The Dangers of Passive Power
Posted on June 13, 2014
Even before Richard Nixon resigned after Watergate, Congress had grown weary of the Vietnam War. Shortly after he was reelected in November of 1973, Congress passed the Case-Church Amendment by veto proof majorities, which severely limited further military activity in South East Asia.
After Nixon resigned and especially after the Democrats had huge victories in the election of 1974, America basically threw in the towel on the Vietnam conflict. As a result, about a million of our former allies in South Vietnam were murdered by the Communists in the North.
The American people had spoken and their political leaders reacted. And as a result, a genocide ensued, not only in Vietnam, but also in neighboring Cambodia.
Had America pulled out too quickly after the conclusion of World War II, the same thing would have happened in Germany and in Japan.
President Obama either didn’t quite know this history or doesn’t care.
To him, the people have spoken. And he had a mission to get us out of Iraq.
And he pulled us out of there so quickly, we now have a very dangerous situation, one that will impact not only the people of Iraq and Syria, but also the pocketbooks of every American. Don't think that this instability won't have a dramatic impact on gas prices.
There is a civil war going on in the Middle East between the Sunni and the Shia. It’s been going on in Iraq, in Syria, to a certain extent in Libya.
And now it has reached the boiling point.
The headlines have said that this ISIS group is a bunch of terrorists and that it is affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Seems to me that terrorists don’t have the ability to seize cities and beat opposing armies in pitched battle.
Seems to me that these terrorists are actually an army of religious extremists who are fighting for their religious beliefs and actually fighting pretty well.
That’s what happens when you have instability, a power vacuum and simmering tribalism that never quite calms down.
President Obama is reluctant to re-engage in Iraq. Pulling out of that conflict was one of his signature achievements, kind of like Obamacare. And kind of like Obamacare, it is blowing up in his face.
I can appreciate how the President doesn’t want to wade into a Muslim civil war, but surely, counting on the Iranians to provide the muscle to stop ISIS is the wrong approach.
Mr. Obama, like Congressional Democrats in 1975, is showing the inherent weakness of a passive foreign policy. When we aren’t engaged, the rest of the world reverts to chaos.