The View from Right Field

Trump vs. Biden: A Question of the Lesser of Two Evils – On Steroids

What do you do when you don’t like either candidate for President?  When, in fact, you think both candidates will leave the country worse off by the time they leave office? 

Well, the first thing you do is hope you are wrong.  I have supported candidates because l thought their policies would make the country better off.  Sometimes that has happened and sometimes it hasn’t.  Sometimes the policies didn’t work like I thought they would.  Other times the candidates didn’t do what they said they were going to do.  You can never be sure.  But you have to decide what to do in an election on some basis, and the only thing you can do is to look at what each candidate is likely to do and go from there.

A Few Thoughts on the Killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani

1. It seems to me that, with a proper plan and an appropriate long-term strategy, the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani could work out well for the United States and other people and countries opposed to the theocratic and totalitarian policies of Iran’s government, especially their external aspects.  Whether the Trump administration has the people to come up with such a plan and strategy and whether Donald Trump has the experience, patience, and long-term commitment to follow through on such a plan and strategy is a real question and concern.¹

2. As for the criticisms about killing, or assassinating, a general of a country with which we are not at war, I would say that what constitutes “war” is a lot different today than what it was in even the first half of the twentieth century.  General Soleimani organized a lot of attacks on United States soldiers and our friends and allies.  He seemed to think he was at war with us.  In today’s world, that may be enough.

President Trump’s Foreign Policy Claims Are Often Bizarre, But It’s Not the First Time We’ve Seen That

The foreign policy follies (and worse) of Donald Trump are so bad, it sometimes makes us forget bizarre positions that prior administrations have taken.  For example, in 2011, when the United States was involved in the bombing of Libya (because, inter alia, Moammar Gaddafi was threatening to massacre Libyan civilians), the question of the War Powers Act arose.  The War Powers Act was passed over President Nixon’s veto in 1973.  It provided that presidents are to get Congress’s approval or authorization within 60 days¹ after they send troops into hostilities.

The Obama administration, however, did not want to seek Congressional approval of our operations in Libya.  But it also did not want to say, as other presidents have said, that the War Powers Act was an unconstitutional limit on the President’s power.² So, the State Department legal advisor, a politically appointed position, came up with the theory that the War Powers Act did not apply to the bombing of Libya because we were not engaged in “hostilities” since the other side could not effectively shoot back at us.  (See here and here,)

North Korea: It’s Harder Than You Think

Donald Trump has attacked Syria with cruise missiles because of its use of chemical weapons (chemical weapons that it supposedly got rid of and agreed not to use).  What happens next, as Bashar al-Assad continues to bomb Syrian cities he doesn’t control, is the question.  The cruise missile attacks were relatively easy.  What happens next is harder – and may be what stopped Barack Obama from doing anything. 

But harder still is North Korea. President Trump has said that, if China won’t help us stop North Korea from getting not only nuclear weapons but also an ICBM capable of hitting the United States, we will do it ourselves.  Now that is hard.

The Problem With Benghazi Was That We Didn’t Try

The House Republican and Democratic reports on Benghazi came out this week, the Republican report on Tuesday and the Democratic response (or pre-response) on Monday.  Most of the news reports said there wasn’t much new in the reports.  Whether that is good or bad for former Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign probably depends on what you think about what we knew before the reports came out.

Among other things, the Democratic report said that the inadequate security in Benghazi was not Secretary Clinton’s fault, but was the result of decisions by mid-level officials in the State Department.  I have already commented on that idea here.  I don’t need to repeat those comments other than to say (as I said before), if Secretary Clinton wasn’t responsible for inadequate security in Benghazi, then George W. Bush wasn’t responsible for the in adequate response to Hurricane Katrina, either.

“The Obama Doctrine”: Libya

The Atlantic has published a lengthy (actually, very lengthy) article by Jeffrey Goldberg in its April issue on “The Obama Doctrine.”  As the subtitle of the article says, “The U.S. president talks through his hardest decisions about America’s role in the world.”  The article is definitely worth reading; I strongly recommend it.  There are also a number of comments to make on the article, the “Obama Doctrine,” and the President.  Let me start with Libya. 

It seems to me President Obama misses the reason why our intervention in Libya failed – because he missed some of the lessons of Iraq.  President Obama famously opposed the invasion of Iraq in a speech in 2002.  The problem may be that, having been proved right, in his opinion, with respect to the question of going into Iraq, he didn’t look at what may be considered the lesser failures of Iraq; i.e., things that were failures even if you supported going into Iraq in the first place. 

Responsibility – and Benghazi

Was George W. Bush responsible for our failures in Iraq?  How about the botched response to Hurricane Katrina?  Apparently not, at least according to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  In an interview with ABC News, Mrs. Clinton made it clear that, while she was “responsible” for the results of the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, she wasn’t really responsible:

“Mrs. Clinton, in an interview with ABC News, made clear that while she bore responsibility as former secretary of state, she said she had also delegated the job of protecting the diplomatic facility to people with more training and expertise in such matters.

Asked by ABC’s Diane Sawyer if she had missed ‘the moment to prevent this from happening,’ Mrs. Clinton said: ‘No.’

Could she have personally done anything to make conditions safer in Benghazi for the U.S. personnel stationed there?  Ms. Sawyer asked.

Ms. Clinton said that she had given ‘very direct instructions’ to security professionals, adding, ‘I’m not equipped to sit and look at blueprints to determine where the blast walls need to be or where the reinforcements need to be.’

‘That’s why we hire people who have that expertise,’ she said.”

According to Mrs. Clinton, she was “responsible” (in some theoretical, philosophical sense), but she really doesn’t take responsibility.  The State Department had hired people to do this; it was their job to do it; it wasn’t hers.

On that theory, as long as George W. Bush hired (or his Administration hired) the right people at the CIA, State Department and Defense Department, then the failures in Iraq weren’t his fault.  Same way with Katrina.  The president just hires people (or hires people who hire people).  It’s their job, not his, and it’s not his fault if it doesn’t work out.

Except that is not the way it is.  In business, if a company is losing money, the company president can’t say that it’s not his or her fault, that it was the fault of the people underneath him or her, that he or she doesn’t do the details.  That’s not the way it works.  One of the jobs of a company president is to hire the right people.  But he or she is also responsible for their results.  Company presidents not only have to hire the right people; they also have to make sure the results are good.  If they aren’t, then it’s not just the people who the company president hired (or the people under them) who are responsible.  It’s the president, too – because he is responsible for their results.

In the Civil War, if Abraham Lincoln had not found Ulysses S. Grant (and William Tecumseh Sherman, George Meade, George Thomas, etc.), he wouldn’t have been re-elected.  The voters wouldn’t have said, it’s not Lincoln’s fault the generals didn’t win; it’s their fault.  No, they would have said, it’s Lincoln’s fault, and we’re not going to re-elect him.

The same with George W. Bush.  He may have appointed the right people (or thought he did) for the war in Iraq from 2003 to 2006, but that doesn’t matter.  They didn’t produce.  The results were bad, so it was Bush’s fault.  And he wouldn’t have been re-elected if he could have run in 2008.

In the same way, Mrs. Clinton was responsible for what happened in the State Department when she was Secretary of State (except to any extent she was not allowed to do what she wanted by the President).  She wasn’t supposed to know how to look at blueprints.  But she was responsible for appointing people who knew how to do it (or who knew how to find the people who could do it).  If the people she appointed didn’t get the job done, then it was her fault for not appointing the right people.  Maybe she tried to appoint the right people, but if they didn’t do the job, then they weren’t the right people.  She is responsible for their results.  She can’t say “not my job” – because it was her job to get the right people to do the job.  And when it came to Benghazi, they didn’t do the job.

I am not saying that politicians are not entitled to make mistakes.  They are.  They are human.  They make mistakes.  But we should expect them to take responsibility, real responsibility, for the mistakes made by the people for which they are responsible.  Hillary Clinton is not doing this.
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Note:  Obviously, the bigger problem with Benghazi is the Obama administration’s inaccurate explanation for how and why the attack occurred.  Why did the Administration explain it wrong?  Because they really did not know or because they did not want to say for political reasons?  But even though that is the bigger problem, when former Secretary Clinton says she is “responsible” but then immediately says she wasn’t really responsible, it irritates me.  Therefore, this post. 

The 3:00 AM Calls Keep Coming. Is Anybody There?

According to Michael Morell, the CIA’s number two official, who is retiring after 33 years with the agency, Syria is the top threat to U.S. security.  This from The Wall Street Journal:

“Michael Morell says the risk is that the Syrian government, which possesses chemical and other advanced weapons, collapses and the country becomes al Qaeda's new haven, supplanting Pakistan. …

‘It's probably the most important issue in the world today,’ he said, ‘because of where it is currently heading.’  Its current track is toward the collapse of its central government, he said. …

The Syrian government's weapons, Mr. Morell said, ‘are going to be up for grabs and up for sale’ as they were in Libya.  The violence in Syria has the potential to spill over into Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.”

This is a concern because I don’t think President Obama has a clue what we should be doing in Syria.  Last year Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus urged President Obama to supply arms to Syrian rebels.  (Here, too.)  President Obama said no (inter alia, there was a campaign on), but now he has changed his mind.  Sort of.  There are apparently so many rules and conditions tied to our aid, it is unclear when the aid will get there and how much good it will do.  The biggest problem, though, is the Syria’s weapons.  Given how poorly we and our allies did in keeping track of Libya’s weapons after Moammar Gaddafi was overthrown, Syria scares me.  There is no reason to think we are ready.

With respect to other threats facing the United States, Mr. Morell listed:

• Iran [given how well President Assad respected the “red-line” we drew with respect to Syria using chemical weapons, I am sure Iran won’t be a problem];
• global Al-Qaeda [I thought President Obama said we beat them];
• North Korea; and
• cyberwarfare [at least the NSA is getting in some practice on its spying].

Mr. Morell summed up by saying: "I don't remember a time when there have been so many national-security issues on the front burner as there are today."

Given that President Obama’s solution to most domestic issues is to blame congressional Republicans and then go someplace to give a speech, House Republicans should get ready to be blamed for a lot of foreign problems, too.  And the White House better make sure the President’s teleprompter works on 220 current.

Seriously, if Mr. Morell is right about Syria, we are in trouble because I don’t think President Obama knows what to do.

Failure to Secure Gaddafi’s Weapons in Libya Leads to Al Qaeda Success in Mali

Here is yet another report, this one from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal*, on how NATO’s failure to secure Moammar Gaddafi’s weapon stockpiles has led to war elsewhere in Africa and is supplying al Qaeda affiliates there (and elsewhere?) with weapons:

“Islamist fighters pounded the northern Malian city of Gao for six hours Thursday with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, a display of firepower that compounds worries that the al Qaeda-backed militants in Africa have enough arms to mount an insurgency that could last years.

The attack – beaten back only with the intervention of French troops and helicopters – is the second in 10 days on the mud-brick city.  It appeared to confirm fears that arms from the caches of former Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi have washed across the Sahara to militant groups such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, which has become a pressing target of U.S. counterterror efforts. …

Diplomats, security experts and others familiar with the militants' arsenal say it includes land mines, automatic weapons with ample ammunition, long-range rifles and missiles, and caches of high-powered plastic explosives such as Semtex.

An examination of such arms reveals the apparent limits of the international effort to secure Gadhafi-regime weapons – a push that focused on securing shoulder-fired missiles that could bring down planes.  Less heed was paid, international experts say, to the more workaday weapons that now appear to be deployed by Sahara militants for guerrilla strikes, desert ambushes and suicide attacks.

But it is those weapons, the experts say, that position the militants to fight a long insurgency against a weak government, much like that waged by the Taliban in Afghanistan or Sunni militants in Iraq. Or, they say, well-armed militants could carve out a haven to plot international attacks, as al Qaeda's Yemen branch has done.

The arms have brought a new level of war to Mali, say soldiers and analysts. …

For African soldiers and diplomats, the specter of a deep rebel arsenal has reignited criticism over what they see as U.S. and European failure to contain small arms from leaving Libya.

When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and United Nations helped Libyans overthrow Gadhafi, defense chiefs recognized the threat of proliferation to neighboring countries.  [Comment: I thought the stated purpose was to protect Libyan civilians.]  Washington spent millions of dollars on intelligence teams in Libya to track down surface-to-air missile systems they believed Gadhafi possessed.  Officials feared that Islamists across the region would use these weapons to shoot down an airliner.

But neither the Libyan opposition nor their Western advisers devised a strategy to secure conventional weapons depots, said several diplomats familiar with the situation. …

In the political vacuum, Libyans hauled arms from several large depots across the country. Mali-born mercenaries and weapons smugglers operating in Libya brought back weapons to their homeland, said northern Malian leaders and State Department officials. …

Mali militants have been seen with 106 mm recoilless rifles – which are typically truck-mounted and fire armor-piercing shells – that were ‘almost certainly’ the ones the U.S. government sold Libya in the 1950s, said James Bevan, director of London's Conflict Armament Research Ltd.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said that while the U.S. government did initially focus its nonproliferation efforts in Libya on surface-to-air missile systems, it is now ‘actively supporting’ Libyan government efforts to secure all weapons stockpiles. [Comment: A little late.]

By January 2012, Libyan weapons were showing up in Mali. AQIM-backed militants chased Mali's ragtag troops from the country's north.  That retreat prompted junior officers – angry about the Malian army's insufficient firepower – to overthrow what had been one of the Sahara's rare democracies.”

Not one of the finest moments of the Obama administration’s foreign policy.

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* Drew Hinshaw and Margaret Coker, “Defenders Outgunned By Islamists In Desert,” The Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2013.

Bin Laden Is Dead and Libya Was a Success. Why Are We Having So Many Problems in North Africa?

Let me go back to Secretary of State Clinton’s testimony before Congress on Wednesday one more time.  I keep going back to it because there is so much there.  And I go to the report in The Guardian, an English newspaper, because it covered more than just what Secretary Clinton said about Benghazi.  US media focused on Benghazi, understandably, but other things she said were just as interesting.  I talked about one of them yesterday.  Let me comment on a couple others today.

First, during last year’s campaign, President Obama and his supporters were constantly telling us that Osama Bin Laden was dead and the threat from Al Qaeda against the United States was gone.  In his inaugural address on Monday, President Obama said “[a] decade of war is ending.

But Secretary Clinton told Congress something quite different on Wednesday.   She said that the jihadists in northern Africa were a direct threat to the United States and that:

"We now face a spreading jihadist threat. … We have killed a lot of them, including, of course, Bin Laden. But we have to recognize that this is a global movement. …

What we have to do is to recognize we are in for a long-term struggle here."

If this is her view, it may be good that Secretary Clinton is leaving.  It doesn’t sound like she and the President are on the same page.  (Or to put it more up-to-date: They may not be using the same e-reader.)

Second, during our bombing of Libya (and our helping of others to bomb Libya) in 2011, much was made about how we were not going to get involved in Libya.  There would be “no boots on the ground” and that would be safer.  When Moammar Gaddafi was overthrown, we were told the effort in Libya was a success.

But on Wednesday, in her appearance before Congress,

“[Secretary of State] Clinton said the instability [in north Africa] has been fuelled by a flow of weapons from several countries in the region, particularly post-revolutionary Libya after Muammar Gaddafi's well stocked armouries were looted.

‘This Pandora's box of weapons coming out of these countries in the Middle East and north Africa is the source of one of our biggest threats. There's no doubt that the Algerian terrorists had weapons from Libya. There's no doubt that the Malian remnants of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has weapons from Libya. We have to do a much better job,’ she said.”

In other words, our lack of follow-through in Libya and our failure to foresee what could happen to Colonel Gaddafi’s stores of arms if they were not secured is at least one of the reasons the jihadists in North Africa are so dangerous now.  It looks like, instead of being a success, our operations in Libya may have caused more problems than they solved.