A Neocon Delusion
Neocon Max Boot hands Obama a very bad report card:
The Obama administration has committed more foreign-policy blunders than you can count on one hand. Off the top of my head, and in no particular order, I would list the failure to keep U.S. troops in Iraq post-2014; the failure to give surge troops in Afghanistan more time to succeed; the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; the failure to do more to protect Ukraine; the failure to better manage the transition in Egypt; the failure to do anything about the Syrian civil war; the failure to help stabilize Libya after the downfall of Gaddafi; the failure to stop the Iranian nuclear program; the failure to prevent al-Qaeda from expanding its operations; the failure to maintain American military strength; and the general failure to maintain American credibility as a result of letting “red lines” be crossed with impunity.
The truth?That entire paragraph of nonsense is completely impossible!Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, Egypt, Syria, Libya...The United States cannot control events in these places! Boot is ascribing beyond-human powers to the U.S. government. The only results are a lot of death and destruction, foreign animosity towards the U.S., and trillions of dollars that must come out of American pockets to pay for it. The only beneficiaries are the crony military corporations that feed off government contracts, the politicians who get to live out their power-driven fantasies, and neocon writers like Max Boot who try to hoodwink the American public into going along for the ride.The foreign policy of the U.S. government (for the first 100 years) was right on the money. John Quincy Adams described it perfectly, when he said that America:
“...has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart...Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.”
Sadly, that was abandoned, and the last 100 years have been a complete disgrace.
