The High Costs of Presidential Incompetence

Last January President Obama called ISIS a “JV” terrorist group.  Months later after it metastasized into a terrorist army, Mr. Obama said he did not have a plan to deal with it.

The strategy Mr. Obama finally announced last month to degrade and destroy ISIS has proved to be weak and ineffective.  ISIS has made gains on the ground in Kurdish areas over the last few weeks and is now threatening Baghdad.  This outcome was predictable: we know from history that a war can’t be won with airpower alone.  The paltry number of U.S. airstrikes against ISIS targets has no chance of proving otherwise.

Now we have the Obama administration’s mishandling of the ebola outbreak.  The president appears to view this issue as a dire threat to his presidency since contrary to his habit of ignoring crises by playing golf and attending glitzy political fundraisers, he actually cancelled fundraising trips to deal with it.  The disorganized response by U.S. government agencies that allowed ebola infections to occur in the United States and the president’s refusal to ban flights from West Africa has led to a major scandal.

While I support Mr. Obama’s decision to send U.S. troops to ebola stricken areas to fight the disease, this is not a burden the United States should be bearing alone.  Where is the UN?  Why did the United States not push for a UN resolution directing all states – including Russia and China – to send troops, doctors and other medial and support personnel to West Africa?

Meanwhile, Secretary John Kerry is putting the finishing touches on a nuclear agreement with Tehran that looks to be a complete sellout by the West and will do nothing to stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.  This agreement is likely to be so bad that it may ensure a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and Israeli airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

The foreign policy incompetence of the Obama administration was been evident since Mr. Obama’s first year in office after he went on an “apology tour” and reluctantly condemned the Iranian regime’s bloody crackdown against demonstrators protesting the fraudulent reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Only now are we seeing the high costs of this incompetence for America and the world, costs that I fear will grow worse in the final months of Mr. Obama’s presidency.

UPDATE: Last Friday, the White House announced President Obama had named Ron Klain, a Democratic political operative, to be the “Ebola czar.”   Klain, an attorney who served as chief of staff to Vice President Gore and Vice President Biden, has no experience working in the health care field.  Was there no Democrat who worked in the Department of Health and Human Services or the Surgeon General’s office available for this post?  Why was a Democratic doctor or health care expert not chosen for this important job?

The answer to these questions is simple: Klain will be an Ebola “Spin Czar.” His job will be “messaging.” This means Klain was not named to help combat this disease but to stop the political damage it is inflicting on the Obama presidency and to Democrats across the country.

By naming a political hack as Ebola Czar to spin this crisis away, President Obama’s craven incompetence has sunk to a new low.