How on earth did Rudy Giuliani get to be an expert on Syria? His greatest claim to fame is that he happened to be mayor of New York during the 9/11 attacks. And while my New York City Democratic friends assure me Giuliani did do a great job in the aftermath, that hardly qualifies him as an expert on Syria or anything else regarding foreign policy. And he pretty much proved that by “forgetting” George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and calling President Obama’s Syria policy “the most bungled” and “most mishandled” foreign policy in the history of the modern age. Seriously.
Giuliani’s appearance last night on On The Record was just one day after we caught him misstating the facts (or, perhaps, lying) about Benghazi on Fox News the day before. But last night, Giuliani joined the Fox News Putin-cheerleading and Syria Sour Grapes contingent.
In words that could have been uttered by so many other Fox pundits, Giuliani said Putin “is now the one that’s leading,” on Syria, that it’s Obama’s fault for “leading by following,” that “we’ve completely lost control” of the “useless negotiation” over Syria’s chemical weapons.
To her credit, host Greta Van Susteren steered the conversation away by asking, “How do you fix it? How do you get us out of this?”
Giuliani didn’t have any great ideas, of course. He said, “There isn’t a good option, there’s a totally unacceptable option (meaning Obama’s plan for “an extremely small” strike). Then Giuliani said:
This has to be, probably, the most bungled, the most mishandled area of foreign policy - I don’t know if it’s in the history of our country but certainly in the modern age.
Really? I would have thought that avoiding war is far preferable to starting one under false pretenses and with rosy assurances that we’d be out within six months.
Later, Giuliani said, “Iran is creating a Shiite axis, right in that area in the Middle East, that includes, obviously, Iran, Iraq – where they have total over Malaki, who’s slaughtering people in Iraq - and now Syria.
And who was it that invaded Iraq under false pretenses and removed one of Iran’s biggest enemies and opened the door for Malaki to take power instead?
It's funny how you rarely, if ever, hear about that on "fair and balanced" Fox News.
I guess I shouldn’t gripe too much about Giuliani’s phony cred on Middle East policy. He’s certainly an expert compared to Donald Trump, whose later comments on the subject were teased during this segment.
Bush domestic that were justified by foreign: Patriot Act, War Stimulus, Immigration Bill, NSA overreach.
Sorry, Rudy… But Obama would have to royally screw up daily every day he has left to even be in sight of how much Bush failed.
Dear Jane S: So am I — and I’m sure the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of the families who lost loved ones (or who have loved ones who were crippled and maimed) in that TOTAL DEBACLE in Iraq will agree with you as well.
Whether Obama’s telegraphing of his uncertainties is a good thing overall in the long run, we’ll find out. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe a lot of other people in the world, Mideast leaders and the like, have the same idiotic macho attitudes as the McCains and Giulianis, etc., and genuinely see Obama, and thus the U.S., as weak because he isn’t strutting around the way they do, I have no way to know. But I have to concede that that’s realistically a possibility.
We’ll find out. I’m certainly happy to give this new way of approaching the rest of the world a chance, since the other way wasn’t working out so well.
