Claudia Rosett

So, under the headline “Gates Says U.S. Lacks Policy to Curb Iran’s Nuclear Drive,” the New York Times reports that according to anonymous government officials: “Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability.”

Gosh, golly and no kidding. The tragiomic touch is that Gates, or anyone else in President Obama’s administration, would feel compelled to treat this information as “secret.”

The failure of U.S. policy may be news to Obama, but for some time now it’s been glaringly obvious to most of the planet. While Obama has been yakking, bowing, apologizing for America, humiliating U.S. allies and dismantling both America’s defense capabilities and capitalist system, Iran’s rulers have been mocking him, scoffing at deadlines and flaunting their bomb program. This weekend, in response to Obama’s bread-and-circuses nuclear summit in Washington, Ahmadinejad has been hosting his own nuclear conference in Tehran — demanding that the U.S. be suspended from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA.

Obama has provided quite a show this past year or so – conjuring crises over U.S. medical care and Israeli housing plans in Jerusalem, while Iran’s rulers have been killing dissidents in the streets and closing in on the bomb. Having been entrusted with the White House, and the defense of America and its constitution, Obama has been treating the world to such statements as his recent observation that the U.S. remains a military superpower “whether we like it or not.” It’s hard to escape the conclusion that he doesn’t like it at all. Even the plans Obama endorsed during his campaign for much tougher sanctions on Iran have been repeatedly diluted and delayed.

As the clock ticks toward a nuclear high noon, the White House has displayed no effective strategy either for stopping Iran’s bomb program, or “containing” a nuclear Iran (good luck). Actually, there’s no effective strategy visible for defending U.S. interests on a good many fronts. Obama is banking on a surge to prevail in Afghanistan, but plans to start pulling out troops by next year.

He’s doing peace deals with Russia, while Russia is firing up Iran’s Bushehr reactor, selling air-defense missiles to the Iranians and doing big deals to arm Iran’s best buddy in America’s own backyard — Venezuela. He’s counting on yet more peace-processing with the Palestinians, and buddying up with Syria, on the gaga theory that this will help bring peace in the Middle East.

Meanwhile. Iran is arming the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas in Gaza,and Iran’s Hezbollah terrorist clients, courtesy of Syria, are piling up missiles in Lebanon.

Where’s all this heading? On the current course, the American superpower will have its own citizens staggering under rising taxes and regulatory overload, and burdened with crushing debt. The U.S. will be depending on Russia to ferry American astronauts into space, terrorists will be holding forth in U.S. courts, and Iran will have the bomb.

There’s nothing secret about any of this — except, apparently, within the confines of the Obama White House. Maybe Gates should fire off another confidential memo to Obama, noting that the lack of effective U.S. policy is by now the world’s least well kept secret.