Smart Power

Jim Geraghty has an excellent column at National Review on the hubris of Democrat administrations of the last thirty years and their utter failure to understand the world as it is.

You really should click on the link and read the whole thing, but in case you don't here are a few excerpts:

As the U.S. mission in Afghanistan ends in disaster and the Taliban returns to rule with wanton and widespread cruelty again, it is time to once and for all cast away the notion that the Democrats are the party of “smart power” abroad.

Every four years, a Democratic presidential candidate pops up and reminds us that he — or, one cycle, she — represents the smart party when it comes to foreign policy. These Democrats boast that they’re not isolationist, like Donald Trump, and they’re not unilateralist cowboys, like George W. Bush. They, and their top advisers, assure us that they are right, tough, smart, nuanced, and sophisticated.

And every four years, the U.S. foreign-policy establishment — think-tank wonks, retired diplomats, columnists and authors, certain retired generals — almost uniformly swoons at these Democratic presidential candidates’ keen grasp of a complicated and dangerous world. And these top Democrats are not shy about telling us how they understand the world better than anyone else does.

Sadly, too many Americans trust them.

"But something odd happens," Geraghty writes, "whenever the self-identified 'smart' Democratic foreign-policy thinkers come to power. Somehow, randomly — through no fault of their own, they insist — disaster strikes."

As its eight years came to a close, the Clinton administration assured Americans that it had “defined a new security agenda that addresses contemporary threats.” There was no mention of that once-obscure extremist who steadily and gradually expanded his power until he commanded a worldwide army of Islamist terrorists, probing for holes and weak spots in America’s open society — detonating truck bombs in New York City, leveling embassies, blowing up U.S. Navy ships.

Clinton’s decision-making on Osama bin Laden was so sterling that Sandy Berger was left stuffing official documents in his socks at the archives.

In Syria, the self-identified “smart” Democratic foreign-policy thinkers declared a foreign-policy “red line” about the use of chemical weapons . . . and then stood and watched as Assad gassed his own people. The Syrian civil war killed so many people that the world couldn’t get a reliable estimate, and waves of refugees poured into Europe, destabilizing European politics.

Bashar al-Assad said he got rid of his chemical weapons, and the Obama team chose to believe him.

The self-identified “smart” Democratic foreign-policy thinkers offered Russia a “reset,” convinced that the Putin regime would come around now that the dreaded cowboy unilateralists were gone. Nearly two terms later, Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, was left appealing to the consciences of Vladimir Putin and the Russian government.

“Are you truly incapable of shame? Is there literally nothing that can shame you? Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that gets under your skin?” The answer is no, and that answer was clear long before 2016.

The self-identified “smart” Democratic foreign-policy thinkers insisted they had safely withdrawn from Iraq, and dismissed this group called ISIS as just the “jayvee team,” and then watched as the “jayvee team” created the Islamic State in the empty vacuum and set about committing genocide and launching and inspiring terrorist attacks all around the world.

The self-identified “smart” Democratic foreign-policy thinkers patted themselves on the back for “leading from behind” in Libya and then watched as American diplomats and security personnel got killed while begging for assistance in Benghazi. The U.S. has not had a significant diplomatic presence in Libya since 2014.

Russia rolled into Crimea, but the self-identified “smart” Democratic foreign-policy thinkers didn’t really do much. Russian forces shot down a civilian passenger airliner over Ukraine, but the self-identified “smart” Democratic foreign-policy thinkers dithered until the world’s anger faded. China repeatedly violated its treaty agreements, but the Obama administration believed Chinese promises to honor its commitments in the future.

Iran seized ten U.S. sailors in international waters, paraded images of their capture on state-run television, and the Obama administration thanked the regime for releasing them.

Iran built secret nuclear facilities, but the self-identified “smart” Democratic foreign-policy thinkers didn’t really do much. The self-identified “smart” Democratic foreign-policy thinkers pledged that the U.S. would never accept North Korea as a nuclear state . . . after North Korea tested nuclear weapons. The self-identified “smart” Democratic foreign-policy thinkers seem to think that the primary obstacle to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is that past American presidents just haven’t tried hard enough.

Every four years, the message is the same: Trust us, we’re the ones who know what we’re doing.

And yet, the oddest thing happens — the Democratic foreign-policy establishment gets in power, and a short while later, so many things go wrong.

One month ago, the president of the United States stood before this country and assured Americans that, “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” “I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more competent in terms of conducting war.” “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

Of course, all of what Mr. Biden assured us would not happen has happened over the last few days, and as if to underscore Geraghty's point Nancy Pelosi declared that the Taliban better be careful about how they treat women because world opinion will censure them if they're not. What planet is she living on? Does she really think that these brutes care about what a bunch of effete Westerners say about them at their soirees?

And the same people who have brought us this profoundly shameful debacle in Afghanistan now want us to trust them when they tell us that passing a $4 trillion spending bill will be great for the country. No thanks.