• A Collapsed Foreign Policy

    With the focus of the coming election appropriately directed at the economy and the creation of jobs, some of the media is desperately attempting a redirection of attention toward foreign policy. More precisely, the MSM is fabricating a four year history of its protagonist’s foreign policy.

    Other than having given the go-ahead to kill Osama Bin Laden, the President’s foreign policy from the beginning of his term has been abysmal and has confused America’s allies as well as its taxpayers. The MSM is doing it best prop-up the primarily missing-in-action-unengaged leadership with incomprehensible accolades such as Where Obama Shines and How Obama’s Foreign Policy Success Will Win Him Re-election. Such is the nature of the progressive mindset. These I-think-I’m-smarter-than-most self-believing-self-annointed mental aristocrats continue to project their perceptions onto the blank slate of a Presidency only too willing to be so consecrated.

    To anyone who has been paying attention since the last Presidential election, such articles are void of insight and far removed from the world’s realities. The MSM assumes no one will have paid attention for four years.

    This is the President who sold-out Poland and the Czech Republic by the sudden abandonment of the missile-defense security arrangement without extracting a single quid pro quo from Putin. If he had a better idea, could he still not have found acuity enough to “negotiate”?  Apparently not. Today, Russia ostentatiously gloats in defiance as it ‘trades’ with, and supports, both Iran and Syria, as slaughter continues unabated by two of the worse current abusers of humanity on the planet. Putin says, “back off.”   Where is the President?

    In May, earlier this year, we could not blame the President with his attempt at political correctness (refraining from insulting Germans by using the “Nazi” word), as he mentioned Jan Karski witnessing a “Polish death camp” during a posthumous presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Karski, a Polish WWII hero. Is it that Obama has way too much on his mind? Or is it possible that he is uninterested and his handlers/writers are not terribly capable?  Has he read a book lately, or even watched TV? Any chance he’s not familiar with Poland and its history as Europe’s tromping ground?

    We can only surmise what Obama might have meant when he whispered to Medvedev, “this is my last election. After my election I’ll have more flexibility”, however, his track record does not allow for much positive speculation. Could he have meant, “flexibility” to leave the decisions to NATO? Backdoor compromises with thugs never work out, regardless what lipstick the pandering MSM has placed on this bizarre ineptitude.

    Yesterday the White House denied an Israeli newspaper’s (Yedioth Ahronoth), accusation that it had secretly negotiated with Teheran to keep it out of the Israeli-Iran conflict. Whether true or not matters less than the fact that under this President’s watch, the story presents itself as a plausible scenario, and one hoisted unsuccessfully in the White House press room.

    On the other side of the world, just as the Democratic Convention gets underway, the Nation’s Secretary of State is busying herself with non-presence. Unfortunately for Obama, as his handlers and writers scramble to prepare his speech, the Chinese have delivered an untimely, polite, but emphatic slam to Hillary, instructing her boss and his administration to stay out of their business in the South China Sea. China is stepping up its military control over the Macclesfield Bank, the Scarborough Shoals, and the Reed bank, against the Philippines, as well as the Paracel and Spratly Islands which are claimed by both the Philippines and Vietnam. Fishing rights are in play, but the bigger fight, and potential war, is over the extensive and proven oil and gas reserves which sit under the hundreds of islands forming the South China Sea archipelago.

    Wagging fingers at dictators is a foreign policy maneuver which has not worked so well in the past. At least not given all evidence. Alexander The Great had a history of being really pissed-off at those who wagged their fingers at him.  So much so that he annihilated their cities. Finger wagging measures will not bring satisfaction with China any more than they are succeeding with Putin or with ayatollah Khamenei in Teheran.

    There would be little point in asking about the intelligence which led the strategic reasoning to support the forcefully ousted Honduran President Zelayan. The MSM doesn’t much care about Honduras but it does care about Obama’s image. When Zelayan attempted to change his nation’s constitution in order to anoint himself dictator-for-life, he was simply duplicating what worked so well for his friend Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez, plus he had support from Nicaragua's Sandinista President Daniel Ortega. The MSM passed on that one.

    Both Obama and Hillary Clinton supported the Zelayan venture to abuse his country’s constitution. Of course if we had access to the insight which shepherded the Obama encouragement of Zelayan, we might enhance our comprehension into the more global intent of this Administration. Surely it cannot be as simplistic as the difficult to swallow explanations recited by the media that “open dialogue” with Latin American dictators is the road to positive futures for the populations of Latin America.

    The soaring rhetoric and promises of Obama’s entry into the Oval Office four years ago that he would “reset” relations with Russia; that he would “refurbish” America’s image in the Middle East; that he would “out-reach” to Iran; that he would obtain Chinese cooperation;  and of course the foundation of his election, that he would end engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, (let’s ignore Guantanamo), have proven to be little more than bombastic hay-feed for the ideologically inclined.

    When I wrote shortly before Obama’s inauguration, “Ronald Reagan prevailed, undaunted, in the shaping of his audacious foreign policy. He backed the Soviet bear into a corner,” it was anticipated, and is now obvious, that we would find ourselves very far from a Reagan foreign policy. With more dictators in power around the world now than ever before, an Administration wagging a finger, or asking for dialogue, only serves to delay the inevitable such as we are witnessing in Iran.  This Administration is kicking the can down the road,  . . . another can.