Understanding U.S. foreign policy is not particularly easy, but you can learn quite a bit from press conferences, congressional hearings, congressionally mandated reports, and answers to reporters' questions. Often, I come across passages that are puzzling, audacious, hypocritical, revealing, or inspiring. In chronological order, here are this year's top 20 notable foreign policy comments from the U.S. government -- with a little context from your columnist.
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1. Michael A. Sheehan, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict: "Al Qaeda wasn't as good as we thought they were on 9/11. Quite frankly, we, the American people, were asleep at the switch, the U.S. government, prior to 9/11. So an organization that wasn't that good looked really great on 9/11." (Andrew Tilghman, "U.S. Misjudged al-Qaida Capabilities," Air Force Times, Feb. 7, 2012.)
2. Department of State: "We call on all governments to declare or reaffirm their commitment not to conduct explosive nuclear tests, and encourage all States that have not done so to sign and ratify the Treaty." ( Media Note: CTBTO Prepcom Fifteenth Anniversary, Office of the Spokesperson, Feb. 17, 2012.)
Of course, one of the countries that the State Department is encouraging to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is the United States.
3. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "I am not a military strategist, but I think I know enough to say air strikes [in Somalia] would not be a good idea and we have absolutely no reason to believe anyone, certainly not the United States, is considering that." (Press Availability on the London Conference, Feb. 23, 2012.)
Hours after America's chief diplomat said this, U.S. Joint Special Operation Command conducted a drone strike -- confirmed by two U.S. officials -- against vehicles in a convoy in southern Somalia, killing between four and seven suspected militants.
4. Attorney General Eric Holder: "An individual's interest in making sure that the government does not target him erroneously could not be more significant." ("Remarks at Northwestern University School of Law," March 5, 2012.)
Holder offered this remarkable observation during a landmark speech that provided the Obama administration's justification for why U.S. citizens can be killed, and why secret Executive Branch discussions are sufficient to deprive a citizen of his Sixth Amendment right to due process.
5. White House spokesperson Jay Carney: "We have eyes, we have visibility into the program, and we would know if and when Iran made a -- what's called a ‘breakout move' towards acquiring a weapon. So we have the capacity to judge that as the regime, the sanctions regime, continues to be implemented. (Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, Aug. 10, 2012.)
Months earlier, a senior administration official stated: "I have zero doubt that if Iran attempted a [nuclear weapons] breakout, we'd see it." In 2013, if pressure builds in Tel Aviv or Washington for the United States to attack Iran's nuclear program, reporters would do well to recall these statements and ask officials if Iran has made a "breakout move."
6. Representative Tom Graves: "Does the federal government have the ability to kill a U.S. citizen on United States soil or just overseas?"
Director of the FBI Robert Muller: "I have to go back. Uh, I'm not certain whether that was addressed or not.... I am going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice." (Hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies, March 7, 2012.)
Mueller has been the FBI director since the week before Sept. 11, 2001, and has been intimately involved in virtually every significant counterterrorism policy decision since. If he does not know if U.S. citizens can be killed by the federal government within the United States, it is hard to imagine who would. The Obama administration has never confirmed if the federal government can kill U.S. citizens at home, though Holder claimed that there are no limits to "the geographic scope of our ability to use force."
7. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta: "Any government that kills its own people loses its legitimacy as a government." (Statement on Syria before the Senate Armed Services Committee, March 7, 2012.)
Later, during this hearing, Senator James Webb asked Panetta if his standard would have applied to the Chinese government's violent crackdown against Chinese citizens around Tiananmen Square in Beijing in June 1989. Panetta replied: "My personal view would be that that was the case there."
8. Sen. Charles Schumer: "Unlike President Bush, [Obama] said the drones could go across the border into Pakistan." (ABC News, "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," March 11, 2012.)
Actually, President George W. Bush authorized CIA drone strikes across the border into Pakistan roughly 45 times during his presidency -- the first in June 2004.
9. Representative Adam Smith: "I mean, imagine in your own community if every day you had foreign troops rolling down the streets as if they own the place." (House Committee on Armed Services, March 20, 2012.)
To quote President Bush regarding a different U.S. military occupation in April 2004, "[Iraqis are] not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either," and in May 2004, "Who wants to be occupied? Nobody wants to be occupied."
10. Department of State Legal Advisor Harold Hongju Koh: "I have never changed my mind [regarding targeted killings]. Not from before I was in the government -- or after." (Tara McKelvey, "Interview with Harold Koh, Obama's Defender of Drone Strikes," Daily Beast, April 8, 2012.)
On the faculty of Yale Law School for a quarter century before joining the State Department, Koh in 2002 said the problem with the Bush administration's "legally undeclared war" was that it blurred the distinction between enemy combatants and other nonstate actors: "What factual showing will demonstrate that they had warlike intentions against us and who sees that evidence before any action is taken?'' Apparently, Koh is satisfied with the facts he has seen to justify the Obama administration's targeted killings -- and believes that only the Executive Branch should see such evidence.
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