According to the New York Times’ Peter Baker, “In this summer of global tumult, the debate in Washington essentially boils down to two opposite positions: It is all President Obama’s fault, according to his critics; no, it is not, according to his supporters, because these are events beyond his control.”
Mr. Baker entirely misses the point. The global tumult is, largely, Mr. Obama’s fault because he has so drastically reduced America’s influence that events are beyond his control. That has become so obvious that even Hillary Clinton understands.
President Obama is extremely sensitive to criticism of his foreign policy, as one would expect given his multifarious failures. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton had her presidential campaign reined in last week when she dared criticize Obama’s policy. She contended, in an interview with the Atlantic magazine, that Obama’s failure to support “moderate” Syrian rebels created a vacuum that enabled the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has — so far — been able to seize about half of Syria and a third of Iraq.
Obama responded by calling her criticism “horse****,” which it resembles closely.
Clinton’s memoir of her State Department daze, Hard Choices, does say that she advocated strongly for arming the Syrian rebels, or at least the good guys among them (of which there were none.) But Clinton’s position was as variable as the weather. Her book says that after she left the State Department, on September 9, 2013 for those who are following the facts, she visited Obama and told him it was crucial to pursue a diplomatic resolution to the Syria conflict, which is a far cry from military support for the rebels.