The biggest foreign policy story of the day is the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. The biggest stories in world events are the story of Ramadi, capitol of Iraq’s Anbar province, falling to the Islamist terrorist organization DAESH and the ongoing war between Saudi Arabia and Houthi forces in Yemen. The biggest political story of the day is the ongoing revelations of corruption surrounding the activities of the allegedly charitable Clinton Foundation which, as well as anyone can tell, exists primary to raise money, create an empire, and support the Clintons’ lifestyle. The media story of George Stephanopoulous’s serial failures of journalistic ethics can be subsumed under that.
I think the most important domestic story of the day has got to be the phlegmatic U. S. economy. A whole phalanx of other domestic stories from public employee pension crises as far as the eye can see to riots in Baltimore and even problems with the police in community after community can be laid at the feet of economic growth inadequate to bring prosperity to all Americans rather than just a few.
How am I doing?
I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.
When I went to bed Saturday, Ramadi was a big success for the anti-IS coalition – “we” had repulsed the attack and given them what-for! We had even sent in “boots on the ground”, as promised, all the way to Syria to kill some guy and abduct his women. (That is what the President promised to do, right?)
Anyway, for me yesterday was all about shopping for a new window AC-unit. By the time I settled in last night, Ramadi had fallen. So I’m starting to think the official accounts of how well we’re doing are pretty much shit, that the President is completely delusional, and that his staff is either too incompetent or too fucking corrupt to set him straight. Seriously, how do they go from crowing about the big victory to admitting total defeat in less than 24 hours? Who’s running the White House, Baghdad Bob?
I think the biggest international story remains Russia’s actions in Ukraine, though, and their threats to invade everyone from Finland to Bulgaria.
I think there’s a problem that’s common to many administrations. Presidents are insulated by their advisors from news they don’t want to hear. The Obama Administration may be particularly susceptible to this problem.
The reason I think this is a big story is two-fold. First, as you intimated it goes against the prevailing wisdom. Second, as I’ve pointed out before, it’s part of a story that’s been ongoing for several decades on the advance of radical Islamism. Just look at a map. In 1995 the only radical Islamist governments were Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan. That number has expanded to include more of Pakistan, much of Iraq, parts of Syria, most of Libya (to the extent that is has a government at all), and Turkey.
The reason I don’t class Russia’s invasion (or whatever they’re doing) of Ukraine as a major story is that the Russians are doing precisely what we should have expected them to do given the incentives we’ve given them. It’s a “dog bites man” story.
This is past “dog bites man” and up to the “dog eats a neighbor’s toddler” stage. And they’re threatening to eat more of the neighborhood children.
Something I’m having trouble understanding is this: Why do the revelations about George Stephanopoulous giving money to the Clinton Foundation change anything? He was always just a Clinton tool, was a Clinton tool when ABC hired him, has remained a Clinton tool since being hired. How is the Clinton Foundation donations supposed to change anything?
For me this is analogous to when the national sports media “discovered” steroids in baseball. It had been obvious TO ANYONE WITH EYES that ‘roids had been a problem in MLB since the late 1980s. When infielders start looking bigger and more ripped than the average NFL linebacker (a position for which people had been taking steroids for a long time, even back then), it’s obvious what’s going on. Or it should be. Are the media types really that stupid, or do they think we are?
Russia’s neighbors might want to consider adopting the strategy that Finland did–convincing the Russians of their neutrality and non-aggressiveness.
Yeah, but the Finns have been having trouble with Russia lately. Even saw a story a few weeks back that they’re getting concerned enough that some of the leadership is considering seeking NATO membership.
They’ve forgotten what their grandfathers knew.
You’ve got it. They used to have plausible deniability or, at the very least, the willing suspension of disbelief. Now they don’t even have that.
Despite the political rhetoric we are engaged in a limited operation in the hope that Iraqi government forces can reconstitute, defeat ISIS, and reunite the country. IMO that is a fantasy – as I’ve been saying for years, Iraq is broken and cannot be put back together again. Ramadi shows the continued weakness of the ISF, but ISIS isn’t particularly strong either. Like Syria, I expect this civil war to be counted in years and not months. Our current policy is likely to continue as well to little effect.
I find our involvement in Iraq baffling. Here’s what we can deduce from it. Iraq is of strategic importance to us. We can even quantify how important it is: the cost of our operations there plus opportunity costs plus a risk premium.
Why is it worth that much? Why isn’t it worth enough to send troops in? Life is full of mystery..
Initially we went in to stop the route and prevent ISIS from taking Baghdad and the Kurdish areas. But what now? Our policy is, publicly anyway, to roll ISIS back but that’s not something we can effect. On the other hand we can’t withdraw because that would not play well with our political elites and would also cede what little influence with have with the current government to the Iranians. So it’s a stalemate really. At some point the people in Washington will have to acknowledge reality.
Just to reiterate my views on Iraq, I thought that Joe Biden’s remark about dividing the country into three pieces was unwise because of the timing. Dividing the country flew in the face of the strategy we were purportedly following there. It wasn’t our decision to make and the Iraqi Arabs overwhelmingly wanted a united Iraq, at least at the time.
I also think that George W. Bush intended to renegotiate the SOFA but Barack Obama leapt on the withdrawal as an excuse for dropping the country like a hot potato. I just can’t figure out why he didn’t let it stay dropped.
With respect to our present policy, I think that if you set out to take Vienna, you should take Vienna.
Before setting to take Vienna one should should seriously consider feasibility and costs vs. benefits.
I don’t disagree with that other than that I think we should only make war when the matter is so grave it’s beyond cost-benefit analysis. I just think that the present policy is foolish and every second we spend not defeating DAESH is a propaganda defeat for us. There is value in having a reputation for possessing an undefeatable military which we have been steadily eroding over the period of the last 13 years. The irony is that we do, in fact, have an undefeatable military. We have weak, vain, and foolish civilian leadership.
I also thought that overthrowing Saddam without being willing to subdue the population was foolish but obviously the Bush Administration thought differently.
At some point the people in Washington will have to acknowledge reality.
!!
I’ll take that bet!