How Is The Yemen Strategy Working Out ?

Bret Stephens: What Obama Knows - WSJ:

We were endlessly schooled on the idiocy of W and on the brilliance of BO, but this article points out a few concrete examples of where the BO pronouncements are dead wrong when compared to reality -- something that our media is not very interested in pointing out. The list covers Asia, South America and a few others, but I'll include the "Yemen Strategy" since it was used again recently as an example of how he would manage policy against ISIS.

The following is from his address to the nation on how he intends to proceed against ISIS ( I do not recognize their claim to the Levant as he seems to want to, so it is ISIS):

Now, it will take time to eradicate a cancer like ISIL.  And any time we take military action, there are risks involved –- especially to the servicemen and women who carry out these missions.  But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.  This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground.  This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.  And it is consistent with the approach I outlined earlier this year:  to use force against anyone who threatens America’s core interests, but to mobilize partners wherever possible to address broader challenges to international order. 

So how is that strategy working in Yemen? The following is from the linked article:

Now turn to Yemen. In 2012, after the Arab Spring, the president singled out Yemen as a model for a prospective political transition in Syria. Mr. Obama was at it again just two weeks ago, citing the fight against al Qaeda in Yemen as the model for the war he intends to wage against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Whoops. "Over the weekend," noted McClatchy's Adam Baron on Monday, "the growing gap between administration rhetoric and reality came to a head, as the acerbically anti-American Houthi rebels—who American diplomats allege have close financial and military ties with Iran—took control of many areas of the capital, Sanaa, with minimal resistance from the U.S.-supplied Yemeni armed forces."

As even Leon Panetta acknowledged on the 60 Minutes interview this last weekend, what W handed over to BO was a stable Iraq -- and BO blew it. Contrast the credulous media treatment of BO's constantly incorrect assessments with the fact that W doggedly worked through the problems in Iraq against howling from all sides to "cut and run" to succeed and hand over a stable Iraq to the incoming BO, and it would seem to be enough to get people to look at reality relative to W in somewhat the same way as the fall of the Berlin Wall forced many to re-assess Reagan.

But not quite yet I guess. It is going to take more significant real events for many to wake up and smell the true scent of BO!


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