Obama Criticizes the ‘Free Riders’ Among America’s Allies
Source: NYT
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“If we’re not talking to them,” he said, referring to young people in those places, “because the only thing we’re doing is figuring out how to destroy or cordon off or control the malicious, nihilistic, violent parts of humanity, then we’re missing the boat.”
Mr. Obama also said his support of the NATO military intervention in Libya had been a “mistake,” driven in part by his erroneous belief that Britain and France would bear more of the burden of the operation. He stoutly defended his refusal not to enforce his own red line against Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, even though Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. argued internally, the magazine reported, that “big nations don’t bluff.”
The president disputed criticism that he should have done more to resist the aggression of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Ukraine. As a neighbor of Russia, Mr. Obama said, Ukraine was always going to matter more to Mr. Putin than to the United States. This meant that in any military confrontation between Moscow and the West, Russia was going to maintain “escalatory dominance” over its former satellite state.
“The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,” he said. “This is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for.”
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/world/middleeast/obama-criticizes-the-free-riders-among-americas-allies.html?_r=0
= new reply since forum marked as read
Finally somebody stops spewing drivel and talks about things like an adult.
since Sanders campaign began. Last night was extraordinary, on the world stage
out loud, very loud actually, truth seeps out. It can be a painful thing for some
to hear yet Obama's words here..what an awesome response. I get the motive
behind it, and that's fine b/c again, truth is spilling out on how things "work"
in DC and our foreign policies.
I am very encouraged for the world this morning, bemildred. 
Here's the interview: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/
While Hillary Clinton and others get the blame in the article for championing intervention in Libya (which was done because Gaddafi had said of the rebels "we will kill them like rats"
in 2011, by 2013, Obama was setting a 'red line' in Syria about Assad attacking his rebels with chemical weapons. He criticises Britain and France for advocating the intervention in Libya although it looked like it'd be chaos afterwards; but in 2013, he wanted to do the same thing, in Syria.
I think he's trying to blame Hillary, and the British and French, a bit too much - after all, she wasn't there by 2013, but he still came down on the side of Syrian intervention. And while Cameron personally supported the bombing of Assad, he was stopped by a vote in the British parliament - and then Obama backed down.
