Thursday - May 29, 2014

Obama, Still At Sea

President Obama, in a commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, signaled a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy—one that pulls back from what he described as “military adventures” while wielding American power in other ways.

The president described the new American foreign policy as one of “collective action” and restraint, deploying unilateral U.S. military force only when the American people are threatened. He outlined his vision a day after announcing his plan for gradually drawing down the U.S. force in Afghanistan once the war formally ends later this year.

“The landscape has changed,” Obama told the graduating class at West Point on Wednesday, citing the end of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The president took on what he described as “interventionists” from both parties, and said that while “isolationism” is not an option, “U.S. military action cannot be the only—or even primary—component of our leadership in every instance.”

The president advised that crises around the world that don’t directly threaten Americans be met first with non-military options: diplomacy, sanctions and “collective action.”

The president pointed to Syria as one battlefield where allies could work together to ease the crisis. He pledged to work with Congress to “ramp up support” for certain elements in the Syrian opposition who “offer the best alternative to terrorists and a brutal dictator.”

Separately, administration officials told The Associated Press that Obama and his team are weighing sending a limited number of U.S. troops to Jordan as part of a mission to train and equip certain moderate members of the Free Syrian Army.

And I’m pretty sure we’ve heard that very dangerous, open ended line about a limited number of military advisers and troops before. Yeah, around 1961 I think it was, to train some of the moderate locals to fight against the insurgency. And look where that got us. [cough cough]

Meanwhile, his One-derfulness’ plan to nip terrorism in the bud is to drop $5 Billion on raggy governments in the lands where jihad comes from. Because we can trust those tinpot dictators to spend the money wisely (Paris real estate is a great investment right now!), to talk peace love and granola to their wild eyed peasants, and to keep the imams in line. ( but wait, wasn’t Obama behind getting rid of the tinpot dictators in Libya and Egypt who had done just that?? ). And of course, once those leaders are bought off this time, they’ll stay bought off forever.

As early as 1784 Congress followed the tradition of the European shipping powers and appropriated $80,000 as tribute to the Barbary states, directing its ministers in Europe, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, to begin negotiations with them. Trouble began the next year, in July 1785, when Algerians captured two American ships and the dey of Algiers held their crews of twenty-one people for a ransom of nearly $60,000.
...
When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli’s demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: “To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . .”

Posted by Drew458     on 05/29/2014 at 08:24 AM   
Filed Under: • International • Obama, The One •  
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