{"id":23395,"date":"2014-04-28T18:54:55","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T02:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=23395"},"modified":"2014-04-28T18:54:55","modified_gmt":"2014-04-29T02:54:55","slug":"president-obama-why-is-it-that-everybody-is-so-eager-to-use-military-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/28\/president-obama-why-is-it-that-everybody-is-so-eager-to-use-military-force\/","title":{"rendered":"President Obama: ‘Why Is It That Everybody Is So Eager To Use Military Force?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is an excerpt from President Obama’s joint press conference<\/a> today with Philippine President Benigno Acquino:<\/p>\n

Typically, criticism of our foreign policy has been directed at the failure to use military force.\u00a0 And the question I think I would have is, why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force after we\u2019ve just gone through a decade of war at enormous costs to our troops and to our budget?\u00a0 And what is it exactly that these critics think would have been accomplished?<\/p>\n

My job as Commander-in-Chief is to deploy military force as a last resort, and to deploy it wisely.\u00a0 And, frankly, most of the foreign policy commentators that have questioned our policies would go headlong into a bunch of military adventures that the American people had no interest in participating in and would not advance our core security interests.<\/p>\n

So if you look at Syria, for example, our interest is in helping the Syrian people, but nobody suggests that us being involved in a land war in Syria would necessarily accomplish this goal.\u00a0 And I would note that those who criticize our foreign policy with respect to Syria, they themselves say, no, no, no, we don\u2019t mean sending in troops.\u00a0 Well, what do you mean?\u00a0 Well, you should be assisting the opposition — well, we\u2019re assisting the opposition.\u00a0 What else do you mean?\u00a0 Well, perhaps you should have taken a strike in Syria to get chemical weapons out of Syria.\u00a0 Well, it turns out we\u2019re getting chemical weapons out of Syria without having initiated a strike.\u00a0 So what else are you talking about?\u00a0 And at that point it kind of trails off.<\/p>\n

In Ukraine, what we\u2019ve done is mobilize the international community.\u00a0 Russia has never been more isolated.\u00a0 A country that used to be clearly in its orbit now is looking much more towards Europe and the West, because they\u2019ve seen that the arrangements that have existed for the last 20 years weren\u2019t working for them.\u00a0 And Russia is having to engage in activities that have been rejected uniformly around the world.\u00a0 And we\u2019ve been able to mobilize the international community to not only put diplomatic pressure on Russia, but also we\u2019ve been able to organize European countries who many were skeptical would do anything to work with us in applying sanctions to Russia.\u00a0 Well, what else should we be doing?\u00a0 Well, we shouldn\u2019t be putting troops in, the critics will say.\u00a0 That\u2019s not what we mean.\u00a0 Well, okay, what are you saying?\u00a0 Well, we should be arming the Ukrainians more.\u00a0 Do people actually think that somehow us sending some additional arms into Ukraine could potentially deter the Russian army?\u00a0 Or are we more likely to deter them by applying the sort of international pressure, diplomatic pressure and economic pressure that we\u2019re applying?<\/p>\n

The point is that for some reason many who were proponents of what I consider to be a disastrous decision to go into Iraq haven\u2019t really learned the lesson of the last decade, and they keep on just playing the same note over and over again.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 But my job as Commander-in-Chief is to look at what is it that is going to advance our security interests over the long term, to keep our military in reserve for where we absolutely need it.\u00a0 There are going to be times where there are disasters and difficulties and challenges all around the world, and not all of those are going to be immediately solvable by us.<\/p>\n

But we can continue to speak out clearly about what we believe.\u00a0 Where we can make a difference using all the tools we\u2019ve got in the toolkit, well, we should do so.\u00a0 And if there are occasions where targeted, clear actions can be taken that would make a difference, then we should take them.\u00a0 We don’t do them because somebody sitting in an office in Washington or New York think it would look strong.\u00a0 That’s not how we make foreign policy.\u00a0 And if you look at the results of what we’ve done over the last five years, it is fair to say that our alliances are stronger, our partnerships are stronger, and in the Asia Pacific region, just to take one example, we are much better positioned to work with the peoples here on a whole range of issues of mutual interest.<\/p>\n

And that may not always be sexy.\u00a0 That may not always attract a lot of attention, and it doesn\u2019t make for good argument on Sunday morning shows.\u00a0 But it avoids errors.\u00a0 You hit singles, you hit doubles; every once in a while we may be able to hit a home run.\u00a0 But we steadily advance the interests of the American people and our partnership with folks around the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Uncharacteristically, I’m at a loss for words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is an excerpt from President Obama’s joint press conference today with Philippine President Benigno Acquino: Typically, criticism of our foreign policy has been directed at the failure to use military force.\u00a0 And the question I think I would have is, why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force after we\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-23395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23396,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23395\/revisions\/23396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23395"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}