A Stunning Profile of Ben Rhodes, the Asshole Who is the President’s Foreign Policy Guru
A Stunning Profile of Ben Rhodes, the Asshole Who is the President’s Foreign Policy Guru by Tom Ricks, Foreign Policy
… Perhaps the key sentence is this: “His lack of conventional real-world experience of the kind that normally precedes responsibility for the fate of nations — like military or diplomatic service, or even a master’s degree in international relations, rather than creative writing — is still startling.”
Rhodes comes off like a real asshole. This is not a matter of politics — I have voted for Obama twice. Nor do I mind Rhodes’s contempt for many political reporters: “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
But, as that quote indicates, he comes off like an overweening little schmuck. This quotation seems to capture his worldview: “He referred to the American foreign policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.”…
Rhodes and others around Obama keep on talking about doing all this novel thinking, playing from a new playbook, bucking the establishment thinking. But if that is the case, why have they given so much foreign policy power to two career hacks who never have had an original thought? I mean, of course, Joe Biden and John Kerry. I guess the answer can only be that those two are puppets, and (as in Biden’s case) are given losing propositions like Iraq to handle…
Also see:
The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru – New York Times Magazine
Official Says He Pushed a 'Narrative' to Media to Sell Iran Nuclear Deal – Washington Post
White House Admits it Played Us for Fools to Sell Iran Deal – New York Post
Why the Ben Rhodes Profile in the New York Times Magazine is Just Gross – Washington Post
A President Who Learned Nothing – Commentary Magazine
Let Us Now Psychoanalyze Young Ben Rhodes – Mother Jones
Rhodes to Perdition: An Exposé on Journalism in the Obama Era – Wall Street Journal
That Profile of Ben Rhodes? You Need to Read It Very Carefully – Mother Jones
Ben Rhodes, Liar – Washington Free Beacon
Ben Rhodes Admits Administration Lied to Sell Iran Deal – American Thinker
Obama Adviser Admits Lying to Media to Seal Iran Deal – Washington Times
Many have said I have had been a harsh critic of the total lack of an Obama foreign policy and or any strategy other than messaging since Crimea……
QUOTE:
But, as that quote indicates, he comes off like an overweening little schmuck. This quotation seems to capture his worldview: “He referred to the American foreign policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.” Blowing off Robert Gates takes nerve.
QUOTE:
Fact check: Obama’s hasn’t been an original foreign policy as much as it has been a politicized foreign policy. And this Rhodes guy reminds me of the Kennedy smart guys who helped get us into the Vietnam War. Does he know how awful he sounds? Kind of like McGeorge Bundy meets Lee Atwater.
AND people think I am harsh…just check the long list of articles saying virtually the same thing.
I am actually mild compared to Tom Ricks and the long listed articles….
BLUF…this has been one of the weakest Presidents and an even sadder NSC in over 70 odd years……
Sounds like Ben spun a yarn that Tom Ricks bought into, and now he is seeking revenge with his poison pen. Reading other articles that Tom didn’t suggest paints a different picture. As for no experience, I’m sorry Tom, a graduate degree in international affairs does not equate to experience, it equates to getting indoctrinating with legacy policy doctrines that are increasingly falling short. Does muddy boots policy experience count? He did work with Rep Lee Hamilton for 5 years, a highly respected Congressman. During that time Ben participated in and wrote a large part of the 9/11 Commission Study and the Iraq Study Group paper, so with access like that to real world challenges and America’s top minds working those issues, one could argue that experience trumped any formal education he may have missed in international relations.
For Outlaw, Ben is one of the few voices that advocated giving more support to the resistance in Syria, and opposing Assad. He also is the one who pushed the administration to engage with Burma/Myanmar, and that is important from a strategic view for a number of reasons.
I’m not supporting the Obama team’s foreign policy, but these one sided attacks that Ricks is well known for leveling against individuals need to be challenged with views that balance his reporting. In the end, he may be everything Ricks accused him of, but there is still more to the story.
Outlaw:
From Tom Rick’s referenced New York Times Magazine article re: Ben Rhodes:
“As the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, Rhodes writes the president’s speeches, plans his trips abroad and runs communications strategy across the White House … ”
For a comparison, let’s look at President Reagan’s speechwriter:
Anthony R. Dolan was the primary speechwriter for President Reagan during both of his terms. He also appears to have had no foreign policy, etc., experience. (Born in July 1948 so, at the time of his appointment in March 1981, Dolan would have been an ancient 32 years of age.)
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=43262
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_R._Dolan
And yet he (Dolan) is credited with, among other things I believe, writing both the “Ash Heap of History” speech in 1982 and the “Evil Empire” speech of 1983.
As a speechwriter/communications director, etc., it appears that a clear understanding who you are writing/communicating for, what this person stands for and what he wants to get across; this may have more bearing on these matters than does foreign policy and/or other experience; as both the Anthony R. Dolan example re: President Reagan, and the Ben Rhodes example re: President Obama, seems to confirm/indicate?
Bill…you are correct…speech writers are a speech writers BUT and here is the BIG but…but when they cross the line into spin deliberate 300% spin in order to effect a decision making process….ARE you any different from the Putin info warriors…..??
QUOTE
In the U.S., Strategic Communication is defined as: Focused United States Government efforts to understand and engage key audiences to create, strengthen, or preserve conditions favorable for the advancement of United States Government interests, policies, and objectives through the use of coordinated programs, plans, themes, messages, and products synchronized with the actions of all instruments of national power.
Strategic communication management could be defined as the systematic planning and realization of information flow, communication, media development and image care in a long-term horizon. It conveys deliberate message(s) through the most suitable media to the designated audience(s) at the appropriate time to contribute to and achieve the desired long-term effect. Communication management is process creation. It has to bring three factors into balance: the message(s), the media channel(s) and the audience(s).
100% SPIN my friend…100% SPIN….is it not the same for the Putin info warriors??
UNQUOTE
Not really AND Rhode’s admitted to spinning the Iran Deal to get it through Congress.
Controlling the “narrative” is the core hallmark of propaganda..simple as that….and there is no discussion on that point.
I keep pointing you and others back to the WaPo article posted here at SWJ where after the Paris attacks when Obama WH stated that they could not understand why Europeans did not realize his Syrian and IS strategy was totally working…..
WHAT was then the Obama WH summation of the problem and how to fix it….
MORE “messaging”.
WHAT do you summize what the term “messaging” meant in that article?
So the “speechwriter” comes full circle and moves easily into propaganda IE “spin”.
If you were tracking as I do the Syria developments you would have seen an immediate barrage of DoD comments-speeches-press statements led off by the SecDef and then onto CENTCOM on the highly successful IS campaign.
Now you are out of the realm of “speech writing” and into the world of spinning a story…to influence and coverup a total lack of a strategy.
I will give you another exampkle of Rhode’s work…remember the massive debate in DC as to “who was and is a Syrian moderate”…..check who positioned the talking points and who on the MSM side was fed those talking points…..
It deflected nicely allowing Obama to simply not make any decisions….
Russian propaganda is composed of SIX Ds…..Deflect, Distract, Dismay, Distort all designed to create Doubt and Distrust.
Recognize a similarity in Rhode’s admitted “speech writing” and Russian propaganda…easily seen is it not????
There have been some who have proposed something similar to a Syrian and IS strategy largely ignored by the Obama WH…….NOTICE that these individuals had often attempted to engage the Obama WH and nothing came back.
Ever wonder why??????
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ex….epWSSToX.dpuf
EXCLUSIVE: US drone strike in Syria killed mediator trying to rein in al-Qaeda –
TWO key portions of a long article well worth reading and asking why did this not come from the NSC and or WH……
Empowering hardliners
Similar efforts to rein in al-Qaeda’s Syria branch through co-opting “moderate” members was suggested last year by retired US Army general and former CIA director David Petraeus.
In 2006, Petraeus was in charge of US military operations in Iraq when Americans started paying Sunni groups, some of whom had previously fought the US, to cut ties with and fight al-Qaeda in Iraq as part of the “Anbar awakening”.
Two years later, Petraeus told politicians in Washington that the strategy had reduced US casualties, increased security and saved money.
The question in Syria, he told CNN in September, was “whether it might be possible at some point to peel off so-called ‘reconcilables’ who would be willing to renounce Nusra and align with the moderate opposition (supported by the US and the coalition) to fight against Nusra, ISIL, and Assad”.
Both Nusra and Gamaa al-Islamiyya’s designations by the US as terrorist groups would make it difficult – if not impossible – for the US to engage or use someone like Taha directly as a go-between.
But Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria and a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute in Washington, says the US should be talking with Islamist groups who are not on the list, including Ahrar, which advocate that Syrians should decide how their country is ruled in the future.
Ford, who wrote about this strategy last year, said he had given this advice to high-level policy makers, including US President Barack Obama, repeatedly.
“The smart American policy is to engage with groups like Ahrar and Jaish al-Islam that, in turn, are able to peel people away from Nusra and bring them into groups that accept that there must ultimately a political process to decide the future of Syria’s political governance,” Ford told MEE.
MEE contacted the US State Department, Department of Defence and the Centcom military command to comment on Taha’s death and ask whether the US should be considering a strategy similar to that advocated by Petraeus and Ford.
The State Department referred questions to the Department of Defence which did not respond, nor did Centcom.
Quote:
Distrust of Islamists
Ford said he believes the Obama administration, including policy makers and some analysts advising them, has not attempted this approach because it has “an instinctual distrust of Islamists”.
“They have an inability to understand what is a jihadi versus what is a Salafi versus what is a Muslim brother,” he said.
“They don’t see any way for Assad to be removed and so their inclination – if forced to choose between Assad and Islamists – they’ll just go with something secular like Assad, mainly out of instinct.”
And while the US may have listed Nusra and Gamaa al-Islamiyya as terrorist organisations, Hassan, the Chatham House fellow, said regional backers of the groups are interested in supporting the kind of work Taha attempted to accomplish.
“The Americans are not on the same page,” he said.
“[The US military] doesn’t think about what Petraeus thinks. That’s not their strategy. Their strategy is to kill as many of these people as possible, disrupt the leadership, and prevent any sort of coalitions.
“They want to just basically disperse jihadists whenever and wherever they find them.”
Meanwhile, the lack of nuanced understanding, at least publicly, of the differences between Islamists in Syria drives militants to further extremes, said the sources familiar with Taha’s trip. His killing, they said, is an example of the exact ramifications of this broadbrush policy.
“Now after this air strike,” said one of the sources, “basically we empowered the hardliners. I am not even sure the US knew who exactly was in the car.”
“I’m sure [Taha] was not a friend of the US and the US was not a friend of him,” said the fighter. But with Taha’s mission in Syria “there were common interests”.
“What would you like to face – an Islamist group that believes in a national project and a Syria after the war, or do you want to face a group with a global ideology?”
Congress: Time to hold Ben Rhodes to account – The Washington Post https://apple.news/AGMBt58pLQDy1msZXaEewng …
Had President George W. Bush’s national security advisers Condoleezza Rice or Stephen Hadley bragged to a journalist that the administration constructed a phony narrative to justify an unpopular foreign policy initiative, using intellectually corrupt members of the press to spread disinformation, surely the Democrats would be calling for impeachment and would drag the braggarts to Capitol Hill to testify under oath. The reporters involved in the deception would be fired, shunned and disgraced. But that’s the standard for a Republican president. The left falsely accused the administration of doing just that in the Iraq War yet when the real thing — a blatant deception in pursuit of a rotten foreign policy decision — comes along there is a collective yawn.
That’s what has occurred with national security aide Ben Rhodes, who, dripping with contempt for those he deceived, told the New York Times magazine that the administration constructed a phony timeline so as to con Americans into believing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was the result of “moderate” Hassan Rouhani’s election. Rhodes did so by creating an “echo chamber” of willing journalists who essentially took dictation from the administration.
As Lee Smith put it, “For the last seven years the American public has been living through a postmodern narrative crafted by an extremely gifted and unspeakably cynical political operative whose job is to wage digital information campaigns designed to dismantle a several-decade old security architecture while lying about the nature of the Iranian regime. No wonder Americans feel less safe—they are.”
Rhodes’s deception is deeply disturbing in at least several ways. “First, he ignored a CIA assessment that determined that Rouhani was not a moderate. Former Undersecretary of State and chief Iran deal negotiator Wendy Sherman reflected this assessment when she said recently that Rouhani was not a moderate and that the choice in the Iranian parliamentary election was between hardliners and hard-hardliners,” explains sanctions expert Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Second, the JCPOA itself makes no sense unless there is an evolution in the nature of the regime over the next decade. As a result of sunset clauses in the deal that see most of the key restrictions disappearing over an eight to 15 year period, Iran will be left with an industrial-size nuclear program with near-zero nuclear breakout, easier advance centrifuge-powered clandestine sneak out, an ICBM program and a more powerful economy increasingly immunized against sanctions”
The latter is key, for the essence of the JCPOA rests on the assumption that by the time key sanctions are lifted the West need not fear Iran. Moreover, substantial compromises before that (e.g. lifting sanctions up front, delivering less than anytime/everywhere inspections) were premised on the notion that Iran was, unlike decades of past conduct, willing to abide by an agreement and cooperate with the IAEA. As soon as the deal was inked however it became clear that Iran was not changed at all — grabbing U.S. sailors (much to Rhodes’ annoyance according to the Times story since it revealed the regime’s true nature) and conducting illegal tests. Rhodes may have used the press, but the Iranians used Rhodes, President Obama and the rest of the hapless administration to get what it wanted: sanctions relief with no irreversible changes to its nuclear program or moderation in its non-nuclear conduct.
Sign up
If Iran’s moderation is a fairytale at the point Iran reaches nuclear breakout, “the United States will be facing a much more formidable and dangerous enemy and may have little choice but to use military force (as sanctions power will be severely degraded) to stop Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon,” says Duboswitz. ” At that point, Iran will be stronger and the consequences of military action more devastating. In selling the Iran deal on a lie, Rhodes may have made war with Iran more not less likely.”
The entire democratic process in this country was usurped. Senate Democrats were bullied and cajoled into going along with the deal and critics discredited based on a lie. “At the very least, Rhodes’s mendacity prevented a proper debate on what will we do in ten years if the Iranian regime is the same regime,” Dubowitz remarks. “Of course that was his intention in spinning the false Rouhani is a moderate story: To head off this debate to prevent a focus on the fatal flaw of the deal.”
Many Senate Democrats, having realized how weak the deal is and how unwilling is the administration to check Iran’s non-nuclear behavior (another misrepresentation, this one by Secretary of State John Kerry who vowed to go after missile tests, human rights violations and regional aggression) may have been embarrassed by their spinelessness. They claim to be “profoundly” concerned about post-JCPOA events. They should now be outraged; they were lied to in order to obtain votes on the deal in contravention of their own deep concerns. (We know how concerned they were; they said so in speeches that were often more critical of the deal than opponents.)
What to do about this now?” First, Congress should conduct hearings and call Rhodes to testify under oath. Any executive privilege he might have had was waived when he went blabbing to the press. Since he claimed to enjoy a “mind meld” with the president it’s critical to understand the degree to which the president and other officials participated in the deceit. (While Rhodes is there they can ask about his role as author of the infamous “talking points” in the Benghazi fiasco.) Second, if Congress concludes members were scammed, then resolutions of condemnation are in order. (Unfortunately it cannot impeach members of the president’s staff.) Moreover, Congress should by legislative enactment return to the status quo prior to the JCPOA, which was obtained in essence by fraud. Sanctions due to expire should be reauthorized (with no executive waiver authority for now) and re-implemented. New sanctions should be passed to address Iran’s human rights violations, support for terrorism, regional aggression and illegal missile tests.
In this year’s Senate elections this issue should be front and center. Any Republican challenger should castigate his incumbent opponent as a gullible victim of a scam. And frankly, if Senate Democrats do not respond to the latest revelation now they know they were scammed, they can rightly be dubbed as willing victims. This debacle (both the process and substance of the JCPOA), by the way, is yet one more reason for a third candidate: a qualified, fit president who understands the fatal flaws in the deal and is willing to reverse the damage to our national security and democratic process is sorely needed. It’s also a reminder why we cannot elect a “pathological liar” (as Sen. Ted Cruz described Donald Trump) to the presidency.
All Ben Rhodes did is call out the Emperor and say it out loud: “the Emperor has no clothes.”
The Washington Consensus is a failure and its most precious schemes since the end of the Cold War have been a disaster for the American people and many innocent people abroad.
The Saudis are really pushing back, aren’t they? Why we care is beyond me.
Why does this shock and anger so many? What did Mr. Obama’s supporters expect would happen in his administration? Didn’t they agree with him that America was too big and rambunctious, and ought not to hog the middle-front of the world’s stage?
Given Mr. Obama’s paper-thin political resume and non-existent foreign policy experience, the only certainty was uncertainty: in geopolitical affairs in particular.
Mr. Obama was always a Rohrschard Ink Blot Test, in which all saw what they wanted to see. He promised “change,” and he has delivered. Our positions on and influence in China, Russia, Iran, Cuba Venezuela, etc have all changed dramatically.
It was hoped by many that this POTUS would learn on the job. Sadly, after 8 years of OJT, it appears that he got only one month of training, repeated over and over.
All that spin effort by Rhode’s and now the Iran Deal unravels……..
Iran Atomic Energy chief Salehi: Plan to send heavy-water nuclear material to US under #nuke deal stopped after US froze more of our assets.
Frederic Hof: Obama refuses to complicate Assad’s ability to commit mass-homicide for the sake of the IranDeal
http://bit.ly/1NpKnhv
May 9, 2016
Beating the Blob and Disentangling from Partners
By Frederic C. Hof
Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, is the subject of David Samuels’ piece in the New York Times Magazine: “The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru”. If Jeffrey Goldberg’s March 2016 on the “Obama doctrine” was not a sufficient foreign policy Rosetta Stone to decode an administration absolutely without precedent, the Samuels piece supplies the missing hieroglyphs. The Oval Office, it seems, circumvented the “American foreign policy establishment” (“the Blob”) to pursue a nuclear deal with Iran that “would create the space for America to disentangle itself from its established system of alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, and Turkey.”
The Samuels piece is not a hatchet job. It is a very sympathetic portrayal of a highly intelligent, disciplined, dedicated, and loyal official: someone who has faithfully and accurately channeled, transmitted, and explained the foreign policy desires of Barack Obama. The attitude of the author toward the subject makes the substance all the more extraordinary.
For those who believe that the bungled occupation of Iraq in 2003 sums up the past, present, and future of American behavior and capabilities in the Middle East, this article is cause for celebratory confirmation. For those who think that disaster in Iraq had specific causes and effects of its own (centering on the absence of stabilization planning) not universally applicable to all things at all times, this article will annoy. Regardless of the reactions it inspires, David Samuels and his subject deserve credit for explaining to the reading public what in the world has been going on for the past several years.
In terms of the administration’s public information rationale for that which it has done and failed to do in the Middle East, it really does all boil down to Iraq: a foreign policy catastrophe that, for Barack Obama and Ben Rhodes, sums up America abroad and typifies the handiwork of the American foreign policy establishment: “the Blob.” Per Samuels, “According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and other Iraq war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.” One could substitute the name “Trump” for “Rhodes” in the foregoing sentence without changing the meaning. Given the nature of campaign 2016 to date, Rhodes’ characterization of the presumptive Democratic Party candidate hardly quickens the pulse.
Indeed, the personal attacks do not matter. Leave aside the fact that neither Gates nor Clinton was on the ground floor of what passed for war planning in 2002 and 2003: the expectation of a splendid little campaign that would culminate with the capture of Baghdad; what one wit described at the time as “Grenada with Goats.” Leave aside that the Obama-Rhodes notion of the “Blob” probably includes the serving vice president and secretary of state in addition to at least one other former defense secretary (Leon Panetta) who served the Obama administration with great distinction. What is key here is the seeming belief that “Iraq 2003” epitomizes the sum total of what America stands for and what it brings to the table in the Middle East.
There is nothing at all remarkable about ‘John Q. Citizen’ looking back on invasion, occupation, and insurgency in Iraq and saying, in effect, “Don’t touch it with a ten-foot pole; let the natives have at it and sort it out on their own.” It is something else, however, for an official channeling the president of the United States to say, “I profoundly do not believe that the United States could make things better in Syria by being there. And we have an evidentiary record of what happens when we’re there—nearly a decade in Iraq.” This is the official alibi for not having protected, over the course of five years, one single Syrian civilian from the murderous assaults of Bashar al-Assad.
Yet the official alibi lacks one critical ingredient: the truth. A “decade in Iraq” did not dissuade the Obama administration from protecting Syrian Kurds from a massacre by the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) in Kobani. Disaster in Iraq did not deter American military forces from protecting Yazidis in Iraq itself. The Iraqi fiasco has not stopped the Obama administration from establishing an anti-ISIS American military presence in both Iraq and Syria: yes, boots on the ground. No: the Rhodes-Obama fear and dismissal of making things better in Syria “by being there” applies only to those parts of Syria experiencing mass murder and massive displacement at the hands of Bashar al-Assad. Why? Iran.
For an American president and his principal subordinates to avert their gazes from mass homicide and from doing anything at all to mitigate or complicate it is far from unprecedented. In this day and age, however, knowing what we know about twentieth century failures to protect civilians thanks to the research and writings of Samantha Power and others, it is stunningly remarkable and regrettable. For a man of Barack Obama’s evident humanity and values, surely there has been something of transcendent importance that has stayed his hand from protecting Syrian civilians; something of paramount national security significance that has stopped him from acting in support of American friends and allies trying desperately to deal with the hemorrhage of humanity from Syria. Thanks to Ben Rhodes and his chronicler we know now what it has been: pursuit of a nuclear agreement with Assad’s premier long-term enabler and partner in mass murder: Iran.
The following passage from the Samuels piece clarifies why it was important for President Obama to protect no one in Syria, to risk his own reputation in the red-line climb down, and even to assure Iran’s Supreme Leader in writing that the Ayatollah’s murderous Syrian subordinate would not be touched by (anti-ISIS) American military intervention in Syria:
“By eliminating the fuss about Iran’s nuclear program, the administration hoped to eliminate a source of structural tension between the two countries, which would create the space for America to disentangle itself from its established system of alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, and Turkey. With one bold move, the administration would effectively begin the process of large-scale disentanglement from the Middle East.”
To complicate the ability of Iran’s man in Syria to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity would have placed at risk nuclear negotiations aimed ultimately at dissolving American relationships of trust and confidence with key regional powers. Yes, the Blob—the foreign policy establishment—would have had a problem with this. Hence an information operation headed by Rhodes aimed at avoiding head-on debates with the Blob or, for that matter, the representatives of the American people in Congress.
Were it not for their enormous suffering, millions of Syrian civilians might find humor in the reason for their abandonment: a desire by the American president to disentangle the United States from long-term cooperative regional relationships. Were it not for the tens of thousands of rockets and missiles pointed at them by Iran’s Lebanese militia, Israelis might enjoy the irony of it all. The only players in this drama who need neither humor nor irony to appreciate the importance and value of what is being undertaken are Iran and Russia.
President Obama and his assistant get high marks for, in the end, spelling it all out. They probably sincerely believe that Iraq 2003 sums up the wisdom and contribution of what they politely call “the foreign policy establishment.” The view here is that their successors will need thoughtful (if fallible) and experienced (if imperfect) foreign policy practitioners—yes, the thoroughly disrespected “Blob”—to undo the damage they have done.