Obama’s Foreign Policy Taking Friendly Fire

The criticism of President Obama’s handling of foreign policy in the Middle East has been sharp and sustained and it’s mostly from friends who served the President when critical decisions were being made (or not made).

The critique is mostly:

• President Obama’s primary goal was to undo the “Bush mistakes,” which translated to getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan. There was never a strategy related to what’s next in the Middle East; hence, the vacuum that has been largely filled by bad actors and tragic events.
• The White House controlled foreign policy decision-making with a group of political operatives using domestic political criteria largely related to the November 2012 re-election.
• President Obama and his team were often not engaged and mostly inclined to cite the risks, not the objectives.

Sample of criticism: