Barack obama

Monday

James Forsyth

What the death of Bin Laden means for Af-Pak policy

The political and strategic implications of Osama Bin Laden’s death are legion. One of the biggest impacts of this operation could well be that it speeds up the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Obama has long been keen to start bringing US troops home in large numbers. But a withdrawal from Afghanistan with Bin Laden not dealt with could have been portrayed as humiliating by Obama’s political opponents. Now, that Bin Laden is dead, it is much easier for Obama to scale down the US operation there, arguing that the central base of al Qaeda’s operations have now moved out of the country. The embarrassment for Pakistan of where Bin Laden

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How the US pulled it off

The veil is being pulled back on how the United States tracked down and killed Osama Bin Laden. The New York Times reveals that the intelligence trail started with information obtained from a Guantanamo Bay detainee about the courier that Bin Laden used to pass and receive messages to the outside world. This is proof that the public debate about the utility of Guantanamo is far too glib. This courier was then tracked down last August to the compound, in Abbottabad which was so secure and grand that the Americans realised that it could well be Bin Laden’s hide-out. These suspicions were reinforced when it became clear that this million

Peter Hoskin

What Obama said about Bin Laden and Pakistan before he became President

After the events of today, the video above has fresh resonance. It is from the first presidential debate in 2008, and features Barack Obama defending his previously stated view that “if the United States has Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, top level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out.” Turns out, in this case, he was true to his word.

Peter Hoskin

Osama Bin Laden is dead

The manhunt is over, as is the man. After almost a decade since 11 September 2001, a decade of the Afghan conflict, Osama Bin Laden is dead. The Al Qaeda leader was shot by US forces, not in a dusty cave complex in the mountains, but at a large house north of Islamabad. Announcing the news last night, Barack Obama called it, “the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat Al Qaeda.” It will surely be remembered as the most significant achievement of his Presidency, too. Let’s remember, though, that Bin Laden was not Islamist terror, just as Islamist terror is not Bin Laden. The fundamentalists

Sunday

James Forsyth

The Gaddafi family should be regarded as legitimate targets

David Cameron became most animated on the Andrew Marr show this morning when the subject of Libya came up. It was clear that he remains passionately convinced that the course he has taken is the right thing to have done. The Prime Minister refused to comment on the Gaddafi regime’s claim that one of Gaddafi’s children had been killed in a Nato airstrike and wouldn’t be drawn on the question of whether the government considers the Gaddafi family legitimate targets. But given that, as Cameron himself noted, the Gaddafi family is running the military operation and ordering moves against civilians then they surely are legitimate targets. Also if the allied

Peter Hoskin

Obama contra Trump

You thought Barack Obama had finished with Donald Trump by releasing a copy of his long-form birth certificate? Not nearly. At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last night — video above — the US Pres took every opportunity he could to bait his bouffant-haired baiter. From the tongue-in-cheek music video that kicks of proceedings — “I am a real American,” it declares against clips from the Transformers and Karate Kid — to the even more tongue-in-cheek attack on Trump’s credentials that follows; this was humour wielded as a weapon. And, yes, Trump was in the audience to witness it all.    Obama also runs through some of the likely Republican

Thursday

James Forsyth

Obama’s military reshuffle

President Obamna’s nomination of  General Petraeus to run the CIA will have a huge knock on effect on the US military. Petraeus will have to resign his commission to take on the post which means that his work trying to transform the US army into a force comfortable trying to deal with counter-insurgency will have to come to an end. One also can’t help but suspect that the Obama administration will be glad to avoid a public tussle with Petraeus over the schedule for withdrawal by moving him out of theatre. Of the other moves in Obama’s shake up of his national security team, one worth paying particular attention to

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Why Gitmo ought to be closed

It is hard to feel anything but nauseous when reading the Guardian’s continuing special report on Guantanamo Bay, which started yesterday. The paper has released hundreds of classified files which were obtained last year by Wikileaks, including detainee assessments prepared between 2002 and 2009 to summarise what the government knew about each detainee — and they do not paint a pretty picture. Some detainees are clearly guilty as sin. But others seem to have been caught in the crosshairs of conflict. One example seems to be Abdul Badr Mannan, who was arrested in Pakistan and turned over to US forces in the belief that he was affiliated with al-Qaeda. According

Wednesday

Jonathan Jones

Obama’s budget: faster, but not further, than Osborne’s

Barack Obama’s budget plan has become a political debating point on this side of the Atlantic. Ed Balls set the ball a-rolling in an article for the Guardian this morning, which effectively claimed that the President isn’t planning to cut the deficit as quickly as George Osborne is. “The truth is that it is Osborne himself who is isolated,” is how he pugnaciously put it. But the Tories’ Matthew Hancock has since responded — on Coffee House, as it happens — arguing that, actually, the Obama Plan is simpatico with what Osborne is doing. By way of hovering above the red-on-blue scrap, we thought we’d put together a comparison of

Matthew Hancock-Mp

Labour are drawing the wrong lessons from America

The global debate about how we live within our means is moving fast. I spent a week in Washington while Congress and the President hammered out their deal on this year’s budget. The deal was significant because all sides agreed on the need to cut spending now. After days of brinkmanship, they agreed to £38 billion in-year cuts. Significant, perhaps, because America has now started to tackle its huge deficit. But everyone agreed it is a small downpayment ahead of a much bigger debate to come.   What’s fascinating for us here is that President Obama’s proposals are to cut the deficit slightly faster than we are here. Congress would

Monday

David Blackburn

Standard & Poor’s bombshell

A mute, almost disbelieving response (except on the Markets) has met Standard & Poor’s announcement that the US government’s fiscal profile may become ‘measurably weaker’. The credit rating agency has put a ‘negative outlook’ on the US’s AAA rating; the accompanying report said:    “We believe there is a material risk that U.S. policy makers might not reach an agreement on how to address medium- and long-term budgetary challenges by 2013. If an agreement is not reached and meaningful implementation does not begin by then, this would in our view render the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of peer ‘AAA’ sovereigns.” Robert Peston tweets, “S&P’s announcement that outlook

Friday

James Forsyth

Balls in fiscal isolation

Ed Balls has long said that America is the right comparison for Britain when it comes to how to deal with the deficit, contrasting the Obama administration’s fiscally loose policies with Osborne’s plan for fiscal tightening. This comparison has always been flawed; the dollar is the world’s reverse currency which gives Washington far more fiscal flexibility than HMG. But, even leaving that aside, the Obama administration is now — albeit under Congressional pressure — about to start cutting.   By 2015, Obama’s plan will have reduced the US deficit by 8 percent of GDP. Osborne’s plan sees Britain reduces its deficit by 8.4 percent by 2015. Indeed, from next year

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

A word for Mitch

In the magazine’s cover piece this week (read it here or subscribe from just £1/issue), Richard Littlejohn described the rather feeble assortment of Republican contenders for next year’s presidential elections. But he left out Mitch Daniels, the Governor of Indiana, who seems to be emerging as a favourite among American conservatives.   Daniels hasn’t yet declared his candidacy, and at first glance he comes across as a dweeb. But it would be foolish to underrate him. In 2008, against a tide of Obama-mania, Daniels won the Indiana governorship with ease. He got more votes, in fact, than any candidate in the state’s history. The secret of Daniels’s success is his

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The government should recall parliament

Today’s declaration (£) by Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy that Nato’s operation in Libya will continue until Gaddafi leaves power marks a shift in their rhetoric and makes explicit that regime change is the war aim. This has led to calls to recall parliament, most notably from David Davis on the World at One, to debate this change. Parliament merely voted to enforce the UN resolution which was not a mandate for regime change. The government would be well advised to heed these requests. It would be the best way of maintaining the necessary political support for the mission. Now that regime change is the explicit war aim,

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Meanwhile, in America…

We really oughtn’t let the weekend pass without some mention of political events across the Atlantic. As you’ve probably heard, a US government shutdown was avoided on Friday evening, and all thanks to a budget compromise which saw Barack Obama slash a cool $38 billion from his spending plans. Although the debate over who has credited or discredited themselves is still ongoing, it’s striking that the Republicans — urged on by the Tea Party corps — achieved around two-thirds of the cuts that they demanded. Yet disaster, or at least the prospect of it, has still not been averted. The Tea Party has already claimed several fiscal scalps along the

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Budget lessons from across the pond for America

In Washington, a budget shutdown is becoming an increasing possibility. The Republican controlled House of Representatives wants deeper cuts than the White House will accept. This has led a growing bi-partisan group of Senators to try and revive the work of the blue-ribbon commission on Fiscal Reform and Responsibility that produced its report late last year. Interestingly, the commission’s proposals are very similar to George Osborne’s plan. UK Treasury analysis shows that the Osborne plan calls for an average tightening of 1.6 percent a year from 2009-10 to 2015-16  while the commission suggests 1.4 percent a year from 2010 t0 2015. The composition is also similar, both work on roughly

Peter Hoskin

Obama sketches out the limits to American involvement in Libya

There was one aspect of Barack Obama’s Big Speech on Libya last night that was particularly curious: for a President who is trying to downplay American involvement in this conflict, he sure went in for good bit of self-aggrandisement. The amount of references to his and his government’s “leadership” — as in, “At my direction, America led an effort with our allies at the United Nations Security Council to pass an historic Resolution” — was really quite striking, at least to these ears. I suppose it’s all about mollifying those voices who argue that the US Pres hasn’t done enough, quickly enough. But it’s hardly going to endear him to

Thursday

James Forsyth

Agreement in principle reached for Nato to take command of operations over Libya 

I understand that agreement in principle has now been reached to pass command of the Libya operation to Nato. The United States has been keen to relinquish control for days now–the Obama administration has no desire for Libya to turn into another American responsibility–but agreement within Nato about the alliance taking over command of the mission could not be reached. This has led to an embarrassing situation where no one appears to want to actually be in charge of the operation. The blockage, up to now, to transferring control to Nato has been Turkey. Ankara is not keen on the whole intervention and is furious about not having been invited

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Obama’s nervousness makes life difficult for him and his allies

Gingerly, gingerly — that’s how the Americans are approaching the presentational battle over Libya, if not the actual campaign itself. There is no bombast in the official broadcasts from Washington, nor categorical intent. Instead we have Robert Gates emphasising, as he did yesterday evening, that the US will soon handover “primary responsibility” for the mission to us or the French. Or there’s Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying that “potentially one outcome” is for Gaddafi to stay in power (see video above). The idea of regime change, or of deeper US involvement, is being downplayed all round. What’s clear, perhaps even understandable, is that Obama

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Sarkozy’s game

I’m hearing more reports about the rather peculiar behaviour of Nicholas Sarkozy, and how he is playing the Libya campaign thus far. Obama wants to hand over leadership of this mission quick. He was never really into it, but the US Navy was overwhelmingly the best placed to do the first phase of the mission (ie, fire Tomahawks into 20 Libyan targets). The Tomahawk team constituted 11 US ships and submarines, plus one British submarine. Anything other than American leadership would have been a joke. Phase Two is to take out Gaddafi’s surface-to-air missiles as soon as he dares to move them. Obama wants to hand over the baton to