12 September SWJ Roundup

That Putin op-ed is one of the most extraordinary pieces I have ever read in its timing, its rhetoric, its appeals to the skepticism of the American people on the WH's case on Syria - including the inept presentation of intelligence information to the public.

Especially after Iraq, information has to be presented in a rock solid way which has simply not been done. It's been amateurish and this allows a case to be made against the Syrian rebels on the matter of CW by others, and, emotionally, however accurate or inaccurate, it has traction. Many American commentators thought the intelligence information or its presentation were unimportant. The op-ed shows why such poor handling has consequences.

This piece too is correct, IMO:

<blockquote>They were told in late 1992 that the U.S. incursion into Somalia was for the benign purpose of merely feeding starving people. A year later that adventure ended in a disaster for America and a major embarrassment for President Bill Clinton, who had expanded the Somalia mission. The American people were told they had to invade Iraq because it had weapons of mass destruction and serious ties to Al Qaeda. Neither was true. They were told that the Iraqi people would embrace some form of Western-style democracy once Saddam Hussein was out of the way. Didn’t happen. They were told that Hosni Mubarak’s departure in Egypt would lead to the emergence of democratic institutions there. They got, first, an Islamist government through election, then another military coup of the kind that has characterized that country and region for decades. They were told the Libyan people would be better off without Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the result was societal chaos, with Qaddafi’s weapons streaming into the hands of Islamist radicals (and being used against U.S. diplomatic personnel). They were told to embrace "globalization," and it led to the worst economic dislocation since the Great Depression.

In other words, the country’s elites—of both political parties and across the political spectrum—have been wrong on just about everything they have done since the end of the Cold War. And the voters, as a collective, aren’t stupid. They know that these fiascos have been the products of particular philosophical concepts that have emerged since the beginning of America’s "unipolar moment" around 1990.

They may not understand these philosophical concepts in all their complexities and nuances, but they know the Republican neoconservatives and the Democratic humanitarians have been driving the agenda.</blockquote>

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-american-publics-foreign-pol…

And Andrew Bacevich has made similar points.

Our posture in the Mid East, its high profile, and our forever alliance with the Saudi axis (which is partly emotional and personal to our Cafe Milano foreign policy class, civilian and military) is hurting us.

The US cannot make the necessary adjustments because of it. Well, the American people are in the process of making the mental adjustment. The mandarins and their counterparts in the military world are the ones having the trouble.