... Empire after WWI.
At home, his administration (and other officials) failed miserably in addressing Hurricane Katrina as is humbled New Orleans, a great American city, and did nothing to prevent the onset of the greatest global financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression (barely managing to address it in time to prevent a possible total meltdown of the global financial and economic systems).
Now, America’s first non-white president, Barack Obama, has encountered a level of obstructionism and partisanship from Congress unseen since the Civil War; the elation and hope of the election results of 2008 has given way to a level of dysfunction and gridlock that calls into question America’s ...
... withdraw from Iraq in voting for Barack Obama in 2008 over John McCain). Below are the top five reasons why the idea that the American withdrawal from Iraq is the main reason ISIS is such a problem today are factually and easily provably wrong:
1.) ISIS’s Roots Go Back Before Obama’s Withdrawal, to the Bush Administration’s Iraq War and the Late 1980s
In assessing what has empowered ISIS, it is important to know how the organization started. There are two paths that led to the creation of ISIS: bin Laden and ...
... el-Sisi. The gamble here is that Egypt’s restive population will tolerate an Egypt aligning itself with Shiite-led Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah and that Egypt’s own explosive and volatile domestic security situation with its own people and an ISIS franchise running amok in the Sinai (one which apparently was able to blow up a Russian airliner) will not be major liabilities. Egypt has a large population but is mainly devoid of resources that Russia would find useful. Sure, Russia can increase ...
... Russians feel good about projecting strength as the expense of their main rival
3.) Use this action to rehabilitate and increase Russia’s global power by
a.) framing the intervention as Russia taking a responsible and leading role in combating ISIS and preserving state sovereignty/the world order; this in turn can hopefully
b.) Relieve pressure/sanctions regarding Russian actions in Ukraine
c.) show regional dictators in the Middle East that, unlike the U.S., Russia will not be a fair-weather-friend ...
... responsibility to the U.S. Military by giving it a new program to train Syrian rebels; but whereas the CIA program was concocted to produce forces to fight Assad’s regime, the U.S. Military’s program will focus on producing fighters to go after ISIS. Obama asked Congress to approve $500 million in funding for the new program in the summer of 2014, and by the end of the year, Congress had approved an over $720 million package for the program, demonstrating both the shift in the U.S. view from Assad ...
... immunity. Nothing to complain about here, and I agree that a residual force would have been better but that is 100% on Maliki not granting immunity and having already committed to his Iranian allies that he would see our troops out in 2011. We will come to ISIS (and Obama’s mild military reengagement in Iraq) and Syria as separate issues.
Israeli/Palestinian Peace
Here, one may be tempted to make more of the efforts of the Obama Administration than they actually represent, but at the same time we should ...
... halt its advance without further stoking Iraq’s spreading sectarian flames. This would also avoid aiding a budding neo-tyrant in Maliki; and, as events played out, along these lines the Obama Administration’s plan was a perfect success. Obama for months even before ISIS’s devastating advance resisted calls by both Republicans and Maliki to aid Maliki’s regime directly, well aware of the increasingly sectarian nature of his rule, his ignoring of the Kurds, and his particularly cruelty towards the Sunnis....
