Jihadists, Other Foes Learn That Obama's America Is A Paper Tiger

[Geee]

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We all run across the pill bug in our gardens. At the first sign of danger, the tiny paranoid crustacean suddenly turns into a ball — in hopes danger will have passed when he unrolls.

 

That roly-poly bug can serve as a fair symbol of present-day U.S. foreign policy, especially in our understandable weariness over Iraq, Afghanistan and the current scandals that are overwhelming the Obama administration.

 

On Aug. 4, U.S. embassies across the Middle East simply closed based on intelligence reports of planned al-Qaida violence. The shutdown of 21 diplomatic facilities was the most extensive in recent American history.

 

Yet we still have over a month to go before the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, an iconic date for radical Islamists.

 

Such preemptive measures are no doubt sober and judicious. Yet if we shut our entire Mideast public profile on the threat of terrorism, what will we do when more anti-American violence arises? Should we close more embassies for more days, or return home altogether?

[Draggingtree]

How al-Qaeda Succeeded Last Week

Even the threat of terror attacks was enough to shut down U.S. embassies---and reveal a fearful Washington.

 

By Philip Giraldi • August 14, 2013

Terrorism is essentially a force multiplier, enabling a weaker insurgent to exhaust much stronger government forces hamstrung by needing to provide comprehensive security for a civilian population against an elusive enemy capable of striking anywhere. The terrorists know they cannot win on the battlefield so they instead seek to make the conflict so expensive and damaging that their opponent collapses under the strain. Osama bin Laden clearly understood that principle and more than once alluded to his desire to see the United States impoverish itself and squander its resources in its struggle to defeat him.

 

Washington’s overly muscular response to 9/11 has included two major wars in Asia in which 6,749 Americans and more than a hundred thousand locals have died. Lesser conflicts span the globe, including the Philippines, Yemen, and Uganda while predator drones regularly carry out missions in Pakistan and Somalia.

 

The U.S. intelligence community regarded the threat as “credible and specific” enough not to ignore. But the decision to close the embassies was purely political in that a risk-averse White House did not want to revisit a Benghazi type situation where an unfortunate incident would be carefully dissected by the Republicans to obtain political advantage. Indeed, in this case, Republican spokesmen strongly and uncharacteristically endorsed the move by the president.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-al-qaeda-succeeded-last-week/