President Obama came into the office 11 months ago with virtually zero foreign policy experience, but with an expectation that he could staff his administration with smart people who specialized in the field. In a moment of supreme over-confidence, he announced in a Cairo speech that he was going to “re-engage the Muslim world in a way that would respect their culture”, while at the same time “work to solve the Israeli/Arab conflict” once and for all. This was his stated a foreign policy priority during his first term. While it’s only been 11 months, let’s take an inventory of his accomplishments so far:
1) He set a September 30th deadline for Iran to end their nuclear efforts “or else” the US would use harsh measures. We are in December and Iran is still thumbing their nose at the world and Obama still making empty threats. Obama “re-calibrated” his deadline to December 31st, and there is no expectation in either the USA or Iran that anything will happen.
2) Hillary Clinton, in an attempt to assure Israeli fears over a possible nuclear Iran, said “if Iran bombed Israel the US would retaliate” – which only served to make Israelis less secure with her inference that the US would allow Iran to have the bomb.
3) Obama, true to his campaign promise, has pulled most US troops out of harm’s way in Iraq, and the predicted massacre of the Iraqi forces that worked with our troops began immediately. This didn’t help US credibility in the eyes of any of our dwindling allies in the Middle East.
4) During the campaign President Obama described Afghanistan as “the good war” because that is where Al Quada is based. It took President Obama 3 months to respond to our US military Afghanistan commander’s request for 40,000 more troops. His response was 30,000 more troops, no logistics infrastructure, and a 12 month timetable before evaluation and possible withdrawal. This was greeted in the Muslim world with astonishment, and served to encourage the Taliban that they are winning the war and can just sit it out for the next 12 months.
5) President Obama demanded that the Israeli government to stop ALL expansion of existing Israeli cities around Jerusalem that are in the disputed territories, even though previous negotiations between previous US governments, as well as with Palestinian negotiators have always allowed for natural growth in these areas. This reversal of US policy alienated and created a sense of betrayal among the Israeli public towards the Obama administration, and also served to cause the Palestinians to backtrack on previous concessions and harden their positions regarding any further negotiations. Meanwhile, the Israeli concessions - having not been met with reciprocity by the Palestinians, are on the verge of being canceled.
6) In March, 2009 the Obama administration suggested to Russia that the US would pull its missile-defense plan in Europe in exchange for Russia more aggressively joining an international effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program and isolate Iran. In September 2009, Obama went ahead and scraped the missile plan and got nothing in return from Russia on Iran, which was interpreted by the international community as a complete US capitulation to Russian demands.
The net result of 10 months of US backtracking, back stabbing and withdrawals is that Muslim extremists all over the Middle East are emboldened and motivated like they have never been since Ayatollah Khomeini took over in Iran in 1979. Within months of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, the extremists will be focusing on taking over the government of nuclear armed Afghanistan.
I will be the first to say that the former Bush administration made some pretty big mistakes – both in foreign policy and in financial policy - but at the rate Obama’s “foreign policy experts” are “recalibrating US foreign policy” around the world, they are looking more like rank amateurs. They seem to have no concept of the possible unintended consequences of their foreign policy initiatives, and no appreciation for how difficult - if not impossible - it will be for a future US administration to fix the damage that is being done.
One thing the Democrats are not amateurs at is the ability to dress up a pile of partisan pork, slap some lipstick on top, and call it a health care bill. But that’s another story …….
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