Obama Administration

Ten years on, the rulers in Damascus sleep easily once again. Without incurring any great punishment from the outside world for their ghastly crimes, the crisis has left Assad and his henchmen emboldened.

In “The Education of an Idealist,” Samantha Power comes across as a compassionate person with generous impulses. These attributes cannot by themselves determine policy on the question of humanitarian interventions.

As we continue to sift through the shrapnel of President Donald Trump’s decision to pull US troops out of Syria and green-light Turkey’s long-planned operations against Syria’s Kurds and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria, we need to keep in mind that what transpired in October represents only the short-term consequences.

HBO’s The Final Year traverses the globe, from Africa to the Arctic, Havana to Hanoi, but it is in Syria where the cockfight personified by Samantha Power and Ben Rhodes climaxes. Indeed, President Obama claims that “on no other issue was there such a split” between them.

As we assess Trump’s early foreign policy moves and first international tour, it helps to look back upon Obama’s. Here, then, are passages from A Perilous Path.

It is past time to take North Korean crimes against humanity and the North Korean military threat very seriously.

It is said that victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. In the case of NATO’s military intervention in Libya six years ago, both sides of the adage seem to apply.

I believe Obama’s motives in trying to close Gitmo were to improve America’s image abroad. It’s sad that, even after eight years in office, he never gave those who opposed the closure of Gitmo the same benefit of the doubt.

Despite his flowery promises about “hope and change,” Obama entered office embodying the most ambivalent view of American power since the end of the Vietnam War.