In order to elicit from him a satisfactory rationale for the manner in which his administration has formulated and implemented foreign policy on any number of key issues, Blum's hypothetical journalist--presumably one who was certain he/she no longer wanted the White House 'beat' or [was] on the verge of retirement--would ask the following, the questions themselves representing only a few Blum posited:
1. Which is most important to you--destroying ISIS, overthrowing Syrian president Assad, or scoring points against Russia?2. Why does the United States maintain crippling financial sanctions and a ban on military aid to Syria, Cuba, Iran and other countries but not to Saudi Arabia?
3. Does it concern you that Turkey appears to be more intent upon attacking the Kurds and the Russians than attacking ISIS?
4. Does the fact that ISIS never attacks Israel raise any question in your mind?
5. Does the United States plan on releasing any of its alleged evidence to back up its repeated claims of Syrian bombing and chemical warfare against the Syrian people?
6. Does the United States plan on releasing any of its alleged evidence to back up its repeated claims of Russian invasions of Ukraine in the past year?
7. Do the numerous connections between the Ukrainian government and neo-Nazis have any effect upon America's support of Ukraine?
8. Would you prefer that Russia played no military role at all in Syria?
I expect any one of us could readily think of any number of additional, similarly pointed questions we might ask the president in either the foreign- or domestic-policy spheres that would accentuate those anomalies. I know I could, but space herein limits such an exercise. And there is of course such a thing as overkill. Although apparently not in the gratuitous vilification of Vladimir Putin, the continued embrace of regime change as a key foreign-policy instrument, or the indiscriminate and counterproductive use of drones ostensibly to battle terrorism, to name a few areas where "overkill" might apply.
The More things Change
If Obama promised change, then as already hinted at, his first-term tenure alone appeared to underscore the hoary old platitude that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Whether he instinctively knew that was how it was going to play out before he was elected may for some be open to debate, but it is now very difficult to escape the view he did.
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