A Night Unremembered
13 years ago
Friday, December 18, 2015
I Can't Figure This Guy Out
I thought I could pretty much understand what makes most people tick. That is, I had a knack for figuring what someone might do in certain situations... at least I used to be able to do it... maybe I was just fooling myself.
The guy is president Obama and he has me a bit worried. Most presidents try to make the next person's term in the Oval Office simple. That is, the current president tries to clean up as much of the mess he made as possible so the next one won't have that to deal with it. After all, the presidency is a tough enough job as it is without having to spend a lot of time trying to straighten out the results of the former president's policies.
Reagan did have to deal with Jimmy Carter's issues but, beyond a poor economy (which Carter inherited from Ford), Reagan didn't have a lot of problems handed down to him. And I give Carter credit for getting Egypt and Israel to sign a deal that has lasted quite a long time. That alone should be Carter's legacy... but he tried and I think his heart was in the right place, he was an outsider who got little cooperation even from his own party.
But Obama has me mystified. I do not understand his foreign policy (which seems to be "make nice and the others will like you", something we learn when we are toddlers but we stop doing in our teens).
Obama seems to be sticking with that policy (except when dealing with Republicans) in spite of its apparent abject failure. I think his domestic economy policy seems to be one of "benign neglect." That is, basically let it take care of itself after establishing bailouts of banks and financial institutions and pushing through a huge stimulus bill that didn't have all that much effect. I think he figured to wait out businesses until they started hiring again. After all, it was in their best interests to do so... eventually. That was pretty smart.
But the mess we have with terrorists is overwhelming and I do not see an easy solution. My idea is to go back to carpet bombing, starting with the IS oilfields and then destroying whatever infrastructure they have. The idea is to inflict so much damage on the populace that the people will want to get as far away from anything IS as possible.
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2 comments:
Bush tried getting tough with the terrorists, and that didn't work. Obama has tried making nice to the terrorists, and that hasn't worked. So what do we do now? Bomb everyone? I read in the Times that we're running out of ammunition.
Tom, actually Bush's getting tough did work. We forget that the Surge had an effect and brought a lot of territory under control. Also, Gitmo was housing the worst of the worst but, unfortunately, became a clarion call on the left ("Close Gitmo!") which became the first thing Obama wanted to do but the last he might do before leaving office. What bothers me about Gitmo is that the recidivism rate (~30%) is lower than US prisons. That says either we are doing it right at Gitmo or wrong at US prisons. I don't accept that Gitmo is a "recruitment tool" for terrorists, they take anything as incentive... including a false narrative about a "war on Islam."
As I said in the post, we might want to use carpet bombing to disrupt IS' hold on the people; essentially making it dangerous to be anywhere near IS. Yes, I realize innocents (non-combatants)will get killed. That is a big part of that strategy.
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