President Obama said in an interview with The New York Times Tom Friedman that (and we're paraphrasing) the president engage in the Middle East when the goals reflected 'inclusive' politics, that there would be no victor and no vanquished.
As President Obama has done with domestic issues, he's going to have to negotiate off of that utopian position because that just isn't happening. As Andrea Mitchell pointed out, the administration is being held hostage by the negotiations, or lack thereof, to remove Maliki as the Iraqi Prime Minister. This serves as a pointed example of how the administration has continually acted in a lackadaisical
manner with all of these crises in the Middle East.
The air strikes that the president has ordered are now of the sort of a last resort. Though they're meant to keep ISIS from slaughtering the trapped Yazidi Christians in Northern Iraq, a sect that ISIS has deemed devil-worshipers, that should not be the signal that air strikes send. The administration and the United States should clearly state that these air strikes will greatly intensify if ISIS advances closer to Erbil, the capital city for the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
As nice as it sounds when Senator Dick Durbin says that only Iraqis can save Iraq, but it's just not realistic. Iraq at this moment barely exists as a country and if we don't help the Kurds, there will absolutely be nothing that we left of any good after our incomprehensible military mistake in Iraq if we don't help establish this territory for a nature ally. That doesn't mean troops on the ground; we're happy that they're out, but that they were there, we now have a moral obligation to help them. And as it was pointed out on the program, the U.S. is going it alone with these air strikes, no friends to help us. If that's the case then build up the friends you have there and that's the Kurdish people, send as much aid as possible - immediately, which is one criticism Rep. Peter King (R-NY) had of the president that we agree with, that Mr. Obama is too slow to act.
Chuck Todd explained that the administration has been modulating on the notion of stability versus democracy [for the region] meaning that stability in the Middle East comes in the form of brutal dictators and democracy leads to utter chaos and anarchy. When you think of it in those terms, it's a false choice. It's also false at this point because neither are part of the equation.
As Robin Wright pointed out, the Obama Administration never solved the diplomatic/political objectives in Iraq, which the need to complete were inherited from the Bush Administration. The United States is so politically divided that we no longer act as one country even when it comes to foreign policy. The continuity we illustrated is a continuity of mistakes.
Our last president made atrociously poor military decisions and this current president has followed suit on the diplomatic side. Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry is embroiled in Israeli/Palestinian diplomacy that is going utterly nowhere, to the point where 'diplomacy' isn't even the word for it anymore. It used to be that if you could solve this conflict the rest of the Middle East would reside in peace, but even that is no longer the case.
Where that leaves us - our new objective - is how The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg described it and that is to keep ISIS from spreading because as former Director of Counter-terrorism Center Michael Leiter explained, he and most analysts believe that ISIS will do nothing but expand if not deterred. Rep. King's hyperbole and panic-button striking temperament aside, this includes attacks on the west. What's sad, is that Senator Durbin said it was a reality of war today that enemies of the United States would be using U.S. military hardware to fight us. We realize, as Mr. Durbin said, that this is nothing new in history, but this seems different, vastly different.
Iraq is now being described as the graveyard for American ambition, and through the course of 4 United States presidents we've dropped approximately 40,000 bombs and missiles on that country, left with tens of thousands wounded and dead for our troubles, and this is the state it's in. We should be appalled, but not surprised.
Round Table: Chuck Todd - Political Director, NBC News; Andrea MItchell - Foreign Affairs Correspondent, NBC News; Rich Lowry - Editor, The National Review; Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD)
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