Liberal critics derided President Bush for engaging in cowboy diplomacy, or “going alone.” Those same critics neglect to notice that Obama is employing a more dubious strategy than Bush. Obama has pursued a confused and aimless foreign policy based on the idea that he can personally sway foreign heads of state with his charisma. Unfortunately for our nation his “follow me because I’m charismatic” policy has proven to be devastatingly ineffective. Obama alienates our friends and appears cowardly by appeasing our enemies.
Obama was elected promising to improve the standing of America in the world; he has failed miserably. In September, Obama agreed to Russian demands and abandoned the Eastern European missile shield. This alienated allies Poland and the Czech Republic, who had risked much to participate in the shield, only to see Obama turn his back on them. This move signaled other countries that America does not stick by her agreements. Obama showed he will abandon America’s friends when it is politically expedient.
Obama’s weak foreign policy is damaging our nation
Obama further caved to Russia by signing a nuclear agreement that could have been written by Putin himself. Obama gave the Russians everything they wanted without negotiating any significant benefits in return. The Russians agreed to a downsizing in their nuclear arsenal, but that downsizing was going to occur anyway. On all the important issues, including tactical nuclear weapons, missile defense, and verification Obama made serious blunders.
With this treaty as a backdrop Obama called a nuclear summit. Two of our closest allies skipped the event. Then Obama earned complaints from the foreign press because the whole event was essentially held in secret. Aside from agreeing on certain platitudes, the summit accomplished nothing.
In an attempt to further appease Putin, Obama refused to meet with Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia. This is embarrassing given that Georgia, as one of our most loyal allies, has contributed the most troops per capita in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In contrast, Obama met individually with the leaders of Ukraine, Turkey and Armenia, all nations friendly with Moscow. This is just another example of Obama seemingly punishing allies and rewarding enemies.
Neither Gordon Brown nor Benjamin Netanyahu attended the nuclear summit. According to Nile Gardiner of the London Telegraph, Obama treats both these allies with “sneering contempt.” Obama offended the British out of a sheer lack of manners; remember the DVD set and the iPod for the Queen? His administration also sided against Great Britain in the dispute over the Falkland Islands. The British worry Obama has abandoned the longstanding “special relationship” between the U.S. and the U.K.
Obama offended Netanyahu by spitefully seeking to bully the prime minister, according to Israeli sources. At their most recent meeting in D.C., Obama presented Netanyahu with a list of 13 demands. When the Israeli prime minister stalled, Obama stated he was going to have dinner with his family and wheeled around and left the room. This sort of rudeness is unprecedented when directed towards a close ally.
After the contentious meeting, the U.S. announced that Obama may outline his own roadmap to peace in the Middle East which would require that Israel cease building settlements in Eastern Jerusalem. Talk about going alone; Obama unilaterally is demanding new internal housing policies in another sovereign nation.
The Obama and Bush administrations are essentially polar opposites with dramatically different results. Bush believed that it is better to be feared than loved. Obama is pursuing a policy based on the idea that he would rather be loved. The results have been abysmal. The crowning achievement of Bush’s foreign policy, besides keeping us safe for eight years, was when Moammar Gadhafi abandoned his nuclear ambitions and agreed to open his country to inspectors after we had invaded Iraq to enforce years of U.N. resolutions. Progress was achieved through strength.
What has Obama achieved? China has refused to make concessions regarding its monetary policy, or move to put pressure on Iran. Ahmadinejad continues mocking Obama and the international community by pushing forward with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Obama has yet to get any new commitments for new troops in Afghanistan. Obama’s position of negotiating through weakness is damaging the credibility of our once great nation.
By Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, Expose Obama
Tags: Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, nuclear summit, Submissive, WeaknessThe Obama administration is locking up the country’s nuclear weapons for all but the most “extreme circumstances,” pledging in a new policy not to develop new nuclear weapons and to limit the use of the ones in storage — even for self defense.
The new strategy stops short of declaring the United States will never be the first to launch a nuclear attack. But officials said the goal is to move toward a policy where the “sole purpose” of nuclear weapons is to deter or respond to a nuclear attack.
Obama is restricting our ability to defend ourselves
And Obama, in an interview with The New York Times, said his administration is committing not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that are following international treaty agreements, even if they attack with biological or chemical weapons.
Obama, fresh off the announcement of agreement with Russia to reduce nuclear arms stockpiles, said he would make an exception for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” in revamping the United States’ nuclear strategy.
Gordon Chang, author of “Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World,” called the policy a “dramatic departure” and said it only works if other nuclear states follow the U.S. lead.
Read More: FOXNews
Tags: Barack Obama, Nuclear Weapons, WeaknessThere is no more solemn duty for an American commander-in-chief than the marshalling of “all elements of American power” – the phrase Obama himself used on Monday – to protect the people of the United States. In that key respect, Obama failed on Christmas Day, just as President George W. Bush failed on September 11th (though he succeeded in the seven years after that).
Obama is weakening our defenses
Yes, the buck stops in the Oval Office. Obama may have rather smugly given himself a “B+” for his 2008 performance but he gets an F for the events that led to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarding a Detroit-bound plane in Amsterdam with a PETN bomb sewn into his underpants. He said today that a “systemic failure has occurred”. Well, he’s in charge of that system.
The picture we’re getting is more and more alarming by the hour. Here are some key elements to consider:
1. Abdulmutallab’s father spoke several times to the US Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria and visited a CIA officer there to tell him, apparently, that he feared his son was a jihadist being trained in Yemen. According to CNN, the CIA officer wrote up a report, which then sat in the CIA headquarters at Langley for several weeks without being disseminated to the rest of the intelligence community.
Read More: By Toby Harnden, UK Telegraph
Tags: Barack Obama, Terrorism, vulnerable, Weakness
First under the Bush Administration and even more so under President Obama, the federal government has been seizing power and spending money as it hasn’t done since World War II. But as bold as the Executive Branch has been during this financial crisis, the innovations of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke have been literally unprecedented. Indeed, it is entirely plausible that before Obama leaves office, Americans will be using a new currency.
Bush and Obama have engaged in record peacetime deficit spending; so too did Herbert Hoover and then Franklin Roosevelt (even though in the 1932 election campaign, FDR promised Americans a balanced budget).
Bush and Obama approved massive federal interventions into the financial sector, at the behest of their respective Treasury secretaries. Believe it or not, in 1932 the allegedly “do-nothing” Herbert Hoover signed off on the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which was given billions of dollars to prop up unsound financial institutions and make loans to state and local governments. And as with so many other elements of the New Deal, FDR took over and expanded the RFC that had been started under Hoover.
In the past year, the government has seized control of more than half of the nation’s mortgages, it has taken over one of the world’s biggest insurers, it literally controls major car companies, and it is now telling financial institutions how much they can pay their top executives. On top of this, the feds are seeking vast new powers over the nation’s energy markets (through the House Waxman-Markey “Clean Energy and Security Act” and pending Kerry-Boxer companion bill in the Senate) and, of course, are trying to “reform” health care by creating expansive new government programs.
Read More: by Bob Murphy, LewRockwell.com
Tags: Amero, Barack Obama, Dollar, Weakness
Cheney wants Obama to be a man and lead
On the eve of the unveiling of the nation’s new Afghanistan policy, former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed President Barack Obama for projecting “weakness” to adversaries and warned that more workaday Afghans will side with the Taliban if they think the United States is heading for the exits.
In a 90-minute interview at his suburban Washington house, Cheney said the president’s “agonizing” about Afghanistan strategy “has consequences for your forces in the field.”
“I begin to get nervous when I see the commander in chief making decisions apparently for what I would describe as small ‘p’ political reasons, where he’s trying to balance off different competing groups in society,” Cheney said.
“Every time he delays, defers, debates, changes his position, it begins to raise questions: Is the commander in chief really behind what they’ve been asked to do?”
Read More: By MIKE ALLEN & JIM VANDEHEI, Politico
Tags: Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, Strength, Weakness
Certain storylines are taking shape about Obama: 1 is that he’s playing with monopoly money
Presidential politics is about storytelling. Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds.
No one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. The pro-Obama narrative featured an almost mystically talented young idealist who stood for change in a disciplined and thoughtful way. This easily outpowered the anti-Obama narrative, featuring an opportunistic Chicago pol with dubious relationships who was more liberal than he was letting on.
A year into his presidency, however, Obama’s gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering. As Washington returns to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, there are several anti-Obama storylines gaining momentum.
The Obama White House argues that all of these storylines are inaccurate or unfair. In some cases these anti-Obama narratives are fanned by Republicans, in some cases by reporters and commentators.
Read More: By JOHN F. HARRIS, Politico
Tags: 7 Storylines, Barack Obama, Chicago Style, Monopoly Money, WeaknessAn old friend — an academic with expertise about the Japanese Empire, and in general a supporter of President Obama — sends me the following note, relating to photographs of President Obama bowing to Emperor Akihito of Japan.
"Obama’s handshake/forward lurch was so jarring and inappropriate it recalls Bush’s back-rub of Merkel.
Obama’s bow showed weakness to the Japanese people
"Kyodo News is running his appropriate and reciprocated nod and shake with the Empress, certainly to show the president as dignified, and not in the form of a first year English teacher trying to impress with Karate Kid-level knowledge of Japanese customs.
"The bow as he performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms….The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part.
"BTW, Obama’s bow at Suntory Hall was much better. Correct angle, slight bow. His hands were wrong but the physical tone was correct and appropriate.
Read More: By Jake Tapper, ABC
Tags: Barack Obama, Bowing, dumb, Weakness
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