Obama has been heavily criticized by one of the UK’s most respected and senior military advisers:
DAILY MAIL – President Obama has been judged to be ‘chronically incapable’ of conducting a coherent military strategy and ‘has no sense of what he wants to do in the world’, according to Oxford University professor, Sir Hew Strachan – one of the UK’s most respected and senior military advisers.
The damning verdict from a governmental insider of the United States’ closest military ally comes days after the president was heavily criticized by his own former Defense Secretary Robert Gates who said that Obama was indecisive and lacked any passion for his nation’s armed forces.
Claiming that America and Britain had committed total strategic failure in their near decade-long Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, Strachan said that the recent failed attempts to intervene militarily on behalf of Syrian rebels ‘has left them in a far worse position than they were before.’
Strachan is currently a member of the United Kingdom’s Chief of Defence Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel and claims that the ‘crazy’ mismanagement of the Syrian crisis at the end of the summer was the worst example of the military planning in evidence since 9/11 and that at least President George W. Bush had a plan and stuck to it.
‘If anything it’s gone backwards instead of forwards, Obama seems to be almost chronically incapable of doing this,’ said Strachan.
‘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 according to the Daily Beast.
I just don’t buy this, exactly. I can understand why it make look the way it does to outsiders who don’t understand the president, but I think this criticism misses the mark. Now I’m not arguing Obama is a brilliant strategist, but I do think he knows generally what he is doing in the Middle East, especially when it comes to supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. Just look at how he’s always been on their side, whether it be in Egypt, Syria, or Libya.
But the other point is that Obama doesn’t want to be a military strategist. He is far too ideological and political to even care about strategy. His only goals are about him, his party, and reelection. When he moves troops out of Iraq, it’s about politics. When he orders a troop surge, it’s political. When he helps take out a Libyan dictator, well that is strategic, but in an anti-American way. But it’s still about him and his ideology and his affiliations.
If Obama cared about America then he would be a much better strategist. No doubt about it.