President Obama to Bill Maher: 'If I watched Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me either'

A few counterpoints on foreign policy:

  1. Russia has successfully blocked Ukraine's path to the west. They may be out of Russia's sphere of influence, but with the Crimea dispute and the continued occupations in the Donbass, Ukraine is diplomatically isolated and has suffered severe damage to its economy. Now, none of this is the fault of Obama as Ukraine is not in any alliance with the West and is owed nothing, but I certainly wouldn't champion it as one of his successes.

  2. Iraq may be on the verge of pushing IS out of Mosul (and hopefully soon after all of Iraq), but its long-term stability remains to be seen. This is also overlooking the fact that it is American withdrawal that allowed IS to grow as large as it did. The US shouldn't have been there in the first place, but as the saying goes, "you break it, you buy it", and the US certainly broke it. To a lesser degree, the same applies to Afghanistan. The withdrawal is fine for the US, but I wouldn't call it a victory to leave that country as violent and divided as it was 13 years before.

/r/politics Thread Parent Link - latimes.com