It would be amusing — if it weren’t so alarming — to hear Republican presidential aspirants take shots at the Middle East maelstrom under President Obama’s watch, as if any of them has suggested a single sane strategy themselves that would actually cool the fires and make America more secure.
Ted Cruz, announcing his candidacy: “Imagine a president who says, ‘We will stand up and defeat radical Islamic terrorism.’ “
Rand Paul, announcing his: “We … need a foreign policy that protects American interests and encourages stability, not chaos.”
Marco Rubio, who jumped in on April 13, has actually criticized Obama because he hasn’t committed American boots on the ground (oh, great!).
And let’s throw Jeb Bush into the pile, simply to offer a fuller ideological spectrum of the GOP: “The administration indulges our enemies and attacks our friends.”
But there’s a difference between an assault and a solution. The question is, What in tarnation would any of these guys do differently?
No, the world is not a peaceful place. And no, the United States can’t just wave a magic wand and change the course of history. If we’ve learned nothing else in the last few decades, we should have learned that everyone doesn’t dote on democracy like we do, and everyone doesn’t prize peace. And that America’s unparalleled power is still not invincible. And that in some restive regions, there is nothing — nothing — the U.S. can offer that our adversaries want. And almost nothing rational that we can do to stop them. We no longer live in a one-size-fits-all world (if we ever did).
Take Iran. Obama’s critics, who include every GOP presidential hopeful, all have uttered the same knee-jerk rhetoric. Cruz: “Under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon.” Paul: “I will oppose any deal that does not end Iran’s nuclear ambitions.” Would Rubio revoke a deal? “Yes.” And again, for good measure, Jeb Bush, saying the potential agreement “may well allow Iran to intimidate the entire Middle East, and … threaten America.”
But none of these guys, nor other potential candidates, offers a tenable alternative. Rather than embrace the only agreement on the table, which at least requires more modest enrichment and fewer centrifuges and more inspectors on the ground, they would opt for no agreement, no dialogue, no visibility, no inspectors, no limits. This is how they propose to make us safer.
And the rest of the Middle East? It’s far too complex to clarify in a hundred words, but suffice to say, in the wake of Afghanistan and Iraq, the costs are too high to jump in with both feet. And the stakes, in terms of both security and diplomacy, are too high to just walk away. We’re now trying to let the regional powers bear the brunt of the beating to rectify their own problems, with our assistance only in the background. Isn’t that what everyone’s been clamoring for?
True, whether due to indecision, naiveté, or incompetence, Obama sometimes has stumbled, most blatantly with Syria. But that’s not why the Middle East is the mess it is. If we want to go back to the source of today’s troubles, we need only look at how, because of poor management and poorer foresight, Iraq fell apart after the U.S. invasion a dozen years ago, which ultimately opened the door to the Islamic State and other neo-extremists. But the point isn’t to rewrite history; it is to rewrite the future. So far, no one with an eye on the White House knows how.
Say what you will, Hillary Cinton is the only one in the race who has seen how the world works and how the U.S. can work within it.
Greg Dobbs of Evergreen was a correspondent for ABC News for 23 years, then for HDNet television’s “World Report.”
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