The Killing of Osama Bin Laden

“American Exceptionalism”

US President Barack Obama made policy decisions that mimicked those of his predecessor President George W. Bush, particularly his notion of American exceptionalism, and that undermined US foreign policy. Obama did not tell the full truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden. He exposed secrets about US dealings with Pakistan. He hid the reasons for his decision to ignore his “red-line” threat to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, if he used chemical weapons against rebels. Obama authorized a secret back channel funneling weapons from post-Qaddafi Libya through Turkey to Syrian rebels, some of whom were extremists.

Obama disregarded intelligence suggesting that Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan saw the Assad’s Syrian government as his true enemy and would do anything to undermine it, even supporting Islamic State (IS) and other fanatics. The Obama administration didn’t know the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in concert with US allies, were relaying targeting intelligence to Syria’s military.

Obama violated his stated principles about military expansion. His deepening of America’s military involvement in Afghanistan proved similar...