Politics & Government
David Harsanyi: ‘The Obama Doctrine Is Dead’ U.S.-Middle East Analysis
What would America's Founding Father's Think About U.S. Foreign Policy in the Last Century of so? A look at Obama and other foreign policy.
According to the Daily Signal which provided the report to this writer for MHProNews and this Patch shown in Part I below: “David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and the author of "Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent."”
What Harsanyi didn’t clearly define in his article is what the Obama Doctrine (D) means. Per left-leaning Wikipedia is the following description.
“The Obama Doctrine is used to describe one or several principles of the foreign policy of U.S. President Barack Obama. In 2015, during an interview with The New York Times, Obama said: "You asked about an Obama doctrine, the doctrine is we will engage, but we preserve all our capabilities".[1]
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Unlike precisely-defined policies such as the Monroe Doctrine, Truman Doctrine, Kennedy Doctrine, Nixon Doctrine, Carter Doctrine, Reagan Doctrine, or Bush Doctrine, the Obama Doctrine is not a specific foreign policy introduced by the executive. This has led journalists and political commentators to analyze what the exact tenets of an Obama Doctrine might look like. Generally speaking, it is widely accepted that a central part of such a doctrine would emphasize negotiation and collaboration rather than confrontation and unilateralism in international affairs.[2][3] ”
More on U.S. foreign policy and other topics in Part II.
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Part I
Commentary
The Obama Doctrine Is Dead
David Harsanyi | December 27, 2024
The Obama Doctrine is as dead as Yahya Sinwar. And the world is better off in both cases.
While the massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, was one of the most traumatic events in modern Jewish history, it’s obvious now that it was a massive, perhaps existential, blunder by the Islamic State as well as a stunning defeat for its allies both in the Middle East and Washington.
Oct. 7 transformed the Middle East in ways that seemed impossible only a few years ago. Hamas, perhaps the most immediate threat to both Jewish and Arab lives in the region, is largely eradicated. Hezbollah, the theocratic militia that’s kept Lebanon in a state of turmoil and war for decades, is reeling.
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Indeed, it was Israel’s success against the latter that helped send Bashar Assad, a real-world genocidal dictator, into Russian exile. Most of all, events have left Iran, which spent decades building its proxies throughout the Middle East, impotent.
It’s no surprise that on their way out, Barack Obama cronies in the Biden administration approved another $10 billion in sanctions relief for the mullahs by waiving restricted payment transfers from the Iraqi government.
These are the same people who had attempted to lift Hamas and propped up its benefactors in Iran with planeloads of treasure. And the same people did everything possible to handcuff Israel in its war against Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not only had the White House threatened to withhold aid if the Israeli military went into Rafah to eliminate Hamas battalions cowering behind women and children, but when Israel pulled off its ingenious pager operation, wounding and killing hundreds of Hezbollah operatives, our uncannily misguided secretary of state, Antony Blinken, warned that “all parties” should “avoid escalating conflict,” treating our close allies and Islamists, in this case a group that once murdered 220 Marines in Beirut, as equals.
Fortunately, Israel ignored Joe Biden and eliminated Hassan Nasrallah, who was involved in those murders, and decimated much of Hezbollah’s capacity to wage war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, far more risk-averse and far less hawkish than his critics maintain, was compelled by the popular will to settle all family business after Oct 7. The conventional wisdom has been that Israel, a small nation, is impelled to finish wars quickly or risk an economic crash. That was surely the case in the conventional wars of the past. The Jewish state proved it could engage in a prolonged conflict, striking one decisive victory after the next.
Conventional wisdom also said that Israel would be unable to effectively strike deep within Iran. Yet, after the Islamic regime launched 500 ballistic missiles and drones in its direction, Israel slipped 100 jets into the Iranian territory and calmly engaged in precision strikes—a warning that it could mete out far more devastation if it felt like it. And perhaps it will in the future.
On Oct. 8, Israelis woke up to a gruesome massacre and perhaps the most devastating security failure in their country’s history—behind only the Yom Kippur War. This month, they woke up to the news that Israel was annihilating the Syrian Air Force, its armaments, and perhaps chemical weapons storehouses, ensuring that no advanced weaponry falls into the hands of jihadis.
Power and strength, rather than capitulation and mollification, work in the Middle East. And the world is a better place today because of Israel’s victories.
It’s not outlandish to believe that Iranians might now be more open to making a genuine deal with President-elect Donald Trump, rather than risking implosion. What would be best for the world, of course, is if the U.S. exerted its economic pressure and precipitated the fall of the mullahs in Iran, a country that has no real geopolitical reason to be at war with Israel or the West.
Though there’s a chance for peace in the region, we should not be pollyannaish.
The Turkish government would like to set up its own proxy state in Syria, though the Arabs tend to detest the Turks. And the Turks, of course, detest the Kurds, who are being ethnically cleansed as we speak. (No college campus protests for a Kurdish state, alas.) And, of course, the Christians and Alawites are now in danger from Islamists.
Or, in other words, the Middle East is still the Middle East.
Whatever happens, though, the Middle East has been forever transformed by Oct 7.
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Part II
As was recently mentioned in a more detailed report linked below, America's founding fathers opposed the notion of the U.S. getting embroiled in foreign treaties, wars, conflicts, and entanglements. There may be an argument that the U.S. should be open to selling arms to foreign powers without the U.S. giving away billions of dollars a year and getting little or nothing tangible in return.
https://patch.com/florida/lakeland/bill-wilson-makes-case-time-u-s-dump-europe-nato
Trillions of dollars have been spent along with hundreds of thousands of American lives, millions counting the wounded, by U.S. leaders who have since then ignored their advice in the 20th and 21st centuries. A flashback to the period under Woodrow Wilson (D) where much of these policies that changed America and often for the worse, is explored in the more detailed report linked below.
https://www.manufacturedhomepr...
Charles' remarks below are debatable. But his quote from General Smedley Butler, U.S.M.C., is accurate. General Butler said "War is a Racket." See the report linked below the Butler quote and X-screen shot.
Some have speculated that former and future President Donald J. Trump is just playing with Canada, Mexico, Panama, and Greenland in saying he may 'take over' those countries through various means (purchase, other possible agreements, etc.), meaning, he is saying that a negotiating ploy. Perhaps. But historically, the U.S. held large parts of Mexico at one point in time. Panama was built by the U.S. and given away for a $1 under President Jimmy Carter (D). It is
conceivable that Trump may be angling for more than just a new deal that could be undone by some future president. He may sincerely want those territories, although it doesn't sound at this point like he has a military operation in mind. Defending America from enemies abroad and having the natural resources to do so could be easier if those territories were part of the U.S. That's not an endorsement, but it is an observation. It could make manufacturing and job creation better.
Time will tell what Trump has in mind. But based on the fact that he didn't start any new wars during his term of office and worked at winding down the U.S. involvement in the Middle East and
Afghanistan suggests that he is looking for peaceful ways to move toward something closer to what the founders envisioned.
It is the nation of We the People, at least according to our founding documents. We have a say.
Over 30 years ago, it was this writer's belief that the U.S. needed to see ballot access reform in many states, to make it easier for a third-major party to rise and potentially thrive. It was my belief then that a Constitutional Christian Party was needed, one that welcomed people of other faiths, but who also wanted to see the political duopoly over America ended. While Republicans may be better than Democrats in many cases, there is evidence of corruption that Senator Rand Paul (KY-R) and others have put forward that continues the belief of millions that a new party could be useful. In fairness, it remains to be seen if the MAGA/America First movement will cause the Republican Party to be such a vehicle for reform of an often corrupted system.
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