By Dale Glading | The Save Jersey Blog
“Our friends don’t respect us and our enemies don’t fear us.”
With those words, former Vice President Dick Cheney summed up the Obama administration’s disastrous foreign policy.
However, Cheney’s scathing analysis remains at odds with President Obama’s own self-assessment. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 25th, Mr. Obama declared that the world is “more stable than it was five years ago.”
Which begs the question: is President Obama delusional? Or is he simply so narcissistic – or naïve – that he believes by declaring the world to be safer, it simply becomes so?
In either case, our president is clearly in over his head when it comes to foreign policy. And dangerously overmatched.
We will get to that latter point momentarily.
While Coptic Christians in Egypt are persecuted and martyred for their faith, riots continue to erupt throughout the Middle East. Libya is in complete disarray – thanks to Obama’s “Arab Spring” – and the strongman that he declared “must go” remains defiantly in power in Syria.
Let’s not forget Saudi Arabia, a longtime American ally, which broke off diplomatic relations with the U.S. over our bungled handling of the Syrian conflict as well as the Iranian nuclear crisis.
It’s a good thing our relationship with Israel is as strong as ever – not!
Meanwhile in North Korea, Kim Jong-un just ordered the public execution of 80 civilians in a crowded arena while their fellow citizens were forced to watch by the maniacal dictator. Their offenses? Some were mowed down by a machine gun wielding firing squad for the crimes of possessing a Bible or watching a South Korean video.
To the southwest, China just laid claim to the previously recognized international waters that encompass most of the East China Sea. Our tepid response was to send two unarmed fighter jets into the disputed airspace.
Yes, you read that right. Our jets were unarmed. Defenseless.
I’ll bet General Secretary Xi Jinping is shaking in his boots – or whatever it is they wear on their feet over there.
So as not to single out President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry has proven to be equally inept in dealing with foreign countries. On the heels of assuring President Assad that any military strike against his tyrannical regime in Syria would be “unbelievably small”, Mr. Kerry has succeeded in negotiating a lopsided treaty with Iran.
Let me get this right. We lighten our economic sanctions and in return, Iran dismantles exactly zero centrifuges.
Where is P.T. Barnum when you need him?
No wonder President Hasan Rowhani’s hands were shaking so hard he had trouble holding a pen. After all, sucker deals like this don’t come around every day.
Supreme Leader Ali Hoseini-Khamenei’s response to the agreement was to publicly criticize the U.S. and to call Israel “a rabid dog”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retaliated by describing the pact as “an historic mistake”. Secretary Kerry countered with a lame comebacker, referring to Khamenei’s comments as “inflammatory”.
I’m with Bibi on that one.
Especially after the Obama administration lacked the moral courage to insist that Iranian pastor – and American citizen – Saeed Abedini be set free as a precondition of any agreement. Instead, Abedini was moved from the notorious Evin prison, where he has been held for the past year, to the even more dangerous Rajai Shahr prison which houses murderers who often kill their fellow inmates.
And now for that “latter point” I promised you.
While President Obama continues to vacillate between doormat and dictator, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has swooped into the vacuum created by Obama’s lack of international leadership. First, he publicly outmaneuvered Obama over the Syrian affair. Now he is cozying up to Turkey, Egypt and Ukraine amongst others, all in broad daylight.
All the while, President Obama stares blankly ahead like a deer caught in the headlights.
Let me see if I can summarize Obama’s foreign policy in one succinct sentence. By comparison, the rollout of the Obamacare website went flawlessly.
