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Obama Foreign Policy Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 12, 2012 25 Comments

From The Guardian in Britain: Detailed leaks of operational information about the foiled underwear bomb plot are causing growing anger in the US intelligence community, with former agents blaming the Obama administration for undermining national security and compromising the British services, MI6 and MI5. The Guardian has...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 03, 2012 31 Comments

Via The Hill: Chen Guangcheng’s daring escape to the U.S. embassy turned into a major political headache for President Obama on Thursday as Republicans accused the administration of naively handing the blind human rights activist back to Chinese authorities...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 29, 2012 13 Comments

It was those damn meteoric expectations, and the failure of those around him, such as the Secret Service agents who visited prostitutes in Colombia, and soldiers in Afghanistan who killed civilians and burned Korans. And that damn Congress: Karl Lemberg, one of thousands who thronged a Berlin park...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 28, 2012 77 Comments

The successful Navy SEAL raid which killed Osama bin Laden is becoming one of the central themes of the Obama campaign. Almost every other sentence out of the mouth of Joe Biden (who opposed the raid) is about "bin Laden." We know that bin Laden was located as...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 31, 2012 21 Comments

It might be a little premature for Bashar Assad to claim victory, but he's feeling confident enough to do so anyway. Via Reuters: Syria says the year-old revolt to topple President Bashar al-Assad is over, but the army again shelled opposition areas on Saturday and rebels said...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 26, 2012 6 Comments

The refusal of the State Department to recognize Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel, and to issue passports listing Jerusalem as a birthplace in Israel, made its way to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled that courts can decide the issue under U.S. statutes.  While it appears to...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 22, 2012 13 Comments

From Seth Mandel: When foreign policy “realists,” pseudo-realists, and leftists claim that the pro-Israel establishment is preventing an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, their argument fails to account for one aspect of recent Mideast history: During the administrations of American presidents seen as favoring Israel, the Jewish state’s...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 26, 2012 15 Comments

When Iranian protesters took to the streets in June 2009, the Obama administration policy was to keep quiet and indirectly support the regime in the hopes of luring Iran into nuclear arms talks. Only when the political pressure became too great did Obama speak out, and even...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 21, 2012 16 Comments

Obama has a Jewish problem because of his administration's Israel policy.  I don't think the Jewish problem is a great as some recent polling suggests, but there does seem to be movement. From the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and anti-Israeli forces in Egypt and throughout the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 10, 2012 26 Comments

From NBC News: Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders. The group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, has...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 09, 2012 31 Comments

Well, it's not the title of Glenn Greenwald's post, Repulsive progressive hypocrisy (h/t @Steven_Swenson), but it could be. Here goes: During the Bush years, Guantanamo was the core symbol of right-wing radicalism and what was back then referred to as the “assault on American values and the shredding...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 14, 2012 10 Comments

There seems to be a war brewing in the Middle East, if not on the battlefield at least in the political realm. The Wall Street Journal and many others report tension between the U.S. and Israel over a potential strike on Iran.  There also is tension over...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 01, 2012 20 Comments

There are two important columns each of which addresses the surge of Islamists throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. The first column, by Andy McCarthy, focuses on reports that the Obama administration is using Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a conduit for contact with the Taliban: The surrender is complete...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 03, 2011 7 Comments

On June 6, 2010, I asked the question Can Israel Survive A Second Obama Term? This past week has seen the coming together of the growing Islamist-Leftist Coalition in the war against Israel. Leftists who, among other things, claim to believe in freedom of speech, women’s rights...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 01, 2011 47 Comments

That's Doug Mataconis pushing back against my post We know who lost Egypt and similar arguments by others. The push back misses the point.  Whether or not we could have controlled the situation -- and whether or not we should have tried -- the fact is that we...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 23, 2011 16 Comments

One of the key supposed foreign policy achievements of the Obama administration is turning into a disaster. Egypt is quickly devolving into chaos with only bad likely outcomes, as Barry Rubin writes: Only days before parliamentary elections, Egypt is in a huge crisis whose outcome will determine the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 11, 2011 7 Comments

Commentary on the claim by Nicholas Sarkozy, with a willing acknowledgement, that Benjamin Netanyahu was a liar, from Caroline Glick (h/t reader John): Since Iran’s nuclear weapons program was first  revealed to the public in 2004, Israel has provided in-depth intelligence  information proving Iran’s malign intentions to the...

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