Article content continued

There is not much more that can be said about the incorrigible incompetence in foreign affairs of the Obama government, worthy successor to the approximately equally inept blunderbuss era of George W. Bush that preceded it. In August 2014, President Obama responded to the collapse of the Iraqi government before only about 20,000 ISIL militants, the unforeseen sequel to his abrupt withdrawal from Iraq after claiming to have successfully ended the war and insurgency there, by announcing a bombing and training campaign. He modestly described his ignominious, half-hearted return to Iraq as “American leadership at its best.” When President Roosevelt declared in 1940 that “We must be the Great Arsenal of Democracy,” and President Truman promoted the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe (1947), and President Kennedy managed the Cuba Missile Crisis (1962), and President Nixon called for the support of “the Silent Majority” for a staged withdrawal from Vietnam (1969), and President Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (1983), it really was American leadership at its best, but all of those men left it to commentators and historians to come to that conclusion for themselves.

The Obama plan has been to operate on a minimalist conflict basis, doing nothing remotely adequate to assist the secular resistance to both Assad and ISIL, or to counter Russian and Iranian support of Assad, which has more effectively focused on attacking the local allies of the West and its remaining supporters in the Arab world, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Last week the U.S. deputy secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said the Syrian conflict would ensnare Russia, “and that in turn creates a compelling incentive for Russia to work for, not against, a political transition. The quagmire will spread and deepen, drawing Russia further in.” He was invoking Vietnam War terminology, from when the United States had 550,000 draftees in-country and was taking 200 to 400 dead every week. In fact, Russia has sent 2,000 advisors and a few squadrons of bombers and interceptors, provided a modest amount of munitions, and taken very few casualties (in a nation which is relatively oblivious to casualty levels anyway, and under Vladimir Putin is substantially unaffected by fluctuations of opinion).