Is President Obama's Middle East Policy Based On 'Fantasy'?

Eli Lake, Bloomberg: Obama's Middle East Fantasy

Way back in the George W. Bush administration, his progressive critics used to call themselves members of the "reality based community." The phrase was first popularized by Ron Suskind in a lengthy criticism of Bush's so-called war on terror. Bush and his team were blinded by the moral certainties of ideology, whereas their critics understood the world as it is.

Reading through President Barack Obama's new 2015 National Security Strategy, I think it's time to resurrect the phrase, because this document bears very little relation to reality, at least in the Middle East.

WNU Editor: I believe that President Obama's policy towards the Middle East has always been the same ... stay away from their wars. Whether that is a strategy based on fantasy is open to debate .... but as Eli Lake in the above commentary very clearly comments on .... he believes that such a debate should start now.

Post-Cold War Caution And Prudence Is Now Coming To An End

Members of the armed forces of the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic gather near an armoured vehicle destroyed during battles with the Ukrainian armed forces in Vuhlehirsk, Donetsk region, February 4, 2015. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

Pat Buchanan, Real Clear Politics: U.S.-Russia Clash in Ukraine?

Among Cold War presidents, from Truman to Bush I, there was an unwritten rule: Do not challenge Moscow in its Central and Eastern Europe sphere of influence.

In crises over Berlin in 1948 and 1961, the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Prague in 1968, U.S. forces in Europe stayed in their barracks.

We saw the Elbe as Moscow's red line, and they saw it as ours.

WNU Editor: There are times when I like reading a Pat Buchanan commentary .... this is one of those times.