National Review on Obama's Foreign Policy

Box-Checking as Leadership; Obama’s foreign-policy failures are always the fault of someone else.    ...  "Let us stipulate — at least for the sake of argument — that the First Cause of Iraq’s unraveling was the Iraq War. That doesn’t change the fact that the second, third, fourth, fifth, and n^th causes of the chaos are the result, directly or indirectly, of President Obama’s decisions (or indecisions). Obama chose to pull troops out of Iraq as quickly as possible. Obama chose to dismiss ISIS as the “jayvee squad” this year. Obama chose to issue a “red line” ultimatum, then chose to say “never mind.” The guy has been president for five years. And yet to listen to him and his defenders he’s been utterly powerless to undo his predecessors’ mistakes, real or alleged. It’s like these people think the twice-elected president of the United States is still new to the job." ...   Jonah Goldberg

Do More for Iraq   ... "Defeating the Islamic State is a crucial national-security priority. The organization President Obama quite recently derided as al-Qaeda’s JV team has had a championship year, which demands much more than one fusillade of airstrikes. The Islamic State has surprised with its effectiveness, and it’s become clear that the Kurdish peshmerga paramilitary forces are underequipped to fight it."  Editors of NRO

Was General Greene a Victim of ‘Workplace Violence’ Too?

The global jihad is not nearly done with us, even if the president thinks he can wish it away.  Andrew C. McCarthy

 

Pity America’s Friends; People in the Middle East who put their trust in Barack Obama are suffering right now.   ... "  I wrote at the time, was an indication of what might become the “Obama doctrine,” which I described thusly: “The United States will remain passive in the face of genocide.” Seven years later, I regret to say, my prediction stands up pretty well.
...
"So pity the Yazidis, the Kurds, the Israelis, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, and the rest of America’s erstwhile friends in the region. They had the naïveté to put their trust in Barack Obama."    James Kirchick

 

Gaza War Has Changed the Way the World Talks About Hamas

Seth Mandel   "Amid all the metrics commentators propose to determine “who won” Operation Protective Edge, one is staring everyone in the face: the international community’s attitude toward a postwar (if and when the war is over) Gaza. And on that score, Israel seems to have won a convincing victory. The Gaza war has changed the way the world is talking about Hamas and the Gaza Strip–and, despite all their tut-tutting at Jerusalem, they sound quite a bit like Benjamin Netanyahu.

"... This time Hamas seems to have overplayed its hand.

"It’s possible that this is Hamas being a victim of its own morbid “success” with regard to the propaganda war. ... And no matter how often they try to blame Israel, they seem to understand that there’s only one way to prevent future bloodshed: demilitarize, at least to a significant degree, the Gaza Strip.

JACK LEVEY responds to the idea discussed above of the UN monitoring any cease-fires in this region:

   

• Would that be the same UN that refused to enforce access to the Suez Canal for ships to and from Israel?
• The UN that withdrew its peace keepers from the Sinai in 1967 at Egypt’s demand?
• The UN whose forces in Lebanon blocked Israel’s attempt to rescue kidnapped soldiers, failed to block terrorist attacks on Israel, and obstructs Israel’s attempts to respond to attack? Who allowed Lebanese terrorist to rearm, falsely accused Israel of targetting UN forces, and then came pleading to Israel for help when the terrorists attacked them?
• The UN whose schools in the disputed territories go beyond anti-Zionism to teach out-and-out Jew-hating?
• The UN that let Hamas divert millions of dollars of cement and rebar to constructing terror tunnels, after promising Israel to make sure that the supplies would be used only for rebuilding civilian infrastructure?
• The UN who falsely accused Israel of targetting UN schools, and who blamed Israel for deaths caused by Hamas shells and rockets? Who blatanly publishes false statistics about Gazans killed in the recent conflict, and who blasted Israel in the trumped up Goldstone Report after the last one? (I think I’ve read about those events at Contentions, as recently as today.)
• Who let Hamas build tunnels under UN schools and clinics (one of them with 12 barrels embedded in the walls, each barrel containing 170 lbs of high explosives — well, the UN guys must have been out for coffee), and handed rockets over to Hamas after finding them stored in UN schools?
• The UN that routinely condemns Israel as a human rights violator, while finding nothing wrong with such bastions of freedom as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Sudan? Who allowed genocide to occur under the noses of its troops in Rwanda? Whose envoy endorsed the fraudulent claims of a massacre in Jenin?
• The UN whose court ruled that Israel had no right to build a fence to keep terrorists out because the terrorists were not a sovereign nation and accordingly Israel had no right of self defense against them?
• Am I the only one who thinks this might not be the best idea? Why would Israel agree to such an agreement, and how could it possibly rely on the UN to monitor Hamas instead of aiding and abetting them?
• ...

Of course not.

However, leftist -oops, "progressive"- cartoonist Pat Oliphant shows us that liberals cannot learn, cannot be made to learn, from the obvious:

 

Obama Iraq Decision Followed Limo Ride Talk With General

Christians take shelter in a church in Erbil, Iraq.

Bloomberg   "President Barack Obama’s decision to approve airstrikes and humanitarian air drops in Iraq began to come together at nightfall on Aug. 6, between the end of the African leaders’ summit he’d hosted and a dinner with his wife and some friends.

"During a five-minute limo ride back to the White House from the State Department with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey, Obama’s fears were confirmed. The offensive by militants with the Islamic State group had reached a critical point, according to an administration official who asked for anonymity to outline the private discussions.

"That chat turned into an hour-long meeting in the Oval Office with Dempsey, Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough and top national security advisers.

"Two White House Situation Room deliberations followed on Aug. 7 -- a 90-minute session during which Obama was told that a genocide could unfold without U.S. intervention and later, after the president broke off to sign a Veterans Affairs bill, a final two-hour huddle in the afternoon.

“ 'America is coming to help,” he announced in natioannly(sp) televised comments that night. U.S. food and water drops were conducted and then U.S. jets and drones yesterday carried out three bombing missions in northern Iraq, hitting militant offensive positions and a convoy." ...

The rise of Ben Carson and the GOP’s fractured flock of 2016

 "Why the prognosis is dim for Ben Carson's 2016 presidential campaign."

NRO  

"How will the fractured GOP find its next standard-bearer without ripping itself apart in the process?  Every Republican I speak with is extremely concerned that the party is again heading toward another brutal primary bloodbath in 2016, yielding disastrous results.

"Perhaps the answer is someone like Carson, a well-respected and fresh face who comes to the party from far outside the political arena.

' “The prospective 2016 presidential field looks like it will more open than any contest in memory,” Mark McKinnon, who served as the media strategist for President George W. Bush, tells National Review Online. “The absence of a clear front runner makes it possible for anyone to be ‘in play’ — even Ben Carson.”

"If Carson continues his current surge, widening his national media profile while his draft committee or official PAC rakes in millions, should that negate my concerns raised by the General Eisenhower?
And a more intriguing political question:

"In our modern age, is traditional elected-office experience really necessary to perform the job of president if one is a highly successful professional in a respected field?

"I do not pretend to know the answer, but I do know that all Americans are craving a strong, decisive leader in 2016. If Dr. Ben Carson is that person, let him lead the way.

Female Israeli Soldiers and American Feminists

Jeannie DeAngelis  

"Almost daily, Americans are subjected to the rantings of the likes of Democrat darling Sandra Fluke, Democrat politician Wendy Davis, and crazier-than-a-hoot-owl Nancy Pelosi.  Shamelessly, Sandra Fluke insists that the government finance her $3,000-a-year birth control habit.  In Texas, Wendy Davis made a name for herself by standing for 11 hours on the crushed corpses of aborted babies filibustering Senate Bill 5’s abortion regulations.

"And then there’s Mrs. Nancy "I’m Significant and You’re Not" Pelosi, who rationalizes promoting a crisis on the border with references to Baby Jesus and Moses, and who then, when challenged with the truth about her party’s culpability in that border crisis, manifests like Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist, insulting colleagues by calling them “insignificant.”
...
"The women of the IDF are focused on preserving the Holy Land, not advancing gender equity – the latter of which, by the way, is automatically accomplished when women act powerful and fearless instead of persecuted and ungrateful.

"It’s equality earned versus equality exacted." ...

 

Krauthammer’s Take: ‘Why in God’s Name’ Will Obama Not Arm the Kurds?

Weasel Zippers

 

"Of course, this qualifies as sense, and we’re talking about the Obama regime…

"Via NRO

"Charles Krauthammer cannot understand why the Obama administration is unwilling to provide arms to Kurds battling ISIS in Iraq: “The Kurds are allies of the U.S. They have a civil society, they’re pro-American, and they fight really hard. But they’re essentially using javelins and harpoons here, and we have not given them anything.”

"The White House has claimed that all American arms must go through the Iraqi government, an obligation at which Krauthammer scoffed: “The Iraqi government — that’s Maliki, that Shiite chieftain — has cut off all aid to the Kurdish area [of Iraq] since December of last year.” None of the arms the U.S. has sent through the Iraqi government have arrived, says Krauthammer.

" 'Why in God’s name we don’t resupply or supply our allies who can hold back ISIS is beyond me.”   Full article..