[Washington Post] President Obama’s foreign policy is based on fantasy

An editorial peice with no name attached, by a writer who wants be taken seriously and yet calls the president "Mr. Obama" yup, all of it must be gold.

 

I think this quote sums up the article quite well, better than the sensationalist title:

 

impotent.

[rquoter]6 Countries That Totally Ignored Obama's Demands

It was a complete rebuff issued with blinding speed: Less than 24 hours after President Obama went on national television on Friday to warn Vladimir Putin that "there will be costs for any military intervention," Russia's military seized total control of Crimea.

It's embarrassing for a world power to see its warnings so cavalierly disregarded - and not just when it comes to Russia and Ukraine. During his second term, President Obama has repeatedly found that the sternest warnings and firmest demands from the United States have been ignored with impunity.

Consider these examples:

CHINA and RUSSIA: Snowden Slips By
RHETORIC: The Administration repeatedly warned China (where Snowden first fled) and Russia that Edward Snowden was a fugitive felon who must be turned over to the United States. On June 24, 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry bluntly warned he "would be deeply troubled" if Snowden were permitted to fly from Hong Kong to Russia "and there would be, without any question some effect and impact on the relationship and consequences." After Snowden boarded the plane in Hong Kong, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney added ominously: "This was a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant, and that decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the U.S.-China relationship."

REACTION: China ignored U.S. demands and allowed Snowden to travel to Russia. Russia ignored demands to turn Snowden over to U.S. authorities and granted him asylum.

SYRIA: The Vanishing 'Red Line'
RHETORIC: "We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that's a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons," President Obama said on Aug. 20, 2012.

REACTION: Syria allegedly uses chemical weapons attacks outside Damascus and Aleppo, killing 25 and wounding dozens more.

SYRIA: A 'Game Changer' That Didn't Change The Game
RHETORIC: "I have made clear that the use of chemical weapons is a game changer," President Obama said on Mar. 20, 2013.

REACTION: On August 21, 2013, Syria engages in a significantly larger chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus, killing over a thousand people, including hundreds of children.

EGYPT: Warning the Military on Democracy
RHETORIC: First, the United States, urged the Egyptian military not to overthrow Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. On July 3, 2013, Morsi was overthrown. Immediately afterward, President Obama said he was "deeply concerned," adding: "I now call on the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process, and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters."

REACTION: The arrest of President Morsi and his supporters and a sometimes bloody crackdown on the opposition led President Obama to cancel joint military exercises with Egypt a month later.

AFGHANISTAN: Extending The Exit Strategy
RHETORIC: The Administration repeatedly warned that if Afghan President Hamid Karzai did not sign the negotiated Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), the United States would be forced to proceed with plans to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

REACTION: Karzai refused to sign by the end-of-year deadline and continues to refuses even as the administration has extended the deadline.

UGANDA: It's Complicated
RHETORIC: On February 16, 2014 President Obama issued a blunt warning to Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni not to enact a law imposing harsh penalties for homosexual acts. "It will be a step backward for all Ugandans and reflect poorly on Uganda's commitment to protecting the human rights of its people," the president said in a written statement. "As we have conveyed to President Museveni, enacting this legislation will complicate our valued relationship with Uganda."

REACTION: One week later, President Museveni signed the bill into law anyway.[/rquoter]

http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=22759795&sid=77&cid=77

 

EPIC PROPORTIONS OF FAIL! LOLOLOL. Who even says that any more. I have you pegged as a 15 year old or someone more advanced in age who is always a late adopter of the lingo and just keeps using it well past the expiration date. As the above poster pointed out, this is a piece by the editorial board. The editorial board brings its own perspective depending on who is on it. Your knee-jerk reaction calling it a bastion of liberal-leaningness shows a certain ignorant or perhaps willful myopia toward nuance.

So who is on the Washington Posts Editorial Board and what do they tend to think on certain issues? The board includes: Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt; Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl.

What sort of perspective does Fred Hiatt have toward foreign policy, I wonder? I'm going to do some lazy short hand here and go to Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hiatt

While we shouldn't give full credence to what people who have different foreign policy leanings say about Hiatt, it should at least be a signal to you as a reader that his bent is neo-conservative on foreign policy. Not getting into whether that is the right point of view or not, you can see that maybe, just maybe, you were a little too hasty in your gleefully exuberant claim that the piece as some "liberal leaning" put-down of the "epic proportions of FAIL" of the Obama presidency.

 

lol Romney & Palin getting the "I told you so"

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>I'm not saying Romney and Palin aren't dumb, just that everyone on the left is much dumber.</p>&mdash; Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) <a href="https://twitter.com/IMAO_/statuses/440631551768801280">March 3, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

By my count the President has kept the US out of 5 wars.

I'm happy with my votes.

Seems the WaPo, McCain, et al just can't wrap their heads around a president that doesn't live in the cold war.

 

You seem to either not be following me or are mistaking the issue. I had no opinion on what they wrote, read my post again. Read it more slowly than the last time as your haste seems once again to have lead you astray. I have no disagreement with the article. My disagreement was with your misleading or misinformed characterization of the Washington post's editorial board as being liberal and acting like it is some big deal that they disagree on foreign policy with the Obama administration.

While I cannot say who in fact wrote the piece, I can point out that you are off the mark in trying to paint the authors of the piece as liberal on foreign policy. The burden is on you to prove that the Washington post Ed board is liberal, you haven't met that burden, while I have provided at least something showing that maybe just maybe you are wrong.

 

I mean if you are spreading falsehoods and trying to mislead, I feel like I should try to correct you. You didn't even provide any commentary on the article. If you wanted to talk about the article you would have said something other than "FAIL," to signal you wanted a serious discussion. Given that you said nothing other than your comment on the policy leanings of the Washington post, It is tough for readers to intuit where really had no idea where you wanted to go. I get it, you don't like Obama and you like the article but just saying you don't like him and like the article doesn't leave much for discussion. Next time add something of your own about the situation in Ukraine if you want to talk about Ukraine.

 

Slate:

[rquoter]
Why Obama Got Russia Wrong (and Romney Got It Right)

Romney was right. Why was Obama wrong? Because, I think, he was willfully blurring the distinction between "geopolitical" and other sorts of threats. He was playing to the cheap seats. Voters do not fear Russia, or particularly care about its movements in its sad, cold sphere of influence. They do care a lot about terrorism. And Obama would use any chance he had, in 2012, to remind voters that he was president when Osama Bin Laden was killed.

So you see the politics—they reveal Obama as the player of a cheap trick. Of course al-Qaida isn't a "geopolitical threat" to the United States. It's a terrorist organization, untethered to states or geography. Obama himself (like George W. Bush before him) repeatedly claimed that the organization was on the run. How could al Qaeda be the greatest threat to America and a pathetic coalition of losers? It couldn't. Obama was spinning, hopefully faster than Romney could un-spin.

But I don't want to spin for Obama. Romney really did maintain a more cynical long-run view of Russia than Obama did. Obama saw Russia as a declining power that he could do business with, as he did with the new START treaty. Romney, as he laid out in his pre-campaign book No Apology, saw Russia as a recovering power. Its "rediscovered ambition for superpower status," he wrote, "is fueled by its massive energy reserves." This wasn't as sustainable as China's free-enterprise empire strategy, but it was an empire strategy, and that was enough to get spooked about.[/rquoter]


http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/03/03/why_obama_got_russia_wrong_and_romney_got_it_right.html

 

Ukrainians, Syrians, Libyans, Egyptians, Venezuelans, Israelis...

and the list will grow.

neither can they.

 

Which one are we this week?

 

Unfortunately common knowledge leads people far afield when it comes to the perspective of the actual authors of the piece. You seem to think that because common knowledge is the Washington Post is liberal-leaning that that perspective extends to the Editorial board. It does not - the Washington Post editorial board has a neo-con perspective on issues of foreign policy. I don't know if you are/were simply ignorant on the Editorial Board's perspective or you are/have been willfully conflating the common perception of the newspaper as a whole with the perspective of the Editorial board. Either way you are wrong, just admit it and move on or just stop trying to defend your misstatement.

It really didn't, you later comments helped flesh out your perspective on the article, but look back on what you wrote:

I have no idea what your actual perspective is because you are only talking about the fact that the Washington Post has called out [his] foreign policy blunders. You could be saying that you agree with the article or you could simply be bemused that a paper you perceive to be liberal is calling out Obama. Given that you didn't ever directly voice agreement with the article, but instead chose to use the article as a pivot piece to talk about the fact that you find it interesting that a "liberal" newspaper would call out a liberal president, I figured I'd talk about what you seemed to want to talk about the latter rather than the former.

Obviously some typos in my previous post, I apologize for the confusion. What I was trying and failing to type was "It is tough for readers to intuit where you wanted to go."

If you are here to just post articles without your own commentary just stop and take those reposts and posts to your facebook page. If you are here to talk about the article, then talk about the article in your initial post instead of posting some factually deficient commentary. The only thing you seemed to want to comment on and start a discussion on was the fact that a "liberal" paper would disagree with a liberal president. I disputed your idea that this article was an example of liberals calling Obama's foreign policy a fantasy. The people that wrote that are unknown, however, all indications are that it the article is an example of neo-cons disagreeing with the president.