You might be interested in Aaron David Miller’s interview with Obama Administration special assistant to the president on the National Security Council (NSC), a senior advisor to the president for the counter-ISIL campaign, and the White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and Persian Gulf region Robert Malley at Foreign Policy:
These days, defending U.S. Middle East policy is no easy matter. And there’s not all that much to feel good about. With less than six months left on his presidential clock, Barack Obama faces the almost certain prospect of leaving the Middle East dramatically worse than it was when he entered office. Still, an honest person would admit that regardless of the Obama administration’s transgressions, the Middle East isn’t primarily a mess of this president’s making. Rather, it is largely the result of a broken, angry, and dysfunctional region in turmoil marked by failed or failing states and leaders and institutions unable to provide the kind of reforms needed to right itself: good, inclusive governance; accountability; transparency; respect for human rights; and gender equality.
As you might expect, Mr. Malley’s remarks are consistently supportive of the president’s policies. There are gaping holes, puzzling lacunae, in Mr. Malley’s comments including President Obama’s drone war, U. S. support for anti-regime rebels in Syria which at the very least has prolonged the conflict and may have sparked it to begin with, actions or omissions that weakened governments in the region, and the administration’s reluctance to support anti-regime demonstrations in Iran. Nearly unmentioned is the U. S. role in destabilizing Libya.
And then there’s the elephant in the room: Afghanistan. The number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan during President Obama’s term of office has been three times what it was when he took office. Is Afghanistan better off than it was seven and a half years ago? Are we? Europe certainly isn’t. There are more Afghans among the immigrants to Europe than from any country other than Syria. The numbers were declining when the president took office.
The Taliban are certainly more powerful now than when Obama took office; his surge failed, as Bush’s in Iraq did by its own criteria of
reconciling the ethnic and religious factions.
It’s not just that it failed. It failed after resulting in the deaths of many more Americans. Many of those deaths could have been avoided by keeping our footprint small.