Strategy and Foreign Policy

This is how Frank Bruni ended his Saturday op-ed in The New York Times [emphasis in the original]:

I felt sick. For a few hours, even a few days, I’d like to focus on the pain of Parisians and how that magnificent city reclaims any sense of order, any semblance of safety. I’d like not to wonder if Hillary Clinton’s odds of election just ticked upward or downward or if Donald Trump’s chest-thumping bluster suddenly became more seductive.

I’d like not to be told, fewer than 18 hours after the shots rang out, how they demonstrate that Americans must crack down on illegal immigration to our own country. I read that and was galled, and not because of my feelings about immigration, but because of my feelings about the automatic, indiscriminate politicization of tragedy.

The Paris atrocity inflicted by Islamic terrorists (Daesh is claiming responsibility) is but one battle in the long war against terrorists. Yet, in Bruni’s mind, we’re not supposed to assess the inputs to the battle, its outcome, or corrective actions to be taken from that analysis until enough time has passed to satisfy his safe space requirements. Time, incidentally, in which Daesh and/or other terrorist organizations can complete their own analyses and plan future battles.

This is how the Left understands strategy, this is how the Left understands foreign policy. Which is to say, they understand neither.

The Futility of our Secretary of State

And the motorboat skipper who sits in that chair has another year left in his term….

Now he’s bragging about how progress has been made on ending the civil war in Syria.

Kerry and the other world leaders in Vienna agreed on a timeline for a political transition in Syria that is aimed at ending the country’s civil war.

And

However, key details, including the status of Syrian President Bashar Assad and a determination of which opposition groups are terrorists, remain unresolved.

Oh, yeah. Might be useful to involve the principles in any timeline or settlement.

John Kerry added, in all seriousness,

We do not agree on all of the issues. But we do agree on this: it’s time for the bleeding to stop.

Cool. Of course, that’s never been in dispute: it’s the underlying purpose of the efforts to stop the civil war.

It’s going to be an interminable year.