The Amateur (24 page)
Authors: Edward Klein
Dubbed the Tarnoff Doctrine by the media, this policy suggested that the Clinton administration expected to withdraw America from many of its customary foreign leadership roles. Although that was not exactly what Tarnoff had in mind—he pointed out that the United States would continue to defend its national interests alone when
directly
challenged—his interview made a splash in several major newspapers. For instance, the
Los Angeles Times
reported: “President Clinton’s decision to defer to European views on Bosnia-Herzegovina reflects a deliberate shift in a new, post-Cold War model of American power: limited by economic problems, modest in style and rarely exercised unilaterally, a senior State Department official said Tuesday.”
directly
challenged—his interview made a splash in several major newspapers. For instance, the
Los Angeles Times
reported: “President Clinton’s decision to defer to European views on Bosnia-Herzegovina reflects a deliberate shift in a new, post-Cold War model of American power: limited by economic problems, modest in style and rarely exercised unilaterally, a senior State Department official said Tuesday.”
Such stories created an instant outcry from moderates and conservatives. The State Department’s public relations flack, Tom Donilon—the same Tom Donilon who would later replace Jim Jones as Obama’s national security adviser—tried to talk the
Washington Post
out of running a story on Tarnoff’s comments. When that didn’t work, Secretary of State Warren Christopher rushed to disavow Tarnoff’s statements and assuage the fears expressed by America’s allies around the world. But the damage had already been done; world leaders expected the United States to behave in a weaker fashion.
Washington Post
out of running a story on Tarnoff’s comments. When that didn’t work, Secretary of State Warren Christopher rushed to disavow Tarnoff’s statements and assuage the fears expressed by America’s allies around the world. But the damage had already been done; world leaders expected the United States to behave in a weaker fashion.
As things turned out, the ideas behind the Tarnoff Doctrine were commonplace among liberals in America’s leading universities and think tanks. “Their community is Barack Obama’s community,” Feith and Cropsey wrote in
Commentary
. “These are the people with whom he studied and with whom he worked as a faculty colleague. He drew heavily on his fellow progressive academics to fill top jobs in his administration, and it is evident they have helped shape his understanding of American history, his perception of international affairs, and his strategy for transforming America’s purpose and role in the world.”
Commentary
. “These are the people with whom he studied and with whom he worked as a faculty colleague. He drew heavily on his fellow progressive academics to fill top jobs in his administration, and it is evident they have helped shape his understanding of American history, his perception of international affairs, and his strategy for transforming America’s purpose and role in the world.”
When it came to foreign affairs, no one had a more profound influence on Barack Obama’s thinking than Samantha Power, who burst upon the foreign policy scene in 2003 with the publication of her book,
A Problem from Hell
, which indicted America and other democracies for being “bystanders to genocide.” A glamorous Harvard professor with a mane of lustrous red hair, Power hobnobbed with Hollywood stars and other liberal celebrities, and once posed in a teal gown and high heels for
Men’s Vogue,
which described her as a “Harvard brainiac who can boast both a Pulitzer Prize and a mean jump shot (ask George Clooney).”
A Problem from Hell
, which indicted America and other democracies for being “bystanders to genocide.” A glamorous Harvard professor with a mane of lustrous red hair, Power hobnobbed with Hollywood stars and other liberal celebrities, and once posed in a teal gown and high heels for
Men’s Vogue,
which described her as a “Harvard brainiac who can boast both a Pulitzer Prize and a mean jump shot (ask George Clooney).”
As an academic, Power had steered clear of politicians—that is, until she met Barack Obama in 2005, became smitten with him, and volunteered to work in his Senate office. It was an instant mind-meld, and Power became one of Obama’s closest foreign policy advisers. They enjoyed a special relationship and frequently texted via their BlackBerries. Power authored a memo titled “Conventional Washington versus the Change We Need,” in which she buttressed the foundations of the Obama Doctrine. “Barack Obama’s judgment is right,” she wrote. “The conventional wisdom is wrong. We need a new era of tough, principled and engaged American diplomacy to deal with 21st century challenges.”
In the midst of the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Power embarked on an international tour to promote her book,
Chasing the Flame
. She told a reporter from
The Scotsman
: “We fucked up in Ohio... and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only place they can win.... She is a monster, too—that’s off the record—she is stooping to anything.... If you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.”
Chasing the Flame
. She told a reporter from
The Scotsman
: “We fucked up in Ohio... and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only place they can win.... She is a monster, too—that’s off the record—she is stooping to anything.... If you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.”
Though Power quickly apologized for calling Hillary a monster, she was forced to cancel her book tour and resign from the Obama campaign. The neoconservative
Weekly Standard
noted: “It might have been the most ill-starred book tour since the invention of movable type.” But it was impossible to keep Power down, and when Obama won the White House, he made her a member of his transition team, then appointed her to the National Security Council, where she serves as special assistant to the president and runs the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights.
Weekly Standard
noted: “It might have been the most ill-starred book tour since the invention of movable type.” But it was impossible to keep Power down, and when Obama won the White House, he made her a member of his transition team, then appointed her to the National Security Council, where she serves as special assistant to the president and runs the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights.
“U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought,” Power argued. “It needs not tweaking but overhauling.... Instituting a doctrine of mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When [then German Chancellor Willy] Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto, his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany. Would such an approach be futile for the United States?”
Power’s answer to her own question was clear: she wanted Obama to get “down on one knee” and seek pardon for the sins of American foreign policy. But that alone, Power warned, would not be enough to undo the harm America had inflicted on the world, especially in the Middle East. In order to solve the problems of the Middle East, Obama had to disentangle the United States from Israel and not worry about the so-called Jewish Lobby.
“So much of [the debate over the Middle East] is about: ‘Is [Obama] going to be good for the Jews,’” she complained, apparently unaware that such a remark could be interpreted as anti-Semitic. Obama, she went on to say, had to be willing to “alienate a domestic [Jewish] constituency of tremendous political and financial import: it may more crucially mean sacrificing... billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the state of Palestine.... America’s important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon ... demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.”
Samantha Power’s history of America’s Middle East policy was a complete distortion, but her radical leftwing attitudes were reflected in Obama’s antagonism toward Israel.
In April 2009, when Barack Obama attended the G20 Summit in London and greeted the King of Saudi Arabia with a full bow from the waist, it was plain for all to see that Samantha’s Power’s ideas had prevailed over
Miss Manners
’ book of etiquette, which strongly advised Americans “not to bow or curtsy to a foreign monarch.” And when Obama went to Cairo two months later and addressed the Muslim world in a landmark speech, foreign-policy cognoscenti could detect the echoes of Samantha Power in the president’s words.
Miss Manners
’ book of etiquette, which strongly advised Americans “not to bow or curtsy to a foreign monarch.” And when Obama went to Cairo two months later and addressed the Muslim world in a landmark speech, foreign-policy cognoscenti could detect the echoes of Samantha Power in the president’s words.
“I’ve come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” Obama declared in Cairo. The poor relations between Americans and Muslims had little to do with the shockingly bad behavior of dictatorial Arab regimes and their obstinate refusal to recognize the right of Israel to exist, he said. Rather, the strains were the fault of Western “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims.” (He made no mention of the fact that the Ottoman Empire ruled the Arab world for 600 years—far longer and with a more detrimental effect than the West.)
Obama presented himself as a paragon of religious tolerance in contrast to the narrow-minded people “in my country [who] view Islam as inevitably hostile... to human rights.” (He made no mention of how existing policies in the Arab world discriminated against women.) The response by President George W. Bush to the September 11, 2001, attacks on America, he lamented, “led us to act contrary to our ideals.” No longer would America seek to impose its will on others, because “any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.”
“Barack Obama’s mention of ‘nearly seven million American Muslims’ in the course of his rambling and complex 6,000-word address to the Muslim world from Cairo symbolizes the whole message,” blogged Daniel Pipes, the respected editor of
Middle East Quarterly
. “Study after study has found that demographic figure about three times too high. But Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America relentlessly promote the notion of seven or even ten million American Muslims. Obama’s acceptance of their version amounts to a giveaway, a cheap way to win the approbation of Islamists who so widely influence Muslim opinion.
Middle East Quarterly
. “Study after study has found that demographic figure about three times too high. But Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America relentlessly promote the notion of seven or even ten million American Muslims. Obama’s acceptance of their version amounts to a giveaway, a cheap way to win the approbation of Islamists who so widely influence Muslim opinion.
“‘Giveaway,’ indeed, defines the whole speech—inexpensive nods, tips of the hat, and salutations to win Muslim favor without initiating new approaches or embarking on new policies,” Pipes continued. “The speech confirms Obama’s personal efforts ... as well as the established practice of American political leaders to promote Islam, tell Muslims what their religion really means, avoid references to radical Islam, and excoriate violent Islamism while accepting the non-violent variety.”
Obama was so anxious to curry favor with the Muslim community that his Justice Department prohibited the mention of “Islam” or “Islamic terror” in federal law enforcement training manuals. In addition, Obama instructed his advisers to remove the term “Islamic extremism” from the central document outlining America’s National Security Strategy. The change in approach was dramatized when Paul Stockton, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Security Affairs, appeared before a joint Senate/House Homeland Security hearing. He was asked by Representative Dan Lungren, a former attorney general of California, about the source of the threat to America and its troops. The exchange went as follows:
Representative Daniel Lungren (R-CA):
Secretary Stockton, are we at war with violent Islamist extremism?Mr. Stockton:
No, sir. We are at war with al Qaeda, its affiliates.Rep. Lungren:
Okay, I understand that. My question is, is violent Islamist extremism at war with us?Mr. Stockton:
No, sir. We are being attacked by al Qaeda and its allies.Rep. Lungren:
Is al Qaeda—can it be described as being an exponent of violent Islamist extremism?Mr. Stockton:
They—al Qaeda are murderers with an ideological agenda.Rep. Lungren:
No, I—that’s not my question. That wasn’t my question. My question was, is al Qaeda acting out violent Islamist extremism?Mr. Stockton:
Al Qaeda is a violent organization dedicated to overthrowing the values that we intend to advance.Rep. Lungren:
So is it yes or no?Mr. Stockton:
Can I hear the question again? I’ll make it as clear as I can. We are not at war with Islam. And it is not—Rep. Lungren:
I didn’t ask that—I did not ask that, sir. I asked whether we’re at war with violent Islamist extremism. That’s my question.Mr. Stockton:
No, we’re at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates.
CHAPTER 19
THE RISE OF THE HUMANITARIAN VULCANS
Leading from behind.... That’s not a slogan
designed for signs at the 2012 Democratic
Convention, but it does accurately describe the bal-
ance that Obama now seems to be finding.
It’s a different definition of leadership than America
is known for, and it comes from two unspoken
beliefs: that the relative power of the U.S. is
declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the
U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world.
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