Bridenstine to SC Tea Party: Change 'Incentive Structure' in Washington
By Matthew BoyleAt the South Carolina Tea Party Convention here on Sunday morning, leading Tea Party conservative Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) said foundational changes to D.C. politics will be needed to achieve a conservative agenda.
“We must change the incentive structure in Washington,” Bridenstine told the crowd of roughly 500 people.
“You've got collusion between Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C,” Bridenstine said. “They’re coming together and they’re making deals. You guys have probably heard of the Ryan-Murray budget deal? It does nothing to stop the $6.4 trillion that will be added to the debt over the next 10 years. Nothing. But everybody wants you to come in and vote for it,” he added to loud applause.
...Bridenstine said there are few true believers in D.C. who are more interested in securing a conservative agenda more than protecting their own skins:
There are three ideologies in Washington, D.C., and a lot of people don’t realize this. The three ideologies are conservatism—which there are very few people in Washington, D.C. who have that ideology. The second ideology is liberalism. There is a lot of those. The third ideology is that of power. What you is these career politicians making deals, dealing with the lobbyists. Whatever the lobbyists are interested in, that’s what they’re going to do. Why? Because it’s in the best interest of their re-election. Whatever deal they make with the lobbyists is in their best interest because they’ll be able to generate revenue for their re-election campaign. Well, there are organizations out there like FreedomWorks that are holding them accountable. They’re changing the incentive structure so it is no longer good for politicians to be making deals with lobbyists and trading votes back and forth inside the beltway. They are holding people accountable. It’s an important thing. So, when you think about FreedomWorks or you think about Heritage Action or the Club For Growth or these kinds of organizations, they are doing what needs to be done in America right now which is stopping this collusion between inside the beltway politicians and of course the lobbyists.“What this comes down to is you’ve got Republicans and Democrats trying to come together but what we need is fighters,” he said. “We need people who will stand up and say ‘no, we’re not going to do this anymore and, oh, by the way, we’re going to go tell the American people what’s happening.’”
EXography: Unfunded public employee pensions drive state debts skyward
By Mark Tapscott....By far the biggest portion of the debt -- 79 percent of the $5.1 trillion -- is linked to unfunded public pension liabilities of state employees and retirees.
The SBS study includes three other factors in its measure of total state debt, including "outstanding government debt, unfunded other post-employment benefit liabilities, and outstanding unemployment trust fund loans."
According to study author Cory Eucalitto, "Together, these four factors present an all-inclusive view of state obligations not conventionally presented but that both lawmakers and taxpayers nonetheless must confront."
....The key factor driving such liabilities is the way state officials measure the financial health of their pension programs, she said.
"The way these things are valued is how much they think the plans will return. That’s very uncertain," Norcross said.
"They tie the liability to the expected return. That’s like saying I’m going to value my mortgage according to the return I expect to get on my 401(k)," Norcross said.
Other factors driving state pension liabilities are "skipping payments, issuing debt to pay for annual contributions, and accounting sleights have all contributed to this problem. Reform in this area is crucial to budget health," she said.
By Victor Davis Hanson
...Over 90 million Americans who could work are not working (the “non-institutionalized” over 16). What we take for granted — our electrical power, fuel, building materials, food, health care, and communications — all hinge on just 144 million getting up in the morning to produce what about 160-170 million others (the sick, the young, and the retired who need assistance along with the 90 million idle) consume.
Every three working Americans provide sustenance for two who are not ill, enfeebled, or too young. The former help the disabled, the latter take resources from them. The gang-banger has only disdain for the geek at the mall — until one Saturday night his liver is shredded by gang gunfire and suddenly he whimpers (who is now the real wimp?) that he needs such a Stanford-trained nerd to do sophisticated surgery to get him back in one piece to the carjackings, muggings, assaults, and knockout games — or lawsuits follow!
Given that the number of non-working is growing (an additional 10 million were idled in the Obama “recovery” alone), it is likely to keep growing. At some point, we will hit a 50/50 ratio of idle versus active. Then things will get interesting. The percentage of workers’ pay deducted to pay for the non-working will soar even higher. So will the present redistributive schemes and the borrowing from the unborn.
We forget that the obligations of the working to care for the 70-80 million who genuinely cannot work become more difficult, when the 90 million who can work for all sorts of reasons won’t. Note the theme of this essay: the more in humane fashion we provide unemployment insurance, food stamps, subsidized housing, legal advice, health care and disability insurance, the more the recipients find it all inadequate, inherent proof of unfairness and inequality, and always not enough.
Libs Like Those Executive Orders
By Jack Cashill
In the most recent issue of The New Yorker, which he edits, sycophantic Obama biographer David Remnick writes of his experience accompanying Obama on a west coast fund raising tour.
At one stop, when Obama walked out on stage, Remnick reports, "it happened again: another heckler broke into Obama's speech. A man in the balcony repeatedly shouted out, 'Executive order!,' demanding that the President bypass Congress with more unilateral actions."
The president has not been shy about doing just that. In his radio address on Saturday, Obama casually observed, "Where Congress isn't acting, I'll act on my own to put opportunity within reach for anyone who's willing to work for it."
Equally indifferent to the separation of powers, Obama's west coast audience egged him on to do more. When Obama acknowledged to the crowd that his supporters wanted him to sign more executive orders and "basically nullify Congress," Remnick reports, "Many in the crowd applauded their approval. Yes! Nullify it!"
These were not the Occupy Wall Street types. These were the donors. It pays to know what we are up against.
At one stop, when Obama walked out on stage, Remnick reports, "it happened again: another heckler broke into Obama's speech. A man in the balcony repeatedly shouted out, 'Executive order!,' demanding that the President bypass Congress with more unilateral actions."
The president has not been shy about doing just that. In his radio address on Saturday, Obama casually observed, "Where Congress isn't acting, I'll act on my own to put opportunity within reach for anyone who's willing to work for it."
Equally indifferent to the separation of powers, Obama's west coast audience egged him on to do more. When Obama acknowledged to the crowd that his supporters wanted him to sign more executive orders and "basically nullify Congress," Remnick reports, "Many in the crowd applauded their approval. Yes! Nullify it!"
These were not the Occupy Wall Street types. These were the donors. It pays to know what we are up against.
The Young and the ObamaCare-less
HHS is already rewriting rules to deal with adverse selection.
...Meanwhile, the insurers who conspired with Democrats to pass the law have figured out who's their daddy.
Jay Gellert,
the CEO of the Medicaid contractor
Health Net,
HNT +1.40%
complained the other day that this newspaper "has decided that they have a jihad on the Affordable Care Act."
That's an unfortunate metaphor, but we'll plead guilty to having
predicted the problems that now beset the law. Mr. Gellert is a wholly
owned HHS subsidiary who knows he'll be punished if he doesn't salute.
Here's
a question for Mr. Gellert: If everything is going so well, how come
the White House is about to ride to the rescue of you and the other
insurers that were supposedly the problem ObamaCare was designed to fix?ABC, NBC spend more time on Michelle Obama b-day than new Benghazi report: study
By Eddie Scarry
A new study by the conservative Media Research Center found that the morning and evening newscasts by ABC and NBC spent more time covering first lady Michelle Obama‘s 50th birthday than on a government report on Benghazi:
Starting Wednesday, January 15 through … January 20, the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows collectively spent just under 15 minutes on the Benghazi report (14 minutes, 49 seconds), vs. nearly a half-hour on Michelle’s birthday (28 minutes, 4 seconds). There were 20 stories/segments on the First Lady’s birthday vs. 10 on the Benghazi report.ABC was the most wildly out of line — 10 minutes on Michelle’s birthday vs. just 2 minutes on Benghazi. NBC spent twice as much time on the birthday (12 ½ minutes) as Benghazi (6 ½ minutes), while CBS actually gave slightly more time to Benghazi (6 minutes) vs. Michelle (5 ½ minutes).
The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report last week
that said the 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya,
were “preventable.” It distributed blame for the attack to the State
Department, U.S. intelligence and even Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was
killed in the attack.
Mother caring for disabled son seeks rollback of forced unionization
By Bill McMorris
A 55-year-old woman who earns less than minimum wage caring for her
disabled son could unravel decades of labor law and strike a blow
against one of the most powerful political lobbies in the nation.Pamela Harris is fighting an Illinois law crafted by imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D.) and enforced by his successor Pat Quinn (D.) that forces her and other home healthcare workers to pay union dues. Her case, Harris v. Quinn, begins oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning.
...Josh receives $715 each month from Medicaid to cover the costs of the constant supervision he requires, a far cheaper alternative to institutionalization. The money is divided between Mrs. Harris, the occupational therapist who massages his limbs to prevent dislocations, the speech therapist who teaches him how to chew and swallow, and the physical therapist who keeps him ambulatory, as well as medical professionals that help keep Josh healthy.
Under the agreement reached by Governors Blagojevich and Quinn, the Harris family would have to funnel a portion of that money to public sector unions, including Democratic allies such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
The government is arguing that because people like Harris receive taxpayer money, they are state employees subject to union dues, though not the pensions and liability coverage that their fellow public sector workers receive. Harris was puzzled by the classification, considering that unions cannot negotiate other benefits for her family because the Medicaid program is capped.
By Rick Moran
....First, the cost: $51 billion. By contrast, the Vancouver Olympics in
2010 cost around $8 billion. And Putin, who showed up in Guatemala in
2007 to personally lobby the IOC for Sochi, received the bid largely
because he promised to spend $12 billion.How does $12 billion turn into $51 billion?
Attempting to stage winter events in a subtropical resort known as the “Russian Riviera” is an expensive, climate-defying business. Though the 7,600-foot-high slopes at the neighboring mountain resort of Krasnaya Polyana are almost guaranteed February snow, the same can’t be said for the lower slopes or at sea level, where the average daytime winter temperature is a pleasant 52 degrees. So officials have had to drain swamps, store last year’s snow, and install 400 snowmaking machines. Meanwhile, at least 70,000 laborers — many of them migrant workers working seven days a week for as little as $500 a month — were shipped in to build more than a dozen venues, 20,000 new hotel rooms, new roads, bridges, and tunnels, a renovated airport, and new railway lines. There is also a more sinister reason why the budget will surpass even the $40 billion Beijing spent on the extravagant 2008 Summer Olympics....The broadcast rights alone for Sochi brought in more than $4 billion, representing 47% of the take. That means that almost $8 billion is taken in by the IOC over a four-year period. That’s a lot of loose cash floating around.
What is that?
Corruption. “The Sochi Olympics are an unprecedented thieves’ caper,” says former deputy prime minister and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. He claims that some $26 billion in phony costs may have been creamed off by contractors, many of whom are Putin cronies. Consider the new 31-mile road and railway that run from the beachfront town of Adler to the Krasnaya Polyana ski resort, overseen by Vladimir Yakunin, a former KGB general and Putin pal who heads Russian Railways. The new route into Sochi cost an estimated $8.7 billion — more than Vancouver spent staging the entire Winter Olympics in 2010. For that sum, calculated the Russian edition of Esquire, Russia could have paved the entire road with beluga caviar.
But Sochi is a Putin project from start to finish. And besides the iffy weather, the poor accommodations for visitors, and the inevitable traffic problems associated with all Olympics, there is the near certainty that the games are going to be disrupted by a terrorist attack.
You wish not, but facts are facts:
Citing a new “surprise package” for Russia and Olympic spectators, Islamist militants in the North Caucasus Sunday launched a new threat to the Sochi Olympics with a purported “martyrdom” video by two suicide bombers who attacked a transit hub 400 miles away....Sochi proper might avoid an attack, but the periphery — like Volgograd — is vulnerable. They are already looking for a “Black Widow” female suicide bomber and it’s likely she won’t be the last.
The pro-gay rallies were recently thought to be the most controversy
to be stirred by the games. By the end of the Olympic fortnight, they
may end up being just a sideshow to the most expensive, corrupt, and
dangerous Olympic games in history.
There is nothing accidental about the president’s apparent foreign-policy blunders.
By Victor Davis HansonDoes Barack Obama have a strategy? He is often criticized for being adrift.
Nonetheless, while Obama has never articulated strategic aims in the manner of Ronald Reagan or the two Bushes, it is not therefore true that there is no “Obama Doctrine.” Indeed, now that he has been in office five years, we can see an overarching common objective in otherwise baffling foreign-policy misadventures.
Collate the following: large defense cuts, the president’s suspicions that he is being gamed by the military, the pullout from the anti-missile defense pact in Eastern Europe, the pressure on Israel to give new concessions to its neighbors, the sudden warming up with an increasingly Islamist Turkey, the failed reset with Russia, radical nuclear-arms-reduction talks, the abject withdrawal of all U.S. peacekeeping forces in Iraq, the timetable withdrawals in Afghanistan, the new worries of our Asian and Middle Eastern allies, the constant euphemisms on the war on terror, the stepped-up drone attacks, the lead-from-behind removal of Moammar Qaddafi, the pullaway from Mubarak in Egypt, the support for Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, the pink lines in Syria, the Iranian missile deal, the declaration that al-Qaeda was on the run and the war on terror essentially ending, the Benghazi coverup, and on and on.
Does such American behavior display any consistent strategic coherence?
I think it most certainly does.
The Obama administration believes that past administrations’ strategic objectives and the methods of achieving them not only were flawed, but led to the sort of world that is not in our interests as defined by the Obama team. The contemporary world landscape is an unfair place. “Have” nations exploit the “have-nots,” in large part because of the rigged postwar system of free-market commerce, alliances, and politics that the United States created. While it would be dangerous and indeed impossible to abruptly disown our responsibilities — we can still hunt down bin Laden, kill terrorists with drones, and jawbone rogue dictators — we can begin to withdraw our sponsorship from the mess that, in a variety of ways, we were responsible for.
Our past and most secure alliances — the special relationships with Britain and Israel especially — are now seen as having alienated more people than they encouraged. Islamist movements in Turkey and Egypt were either inevitable or justified, given historical grievances against the West and the fact that they reflect grass-roots indigenous support.
...Summed up, the Obama Doctrine is a gradual retreat of the American presence worldwide — on the theory that our absence will lead to a vacuum better occupied by regional powers that know how to manage their neighborhood’s affairs and have greater legitimacy in their own spheres of influence. Any damage that might occur with the loss of the American omnipresence does not approximate the harm already done by American intrusiveness. The current global maladies — Islamist terrorism, Middle Eastern tensions, Chinese muscle-flexing, Russian obstructionism, resurgence of Communist autocracy in Latin America — will fade once the United States lowers its profile and keeps out of other nations’ business.
Our Gravest Peril
ObamaCare? Stagnant economy? Crushing debt? Foreign-policy fecklessness may trump them all.
By Pete Du Pont
....The Iran and Syria missteps are signs that
President Obama's second term will be no better than his first,
characterized by a critical lack of understanding that despots,
terrorists and other adversaries see American weakness as a green light
to bad behavior. Early on, we saw Mr. Obama's penchant for downplaying
America's contribution for good in the world. There was his 2009
reneging on our nation's promise of missile defense assistance for our
allies in Eastern Europe, done in a failed and naive attempt to placate
Russia's Vladimir Putin. We saw exit strategies for Iraq and Afghanistan
that seemed bereft of any concerns about forfeiting hard-won and costly
progress, missteps in handling both the Iranian protests of 2009 and
the Arab Spring. "Leading from behind" in Libya set the stage for
Benghazi. Few governmental responsibilities are as critical or assigned so explicitly to the federal government in the Constitution as ensuring a strong national defense. In today's world, this responsibility demands the same strength and principled resolve that administrations of both parties projected during the Cold War. Our allies must know they can rely on us, and our enemies must respect us and fear the consequences of misbehavior. Foreign policy will always be difficult and often entails choosing the least bad option. Even by that realistic standard, the Obama administration has too often fallen short.
The United States on Monday eased some sanctions on Iran, pausing
efforts to reduce Iranian crude oil exports, as part of a nuclear deal
between Tehran and world powers that went into effect.
The Treasury Department said that now that Iran has fulfilled its
initial nuclear commitments under the deal, “the administration has
taken the necessary steps to pause efforts to further reduce Iranian
crude oil exports.”This will allow the six current customers of Iranian oil to maintain their purchases at current reduced levels for the six-month duration of an interim nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, the Treasury Department said.
The United States also took steps to suspend sanctions on non-U.S. people engaged in transactions related to Iran’s petrochemical exports, as well as certain trade in gold and precious metals with Iran and provision of goods and services to Iran’s automotive sector.
New report details gruesome war crimes by Assad
An international team of prosecutors and forensic experts received 26,948 images from a source inside Syria who claimed to have photographed nearly 50 bodies a day during the country’s civil war. They studied the pictures of 850 individual corpses and did more detailed studies on 150.
The experts found obvious torture injuries on most of the bodies. One man’s body was covered “over every inch” in bruises and lacerations. Many victims showed signs of internal bleeding so severe that it caused their abdomens to turn various shades of black, blue, and purple.
Sixty-two percent of the victims that were studied in-depth also showed signs of severe starvation.
By Michelle Malkin
...The chronic cluelessness of the root-cause apologists of jihad never
ceases to amaze. Britain’s MI5 reported in 2011 that two-thirds of the
U.K’s jihad suspects were from middle-class backgrounds, “showing there
is no simplistic relationship between poverty and involvement in
Islamist extremism.” Thorough reviews of the empirical evidence shows,
as the RAND Corporation reported, that “(t)errorists are not
particularly impoverished, uneducated or afflicted by mental disease.
Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within
their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from
relatively privileged backgrounds.”Here’s a refresher cheat sheet:
–9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta went to Hamburg University to study urban planning.
–Convicted al-Qaida scientist Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani who studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis.
–Osama bin Laden did a summer school stint at Oxford.
–Christmas Day underwear bomb operative Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab was an elite Nigerian engineering student who studied at one of Britain’s leading universities and “lived a gilded life.”
–Jihadist Samantha Lewthwaite, the notorious “White Widow” British Muslim convert linked to last year’s Westgate mall massacre in Nairobi, was the daughter of a soldier and a former University of London student.
–British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a London School of Economics student, was convicted of abducting and murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl.
–Seven upper-middle-class jihadi doctors were implicated in the 2007 London/Glasgow bombings.
–Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri didn’t need more education or wealth to steer him away from Islamic imperialism. He had a medical degree. So did former Hamas biggie Abdel al-Rantissi.
–Al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed attended Chowan College in Murfreesboro, N.C., and then transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he earned his degree in mechanical engineering along with 30 other Muslims. Mohammed applied his Western learning to oversee the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot (six Americans dead), the U.S.S. Cole attack (17 American soldiers dead) and the September 11 attacks (3,000 dead). He also has been linked to the 1998 African embassy bombings (212 dead, including 12 Americans), the plot to kill the pope, the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl and the Bali nightclub bomb blast that killed nearly 200 tourists, including two more Americans.
Osama bin Laden, of course, was dedicated to spending every last penny of his inherited Saudi fortune — estimated at between $50 million and $300 million — to wage war on the West. Al-Shabaab jihadists have amassed their own terror campaign chest through the illegal ivory trade.
Privileged jihad funders from Qatar and other Gulf states heap their petro-dollars on al-Qaida. The Taliban raised $400 million in one year, according to a 2012 U.N. report, not just from opium, but largely from “donations, taxing local economies and extorting money from such targets as drug dealers, cellphone operators and aid projects.” Indeed, since 2006, “the Taliban have managed to finance an ever-increasing number of attacks, reflecting a year-on-year increase in income,” the U.N. report said.
Memo to stupidly rich elitist John Kerry, richly stupid progressive Barack Obama and the administration’s bleeding-heart bureaucrats in a bubble: Financial bankruptcy is not, and has never been, the “root cause” of Koran-inspired hatred and violence against nonbelievers. Lack of intellectual stimulation is not, and has never been, the “root cause” of radical Islam’s centuries-old and never-ceasing imperative to establish a worldwide caliphate and conquer the West. The root cause of civilizational jihad is unmitigated evil and arrogance, not lack of compassion, understanding or social justice.
Islamic terrorism never had such dutiful tools as the American fools who rationalize it.
Dueling Headlines; ‘Obama says Al Qaeda is junior varsity and not like Kobe Bryant’ edition
By Doug Powers
In an interview with The New Yorker, President Obama made a curious comparison in an attempt to dismiss the influence of Al Qaeda:
As evidenced by the below dueling CNN headline from a couple of weeks ago, the junior varsity squad seems to be holding their own:
What Did Our Wars Win?
By Pat Buchanan....Ending America longest wars may prove to be Barack Obama's legacy.
For, while ending wars without victory may not garner from the historians' the accolade of "great" or "near great," it is sometimes the duty of a president who has inherited a war the nation no longer wishes to fight.
That was Nixon's fate, as well as Ike's, and Obama's.
And as we look back at our interventions in the 21st century, where are the gains of all our fighting, bleeding and dying?
We know the costs -- 8,000 dead, 40,000 wounded, $2 trillion in wealth sunk. But where are the benefits?
After Moammar Gadhafi fell in Libya, the mercenaries he had hired returned to Mali. The French had to intervene. In Benghazi, the city we started the war to save, a U.S. ambassador and three Americans would be murdered by terrorists.
Libya today appears to be breaking apart.
While Gadhafi was dreadful, what threat was he to us, especially after he had surrendered his weapons of mass destruction?
In Egypt, we helped overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and hailed the election of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammad Morsi.
A year later, we green-lighted Morsi's overthrow by Mubarak's army.
Terrorism has returned to Egypt, the Sinai is now a no man's land, and almost all Egypt hates us now.
The Shia regime we brought to power in Iraq has so repressed the Sunnis that Anbar province is now hosting al-Qaida. Fallujah and Ramadi have fallen. President Nuri al-Maliki is asking for U.S. weapons to retrieve Anbar and for U.S. personnel to train his soldiers.
Unlike the bad, old Iraq, the new Iraq tilts to Tehran.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign a status of forces agreement giving our troops legal protections if they remain. This could cause a complete U.S. pullout in 2014, leading to the return of the Taliban we drove out in 2001.
Sunday saw terrorism in the heart of Kabul, with a restaurant favored by foreign officials targeted by a car bomb, followed by a machine-gunning of dining patrons in which 21 were killed.
Americans have fought bravely there for a dozen years. But how has our nation building in the Hindu Kush benefited the good old USA?
Pakistan, with nuclear weapons, has become a haven of the Taliban, perhaps the most dangerous country on earth. Anti-American elements in the Khyber region have, because of our drone attacks, been blocking a U.S. troop exodus to the sea.
How enduring is what we accomplished in Afghanistan?
Last summer, Obama, goaded by democracy crusaders and the War Party, was about to launch strikes on Syria when America arose as one to call a halt.
We did not attack Syria. Had we, we would have struck a blow for an insurgency dominated by the al-Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The ISIS goal? Detach Anbar from Iraq and unite it with jihadist-occupied sectors of Syria in a new caliphate.
Can we not see that Bashar Assad's worst enemies are ours as well?
Syria's civil war, which has cost 100,000 dead, with millions uprooted and a million in exile, has spilled over into Lebanon, where Hezbollah backs Assad and the Sunnis back the rebels.
The neoconservatives say much of this might have been averted, had we left a stronger contingent of U.S. troops in Iraq and supported the Syrian uprising before the jihadists took control.
They were for attacking Assad last summer, are for more severe sanctions on Iran now, and are for war if Iran does not give up all enrichment of uranium.
But the neocons have broken their pick with the people. For they have been wrong about just about everything.
They were wrong about Saddam's WMD and a "cakewalk" war.
They were wrong about how welcome we would be in Iraq and how Baghdad would become a flourishing democracy and model for the Mideast.
They did not see the Sunni-Shia war our intervention would ignite.
They were wrong about how our interests would be served in attacking Libya.
They did not see the disaster that would unfold in Pakistan.
While we did not follow their advice and attack Syria, how have we suffered from having taken a pass on Syria's civil-sectarian war?
From Libya to Lebanon, Syria to Yemen, Iraq to Afghanistan, the Maghreb and Middle East are aflame. What have we lost by getting out of the wars Obama found us in? How would we benefit from parachuting back into the middle of the fire?
Which raises a related question: Was Obama wrong in extricating us from the wars into which George W. Bush plunged his country?
How will history answer that one?
No comments:
Post a Comment