Bill O’Reilly Beats the War Drum but Needs to Consult a Dictionary

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

In the 1987 romantic comedy The Princess Bride, Vizzini (played by hilarious character actor Wallace Shawn) keeps saying that unfolding events are “inconceivable.” After Vizzini cuts a rope that Dread Pirate Roberts is attempting to climb up, and Roberts does not fall to his death, Vizzini again exclaims that it is “inconceivable.” Inigo Montoya (played by Mandy Patinkin) replies to Vizzini: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Bill O’Reilly has been referring to President Obama’s world view in regards to foreign policy as “passive.” He keeps using that word. I do not think it means what O’Reilly thinks it does. O’Reilly has also been speaking of President Obama’s “weakness” and how it is being perceived by fellow world leaders. He keeps using that word. I do not think it means what O’Reilly thinks it does.

For well over a decade, Bill O’Reilly has beat a war drum like a militaristic and bloodthirsty John Bonham. But the Fox News Channel host needs to put down his drumsticks and pick up a dictionary. President Obama is neither passive nor weak when it comes to foreign policy. His problem is just the opposite. He has been hubristically active to the point of being a Caesarian dictator, shredding the Constitution and creating dangerous blowback.

O’Reilly accuses President Obama of “backing away from Iran.” What President Obama is doing is attempting to negotiate a peaceful solution by which Iran abandons its military nuclear ambitions. While friends such as O’Reilly’s neocon fellow traveler Charles Krauthammer consider these negotiations “a surrender,” it is difficult to see precisely what discredited neocons such as Krauthammer and pathologically bellicose traditionalists such as O’Reilly want the President to do concerning Iran. President Bush’s pointless and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq, the failure of both the Bush and Obama administrations to force Baghdad to provide Sunnis adequate autonomy and a share of governance, and Obama’s incomprehensibly foolish arming of Syrian Jihadists against Assad have led to the Islamic State (IS) threat. Quite frankly, the United States could use Iran’s cooperation against IS. In addition, the United States can afford neither a costly war against Iran nor blowback that could be caused from more crippling sanctions against the Iranian people. The Iran strategy has been the sole sane foreign policy initiative that the Nobel Laureate President has enacted.

O’Reilly also criticizes the President about Yemen: “The government of Yemen has now been overthrown by the jihadists and word is Americans are evacuating the U.S. embassy there.” Calling the Youthis, who captured the Yemeni capital, “jihadists” might be a bit overblown. The Sunni Yemen government has long discriminated against Shiites such as the Youthi rebels and their allies. Instead of ordering countless drone strikes and amassing a large amount of collateral damage, President Obama should have been working behind the scenes in brokering a peaceful solution by which the Shiite minority was guaranteed more autonomy and greater rights from the despotic Yemen government that the United States has long backed. Yemen has been a tinderbox for a long time, and it has exploded because President Obama lit a match too close to it. Lighting a blowtorch instead, as O’Reilly would have had the President do, would have just created a greater incendiary mess. Using CIA operatives or Special Forces troops to capture or neutralize alleged Al Qaeda members in Yemen while attempting to broker peace in the country would have been a far better solution than Obama’s unconstitutional drone war in Yemen. O’Reilly worries: “While few care about Yemen, the danger is Saudi Arabia will attack that country, fearing the jihadists will set up a base that is dangerous to the Kingdom.” It is far more likely that Saudi Arabia will coax the United States into doing its dirty work here. While a Saudi attack on Yemen would not be a positive turn of events, it would have far less downside and far less potential for blowback than more American attacks on Yemen.

President Obama was also anything but “passive” and showed anything but “weakness” when he ordered military strikes against the Libyan government on behalf of a rebel group that contained jihadist elements. This reckless warmongering led to the Benghazi tragedy. As cruel as Qaddafi could be, he was not murdering Americans at the consulate.

O’Reilly has also long been hankering for a war against nuclear-armed Pakistan. He has recently said: “I mean what did we do to Pakistan when they harbored bin Laden all those years?  Nothing.” While Carlotta Gall of the New York Times—hardly O’Reilly’s favorite publication—has claimed that Pakistan knew about bin Laden’s location within Pakistan, other experts such as CNN’s Peter Bergen find that a dubious claim and rightly point out that it needs to be proven. Instead of giving President Obama credit for eliminating bin Laden—President Bush never showed much interest in the task while he was playing a real life game of Risk with American blood and treasure—O’Reilly laments that President Obama did not attack a nuclear power or do something else to destabilize the nation and empower jihadists to take over the Pakistani government.

President Obama also wished to bomb the Syrian government, but disapproval by the American people and Congress led him to abandon that plan. Would O’Reilly have had the President act unconstitutionally like a dictator and attack Syria anyway? But that would have further empowered IS. The truth is that if the President had just ignored the Syrian Civil War instead of arming and funding the rebels, the ruthless Assad may have already taken care of IS. Would O’Reilly have cared if Assad used chemical weapons against monsters who behead innocents?

O’Reilly is too simpleminded to realize that violent actions have consequences. He was a cheerleader for the Iraq War which deposed Saddam Hussein—who was evil but happened not to be beheading American or British citizens. Invading and destroying Iraq on false pretenses—as the neocons did—helped empower both IS and Iran. Yet now O’Reilly wants military action against IS and Iran. When the United States destroys them, will he then want military action against whatever powers then fill the vacuum left behind? And does O’Reilly even care if “boots on the ground” will lead to American casualties?

President Obama has been anything but passive or weak. He has been violent and tyrannical. Perhaps the Commander-in-Chief has been less bloodthirsty than the macho chickenhawk Bill O’Reilly wishes. However, he has been even more willing to egregiously violate the Constitution in the foreign policy arena than had his predecessor President Bush. The unconstitutional military campaigns in Yemen, Libya, and now Syria are far beyond even what President Bush did to bend the Constitution. 

(For a much more detailed discussion of Bill O’Reilly’s zealous militaristic views and disdain for the Constitution, read my new book The Real Culture War: Individualism vs. Collectivism & How Bill O’Reilly Got It All Wrong. Available now on Amazon in both print and Kindle.)