Posted on 01/27/2013 5:22:31 PM PST by kristinn
Last week on Meet the Press, it was NBC News' Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel slamming the Obama administration's "diminished",foreign policy influence around the globe.
Today on Meet the Press, two veteran Washington newsmen, The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and former ABC, now NBC News correspondent Ted Koppel, matter of factly described the present foreign policy environment as being in "meltdown" and entering "one of the most dangerous" periods in U.S. history. Their remarks were made without directly blaming President Barack Obama and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but they were made in response to a question pointing out Obama's neglect of foreign policy in his second inaugural address last Monday.
Host David Gregory opened the segment with a clip of Clinton's 'what difference does it make' outburst at the Senate Benghazi hearing last week. Gregory went on to ask Koppel:
(Transcription by Kristinn Taylor)
"Wider than just the Benghazi investigation and the questions are about a region that's in ferment, in revolution in certain parts where there are a lot of threats facing the United States. And it's not getting a lot of attention thus far from the administration, certainly from the president's inaugural address. And there are real fears in the region that Iran particularly is gonna be on the edge of causing problems for the United States."
Koppel: "I think David as I suggested before that we're entering one of the most dangerous periods this country has ever known. A--it's not over in Afghanistan. B--to the degree that al Qaeda has moved over in to Pakistan. That's a country that has over a hundred nuclear weapons. Syria which is an ongoing problem. The suggestion constantly seems to be that we need to come in on the side of the rebels. There are at least a thousand al Qaeda members in Syria today fighting on the side of the rebels. If the chemical weapons fall in to their hands, big problems. You mentioned Iran. Remember now, it may even have been on this program I think that Bibi Netanyahu the Israeli prime minister suggested that come Spring come early Summer if the Iranians still have not pulled back from building a nuclear weapon the Israelis may attack. The Iranians would respond against the United States and they have the capacity to do it with cyber war."
Woodward: "I think it's even bigger and more troubling than that. It isn't just the Middle East and that region. Look at North Korea announcing that they are gonna target the United States. They have nuclear weapons--unlike Iran at this point. You look at what happened in Algeria and Mali. The Egypt problem is not solved.
"I actually had one the experts tell me recently that the next book I ought to do is this whole sweep of foreign policy and the working title of the book would be, "Meltdown"."
Gregory turns to Andrea Mitchell to save Hillary Clinton's reputation as if this "meltdown" hasn't happened on her watch.
Gregory: "And Andrea I want you to respond to something. Hillary Clinton, when she was not talking about Benghazi, issued a warning for her successor. Which I gather she also wanted to make sure was heard inside the White House when she talked about the region in this case, North Africa, the al Qaeda presence, bigger than Benghazi. This is what she said."
Clinton: "Let me underscore the importance of the United States continuing to lead in the Middle East, in North Africa and around the world. When America is absent, especially from unstable environments, there are consequences. Extremism takes root, our interests suffer our security at home is threatened."
Mitchell: "I think she is trying to warn the administration and the world that we cannot retreat from this engagement here. And right now over night we've seen that the US is doing refueling of French fighters in Mali which is very troublesome to some it is a much more aggressive posture. But, the UK has taken all of their nationals out of Somalia overnight. This area of North Africa, as Bob and Ted were just saying is the most dangerous perhaps in the world aside from Pakistan and Afghanistan which are nuclear armed against each other--and oh, Pakistan and India are nuclear armed against each other. And what's happening in Afghanistan as we retreat and the effect on that, and North Korea. So they have to really not just look at immigration and guns and the budget as the next challenges."
Also on the panel were the Heritage Foundation's Jim Demint and the NAACP's Ben Jealous. They were brought in to the conversation at this point. Click this link to view the entire Meet the Press panel discussion segment titled "Panel recaps turmoil in the Middle East."
Let history record that, as he stumbled across the world stage, Barack Obama did more to enable Islam and disable America than any other despot since the founding of our nation.
I predict Obama will not be reelected.
Not at all, I'm sure ...
... a terrible FATE, maybe.
bump
Good for you.
And how was Jersey Boys? I’m dying to see it, but no one will go with me.
These problems have been obvious for a long time. Too bad it’s all Bush’s fault. /s
Democracies are successful in cultures that not mixed racially, such as Japan, or where there is a history of democratic government.
The middle east will never have a successful democracy.
“And, it is their lord and savior that has made it more perilous by creating dangerous, Islamist regimes.”
Maybe if these shams had outed the worthless bastard when he first reared his ugly head, they wouldn’t have to be making such morose statements. Stupid is as stupid does.
Democracies are successful in cultures that not mixed racially, such as Japan, or where there is a history of democratic government.
The middle east will never see a successful democracy outside of Israel.
The middle east will never have a successful democracy.
***Israel is a successful democracy.
It is Mears, but not to the uneducated, low info idiot voters! To them, it means everything.
Sweetness!!!
Look, the Prince and Princess of America have destabilized the Middle East and North Africa while the Perfumed Princes at the Pentagon did their best shuffle answering yassiree to every idiotic order and suggestion by CIC Rambama. Lots more Americans will die because of the disaster that these dipshits have wrought.
I think this means the brain dead Nobel Committee will be giving Hillary the Peace Prize...
the “Nobel Committee will be giving Hillary the Nobel Peace
Prize”-——
as was the case with Obama, he was given the Prize because of his presumed “good intentions”, not because of anything he even had a workable plan to do—the skewed logic behind it was the self-congratulatory conceit of the Committee as being able to award a prophetic “Leader” that only they had to foresight to identify. With Hillary, if she gets the Prize, it will be because they’ve started to identify failure with success:exactly as with ALL of Obama’s domestic policies, the demonstrable failure can be seen in virtually ALL the statistics of an increasingly hopeless economy, which only goes to PROVE, in their eyes, that it was that way all along, before they had the enormous task of setting it on the right course. This Administration will NEVER take ownership of ANYTHING they’ve created, because NONE of it is working or helping anybody: that, in a nutshell, is what was behind their four year mantra of “It’s Bush’s fault”.
What a joyous evening that must have been! I am happy for you and so glad that you got to say something like that to that freakish lizard faced has been.
Woodward / Compost bump for later....
Is David Gregory implying that as a result of the Arab Spring, they are starting to brew up alcohol?
Maybe if they start drinking, it will calm them down a little bit. At least being buzzed, sobering up, sleeping it off and nursing a hangover will use up a lot of that spare time they seem to have on their hands.
Or am I reading too much into this?
Actually he's not pulling foreign policy out of his back pocket, but he is pulling it out of somewhere that is very close to his back pocket.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.