Foreign Policy: Good Will = Nothing. Surprise!

Peter Baker writes in the New York Times, “Good Will, But Few Foreign Policy Benefits for Obama,” that

“As much as they may prefer to deal with Mr. Obama instead of his predecessor, George W. Bush, foreign leaders have not gone out of their way to give him what he has sought.”

Well, duh, who didn’t see that coming?  Who doesn’t prefer to negotiate with someone who wants to be your best friend, so that they can clean your clock before you realize what hit you?  I take that back, liberals didn’t see it coming and they never do.  One liberal that I can think of who could see it, is no longer with us, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  He wrote a book about it referring to the world in it’s title A Dangerous Place.

So what has Obama’s policy of “engagement” gotten us?

• Putin getting Obama to drop missile defenses based in Poland and the Czech Republic for… “a player to be named later” from Putin?
• Ahmadinejad fixes an election in Iran, kills and rapes the opposition, presses on with its intention of getting nuclear weapons and the Obama administration says, “That’s a no, no,” as if chiding a tot.  Ahmadinejad can’t believe his good fortune.  He will play Russia off the U.S. and merrily stall until he has nuclear weapons and the missile technology to deliver them anywhere.
• Chavez is trying to help a dictator abolish democracy in Honduras, and Obama and Clinton try to help him by telling the Honduran people that have to allow their law breaking former president to return to power.
• Chavez is getting buddy-buddy with Ahmadinejad, so as soon as Iran has nuclear weapons, we may soon see nukes in South America.  JFK went to the brink of nuclear war to keep such weapons out of this Hemisphere.  Does anyone believe Obama would do the same?
• North Korea continues to thumb its nose at the Obama Administration, while it tests more missiles until it gets one that can hit Kansas City.
• Europeans dismiss Obama’s calls for more troops in Afghanistan
• The Saudi’s dismiss (despite or because of,  the bowing of Obama to their king) his requests for concessions on Israel
• Israel refuses to stop building settlements on the West Bank
• Obama has marginalized the State Department.  What is Hillary Clinton actually responsible for?  Biden seems to be handling (?) Russia; George Mitchell the Middle East; Holbrooke Afghanistan; Dennis Ross for Iran.

Foreign policy could not be more fundamental to the office of the President (Constitution: Article II, Section 2), but today President Obama will appear on five Sunday talk shows to continue to push his health care initiative that 56% of the American people don’t want and the Constitution doesn’t identify as a federal function.  If he doesn’t get back on track with foreign policy it won’t be health care we need but medical triage in the aftermath of another terror attack or war on our soil.

Tagged as: African American history, ahmadiinejad, Barack Obama, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, George W. Bush, Heads of state, Illinois, Iran, mahmoud ahmadinejad, Obama, Peter Baker, Political positions of Barack Obama, Politics, President, the New York Times, The New York Times Co, United States, United States presidential election