I regret to inform you that Obama bro Ben Rhodes is back, and he's commenting on foreign policy again. Perhaps the worst NSA to ever serve any president, Rhodes continues to maintain a shockingly shameless amount of arrogance in his proclamations.
On Friday, he took to social media to decry Israel's move to enter Gaza following the deadly slaughter perpetrated by the terrorist government on October 7th.
Let me help Rhodes out before we get to the laundry list of failures that have disqualified him from offering an opinion. The objective is to eradicate Hamas as a military and political force within a relatively tiny strip of land. Never in the history of warfare has the goal of an operation been more clear-cut and straightforward. The far-left talking point that Israel lacks an objective is completely false. People are welcome to disagree with that objective, but they should do so honestly instead of making up scenarios that don't exist.
Yet, even if things were murkier than they are, Rhodes is one of the last people on earth who has the credibility to critique any other nation's decision-making. Recall that he was a chief driver along with Hillary Clinton of the U.S. campaign against Libya. What was the result? A relatively stable government was removed, hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and Libya now exists as an anarchic modern-day slave state. So tell me, Mr. Rhodres, what was the "objective" there?
That bit of brilliance wasn't Rhode's most destructive work, though. He also pushed the training and arming of supposedly "moderate rebels" in Syria in an attempt to depose Bashar al-Assad, a relatively secular dictator. Those "rebels" were Islamic fundamentalists, some of whom would go on to form ISIS after leaving the Al-Nusra front.
How'd that work out? I'll tell you how it worked out. Over half a million people died in a fruitless civil war while the non-government-controlled areas of Syria populated by the "moderate rebels" became a hotbed for global terrorism and abject brutality, leading to a multi-year fight against ISIS. Meanwhile, U.S. forces are still in Syria because the situation is so fragile. Was that the "objective" Rhodes had in mind a decade ago?
Wars are complicated. Sometimes there is no "good" side, and the best decision is to stay out of a conflict lest matters be made worse. That was obviously the situation in Syria. It was obviously the situation in Libya. It is obviously not the situation in Israel, and Rhodes should kindly sit all the way down. He caused far more death and destruction chasing unrealistic, unjustified goals than Israel has done or will do chasing a completely attainable and justified one in taking out Hamas.