What Obama Says Is His 'Worst Mistake' as President

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

In his final year in office, President Obama has spent a significant amount of time emphasizing what he sees as his long list of accomplishments since 2008, but in an interview today he also admitted what he considers to be his "worst mistake."

"Probably failing to plan for, the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya," Obama said an interview with "Fox News Sunday."
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"That's a lesson I now apply when we're asked to intervene militarily. Do we have a plan for the day after?" Obama said in an interview with the BBC that aired two weeks ago.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-worst-mistake-president/story?id=38289813

Just my opinion...

The problem as I see it is that if you bomb a country under poor conditions removing some dictator, the new guy in charge will be representing a people with a huge chip on their shoulders. Any sort of half-way peaceful potential leader is going to be taken out in competition against the ruthless dictator types in that environment with that support. More peaceful leaders will come out of democracies than out of war-torn unstable dictatorships where you've bombed the people because those potential "good" candidates will be blocked.

A rather big exception to this rule is when the intervening countries occupy and "unbrainwash" the people for decades which costs millions of lives, involves hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground, trillions of dollars, and decades of work. Somewhere in there you've also got to claim a moral high ground. If the people are constantly exposed to the immorality of your choices and the morality of other choices, the occupation will be rejected.

These are the reasons why propping up dictators is easy but creating a moderately peaceful, pro-US government is a difficult, expensive path. There are other ways to handle the problem as well, but the short-sighted and the corrupt will continue to tackle the world's problems with the same old tools.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think this is simply one of a class. He refuses to recognize the organized threat the Islamists pose. I don't mind his treating their terrorism as simply criminal behavior to deny them their message but when it comes to planning you can't do that.

 

[TV and credit cards]

The Atlantic has a very good piece that covers this and more if you'd like to read it.
The Obama Doctrine

 

[untermensche]

How about the next time you are asked to intervene somewhere you say "no".