A ‘new beginning'? Not quite

Note:   Second of a two-part series. Part one was published in the Sept. 8 edition and can be found at: Blue Ridge Now.

As Libya descended into chaos in 2011, the United States vacillated with respect to its role in removing Libya's strongman, Moammar Gadhafi. By October of that year, the Arab Spring revolt in Libya was victorious and Gadhafi was dead.

A year later, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered by terrorists at our consulate in Benghazi. The event created a firestorm of criticism directed at the State Department, then-Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House concerning what they did and did not do and say as this tragedy unfolded in the midst of the 2012 presidential election campaign.

On Jan. 23, 2013, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relation Committee, Clinton failed to put the issue to rest. Instead, she shouted, "Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?"

Pakistan

Pakistan is the world's sixth most populous nation. It is a catastrophe in the making. Its central government is notoriously weak. Its rogue intelligence service, the ISI, acts independently and has been allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan for decades. Radical Muslim clerics in Pakistan continue their efforts to subvert the central government, which has a nuclear arsenal of 50-100 warheads. Osama bin Laden took refuge in Pakistan until he was killed in 2011 by the United States.

Does anyone believe the ISI didn't know bin Laden was holed up in Abbottabad less than one mile from the Pakistan's version of our West Point? Since bin Laden's death, America's relations with Pakistan have gone from bad to horrendous.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the United States is unable to project a coherent foreign policy in the Middle East because of the paralytic shadow that is cast upon the region and the American government by our ill-fated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most Americans believe former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama have little or nothing in common. History will prove that belief wrong in one critically important way, the monumental blunders of those two wars.

After 9/11, Bush took America to war in Afghanistan in order to deny al-Qaida the training ground it had used to attack America. No credible analyst doubted the prudence or necessity of that decision. By 2003, we were on the verge of victory in Afghanistan.

But instead of finishing the job, Bush embarked on a pre-emptive war against Iraq, even though there was clear evidence that Iraq had not been involved in the 9/11 attack. Having decided to attack Iraq, the Bush administration needed a rationale that could be sold to Congress and the American people. It chose to assert that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

It was an argument that carried the day politically but was false. But by then it was too late. America was locked in a no-win ground war in Iraq that cost hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars and thousands of needless deaths and injuries. When the war sputtered to a stalemated conclusion years later, the United States' blunder was obvious, and the victory that was within reach in Afghanistan in 2003 had vanished.

The fundamental purpose of war is to achieve clear and essential political objectives and outcomes, not simply to seize territory and win battles. From that perspective, the Iraq war, unnecessary from the outset, was a failure.

On Dec. 1, 2009, after seemingly endless meetings with his National Security Team, Obama addressed the Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He announced the fateful decision he had made to escalate the war in Afghanistan and to say in advance when it would end. He said, "As commander in chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home."

Like Bush's pre-emptive war in Iraq, Obama's escalation in Afghanistan was a military and foreign policy blunder that undercut the effective projection of our vital interests throughout the Middle East. Just like it did in Iraq, this nation has invested hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars in a military adventure in a country that was not in 2009 a central training ground for al-Qaida and international terrorism. By then, al-Qaida had migrated to the Arabian Peninsula, Africa and Pakistan.

A recent study at Harvard by Linda Blimes now puts the costs of these two wars, including medical and disability costs, at $4 trillion to $6 trillion.

The Middle East is a seething and uncontrolled cauldron of ferment and antipathy toward this nation. The United States has less influence and less respect in the region that at any time in our history. That is the enduring legacy of Bush and Obama's combined arrogance and incompetence.

With regard to the president's proposal of a possible military strike against Syria, he miscalculated the mood of the American people, Congress and our allies. His behavior reminds us of the mayor of Doodyville, Phineas T. Bluster, a marionette dangling at the end of strings now being pulled by the Kremlin.

The "new beginning" Obama promised at Cairo University in 2009 is stillborn, its death shroud two lost wars. Obama will leave office just like his predecessor, resembling the philosophic Cheshire Cat in "Alice in Wonderland" — with nothing but a grin.

The Shadow's in the Kremlin watching Putin orchestrate Obama's volte-face, but Goldman can be reached at:  EmailMe.