Foreign Policy Has Left Obama A Global Laughing Stock
Foreign Policy: The latest U.S. ally to openly sneer at us is a senior British defense adviser who says President Obama has "devalued the deterrent effect of American military capability" in the world.
In his first campaign for president, in April 2007, Barack Obama complained George W. Bush's war in Iraq cost the U.S. "in influence and respect."
Because of Iraq, he said, "many around the world are disappointed with our actions, and many in our own country have come to doubt either our wisdom or our capacity to shape events beyond our borders. Some have even suggested that America's time has passed."
To rectify this, Obama promised when he is president the U.S. would lead "the world toward a new era of global cooperation." He pledged "to rebuild and construct the alliances and partnerships necessary to meet common challenges and confront common threats."
Today, it is clear that this president has done exactly the opposite. Tragically, our allies now even laugh at us.
Never has the possibility been more seriously discussed of America being in serious decline. And as to doubts regarding our nation's wisdom and capacity "to shape events beyond our borders," one need only look at the particulars of this president's foreign policy to see example after example of exactly such impotence — Syria, Egypt, Iran, Libya, China, to name but a few.
Allies warn of the serious harm Obama has done.
For instance, war historian Sir Hew Strachan, adviser to Britain's chief of the defense staff and author of soon-to-be-published "The Direction of War," told the Daily Beast this week that "Obama has no sense of what he wants to do in the world."
He pointed especially to the debacle last year on Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons. Strachan called Obama's handling of that "crazy," with the U.S. actually enhancing the power of Syrian terrorist ruler Bashar al-Assad, undermining the U.S.' military reputation, and destabilizing the Middle East to boot.
"What he's done in talking about red lines in relation to Syria has actually devalued the deterrent effect of American military capability," Strachan charged, referring to Obama's broken commitment to intervene if Assad was seen to use chemical weapons.
Strachan also cited Obama's strategic failure in Afghanistan, where U.S. withdrawal makes the return of the Taliban inevitable. The Afghan and Syria messes have crippled us as a global military power, he says.
Add to this criticism Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon on Tuesday accusing Secretary of State John Kerry of operating "based upon an unfathomable obsession and a messianic feeling," and hoping Kerry would win a Nobel Peace Prize so he might "leave us alone."
Israeli allies obviously recognize that whether it's the intractability of Palestine, Syria's state terror, trying to talk Iran out of going nuclear, or destabilizing Egypt by encouraging the toppling of a dependable ally in it presidency, fuzzyheaded naivete is behind Obama's foreign policy.
All this comes on the heels of a new memoir by the former defense secretary for both Obama and George W. Bush, Robert Gates, charging that Obama didn't "believe in his own strategy" on the Afghan war, was "skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail," and didn't "consider the war to be his. For him, it's all about getting out."
On the 2009 Afghan surge of 30,000 more troops — far less that the military's request — "I never doubted Obama's support for the troops, only his support for their mission," Gates wrote.
That's not news. In May 2012, the New York Times reported that Obama ordered the Afghan surge "reluctantly," quoting an Obama adviser who said, "I think he hated the idea from the beginning" — and that "the military was 'all in,' as they say, and Obama wasn't."
Having re-elected a president of such far-reaching foreign policy incompetence, the U.S. has become a global embarrassment. High-ranking defense officials in allied governments now openly laugh and scoff at our president and secretary of state.
But it is gallows humor. The danger to American lives far outweighs the mirth.
