Bombs, Boots and Bluster Won’t Work
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on September 8th, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
Bombs, Boots and Bluster Won’t Work
Eugene Robinson, RealClearPolitics
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s strategy against the Islamic State may be hard to pin down — maddeningly so, some complain — but it is likely to work far better than anything his bellicose critics advocate. Perhaps the president will eliminate any confusion when he addresses the nation Wednesday, but I doubt it. Based on what he told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press,” there may be no way to reduce Obama’s fluid and perhaps deliberately ambiguous thinking to a black-or-white, all-or-nothing dichotomy. “This is not going to be an announcement about U.S. ground troops. This is not the…
Success or Failure?
Thomas Sowell, RealClearPolitics
Those people who say that President Obama has no clear vision and no clear strategy for dealing with the ISIS terrorists in the Middle East may be mistaken. It seems to me that he has a very clear and very consistent strategy. And a vision behind that strategy. First the strategy — which is to get each crisis off the front pages and off television news programs as quickly as he can, in whatever way he can, at the lowest political cost. Calling ISIS a junior varsity months ago accomplished that goal. Saying before the 2012 elections that “bin Laden is dead” and that terrorism was defeated…
Time for an All-Out Attack on ISIS, Says Kissinger
Toby Harnden, RealClearPolitics
NEW YORK — If there were any doubts about whether Henry Kissinger, at the age of 91 and having undergone heart surgery in July, has kept his edge, he dispatches them almost as soon as he sinks into a sofa in his high-rise corner office in midtown Manhattan. News that a second American journalist has been beheaded in Syria has just broken. But the former US secretary of state — who helped to bring the Vietnam War to an end, initiated a rapprochement with China and led the policy of detente with the Soviet Union — is already clear about what should be done. “We should launch…
Will Justice Do Justice in Ferguson?
Mona Charen, RealClearPolitics
It has been over a month since Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Mo., and we have yet to hear the police officer’s version of events. Was Officer Darren Wilson badly injured in his scuffle with Brown? Did Brown attempt to seize the officer’s weapon? Did Wilson have reason to fear for his own life? None of these answers has been forthcoming, which is odd and, frankly, suspicious. There are many possible explanations for the tragic death of Brown ranging from justifiable self-defense by Wilson to bad judgment by both parties and all the way to racially motivated murder. But the…