FOD 2014.01.20

It's not just former Defense Secretary Robert Gates who thinks obama has been a dismal failure as Commander-in-Chief.

In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”

One of the U.K.'s most knowledgeable and respected military advisers is also highly critical of obama's performance as CINC..

President Obama has been judged to be 'chronically incapable' of conducting a coherent military strategy and 'has no sense of what he wants to do in the world', according to Oxford University professor, Sir Hew Strachan - one of the UK's most respected and senior military advisers.

The damning verdict from a governmental insider of the United States' closest military ally comes days after the president was heavily criticized by his own former Defense Secretary Robert Gates who said that Obama was indecisive and lacked any passion for his nation's armed forces.

Claiming that America and Britain had committed total strategic failure in their near decade-long Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, Strachan said that the recent failed attempts to intervene militarily on behalf of Syrian rebels 'has left them in a far worse position than they were before.'

'What he’s done in talking about Red Lines in relation to Syria has actually devalued the deterrent effect of American military capability and it seems to me that creates an unstable situation, because if he were act it would surprise everybody,' he said.

"...if he were act it would surprise everybody..." - More on that.

While the Middle East is going through one of the most turbulent periods in history, America is governed by one of the most, if not the most, risk-averse post-war Presidents. The consequences of this unfortunate match are devastating, far-reaching and long-lasting.

The “Arab Spring” was always going to be a brutal contest between two major camps - secular progressives and religious reactionaries - and not an instant fix for the region’s deep-rooted socio-political, cultural and economic problems. Democracy is more than protests, elections and the sum of its institutions. But neither was the “Arab Spring” destined to turn into an “Islamist Winter” with no end in sight.

It has reached its bloody peak in Syria with the death toll now exceeding 130,000 - a conservative estimate with the actual numbers likely to be far higher.

On average, 5000 people are being killed every month and the civilian fatality rate is approximately 30 per cent or higher. The situation in the country is so bleak that it has almost produced as many casualties in less than three years than the war in Iraq, which many consider to be the US’s greatest foreign policy disaster in decades. The UN speaks of the worst refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and, at current pace, Syria is likely to replace Afghanistan as the top refugee producing country during 2014, the first change since 1981.

Syria also constitutes the peak of Barack Obama’s contradiction-ridden Middle Eastern Odyssey of failures. His administration mishandled almost every major challenge it has been confronted with in the region..

Examples:

Iran

When in 2009 the Iranian people took to the streets in massive protest against the clerical regime and fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Obama remained silent. Now, his administration is engaging in controversial nuclear talks with the Islamic Republic, including the country’s new Defence Secretary, Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, who was involved in Hezbollah's 1983 Marine barracks bombings that killed 241 Americans.

Egypt? Same thing.

Yet again Obama left American foreign policy hanging in the wind at a crucial moment in time after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak. Egypt has always been a pivotal player in the region and the direction Egypt goes, the surrounding Arab countries tend to follow. Not only did Obama fail to use the leverage that the more than $1,5 billion in aid gives the US, but his administration lacked a clear and coherent policy altogether. It resulted in the isolation of Washington with almost no influence to shape events on the ground, as both sides of the revolution and counter-revolution blamed America for supporting the other. His infamous Cairo speech is no more than a distant memory and ratings for the US are lower now than they were during the Bush administration.

Iraq?

Obama’s short-term foreign policy thinking was once more revealed when he failed to negotiate the renewal of the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Iraq. When troops were pulled out too quickly and over-hastily in December of 2011, despite repeated calls for caution from the generals, the peace in Iraq was once more lost.

Afghanistan?

575 US troops died in Afghanistan during the Bush presidency. By August 18, 2010, following two troop surges initiated by President Obama, that number had doubled. Today, over 1500 US troops have died in Afghanistan since President Obama took office—and yet, little in that war-torn country has changed.

But surely al-Qaeda is defeated, right?

Al-Qaeda has re-emerged in Iraq under the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shām (the Levant). Under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, they are seeking to seize control of the province of Anbar where nearly a third of US soldiers lost their lives. ISIS has already managed to gain control of parts of Fallujah, less than an hour away by car from Iraq’s capital Baghdad. Meanwhile, ISIS’s offshoot and former proxy organisation in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, is considered to be one of the most successful but also aggressive opposition groups. The al-Nusra Front has a strength of up to 10,000 fighters with mostly foreign backgrounds. Hezbollah’s support for the Assad regime has also given a boost to al-Qaeda’s partner organisation in Lebanon, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which are behind a series of recent deadly suicide attacks in an attempt to draw the country deeper into Syria’s civil war.

Not to worry, though. barry still has his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize:

The Nobel Peace Prize 2009 was awarded to Barack H. Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".

What a sad, pathetic, fraudulent joke...