Snub our friends, appease our enemies, support totalitarians (especially if they are Islamic), grovel before the world, and gut our armed forces. That is the essence of the Pax Obama. I really wish Mitt Romney would speak out more on Obama’s disastrous foreign policy.
by Victor Davis Hanson
The 2012 election will hinge on the economy, not on U.S. foreign policy, unless there is a major overseas crisis — an Israeli attack on Iran, an Iranian detonation of a nuclear weapon, a Middle East war, a North Korean attack, or something of that sort. That said, there is much to lament in the current administration’s foreign policy. But Mitt Romney should be careful in critiquing the status quo, given that it is full of paradoxes and contradictions.
The war on terror? Forget the absurd euphemisms like “overseas contingency operations” and “man-caused disasters,” the hypocrisy of railing against waterboarding three known terrorists while blowing up over 2,000 suspected terrorists (and anyone near them), and the half-hearted efforts of both using and trying to close Guantanamo and envisioning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court. What Obama said he wanted to do and what he actually did do are quite different things. In truth, he embraced or expanded almost all the Bush-Cheney protocols that he demagogued against as a state legislator, a senator, and a presidential candidate. That he gave George W. Bush absolutely no credit for surging in and saving Iraq, or setting up the procedures for operations like those that killed bin Laden, is again a matter of ingratitude, not foreign policy, given that the war on terror is now a successful eleven-year continuum.
But there is one caveat. Words ultimately have consequences. The constant naïveté from the administration — the characterization of the Muslim Brotherhood as largely “secular,” the mythography of the Cairo speech, the taboo against using the phrase “radical Islam” — may have been designed to offer a politically correct mask for Obama’s continuance of the Bush-Cheney protocols, but it may also have had the effect of suggesting to our enemies that the U.S. is ambiguous about radical Islam and does not necessarily connect it with anti-American terrorism.
In general, given American exhaustion over Afghanistan and Iraq, combined with the economic crisis, the Obama administration correctly gauged the public desire for no more interventions, but it finessed that isolationist impulse into its own sense of a multipolar world where America was merely one among many nations.
Aside from the war on terror, then, what are the ten legitimate areas of criticism?
1. Securitygate. The Obama administration has leaked the most intimate secrets about U.S. covert operations — the cyber war against Iran, the Predator-drone assassination program, the Yemeni double agent, the bin Laden raid — in a transparent attempt to chest-thump over the once covert anti-terrorism efforts. This was a shameful thing, and we have not yet felt the full consequences of this disaster.
2. The administration initially did not care much about the Arab Spring, but was dragged into it by the looming fall of Hosni Mubarak. Leading from behind in Libya was incoherent, and what followed Qaddafi was more incoherent. Not going into Syria was wise, even if the reasons for not going in were again muddled. Obama remains ashamed of Iraq and ostracizes it (even as it so far remains the most stable of the new Arab consensual governments), and he makes no distinction between the Muslim Brotherhood and secular democratic movements. In other words, rather than encouraging those who thought the Arab Spring might offer a pluralistic society, Obama stood back as Islamists, Khomeini-style, took control, and he then ex post facto labeled them democrats, even though, as in the case of Hamas and the Iranian theocrats, they favor one free election, just one time.
[........]
4. Obama has snubbed our closest allies, so much so that should the U.S. ever find itself again in need of a coalition, it is hard to imagine who would join it. Canada got mostly ingratitude for its presence in Afghanistan, and it is still furious over the Keystone Pipeline debacle. Our once closest ally, Great Britain, recognizes that the United States is now neutral on the Falklands (a.k.a. the Maldives), and that if Argentina were to invade again, the U.S. would probably withhold help. Israel knows that the U.S., at best neutral, votes present on the Middle East and does not much worry that Israel may soon be surrounded by Islamist frontline states. Whether we would fully supply Israel in its next war is legitimately in doubt. In contrast, Turkey, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood, for the first time in history, believe that America is more sympathetic to their causes than to Israel’s. Anti-democratic Venezuela and Cuba, and their Latin American kindred Communist states, also sense that the U.S. is a friend of such totalitarian movements — a suspicion shared by the vanishing number of regional democrats.
5. President Obama was quiet when nearly 1 million Iranian protesters hit the streets in the spring of 2009, almost as if he felt his own multicultural bona fides should be given a chance to finesse the Khomeinist theocracy — or as if the pro-democracy protesters were some sort of inauthentic neocons. It was a shameful decision at a rare time when the Iranian people were looking for pro-democracy affirmation — offering the last chance to stop the Iranian bomb without some sort of military intervention.
6. The new emphasis on Asia is so far in utter confusion. Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are less, not more, assured that a diffident U.S. would come to their defense in case of an existential crisis. Are they still under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, or is the umbrella itself shrinking fast? Simultaneously borrowing from and lecturing China leads to the image of U.S. impotence. The timing of looking eastward was terrible, as NATO sinks into irrelevance at precisely the moment when an insolvent southern Europe is waging a propaganda war against an ascendant Germany. As the euro zone unravels, a strong U.S. presence in Europe is needed more than ever.
7. Despite the growing anti-democratic tendencies of the Erdogan government in Turkey, Obama has structured his Middle East policy around that government, unconcerned that its policy of insidious Islamization is a model for slowly subverting what follows from elections.
8. The apologies, contextualizations, and bowing were trivial gestures, but in aggregate they added to the sense of U.S. diffidence and decline. As they became right-wing talking points, they also became rarer — a reflection that Obama’s own advisers understood that the optics of his one-worldism were becoming harmful to U.S. interests.
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10. With a little deft diplomacy, Obama could have salvaged a vestigial American presence to monitor the security of Iraqi democracy and blunt Iranian subversion. The failure to attempt this was an especially ironic lapse, given that the administration now wants to radically increase U.S. troop levels in nearby monarchical Kuwait.
The key for the Romney campaign is not, in the manner of the anti-Bush unthinking Left, to offer blanket condemnations, given that on many aspects of the war on terror, Obama, to his credit, continued the successful policies that he inherited. In contrast, there are plenty of policies that are Obama’s own — and therefore quite dangerous.
Read the rest - The Obama Foreign Policy
Tags: Victor Davis Hanson
Obama doesn’t do American foreign policy. Only islamic foreign policy
Zimmy free on $1 million dollar bond.
I like the new ‘do, George.
h/t Weasel Zippers
The Osprey wrote:
Yeah, the shaved head look didn’t do much for his cause.
Just because we have free speech.
Is the DNC chairperson a tranny?
Just saying the photos taken as a whole begs an answer.
MacDuff wrote:
I think Obama should give it a try. He’d looking smashingly pharaonic
Obama is a disgrace to this country. Everyone wants Romney to concentrate on the economy..and now they want him to hit the foreign policy. All in do time.
Romney is doing so far fine. Drip, drip, drip and at the right time let the flood gates open on obama before he balance himself out of it.
@ waldensianspirit:
With all the bling that would go with that then he would really hold as his honor the first gay president. He is so skinny-minny that he would appear like he was under-going chemo if he did the bald do too.
He is the most weak-looking president in looks and in deeds we have ever had. Even FDR looked stronger and he was ill.
Any way Obama goes there is a trip wire of facts set for him.
@ taxfreekiller:
So many lies out there….and he owns them all concerning his presidentacy.
@ Lily:
He will change the subject every time the sun comes up until vote day.
Some days he will do twofer subject changes.
BO was supposed to be Teh One who would restore “respect” to the American image abroad. How’d that turn out? The Euros laugh at him behind his back. The muzz totally disrespect him. Putin gives him the finger at every opportunity. And the Groveller-in-Chief ™ has dissed every true ally we’ve ever had. I honestly don’t care if we are liked or admired abroad. However, our economic and military might should be respected and feared. I like Rick Perry’s idea of foreign aid. It all starts at $0.00 until those with outstretched hands show that they are on our side, not neutral or against us.
8:00 in the morning on NBC’s Today Show.
Obama…”ya but”
6:00 ABC Nightly News…. “I can chage sunlight at will if asked.”
You light walker leader….
Just checked into a hotel room & turned on the TV.
There is Bob Beckel on FNC getting mental over Alan West
saying that “Blacks should stop acting like
slaves” (Meaning get off of the Dem plantation)
Beckel said “Iwould like to punch him”
Wait isn’t Alan West a Black officeholder & isn’t
any criticism racism per se?
Also West would kick Beckels fat ass until it was
a pool of blood..
huckfunn wrote:
They laugh at him. they have taken his measure and he has come up short.
MacDuff wrote:
yeah it gives ignoraumuses like CJ the excuse (not that he needs any) to yell Naaaaazi.
Bob Beckel is a good “reservation” white gofer slave of the commies.
If the commie Democrats told him to eat dog shit on TV live he would lick his lips in delite.@ RIX:
@ RIX:
I can’t stand Beckel. He’s obviously a paid punching bag for The Five as much as Colmes was for Hannity. He sits there looking fat and miserable for the entire show.
Speranza wrote:
History will show that he was an abject failure and the weakest of American Presidents. The United States is about power and success. Obama is all about weakness and failure.
taxfreekiller wrote:
Beckel is a blowhard. He always talks about playing football.
It was Divison III! Nothing wrong with that, but it is not a
claim to fame.
huckfunn wrote:
That’s it exactly. He brings nothing to the party, but he
makes the young, smart ones look good.
RIX wrote:
Total buffoon. On FNC they were just showing The Four dropping his fat ass in the dunk tank.
huckfunn wrote:
Yeah, I saw it. A beautiful thing!
I do hope that Beckel comes face to face with Alan West.
Beckel? money whore
Utah Suing Federal Government
RIX wrote:
Unbelievable…but from Beckel I can believe it. Isn’t this racism on his part? Would be if he was talking about a Dem. Disgusting.
taxfreekiller wrote:
Yes, and a million retorters from communist news networks, All Bull crap, or seeBS to catch him.
There is a baseball story from long ago. During a game, a runner made a dash for second. The throw arrived late, and as he slid in, teh umpire shouted “Safe!”. BNoth the baseman and the runner looked up, and he was standing with his thumb extended.
“Well, which is it?” they asked.
“Sorry”, he said to the runner, majority rules, only you two heard me say safe, a thousand fans though see the thumb.”
And so it is with politics. No one will know the truth about ObamAA+ as long as the mainstream media gives him a pass.
RIX wrote:
“FOX New contributor wants to punch a black man in his face.”
Media spin….see how that works.
I didn’t read the Hanson piece, but if I may. B. Hussein’s foreign policy can be exemplified in a nutshell (pun intended) with his bowing to the Saud’s.
O, and if there are any young people here (which I doubt) I have a qualified public service announcement. Don’t have kids; they cost too much.
Lily…
dropped a post to you on the last thread…had to book quick…we just got hammered with a t-storm bigtime…a ferocious downpour
@ song_and_dance_man:
where you at bro?…did you just get wet?
@ heysoos:
A lightening strike within yards here. It was flash, bang. The power is still on and the rain has subsided, but it’s still nice to see since we haven’t had any of significance for a minute.
And I just took my sons new car for a wash today. I guess I’m to blame.
I can hear the peals moving towards the Sandia range.
song_and_dance_man wrote:
I’m flooded here at Osuna and 2nd Street…an epic rain, one for the books amigo….damn lot of water
@ heysoos:
On the north eastern corner of where Coors smacks into the 40. Ladera heights.
song_and_dance_man wrote:
hell, you’re on high ground…it rained so hard here I about fainted…a cosmic intensity
heysoos wrote:
I was living in that very same area for the past 5 years. On Osuna in-between 2nd and 4th. Almost bought the duplex we rented for 4 years.
I guess that is how we happened to meet again at the Giant on 4th some months ago.
song_and_dance_man wrote:
2 blocks from me…so you’ve moved up then…good for you…we need to meet again
RIX wrote:
West wold knock him out in one blow.
huckfunn wrote:
He is so far in over his head it is criminal.
huckfunn wrote:
Feret Face Hannity has become even nuttier then ever when he is on Fox New Watch.
Speranza wrote:
that’s why his nic is ‘Out West’
NoThreat2U wrote:
lol that is how Charles Johnson will report it as.
heysoos wrote:
Yeah, it’s been a long haul after having moved here from SoCal. So, yeah, I can say circumstances have moved up somewhat.
You name the place and time and I’ll be there.
song_and_dance_man wrote:
I’ll figure it out bro, on me…kids included…if you email Walter he will give you my phone number, unless you have it already
song_and_dance_man wrote:
*Note to self*
Don’t have kids one year apart and then whine about car insurance %%’s.
Walter is like the Post Office, bless his heathen soul
OT
My neighbor, who is a wonderful elderly woman across the street, invited me into her home. She had these skylights installed that are called solar-lights. I have got to get me a few of these for my own home. They intensify the sunlight and warm the room with a glow that can only come from the sunlight entering a window. The difference being the light comes from above.
Calo wrote:
That is fairly prophetic. Because my complaint stems from that very issue.
* i must watch this one more closely*
@ heysoos:
I don’t know who Walter is. But when the comes ask any admin for my addy and it will be there.
I don’t think I have your email anymore since experiencing a crash about a year ago wiped a lot of those out.
@ Speranza:
Don’t I know it. It would make no mention of Beckel and his liberal leanings. Key words: FOX News,
song_and_dance_man wrote:
the choice was yours eh?….I bought my kids cars and told them point blank…you mess this up and you are totally fucked…don’t mess with Dad…you better have a damned good reason for slamming into another car…did you pay attention when I taught you?
@ heysoos:
Email the admins and they will exchange addresses between you both.
song_and_dance_man wrote:
we’ll fix that…I’ll be in touch somehow
Not News: Brad Pitt’s Mother Writes Letter to the Editor — News: Brad Pitt’s Mother Writes Letter to the Editor Ripping Obama and Endorsing Romney
However don’t read it if you’re a social progressive
heysoos wrote:
His mom and I saved a good amount for him to install him in a good car when the time came. Now on the verge of him entering college he blows the engine by not maintaining it. My anger over his lackadaisical and egregious lazybones effort to upkeep the vehicle was just short of a bastard slap.
We just had to get him another since his education is paramount for his future. Your advice to your own is much like my attitude this time. You blow it again and you’re on your own. I know what it’s like to scrape. I’ve been doing it since I left home at 15, and I let him know that his up to this time ease of life will cease if he fails.
@ Calo:
Lily totally bum rushed and harassed me today on your behalf….
bbl
My tummy and the rib eye waiting to enter it are mutually approaching a confluence.
song_and_dance_man wrote:
If their is no A1 Cracked Peppercorn in that confluence, then that confluence is totally lacking in EPIC stature…
@ song_and_dance_man:
kids can be really tough against you, not that they mean any malice…from Day One, my kids feared my wrath, but loved me for all I did for them…it was tricky but I pulled it off…there is a point, early I think, where you draw the line…it was never anything specific but my kids learned that to disappoint dad was a loser…but we were always very close and they seemed to understand the stress that involves parenting…I got lucky and my kids responded
doriangrey wrote:
ARe you kidding me? No one of any significance with BBQ experience would ever taint a rib eye with anything other than slat and pepper. Garlic OK.
I’m reporting you to the Food Network Stars.
Retiring is a perfect and acceptable solution for gaining his health back
doriangrey wrote:
OK, my keyboard friend… Good on Lily.
And, check your DM on twitter.
@ heysoos:
That is a great response.
I have a lot to say about Day One. It is imperative that children understand that authority. And it proceeds from Day One. I have to go and cook, but I must spend a bit of time expanding on that.
I have, over the years, wondered why we can’t gather memories from the formative years. Those years that are the most crucial for the development of the child. Birth to about 4. As I thought about it, it occurred to me these years are not retainable because these are the years that are the most significant in the shaping of the childs character. If a baby at two is allowed to have it’s way, then we call them a spoiled brat. And they are. If a child at that age is taught moral or character limitations of their behavior it is imbedded in them and they retain it for life.
I’m writing fast, and have much more to say, but I’ve got to go.
We don’t remember our early childhood because it’s a mechanism, as it were, inherent in all that is for the purpose of character development. This is for the role of the parent. To use those early years of the child to mold them adequately. I hope this makes sense.
song_and_dance_man wrote:
And you sir… Have obviously never tried A1′s Cracked Peppercorn… For 30 years I religiously refused to put anything on my steak, preferring instead to savior the pure goodly goodness of unpolluted formerly living now fire charred dead animal flesh. Then one fateful afternoon earlier this year, a nearly tragic accident involving a 8 year old child (who of course nearly became a extinct formerly living child) and my freshly grilled to utter perfection Angus Tri-Tip 2 inch thick steak and the a fore mentioned A1 Cracked Peppercorn steak sauce took place. Praise the Lord and pass the A1, for I have become a born again steak sauce believer. Truly mine eyes have been opened and I have seen the light and the glory of the perfection of a perfectly seared steak and the A1 Cracked Peppercorn Sauce…
Calo wrote:
Ummmm, how do I do that?
waldensianspirit wrote:
That’s ok, Angelina Jolie’s father (Jon Voight) hates Obama too.
@ doriangrey:
I’m not sure what you are using to view your tweets, but look under the dropdown area that has your settings, sign out and lists. Your direct messages are there.
doriangrey wrote:
Never mind, found it…
The splendor of Camelot on the 4th of July.
@ doriangrey:
mmmm tri tip
Still, I will hold to the notion that good steak be relatively un-molested by anything other than it’s own savory appeal.
song_and_dance_man wrote:
Yes, I know it sounds totally wrong and counter intuitive, and were it not for the actions of an eager to please 8 year old nephew I myself would never have tried it either. That said, this is one steak sauce that you have to try to understand how unbelievable good it is.
huckfunn wrote:
Ugh.
@ doriangrey:
Next time, just based on your witness, I will give it a try. For now it’s the old tried and true pair of salt and pepper. And a dollop of salsa and guacamole as a bite dip.
Putin on the Ritz!
h/t Stacy McCain.
song_and_dance_man wrote:
Hey, I’m a grumpy old curmudgeon and the 8 year old is still alive, that ought to tell ya something…
OOT is up.
@ song_and_dance_man:
Shoot. I miss y’all….