By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, September 18, 2015
The news that the Obama administration has spent $500
million to put “four or five” fighters on the ground in Syria adds an almost
comic irony to what is ultimately a tragic farce.
In the 1980s, the symbol of Republican incompetence and
mismanagement was the $600 toilet seat. Left out of the media coverage was the
fact that the toilet seat was for a special kind of anti-submarine aircraft
that had been out of production and needed special retrofitting. But forget all
that. How does that compare to spending $100 million per non-bionic human
soldier?
This news comes from General Lloyd J. Austin III, head of
U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM. Ever the loyal soldier, Austin insists that
we should stay the course. It’s not really a tenth of a billion dollars for
each rebel, we’ve got another hundred “in the pipeline,” he told Congress
Wednesday. No doubt that will turn the tide.
Besides, he says, the larger strategy in Syria is
working. Specifically, he offered this word salad: “Despite some slow movement
at the tactical level, we continue to make progress across the battlespace in
support of the broader U.S. government strategy to degrade and ultimately
defeat [the Islamic State].”
No doubt Austin is an honorable man, but it’s difficult
to take such a promise at face value. And not just because the Defense
Department’s inspector general is investigating allegations — according to
reporting by the normally Obama-friendly Daily Beast and New York Times — that
intelligence reports were falsified or otherwise altered to paint a rosy
picture in the fight against the Islamic State. (Another irony, given this
president’s sanctimony about allegedly “cooked” intelligence on his
predecessor’s watch.)
There’s also the fact that we’ve heard something like
this before. Almost exactly one year ago, when Barack Obama announced his plan
to build an army of Syrians to take out the Islamic State — a group he had only
recently dismissed as the “jayvee squad” — he told the American people in a
televised address:
This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out [the Islamic State] wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.
Four months later, the terrorists Obama was degrading
“successfully” toppled the government in Yemen.
Meanwhile, rumors of the Islamic State’s demise are
greatly exaggerated. It still controls an area roughly the size of England.
Foreign fighters still flock to its ranks. It’s winning the war in Syria, which
is why the Iranians and the Russians are now racing to the regime’s aid.
Such aid will come easy to Iran, given that the
president’s deal with the Iranians will give the world’s biggest state sponsor
of terror $100 billion.
Now the ironies are too numerous to count. Among Obama’s
most cherished ideals are resisting the scourge of nuclear proliferation and
embracing the glories of ever-expanding globalism. In 1983, as a college
student, he penned an earnest cri de coeur on the need to pursue a
“nuclear-free world.” His “legacy” foreign-policy accomplishment has been to
all but guarantee the Iranians will one day have a nuclear bomb — and, as a
result, so will several of Iran’s neighbors in the years to come. Even North
Korea is returning to its nuclear saber-rattling in the hopes of shaking down
the West yet again. Kim Jong Un may be crazy, but given Tehran’s windfall, he
knows a sucker when he sees one.
Some defenders of the Iran deal argue that the real point
was to open an era of engagement with Iran. A good sign that this argument has
cleared the laugh test will come when the regime’s leaders stop chanting “Death
to America!” Don’t hold your breath.
As for globalism, then-candidate Obama gave a stirring
speech at the former site of the Berlin Wall in 2008 on the evils of “walls”
that divide people. Thanks to the river of people fleeing the “progress” of
Obama’s strategy in the Middle East, Europeans are building walls like never
before (and, thanks to his studied fecklessness on illegal immigration here at
home, walls are more popular than ever).
The ongoing meltdown in Syria and the migrant crisis it
is fueling will be at the top of the agenda. But the fact is, it’s failures all
the way down.
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