Discussion for article #227058
He’s right. But there are big changes afoot in the Middle East.
Remember that what proved to be the big catalyst for the Arab Spring was the release of WikiLeaks documents that revealed the absolute corruption of the leadership of most of the N. African Arab countries. The rest of the strife seems to be a vicious conflict between Sunni and Shia (North Africa and Pakistan are mainly Sufi, a very different stripe from Sunni/Shia–more spiritual, less fanatic, apparently) with the Saudis mainly backing the Sunnis and Iran backing Shia (including Assad who is Alawite–a branch of Shiism).
The Saudis were the main promoters, funders and backers of jihad, they founded madrases that taught jihad, and they did so mainly to distract their people from the fact that the royals kept all the money and left the ordinary people very little. Now they fear that the jihadis will turn against them. They wanted to export revolution, not have it in their backyard.
But they now realize they can’t control the extremists.
So what is the US supposed to do in the midst of this set of conflicts?
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I’ll tell you what we shouldn’t be doing: Exporting democracy! Democracy should be organic, not transplanted (and, in many ways, enforced). Not everybody wants to live like we do. And exporting democracy creates idiots like al-Maliki and Hamid Karzai.
Should we defend our country? Absolutely – but not with pre-emptive war.
Should we help our allies? Absolutely – but not when they go off the rails like Israel did with Gaza, and not when they dig their own holes like al-Maliki did. (I’m all for the air strikes against ISIL, but nothing further, and definitely no boots on the ground!)
Should we promote democracy? Absolutely – but if the people aren’t buying our brand, shoving it down their throats ain’t gonna make 'em like it.
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Obama told donors that Americans are much less vulnerable to foreign threats than they were just 10 years ago.
Ironically social media has shown us Americans are very very vulnerable to law breaking US PIGS.
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“President Barack Obama sought to reassure donors Friday that the foreign
policy quandaries facing America today are no more challenging than
threats the country has faced before.”
To my mind no single threat is more than we have faced before but taken together: ebola, poverty, racism here and abroad, Israel-arab conflict, ISIS, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Russia, Drugs, Illiteracy, underfunding of education, and a do-nothing dysfunctional House of representatives…that’s a pretty impressive list. I’d say that we are indeed faced with more now than at other times in our history. And going into his Presidency Obama was faced with an economy that was tanking in the worst way since the Great Depression (thanks to whom?? One guess and it isn’t Obama). Is it any wonder Obama is going grey??
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Depends on the issue. The opposite is actually true for most things. It cleaned up the political mess known as marriage equality in short order as threats and insults become known by friends, family, co-workers and teammates, pretty much immediately. And they have said N-O.
There is no general harm in that.
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TPM? Stop perpetuating the “Obama doesn’t have a strategy” meme. His remarks were considerably more complex than that, and you’re just as obnoxious as Drudge when you distill those remarks to “he doesn’t have a strategy.”
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that’s right.
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Actually Americans are much less vulnerable to police abuse than 40 years ago, but thanks to social media every incident around the country becomes national news. Michael Brown wouldn’t have even been a major story in St. Louis in 1974. It’s interesting how people (especially younger ones) tend to forget that the things going on today are not at all new.
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Agree, and I think his comment will force other Middle East countries possibly in ISIS’s path to join in a coalition for their common defense – the old “hang together or hang separately” idea.
This comment reminds me of an incident a few years ago: Egypt, fresh from a bloody uprising that ousted Mubarek, elected a president who then subverted the constitution and committed other abuses. In the ensuing turmoil, a reporter asked if we and Egypt were still allies. Obama answered, “I don’t know,” with the caveat that they were a new government facing many challenges. Egypt got the message: billions in foreign aid were on the line. They blinked.
Also, the comment should put to rest the fears of some that Obama was ready to go in whole-hog into Syria without Congress’s OK.
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Why won’t Nodrama Obama in Denial realize that he has unleashed All the Demons of Hell?! Just like Revelations predicted!
Sorry, but this is utter nonsense. Take a look at just two decades, from 1925 to 1945. Organized crime on a rampage. Rampant drug abuse (opium, cocaine, you name it). No antibiotics at all to combat routine infections. Routine lynchings of young black men who dared to “look funny” at a white woman. A global economic depression on a scale never seen before or since. A human-induced environmental catastrophe on the high plains that stripped the land of topsoil that took millenia to get there, and sent hundred of thousands of people onto the highway, headed west with no more than few dollars in their pockets. The rise of fascist dictatorships in the heart of Europe and Asia. A global war that killed well over 60 million people. Organized genocide in Europe that killed over 6 million. The list goes on and on and on.
By comparison, there’s almost nothing worth reporting going on today.
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Thanks for that perspective.
I laugh when people tell me they’ve never seen this country more polarized. I usually tell them, “So, you don’t remember the Vietnam War, when we had a draft?”
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President Obama swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and that’s his guiding document, not a bible. But you get a couple of points for being rhymey and cutesy while demonstrating religiosity.
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We are going to miss Barack Obama’s leadership when his term in office is over.
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Maybe you should check the batteries in your snark detector…
Throw in 1912-1925 as well. Two 600 year old empires collapsing into dust amid war and revolution. Ethnic nationalism, socialism, and proto-fascism turn the heart of Europe into a chaotic mess, then plunge it into a catastrophic and senseless slaughter of a war. Immediately as the war ends, a global pandemic kills at least 50 million people, 5% of the world’s population (the equivalent of 350 million today). Even in the aftermath, wars continue for years in the new countries and territories of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Almost completely ignored, feeding all of this is mass enslavement, exploitation, and murder in the colonies of Africa and Asia on a scale of both numbers and brutality that’s practically incomprehensible today.
Now compare those 33 years (1912-1945, including what MisterNeutron wrote) to the 33 years 1981-2014. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the Arab Spring, and even the rise of jihadism have been pretty minor in comparison.
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I’d like to suggest as a “strategy for combating Islamic militants in Syria” that we shanghai all members of the press, chicken-hawks and baggers – arm them with weapons and pom-poms then dump their ass in Syria.
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Is Obama exporting democracy the way Bush attempted to do? If so, I’m not seeing it.
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Thumbs up times a thousandsy!
We have a president who gathers the facts, the opinions and strategy proposals of those he trusts, and thinks it through. The idea that he isn’t a puppet like the previous regime, anxious to go to war without consideration, makes the “sound bite” crowd rabid.
I, for one, am proud of our president for his calm and consideration and thank him every day that we are not engaged in more wars like Ukraine, Iran or Syria, or boots back on the ground in Iraq.
That a news organization we’d like to trust, like TPM, leans toward CW talking points to make profit off clicks, rather than communicating the less sexy or clickable nuances our current challenges demand, makes me cranky.
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