It’s not surprising that our allies think so little of Obama given his incompetence, but it is noteworthy that they’re willing to say it out loud.
President Obama is “chronically incapable” of military strategy and falls far short of his predecessor George W. Bush, according to one of Britain’s most senior military advisors.
Sir Hew Strachan, an advisor to the Chief of the Defense Staff, told The Daily Beast that the United States and Britain were guilty of total strategic failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obama’s attempts to intervene on behalf of the Syrian rebels “has left them in a far worse position than they were before.”
The extraordinary critique by a leading advisor to the United States’ closest military ally comes days after Obama was undermined by the former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who questioned the President’s foreign policy decisions and claimed he was deeply suspicious of the military.
Strachan, a current member of the Chief of the Defense Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel, cited the “crazy” handling of the Syrian crisis as the most egregious example of a fundamental collapse in military planning that began in the aftermath of 9/11. “If anything it’s gone backwards instead of forwards, Obama seems to be almost chronically incapable of doing this. Bush may have had totally fanciful political objectives in terms of trying to fight a global War on Terror, which was inherently astrategic, but at least he had a clear sense of what he wanted to do in the world. Obama has no sense of what he wants to do in the world,” he said.
…The dithering over intervention against President Bashar al-Assad has empowered the Syrian ruler, undermined America’s military reputation and destabilized the Middle East, said Strachan. “What he’s done in talking about Red Lines in relation to Syria has actually devalued the deterrent effect of American military capability and it seems to me that creates an unstable situation, because if he were act it would surprise everybody,” he said. “I think the other issue is that in starting and stopping with Assad, he’s left those who might be his natural allies in Syria with nowhere to go. He’s increased the likelihood that if there is a change of regime in Syria that it will be an Islamic fundamentalist one.”
Naturally, Americans have spent a lot of time focusing on Obama’s disastrous domestic policy, but his foreign policy has been just as bad. Al-Qaeda is taking over parts of Iraq and Syria. We’re losing the war in Afghanistan. Obama helped radical Islamists take over Libya. China and Russia have become increasingly belligerent. Iran is steadily moving towards building nuclear weapons. In other words, our enemies have been emboldened and our allies have been demoralized. That will be Obama’s “legacy” on the foreign policy front assuming things don’t get even worse before he leaves office.
http://www.rightwingnews.com/barack-obama/senior-defense-advisor-to-british-government-slams-obama-as-crazy-chronically-incapable/
