ALPERN AT LARGE-Yom Kippur has come and gone, and both Jews and non-Jews, whether they fasted, observed a new beginning, or even noted that it was a Jewish New Year, have a lot of reasons to reflect on whether forgiveness (or at least reflection) is in order as foreign policy increasingly concerns us. Americans, whether it's about former President Bush and/or President Obama, have to figure out a way to move forward without the past weighing them down.
It's understood that some (too many, really) folks in this nation favor party over country, which just goes to show us how far down the rabbit hole this nation has fallen--some people live to hate, some people live to achieve political power, and some people live to tear down rather than build, but there remains two stubborn facts that aren't going away:
1) There are blunders, and there are lessons learned, and it's up to this President, as it was up to our last President, to state these points to the American people.
2) The al-Qaida, ISIS and other foreign policy problems--as with the Ebola virus or any other infectious diseases of foreign origin--aren't going away, no matter how much some of us wish they would.
Unfortunately, we've had not one but two Presidents who had ideological beliefs and a stubborn nature (some might call it arrogance) that prevented a simple message of "we thought we could do this, but time and events have shown us that we couldn't".
Which is a crying shame, because the American people are, by nature, understanding and willing to give Presidents a do-over when they are addressed as adults.
Also unfortunately, former President Bush and his team were so entrenched into creating foreign military bases in the Middle East to confront terror and create allies in that part of the world, while President Obama and his team were so entrenched into getting out of Iraq and making political points against former President Bush, that both sides went far beyond what the majority of the American people were willing to stomach:
1) Very few Americans (except Bush cheerleaders) were interested in nation-building in Iraq--most had an idea, and even more certainly get the point now, that throwing out Hussein and replacing him with another strongman who would keep the peace, promote democracy and not scare the daylights out of Europe, Saudi Arabia, Israel and our other allies, would have been preferable to also throwing out those who had kept Iraq together.
2) Very few Americans (except Obama cheerleaders) were interested in completely bailing out of Iraq and ignoring military recommendations, because it was understood how fragile Iraq was, and that the big blunder and chaos of President Bush in allowing all of Hussein's Baath Party to be thrown out would be made only worse if we completely left.
Perhaps history will argue that it would have been a better America, and a better world, if John McCain had beaten George W. Bush in the 2000 GOP primary, and if Hillary Clinton had beaten Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic Party, because both our current and past Presidents have displayed a tone-deafness which has shut out the common sense and support of the American electorate.
Right now, President Barack Obama's favorable polling is at an all-time low (truly following in the footsteps of his predecessor), and if his cheerleaders aren't willing to accept the criticism of the President by former defense secretary Robert Gates, it's much harder to ignore that of former CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta (photo above).
Panetta has been both a solid-yet-moderate Democrat and a man with first-rate credibility and credentials for most Americans who know him and of his capabilities. So his statements that President Obama has "kind of lost his way" and didn't push hard enough to keep American soldiers in Iraq are therefore pretty condemning to our current commander-in-chief.
It now appears that there are two stubborn, painful realities that will be ignored only by the most partisan amongst us:
1) It appears that former President Bush was too dogged, if not fanatical, to get us into Iraq, and to have a presence we weren't prepared to have, while current President Obama was too dogged, if not fanatical, to get us out of Iraq altogether and to leave a power vacuum which ISIS and related groups were only too happy to fill.
2) It appears that throwing out strongmen and replacing them with democracies has worked poorly in the Arab/Muslim crescent, with prominent exceptions in Egypt and amongst the Kurds (who continue to show they deserve their own nation), and only prolonged American/Western presence and influence will change that.
Here are two more stubborn, painful realities:
1) Taking down Saddam Hussein without creating a new, more reasonable and less frightening/crazy leader who could both keep the peace and transition Iraq to democracy will be Bush's legacy.
2) Taking down Moammar Khadafi (who, unlike Hussein, had actually made peace with the West) and Egyptian President Mubarak (a Western ally) and letting both nations descend into chaos will be Obama's legacy.
The "Libyan caliphate" might not be getting the press that Syria and Iraq are getting, but suffice it to say that (if one digs into this media-ignored subject) the average Libyan is pretty angry at both current President Obama and former Secretary of State Clinton, because Libya is now in chaos.
Egypt isn't too thrilled with our current Libya foreign policy, either, if popular American ally and Egyptian President el-Sisi, who brought that country back from the chaos of the Obama-supported Egyptian Brotherhood regime of former Egyptian President Morsi, is to be believed.
So where does this leave us? Well, with our November elections coming up it's probably impractical, if not downright unreasonable, to expect President Obama to "fess up" and "man up" about his past mistakes and to come clean with the American people--and if we didn't see that happen with former President Bush then we likely won't see that happen with President Obama.
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Which means that while the old "blame Bush" becomes increasingly stale and irrelevant (even if factual), the new "blame Obama" will continue to take hold if the President chooses to adhere to the tone-deafness and ideology-driven operational tactics of his predecessor--after all, if President Obama's done so well politically with "blame Bush" then why would he strive to emulate Bush?
And, as with the "workplace violence" being blamed for the military Fort Hood massacre and the Oklahoma beheading, an increasing number of Americans are having trouble swallowing paradigms they know are obviously oversimplified and downright untrue.
Foreign policy is increasingly relevant to the American people, whether they like it or not, and the people have good reason to be scared.
Yet while Presidents Bush and Obama should have, and can still, apologize for their past errors (after all, they WERE made with at least a few good intentions), it will be up to the American people who elected them both to two terms of office to figure out where they made their errors as well, and confront their own past misjudgments....
... provided, of course, we can get past our own political shenanigans and our own ideologically-driven and dogmatic ways of doing things.
The forgiveness of Yom Kippur need not be limited to Jews--as with former President Bush and current President Obama, we all have a lot to atone for.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected]. He also does regular commentary on the MarkIsler Radio Show on AM 870, and co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 81
Pub: Oct 7, 2014
