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President Obama is channeling President Nixon with his justification for deploying Special Forces to help combat ISIS. Of course, Nixon justified deploying the FBI and other intelligence agencies to illegally wiretap, entrap, and otherwise undermine anti-Vietnam protesters as follows:
Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.
(“Nixon-Frost Interview,” New York Times, May 20, 1977)
Well, only such a tortured, imperial justification could explain this:
President Obama announced on Friday that he had ordered several dozen Special Operations troops into Syria for the first open-ended mission by United States ground forces in that country, deepening American involvement in a war he has tried to avoid for more than four years. …
‘The responsibility that they have is not to lead the charge to take a hill, but rather to offer advice and assistance to those local forces about the best way they can organize their efforts to take the fight to ISIL or to take the hill inside of Syria,’ [White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest] said.
(New York Times, October 30, 2015)
Especially given this:
The Obama administration on Friday abandoned its efforts to build up a new rebel force inside Syria to combat the Islamic State, acknowledging the failure of its $500 million campaign to train thousands of fighters and announcing that it will instead use the money to provide ammunition and some weapons for groups already engaged in the battle.
(New York Times, October 9, 2015)
Clearly, having abandoned similar efforts just weeks ago, deploying U.S. troops now to “train, advise, and assist” local forces defies logic. Therefore, Obama’s explanation can only be a Nixonian pretext for their real mission to engage in the very “frontline” combat he steadfastly denies.
More to the point, his doublespeak about the nature of U.S. involvement in the fight against ISIS is eerily similar to that which Nixon propagated about U.S. involvement in the fight against the Viet Cong. Watergate journalist Bob Woodward documents Nixon’s willful perfidy in this respect in his latest book, The Last of the President’s Men:
President Richard Nixon believed that years of aerial bombing in Southeast Asia to pressure North Vietnam achieved ‘zilch’ even as he publicly declared it was effective and ordered more bombing while running for reelection in 1972.
(Washington Post, October 11, 2015)
Likewise, I suspect Obama believes his aerial bombing in Syria and Iraq to destroy ISIS has achieved zilch. Yet he has ordered more bombing.
He betrayed his Nixonian deception in this respect when he surged tens of thousands of troops into Afghanistan in 2009, in a plainly vain attempt to win that unwinnable war. After all, he spent much of his 2008 presidential campaign criticizing Bush for wasting seven years, thousands of lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars attempting to do so.
Not to mention the manifest futility of deploying 300 advisers just last year to train, advise, and assist local forces in Iraq, which I lampooned, rather presciently, in “Why Have 3,000 Troops When 300 Will Do?” June 20, 2014. I say presciently because those 300 advisers have already grown (in mission creep reminiscent of Vietnam) to 3,500.
The Obama administration announced Wednesday the deployment of up to 450 additional military advisers to Iraq, deepening U.S. involvement in the war against the Islamic State and underscoring the fragility of a U.S. strategy that rests on the abilities of local forces.
The new troops, once in place, will bring the number of American service members in Iraq to around 3,500…
‘This train, advise, and assist mission builds on lessons learned during the past several months,’ the White House said in a statement.
(Washington Post, June 10, 2015)
I cannot make this stuff up, folks.
I’m no Woodward, but even I decried Obama’s Vietnamization of America’s involvement in the Middle East in “Obama Escalates Afghan War; the ‘Die’ Is Cast on His Presidency,” December 2, 2009, which includes this ominous observation on his ill-fated surge:
I do not see how Obama can possibly justify the loss of life and waste of money that will occur over this period just for him to end up doing what President Nixon did in Vietnam: i.e., declaring victory and going home.
In fact, more U.S. troops died in Afghanistan after Obama promised to end that war than those who died during all of the feckless years Bush spent waging it.
Seventy-four percent of the U.S. military personnel who have given their lives serving in the Afghan War died after Feb. 17, 2009, when President Barack Obama announced his first increase in the number of U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan. …
1,593 of those 2,162 U.S. casualties — or 73.7 percent — have occurred since Feb. 17, 2009, when Obama announced the first of his multiple increases in U.S. military personnel deployed to Afghanistan.
(CNS News, January 9, 2014)
What could be more damning than that!
And what does Obama have to show for all of this American blood he now has on his hands? A resurgent Taliban that is more powerful and influential today than it was at any time during the Bush administration.
In the group’s biggest victory in 15 years, the Taliban this week seized parts of Kunduz, Afghanistan’s fifth largest city and a major strategic hub between Kabul and Tajikistan…
The group also claimed control of the Warduj district of Badakshan, east of Kunduz province, according to Fawzia Koofi, one of the first women to be elected to the Afghan parliament after the U.S. invasion of the country.
(CNN, October 2, 2015)
No doubt, if the American people knew then what Woodward is revealing about his war deception now, Nixon would have been impeached for Vietnam long before Watergate. But we know about Obama’s war deception now.
Therefore, what does it say about the American people that the only ones calling for impeachment are right-wing Republicans? Especially given that these nutjobs want to impeach Obama for implementing immigration and healthcare reforms, not for sending American troops to die in a war he knew was achieving zilch.
Truth be told, I have written too many commentaries to count on Obama’s march of folly in the Middle East, including most recently “Obama Amassing Coalition of the Willing to Do in Syria What Bush Did in Afghanistan/Iraq,” September 30, 2015.
But this excerpt from “Demystifying ISIS: Case against Obama’s Bush-lite War on Terrorism,” September 10, 2014, should explain why commenting any further would amount to the proverbial beating a dead horse.
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If the Afghans and Iraqis Americans spent over a decade training to govern themselves, defend themselves, and sustain themselves can’t stand on their own against a rag-tag bunch of Taliban fighters and rampaging ISIS terrorists, respectively, then they deserve whatever fate befalls them. To say nothing of the dreadful spectacle of so many of those the U.S. trained either turning their guns directly on U.S. troops — in now notorious ‘green-on-blue’ killings, or using that training to professionalize the ranks of terrorist groups like ISIS.
Incidentally, Obama is making quite a show of seeking congressional authorization to train ‘moderate’ Syrian fighters as part of his war on terrorism strategy. But, consistent with the foregoing, nothing betrays the wishful thinking inherent in this quite like the shameful (and ultimately sacrificial) way thousands of U.S.-trained Iraqi troops threw down their U.S.-made weapons, abandoned their U.S.-made military vehicles, and hightailed it from just a few hundred poorly equipped ISIS fighters.
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Enough said?
Except that I feel compelled to confess how much political pain these commentaries cause me. Not least because my ardent support for Obama’s presidency stems back to when other johnnies-come-lately supports were still joining Bill and Hillary Clinton in dismissing his candidacy as a ‘fairytale.” My commentary ‘It’s Time: Run Obama, Run!’ October 24, 2006, affirms this.
I am still a big fan. Obama has had a remarkably successful, transformative presidency in many respects – especially given the Republicans’ politically/racially motivated efforts, from day one, to “make him a failed president.”
All the same, my commentaries chronicle my profound disappointment in his conduct of foreign policy in the Middle East – from the Arab Spring to this creeping combat against ISIS.
Just as ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ combat by any other name would spell defeat. In fact, the other name for Obama’s new mission of ‘train, advise, and assist’ is mission creep … with all of the horrors of Vietnam that entails.
(“Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Barack Obama, Wins Landslide Victory,” The iPINIONS Journal, October 24, 2015)
Related commentaries:
Demystifying ISIS…
Why have 3000…
Afghanistan … failure is likely…
Run Obama run…
Justin Trudeau…