Obama Loses Nerve, Making Long War Worse

Long War: The Obama administration was given two choices when it comes to the conflict between North Sudan and South Sudan: it could support Ethiopia's plan to send thousands of troops to the border region and thus push North Sudan back or it could advise South Sudan to adopt a policy of appeasement.

Obama has chosen the second option, appeasement. North Sudan has already taken some territory from South Sudan and it is continuing a military build up in contested regions not yet seized. On US advice, the South is giving way to the aggressor, slowly retreating. As with any appeasement policy, the aggressor nation only gets hungrier when it is given new territory.

South Sudan is an embryonic democracy. By displaying a week-kneed posture, Obama is potentially snuffing out an ally and a new democratic state. And Obama is sidelining another ally, Ethiopia, by telling it not to interfere in the gathering conflict in Sudan.

Now consider the conflict in Yemen, it is entirely up to Saudi Arabia to prevent Al-Qaeda from taking over that country. The US is a total no-show in this conflict. We know that the CIA has drone capability in Yemen, this is a fact. Yet there have been no drone strikes in the towns Al-Qaeda has overrun. There is no drone activity even though Al-Qaeda is actually creating its own country in Yemen.

And what is Saudi Arabia doing? It looks as if Pres. Saleh is being sent back to Yemen after convalescing in Riyadh and the civil war will resume. The Saudis understand that any other path will hand Yemen directly to Al-Qaeda. Newsflash: The Saudis are not stupid. The US is advising Saudi Arabia not to return Saleh to Yemen as if by doing this wonderful peace-loving pro-democracy students will magically take over. By giving this advise the US is turning a blind eye to the very real problems brewing in Yemen, a short-sighted sop to voters here in America, a pathetic cry of: "Please, just make these problems go away."

Not only is every established hot spot in the Long War exploding, new ones are opening up. Israel just killed twenty unarmed Syrian protesters who were crossing into the Golan. Rage rebellion protesters moving into Israel is a new development. As this new problem grows the Arab world will be treated to the steady sight of unarmed Muslim protesters getting mowed down by the Israeli Army. This will bring the Arab world to an even higher boiling point. It is probably the reason why US soldiers are facing combat again in Iraq, something we haven't seen in a long time.

Obama is responding to the huge generalized Long War flare-up with an overarching appeasement policy. When he faces new problems or finds old ones getting worse, he pulls back, retreats. And when he pulls back the bad guys advance. This back stepping began when Obama ordered A-10 warthogs and AC-130 gunships out of Libya after two days of highly successful attack missions. If they had been allowed to keep fighting for another week, Gaddafi's army would have been shattered.

Obama has lost his nerve and regained it before. That needs to happen again. We will know one way or the other with the Afghan troop draw-down decision due in early July. If he allows a draw-down of only 5000 troops, then he is regaining his nerve.