Nobody – well, nobody sane – will accuse the Washington Post of being a right wing publication, or favoring Republicans, or being an enemy of Barack Obama.
With that in mind, please read the following – the first, and last, paragraph of yesterday\’s editorial on the Yemen disaster and, more broadly, Barack Obama\’s overall foreign policy:
INDEVOTING 250 of the 6,800 words of his Stateof the Union address to the fight against “violent extremism,”President Obama offered a boilerplate description of his policy.”Instead of sending large ground forces overseas,” he said,”we\’re partnering with nations from South Asia to North Africa todeny safe haven to terrorists who threaten America.” As he spoke,his strategy was crumbling in a nation he failed to mention: Yemen,home to the branch of al-Qaeda that claimed credit for the recentattacks in France and has repeatedly attempted to strike the U.S.homeland.
TheYemen mess reveals the weaknesses of Mr. Obama\’s “partners”strategy, which has been too narrowly focused on drone strikes andtraining of specialized units, and not enough on providing securityfor the population, institution-building and support for moderatepolitical forces. Unfortunately, the president\’s cursory andformulaic description of his counterterrorism policies this week,following a year in which jihadist forces and terrorist attacksexpanded across the world, suggested that he remains uninterested incorrecting his mistakes.
I couldn\’t have said that part of it better.
Now, here\’s the other part – the one the Washington Post did not (would not?) say: President Obama is an egomaniac who has run an unwaveringly inept, incompetent foreign policy (if that term even applies) for 6 years. And foreign policy under Barack Obama has been one disaster after another; a succession of ridiculously one-sided “deals” with our enemies, while snubbing/disdaining Israel, one of our most loyal allies in the world.
Albeit way too belatedly, I commend the Washington Post for being honest enough to acknowledge what it did….and only wish that more mainstream media showed the same level of honesty.
I\’m not counting on it.
