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US Foreign Policy In Shambles: Global Crises Worst Since 1970 As Obama Golfs
If one were so inclined, one could imagine that the relentless barrage of domestic scandals plaguing Obama have been orchestrated with a simple reason: to divert attention from the worst US foreign policy in four decades. And sure enough, even a casual glimpse of all the raging international crises, in which the US is currently embroiled, is enough to make one wonder if the next global crisis will be fought not in the capital markets but in the actual battlefield. As the WSJ recounts, "a convergence of security crises is playing out around the globe, from the Palestinian territories and Iraq to Ukraine and the South China Sea, posing a serious challenge to President Barack Obama's foreign policy and reflecting a world in which U.S. global power seems increasingly tenuous. The breadth of global instability now unfolding hasn't been seen since the late 1970s, U.S. security strategists say, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, revolutionary Islamists took power in Iran, and Southeast Asia was reeling in the wake of the U.S. exit from Vietnam."
In the past month alone, the U.S. has faced twin civil wars in Iraq and Syria, renewed fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, an electoral crisis in Afghanistan and ethnic strife on the edge of Russia, in Ukraine.
Off center stage, but high on the minds of U.S. officials, are growing fears that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program could collapse this month, and that China is intensifying its territorial claims in East Asia.
Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), in a CNN interview Sunday, said the world is "in greater turmoil than at any time in my lifetime." Many of the seeds of instability in the Middle East have taken root since the upheaval that followed the Sept. 11 terror attacks. At the same time, post-Cold War shifts are continuing as superpower influence has receded.
The developments have fueled debate over the Obama foreign-policy doctrine, which the president said in a May speech at West Point would rely on U.S. leadership, but not troop deployments.
Some more pointing out the obvious:
The president's critics in Washington, as well as some diplomats abroad, believe Mr. Obama's policies have fueled today's conflicts. They cite his decision to pull back from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his rejection of a more decisive U.S. and allied role in the Syrian civil war, and what they see as his reluctance to provide greater support to American allies in Asia and Europe as they face down the newly aggressive foreign polices of China, Iran and President Vladimir Putin's Russia.
"I think our country acting like such a paper tiger to the world on this and so many other fronts is doing incredible long-term damage to our nation," said Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) at a hearing last week on Ukraine. "And I do hope at some point the administration will actually follow through on the things that it continues to tout publicly."
The chaos has meant that the Obama administration finds itself in the middle of a second term reacting to rather than directing world events. Dangers for the president and for the U.S. are growing as militant groups gain greater control. The organization known as the Islamic State, which now holds parts of Iraq and Syria, poses a particular danger.
"If they are able to consolidate their gains in that area, I think it's just a matter of time before they start looking outward and start looking at the West and at the United States in particular," Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday in an ABC News interview. "So this is something that we have to get on top of and get on top of now."
The biggest culprit for Obama's ruinous outside reign: completely confusion.
Many Middle East leaders also have said Mr. Obama has been too reluctant to use force, which has emboldened terrorist groups and rogue states. They cite the president's failure last year to follow through on a threat to strike Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime after it allegedly used chemical weapons on its political opponents.
Of course, with John Kerry in charge of policy, is anyone surprised? Still, he does report to Obama, and one would assume that despite the president "knowing nothing" about any of the domestic scandals he has faced in the past year, he can find the world on a map...
In some cases, U.S. allies are complicating matters. European countries have balked at imposing tough new sanctions on Russia, according to U.S. officials. And divisions between South Korea and Japan have undermined U.S. efforts to present a united front against China.
Some foreign diplomats believe the Middle East is weathering a historic intra-Islamic feud between its Sunni and Shiite sects that no outside power could significantly affect and that is undermining the very structure of the region's nation states.
...
There is a growing skepticism in Asia about whether the U.S. would abide by its commitment to defend Japan, Taiwan and other Asian countries if their territorial disputes with China escalate into conflict, according to Asian diplomats. Messrs. Obama and Kerry have worked to assure Japan and South Korea that Washington remains wholly committed to its defense treaties. But even some security analysts who are close to the White House say the Obama administration's perceived hesitancy in responding to international threats is unnerving U.S. allies in the region.
"Our allies are looking for a quarterback to call some plays here, and our body language sometimes doesn't show that we're doing that," said Brian Katulis of the left-leaning Center for American Progress. "Obama's always been a look-before-you-leap guy. And I think that leads to some of the confusion here at home, but also abroad."
Although to be honest, not all is a disaster: Obama has shown that when it comes to spying on his closest European ally, he is indeed second to none. The only problem is that said information would have been better used outside the public domain.
So what does Obama do to mitigate the disastrous image he portrays to global leaders everywhere?
Obama golfing at the TPC in Potomac with Michael Wilbon.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 12, 2014
... He golfs.
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This article ignores the success that is Libya where civil war would require a more coherent picture on the ground. It fails to address Ukraine which is getting to be like Poland on 17 September 1939 when USSR and Germany divided it up and the USA declared Neutrality as Woodrow Wilson's creation was dismembered and its national identity hauled off to the gulags.
Or the general sense that Obama wants every man woman and child bar-coded and electronically tagged by the NSA even if it leads to the Us being an Evil Empire.
Zat was alvays ze plan.
And you will be replaced by Lesser Evil Empires.
This is of course - intoxicating nonsense....a bewildering Orwellian, neoconservative mirror - holding up a mirror to examine the world while reversing the image.
And Obama is a puppet, and for being a secret muslim, he sure has been advised by, and appointed a wildly disproportionate number of Zionist Jews: Rahm, Axelrod, Sunstein, the fed, irs, treasury, cftc, commerce, fdic, trade rep, council of economic advisors.
He's made Bill Clinton's "kosher kitchen" look like a Baathist Party picnic....but the secret muslim meme helps avoid Crime Think. ..
One is better off, of course, asking which troublespots in the world are not due to neocon (mostly Jewish Zionists and militarist realists like Zbig) wisdom, deception, and bloodlust. But the media is fundamentally just zioglobalist propaganda... please find me a single major media news outlet which is not owned and/or managed by neocons, and yes, far, far more than 2.5 percent by Jews. Whither "diversity" in media and Hollywood? Aren't boardrooms supposed to 'look like the country'? Its not merely that Jews do, as a matter of fact, essentially run Hollywood - but that they have kept it a Jewish closed shop, virtually, for 80 years.
McCain is a traitor, and deserves to be treated as one.
Indeed, 2.5% Jewish owned and operated has always been the tipping point!
Out of one side of his mouth, like all good Republicans, McCain blames Obama.
But then if you Google ‘McCain ISIS pictures’, there McCain is with the enemy, ISIS – BEFORE the ISIS rampage.
Hmmm……
Is it really bathhouse Barry's fault, or are these the results that can only be expected? Affirmative Action is NOT a victimless crime!
In many of the essays and reports on ZH, and at sites like GlobalResearch.com, Empire Report and antiwar.com, we can see the collapse of the Empire as if from the outside, driven forward by the inexorable collapse of the greed-crazed bloated financial system at its base, swallowing the real economy like a black hole at the heart of a collapsing star.
Here, in this essay, we can see a pure expression of how this collapse appears from inside the black hole, looking out at the flameups on a shrinking event horizon.
Wars and brush fires everywhere, spreading, a world order spinning out of control, allies and vassals in complete confusion, upstarts and rivals getting ever more uppity, and a President who - despite all his missiles, nukes and carrier fleets - won't (can't?) act to save us from this spreading contagion of collapse.
This is a look at the world from inside the minds of the international banksters and the demented neocons, militarists and minions who defend them, an expression of the gathering panic driving them toward ever more use of naked force to crush dissent and restore order, abroad and at home - and toward the choice of world war to save their world.
It has a familiar feel because it is the mindset that guides our corporate media and propaganda mills.
And it has the power of authenticity.
We each get to choose. Do we want to enter into their minds and make believe we are one of them? Lend our minds and hands to the glorious task of saving their world from the vandals at the gates and rebellious slaves within?
Here is your portal. Hope you can find your way back out when you figure out there's nothing real there for you.
Shared publicly - 7:48 AM #BREAKING #BREAKING
Ukraine Defence Minister says Ukrainian AN-26 transport plane shot down by rocket "probably" from Russian territory - Presidential website
Tough Titty, NAZIs.
He should be asked to explain his gang signs.
US Foreign Policy in Shambles as Bath House Throws Homosexual Orgies with Crack Cocaine and Young Mexican Boys.
Nobody is doing anything just blabbing. That includes everyone here. Who cares?
Impeach the Turd of Washington D.C.
Better yet, drain the punchbowl.
You mean hashtags dont work as a foreign policy?
And I'm sure the next "hero" to save us from the imminent destruction put in place by O will be so much better...
I can't believe people still play into this stupid soap opera. Silly rats wouldn't be running around in a maze if they knew just how easy it was to kick down the walls and go in a straight line.
Agreed. Brilliant image.
If you understand O is a patsy, a flunky, a distractor, pied piper for some, embattled victim for others and designated villain for the rest, like Emmanuel Goldstein the designated hate object in Orwell's 1984. If we see him as an actor prepped to play President and take a dive - as any regular ZH reader surely must - then surely we should get it that beating up on him is just playing a designated part in the "stupid soap opera".
Obama does occupy the position of President, and when he speaks he gives glimpses of the action on Olympus where the gods are perhaps warring among themselves, and so he rates some airtime.
Many of us grew up believing the President of the United States was the Most Powerful Man on Earth. Time to get over it.
BINGO!
"Many of us grew up believing the President of the United States was the Most Powerful Man on Earth. Time to get over it."
In putting Obama in power and then leading the charge to render him powerless and hold him up to ridicule, they have deliberately sacrificed the mystique of the POTUS!
Yikes!
That's a serious matter. How do we deal with THAT?
If the position has no power can we hope to imbue it with power by electing someone else? If not, then what?
Or perhaps we could unite the Presidency with the power, by electing for example a President Rockefeller or a President Rothschild, and pretending he speaks for us?
What truly disturbs me is that no-one here even questions the notion that the US has a right to be involved with situations occurring thousands of miles from it's shores. Not one person speaks about the US's involvement in creating most, if not all, of these foreign conflicts. It is these subtle media pieces that divert attention away from the real issue, Why is the security of the US effected by any of this?
Everybody, listen up! I got hit by a piece of falling sky this morning! No shit!
Who WRITES this garbage? Is this Zero Hedge, or some garbage propaganda from Human Events? Boo.
Come on dummies! Show a slight trace of brains for a change! Everyone thinks him golfing is a sign that he is not aware or detached from the situation...and you wouldbe all wrong!!!!!!!!
He is golfing and showing other signs of leisure because he is signaling that everyting is under control. The chaos in Ukraine, te Middle East and at home here in the USA is part of the plan. Order out of chaos. It is the US tried and true game plan. Golfing is a sig of strength. Panicking and returning to White House would show that tese events are not under our control.
In addition, the US government has hardware that would blow your mind.
ISIS, Ukraine, border problems...child stuff. We could wipe out ISIS in a few hours if we wanted, via a multiple of ways. Fry them, shred them, disintegrate them...whatever method POTUS is in the mood for. No, like it or not, for better or for worse, the US government has unimaginable power at it's disposal, nd anything bad tat happens is merely part of he plan to reshape and redefine the world according to TPTB vision.
Relax!
Quite so!. Our author above thinks that an awe inspiring super-power capable of frying the globe, should leap before it looks, act without deliberation, and generally act crazy to intimidate all who might not support it's aims.
We have seen how well that works out in every intervention since WW2, which, by the way, the US only entered after years of deliberation.
Indeed very bad things might happen in the Middle East and even here. However, similar to 9/11 it will be done either with their complete knowledge of it, oreven assisted to further their gains.
This is a tremendous time for TPTB, a great time of opportunity, where old orders crumble and the chance for them to extend their reach, or allow old enemies and allies to die. They will survive and cruise in amid the ruble, bones, and burning cars to declare a New World Order has been established.
Chaos is a law, either you bring it, or it will be brought upon you!
This writer is a complete JACKASS with no sense of anything except the most base, low level view and analysis of the world. What should Obama be doing? Scrambling in front of the press onto his jet to meet with other world leaders? Should he be having all night sessions wth the Joint Chiefs to try and figure out how to solve these very out of control situations? Or, wouldit be more appropriate to give a short call in the morning to confirm that ALL IS GOING AS PLANNED?!?!!?
This writer is a complete JACKASS with no sense of anything except the most base, low level view and analysis of the world. What should Obama be doing? Scrambling in front of the press onto his jet to meet with other world leaders? Should he be having all night sessions wth the Joint Chiefs to try and figure out how to solve these very out of control situations? Or, wouldit be more appropriate to give a short call in the morning to confirm that ALL IS GOING AS PLANNED?!?!!?
Quoting McCain and Corker is all you need to see. I differ from some here in that what you are seeing is in fact part of the decline of the western empire...I'm no fan of any Prez, but Obama the current puppet is just reflecting an establishment with a power and legitimacy crisis. The nation state is an artifact of history...decentralization is in control...not some fantasy global government. To "act" would just speed the system's demise and they even know it. That's why they are "pausing"...self interst plain and simple.
Order out of chaos worked during the info monopoly that was the 20th c., but now it's a precarious game for elites to play and they are seeing it. The Mc-Corker quotes are meaningless other than two old failed politicians proving once again they are less relevant every breath they take. Who takes them seriuosly...they literally pretend we don't know they helped cause all of this with their criminality...there's this new thing called the internet if they noticed.
And please people...stop caring what "most people" think. They still don't matter. The wheels are coming off the anglo empire...but it's actually a good thing and it could be going down so much worse. The "leaders" deserve no credit for mediating anything. ..and we are so lucky they are becoming spectators along side us as the real changes manifect more or less organically. This has happened many times before. Just quicker as has always been the trend with each passing era of human history.