World War Obama

 The New York Times reported on May 20, 2017, “Saudis Welcome Trump’s Rebuff of Obama’s Mideast Views.”

The story began, “With trumpets blaring, cannons booming and fighter jets streaking overhead trailed by red, white and blue contrails, President Trump arrived in the scorching heat of the Arabian desert on Saturday hoping to realign the politics and diplomacy of the Middle East by forcefully reasserting American support for Sunni Muslim countries and Israel against Iran’s Shiite-led government.

“The start of Mr. Trump’s first trip abroad since becoming president — coming amid the scandals and chaos engulfing his administration — was intended to be a blunt rejection of President Barack Obama’s vision for the region. Mr. Obama sought a reconciliation with Iran and negotiated a deal intended to keep Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.”

Imagine that you are Barack Hussein Obama reading this in one of your mansions (well, the one in Chicago barely qualifies at only 6,500 square feet) and you read this.

Trump — the man you mocked for 6 years — is undoing all your efforts to give Iran nukes and destabilize the Middle East. The Saudis fell over themselves to praise him. Trump and his family — including his Jewish son-in-law and Jewish daughter — dominated the front pages of the official Saudi press. The Saudis would fete him for two days before waving goodbye as he flew in Air Force One DIRECTLY to Israel, the first plane to do that since the creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948.

Reading the NYT story was pure agony for the 44th president.

Read the whole thing.

Obama's Syrian Adventure - monumental screw-up

Syria army bids to recover losses to IS after deadly US-led raid

Beirut (AFP) - Syrian troops counterattacked against the Islamic State group around a key eastern airbase Sunday after a US-led coalition air strike killed scores of soldiers forcing a retreat, military sources said.

The Pentagon said that coalition pilots had believed they were hitting IS and had halted the raid as soon as Damascus ally Moscow informed commanders that army positions were coming under attack.

But Damascus reacted angrily to the deadly strike, which forced troops to pull back from two strategic hilltops overlooking the besieged airbase on the outskirts of the city of Deir Ezzor.

"The Syrian army has returned to the offensive," a military source told AFP on Sunday.

"After the American raids, it withdrew from several positions but now it has gone back on the attack."

Here’s What Would Be Happening if President Romney Had Bombed a Hospital in Afghanistan

The news out of the Perpetual War on Terror is pretty grim these days. The US military knowingly but “accidentally” bombed a hospital in Afghanistan, killing 22 doctors and patients. Just days later, the president decided not to draw down troops in the country as previously planned, but will instead keep nearly 6,000 of our sons and daughters in the country until at least 2017 when his term ends. At the same time, the inner workings of the president’s drone war, including questionable intel, lax target timeframes, and horrifying collateral damage ratios, have been brought to light by a whistleblower.

But you’d be forgiven for not noticing any of this. While it has been reported in the news media, there has been almost no secondary public reaction. I think that’s entirely because of one factor: Barack Obama won the last election, not Mitt Romney. If Romney had been elected in 2012 and in the year before his reelection campaign had bombed a hospital, decided to keep troops in Afghanistan, and had details of his robot assassin program leaked, things would probably look a little different today.

If Romney were president right now, the White House would be surrounded by protesters and candlelight peace vigils night and day. Some would wave American flags, some would wave signs calling for impeachment, some would have pictures caricaturing the president as Hitler or an animal. They would chant “Not in our name!”, or “Bring them home!”, or “Hey ho, hey ho, Romney has got to go!”

If Romney were president, nightly news reports on CBS, NBC, and ABC would have regular features on war crimes, quagmires, and collateral damage. CNN would be wall-to-wall with team coverage of protests, interviews of bombing witnesses, and Anderson Cooper walking through rubble in full body armor.

If Romney were president, every political analyst left of Judge Napolitano would be fretting over the war-weary public turning the upcoming election into a referendum against the president and his party. Vox and FiveThirtyEight would have maps showing how many Senate seats Republicans would lose because of the president’s sure-to-plummet approval rating. And then there’s MSNBC.

If Romney were president, MSNBC would be holding mock war crimes tribunals on Chris Hayes, explaining the ins and outs of the process with expert guests. Lena Dunham would be on Maddow every night aghast (but still giggling!) at this warmonger-in-chief. Chris Matthews would be yelling at Michael Moore, trying to find out when charges would be filed at the Hague.

If Romney were president, Democrats in Congress would be calling for hearings and investigations for each transgression: the bombing, troop levels, and drone policy. Chuck Schumer would hold daily press briefings scolding the wreckless president from behind the glasses perched precariously down his nose. Someone would accurately quote Sheila Jackson-Lee condeming the terrible bombing of the “orphanage in Pakistan”.

But Mitt Romney isn’t president, Barack Obama is, so no one cares. When the One, the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, the Lightbringer, the Calmer of Seas, the History-maker, the Healer of Wounds, He Who Will Make Us Respected Again bombs a hospital, extends a war he said he already ended (Promise Fulfilled!™), and uses flying death robots to kill [REDACTED]s of bystanders and labels them “enemies” anyway, we assume it’s a bug, not a feature, and we excuse it. Shame on us.

Obama’s race to chaos

Reading Michael Goodwin's article I though a better headline would have been Obama's Race to Armageddon.

If you’re confused about the Saudi Arabia-led air attacks against Islamist rebels in Yemen and can’t tell one group of head-choppers in Iraq and Syria from another, don’t despair. All you need is imagination.

Close your eyes and imagine that those countries and terrorists have nuclear weapons. Imagine their barbarism going nuclear as they blow up cities, wipe out ethnic and religious groups and turn the region into cinders.

Now open your eyes and realize you’ve seen the future, thanks to President Obama’s policies. It is a future that will be defined by Obama’s Wars. Yes, plural.

Read the whole thing because it's real.

US removes remaining personnel from Yemen

Wait, wasn't Yemen an example of Smart Diplomacy?

Four months ago, Obama called Yemen’s war on terror a success. Now the Yemeni government may fall.

Yemen in Chaos: Portrait of an Obama 'Success' Story

Obama Tonight: Yemen and Somalia Are Models of Success (!)

“But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. This counter-terrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.”

After all the mocking of Bush standing before a banner on an aircraft carrier proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" why is the MSM silent about Obama's "success story in Yemen?

The question is rhetorical; Democrat operatives with bylines don't question other Democrats about failure.

Instapundit:

JUST SIX MONTHS AGO, IT WAS AN OBAMA “SUCCESS STORY.” Losing Yemen.

The last US special forces have been withdrawn from Yemen without exciting much notice from the US press. Max Boot tweets: “All US SOF evacuating Yemen. Huge win for AQAP, huge defeat for US. How many foreign policy disasters can we handle?” Reuters reports, “the United States has evacuated its remaining personnel, including about 100 special operations forces, from Yemen because of the deteriorating security situation there, U.S. officials said on Saturday.” This means that the last vestiges of what the Obama administration only recently touted as their model counter-insurgency operation are gone. The collapse has flown largely under the media radar.

Last week Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post reported that $500 million dollars in American supplied weapons are now in the hands of “Iranian-backed rebels or al-Qaeda”. The Islamist blitzkrieg is living off huge quantities of captured US materiel.

"Foreign policy" is something old bitter white men do.

Mark Steyn

And so the President assures us that his determination to "destroy" Isis won't be anything like Iraq and Afghanistan, but more on the lines of Yemen and Somalia - that's to say, one more failed state we'll drone now and again. Can you really treat one of the world's deepest pools of oil as just another piffling fringe-of-the-map basket-case? Don't worry about it. For the modern progressive, the entire planet is fringe-of-the-map. Real politics is about free contraceptives for thirtysomething college students, and transgender bathrooms for grade-schoolers. "Foreign policy" is something old bitter white men do.

Is Obama a War Criminal?

Calling the President a war criminal is usually associated with the Left. To find a list of political commentators who accuse George Bush of war crimes one need only go to the Huffington Post, Mediaite, or any even Barack Obama himself. The question rarely enters the conversation from the Right or even from the center.

But it is a question that should be considered. Before we accuse someone of war crimes we should define our terms. Let’s be honest, “war crimes” are whatever the victors of a war decide. But since we have entered this politico-legal thicket, can we include in our list of war crimes the use of the “Wag the Dog” strategy? This time we're not covering up a sex scandal but facing falling poll numbers.  Is it a crime to create a fake “war” in which real people get killed for cynical political opportunism?  If the aim on the field of battle has no chance of succeeding but dropping bombs or firing rockets could shift a few votes in key districts?

Paul A. Rahe asks the question:

So the question in my title is, in fact, legitimate. Is killing people via bombing strikes a war crime if it serves no larger strategic purpose, if it is a feckless act apt only to enrage against us those Sunnis who desperately fear the Shia, if it is a cynical maneuver aimed solely at improving the President’s standing in the polls? It is, after all, one thing to seek victory and another to engage in aimless mayhem.

It will become clear over time whether Obama's actions have any effects other than enraging our enemies and getting some people killed. Air power does not win wars and the designated Arabs that Obama promised would supply the 'boots on the ground" are not going to be anxious to be used as cannon fodder.

Bill Clinton was accused of "Wag the Dog" but was far as is known, didn't kill anyone.  The Obama effort, whatever it's called, is real and people are going be killed.   And few on either the Left or Right thinks that it will accomplish its battlefield objective.  

Not everything is coming to a halt because of the cold.

Bud Norman reminds us that ...

Which is not to say that there’s nothing going on in the world except the cold. Al-Qaeda has recaptured the Iraqi city of Fallujah that American soldiers and Marines once fought bravely to liberate, it is increasingly apparent that Obamacare is clearly not the cure for the common cold, and the newly-inaugurated commie mayor of New York City has begun his campaign to create a socialist utopia by banning Central Park carriage rides and conveniently freeing up the stables for a campaign donor’s new development, among other things. All of it is dispiriting, but it’s hard to get one’s blood appropriately boiling about it when the wind chill is well below zero. Whatever the next debacle the Obama administration is planning, they should unleash it now while the public is preoccupied with this even more dreadful weather.

You Go to War with the Clowns You’ve Got

-Oh-oh! As reported by both leftist and righteous on-line sources, Syrian rebels have admitted to using chemical weapons in pursuit of Osama Bin Laden’s directive to kill women and children.

From WND World

A video has emerged of an opposition rebel militant in Syria apparently confessing to using chemical weapons in order to follow Osama Bin Laden’s mantra of killing women and children.

The individual in the clip, Nadeem Baloosh, is a member of an insurgent group called Riyadh Al Abdeen, which is active in the Latakia area of Syria.

Baloosh speaks of “chemicals which produce lethal and deadly gases that I possess,” before going on to state, “We decided to harm them through their women and kids.”

An Army of Clowns: Harry, Gibbsy, JJ, Jean Carré, Big Guy, Axe-man and Joey

 

The bottom line: don't bluff about war.

By all accounts, even the highly regarded John F. Kennedy, who was pretty green at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, sought advice from those with more military experience than himself. He clandestinely consulted with Dwight D. Eisenhower to gain insight and perspective on how best to proceed with the deathly serious situation of Russian nuclear warheads headed for Cuba. Eisenhower coached the young President thorough the negotiations and mechanics of the Cuban blockade. At one point Kennedy seemed to waver, asking his mentor, “but what do I do if the Russians call my bluff?” To which Eisenhower replied, “You’re not bluffing, John.”

The Left's Dominos

 

Among the top reasons for enforcing Obama's ... uhh ... the world's red line against Syria are the horrible chain of events that will follow if we don't.  If we don't bomb Syria, so the theory goes, then Assad will win.  Then Assad's ally, Iran, will have won, giving them a green light to build a nuclear bomb, using it to strike Israel.  Russia will have a new foothold in the Middle East and before you can say "let me be clear"  we're back to the Cold War with the US and Russia facing each other without a misspelled "Reset" button to push.  And this chain of events assumes that Assad is the one who actually used nerve gas, a claim that is losing credibility even as Team Obama raises the stakes.

 

Does this begin to sound vaguely familiar?  Because to me it suddenly brought a flashback to the old domino theory that the Liberals ridiculed when it was one of the key reasons for intervention in Viet Nam. 

 

I sure wish Obama had been elected instead of that warmonger Romney who was accused by Joe Biden of wanting to attack Syria.  Then we wouldn't be in this mess. 

Obama, Benghazi and the Pleasures of Self-Deception

When theory and reality conflict, the ideologue sides with the theory.  It explains how people who go to a mountaintop to await the predicted end of the world descend unshaken in their faith.

William J. Luti's subhead is:  Since the White House promised that war is winding down, evidence to the contrary is ignored.

It almost cost the British their freedom.

British planners needed a reason to keep their defense budget down. They found one in the "Ten Year Rule," adopted in August 1919. The British assumed, on an annual basis, that no major war would break out in the subsequent 10 years.  They ran that assumption right up to the onset of World War II...

 The Obama administration is committed to fundamentally transforming America and appeasing our enemies because, in the ideology of the people that have shaped Obama, the enemy is the white race like Obama's "typical" aunt and the free market system.  That leaves no room for real, existential enemies external that can cause the country major harm.  It's why any problems can be handled by the occasional drone strike or the police and courts. 

Today, it is the United States that is war weary. A decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has taken its toll, and Americans are looking inward. Bin Laden is dead, and President Obama assures us that the core of al Qaeda is on a path to defeat, that it is now a "diffuse" threat, dispersed from Syria to Somalia to Yemen to the Maghreb and wreaking havoc largely in those lands.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the victory party. The enemy fought back. Islamic radicals took quick advantage of a strategic shift in the battle and flooded into the power vacuum created by the Arab Spring. With force and guile, they push toward their objective: Get the U.S. out of the region and take over a state. What better way to further that goal than to attack the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America.

So why, after two years of chaos caused by the Arab Spring, was the Obama administration unable to separate the Benghazi signal from the noise? We now know that there was a flood of advance warning about the danger to U.S. interests across the region before the attack on the U.S. consulate. Those CIA "cable(s) to stations on 9/11 security," referenced obliquely in White House emails, may hold evidence to the severity of the threat.

In times past, military and diplomatic councils would convene. Reasoned threat assessments would be made and forces repositioned accordingly. Perhaps an American aircraft carrier or an amphibious ready group would have been dispatched to patrol the waters of the eastern Mediterranean gathering intelligence, providing situational awareness and, most importantly, better positioned to respond to a potential crisis.

But in these times, taking such action runs counter to the administration's template. After all, we are now in the business of winding down wars.

For those in the Obama administration who want to believe the world is no longer a dangerous place, holding close to "cherished beliefs and comforting assumptions" about the nature of radical Islam can indeed provide respite from the war on terror.

But in the brutal world of the Islamic radical, not everyone can be trusted to act with reason. The scramble to close 19 embassies from West Africa to South Asia and airlift dozens of Americans out of Yemen last week raises the awkward question of who has who on the run? It also exposes the essence of the administration's strategic confusion about the nature of the conflict.

In this case, the proposition "the war is over" is what Roberta called a "self-annihilating prophecy." Such prophecies, she wrote, can be suicidal in two ways: They endanger both the prophecy and the prophet.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

I'm not sure if losing Iraq was the goal or simply the result of stupidity and incompetence, but it's Mission Accomplished for the Obama Administration.

Al Qaeda drives Iraq toward chaos; U.S. withdrawal left door open to sectarian battle for power

Security inside Iraq is unraveling at an alarming pace, and al Qaeda terrorists there aren’t just pulling the thread; they’re setting it on fire.

More than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in bombings and shootings last month, making July the deadliest month since violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims peaked from 2006 to 2008, the United Nations says.

On Thursday, gunmen stormed a policeman’s home in Tikrit and killed him, his wife and their three children. When neighbors later approached the house, a nearby car bomb exploded and killed eight people — a noted al Qaeda tactic, though the terrorist group has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

In the past week alone, more than 85 Iraqis have been gunned down or blown up.

“We are certainly seeing a rise of al Qaeda in Iraq,” said Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Jessica Lewis, a research director at the Institute for the Study of War, said in a recent report that al Qaeda in Iraq is “now setting the terms of battle in Iraq for the first time since 2006.”

Iraq’s slide toward chaos began in the aftermath of the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. troops, who had mostly secured the country after its eruption of sectarian violence

Is it neccessary to mention that the MSM rarely mentions the chaos in Iraq?  And when it does, does not connect the dots to Obama?

In the NY Times, being compared to George Bush is the worst thing that could happen.

 

Peter Barker has written a column for the NY Times in which he compares Barack Obama to George Bush. Obama’s Turn in Bush’s Bind. 

For Times readers, that’s like comparing Obama to Hitler. It means that the Times is wondering if this White ...uh ... Authentically Black Knight is for real.  He starts:

Four years into his tenure, the onetime critic of President George W. Bush finds himself cast as a present-day Mr. Bush, justifying the muscular application of force in the defense of the nation while detractors complain that he has sacrificed the country’s core values in the name of security.

Of course in TimesLand nobody is as evil as George Bush with the exception of Dick Cheney who was not Hitler but Satan. And since Obama is not one of history’s greatest villains, there are differences:

The debate is not an exact parallel to those of the Bush era, and Mr. Obama can point to ways he has tried to exorcise what he sees as the excesses of the last administration.

But it’s that damned secret memo, of course. Times readers knew that Obama was killing his enemies, including American citizens using drone strikes. And that wasn’t bad, just a little iffy since he didn’t give the American a chance to surrender, just blew him up. But to have a MEMO! written justifying killing people at long distance? Especially if those people were also American citizens? What is the world coming to? Because, you see, that brings back memories of that Bush era Yoo memo justifying enhanced interrogation including waterboarding which, in contrast to blowing people (and those standing nearby) to bits, leaves them physically unharmed. …

“That memo coming out, I think, was a wake-up call,” said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union. “These last few days, it was like being back in the Bush days.”

One of the more endearing habits of the Times is its ability to swallow any claim by Obama whole. So they can say with a childlike faith that Obama is runner a kinder, gentler war.

At the same time, a separate hearing in Congress revealed how far Mr. Obama has gone to avoid what he sees as Mr. Bush’s central mistake. Testimony indicated that the president had overruled his secretaries of state and defense and his military commanders when they advised arming rebels in Syria.

With troops only recently home from Iraq, Mr. Obama made clear that he was so intent on staying out of another war against a Middle East tyrant that he did not want to be involved even by proxy, especially if the proxies might be questionable.

Which is totally true if you assume that running wars “off the books,” with John Brennan in charge, - the sort of thing Enron did with its financial accounting just before going bust - is legitimate.

Of course the real difference is that to the readers of the NY Times, Obama is a good guy and what good guys do is – by definition – good. We have Jennifer Granholm’s word for it.

“We trust the president,” former Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan said on Current TV. “And if this was Bush, I think that we would all be more up in arms because we wouldn’t trust that he would strike in a very targeted way and try to minimize damage rather than contain collateral damage.”

All this makes sense if you are one of the remaining readers of the NY Times.

'Benghazi: The Definitive Report'

According to Brandon Webb, a former Navy SEAL, and Jack Murphy, a former Green Beret David Petraeus was brought down by an internal CIA coup. In addition,

• Obama security adviser John Brennan was running a secret war for Obama "off the books."
• This led to the Benghazi attack which was a retaliation for secret raids authorized by Obama security adviser John Brennan.
• Elite counter-terrorist operators from America’s Delta Force were deployed to Libya as 'analysts,' which allowed President Obama to declare that America did not have any boots on the ground but was simply providing air support for the rebels. The reality was that Delta Force had a small contingent instructing the rebels in the finer points of weapons and tactics.
  

  Webb and Murphy said they wrote the book to reveal 'the truth' behind the attack. They say news accounts of the incident have often been inaccurate because journalists have not had inside access to the people who were on the ground at the time.  The authors have been frustrated, they say, by politicians who have attempted to twist the facts of the case to suit their own ends. Conservatives sought to use the attack as an election issue and place the blame on Obama. Democrats and the Obama administration have worked to deflect responsibility and downplay the warning signs that were present before the consulate was raided.

The Daily Caller’s guide to avoiding drone strikes

1.) Don’t be accused of terrorism - easier said than done.  The Feds have accused lots of people of being terrorists, including Christians.


2.) Make sure you’re always somewhere where you can easily be captured - because if its feasible to capture you, you may not be vaporized.


3.) Avoid visiting Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen altogether - teen ager al-Awlaki was taken to Yemen by has father.  Avoid this mistake.


4.) If you are a terrorist, don’t get promoted - only senior level terrorists get targeted by Obama.


















 

They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, we’d see a war on terror that John Bolton endorsed. And they were right!

Team Obama were protected by the NY Times and the Washington Post who buried the story.

Of course to get the full story you have to go to European papers.  The drones in the press do cover-up well.

"Kill them all and let God sort them out"

That seems to be the policy of Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama.

SANA, Yemen — Late last August, a 40-year-old cleric named Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber stood up to deliver a speech denouncing Al Qaeda in a village mosque in far eastern Yemen.

It was a brave gesture by a father of seven who commanded great respect in the community, and it did not go unnoticed. Two days later, three members of Al Qaeda came to the mosque in the tiny village of Khashamir after 9 p.m., saying they merely wanted to talk. Mr. Jaber agreed to meet them, bringing his cousin Waleed Abdullah, a police officer, for protection.

As the five men stood arguing by a cluster of palm trees, a volley of remotely operated American missiles shot down from the night sky and incinerated them all, along with a camel that was tied up nearby.

The Coming War in the Middle East

That "Arab Spring" is morphing into World War 3.  It will not be contained to "Arabia."   Oil is too important.   

But don't worry, Team Obama is in charge.  Kerry is Secretary of State and Chuck Hagel will be Secretary of Defense and Barack Hussein Obama is overseeing everything.

What a nightmare.

Lara Logan's 2012 BGA Annual Luncheon Keynote Speech

Via American Digest

“I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated . . . The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban. There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!” She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.” Our enemies are writing the story, she suggests, and there’s no happy ending for us.

To think there is any similarity between this and Viet Nam is ridiculous. The Viet Cong didn't care what you did when you went back to America. The Viet Cong weren't fighting for an Islamic caliphate. The Viet Cong didn't have a global struggle. And it's amazing to me that we constantly ignore what Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and [...] all these groups tell us every day in their own newspapers, in their own statements.

If you fail to identify the ideological component to this fight, if you fail to identify what your enemy is really fighting for, if you lie about who they really are, I don't see how you could possible have the right strategy.

When I look at what's happening in Libya, there's a big song and dance about whether this was a terrorist attack or a protest. And you just want to scream, "For God's sake! Are you kidding me?" The last time we were attacked like this was the USS Cole, which was a prelude to the 1998 embassy bombings, which was a prelude to 9/11. And you're sending in FBI to investigate. I hope to God that you're sending in your best clandestine warriors who are going to exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil, that its ambassadors will not be murdered, and the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it."

Iraq: "Bright Spot In The Middle East"

Via Meadia: 

The Middle East is looking pretty dismal for the Obama administration right now. That peace process he was going to revive between Israelis and Palestinians? No US president since Richard Nixon has gotten less done on that front. The Arab Spring that was going to open a new era in US-Arab relations and turn power over to liberal, social-media empowered activists? Hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood or massacred by Syrian goons. The “good war” in Afghanistan, the “war of necessity” that a brilliant and wise Obama strategy would rescue from the bungling neglect of those Bush-era lunkheads? The less said about it these days, the better. The peace process with Iran? In tatters, as the Iranians crush our hopes for a breakthrough time after time.

But there is one bright spot in this dismal region, one country where US efforts have borne fruit. Unfortunately for the president, that country is — Iraq.

 

Read the whole thing.