OBAMA WATCH: 8.26.16 - A Highly Calculated Disaster

 

A Highly Calculated Disaster - By Matt Ward - http://raptureready.com/soap2/ward66.html

 

As President Barack Hussein Obama's final term draws to a close, it is now time to take stock and reflect upon the impact of his presidency, specifically as it relates to foreign policy.

 

It will be the tangible results of Obama's foreign policy, after all, that will dictate the immediate agenda for the next President of the United States of America.

 

Obama started well. In fact, it's hard I imagine how it could have been any better. After mere months as president of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama was awarded the prestigious, and highly coveted Nobel Peace Prize.

 

This Peace Prize was given primarily for Obama's attempts at "resetting" American international relations in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan. To this end, Obama had toured the world giving a number of benchmark speeches that he hoped would set a new tone in American international relations. For better or worse it seemed that change certainly had come to America.

 

He was lauded for these speeches and the "transformational" attitude they heralded, especially in the Islamic world. Little did those present realize quite how transformational Obama's foreign policy would actually prove to be.

 

An illustrious beginning. But hindsight is an unhelpful friend for people looking to establish any kind of meaningful and lasting legacy. Aspirations mean nothing, neither do good intentions, results are what counts in the cold hard world of international relations.

 

With hindsight, the Nobel Peace Prize, this one crowning achievement at the very beginning of Obama's first term, was perhaps the foreign policy high point of his entire presidency.

 

The following eight years have been characterized by utter failure. It would be no great exaggeration to say that US foreign policy under Obama has been an unmitigated disaster. Obama has left a trail of chaos all over the world with a foreign policy that lacks clarity and vision and has certainly set the stage for worse global conflicts to come.

 

Obama's foreign policy adventure began in real terms by him announcing that all US troops would be gone from Afghanistan by late 2014, and that all troops would be out of Iraq by 2011. He later reversed course in Afghanistan, saying that troops would actually stay until 2017.

 

Obama withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 despite heavy criticism and concern, at home and abroad, that this withdrawal from Iraq was entirely premature and would lead to an explosion of terrorism and violence.

 

This is exactly what happened; almost every major Iraqi city erupted into the most horrific sectarian violence after the stabilizing presence of U.S. forces left. Iraq remains in a quagmire   of violence from which it seems completely unable to escape to this day.

 

Yet despite all this, Obama persisted in his belief that a withdrawal from Iraq was the correct course of action to take. He was never talked around by his military advisors, his own intelligence community or other international leaders, all of whom were asking him to slow down or pause the troop withdrawal.

 

Nothing swayed him, not even the dramatically rising Iraqi civilian body count.

 

Iraq was undoubtedly the first major foreign policy failure of Barack Obama's presidency, and it came about primarily because of his own personal hubris. Obama simply believed that despite all the conflicting advice and information, he knew better.

 

Time proved him wrong.

 

The mishandling of Iraq led directly to the second major, and ongoing, foreign policy failure of his administration, the rise of ISIS.

 

Withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 left a huge vacuum in leadership. There was a vast, gapping chasm where traditional power structures had once been. The police force had been disbanded,  as had the Iraqi military after the allied invasion. In late 2011 there was simply no provision to ensure and provide for basic continued societal stability.

 

There was nobody left in Iraq to keep basic law and order. What there was though, we're lots and lots of ex policemen and soldiers who were not getting paid and were increasingly resentful of the U.S. presence.

 

Many of them flocked towards sectarian violence and it was shortly after this point that ISIS really began to take control of Iraq, bringing these disaffected ex soldiers and policemen within their ranks. Unifying them, ISIS stormed the vast Iraqi land, took Mosul, grabbed the oil fields and rapidly declared a caliphate.

 

Today, in 2016, the Islamic State are the best funded, most heinous and violent transnational terrorist organization this world has ever seen. They are a direct result of poor policy and decision making from within this current White House.

 

ISIS have killed, kidnapped and raped their way across vast swathes of the Middle East. At this point, harsh rhetoric and a few token air strikes are not going to stop them.

 

And now, this new and very modern type of terrorism is morphing again. Not content to take Syria and Iraq, Islamic State fighters are now taking the fight to us, directly, in our streets, in our communities. 

 

ISIS affiliates are spreading their terror from Paris to Brussels, Orlando to London. More future attacks in mainland America and Europe are an absolute certainty. It really is not a question of "if" but "when."

 

Up until this point it could be argued that Barack Obama is just inept, that he is in completely over his head. The same cannot be said of his next foreign policy fail, the Iranian nuclear accord.

If ever there was an international agreement that illustrated the hubris of an administration and its foreign policy, it would be this nuclear deal.

 

If ever there was an international agreement that showcased an administration disregarding and ignoring obvious facts, it would be this deal.

 

If ever there was an international agreement that demonstrated how dangerous a rogue president really could be, it is this deal.

 

Obama, to this day and despite all the hard evidence to the contrary, regards this nuclear accord with Iran as one of the crowning achievements of his entire two term foreign policy effort.

 

And Iran still has not even signed it. Think about that, they haven't even signed onto it. It is a deal made with the devil himself-it is that bad.

 

Nothing in the last seventy years, since the conclusion of the Jewish Holocaust when six million Jews lost their lives, has placed the tiny Jewish state of Israel in such utter peril.

 

This nuclear deal, of which Obama is so proud, represents a clear existential threat to the continued existence of the Jewish State, something Obama seems to care nothing about.

 

The international community, however, is under no illusion about the real state of Iran's nuclear program. Many, many world leaders are deeply uneasy about Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.

 

Speaking on August 4th, President Barack Obama said that the Iranian nuclear deal had, "worked exactly the way we said it would." He even had the audacity to claim that Israel now supported the accord, something Tel Aviv hotly disputed.

 

World leaders and Israel are so uneasy about this accord because it is based on lies. President Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, both claim that the nuclear accord has put Iran's nuclear capability back by 10 years. The facts on the ground tell a different story.

 

If Iran so desired, and likely they do, they could have a workable and deliverable nuclear weapon by the end of 2017. Everybody in the international community knows this. Everybody in the various scientific and military communities know this.

 

Ali Akbar Salehu, President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, stated that if any party violates the nuclear record then Iran could go back to enriching Uranium within just 45 days. Salehu's deputy has even suggested considerably less than 45 days.

 

It is against this backdrop that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has in the last six months on numerous occasions, publicly claimed that America itself has violated the accord, not Iran, this nullifying them of any obligations towards it.

 

The facts are stark and speak for themselves. This nuclear accord with Iran, which Obama views as such a crowning achievement, is actually an utter failure.

 

Worse than that, so obvious is Iran's duplicity that one has to question Obama's motivation in continuing to allow this status quo to stand. Iran are going to become a nuclear breakout state, soon. It will be too late then to do anything about it.

 

Whatever one personally feels about Obama, he is a highly intelligent man. He understands perhaps better than you or me, the true status of Iran's nuclear weapons program, and the subterfuge and lengths they have gone to in order to hide the fact that they are still actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.

 

And they also continue to threaten the very existence of America's greatest ally in the region, Israel.

 

The impression any impartial person looking in from the outside might get is that Obama actually wants Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.

 

Iran has been consistently lying to the International Atomic Agency Committee, whose job it is to oversee compliance with the joint nuclear accord. They have hidden from the inspectors large quantities of second generation IR-2M centrifuges. These centrifuges cut, substantially, the amount of time required to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels.

 

Obama knows this.

 

Iran, in preparation for the nuclear accord, also stock piled huge quantities of other centrifuges. At Natanz alone there are believed to be 15,400, all capable of enriching uranium whenever required. This is a direct contravention of the nuclear accord.

 

Obama knows this.

 

Further more, Iran has been circumventing the nuclear accord, which under its terms allow Iran to hold about 300 kilograms of low grade enriched uranium. Iran have been covertly transporting some of this stock to Oman, where the uranium refinement process has been continuing.

 

This means that the U.S. estimate of "at least a year" before Iran could achieve a nuclear breakout is entirely flawed as it based on an estimate that assumes Iran only have low grade enriched uranium.

 

Again, Obama knows this, so why the constant charade? This nuclear accord is dead in the water and everybody knows it. It is an epic foreign policy fail.

 

This terrible accord, bad as it is may be, may yet pale into insignificance compared to the next potential foreign policy catastrophe. The last foreign policy disaster of Barack Obama's two terms is slightly different though, because it hasn't happened yet.

 

There are consistent rumblings in diplomatic circles that as a final, parting betrayal, Obama intends to deliver Israel up to the UN before the end of his presidency.

 

Obama obviously despises Israel and his foreign policy displays this clearly. That he might deliver Israel to her enemies at the United Nations before he leaves office is a realistic possibility.

 

Never in Israel's short modern existence has there been a U.S. president so openly hostile to the Jewish State. Betraying Israel at the UN would be no great change of pace for Obama, he has a significant track record for it.

 

Obama's entire foreign policy has been, some would say, a highly calculated disaster. Calculated to disempower America globally, alienate her amongst friends and embolden her enemies. The entire western world has become the victim of Obama's foreign policy.

 

Obama has undermined American influence so much that the traditional balance of power, that has maintained a strained peace for so long, has now been destroyed. He has betrayed traditional allies and sought friendship with enemies who have thrown it back in Americas face. He has fundamentally destabilized Iraq and Syria and because of this allowed for the conditions necessary for the rise of ISIS.

 

The world is a without doubt a worse place for Barack Obama's presidency.

 

Worse though, than all this, is his active and continued betrayal of Israel. It will be these acts alone that signal perilous times ahead for America.

 

Obama's foreign policy has left Israel as a lamb amongst wolves in the Middle East. They are now totally alone. When the very last vestiges of American support for Israel finally do dry up, as it soon must, so will God's cover and protection over America itself will finally end.

 

That is a fearful thing.

 

It might take decades, if that long were left, for the world to recover from Obama's time in office. That is, of course, assuming that somebody even worse will not soon become president of the United States of America.

 

As Predicted, Obamacare Is Absolutely Killing the Middle Class - By Michael Snyder - http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/as-predicted-obamacare-is-absolutely-killing-the-middle-class

 

The critics of Obamacare have been proven right.  The Obama administration promised that health insurance premiums would go down.  Instead, they have absolutely skyrocketed.  The Obama administration promised that Obamacare would not kill jobs.  Instead, firms are hiring fewer workers because of suffocating health care costs.  As you will see below, even the Federal Reserve is admitting this.  The Obama administration also promised that the big health insurance companies would love the new Obamacare plans and would eagerly compete with one another to win customers in the new health insurance marketplaces.  Instead, many of the big health insurance companies are now dropping Obamacare plans altogether.

 

We witnessed the latest stunning example of this phenomenon just a few days ago.  It turns out that Aetna has been losing hundreds of millions of dollars on plans sold through the health exchanges, and now they plan to pull out of the program almost entirely...

 

Earlier this week, Aetna, which covers about 900,000 people through the health exchanges created under Obamacare, announced that it would dramatically reduce its presence those exchanges. Instead of expanding into five new states this year, as the insurer had previously planned, the company said that it would drop out of 11 of the 15 states in which it currently sells under the law.

 

Aetna's decision follows similar moves from other insurers: UnitedHealth announced in April that it would cease selling plans on most exchanges. Shortly after, Humana pulled out of two states, Virginia and Alabama. More than a dozen of the nonprofit health insurance cooperatives set up under the law-health insurance carriers created using government-back loans in order to spur competition-have failed entirely. While some insurers are entering the exchanges, even more are leaving.

 

Another one of "the big five", UnitedHealth, is going to lose more than half a billion dollars on Obamacare plans.  So just a few months ago they also announced that they would be dramatically scaling back their participation in the program.

 

Because of the ridiculous costs, health insurance companies are either going to have to abandon the exchanges completely or they will have to raise rates substantially.

 

Needless to say, the people that are going to ultimately feel the pain from all of this are consumers...

 

Customers who are now forced to obtain insurance or pay a hefty fine that grows more costly over time are being left in a difficult position. Americans are essentially stuck between a rock and hard place, either losing coverage entirely, or having to cough up money for a plan they can't afford.

 

"Something has to give," said Larry Levitt, a healthcare law expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "Either insurers will drop out or insurers will raise premiums."

 

On the low end of the spectrum, tens of millions of poor Americans benefit from government programs that provide health care at little or no cost.

 

On the other end of the spectrum, the very wealthy can afford to pay the ridiculously high health insurance premiums that we are seeing under Obamacare.

 

So what this means is that the people that are being hurt the most by Obamacare are those that belong to the middle class.

 

As I mentioned above, employers are now hiring less workers because of Obamacare, and that is very bad news for the middle class.  One recent study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York discovered that nearly one out of every five firms is "employing fewer workers" because of this insidious law...

 

According to a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 20.9% of manufacturing firms in the state said they were employing fewer workers because of the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law known as Obamacare, while 16.8% of respondents in the service sector said the same.

 

And middle class Americans that have to pay for their own health insurance are being hit with much higher bills these days.  According to one recent study, it is being projected that the average Obamacare premium will go up 24 percent in 2016...

 

Now, courtesy of a new study by independent analyst Charles Gaba - who has crunched the numbers for insurers participating in the ACA exchanges in all 50 states - we can also calculate what the average Obamacare premium increase across the entire US will be: using proposed and approved rate increase requests, the average Obamacare premium is expected to surge by a whopping 24% this year.

 

Even NBC News, which is about as pro-Obama as you can get, is reporting on the crippling premium increases that are devastating the middle class...

 

Millions of people who pay the full cost of their health insurance will face the sting of rising premiums next year, with no financial help from government subsidies.

 

Renewal notices bearing the bad news will go out this fall, just as the presidential election is in the home stretch.

 

"I don't know if I could swallow another 30 or 40 percent without severely cutting into other things I'm trying to do, like retirement savings or reducing debt," said Bob Byrnes, of Blaine, Minnesota, a Twin Cities suburb. His monthly premium of $524 is already about 50 percent more than he was paying in 2015, and he has a higher deductible.

 

All over the nation people are getting hit like this.

 

Personally, my health insurance company wanted to nearly double the rate I was paying when Obamacare fully kicked in.  So I searched around and found another plan that was only about a 30 percent increase, but at least it wasn't nearly double what I had been paying before.

 

But when the time came to renew that plan, they wanted to jump my premium up another 50 percent per month.

 

Those of us that are in the middle are being crushed by Obamacare.  We aren't poor enough to qualify for government assistance, and we aren't wealthy enough for these ridiculous health insurance premiums not to matter.

 

Just about everything that Barack Obama promised us about Obamacare has turned out to be a lie.

 

So where in the accountability?

 

This is one of the big reasons why nearly one out of every five U.S. adults lives with their parents or their grandparents these days.  Many young adults cannot afford the basics of life such as health insurance, and so they have got to find a way to cut back expenses somewhere.  If that means moving back in with Mom and Dad, that is what some of them are going to do.

 

I am astounded that our system of health care has become so messed up.  But this is just more evidence of how our society is falling apart in thousands of different ways, and I am not optimistic that things will be turned around any time soon.

 

 

Obama and Iran: A Misguided Messianic Mission - By Peter Berkowitz - http://www.realclearpolitics.com

 

On August 3, Wall Street Journal reporters Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee broke a story suggesting that contrary to longstanding U.S. policy, the Obama administration paid the Islamic Republic of Iran a ransom for the return of Americans held captive.

 

"The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran," Solomon and Lee wrote. "Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies," U.S. and European officials told the journalists, "were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane."

 

The WSJ piece dutifully carried the administration's denial that the cash was a quid pro quo for the hostages. It was rather, according to officials, "the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran's last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi."

 

The following day, President Obama went further. In a news conference at the Pentagon, he said it "defies logic" to think he'd pay ransom for hostages. The president also ridiculed media interest in the WSJ story, dismissing it as old news, while adding that the only fresh fact was that the payment to the mullahs was in cash. His critics, he sneered, were caught up in that detail as if it were part of "a spy novel."

 

On Aug. 18, however, Solomon and Lee produced another scoop: It turns out that Obama's smug denials notwithstanding, the hostage release and the cash payment were closely coordinated (the plane ferrying the cash, moreover, was linked to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). This revelation led to an exchange between reporters and State Department spokesman John Kirby that brought the administration's account more in line with reality:

 

Q: "In basic English, you are saying you wouldn't give [Iran] the 400 million in cash until the prisoners were released, correct?"

 

A: "That's correct," Kirby responded.

 

But there are broader questions about the Obama administration's Iran dealings than dissembling about the mechanics of hostage negotiations. They form a substantial part of Jay Solomon's painstakingly reported book, "The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East." It shows that the Obama administration's far-fetched denials of ransom payment are part and parcel of more fundamental problems.

 

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action -- the July 2015 Vienna agreement between Iran, on one side, and, on the other, the United States, the other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Germany, and the European Union -- was for the Obama administration, Solomon writes, "the most important initiative of its second term and the defining foreign policy legacy of Barack Obama's presidency."

 

Solomon stresses, "President Obama, from his first days in office, pursued an opening to Iran and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei with an obsessive commitment."

 

To win Ayatollah Khamenei's trust, Obama withheld support for the spontaneous democratic uprising against the corrupt June 2009 Iranian presidential election. The administration also deceived the public by undertaking secret negotiations with Iran and conducting outreach and talks "behind the backs of the Security Council and the United States' closest Middle East allies, including Israel and Saudi Arabia."

 

During negotiations - both those conducted openly and those done surreptitiously - Obama's diplomatic team, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, made numerous, significant, unreciprocated concessions. And to avoid antagonizing Khamenei, Obama decided that America should stand by and do practically nothing as Syria's president and Iranian client, Bashar al-Assad, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people, wounded more than a million others, and drove in excess of 12 million Syrians from their homes.

 

A Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent for nearly two decades, Solomon is an old-school reporter who regards his principal mission as getting the story right. On the basis of extensive and courageous reporting from the Middle East and assiduous coverage of the ebb and flow of power in Washington, he discloses the multiple dimensions-political, diplomatic, economic, military, and clandestine-of America's post-9/11 struggles with Iran. Although Obama was determined to correct what he regarded as George W. Bush's mistakes in the Middle East, the 44th president's policies resembled, in a crucial respect, the 43rd's: Both vied with, Solomon's book reveals, an adversary we didn't understand.

 

Obama thought he was replacing a foolish war with smart diplomacy. But a central question Solomon's book explores is whether that approach was effective. His scrupulous reporting will do much to corroborate the judgment of those who believe that, for the sake of Obama's supposedly crowning foreign policy achievement, the president paid much too high a price.

 

"Iran, under the deal, agreed to cap or reduce large parts of its nuclear infrastructure, including the number of centrifuges enriching uranium as well as its stockpile of fissile material, for at least a decade," Solomon writes. "It also agreed to enhance the ability of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to access and monitor Iran's nuclear sites to guard against Tehran secretly developing atomic weapons."

 

In exchange, the United States and its coalition "rolled back the crippling economic sanctions they had imposed on Iran over the past decade." But is Iran likely to honor the deal? Will the United States be able, as Obama promised, to snap back sanctions if Iran violates its obligations? Did the deal make the Middle East safer?

 

The evidence gathered by Solomon indicates that the answer to these questions is no.

 

Desperate to strike a deal to avoid the embarrassment of betraying the president's promise to employ military force to block Iran's path to a nuclear weapon, the administration acquiesced to a cascading series of Iranian demands. Instead of requiring the complete dismantlement of Iran's uranium enrichment facilities, the administration agreed to their reduction and regulation. Instead of banning the development of ballistic missiles, whose main purpose could only be the delivery of nuclear weapons, the administration permitted it. Instead of barring weapons trading, the administration allowed it.

 

These and other concessions have left Iran, should it cheat, approximately one year away from producing a nuclear weapon and, under the agreement, free to do so in 15 years.

 

They have also emboldened Iran's export of its Shia Islamic extremism throughout the region. The Islamic Republic has increased its arming and training of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. In addition, it agreed to Russia's direct military intervention in Syria on behalf of Assad. Last week, Russian long-range bombers for the first time used Iranian air bases to strike the Syrian opposition.

 

Furthermore, consenting to Iran's retention of a nuclear program infrastructure threatens to spark a regional nuclear arms race as America's Sunni Muslim allies conclude that they cannot count on the United States to defend their vital national security interests.

 

Solomon observes that "at the heart of Obama's philosophy was a sense that" his administration "had righted history" with the Iran deal. That's a messianic sense. From paying what bears an uncanny resemblance to ransom, to disregarding state sponsorship of terrorism and declining to confront epic state brutality, to triggering nuclear proliferation in the name of nonproliferation, what will a messianic sense not justify?