In the period of the president’s maximum political peril, the summer of 2012, then CIA Director David Petraeus presented him with a plan for arming the Syrian rebel forces fighting to topple Bashar al-Assad and his regime. In addition to Petraeus, the plan was supported by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey. Barack Obama rejected their advice and insisted that the United States would provide only non-lethal aid. Director Petraeus resigned on Election Day, shortly after the exit polls were known. None of the other players groused about the decision or created any sense of division or disarray within the national security team.
Obama not only stood up to the CIA and the top brass at the Pentagon, he did it without the cover of Clinton or Panetta. He kept us out of a war the rest of the Establishment wanted to fight; he did it without arousing disloyalty, and he did it in the heat of a presidential campaign.
Even John McCain is gobsmacked.
At the tail end of a line of questioning about Benghazi, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked Panetta and Dempsey whether they had supported a plan “that we provide weapons to the resistance in Syria.” The plan, he said, was floated in the summer by then-CIA Director David H. Petraeus and endorsed by another heavyweight in the administration at the time, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“We do,” Panetta replied.
“You did support that?” McCain asked again.
“We did,” added Dempsey, who was sitting next to Panetta. Neither elaborated on their positions.
McCain appeared taken aback by the answers. A few hours later, he issued a statement saying he was “very pleased” to learn of the Pentagon’s stance but criticized President Obama for blocking arms shipments to Syrian rebels.
“What this means is that the president overruled the senior leaders of his own national security team,” said McCain, who has long advocated for U.S. intervention in Syria.
Obviously it matters that Obama beat McCain, but it matters that he beat Clinton, too. I mean, if you care about peace, anyway.
I’ve seen idiots make this about Benghazi. It’s all over comment pages, which means someone at Drudge, The Blaze, or Fox Nation is spreading it.
Anyway, this is why candidates matter. I’m glad the president stood up to the war machine. Let’s hope that’s why he wants Chuck Hagel as DoD. He needs another voice against these hawks.
Yes, that appears to be his rationale.
However, watching John Brennan’s testimony today, I was reminded again that Chuck Hagel has the equivalent of a Pentium II chip in his brain.
Think w/e you want, I don’t agree. Speaking of John Brennan’s testimony, I was reminded of why I opposed him the first time, and once again.
What was it about Brennan’s performance today?
My comment in a diary – Thanks Boo – Obama Stance on Syria.
Given his response in Libya, dialing back a bigfooting US military, this is what I expected to happen in Syria. Obama is most times helpfully cautious in foreign policy, if patient. He is getting us out of Afghanistan completely and quickly because he gave the military what they wanted when he first showed up. And insisted on results, which the military could not deliver because it was not to be had from the situation despite all of Petraeus’s theories.
The policy in Syria is containment. Something went on last week with regard to Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities; I don’t think we will know what until the war is over. But that is the only interventionist motive at the moment–secure or destroy those weapons.
As far as peace is concerned, the proof of the pudding is in drastically transformed national security institutions more fitting to a democratic nation instead of a garrison state. That is a diplomacy issue. If anyone has the motivation to do this, it’s Kerry. But he’s got to beat the Republicans on obstructing this too. Normalizing relations with Cuba would be an easy get. Normalizing relations with Iran is the best way to walk back any movement toward a nuclear program. Normalizing relations with North Korea is the tough nut. Withdrawal of troops from Europe and Okinawa would be big moves. Another round of strategic arms reductions with the Soviet Union, maybe bringing the number of nuclear weapons down to the point of involving China in the next round would aid enforcement of a non-proliferation regime even more than Iran sanctions. Creation of a multinational force to co-operatively preserve and patrol the planets’ commons–international airspace, international sea lanes, outer space, Antartica is a coming necessity. International action on climate change mitigation is another huge one that will take wartime-like levels of resources.
But the biggest task is fixing our domestic politics so that it drives towards peace and prosperity instead of war and poverty. And the GOP is nothing more than the war and poverty party. GOP beaters have been scaring the public to rush over the cliff since 1946. It’s time that Democrats stood up to them and told them No. No more.
You mean Russian Federation, not Soviet Union
Yep, brain heinie burp.
It is an interesting post, you were too absorbed in your subject matter
Thanks for your post. It causes me to think and revisit our history. But this is so simple and so true: “The GOP is the war and poverty party.” They really are just that.
I’m glad that we have Obama as President. The willingness of Hillary Clinton to support the war part/deploy the military has always always made me a bit distrustful of her. Have never understand why she’s that way, except that she grew up in a Republican family, No? And was Republican herself for a time?
See my follow-up diary – Kerry Distances Himself from Clinton on Syria.
Interesting. Of course, if McCain had been president, it would be impossible to count the number of armed conflicts that idiot would have gotten us embroiled in.
I wonder if John McCain has an Xbox. That’s what he really needs. That way he could get his fill of things that go boom without getting anyone killed.
This isn’t the first time Obama overruled the unanimous or near-unanimous advice of his top aids and experts.
He kept pushing for health care reform after Scott Brown’s election.
He green-lighted the bin Laden raid.
He gave a high-profile speech about race relations at the peak of the Reverend Wright story.
People who know Obama always talk about his incredible self-confidence (and incredible competitiveness). But neither quality really seems to really come through in his public persona. In fact, he often seems like the humblest of presidents.
But at least re: self-confidence the proof is in his actions, as shown by those major decisions you point out. And how could it be otherwise? How else could someone make such staggeringly important calls against the advice of all those brilliant, talented, powerful people?
It’s nothing short of astonishing to me. I mean, I’m a confident person, but I can’t imagine what it’s like to believe in oneself and one’s abilities that much.
People who know Obama always talk about his incredible self-confidence (and incredible competitiveness).
I bet he’s a real prick to have as a boss, but there’s no denying the man’s effectiveness.
I agree. Remember, after Scott Brown he had that interview where it looked like he was conceding on health care.
OT: Interesting tweet.
Privatization of intelligence never comes up at these hearings, ever. Not even when Mike McConnell came to ODNI straight from Booz in 2007.
What’s your Twitter handle? I see you follow Tim Shorrock. 😉
Mike McConnell, Booz Allen and the Privatization of Intelligence, Democracy Now! January 12th, 2007
TarheelDem
I follow a lot of crazy stuff on Twitter. I’m not sure that was directly from Tim Shorrock or a retweet. There are about three aggregators that I am following (or that’s what their tweets turn out to be like).
This story in a nutshell is why I voted for Obama over Clinton.
I never understood in 2008 why so many progressives thought Madame Yes (as she was known on the Senate Armed Service Committee) was anything but a neo-con with a liberal’s vocabulary on foreign affairs. She’s acquitted herself well at State, but in the Senate she tended to favor conflict over diplomacy, and I’m not at all surprised that that was her inclination behind the scenes.
If she runs for the nomination next time, I’m going to have to hear a very convincing conversion story.
Maybe she broke with her past at some point, and has come around to a different foreign policy outlook. That’s certainly feasible – look at Hagel.
Maybe.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if Obama agreed to serve as her Secretary of State?
Have you ever gotten the feeling that, outside of the times that it’s really scary or frustrating, Obama truly enjoys the foreign policy stuff? More than any of the other presidenting jobs? It’s always seemed like that in his speeches and interviews.
yes,
yes, wondering about that
I don’t think there is anything she could do for me to convert–except to run against someone insane like any of the crazy Republicans.
The last straw came for me in May of 2008. I had spent two weeks getting out the vote in housing projects in Winston Salem only to have the Clinton campaign run robo calls the night before the primary telling people that they could be arrested at the polls for unpaid parking tickets, etc. They also called students and gave them the wrong polling locations. She had already pulled a lot of crap before that but that was personal.
I’m never going to forget she ‘used to be’ a republican. She has always been a neocon. She makes bad choices and hires bad people.
Wasn’t she one of the Senators who voted for that insane resolution to attack Iran’s Republican Army?
Obama is showing how it can be done – a creative, strong but non-hegemonic foreign policy. This has not been done before, and not everyone is/ was capable of envisioning it and carrying it out. It’s a different matter to ask her to continue a stance and policy in place for 8 years already
That was my biggest hope for an Obama presidency – that he’d articulate and implement a foreign policy that represents a real break from the Cold War era (as continued through Bush with “fundamentalist Islam” taking the place of communism).
I have not been disappointed.
Sorry, Boo, I think you’re off on this one. Al Qaeda in Iraq (now going by the name Al Nusra Front) has gathered a scary amount of firepower while fight on the Islamist side, and if the Islamists win (which seems likely since the Free Syrian Army isn’t getting tons of guns and money from the Gulf Arabs, unlike the Islamists are) they’re not going to be exactly aggressive about ferreting them out. I’m afraid we may be creating another Afghanistan, only smack dab in the middle of the Mideast now. It’s not going to help Iraq’s stability to have AQI sitting over the border sending suicide bombers over trying to spark the Sunni/Shia conflict again.
You may be right about what ends up happening in Syria. If so, isn’t it kind of the opposite of the US role in Afghanistan over the last 30+ years?
In Afghanistan, the enemy of our enemy was our friend so the US armed everyone and anyone willing to fight the Soviets—thus (along with the blowback from the first Iraq War) basically creating al-Qaeda.
Then after 9/11, the Bush administration 1) immediately went to war against Afghanistan, 2) hesitated (the kindest way to put it) at the critical moment when presented with an opportunity to capture/kill al-Qaeda’s top leadership, and 3) let the Afghanistan War drag for 6+ years while diverting resources to the 2nd Iraq War.
The Obama administration 1) ended the 2nd Iraq War, 2) escalated the Afghanistan War by focusing on al-Qaeda and the Taliban’s top leadership, and 3) is now ending the Afghanistan War.
Whether you agree with President Obama’s decisions, and whatever the outcomes (in Syria and Afghanistan), it’s hard to see (unless you can explain it more clearly) how his actions are “creating another Afghanistan”.
I’m afraid we may be creating another Afghanistan
“We?”
The U.S. isn’t arming the Al Nusra Front; we’ve been trying to steer arms away from them and towards the more democratic, pro-western majority of forces. We’ve declared the organization an international terrorist organization, and have been leaning on the SNC to cut ties with them.
Quite the opposite of “creating” this situation, American policy in the Syrian civil war has been based around trying to prevent it from coming about (in addition to containing the chemical weapons).
Syrian are not going to be any more interested in foreign troops from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states than Iraqis were in having US troops. And al Nusra will have to build indigenous political strength in Syria to dominate a post-civil-war government.
The Saudis and Gulf Arab state might be creating another Afghanistan (after all they created the post-Soviet-occupation Afghanistan). But their policy is independent of that of the United States. And unfortunately when it comes to Saudi and Gulf states policy, like policy with Israel, President Obama has not yet deal with the domestic politics that causes the tail to wag the dog. Bandar Bush and company included.
To get a reasonable foreign policy is going to require the domestic politics of crushing the GOP’s credibility to speak about what “makes us strong”. Their policy pushes (which were really partisan strategies to break the New Deal) have sent the US down the primrose path to war ever since the 1946 election.
I always thought if Clinton was elected she would have an overly aggressive foreign policy overcompensating for being the first female President. This is one of the major reasons I never supported her in the primaries.
Do you feel that way about all potential first female Presidents?
No. Hillary and Bill Clinton are overwhelmingly political creatures. See welfare reform, Sister Soulja, financial deregulation.
I believe Hillary would make the political calculation that as the first female President she cannot afford to be seen as weak on defense. It’s the same dynamic that many Democrats in general succumb to just because they’re Democrats.
I wouldn’t have this concern with a female candidate like Elizabeth Warren.
Maybe after her doing well as SOS that wouldn’t/ won’t be necessary.
I really hope so because it’s looking like there’s a good chance she’s going to be the strongest Democratic candidate in 2016. Plus, I think following Obama will help.
She was always the more hawkish and the more Zionist. One of the reasons I preferred him and hope she is never the Dem nominee. Unless the others in the primaries are even more hawkish than she!
So much here to comment on…
Summer 2012 was the time of Obama’s “maximum political peril”? It is to laff. Obama has NEVER faced serious political electoral opposition since he lost his first state rep election. NEVER. Not in a million years was Romney, Gingrich, Bachmann, et al going to unseat him.
Obama is a political creature. He knows how to win elections. He’s far better at winning elections than he is at governing, in my opinion.
It is entirely within the realm of reality that Obama decided not to arm the rebels because Libya had already come back to bite him in the ass. It was more than obvious that by that time, the ‘rebels’ were filled with the ranks of fundamentalist Muslims. If Obama armed the Syrian rebels, he was basically arming more fundamentalists.
Then Benghazi hit, and proved that theory–and bit Obama in the ass. Hard.
If you care about peace…please. Obama is no peacemaker. He’s an empty suit that I voted for. You don’t need to fluff him, Booman. You’re a better writer than this.
The Libyan rebels are so dominated by Islamists that the Islamist parties were driven out of Benghazi and their offices sacked the day after the attack on the consulate.
Libya is so dominated by Islamists that the Islamists achieved near-Nader levels of support in the elections.
I expect this sort of Islamist paranoia from the right, but it’s dispiriting to see people on the left going along with it.
Thank you.
You know what always gets me?
A terrorist attack happens in the United States, and people start talking about car accidents.
A terrorist attacks happens in Libya, and the same people start shouting that skeery al Qaeda Mooslems are going to take over the country and kill us all.
Unfortunately, the public has to get a reasonable foreign policy out of the President they can elect, not the President they want. And it is never clear that any President they want has the political skills to do the inside-DC infighting and diplomatic negotiating to change the system.
President Obama is the closest that we are going to come right now until there is a substantial change in (1) the Congress, (2) the information available to the broader public, and (3) the public’s ability to grasp the issues.
The American political system at the moment is geared to selecting folks who are better at winning elections than governing. And that drag in Congress makes the President’s job much harder.
But consider the results thus far. The US is out of Iraq without the dodges that were built in the SOFA by the Bush administration (thank you, Mr. Maliki.) McChrystal and Petraeus, the two biggest advocates of neo-Vietnam counterinsurgency are both gone and discredited by having failed to produce the results they said they could. The United States will be leaving Afghanistan in 2014; there is no other way to stabilize that country. There is in place another round of strategic arms reductions with Russia, despite GOP objection. The idea of a permanent US military presence in Central Asia is dead. The US military is talking about a strategy that does not require large forwardly deployed US military bases. Those are the good things. There are a lot of bad things on the other side of the ledger yet to deal with and a lot of institutional stupidity yet to clear away.
Politically, a President’s job is always to create policies that tend toward peace and prosperity. But the President is constitutionally the commander-in-chief and judged by the foreign incidents that happen “on his watch”. No Democratic President wants to be politically “Carterized” by dramatic events that are the results of several previous administrations’ actions. So the tendency is to double down on current policy. And domestic politics pushes that way, especially in this era of the cult of male toughness.
I think that the refusal to add to the flood of arms in Syria, to adopt a policy of containment instead of intervention, is a huge contribution to peace in the region. I am a harsh critic of Obama, but I don’t think pointing this out is fluffing.
There is a huge task for progressives in changing the political culture that conflates national security with wars and the winning of wars. There is a huge task in educating the public that war is “politics by other means” and that we are in great need of fixing the US approach to international politics so that we are not in a state or war without end. And that task starts with questioning the content of the words “US interests”.
And I’m sure a President McCain would never ever ever have overruled the senior leaders of his own national security team. I mean, unless he wanted to start a war and they didn’t.
You write as if John McCain would ever appoint someone who might disagree with him.
I take it the opposite. He was too scared of the consequences to launch a war in an election year.
Clearly the right and reasonable thing to do in most circumstances even not in an election year however!
“scared of the consequences” = “prudent”
We’ve been stampeded for too long by the “scared of the consequences if we don’t….” worst-case scenario bunch.