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Obama Foreign Policy Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 24, 2009 2 Comments

When the NY Times takes Obama to task, I am always a little suspicious. Will this be a "he's not perfect, but at least he's not Bush" type of critique; a compliment disguised as a criticism.So I don't know what to make of this piece...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 24, 2009 0 Comments

Gateway Pundit has a good update on the murder of Ilan Halimi:Ilan was lured to his death by a woman he had met in his telephone store. They met up late on the night of January 20, 2006, in one of Paris's southern suburbs, Bagneux....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 14, 2009 3 Comments

Give praise where praise is due. Barack Obama acted wisely in deciding to continue appealing the court-ordered release of detainee abuse photos.These photos, by the way, have nothing to do with the controversial interrogation program which was the subject of the four legal memoranda recently...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 10, 2009 4 Comments

Professor Darren Hutchinson examines the military commissions Obama is establishing to try detainees, and finds that while there are some differences from the Bush tribunals, it is hard to conform Obama's campaign promises with the current proposal:As a Senator, Obama voted against the Military Commissions...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 29, 2009 25 Comments

It would be very easy to fall into a depression over Arlen Specter switching political parties, giving Democrats a likely filibuster-proof Senate majority. The result will be that Obama will be able to push through much of his agenda without meaningful debate.Not that I will...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 27, 2009 2 Comments

Republicans are not Obama's worst policy enemies. At least Obama knows that Republicans do not support Obama's agenda. Democrats who are fixated on getting revenge on the Bush administration are Obama's real problem, and are handing Republicans a policy gift by pushing hard for a...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 25, 2009 3 Comments

From The Telegraph via Powerline (emphasis mine):If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 24, 2009 3 Comments

Bill Roggio, who runs a great website, The Long War Journal, has been reporting for months on the steady increase in the power of the Pakistani Taliban, who are approaching the capital of Islamabad. What is most frightening is that the Taliban also are approaching...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 23, 2009 6 Comments

By trickling out bits and pieces of top secret memoranda regarding interrogation of al-Qaeda terrorists, Barack Obama thought he would have the best of all worlds. Obama believed that exposing the dark side of the war on terror would ingratiate us with the world. At...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 22, 2009 1 Comment

Whether waterboarding should have been used on 9/11 mastermind Kalhid Sheikh Mohammed and two other top al-Qaeda operatives is a legitimate issue. Jay Bybee and others gave legal opinions with which many people disagree, but I have yet to see anyone present a convincing argument...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 21, 2009 3 Comments

I don't think Jay Bybee (or Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo or Stephen Bradbury) are criminals. At worst, they expressed legal opinions on interrogation of terrorism suspects which a court may someday declare to be wrong. Bybee's being wrong, if indeed he was, contributed to...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 20, 2009 13 Comments

The debate over interrogation of the three top-level al-Qaeda leaders who were subjected to waterboarding is entering the honest phase. The first phase was the "this is the worst thing that has happened in the history of the earth" handwringing on the left. The second...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 20, 2009 3 Comments

CQ Politics reports, based on an anonymous source, that California Democratic Representative Jane Harman "was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 19, 2009 9 Comments

Bloomberg news reports the following statement by Barack Obama in his speech at the Summit of the Americas, after Daniel Ortega had spent an hour ripping into the U.S. (emphasis mine):“You can’t blame the U.S. for every problem in this hemisphere,” Obama said. “I am...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 18, 2009 2 Comments

Obama's warm embrace of Hugo Chavez was worse than his bowing down to the King of Saudi Arabia. In the case of Saudi Arabia, there is no apparent movement for freedom, so all Obama threw under the bus was our country's dignity. As to Chavez,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2009 5 Comments

If ever there were poster children for the term "useful idiots," the Somali pirates would be it. They just don't know it yet.For years, Somali pirates have run amok off the east coast of Africa, taking advantage of private shipping companies, and taking various non-U.S....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2009 1 Comment

I'm thrilled that the Somali pirates were killed, and the Maersk ship captain is safe. The Obama administration is claiming credit for giving the go-ahead for military action. But this presents Obama with a problem.There are two choices when negotiating with hostage takers/pirates....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 12, 2009 0 Comments

Rather than worrying about news aggregators stealing its stuff, AP should worry about its credibility.A news article titled Obama Hopes to Use Dealmaking Skills Honed Abroad (run in the NY Times, which seems to be reprinting a lot of AP articles verbatim these days), makes...

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