I said this recently and got taken to task for it. I'll get back to this in the next few days to say more about it: (Later: below):
Also, I didn't say anything about Obama's domestic policies, which were arguably more successful than his foreign policies. But even they are arguable.
Fact is: one can be, or have been (like me) an Obama supporter, but be deeply disappointed by his foreign policy failures. Failures mainly because he was pusillanimous, perhaps by character, perhaps by principle ("leading from behind").
There are critiques on the Left, which pretty much echo mine:
The Human Rights Watch
The Washington Post
And at the conservative centre:
No, He didn't: Obama's legacy
Syria was an Obama own-goal. Obama’s failure to punish Assad's crossing of the “Red Line”, a line Obama himself had set, made Assad contemptuous of the US. Obama's failure to be more robust in Iraq and then Syria, led to ISIS and now to Russia ruling this radical roost. Line them up these Obama errors: withdraw from Iraq (>> Al Qaeda, then ISIS), do nothing in Lybia and Syria (ditto), do nothing about Crimea or Ukraine (weaken Nato, embolden Putin), diss the EU (ditto), fold to China’s South China Sea hegemony (embolden Xi Jinping)…. so much, so sadly much…. and then his valedictory stabbing of Israel: not in the back but in the chest. An ally and the only democracy in that part of the world, frontally skewered by a dishonest, biased UN resolution supported by such bastions of probity as China, Russia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Senega, Uruguay, Ethiopia and Egypt. A sick joke.
Obama’s foreign policy, I’m convinced, will go down in history as a monstrous avoidable failure. I think he may even be judged the uniquely awful foreign policy president in the pantheon of presidents. The worst in 44. It’s hard to deny that his presidency has made the world more dangerous. Yet that’s the same Obama that won a Nobel Peace Prize. (And an Obama I would have voted for….). Obama Foreign Policy summary: a signal, unique, avoidable, disastrous, catastrophic, failure.
As for those “refugees” from outside Syria, well, blame Mad Mutti Merkel. The bulk are single young men, out for a better life. Young men who saw her say “refugees welcome” on social media. Can we blame them, for taking to the road, the sea? No. But they are not refugees. The are economic migrants. There’s a process for economic migrants. Unless you’re Merkel. In which case you simply tear up the process, because you’re still guilty over the Nazis (she is).
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LATER (10 Feb): I should have said that Obama's failures to be "more robust" in Iraq and Syria leading to ISIS gains, is arguable, but that there are judgements on both left and right the come to that conclusion. If there's evidence that they didn't lead to ISIS, I'd like to read them.Also, I didn't say anything about Obama's domestic policies, which were arguably more successful than his foreign policies. But even they are arguable.
Fact is: one can be, or have been (like me) an Obama supporter, but be deeply disappointed by his foreign policy failures. Failures mainly because he was pusillanimous, perhaps by character, perhaps by principle ("leading from behind").
There are critiques on the Left, which pretty much echo mine:
The Human Rights Watch
The Washington Post
And at the conservative centre:
No, He didn't: Obama's legacy
