See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can't Handle by Joel Pollak

Author:Joel Pollak [Pollak, Joel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781621574347
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2016-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

The only difference between Bush’s plan for Iraq and Obama’s plan for Syria was that Bush won Congress’s approval—and that Bush was intent on succeeding.

Two years later, Obama would send special forces to Syria after all, to fight the so-called Islamic State, while telling the nation there were no “boots on the ground.” This was not a lie so much as a semantic dodge: “boots on the ground”14 typically refers to combat divisions, though the public could be forgiven for thinking the presence of any ground troops qualified. It was an example of Obama’s preference for special operations forces, which had been heroically successful in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in May 2011. But special operations could only achieve limited tactical objectives, not broader strategic aims—and that is where Obama’s deep leftist philosophical resistance to war remained solid. The results were often catastrophic.

In Iraq, for example, Obama famously withdrew all U.S. forces by 2011, far earlier than military leaders had wanted, and despite warnings, later fulfilled, that Iraq was not read to handle its own security.

In 2009, he had ordered a “surge” of his own into Afghanistan—after months of dithering, and sending far fewer troops than the military said it needed. Crucially, he set a timeline for withdrawal—satisfying anti-war Democrats, but undermining confidence in the mission. As American casualties mounted in Afghanistan, Obama began to look for an exit, going so far as to release five senior Taliban commanders from Guantánamo Bay in exchange for an American deserter, hoping to speed negotiations—without telling Congress in advance, as required by law.

That was just one example of Obama’s flouting existing laws and constitutional restraints on the president’s powers in war—and in diplomacy. On Libya, as we have seen, Obama flouted the War Powers Resolution. On Iran, he did far worse, flouting the Treaty Clause of the Constitution itself.

Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution provides, “The President . . . shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur . . . .” President Obama was fully capable of passing treaties—even controversial ones—with Republican votes. In late 2010, for example, the Senate ratified the New START treaty with Russia, despite concerns that its nuclear cuts were one-sided in Russia’s favor, and despite worries that Russia would interpret the treaty as a ban on future U.S. deployment of missile defense systems—which it did, almost immediately.

But when the president pursued a nuclear deal with Iran, he avoided the Senate entirely. Obama had been set on negotiations with Iran long before he became president, when he vowed to meet its leaders “without preconditions.”15 In 2009, when pro-democracy protesters rose up against the Iranian regime, Obama did nothing to help them, believing that the goodwill that the lack of American intervention built with the regime would help bring it to the negotiating table. And throughout his presidency, he resisted sanctions on Iran—sanctions for which he would take credit.

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