If you were to say, for instance, that were going to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban and build a prosperous democracy instead, the president is aware that someone, seven years later, is going to hold you to that promise, Ben Rhodes, Obamas deputy national-security adviser, and his foreign-policy amanuensis, told me not long ago. One of them is that sometimes you have to take a life to save even more lives. But he is the rare president who seems at times to resent indispensability, rather than embrace it. Check it out here. Arent the Saudis your friends?, Turnbull asked. As Air Force One began its descent toward Kuala Lumpur, the president mentioned the successful U.S.-led effort to stop the Ebola epidemic in West Africa as a positive example of steady, nonhysterical management of a terrifying crisis. Over the course of our conversations, I came to see Obama as a president who has grown steadily more fatalistic about the constraints on Americas ability to direct global events, even as he has, late in his presidency, accumulated a set of potentially historic foreign-policy achievementscontroversial, provisional achievements, to be sure, but achievements nonetheless: the opening to Cuba, the Paris climate-change accord, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, and, of course, the Iran nuclear deal. Youve got tribal divisions inside of Libya. Obama generally does not believe a president should place American soldiers at great risk in order to prevent humanitarian disasters, unless those disasters pose a direct security threat to the United States. The United States supports a set of universal rights. You dont see him in any of these meetings out here helping to shape the agenda. Hes done the exact same thing in Syria, at enormous cost to the well-being of his own country. And you and I and a whole bunch of people who are writing about what happened in Paris have strolled along the same streets where people were gunned down. The truth is, actually, Putin, in all of our meetings, is scrupulously polite, very frank. Its a playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment. So I dont underestimate the dangers there.Obama returned to a point he had made repeatedly to me, one that he hopes the country, and the next president, absorbs: You know, the notion that diplomacy and technocrats and bureaucrats somehow are helping to keep America safe and secure, most people think, Eh, thats nonsense. That would change my calculus. It involves every single country, and it is a comparatively slow-moving emergency, so there is always something seemingly more urgent on the agenda.. There is no way we should commit to governing the Middle East and North Africa, he recently told a former colleague from the Senate. In recent days, the president has taken to joking privately, All I need in the Middle East is a few smart autocrats. Obama has always had a fondness for pragmatic, emotionally contained technocrats, telling aides, If only everyone could be like the Scandinavians, this would all be easy. The unraveling of the Arab Spring darkened the presidents view of what the U.S. could achieve in the Middle East, and made him realize how much the chaos there was distracting from other priorities. I actually would have, he said, meaning that he would have struck Irans nuclear facilities. The contrast is pretty stark.. Friday, August 30, 2013, the day the feckless Barack Obama brought to a premature end Americas reign as the worlds sole indispensable superpoweror, alternatively, the day the sagacious Barack Obama peered into the Middle Eastern abyss and stepped back from the consuming voidbegan with a thundering speech given on Obamas behalf by his secretary of state, John Kerry, in Washington, D.C. I have friends who have kids in Paris right now, he said. The story of Obamas encounter with the Middle East follows an arc of disenchantment. But his desire for the nuclear agreement was born of pessimism as much as it was of optimism. Though in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in 2009, Obama said, Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later, today the opinions of humanitarian interventionists do not seem to move him, at least not publicly. As the questions unspooled, Obama became progressively more irritated. It seems to be outside this plane.. Gold & Platinum Youve got a violent, extremist ideology, or ideologies, that are turbocharged through social media. For years, the pivot to Asia has been a paramount priority of his. What I think is not smart is the idea that every time there is a problem, we send in our military to impose order. People respond based on what their imperatives are, and if its really important to somebody, and its not that important to us, they know that, and we know that, he said. Im very proud of this moment, he told me. In Manila, at apec, Obama was determined to keep the conversation focused on this agenda, and not on what he viewed as the containable challenge presented by isis. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. This was followed by Could I ask you to address your critics who say that your reluctance to enter another Middle East war, and your preference of diplomacy over using the military, makes the United States weaker and emboldens our enemies? And then came this imperishable question, from a CNN reporter: If youll forgive the languagewhy cant we take out these bastards? Which was followed by Do you think you really understand this enemy well enough to defeat them and to protect the homeland?. He is not so much the realist, he suggested, that he wont pass judgment on other leaders. Originally conceived to honor artists and track sound recording sales, Gold & Platinum Awards have come to stand as a benchmark of success for any artistwhether theyve just released their first song or Greatest Hits album. Both Franois Hollande and David Cameron have spoken about the threat of radical Islam in more Huntingtonesque terms, and Ive heard that both men wish Obama would use more-direct language in discussing the threat. He described a relationship with Putin that doesnt quite conform to common perceptions. But today that decision is a source of deep satisfaction for him. If you compare us to previous superpowers, we act less on the basis of naked self-interest, and have been interested in establishing norms that benefit everyone. Late in the summer of 2011, he had called for Assads departure. isis is not an existential threat to the United States, he told me in one of these conversations. Now, we should learn from that. Recently, when Kerry handed Obama a written outline of new steps to bring more pressure to bear on Assad, Obama said, Oh, another proposal? Administration officials have told me that Vice President Biden, too, has become frustrated with Kerrys demands for action. The perception was that my credibility was at stake, that Americas credibility was at stake. His frustration with the Saudis informs his analysis of Middle Eastern power politics. But as Assad clung to power, Obamas resistance to direct intervention only grew. He listed the practical worries that had preoccupied him. If we didnt do that, you could have allies and friends of ours fall. I had been under the impression that Obama viewed Putin as nasty, brutish, and short. You said, Im the president of the United States, I dont bluff.. But on the other hand, if we dont set the agenda, it doesnt happen. He explained what he meant. We have one goal in mind with this book: to help you win back an ex (for good!). It shows you what options you have and what could happen in each scenario. They had never trusted Obamahe had, long before he became president, referred to them as a so-called ally of the U.S. Iran is the new great power of the Middle East, and the U.S. is the old, Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, told his superiors in Riyadh. At the time, I was familiar mainly with the text of a speech he had delivered four years earlier, at a Chicago antiwar rally. Five Arleigh Burkeclass destroyers were in the Mediterranean, ready to fire cruise missiles at regime targets. Keeping children safe in education but before she goes, she makes a Last May, as he was trying to move the Iran nuclear deal through Congress, I told him that the agreement was making me nervous. If you catch your ex gazing at you and quickly averting his or her eyes away from you not once, but many times, you can be almost certain your ex still has feelings for you.. His sympathy for the Palestinians moved the audience, but complicated his relations with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime ministerespecially because Obama had also decided to bypass Jerusalem on his first presidential visit to the Middle East. One box he called isolationism, which he dismissed out of hand. Obama flipped this plea on its head. The president asked Congress to authorize the use of forcethe irrepressible Kerry served as chief lobbyistand it quickly became apparent in the White House that Congress had little interest in a strike. In the midst of an international challenge like Syria, you get judged harshly if you dont follow the playbook, even if there are good reasons why it does not apply., I have come to believe that, in Obamas mind, August 30, 2013, was his liberation day, the day he defied not only the foreign-policy establishment and its cruise-missile playbook, but also the demands of Americas frustrating, high-maintenance allies in the Middle Eastcountries, he complains privately to friends and advisers, that seek to exploit American muscle for their own narrow and sectarian ends. Rhodes interjected: Why cant we get the bastards? That question, the one put to the president by the CNN reporter at the press conference in Turkey, had become a topic of sardonic conversation during the trip. In fact what had happened was that there was a long negotiation with the Iranians and because they so disliked Cartereven though the negotiations had been completedthey held those hostages until the day Reagan got elected. So we dropped more ordnance on Cambodia and Laos than on Europe in World War II, and yet, ultimately, Nixon withdrew, Kissinger went to Paris, and all we left behind was chaos, slaughter, and authoritarian governments that finally, over time, have emerged from that hell. Hillary Clinton, when she was Obamas secretary of state, argued for an early and assertive response to Assads violence. (Biden, who is acerbic about Clintons foreign-policy judgment, has said privately, Hillary just wants to be Golda Meir.) American bombs fell, the people of Benghazi were spared from what may or may not have been a massacre, and Qaddafi was captured and executed. According to Leon Panetta, he has questioned why the U.S. should maintain Israels so-called qualitative military edge, which grants it access to more sophisticated weapons systems than Americas Arab allies receive; but he has also questioned, often harshly, the role that Americas Sunni Arab allies play in fomenting anti-American terrorism. But at any given moment, Obamas entire presidency could be upended by North Korean aggression, or an assault by Russia on a member of nato, or an isis-planned attack on U.S. soil. But this is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for. Administration officials have repeatedly hinted to me that Vietnam may one day soon host a permanent U.S. military presence, to check the ambitions of the country it now fears most, China. 34. And despite all that, Libya is a mess.. WebThe SAG-AFTRA Foundations Daytime Emmy nominated, Storyline Online, features celebrated actors including Viola Davis, Kristen Bell, Chris Pine, Lily Tomlin, Wanda Sykes, Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, Betty White and more reading childrens books to inspire a love of reading in millions of children worldwide. When Someone Loses a Husband He has escalated his efforts. Obama, however, was completely calm. I first spoke with obama about foreign policy when he was a U.S. senator, in 2006. Even his own advisers were surprised. He started by describing for me a four-box grid representing the main schools of American foreign-policy thought. The nuclear deal he struck with Iran proves, if nothing else, that Obama is not risk-averse. Laura Bush Kerry, like Obama himself, was horrified by the sins committed by the Syrian regime in its attempt to put down a two-year-old rebellion. And the fact that he invades Crimea or is trying to prop up Assad doesnt suddenly make him a player. They do, Obama said. Recently, when I asked the secretary of state a general questionis the Middle East still important to the U.S.?he answered by talking exclusively about isis. It is, the president responded coolly. Part of his mission as president, Obama explained, is to spur other countries to take action for themselves, rather than wait for the U.S. to lead. Obama figured out how important this is, Jubeir, who is now the Saudi foreign minister, told one interlocutor. At the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, which was held the week after the Syria reversal, Obama pulled Putin aside, he recalled to me, and told the Russian president that if he forced Assad to get rid of the chemical weapons, that that would eliminate the need for us taking a military strike. Within weeks, Kerry, working with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, would engineer the removal of most of Syrias chemical-weapons arsenala program whose existence Assad until then had refused to even acknowledge. We want to work to help achieve statehood and dignity for the Palestinians, but I was hoping that my speech could trigger a discussion, could create space for Muslims to address the real problems they are confrontingproblems of governance, and the fact that some currents of Islam have not gone through a reformation that would help people adapt their religious doctrines to modernity. His critics believe, however, that problems like those presented by the Middle East dont solve themselvesthat, without American intervention, they metastasize. When we sat down, I pointed out to the president a central challenge of his pivot to Asia. And that is a danger to our national security., It appeared as though Obama had drawn the conclusion that damage to American credibility in one region of the world would bleed into others, and that U.S. deterrent credibility was indeed at stake in Syria. Youve got countries that have very few civic traditions, so that as autocratic regimes start fraying, the only organizing principles are sectarian., He went on, Contrast that with Southeast Asia, which still has huge problemsenormous poverty, corruptionbut is filled with striving, ambitious, energetic people who are every single day scratching and clawing to build businesses and get education and find jobs and build infrastructure. I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein, he said. Some of his deepest disappointments concern Middle Eastern leaders themselves. Theres a difference between resilience and complacency. He went on to describe another differencebetween making considered decisions and making rash, emotional ones. A widely held sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and pro-Israel funders. Why, given what seems to be the presidents natural reticence toward getting militarily ensnarled where American national security is not directly at stake, did he accept the recommendation of his more activist advisers to intervene? When we deploy troops, theres always a sense on the part of other countries that, even where necessary, sovereignty is being violated.. At the outset of the Syrian uprising, in early 2011, Power argued that the rebels, drawn from the ranks of ordinary citizens, deserved Americas enthusiastic support. And he was particularly mindful of promising victory in conflicts he believed to be unwinnable. As an attorney, Thompson focused his legal efforts against what he perceives as obscenity in modern culture. She lobbied him to endorse this doctrine in the speech he delivered when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, but he declined. They are watching to see if Syria can get away with it, because then maybe they too can put the world at greater risk., Ninety minutes later, at the White House, Obama reinforced Kerrys message in a public statement: Its important for us to recognize that when over 1,000 people are killed, including hundreds of innocent children, through the use of a weapon that 98 or 99 percent of humanity says should not be used even in war, and there is no action, then were sending a signal that that international norm doesnt mean much. Storyline Online - Home What they dont understand is that history is bending in his direction. History may record August 30, 2013, as the day Obama prevented the U.S. from entering yet another disastrous Muslim civil war, and the day he removed the threat of a chemical attack on Israel, Turkey, or Jordan. Samantha, enough, Ive already read your book, he once snapped. Remind yourself that your friends' superiority is entirely in their own heads. The person you love is still there, sometimes they look sick, sometimes they dont. In Vietnam right now, America polls at 80 percent., The resurgent popularity of America throughout Southeast Asia means that we can do really big, important stuffwhich, by the way, then has ramifications across the board, he said, because when Malaysia joins the anti-isil campaign, that helps us leverage resources and credibility in our fight against terrorism. The president, leaning back in his office chair with his jacket off and his tie askew, did not seem to notice. You USA TODAY I just got fucked over, he told a friend shortly after talking to the president that night. And he believes that a misplaced word, or a frightened look, or an ill-considered hyperbolic claim, could tip the country into panic. So why does Obama stumble when explaining to the American people that he, too, cares about terrorism? Kerrys speech would mark the culmination of this campaign. Obama entered the White House bent on getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan; he was not seeking new dragons to slay. Possibly, I said, but its kind of a cheap trick. But he also thinks rhetoric should be weaponized sparingly, if at all, in todays more ambiguous and complicated international arena. Some thought that Putins decision to fight on behalf of Assad would prompt Obama to intensify American efforts to help anti-regime rebels. By 2013, Obamas resentments were well developed. WebRIAAs historic Gold & Platinum Program defines success in the recorded music industry. When I hear folks say that, well, maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims; when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person whos fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, Obama told the assembled reporters, thats not American. Wouldnt it be helpful for Putin to believe that Obama might get angry and irrational about that? I think Aisa is a perfect example of what were seeing in a lot of countriesyoung entrepreneurs coming up with leapfrog technologies, in the same ways that in large portions of Asia and Africa, the old landline phones never got set up, Obama said, because those areas jumped straight to mobile phones. Well A second major factor was the failure of Cameron to obtain the consent of his parliament., The third, and most important, factor, he told me, was our assessment that while we could inflict some damage on Assad, we could not, through a missile strike, eliminate the chemical weapons themselves, and what I would then face was the prospect of Assad having survived the strike and claiming he had successfully defied the United States, that the United States had acted unlawfully in the absence of a UN mandate, and that that would have potentially strengthened his hand rather than weakened it., The fourth factor, he said, was of deeper philosophical importance. I live in the White House. And what has been clear throughout the 20th and 21st centuries is that the progress we make in social order and taming our baser impulses and steadying our fears can be reversed very quickly. Obama has steadfastly resisted Kerrys requests, and seems to have grown impatient with his lobbying. Nobody talks about me ordering 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. The red-line crisis, he said, is the point of the inverted pyramid upon which all other theories rest., One afternoon in late January, as I was leaving the Oval Office, I mentioned to Obama a moment from an interview in 2012 when he told me that he would not allow Iran to gain possession of a nuclear weapon. Inside the West Wing, officials say that Obama, as a president who inherited a financial crisis and two active wars from his predecessor, is keen to leave a clean barn to whoever succeeds him. He understands that Russias overall position in the world is significantly diminished. But he was completely at ease., Not long ago, I asked Obama to describe his thinking on that day. One of the most destructive forces in the Middle East, Obama believes, is tribalisma force no president can neutralize. We have history, he said. The split-screen quality of the day prompted a conversation about two recent meetings hed held, one that generated major international controversy and headlines, and one that did not. Chris Christie had said that all refugees, including orphans under 5, should be banned from entry until proper vetting procedures had been put in place. He added, It would have also meant that we might have wasted a huge amount of resources in our public-health systems that need to be devoted to flu vaccinations and other things that actually kill people in large numbers in America. In his first term, he came to believe that only a handful of threats in the Middle East conceivably warranted direct U.S. military intervention. By The Well Desk and Tony Cenicola/the New York Times Erotic Couplings 02/16/17: Kelly and Gwen (4.81) Kelly issues a surprising 'order'. I am very much the internationalist, Obama said in a later conversation. The president did not understand how Dont do stupid shit could be considered a controversial slogan. The subject of Kerrys uncharacteristically Churchillian remarks, delivered in the Treaty Room at the State Department, was the gassing of civilians by the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. That intervention was meant to prevent the countrys then-dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, from slaughtering the people of Benghazi, as he was threatening to do. At the moment, of course, the most urgent of the seemingly more urgent issues is Syria. This article is informed by our recent series of conversations, which took place in the Oval Office; over lunch in his dining room; aboard Air Force One; and in Kuala Lumpur during his most recent visit to Asia, in November. The fourth is that the world cannot afford to see the diminishment of U.S. power. There are ways to deter, but it requires you to be very clear ahead of time about what is worth going to war for and what is not. Putin acted in Ukraine in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp. News One day in January, in Kerrys office at the State Department, I expressed the obvious: He has more of a bias toward action than the president does. Later, the president would say that he had failed to fully appreciate the fear many Americans were experiencing about the possibility of a Paris-style attack in the U.S. Great distance, a frantic schedule, and the jet-lag haze that envelops a globe-spanning presidential trip were working against him. If I saw them break out.. I know comments about your personality can be hurtful. Nobody remembers bin Laden anymore, he says. Obamas patience with Saudi Arabia has always been limited. He didnt disagree. But if he believes it is necessary to act, he doesnt hesitate.. But what has been a habit over the last several decades in these circumstances is people pushing us to act but then showing an unwillingness to put any skin in the game.. But us being there, not taking all that stuff seriouslybecause it really wasnt a threat to ushelped neutralize the regions anti-Americanism. A moments wait, and then Obama opened the door. It was enormous and lonely and claustrophobic all at once. But those of us watching from the press section became distracted by news coming across our phones about a new jihadist attack, this one in Mali. We have a similar view of just-war theory. If you come into office in the middle of a war that is not going well, youre convinced that the American people have hired you to do less. One difference between Eisenhower and Nixon, on the one hand, and Obama, on the other, Sestanovich said, is that Obama appears to have had a personal, ideological commitment to the idea that foreign policy had consumed too much of the nations attention and resources., I asked Obama about retrenchment. The Paris attacks had been a main topic of conversation in Antalya, where Obama held a particularly contentious press conference on the subject. Tribalism, made manifest in the reversion to sect, creed, clan, and village by the desperate citizens of failing states, is the source of much of the Muslim Middle Easts problems, and it is another source of his fatalism. Since that first meeting in 2006, Ive interviewed Obama periodically, mainly on matters related to the Middle East. Obamas secretary of defense, Ashton Carter, told me not long ago that Obama has maintained his focus on Asia even as Syria and other Middle Eastern conflicts continue to flare. If youve been around him, you know when hes ambivalent about something, when its a 5149 decision, Ben Rhodes told me. It was part of the antifree rider campaign., The president also seems to believe that sharing leadership with other countries is a way to check Americas more unruly impulses. At one point I observed to him that he is less likely than previous presidents to axiomatically side with Saudi Arabia in its dispute with its archrival, Iran. If China fails; if it is not able to maintain a trajectory that satisfies its population and has to resort to nationalism as an organizing principle; if it feels so overwhelmed that it never takes on the responsibilities of a country its size in maintaining the international order; if it views the world only in terms of regional spheres of influencethen not only do we see the potential for conflict with China, but we will find ourselves having more difficulty dealing with these other challenges that are going to come., Many people, I noted, want the president to be more forceful in confronting China, especially in the South China Sea. The danger to the United States posed by the Assad regime did not rise to the level of these challenges. BDSM 08/31/22: Kinky Beach Party (4.22) When I go back and I ask myself what went wrong, Obama said, theres room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libyas proximity, being invested in the follow-up, he said. But its true. The Iran deal was never primarily about trying to open a new era of relations between the U.S. and Iran, Susan Rice told me. The stakes are too high to play those games., With that, Obama stood up and said, Okay, gotta go. He headed out of his office and down the stairs, to the red carpet and the honor guard and the cluster of Malaysian officials waiting to greet him, and then to his armored limousine, flown to Kuala Lumpur ahead of him. I turned to the president: Well, yeah, and also, why cant we get the bastards?. Almost every great world power has succumbed to overextension, he said. The other meeting took place two months later, in the Oval Office, between Obama and the general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong. So we have to be mindful of our history when we start talking about intervening, and understand the source of other peoples suspicions., In his efforts to off-load some of Americas foreign-policy responsibilities to its allies, Obama appears to be a classic retrenchment president in the manner of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Thats interesting, he said, noncommittally. When you think of the military actions that Reagan took, you have Grenadawhich is hard to argue helped our ability to shape world events, although it was good politics for him back home. The Asahi Shimbun is widely regarded for its journalism as the most respected daily newspaper in Japan. Obamas decision caused tremors across Washington as well. The prime minister was certainly under the impression that the president would enforce the red line, the adviser told me. News Remember how that started? At a National Security Council meeting held at the Pentagon in December, Obama announced that no one except the secretary of defense should bring him proposals for military action. Ben Rhodes recalls that the questions we were asking in the White House were Who exactly is in the stupid-shit caucus? He has said privately to the secretary of state, John, remember Vietnam? For that matter, theres not a G20 meeting where the Russians set the agenda around any of the issues that are important.. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses. And in a stunning development, on Thursday, August 29, the British Parliament denied David Cameron its blessing for an attack. That is the source of the controversy. And the notion that somehow Russia is in a stronger position now, in Syria or in Ukraine, than they were before they invaded Ukraine or before he had to deploy military forces to Syria is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of power in foreign affairs or in the world generally. They were thugs, but there was a kind of order. He thought Assad would go the way Mubarak went, Dennis Ross, a former Middle East adviser to Obama, told me, referring to the quick departure of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in early 2011, a moment that represented the acme of the Arab Spring. And our ability to have any kind of structure there that we could interact with and start training and start providing resources broke down very quickly., Libya proved to him that the Middle East was best avoided. During the couple of months in which everybody was sure Ebola was going to destroy the Earth and there was 24/7 coverage of Ebola, if I had fed the panic or in any way strayed from Here are the facts, heres what needs to be done, heres how were handling it, the likelihood of you getting Ebola is very slim, and heres what we need to do both domestically and overseas to stamp out this epidemic, then maybe people would have said Obama is taking this as seriously as he needs to be. But feeding the panic by overreacting could have shut down travel to and from three African countries that were already cripplingly poor, in ways that might have destroyed their economieswhich would likely have meant, among other things, a recurrence of Ebola. WebStay up to date on the latest NBA news, scores, stats, standings & more. Kerry would not learn about the change until later that evening. If it is possible to do good at a bearable cost, to save lives, we will do it., If a crisis, or a humanitarian catastrophe, does not meet his stringent standard for what constitutes a direct national-security threat, Obama said, he doesnt believe that he should be forced into silence. John Kerry, for one, seems more alarmed about isis than the president does. Telling narcissistic people that they are arrogant or selfish will only cause them to become defensive, which will likely make their behavior worse. He added, Now, the argument that cant be resolved, because its entirely situational, was what constitutes them getting the bomb. And we worked with our defense teams to ensure that we could execute a strategy without putting boots on the ground and without a long-term military commitment in Libya. Yet by Obamas stringent standards, Assads continued rule for the moment still doesnt rise to the level of direct challenge to Americas national security. Obama went on to say that the belief in the possibilities of projected toughness is rooted in mythologies about Ronald Reagans foreign policy. Then you need to check out our FREE eBook, The Ex Back Handbook. He is the first child of the Pacific to become presidentborn in Hawaii, raised there and, for four years, in Indonesiaand he is fixated on turning Americas attention to Asia. Working with the Americans, we had already seen the targets. The way I looked at it was that it would be our problem if, in fact, complete chaos and civil war broke out in Libya. He interrupted. Its not that I dont appreciate the value of theater in political communications; its that the habits wethe media, politicianshave gotten into, and how we talk about these issues, are so detached so often from what we need to be doing that for me to satisfy the cable news hype-fest would lead to us making worse and worse decisions over time.. After Obama finished his presentation on climate change, he joined Ma and Mijeno, who had seated themselves on nearby armchairs, where Obama was preparing to interview them in the manner of a daytime talk-show hostan approach that seemed to induce a momentary bout of status-inversion vertigo in an audience not accustomed to such behavior in their own leaders. Signs Your Ex Is Pretending To Be Over You Obama entered the lecture hall at Taylors University to huge applause. Others had difficulty fathoming how the president could reverse himself the day before a planned strike. But John Brennan, Obamas CIA director, told me recently that he and the president have similar views. I believe that theres more good than bad in humanity. Theres a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow. Or it could be remembered as the day he let the Middle East slip from Americas grasp, into the hands of Russia, Iran, and isis. Jamaica Observer A writer at heart, he had a suggestion: Its probably a pretty easy way to start the story, he said, referring to this article. The aim was very simply to make a dangerous country substantially less dangerous. Much love to you and your children during these difficult times. Extend your messages of sympathy to the children as well as the spouse. He never keeps me waiting two hours like he does a bunch of these other folks. Obama said that Putin believes his relationship with the U.S. is more important than Americans tend to think. Two hundred fifty years of slavery. His two-story suite was outlandish: Tara-like drapes, overstuffed couches. This is what theyre looking for.. And the Middle East is a region to be avoidedone that, thanks to Americas energy revolution, will soon be of negligible relevance to the U.S. economy. plot: a girl kills herself. These included the threat posed by alQaeda; threats to the continued existence of Israel (It would be a moral failing for me as president of the United States not to defend Israel, he once told me); and, not unrelated to Israels security, the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran. He described his isis strategy at length, but the only time he exhibited an emotion other than disdain was when he addressed an emerging controversy about Americas refugee policy. No one gets to tell you who you are. I want my teens to embrace their authentic selves . Obama had arrived in Manila the day before from a G20 summit held in Antalya, Turkey. backtrack. The degree of tribal division in Libya was greater than our analysts had expected. You could have a massive migration into Europe that destroys Europe, leads to the pure destruction of Europe, ends the European project, and everyone runs for cover and youve got the 1930s all over again, with nationalism and fascism and other things breaking out. In recent National Security Council meetings, Obamas strategy was occasionally referred to as the Tom Sawyer approach. Obamas view was that if Putin wanted to expend his regimes resources by painting the fence in Syria, the U.S. should let him. When I spoke with Biden recently about the red-line decision, he made special note of this fact. Our meetings are very businesslike. Real power means you can get what you want without having to exert violence. It matters to have Congress with you, in terms of your ability to sustain what you set out to do, he said. When you have a professional army, he once told me, that is well armed and sponsored by two large statesIran and Russiawho have huge stakes in this, and they are fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict He paused. The U.S. wouldnt have to claim credit for the attacks, Kerry has told Obamabut Assad would surely know the missiles return address. Damage was done even inside the administration. Thats true whether youre talking about nuclear security, whether youre talking about saving the world financial system, whether youre talking about climate.. The Atlantic A president does not make decisions in a vacuum. oh wait, you can't because she's dead. The American people seemed unenthusiastic about a Syria intervention; so too did one of the few foreign leaders Obama respects, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. That would be a basic, fundamental mistake.. I told Obama that the Middle East is to his presidency what the Mob is to Corleone, and I started to quote the Al Pacino line: Just when I thought I was out. The current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who is the most dispositionally interventionist among Obamas senior advisers, had argued early for arming Syrias rebels. MLB News, Expert Analysis, Rumors, Live Updates, and more He will definitely strike.. So as I stood in the doorway with the president, I asked: Was it a bluff? I told him that few people now believe he actually would have attacked Iran to keep it from getting a nuclear weapon. I do, probably, Kerry acknowledged. Outside, on the tarmac, I could see that what appeared to be a large portion of the Malaysian Armed Forces had assembled to welcome him. One day, over lunch in the Oval Office dining room, I asked the president how he thought his foreign policy might be understood by historians. When I came into office, at the first Summit of the Americas that I attended, Hugo Chvezthe late anti-American Venezuelan dictatorwas still the dominant figure in the conversation, he said. Lets fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle Eastthe Saudis and the Egyptiansstop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality. In the White House these days, one occasionally hears Obamas National Security Council officials pointedly reminding visitors that the large majority of 9/11 hijackers were not Iranian, but Saudiand Obama himself rails against Saudi Arabias state-sanctioned misogyny, arguing in private that a country cannot function in the modern world when it is repressing half of its population. In meetings with foreign leaders, Obama has said, You can gauge the success of a society by how it treats its women.. (For that matter, Samantha Power will also be the subject of criticism from the next Samantha Power.) Ive been navigating tribal divisions my whole life. In Asia, as well as in Latin America and Africa, Obama says, he sees young people yearning for self-improvement, modernity, education, and material wealth. Thats deterrent credibility.. It has the capacity to set the whole region on fire. Everyone had his turf. And he said that British Prime Minister David Cameron soon stopped paying attention, becoming distracted by a range of other things. Of France, he said, Sarkozy wanted to trumpet the flights he was taking in the air campaign, despite the fact that we had wiped out all the air defenses and essentially set up the entire infrastructure for the intervention. Obama said he had heard that Abdullah had complained to friends in the U.S. Congress about his leadership, and told the king that if he had complaints, he should raise them directly. In a meeting during apec with Malcolm Turnbull, the new prime minister of Australia, Obama described how he has watched Indonesia gradually move from a relaxed, syncretistic Islam to a more fundamentalist, unforgiving interpretation; large numbers of Indonesian women, he observed, have now adopted the hijab, the Muslim head covering. The Daily Show It just doesnt make sense. He also pointed out an underlying flaw in the proposed strike: U.S. missiles would not be fired at chemical-weapons depots, for fear of sending plumes of poison into the air. Just as the leaders of several American allies have found Obamas leadership inadequate to the tasks before him, he himself has found world leadership wanting: global partners who often lack the vision and the will to spend political capital in pursuit of broad, progressive goals, and adversaries who are not, in his mind, as rational as he is. She is a professionally trained improvisational and comedic actress who studied and performed at The Groundlings and ImprovOlympic. He spoke about Muslims in his own family, and his childhood years in Indonesia, and confessed Americas sins even as he criticized those in the Muslim world who demonized the U.S. What drew the most attention, though, was his promise to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was then thought to be the central animating concern of Arab Muslims. He and McDonough stayed outside for an hour. In one of Netanyahus meetings with the president, the Israeli prime minister launched into something of a lecture about the dangers of the brutal region in which he lives, and Obama felt that Netanyahu was behaving in a condescending fashion, and was also avoiding the subject at hand: peace negotiations. A strike would target military units that had delivered these weapons, but not the weapons themselves. Why hes proud of not striking Assad in 2013, The necessity of pivoting from the Middle East to Asia and other regions, Why Ukraine will always be vulnerable to Russian domination, Resisting John Kerrys requests to attack Syrian-regime targets, Why Saudi Arabia should share the Middle East with Iran, How France and Great Britain contributed to the mess in Libya, Why ISIS isnt an existential threat, but climate change is, A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: Were America, Bitch, Why So Many Women Choose Abortion Over Adoption. WebEditors and writers join Thea Lenarduzzi, Lucy Dallas and Alex Clark to talk through the week's issue. By late winter, though, when it appeared that Russia was making advances in its campaign to solidify Assads rule, the White House began discussing ways to deepen support for the rebels, though the presidents ambivalence about more-extensive engagement remained. Obama told him he was worried that Assad would place civilians as human shields around obvious targets. Five years later, It is also informed by my previous interviews with him and by his speeches and prolific public ruminations, as well as by conversations with his top foreign-policy and national-security advisers, foreign leaders and their ambassadors in Washington, friends of the president and others who have spoken with him about his policies and decisions, and his adversaries and critics. The second is that even if the Middle East were surpassingly important, there would still be little an American president could do to make it a better place. I noted that the 200 or so young Southeast Asians in the room earlier that dayincluding citizens of Communist-ruled countriesseemed to love America. The Asahi Shimbun Given the speed with which the killing took place, and how long it takes to crank up the machinery of the U.S. government, I understand why we did not act fast enough, he said. Though he has argued, controversially, that the Middle Easts conflicts date back millennia, he also believes that the intensified Muslim fury of recent years was encouraged by countries considered friends of the U.S. For the sake of the Syrian people, Obama said, the time has come for President Assad to step aside. But Obama initially did little to bring about Assads end. The threat of force was credible enough for them to give up their chemical weapons, Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, told me. The first is that the Middle East is no longer terribly important to American interests. oh god, somebody buy this girl some perspective! And its important for us not to ever get complacent. Because, Obama answered, the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs have funneled money, and large numbers of imams and teachers, into the country. But in that environment, the temptation to project military force to show greatness is strong, and thats what Putins inclination is. You have the Iran-Contra affair, in which we supported right-wing paramilitaries and did nothing to enhance our image in Central America, and it wasnt successful at all. He reminded me that Reagans great foe, Daniel Ortega, is today the unrepentant president of Nicaragua. She told him that her country would not participate in a Syria campaign. The rise of the Islamic State deepened Obamas conviction that the Middle East could not be fixednot on his watch, and not for a generation to come. Those who speak with Obama about jihadist thought say that he possesses a no-illusions understanding of the forces that drive apocalyptic violence among radical Muslims, but he has been careful about articulating that publicly, out of concern that he will exacerbate anti-Muslim xenophobia. WebSelf-doubt and fear are totally common when want to do the right thing to help someone you care about. He will be remembered harshly for the things he did in the Middle East. Benjamin Netanyahu is in his own category: Obama has long believed that Netanyahu could bring about a two-state solution that would protect Israels status as a Jewish-majority democracy, but is too fearful and politically paralyzed to do so. In White House meetings that crucial week in August, Biden, who ordinarily shared Obamas worries about American overreach, argued passionately that big nations dont bluff. Americas closest allies in Europe and across the Middle East believed Obama was threatening military action, and his own advisers did as well. John Kerry today expresses no patience for those who argue, as he himself once did, that Obama should have bombed Assad-regime sites in order to buttress Americas deterrent capability. Obama didnt go to Congress to get himself off the hook. WebThe order of the Gamache books, from first to most recent, is: Still Life, A Fatal Grace/Dead Cold (same book, different title), The Cruelest Month, A Rule Against Murder/The Murder Stone (same book, different title), The Brutal Telling, Bury Your Dead, A Trick of the Light, The Beautiful Mystery, How the Light Gets In, The Long Way Home, The Nature of the He equated protesters in Tunisia and Tahrir Square with Rosa Parks and the patriots of Boston., After decades of accepting the world as it is in the region, we have a chance to pursue the world as it should be, he said in a speech at the time. 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