President Obama's farewell address to the American people is a mere hours away, so the kind folks at Morning Joe are trashing him in epic fashion. The Council on Foreign Relations, spokesman Richard Haass joined Joe in painting the foreign policy 'catastrophe' that Trump is inheriting as worse than what President Obama was handed by Bush 43.
HAASS: You've got an inbox that's going to greet Donald Trump on January 20th after he gets sworn in, that's as difficult as any inbox that's greeted any American President in living memory.
SCARBOROUGH: More difficult than the one that greeted Barack Obama?
HAASS: Yes, in part because of what Barack Obama did and didn't do. Barack Obama's hand-off is considerably worse than the world he inherited. I think when history is done writing about Barack Obama, he is going to be criticized more for things he didn't do, in particular in the Middle East.
SCARBOROUGH: That's probably shocking to a lot of people that are watching right now that you're saying his hand-off to Donald Trump is actually worse than George W. Bush's to Barack Obama.
HAASS: Considerably worse. If there was a share of stock called state of the world, inc., it suffered not just a correction but probably a bear market in the last eight years. You look at the Middle East looks like an unraveling 30 days equivalent. Europe has gone from one of the most stable parts of the world to one of the most questionable parts of the world. North Korea's nuclear and missile programs have advanced. more than anything else, what we've learned with Barack Obama is what you don't do can be every bit as consequential as what you do do. In some ways he's the overreaction to George Bush. He came into office saying I'm not going into Iraq, not have large forces in the Middle East, I'm not going to make that mistake again.
So what he did was make his own set of mistakes. Goes into Libya, then doesn't follow up. Misses any number of opportunities to do useful things in Syria, pulls US. forces out of Iraq, puts a calendar on U.S.forces in Afghanistan. Signs a questionable agreement with Iran. Doesn't react in certain ways to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So I think history will basically say that he missed a lot of opportunities to deal with the challenges of this day.
Too bad that Haass doesn't remember the history of the allegedly superior foreign statesman, George W. Bush. The Status of Forces Agreement signed under the Bush Administration, forced the withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011, as they'd lose any protections of being a legal occupant. President Obama withdrew the troops based on Bush's treaty.
Obama also decided not to entangle U.S. forces in Syria as that would be akin to war with Russia, which might have some serious consequences. Ya think? As far as Libya is concerned, we stopped a genocide, but hey, that's just human lives.
What, pray tell us, Mr. Haass, was 'questionable' about the Iranian agreement signed by our allies and the U.S. Government, apart from right wing website lies and fearmongering? That agreement was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, whereas the Right Wing Noise Machine states that Obama wrapped up a nuke and handed it to Iran. The opposite is true.
Further solidifying Haass as a warmonger of the highest order, he says:
HAASS: You don't want every other country getting up every day of the week and say we can no longer rely on America, so let's take matters into our own hands. You're seeing a lot of that.
After all, how can US defense contractors become insanely wealthy if we let other countries govern themselves?
Look forward to four years of this, folks.
