Posted in: Foreign Policy
Monday May 2, 2011
Getting Osama: What We Should Have Done In The First Place ... But Republicans Wouldn't Do
Osama Bin Laden's demise came after President Barack Obama restored counter-terrorism operations to America's top national security priority, reversing President George Bush's decision -- before and after the 9/11 attacks -- to de-prioritize the effort to destroy Al Qaeda. Bush...
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emailFriday Feb 11, 2011
The Five Ways President Obama Ushered In Egyptian Democracy
President Barack does not deserve the primary credit for the Egyptian revolution, that goes to the Egyptian people. But President Obama made five critical strategic choices that maximized the possibility of success, which also show how dramatically his administration has...
Friday Jul 10, 2009
Obama, Russia and Nuclear Weapons
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy If you had your eyes glued to the TV and you were taking notes, you probably still missed it. The mainstream media seemed not to want to cover...
Tuesday Dec 30, 2008
Hillary, It is Time to be Great!
Eight years ago, when many in the US thought that it really didn't matter who was president and that the country could run on automatic pilot, George Bush was elected president. At the time, he was thought to have had...
Saturday Nov 29, 2008
Samantha Power should be considered for post
In a particularly pointless article, the Washington Post notes that Samantha Power "is listed on Obama's transition website as part of the team reviewing national security agencies." Really? Samantha Power is an especially gifted woman. As a journalist and war...
Monday Sep 22, 2008
Monday evening news Roundup For the second straight day, let's start overseas. North Korea is miffed that the United States has not lived up to their obligations in the nuclear nonproliferation Treaty, according to North Korea. It appears that they...
Monday Aug 11, 2008
It Was 3 A.M., And We Were Asleep
The Politico rightly called the outbreak of war between Russia and Georgia a real "3 A.M." moment for Obama and McCain. In the case of McCain, it proved him to be reckless and rash, simplistic and belligerent -- "much worse"...
Saturday Jul 26, 2008
The LiberalOasis Radio Show: Blood and Oil Edition
Today at 10 AM ET, The LiberalOasis Radio Show was broadcast on WHMP-AM in Western MA. My special guesst for the full show was Michael Klare and Scott Morris, discussing their new documentary from the Media Education Foundation, "Blood and...
Tuesday Jul 22, 2008
I suspect the McCain campaign really believes Sen. Barack Obama is an inexperienced empty suit who is only good in front of a teleprompter. It's the only explanation for their foolish strategy. As said here before, making "experience" your main...
Tuesday May 20, 2008
On MSNBC a few minutes ago, Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice just called McCain to task for not recognizing that Ahmadinejad isn't actually the leader of Iran -- a key point that LiberalOasis has long said should be central...
Monday Jan 28, 2008
McCain: More War, No Matter Who Wins!
On CNN tonight after the State of the Union speech, Sen. John McCain said that both Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would "surrender" in Iraq, which would mean there would be "chaos" and "genocide" and so, we would have...
Friday Jan 11, 2008
Selected responses from last night's GOP debate, answering the critical question, "did the American commander in the Strait of Hormuz the other day make the right decision by responding passively when approached aggressively by Iranian fast boats believed to be...
Tuesday Nov 27, 2007
Four years ago, Saddam Hussein was captured. Dem presidential front runner Howard Dean said "the capture of Saddam has not made America safer." Soon after, he was roundly attacked by his Dem rivals, and other Beltway Dems sought to undermine...
Monday Nov 12, 2007
I always felt that my foreign policy chapter in "Wait! Don't Move To Canada!" was the most important of the book. I also sensed it would be the chapter that would gain the least traction. Arguing, as I do, that...
Saturday Oct 27, 2007
What are we, Americans, about?
As I look around and I try to interpret domestic and foreign policy, one question keeps nagging at me, what are we, as Americans, about? Let's look at recent events. The failure of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-Chip)...
Wednesday Oct 3, 2007
Forgive the pessimism, but the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar appears to be achieving its objective. The AP reports: "the streets [are] cleared of protesters, the Internet [is] down and many residents [are] too fearful to go out."...
Thursday Sep 27, 2007
For Western Mass. readers, tomorrow night is a one-night only screening of the new documentary War Made Easy, from the Media Education Foundation, and featuring Sean Penn and Norman Solomon. It's happening at The Academy of Music Theater, Friday at...
Sunday Sep 16, 2007
Associated Press, today: [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates ... said he disagreed with assertions by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in his new book that the Iraq war "is largely about oil." "I've known him a long time and I...
Friday Aug 31, 2007
David Ignatius said yesterday, in the latest Washington Post effort to buoy Iyad Allawi's paid lobbying campaign to run Iraq again, that: "Future historians should record that the Bush administration actually lived by its pro-democracy rhetoric about a new Iraq...
Thursday Aug 30, 2007
Larry Craig's Foreign Policy: Occupation for Oil
Sen. Larry Craig may not be telling the truth about his sexual orientation, but he was certainly honest about why we're occupying Iraq and gearing up to fight Iran: oil. This is from last month's all-night Iraq debate. Craig ran...
Wednesday Aug 22, 2007
Dubya has learned how to maintain his bully pulpit and generate headlines as a lame duck: by making the craziest, most factually baseless, arguments possible. Democrats appear to be descending into one of their patented shame spirals as they fret...
Tuesday Jul 31, 2007
Here's a question for the presidential candidates attending the YearlyKos presidential forum. Will you lead the effort to defeat in Congress Bush's proposed multi-billion arms deal to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other undemocratic Arab states? Why should this deal be...
Wednesday Jul 25, 2007
Maintaining the Conservative Foreign Policy Frame
Sen. Hillary Clinton is seeking to prey on the potentially weak self-esteem of Democratic primary voters, by picking a gratuitous fight with Sen. Barack Obama. During this week's debate, Obama said he would be "willing" to meet with the leaders...
Sunday Jul 22, 2007
How Did That Safe Haven Get There?
With the latest National Intelligence Estimate finding that Al Qaeda "has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability," the White House took to the Sunday shows to fight the obvious conclusion that Dubya's neocon foreign policy has...
Tuesday Jul 10, 2007
McCain's Problem is Every Republican's Problem
John McCain campaign is faltering for one simple reason: Iraq. More specifically, McCain has been mistrusted by the conservative base of the GOP ever since he picked fights with them in 2000, despite his long-standing neoconservative foreign policy views. In...
Tuesday Jul 10, 2007
The Sorry History of Bush's Pakistan Policy
Following Sunday's NY Times report that "A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky...
Sunday Jul 1, 2007
Lugar Making Less And Less Sense
Sen. Richard Lugar visited CBS' Face The Nation today to talk about his recent speech criticizing Dubya's "surge" strategy in Iraq. His main argument against the continuing the surge was: The point of the surge was to give time to...
Saturday Jun 30, 2007
"We Have To Fight Them Over There, So We Don't Have To Over Here"
An argument you will never hear in Great Britian....
Sunday Jun 24, 2007
When you practice Democracy Hypocrisy, bankrupting yourself of moral authority and legitimacy, things tend not to work out so well. Let's go to Iran, where democracy is at least a stated, if not terribly sincere, goal: ... George W. Bush's...
Thursday Jun 14, 2007
No One Is Leading, And It Shows In The Polls
Wednesday's NBC/WSJ poll is a depressing read. Bush at 29% approval. Congress at 23%. Nineteen percent believe the country is headed in the right direction. Neither party's presidential field seems to be catching fire. The GOP field is flatter: Rudy...
Wednesday Jun 6, 2007
The GOP presidential field, hysterical and crazy they may be, but they are still ahead of the Democratic field in articulating a consistent foreign policy vision. But there was some positive movement during the Democratic debate. And a counter-intuitive opening...
Wednesday May 23, 2007
Promoting Region-Wide Sectarian Violence
ABC News' The Blotter yesterday broke the news that Bush has given secret authorization to "mount a covert 'black' operation to destabilize the Iranian government." And on CNN International, Seymour Hersh re-broke his overlooked New Yorker scoop from March, regarding...
Sunday May 20, 2007
On Meet The Press today, presidential candidate Sen. Chris Dodd debated Newt Gingrich about Iraq and foreign policy, the kind of bold move that most "top tier" candidates would be too risk-averse to do. But the bold move only works...
Thursday May 17, 2007
The Feingold-Reid resolution had a poor showing this week, garnering only 29 votes in a cloture vote. And that's inflated, because presidential candidates Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama made clear they were only voting for cloture (which they...
Monday May 7, 2007
We are caught up in a worldwide war against an irreconcilable enemy who seeks to destroy us and will use nuclear or biological weapons if they can get them. And they mean literally destroy us ... whether it's Afghanistan, it's...
Thursday Apr 26, 2007
Why The Republicans Are In Trouble
Rudy Giuliani was stuck in 2004 when he attacked Dems for wanting to "go on defense" against terrorists. As were leading Dems for defensively responding that Rudy was being mean and divisive -- instead of going on offense and attacking...
Wednesday Apr 4, 2007
You know what sends mixed signals to Syria? Working with Syria to torture our detainees for us, then attacking Syria for sponsoring terrorism....
Monday Jan 29, 2007
LiberalOasis has previously expressed wariness about Sen. Hillary Clinton's foreign policy objectives, as she has left open the possibility of permanent bases in Iraq. But today on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, when asked about possible military action in Iran, she...
Friday Jan 26, 2007
On Wednesday during NBC's Today, Sen. Barack Obama said: I think all of us are talking about a phased redeployment which would leave American troops in the region to send a strong message not only to the Iraqi government that...
Wednesday Jan 24, 2007
Forgettable SOTU, Heartening Response
There's no need to debunk Dubya's State of the Union point-by-point. His political capital is nil. His credibility is shot. He offered no proposal that will rally the public to his side. He failed to reclaim control of the domestic...
Monday Jan 15, 2007
Read, and listen, to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s address, "Beyond Vietnam -- A Time To Break Silence" at American Rhetoric....
Wednesday Dec 27, 2006
Somalia: Another Foreign Policy Failure
Back in June, LiberalOasis noted how Dubya's foreign policy in Somalia had backfired: They could have chosen to shore up the relatively new transititional government, fostered economic development, engaged in diplomacy to solve regional differences -- all with an eye...
Thursday Dec 21, 2006
Congressman's Hate Weakens America
Last week was dubbed the "Week of Rising Hate" by LiberalOasis, with rising anti-Muslim sentiment at home and anti-Semitism abroad. Though this week, Iran's voters were not impressed with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial conference and weakened his political standing in...
Wednesday Dec 20, 2006
A Bigger Military, But For What?
So Dubya announces he wants to increase the overall size of the military, and leading Democrats applaud. Before you get too ticked, do note that leading Democrats have been calling for an increase since 2003. They have been critical of...
Friday Dec 15, 2006
This week, CNN viewers had the misfortune of having to suffer the venom of both the anti-Muslim Dennis Prager and the anti-Jewish David Duke. Which means Prager and Duke were making enough waves to be considered newsworthy. Which means this...
Tuesday Dec 5, 2006
The end of John Bolton's UN career is a positive development, in that it's at least another reminder that we can stand firm and win. But by itself, it's not going to do anything to change White House foreign policy....
Wednesday Nov 29, 2006
What We Need On The Intel Committee
Perhaps the most important positions in the next Congress are the chairs of our intelligence committees. Specifically because we need to be able to prevent neocons inside and outside the White House from being able to rerun the 2002 Iraq...
Sunday Nov 19, 2006
There's been a fair amount of chatter about the nomination of Bob Gates for Defense Secretary. He is considered more of a realist than a neocon, more of a Bush Sr. man than a Dick Cheney man. And so, there...
Monday Oct 30, 2006
I recently was interviewed by Michelle Malkin for her conservative Internet broadcast network Hot Air. An edited version of our discussion is available here. As we note at the start, Michelle and I are old friends from Oberlin College. Life...
Tuesday Sep 26, 2006
LiberalOasis has been critical of Washington Dems for not nationalizing the election around a " target="_blank">set of core principles. Yet Washington Dems have been working to prevent Republicans from nationalizing the election around dishonest right-wing terrorism frames. They got in...
Thursday Sep 21, 2006
Calling Out Democracy Hypocrisy
Chapter 4 of Wait! Don't Move To Canada! is titled "Reject Republican Democracy Hypocrisy," and once again, we are witnessing that hypocrisy. As today's W. Post reports, the White House is sitting quietly as a democratically elected leader is ousted,...
Friday Sep 15, 2006
Yesterday, we saw Republicans admit that getting Osama Bin Laden is not a top priority, while lying about WMD intelligence regarding Iran. In other words, instead of focusing our military on the main threat to our security, those in charge...
Wednesday Sep 6, 2006
In Dubya's latest speech about the "Global War on Terror," referring specifically to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, he said: These radicals have declared their uncompromising hostility to freedom. It is foolish to think that you can negotiate with...
Friday Sep 1, 2006
Yesterday, Dubya loftily proclaimed: The war we fight today is more than a military conflict; it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century... ...For a half-century, America's primary goal in the Middle East was stability. This was understandable...
Thursday Aug 31, 2006
The crux of Tuesday's demagogic address by Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld was: [Before World War II] was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies. When those who warned about a coming...
Monday Aug 14, 2006
How are the neocons reacting to the UN cease-fire resolution? They're pushing for the downfall of the Israeli government. Here's Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday: I'm afraid the truth is that a terrorist group launched an attack across an...
Thursday Aug 10, 2006
War Opposition Hits 60%; GOP To Run On War
The chronically unpopular Bush Administration, drowning in crises around the world, thought they had a political opportunity in Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman. An opportunity to recycle old McCarthyite distortions of Democrats. In yesterday's press briefing, WH Spokesman Tony...
Friday Jul 28, 2006
Dragging Democracy Through The Mud
Back in February, LiberalOasis offered that: "Perhaps the worst part of the Bush legacy will be the stain he has put upon the good name of democracy." That stain is getting harder and harder to come out. Syria Comment delivered...
Thursday Jul 20, 2006
It's a fine line between an effective squeaky wheel and a counterproductive whiner. Beltway conservatives are an especially whiny lot, but on the whole, pretty effective. By periodically complaining that even right-wing presidencies are not right-wing enough, they can move...
Tuesday Jul 18, 2006
As Ezra Klein, Juan Cole and Billmon have already noted, the real news in the overheard Bush-Blair lunch chat is not the profanity, but the comments about Syria: BUSH: See, the irony is what they need to do is get...
Monday Jul 17, 2006
Last week's neocon Iran Fever continued to spread on Sunday. Newt Gingrich, on " target="_blank">NBC's Meet The Press, and Bill Kristol, on " target="_blank">Fox News Sunday, continued the right-wing effort to pressure the Bushies for accelerated action against Iran, if...
Wednesday Jun 7, 2006
Two years ago in a Balt. Sun oped, John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, urged the Bush Adminstration to get involved diplomatically in Somalia, so it won't be a failed state and "comfortable home for terrorist groups". The Bushies...
