A quick overview of the president's gaffe-prone, inexplicably weak, and dangerously naive foreign policy.
May 21, 2010
- by Kim Zigfeld
Pajamas Media
When even the pages of the Huffington Post are excoriating Barack Obama’s foreign policy, you know the commander in chief is in some pretty serious trouble.
Writing for the HuffPo, Ken Blackwell, a fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration and the Family Research Council, pulls no punches:
If that’s what the august pages of the Huffington Post are saying, it isn’t hard to imagine how the right is starting to see Obama’s craven conduct. But for those who remain unclear, former Bushie David Kramer, now with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, spelled it out in no uncertain terms in the Washington Post.
Focusing on another festival of Obamanian failure, Kramer blasts Obama for selling out our Eastern European and Central Asian allies in order to get the Iran deal that never was. He believes the administration has signaled that Russia has a free hand to gobble up Georgia: “The administration is essentially abandoning the Georgians and giving Russia a green light to continue to engage in provocative behavior along its borders.” He continues:
In the past seven months, four high-profile Democrats have gone down to defeat despite active campaigning on their behalf by President Obama. Senior Obama advisor David Axelrod is running scared. He told the Associated Press: “At some point, you feel like we’ve done what we can do. We do have other stuff going on.”
You sure do, Mr. Axelrod. You have this country’s foreign policy to conduct. Ironically, though, it’s precisely because you are butchering that work so badly that your man is unable to help your candidates win reelection.
The country is slowly awakening to the reality that it has another “Jimmah” to contend with in the White House, a man whose palpable weakness and inexperience are encouraging America’s worst enemies to think they can take advantage.
While candidate John McCain proposed sanctioning Russia, and increasing American influence, by booting Russia out of the G-8 (yet another organization to which Russia belongs while repudiating all its core values), Obama is seeking to reward Russia and dilute American influence by expanding the G-8.
Americans see Russian nuclear bombers buzzing their coastline. They see American values under siege in Putin’s Russia. They see the creation of a neo-Soviet state. They see American promises being broken in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and as a result they see rising Russian aggression and imperialism.
With all this, they are displeased. They want America to be what it has always been: a beacon of freedom and democracy. Liberals are stunned to see a president who was supposedly dedicated to liberalism ignoring violent racism, homophobia, censorship, and dictatorship on the rise in Russia. Conservatives are equally shocked to watch Obama encourage Russia to foment anti-American hatred in the Middle East (which has the side benefit of roiling the oil markets and lining Russia’s pockets) and to draw down a new Iron Curtain across Europe.
It seems there is one thing all Americans can agree on: Barack Obama is a truly awful president.
Writing for the HuffPo, Ken Blackwell, a fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration and the Family Research Council, pulls no punches:
It would be hard to say which specific foreign policy of the Obama administration is worst. Iran sanctions? Russian relations? Attacks on Israel for Jewish settlements in Jerusalem? Trashing the special relationship with Britain? Insulting the Canadians in their own capital? Failure to secure the border with Mexico? We have an entire menu of foreign policy disasters to consider.Blackwell points out that despite Obama’s claim to the contrary, there is no sign that Russia will assist the West in imposing sanctions on Iran. Just the opposite, in fact. Russia has just announced a massive new offensive weapons arms deal with Syria, a country that serves as a direct pipeline to the Hezbollah terrorists who are also favored by Iran.
If that’s what the august pages of the Huffington Post are saying, it isn’t hard to imagine how the right is starting to see Obama’s craven conduct. But for those who remain unclear, former Bushie David Kramer, now with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, spelled it out in no uncertain terms in the Washington Post.
Focusing on another festival of Obamanian failure, Kramer blasts Obama for selling out our Eastern European and Central Asian allies in order to get the Iran deal that never was. He believes the administration has signaled that Russia has a free hand to gobble up Georgia: “The administration is essentially abandoning the Georgians and giving Russia a green light to continue to engage in provocative behavior along its borders.” He continues:
Obama and other senior U.S. officials have repeatedly said they do not recognize a Russian “sphere of influence,” but actions, or non-actions, speak louder than those words. Through its neglect of countries in the region except for Russia, the administration is ceding to Moscow exactly such a sphere.As Professor Ethan Burger of Georgetown University argued recently on my blog La Russophobe, yet another sign of Obama’s capitulation to Russia is his willingness to allow Russia into the World Trade Organization without first embracing any of the core principles that support the WTO. Why should Russia think it needs to make any fundamental changes if it can get what it wants without making any?
In the past seven months, four high-profile Democrats have gone down to defeat despite active campaigning on their behalf by President Obama. Senior Obama advisor David Axelrod is running scared. He told the Associated Press: “At some point, you feel like we’ve done what we can do. We do have other stuff going on.”
You sure do, Mr. Axelrod. You have this country’s foreign policy to conduct. Ironically, though, it’s precisely because you are butchering that work so badly that your man is unable to help your candidates win reelection.
The country is slowly awakening to the reality that it has another “Jimmah” to contend with in the White House, a man whose palpable weakness and inexperience are encouraging America’s worst enemies to think they can take advantage.
While candidate John McCain proposed sanctioning Russia, and increasing American influence, by booting Russia out of the G-8 (yet another organization to which Russia belongs while repudiating all its core values), Obama is seeking to reward Russia and dilute American influence by expanding the G-8.
Americans see Russian nuclear bombers buzzing their coastline. They see American values under siege in Putin’s Russia. They see the creation of a neo-Soviet state. They see American promises being broken in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and as a result they see rising Russian aggression and imperialism.
With all this, they are displeased. They want America to be what it has always been: a beacon of freedom and democracy. Liberals are stunned to see a president who was supposedly dedicated to liberalism ignoring violent racism, homophobia, censorship, and dictatorship on the rise in Russia. Conservatives are equally shocked to watch Obama encourage Russia to foment anti-American hatred in the Middle East (which has the side benefit of roiling the oil markets and lining Russia’s pockets) and to draw down a new Iron Curtain across Europe.
It seems there is one thing all Americans can agree on: Barack Obama is a truly awful president.
Kim Zigfeld is a New York City-based writer who publishes her own Russia specialty blog, La Russophobe. She also writes about Russia for the American Thinker and for Russia! magazine and is researching a book on the rise of dictatorship in Putin’s Russia.
Obama’s support for Zelaya of Honduras? Zelaya was violating their constitution and attempting to get another term in office. Both their supreme court and their legislature rejected this attempt but Obama actually supported Zelaya.
And Obama’s indifference to the demonstrators for democracy in Iran. Obama said nothing in their support – thus siding with the brutal repression of these demonstrators by the Iranian govt.
Then, there’s Obama’s refusal to recognize the reality of Islamic fascism and its terrorist agenda. He’s rejected this as a reality by calling these attacks ‘man-made disasters’ and ‘overseas contingency operations’. He’s chastized Americans for even thinking that the attacks in the US were connected to Islamic terrorism, trying to divert them to ‘lone extremism’ when they were, in fact, Islamic terrorism.
How about his insults to the leaders of the UK – eg, no press time for Brown, and Obama gave him as an official gift, a set of unusable DVDs of American films. He gave the Queen of England a set of his own speeches – how’s that for narcissism!
He’s effectively allowed Iran to become a nuclear power by his sanctions-as-rhetoric-only…where he threatens sanctions by such and such deadline, and then, goes silent when the deadline passes and the sanctions disappear.
His apologies for America – a nation whose technological innovations over the last centuries are unparelleled in history – and whose focus on democracy is equally unparalleled – are insulted to all of American history. Essentially, Obama is denying the value of America..Before Obama.
His refusal to deal with Mexican illegal immigration and secure the US borders is a dereliction of duty.
Obama, a pathological narcissist, and his Obama Gang, are disastrous for the US and Americans.
Then sadly, it is not true that all Americans can agree that Barack Obama is a truly awful president. In spite of the clearly expressed anger by voters, there has been zero declared intent about dumping Obama headed into the 2012 election cycle. At least there were a few Democrats that spoke out against Jimmy Carter long before he was tossed into the street.
In fact there is serious reason to doubt that the Republicans can mount a successful challenge against Obama before they self-vaporize. A few more Scott Browns, big cheese chiefs and no Indians will put the cherry on top of Obama’s second inauguration.
How does the Russians giving Iran nuclear bombs and saying, “Here go wipe out Israel and take out a few dozen American cities” sound to everyone for renewed Hope and Change?
Who will stop them??
It would be hard to find a better description of the Obama foreign policy establishment. They are resolved to be irresolute since foreign policy bores them and does not translate into Democratic votes at home. George Bush was regularly caricatured for his “cowboy mentality” and insularism. Yet could anything be more “insular” and less “worldly” than this group of Chicago machine ward-heelers who make every decision based on how it will resonate at the polls? What passes for foreign policy can be summarized as alienating our friends and ineffectively (and pathetically) sucking up to everyone else. Ironically the Bush strategy in both Iraq and Afghanistan is being continued with the single added feature of more drone attacks.
Ms. Zigfeld concludes by saying that “(Americans) want America to be what it has always been: a beacon of freedom and democracy.” This may be true but it is not a goal of the Obama administration. This administration is so imbued with post-modernist moral relativism and a “blame America first” mentality that it cannot possibly see the United States in that light. In their view only the most ignorant of bummpkins could envision America as a beacon of freedom and we all know that these are the smartest guys around.
…The comments from U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens mark the first time U.S. officials have so directly criticized former President Manuel Zelaya for his pre-coup actions…
During his speech, Llorens said the U.S. took a principled position in opposition to the coup, halting financial aid to Honduras, avoiding official recognition of de facto president Roberto Micheletti, and suspending U.S. visas for some of Micheletti’s staffers and allies.
American University professor Adrienne Pine, an expert on Honduras-U.S. relations, took issue with Llorens’ assessment. She said both opposing Zelaya’s overthrow and criticizing his actions is anything but principled.
“Their gall is really quite astounding,” she said. “If Llorens is chastising Zelaya for trying to return to the post that he was violently and illegally ousted from, then Llorens is basically saying to the entire Honduran nation that it does not deserve democracy.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAkMGKIUDg_ngUiZboxQbYj5_DPwD9FDMRQ81
To do this, he was trying to have a referendum – but such referendums are under the mandate of the legislature not the president. Forbidden to do this, Zelaya went ahead anyway, getting the ballots printed up in Venezuala. The supreme court and the legislature then voted to remove him, for both his agenda and his refusal to abide by the laws of the nation.
Their interim president, who would not be running for the presidency, was installed only as short-term, for elections were to be held in November. These were duly held – and ‘that was that’.
Honduras did everything – every action – legally and correctly. Why the Obama gang supported a thug like Zelaya, who was violating the constitution and the legislature AND the supreme court – is bizarre.
Whoever the Republicans run in 2012, I think one central plank needs to be promoting an American foreign policy that advances American interests. There are only so many times that we can tinkle on our friend’s legs until they eventually go and stand somewhere else. While accurate comparisons to Jimmy Carter’s 4 year long train wreck of a presidency abound, we can only hope that we have another Reagan waiting in the wings. Unfortunately, some foreign policy mistakes remain long after their owners have vacated the White House. Carter’s helping hand to the Mullahs not only helped enslave a generation of Iranians, the same regime is one of the most serious threats to America’s strategic interests in the region today.
Shame on the Democrats, a party that deserves to be severley savaged in the next elections.