Obama Wrap-up Part IV: Last in peace, always at war, and last in tactical thinking.

Obama's policies on defence and cyber security: A true study in ineptitude and lack of planning.

Barack Obama addresses US troops concerning the war
against ISIS in 2015 (ABC News).

In 2008 Obama was elected claiming that he would "only send our troops into harm’s way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home." After 8 years, it's become clear that he's come well short of all of the vows contained in that statement, this being perhaps the area where he has the most actionable power compared to other issues such as finance and monetary policy where he still requires much input from Congress. 

This is not to say that he hasn't faced opposition, yet how can we not notice that he's gotten his wish on many issues pertaining to defence: 

• Withdrawing troops from Iraq (2012)
• Ending Don't Ask Don't Tell (2010)
• Drawing down troop deployment in Afghanistan.
• Killing Osama Bin Laden (2010)

This post will deal with much of Obama's defence policy, but many other issues may be covered later in a piece on his foreign policy.

When it rains it pours -- Obama bungles the fight with ISIS and Middle East conflicts

However, if we were to judge Obama's defence policy accomplishments based on the goals of 2008, we would be leaving out these important issues that did indeed crop up during his presidency. Though he didn't explicitly guarantee an end to US involvement in foreign wars everywhere, his record of being the only US president to serve 8 years at war every day makes a mockery of that expectation, as even NPR points out. US troops withdrew from Iraq between 2007 under Bush and December 18, 2011 under Obama. Yet the haste made to execute this decision, not to mention the public broadcasting of it would be a major blunder for Obama and the mushrooming power of ISIS as a reaction to the Iraqi Shiite government eventually engulfed the entire region in war again once that group invaded Syria. The President repeatedly claimed that ISIS was among other things "JV"  and "contained" (2015). Obama's weather vane approach to the Arab Spring also showed that he had no broad strategy of how to deal with the Muslim world where many of these violent conflicts were occurring. 

Obama's failures to deal with Islamic terrorism in the Middle East in his second term clouded over the signature accomplishment of his first term: the killing of Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011. The Bin Laden killing was a major accomplishment, but would have been much more relevant had Obama's policies focused on counteracting Islamic terror groups as a whole and not on a case-by-case basis. Since 2011 Al-Qaeda's star in that sector has diminished in relation to ISIS, and therefore the Bin Laden death has not had any effect on the movement as a whole. 

ISIS gained new adherents not only in western countries among converts and Muslim immigrants, but Islamist groups in countries such as Libya, Yemen, Syria, and the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. Incidentally, all four of these nations had been wracked by conflict due to the Arab Spring, and the USA had in one way or another acted to depose their dictators. The lack of coherence in this part of his overall policy has led to three of these nations becoming failed states along with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Zig on Libya, Zag on Syria

Obama's decision in March 2011 to support a NATO coordinated military intervention in Libya was at the time considered necessary in order to avert a massacre by dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi in that desert nation. Whether it did or did not save anyone's life is a matter of conjecture: The US commitment to a free Libya was very brief and by September 2012 it had disintegrated into a patchwork of warlord-ruled zones. The Benghazi embassy attacks on September 11 of that year by Al-Qaeda also triggered one of the most infamous political scandals in American history, as the Obama Administration, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, and US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice all foolishly attributed the attack to an anti-Islamic internet video, while at the same time knowing full well that it had indeed been orchestrated by Al-Qaeda network affiliates. Today Benghazi, an attack that in material terms was not as large as others, has been magnified due to the botched Obama strategy for framing it to the media, as well as the lies and concealment of facts by Hillary Clinton. 

In Syria, Mr. Obama also had a poor approach on how to react to that country's uprising against Pres. Bashar al-Assad. In 2011 mass demonstrations began to shake the ground underneath this country that was ruled by the British-educated ophthalmologist son of military dictator Hafez al-Assad. Syria is officially a republic but in effect is almost a kingdom ruled by a clan of religious minority Alawites and their cronies. As the situation deteriorated into full-on war and violence, Obama was asked essentially what it would take for the US to intervene militarily on August 20, 2012. His response was this:

"We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation."

Exactly one year later, chemical weapons were used in the Syrian locality of Ghouta, and Obama backed away from his "red line". What deterred him from taking the same approach in Syria as he had in Libya was the repercussions of the Benghazi attack that had occurred the year before. Also, the presence of Russian naval forces in the Syrian city of Tartus made Obama prevaricate on whether he wanted to risk their involvement. With the US failing to take any action though, the country spiraled further into violence as more foreign parties and jihadist volunteers flooded in to help the various sides and ISIS established its capital in Raqqa, one of Syria's easternmost cities. 

In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election Obama and the rest of the US-led coalition in Syria and Iraq launched a massive offensive to regain Mosul in northern Iraq from ISIS on October 16, 2016. As of today, the battle is ongoing with air support from the US, France, and the UK backing up the forces of Iran, Iraq, and Hezbollah on the ground. The conflict has blurred the lines between the United States, its allies, and its enemies. The fall of the nation's largest city Aleppo to government forces in December 2016 was considered by many to be the final exclamation point on Obama's legacy of failure in Syria.

Ukraine, Nigeria, and East Asia

In 2014 Russia began to encroach on the territory of Ukraine as a result of the Euromaidan, an uprising among the country's western ethnic Ukrainian majority against a decision by the pro-Russian government of Pres. Victor Yanukovich's annulment of an association treaty with the EU. Russia's reaction in February 2014, almost coinciding with the obscenely expensive Winter Olympic games that it was hosting in Sochi, was to invade and annex Crimea from Ukraine and later to support further separatist efforts in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Obama consistently condemned Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin's actions in Ukraine, and did supply the Ukrainian government with some aid, but did not back it up in deeds. Russian-backed separatists continue to undermine the integrity of Ukraine's territory and as of December 2016 the conflict is ongoing. Throughout the saga, Putin has been perceived to have outsmarted Obama at every turn, and the relationship was visibly awkward and restrained during public meetings between the two.

Obama's reaction to the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria's northern provinces is also considered a sign of his impotence not only on the world stage but toward violence on the African continent. Similarly, Obama's term saw increasingly robust Islamic insurgencies in African countries like Kenya, Somalia, Chad, Mauritania, and Algeria. The 2015 Garissa University College attack that killed 152 students in Obama's father's home country of Kenya accentuated how ineffective his terrorism policy was; it was repeatedly pointed out that he made no mention of how the victims were targeted for being Christian. 

Michelle Obama's hashtag campaign backfired and became a
symbol of her husband's inaction on a number of issues, including
Ukraine and Nigeria (The White House).

What was so pathetic about the Nigeria policy however was Obama's use of his wife Michelle to attempt a public campaign to bring back hundreds of Nigerian girls abducted on April 14 and later on December 13, 2014. Her  #BringBackOurGirls campaign was quickly lampooned unexpectedly by critics of her husband's drone strike policies in Yemen and Pakistan that had caused the deaths of thousands of civilians.

Somewhat more worrying has been the success of China and North Korea in defying US foreign policy in East Asia. North Korea's sabre rattling has been backed up recently by reputed hacks of Sony Pictures in response to the release of a movie that mocked the nation's dictatorial leader Kim Jong Un. Though the culprits have not been found for the Sony hacks, the lack of accountability and the embarrassing emails revealed in the course of them were a precursor to the latest election. 

Obama's USA also failed catastrophically in challenging Chinese encroachment on international waters by building military islands atop coral reefs in the South China Sea. This waffling policy and Obama's parallel antagonistic relationship with Filipino Pres. Rodrigo Duterte helped wreck the US military's deterrence capabilities in the Far East. 

Budget Performance

The GOP griping about Obama slashing military budgets is more a statement of their zeal for feeding defence contractor lobbyists than it is to his lack of commitment to the military. Under Obama, the USA still outspent every other NATO member combined on defence. The mushrooming power of this sector of the economy which includes both the armed services, private contractors, and our intelligence agencies, has been a source of concern among every president since, ironically enough, Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address on January 17, 1961:

"we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex."

Obama, like Bush again, once again played the pragmatic hand and showered the F-35 fighter jet programme with $11 billion in 2015 for purchases of the jet, a further blip on its mammoth $400 billion investment up util then. Also like Bush, Obama's Pentagon in 2016 was found to have concealed the waste of $125 billion in defence spending, a revelation first published in the Washington Post. The Post also revealed on December 5, 2016 that Obama had agreed to allow Lockheed Martin and Boeing to manufacture the now legacy fighter jets F-16  Fighting Falcon and F/A-18 Super Hornet in India, a twist that was interpreted as a stab in the back by the company's assembly line workers in Fort Worth, Texas as well as a compromising of national security in the future should the new Indian manufacturers leak the aircrafts' documents to a third party. 

As Commander in Chief

Under Obama four people served as Secretary of Defense: Robert Gates (a holdover from Bush -- 2009-11), ex-CIA chief and Clinton WH chief of staff Leon Panetta (2011-13), former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel (2013-15) and noted physicist Ash Carter (2015-17). This ties the record set by Dwight Eisenhower. The Dept. of Veteran Affairs has been headed by two Secretaries: former Gen. Eric Shinseki (2009-14) and Bob McDonald (2014-17). 

Under this administration, the president and Congress legislated the end of the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy and controversially ditched the Navy's ratings system in 2016. Perhaps more significantly, Obama fired his Afghan War commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal and clashed with his successor Gen. David Petraeus after he was appointed Director of Central Intelligence and later left criticizing Obama's intent to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan by 2016. Obama's first defense secretary Robert Gates revealed this about Obama in his 2014 memoir Duty: "[he] doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out". In 2015 former US commander in Iraq Gen. Ray Odierno, while retiring as US Army Chief of Staff, stated that the ISIS flare-up in Iraq did not have to happen if the US forces had not been withdrawn.

Former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was Obama's fall

guy for one of the worst scandals in the history of

government programmes.

The VA scandals have also rocked the Obama legacy, as his promises to care for veterans ended up being empty rhetoric. The cover-up of fake waiting lists tarnished was revealed at the worst time in Spring 2014 while Obama was contending with the Crimea crisis. Obama accepted the resignation of former Army Chief of Staff Gen. (ret.) Eric Shinseki in May 2014, but little changed and by April 2016 new charges has cropped up concerning a repeat of the fake appointment lists. 

Another scandal that repeated itself in the VA was the accidental infection of thousands with HIV. This occurred both in 2010 and 2016.  

Tangled in the Web

Known now as Chelsea Elizabeth, Bradley E. Manning

was responsible in 2010 for one of the largest data leaks

in history. (Wired). 

On November 28, 2010 the information activist group Wikileaks published over a quarter million diplomatic cables held by the US State Department. It followed earlier releases of the Afghan War documents (July 25, 2010) and  the Iraq War Logs (October 22, 2010). This embarrassing breach of security was later revealed to have been due to a leak by US Army Private Bradley Manning. Manning was later tried and convicted under the Espionage Act, a charge that was commuted as one of Obama's last pardons.

Perhaps even more troubling is the issue of data security in the government. In June 2015 a federal government employee union claimed that the hack of the databases of the Office of Personnel Management, generally attributed to China, had stolen the personal information including social security numbers of every federal government worker. This, like the Sony hack, would portend more data breaches of the Democratic National Committee, Clinton-Kaine campaign chairman John Podesta, and other senior figures in the State Department under Hillary Clinton, including Clinton herself. Unfortunately for all of us, we may be living in a nation that is on the verge of losing the first major cyber security war, the cost of which we cannot begin to comprehend

Final Grade: Given the colossal disappointments inherent in being a "peace president" that seemed to always be failing at war, I had to give him a solid F. 

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