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Ok, this is going to get downvoted like hell but here is a thought experiment from a European... Not a bad record on Foreign Policy for Obama. (Ok, I am being

Ok, this is going to get downvoted like hell but here is a thought experiment from a European... Not a bad record on Foreign Policy for Obama. (Ok, I am being very very generous in some areas and will let someone else lay out the opposite case but still...) -Improve the US image abroad after Bush -Get out of major boots on the ground in Iraq -Get out of major boots on the ground in Afghanistan -Kill Bin Laden -Reduce the operational capability of Al-Qaeda core members -Avoid getting dragged into boots on the ground in Syria / get chemical weapons out -Overthrow Gaddafi -Re-open Cuban Embassy -Contain ISIS -Re-focus on China -Environment deal with China -Get cooperation from the Pakistan ISI vs Taliban -Improve long-term relations with India -Gain trust of Asian states (like Vietnam) who are threatened by China -Re-balance relationship with Israel -Weaken Russia slowly (after getting out manoeuvred in Ukraine by Putin) -Reduce dependance on Saudi Arabia -Reduce dependence on foreign oil/gas -Reduce the slow march of Chinese power in Africa (esp: Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa) -Shore up NATO vs Russia -Reduce the influence on Venezuela in South America -Get a deal on Iranian nuclear program -Lay the ground work for rebuilding the US military after 15 years of insurgent warfare -Patch things up (behind the scenes) with Brazil and Germany after Snowden -Rebuild economy (slowly) after the Bush mess and recession (EDIT: Just to point out, I don't see these as exactly black and white issues and am well aware of the nuance. Just trying to give one side of an argument so others can do the rest. Even a portion of the stuff in there is a pretty decent record for a President.)

Kopion 11y ago
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33440287 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33440287
- secfirstmd 11y ago
  People where saying the same thing constantly in the 1980s https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1988-12-01/us-decline-or-renewal https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1988-1...
  - lukas099 11y ago
    That doesn't make it not true.
blfr 11y ago
You're a European and you're celebrating the mess in Libya? Not Italian, I'm guessing. Annexation of Crimea? Half of your list are spun failures.
- secfirstmd 11y ago
  I'm well aware of the mess. I meant specifically getting Gaddafi.
  - jayess 11y ago
    I don't know how the world is better off without Gaddafi.
    - pekk 11y ago
      That's okay, everyone has things they haven't bothered to read about.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        The trouble is we now have ISIS in Libya.
ArtDev 11y ago
History will show Obama as one of the greatest US presidents in modern history. Sure he is not perfect, the drone strikes and the TPP come to mind, but he is just about as good a president can be in America (without being assassinated).
- us7892 11y ago
  I'll just simply say the opposite. History will show Obama as one of the worst US presidents in the entire history of the United States. Sure, he did a few things well, his "Beer Summit" comes to mind, but he is just about as good a president can be in the United States, when propped-up by awe-struck media.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Obama is letting thousands of Ukranians get slaughtered by Russian forces, almost all civilians and cut one of the worst deals with a hostile power in recent memory, more or less guaranteeing an Israeli-Iran war in the next 5-10 years as the Iranians finally get nukes. His Iraq pullout failed considering Iraq has lost most of its territory to a ragtag bunch of nuts. Half the things on your list make no sense like "Re-focus on China?" What? The Chinese are launching their military and stealing disputed islands and putting airstrips and AA on them to control critical trade routes and denying fly-over rights to other nations. >Re-balance relationship with Israel What? We just gave Netanyahu a moral right to attack Iran as its clear they will get a nuke soon. The same way Israel had to stop Assad's nuclear program in Syria- via bombing (Operation Orchard). >Overthrow Gaddafi The brave people on Libya did that, NATO may has hastened his demise, but no one went after Gaddafi from the west; this was a civil war. Meanwhile Syria's al-Assad has 300,000 civilian deaths under his belt and we're all pretending this isn't happening because Obama won't confront Iran or Russia on this. >Weaken Russia slowly Russia is trivially annexing its neighbors and these "show sanctions" are doing next to nothing. Russia's economic slowdown was a long time coming and these sanctions haven't changed a thing. Putin is trivially murdering children in Ukraine and laughing about it on state television. "Oh that's not us" wink-wink. >Shore up NATO vs Russia NATO spending is still in the toilet, what are we shoring up exactly? Stretching out the USG because most of the NATO countries don't want to actually build a military? A few tanks in Estonia? >Reduce dependence on foreign oil/gas Destroying our environment via fracking shouldn't be applauded. Look, Obama is a pretty good domestic president and a bad foreign policy president. Lots of innocents have died on his watch and many of those conflicts and deaths were 100% preventable. Its incredible how bad his foreign policy credentials are. I wish this wasn't true. I voted for him, twice, and am just shocked at how he is unable to compete on the world stage. He is routinely outsmarted and outfoxed by most nations. Lastly, Cuba hasn't made any human rights reforms, is not committed to stopping the torture and jailing of political dissidents, etc but somehow magically gets normalization overnight via backroom deals and secret agreements? This happens out of the blue? Gee, I think Putin made a deal to Cuba and Cuba called Washington and said "You guys or Putin, pick now" and Obama folded because he's running scared from Putin on several fronts and doesn't need him in his backyard. As a European in NATO, I presume, this should give you pause. Having the superpower that protects you running scared over paper tigers like Putin, Khamenei, Jinping, and the Castros should be worrying, not celebrated. I suspect Obama's focus on having a "legacy" means wrapping up issues as his time is running out. Shame that a lot of these decisions are poorly thought out and will come at a real human cost. A lot of his "landmark" foreign policy is just pushing conflicts onto the next president.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- tome 11y ago
  > > here is a thought experiment from a European > I don't know how American news reports stuff, but if this is the result, you're getting very filtered news.
- secfirstmd 11y ago
  I agree with some of the things you put forward. As I said, I wasn't gonna lay out the case for the opposition.
- SEJeff 11y ago
  Incorrect. The founder of ISIS / Daesh was a former Baathist general under Sadaam in Iraq. He saw the conflict in Syria as a way to gain leverage, but it most definitely did not bring it to us. He was already planning to build ISIS, and just simply leaped at the opportunity when the Syrian civil war began. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-file... Edit: Another great article on this: http://www.npr.org/2015/04/23/401655832/secret-papers-reveal-islamic-states-structure http://www.npr.org/2015/04/23/401655832/secret-papers-reveal...
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Have us not forget that the Syrian conflict brought us ISIS/ISAL who subsequently invaded Iraq and still hold land there today. The entity now calling itself simply "the Islamic State" and claiming a global caliphate -- formerly styled Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, before that the separate Islamic State in Iraq and al-Nusra front in Syria, before that just the Islamic State in Iraq (al-Nusra front was an offshoot which later reunited), earlier still (before severing the ties it formed in 2004 with al-Qaeda) al-Qaeda in Iraq, and originally Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad -- has been around since 1999. Certainly, the US war with al-Qaeda, the US invasion of Iraq, and the Syrian civil war each provided opportunities which it exploited in its growth, but none of them -- and certainly not the last of those -- can be credited with having "brought us" the organization. And the Islamic State in Iraq held territory in Iraq and was fighting a campaign against the government there before it sent an offshoot group to Syria, it wasn't something formed in Syria which later invaded Iraq.
tosseraccount 11y ago
He deserves another Nobel prize from you Europeans.
- Grazester 11y ago
  Hey I think people were just too happy to get rid of bush ok!
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    If Trump gets elected, what would be the appropriate prize for whoever kicks him out of the White House? Popehood? All the Nobels of the year?
fennecfoxen 11y ago
You are being generous. Too generous. These are very, very high-spin bullet points and contrary analysis is easy. Let's try a few examples! (Disclaimer. These opinions are for sample use and being contrarian only. Seriously advancing these opinions is a legitimate thing, but the purpose of this post is not to advance them. They will not be defended if you reply.) Reduce dependence on foreign oil and gas? He's been against all sorts of oil projects and fracking from the moment he took office (although if you want to be pedantic Keystone is technically foreign oil). The mess around Gaddafi and Syria, and the troop withdrawals in Iraq, helped gave rise to ISIS/ISIL to begin with, and they're far from contained yet. NATO vs Russia has looked less like "shoring up" NATO and slowly weakening Putin than just letting Putin having his way with Ukraine (or "the Ukraine", if you're Putin). "Re-balance relation with Israel" could equally be construed as propping up Hamas and giving his blessing for Iran to build nuclear weapons. Re-establishing relations with Cuba is re-establishing relations with a totalitarian state and a bad idea! The environment deal will accomplish nothing in the end. (end sample opinions) I think there's a few too many caveats here, and that at best a few decades out we'll be looking at the Obama foreign-policy record as decidedly mixed.
- secfirstmd 11y ago
  Thanks for making the case for the opposition :)
- pekk 11y ago
  Fracking is at an all-time high and US oil production is higher than it's been for a while. Whether you are happy with oil prices or not, environmentalists will tell you it's blatantly dishonest to say "He's been against all sorts of oil projects and fracking." Most of this is US foreign policy which is not specific to Obama, it just represents continuity from Bush. It was our entry into Iraq which created enemies like ISIS, not the withdrawal from Iraq. Iraq was never going to be the 51st state. I agree that Putin has been allowed to do whatever he wants, but the clear start of that was the Georgia fiasco under Bush, and the unspoken alternatives are extremely unpleasant. I hate what happened to Ukraine, but I wouldn't personally die to fight Putin about Ukraine, so why should I volunteer our troops to die for that? Was that ever really an option? There is plenty of room to disagree about whether we should have been making deals with Iran and Cuba. If someone has an honestly favorable impression, it doesn't mean they have "very high-spin bullet points" but the arguments you've advanced are clearly dishonest.
rbanffy 11y ago
> Improve the US image abroad after Bush That was easy!
hueving 11y ago
>-Kill Bin Laden He didn't do this. He was just president in an ongoing operation that started a long time ago. He didn't pass any particular policies or make any changes that led to this. >-Contain ISIS ISIS started under him and it's not contained. >-Get a deal on Iranian nuclear program Also 10 years in the making and he made some significant concessions to Iran that made the deal almost useless. The US has to give nearly a months warning before it's allowed to check to see if they are breaking the rules.
- secfirstmd 11y ago
  -Biden Laden was on his watch, according to various reports he asked for some changes which suggest he had some ownership of the operation -ISIS was formed before he took over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_...
- EliRivers 11y ago
  ISIS started under him and it's not contained. It switched to its current name during his terms. It started well before.
- discardorama 11y ago
  > >-Kill Bin Laden > He didn't do this. As if the president dons his cowboy hat, gets into an Apache Rambo-style and hunts terrorists, right? I don't understand how any rational person would have so much difficulty giving him credit for the operation; it was his call! He made the call to get Bin Laden, just like Bush made the call to let him and other top Taliban escape (see "Kunduz Airlift": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunduz_airlift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunduz_airlift )
  - coryrc 11y ago
    To be fair, a modern Teddy Roosevelt would probably do that.
- mturmon 11y ago
  The presently-accepted record demonstrates you are incorrect in saying Obama "was just president in an ongoing operation" to get bin Laden. First, it has been reported over and over that locating bin Laden was a priority of the Obama administration. Obama announced this in presidential debates, and redirected intelligence resources to this end after he was elected (directing DCI Panetta on June 2 2009 to find a detailed operational plan for locating bin Laden, among other things). I think this priority shift is rather well established, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Backg... Second: Obama personally accepted responsibility for conducting the raid. We all know how well that went for Jimmy Carter, so that was a real risk. Third, and perhaps more controversial: It was reported at the time of the raid that Obama's concerns about getting the team out resulted in changing the plan in a key way (e.g., http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/03/obama-pushed-for-fight-your-way-out-option-in-bin-laden-raid/ http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/03/obama-pushed-for-fight-...). This is what we have been told, but only time will tell.
adventured 11y ago
Most of those things Obama wasn't specifically responsible for, and many of them he had absolutely nothing to do with (eg oil/gas boom). Obama's greatest contribution overall was the lack of negatives: the US economy will self-heal so long as you stop stabbing it. That said, here are his most important accomplishments: - Standing down, mostly, as states begin legalizing pot and start to experiment with decriminalization of drugs - Bringing focus to the US prison system, and obscene mandatory sentencing laws (working with the Koch brothers to boot) - Not trying to block marriage equality - Bringing some attention to asset seizures, removing some incentives for the police to steal - Avoiding any further large scale wars, the US simply can't afford it; it's worth noting he wanted a much larger scale war effort against Syria, and found very little support for it, so he back-tracked - Iran deal, avoiding the war that some would have liked to see; such a war would have been unimaginably destructive to the US economy, far worse than Iraq - The strong dollar and oversupply of oil damaged Russia. The end of QE caused the dollar to rise. Obama's contribution was to not do anything stupid that might cause oil to soar, or the dollar to plunge - Obamacare / ACA. His involvement was very limited, but he did champion it from the beginning. Not sure on this one though, it'll either end up being viewed as a giant debacle cost wise, or the program that marked the start of universal healthcare in the US and bending down the cost curve in healthcare via top-down government mandate.
jcranmer 11y ago
FWIW, I don't think Obama has been any more effective in foreign policy than Bush. Obama's biggest failure is that he makes very big, lofty rhetoric, yet is unable to fulfill that rhetoric with effective action. Examples: * Nuclear disarmament (you know, what he ostensibly got his Nobel peace prize for)... yeah, that's firmly dead in the water. * The big Muslim reconcilation (his big speech in Cairo in 2009)... post-Arab Spring, there's a lot of disillusionment in the Muslim world considering that actions haven't matched up to those words. * Syria's chemical weapons, wherein Obama threatened heavy repercussions should Syria use them in its civil war. Said heavy repercussions turned out to be merely exporting those weapons and not even anything so hefty as extracting an admission of guilt or instituting a trial in the ICC or ICJ over their use. * The Asian pivot, whose biggest practical effect has been to cause allies to question America's willingness to uphold its own commitments. * The Russian "reset"... okay, this one is Putin's fault. :-) You can argue that, in many respects, Obama is/was constrained by public opinion, but that's just the mark of the most common failure of politicians: the politicians whose names echo through history are not the ones who follow public opinion, but the ones who lead it.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Great rhetoric with no action is still way better than terrible rhetoric backed up by force. Bush's foreign policy was a complete disaster. Accomplishing nothing would be a tremendous improvement by comparison.
  - jcranmer 11y ago
    The problem, though, is that some of Obama's accomplishments aren't "accomplishing nothing"--they're accomplishing bad things. In particular, the "red line" in Syria and the (effective) capitulation to Russia over Ukraine feel eerily similar to the run-up to WWII, where the Allies capitulated to Hitler rather than go to war and ended up going to war when Germany was a lot stronger and harder to counter. In contrast, the situation of the Cuban missile crisis was resolved in large part by JFK refusing to let the USSR declare a new normal. As a thought experiment, do you think that Putin would have attempted to dislodge Crimea from Ukraine or Assad would have used chemical weapons had Bush still been in power? If you're tempted to answer "no," then that is a success of Bush's foreign policy. But if words will never be backed up with power, then words are just words and can be safely ignored.
pdeuchler 11y ago
Even if you're extremely charitable in all of those cases President Obama also started and defined the rules for what is essentially illegal drone warfare against citizens, not enemy combatants, in other countries. That's not even counting the pandora's box he opened by killing American citizens by drone without any sort of due process. To me those two simple facts far outweigh anything else he's done, both domestically and internationally. If you had told me in 2008 that Obama would be signing extrajudicial death-by-drone warrants every Tuesday morning I would have laughed. But, here we are...
- pnut 11y ago
  And if you go back in time to the Vietnam era, and tell anyone that in the 21st Century, the president would personally authorize the deaths of individual militants when prosecuting a war, they would think we now live in a liberal utopia.
anigbrowl 11y ago
While I'm broad agreement with you, I think quite a few of these are checks in the mail rather than money in the bank, if you see what I mean.
themeek 11y ago
I find this neither complete nor accurate but it's good to see a list like this. Thanks for doing the legwork. Don't forget the Japan mutual defense deal, the upcoming Korea unification and all the other hundred things in the Asia Pacific. Be careful about many of these things - the way you present them needs to be pretty careful. The goal in the Asia-Pacific (TPP included) is to contain China with a balance of power in their region. This includes Australia, Philippines, Japan of course, Guam, and Singapore, Vietnam, India, Thailand, Northern Mariana Islands, etc. Ukraine was being purposefully Westernized (Project UNITER) for inclusion into the EU and Russia is the goal after Ukraine. It is against the backdrop of NATO, EU and in general Western liberal expansion that Russia solidified its position in Crimea. In other words many of the things you list here can be seen as policy failures or at least haven't played themselves out (Saudi Arabia and Israel with Iranian nuclear deal, etc). We don't know whether this will actually prevent Israel from invading Iran yet. Yadda yadda. Anyway, thanks for compiling a list. It's hard to follow American domestic politics without understanding American Foreign policy and Geostrategy. So it's good to see information and dialogue posted here. During the White House press briefing the WH spokesperson mentioned that normalizing ties was being done for international strategic purposes (and of course, Cuba was blacklisted for similar and for political reasons - not because they had anything to do with terrorism). I don't actually know what they mean by this. Do you have some idea of what strategic investment/partnership is being made?
- scrumper 11y ago
  the upcoming Korea unification The what now?!
  - themeek 11y ago
    Oh yeah. That's totally happening. The Sunshine Policy was ended some time ago. President Geun-hye called for international support for the unification at the UN. SK, the US and Japan have joint plans for the destabilization of the regime and other contingencies, US foreign policy thinktanks are devising plans for the event (http://www.brookings.edu/research/presentations/2015/01/20-korean-reunification-revere http://www.brookings.edu/research/presentations/2015/01/20-k...), SK and US are in talks with China about getting their support, interception capabilities have been moved out to the Korean peninsula, anthrax was sent from the DoD to a bunch of labs in the Asia Pacific (North Korea is afraid of being framed - came to the UN with a complaint and offered to open up inspection of its laboratories to the international community). Uh, a bunch of other associated facts. But yeah, give it a pretty short couple of years and you're going to see this happen.
noobermin 11y ago
We'll have to see. I've read that until after JFK was assassinated, he wasn't really viewed as a good president as he is now. I am biased in thinking that he will be remembered well, but we'll have to wait and see.

Kopion 11y ago

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33440287 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33440287

secfirstmd 11y ago
People where saying the same thing constantly in the 1980s https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1988-12-01/us-decline-or-renewal https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1988-1...
- lukas099 11y ago
  That doesn't make it not true.

blfr 11y ago

You're a European and you're celebrating the mess in Libya? Not Italian, I'm guessing. Annexation of Crimea? Half of your list are spun failures.

secfirstmd 11y ago
I'm well aware of the mess. I meant specifically getting Gaddafi.
- jayess 11y ago
  I don't know how the world is better off without Gaddafi.
  - pekk 11y ago
    That's okay, everyone has things they haven't bothered to read about.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      The trouble is we now have ISIS in Libya.

ArtDev 11y ago

History will show Obama as one of the greatest US presidents in modern history. Sure he is not perfect, the drone strikes and the TPP come to mind, but he is just about as good a president can be in America (without being assassinated).

us7892 11y ago
I'll just simply say the opposite. History will show Obama as one of the worst US presidents in the entire history of the United States. Sure, he did a few things well, his "Beer Summit" comes to mind, but he is just about as good a president can be in the United States, when propped-up by awe-struck media.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

Obama is letting thousands of Ukranians get slaughtered by Russian forces, almost all civilians and cut one of the worst deals with a hostile power in recent memory, more or less guaranteeing an Israeli-Iran war in the next 5-10 years as the Iranians finally get nukes. His Iraq pullout failed considering Iraq has lost most of its territory to a ragtag bunch of nuts. Half the things on your list make no sense like "Re-focus on China?" What? The Chinese are launching their military and stealing disputed islands and putting airstrips and AA on them to control critical trade routes and denying fly-over rights to other nations. >Re-balance relationship with Israel What? We just gave Netanyahu a moral right to attack Iran as its clear they will get a nuke soon. The same way Israel had to stop Assad's nuclear program in Syria- via bombing (Operation Orchard). >Overthrow Gaddafi The brave people on Libya did that, NATO may has hastened his demise, but no one went after Gaddafi from the west; this was a civil war. Meanwhile Syria's al-Assad has 300,000 civilian deaths under his belt and we're all pretending this isn't happening because Obama won't confront Iran or Russia on this. >Weaken Russia slowly Russia is trivially annexing its neighbors and these "show sanctions" are doing next to nothing. Russia's economic slowdown was a long time coming and these sanctions haven't changed a thing. Putin is trivially murdering children in Ukraine and laughing about it on state television. "Oh that's not us" wink-wink. >Shore up NATO vs Russia NATO spending is still in the toilet, what are we shoring up exactly? Stretching out the USG because most of the NATO countries don't want to actually build a military? A few tanks in Estonia? >Reduce dependence on foreign oil/gas Destroying our environment via fracking shouldn't be applauded. Look, Obama is a pretty good domestic president and a bad foreign policy president. Lots of innocents have died on his watch and many of those conflicts and deaths were 100% preventable. Its incredible how bad his foreign policy credentials are. I wish this wasn't true. I voted for him, twice, and am just shocked at how he is unable to compete on the world stage. He is routinely outsmarted and outfoxed by most nations. Lastly, Cuba hasn't made any human rights reforms, is not committed to stopping the torture and jailing of political dissidents, etc but somehow magically gets normalization overnight via backroom deals and secret agreements? This happens out of the blue? Gee, I think Putin made a deal to Cuba and Cuba called Washington and said "You guys or Putin, pick now" and Obama folded because he's running scared from Putin on several fronts and doesn't need him in his backyard. As a European in NATO, I presume, this should give you pause. Having the superpower that protects you running scared over paper tigers like Putin, Khamenei, Jinping, and the Castros should be worrying, not celebrated. I suspect Obama's focus on having a "legacy" means wrapping up issues as his time is running out. Shame that a lot of these decisions are poorly thought out and will come at a real human cost. A lot of his "landmark" foreign policy is just pushing conflicts onto the next president.

deleted 11y ago

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tome 11y ago
> > here is a thought experiment from a European > I don't know how American news reports stuff, but if this is the result, you're getting very filtered news.
secfirstmd 11y ago
I agree with some of the things you put forward. As I said, I wasn't gonna lay out the case for the opposition.
SEJeff 11y ago
Incorrect. The founder of ISIS / Daesh was a former Baathist general under Sadaam in Iraq. He saw the conflict in Syria as a way to gain leverage, but it most definitely did not bring it to us. He was already planning to build ISIS, and just simply leaped at the opportunity when the Syrian civil war began. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-file... Edit: Another great article on this: http://www.npr.org/2015/04/23/401655832/secret-papers-reveal-islamic-states-structure http://www.npr.org/2015/04/23/401655832/secret-papers-reveal...
dragonwriter 11y ago
> Have us not forget that the Syrian conflict brought us ISIS/ISAL who subsequently invaded Iraq and still hold land there today. The entity now calling itself simply "the Islamic State" and claiming a global caliphate -- formerly styled Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, before that the separate Islamic State in Iraq and al-Nusra front in Syria, before that just the Islamic State in Iraq (al-Nusra front was an offshoot which later reunited), earlier still (before severing the ties it formed in 2004 with al-Qaeda) al-Qaeda in Iraq, and originally Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad -- has been around since 1999. Certainly, the US war with al-Qaeda, the US invasion of Iraq, and the Syrian civil war each provided opportunities which it exploited in its growth, but none of them -- and certainly not the last of those -- can be credited with having "brought us" the organization. And the Islamic State in Iraq held territory in Iraq and was fighting a campaign against the government there before it sent an offshoot group to Syria, it wasn't something formed in Syria which later invaded Iraq.

tosseraccount 11y ago

He deserves another Nobel prize from you Europeans.

Grazester 11y ago
Hey I think people were just too happy to get rid of bush ok!
- rbanffy 11y ago
  If Trump gets elected, what would be the appropriate prize for whoever kicks him out of the White House? Popehood? All the Nobels of the year?

fennecfoxen 11y ago

You are being generous. Too generous. These are very, very high-spin bullet points and contrary analysis is easy. Let's try a few examples! (Disclaimer. These opinions are for sample use and being contrarian only. Seriously advancing these opinions is a legitimate thing, but the purpose of this post is not to advance them. They will not be defended if you reply.) Reduce dependence on foreign oil and gas? He's been against all sorts of oil projects and fracking from the moment he took office (although if you want to be pedantic Keystone is technically foreign oil). The mess around Gaddafi and Syria, and the troop withdrawals in Iraq, helped gave rise to ISIS/ISIL to begin with, and they're far from contained yet. NATO vs Russia has looked less like "shoring up" NATO and slowly weakening Putin than just letting Putin having his way with Ukraine (or "the Ukraine", if you're Putin). "Re-balance relation with Israel" could equally be construed as propping up Hamas and giving his blessing for Iran to build nuclear weapons. Re-establishing relations with Cuba is re-establishing relations with a totalitarian state and a bad idea! The environment deal will accomplish nothing in the end. (end sample opinions) I think there's a few too many caveats here, and that at best a few decades out we'll be looking at the Obama foreign-policy record as decidedly mixed.

secfirstmd 11y ago
Thanks for making the case for the opposition :)
pekk 11y ago
Fracking is at an all-time high and US oil production is higher than it's been for a while. Whether you are happy with oil prices or not, environmentalists will tell you it's blatantly dishonest to say "He's been against all sorts of oil projects and fracking." Most of this is US foreign policy which is not specific to Obama, it just represents continuity from Bush. It was our entry into Iraq which created enemies like ISIS, not the withdrawal from Iraq. Iraq was never going to be the 51st state. I agree that Putin has been allowed to do whatever he wants, but the clear start of that was the Georgia fiasco under Bush, and the unspoken alternatives are extremely unpleasant. I hate what happened to Ukraine, but I wouldn't personally die to fight Putin about Ukraine, so why should I volunteer our troops to die for that? Was that ever really an option? There is plenty of room to disagree about whether we should have been making deals with Iran and Cuba. If someone has an honestly favorable impression, it doesn't mean they have "very high-spin bullet points" but the arguments you've advanced are clearly dishonest.

rbanffy 11y ago

> Improve the US image abroad after Bush That was easy!

hueving 11y ago

>-Kill Bin Laden He didn't do this. He was just president in an ongoing operation that started a long time ago. He didn't pass any particular policies or make any changes that led to this. >-Contain ISIS ISIS started under him and it's not contained. >-Get a deal on Iranian nuclear program Also 10 years in the making and he made some significant concessions to Iran that made the deal almost useless. The US has to give nearly a months warning before it's allowed to check to see if they are breaking the rules.

secfirstmd 11y ago
-Biden Laden was on his watch, according to various reports he asked for some changes which suggest he had some ownership of the operation -ISIS was formed before he took over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_...
EliRivers 11y ago
ISIS started under him and it's not contained. It switched to its current name during his terms. It started well before.
discardorama 11y ago
> >-Kill Bin Laden > He didn't do this. As if the president dons his cowboy hat, gets into an Apache Rambo-style and hunts terrorists, right? I don't understand how any rational person would have so much difficulty giving him credit for the operation; it was his call! He made the call to get Bin Laden, just like Bush made the call to let him and other top Taliban escape (see "Kunduz Airlift": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunduz_airlift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunduz_airlift )
- coryrc 11y ago
  To be fair, a modern Teddy Roosevelt would probably do that.
mturmon 11y ago
The presently-accepted record demonstrates you are incorrect in saying Obama "was just president in an ongoing operation" to get bin Laden. First, it has been reported over and over that locating bin Laden was a priority of the Obama administration. Obama announced this in presidential debates, and redirected intelligence resources to this end after he was elected (directing DCI Panetta on June 2 2009 to find a detailed operational plan for locating bin Laden, among other things). I think this priority shift is rather well established, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Backg... Second: Obama personally accepted responsibility for conducting the raid. We all know how well that went for Jimmy Carter, so that was a real risk. Third, and perhaps more controversial: It was reported at the time of the raid that Obama's concerns about getting the team out resulted in changing the plan in a key way (e.g., http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/03/obama-pushed-for-fight-your-way-out-option-in-bin-laden-raid/ http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/03/obama-pushed-for-fight-...). This is what we have been told, but only time will tell.

adventured 11y ago

Most of those things Obama wasn't specifically responsible for, and many of them he had absolutely nothing to do with (eg oil/gas boom). Obama's greatest contribution overall was the lack of negatives: the US economy will self-heal so long as you stop stabbing it. That said, here are his most important accomplishments: - Standing down, mostly, as states begin legalizing pot and start to experiment with decriminalization of drugs - Bringing focus to the US prison system, and obscene mandatory sentencing laws (working with the Koch brothers to boot) - Not trying to block marriage equality - Bringing some attention to asset seizures, removing some incentives for the police to steal - Avoiding any further large scale wars, the US simply can't afford it; it's worth noting he wanted a much larger scale war effort against Syria, and found very little support for it, so he back-tracked - Iran deal, avoiding the war that some would have liked to see; such a war would have been unimaginably destructive to the US economy, far worse than Iraq - The strong dollar and oversupply of oil damaged Russia. The end of QE caused the dollar to rise. Obama's contribution was to not do anything stupid that might cause oil to soar, or the dollar to plunge - Obamacare / ACA. His involvement was very limited, but he did champion it from the beginning. Not sure on this one though, it'll either end up being viewed as a giant debacle cost wise, or the program that marked the start of universal healthcare in the US and bending down the cost curve in healthcare via top-down government mandate.

jcranmer 11y ago

FWIW, I don't think Obama has been any more effective in foreign policy than Bush. Obama's biggest failure is that he makes very big, lofty rhetoric, yet is unable to fulfill that rhetoric with effective action. Examples: * Nuclear disarmament (you know, what he ostensibly got his Nobel peace prize for)... yeah, that's firmly dead in the water. * The big Muslim reconcilation (his big speech in Cairo in 2009)... post-Arab Spring, there's a lot of disillusionment in the Muslim world considering that actions haven't matched up to those words. * Syria's chemical weapons, wherein Obama threatened heavy repercussions should Syria use them in its civil war. Said heavy repercussions turned out to be merely exporting those weapons and not even anything so hefty as extracting an admission of guilt or instituting a trial in the ICC or ICJ over their use. * The Asian pivot, whose biggest practical effect has been to cause allies to question America's willingness to uphold its own commitments. * The Russian "reset"... okay, this one is Putin's fault. :-) You can argue that, in many respects, Obama is/was constrained by public opinion, but that's just the mark of the most common failure of politicians: the politicians whose names echo through history are not the ones who follow public opinion, but the ones who lead it.

mikeash 11y ago
Great rhetoric with no action is still way better than terrible rhetoric backed up by force. Bush's foreign policy was a complete disaster. Accomplishing nothing would be a tremendous improvement by comparison.
- jcranmer 11y ago
  The problem, though, is that some of Obama's accomplishments aren't "accomplishing nothing"--they're accomplishing bad things. In particular, the "red line" in Syria and the (effective) capitulation to Russia over Ukraine feel eerily similar to the run-up to WWII, where the Allies capitulated to Hitler rather than go to war and ended up going to war when Germany was a lot stronger and harder to counter. In contrast, the situation of the Cuban missile crisis was resolved in large part by JFK refusing to let the USSR declare a new normal. As a thought experiment, do you think that Putin would have attempted to dislodge Crimea from Ukraine or Assad would have used chemical weapons had Bush still been in power? If you're tempted to answer "no," then that is a success of Bush's foreign policy. But if words will never be backed up with power, then words are just words and can be safely ignored.

pdeuchler 11y ago

Even if you're extremely charitable in all of those cases President Obama also started and defined the rules for what is essentially illegal drone warfare against citizens, not enemy combatants, in other countries. That's not even counting the pandora's box he opened by killing American citizens by drone without any sort of due process. To me those two simple facts far outweigh anything else he's done, both domestically and internationally. If you had told me in 2008 that Obama would be signing extrajudicial death-by-drone warrants every Tuesday morning I would have laughed. But, here we are...

pnut 11y ago
And if you go back in time to the Vietnam era, and tell anyone that in the 21st Century, the president would personally authorize the deaths of individual militants when prosecuting a war, they would think we now live in a liberal utopia.

anigbrowl 11y ago

While I'm broad agreement with you, I think quite a few of these are checks in the mail rather than money in the bank, if you see what I mean.

themeek 11y ago

I find this neither complete nor accurate but it's good to see a list like this. Thanks for doing the legwork. Don't forget the Japan mutual defense deal, the upcoming Korea unification and all the other hundred things in the Asia Pacific. Be careful about many of these things - the way you present them needs to be pretty careful. The goal in the Asia-Pacific (TPP included) is to contain China with a balance of power in their region. This includes Australia, Philippines, Japan of course, Guam, and Singapore, Vietnam, India, Thailand, Northern Mariana Islands, etc. Ukraine was being purposefully Westernized (Project UNITER) for inclusion into the EU and Russia is the goal after Ukraine. It is against the backdrop of NATO, EU and in general Western liberal expansion that Russia solidified its position in Crimea. In other words many of the things you list here can be seen as policy failures or at least haven't played themselves out (Saudi Arabia and Israel with Iranian nuclear deal, etc). We don't know whether this will actually prevent Israel from invading Iran yet. Yadda yadda. Anyway, thanks for compiling a list. It's hard to follow American domestic politics without understanding American Foreign policy and Geostrategy. So it's good to see information and dialogue posted here. During the White House press briefing the WH spokesperson mentioned that normalizing ties was being done for international strategic purposes (and of course, Cuba was blacklisted for similar and for political reasons - not because they had anything to do with terrorism). I don't actually know what they mean by this. Do you have some idea of what strategic investment/partnership is being made?

scrumper 11y ago
the upcoming Korea unification The what now?!
- themeek 11y ago
  Oh yeah. That's totally happening. The Sunshine Policy was ended some time ago. President Geun-hye called for international support for the unification at the UN. SK, the US and Japan have joint plans for the destabilization of the regime and other contingencies, US foreign policy thinktanks are devising plans for the event (http://www.brookings.edu/research/presentations/2015/01/20-korean-reunification-revere http://www.brookings.edu/research/presentations/2015/01/20-k...), SK and US are in talks with China about getting their support, interception capabilities have been moved out to the Korean peninsula, anthrax was sent from the DoD to a bunch of labs in the Asia Pacific (North Korea is afraid of being framed - came to the UN with a complaint and offered to open up inspection of its laboratories to the international community). Uh, a bunch of other associated facts. But yeah, give it a pretty short couple of years and you're going to see this happen.

noobermin 11y ago

We'll have to see. I've read that until after JFK was assassinated, he wasn't really viewed as a good president as he is now. I am biased in thinking that he will be remembered well, but we'll have to wait and see.