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November 30, 2009

'Obama the Impotent'

The overseas reviews for President Obama's foreign policy are starting to pour in, and as Peter Wehner points out at Commentary, they are most definitely not favorable. We are witnessing the unmasking of Barack Obama, and we are seeing "Obama the Impotent":

[...] On almost every front, progress is nonexistent. In many instances, things are getting worse rather than better. The enormous goodwill that Obama's election was met with hasn't been leveraged into anything useful and tangible. Rather, our allies are now questioning America's will, while our adversaries are becoming increasingly emboldened. The United States looks weak and uncertain. It's "amateur hour at the White House," according to Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former official in the Carter administration. "Not only are things not getting fixed, they may be getting more broken," according to Michael Hirsh at Newsweek. When even such strong Obama supporters as Gelb and Hirsh reach these conclusions, you know things must be unraveling.

[...] Right now the overwhelming issue on the public's mind is the economy, where Obama is also having serious problems. But national-security issues matter a great deal, and they remain the unique responsibility of the president. With every passing month, Barack Obama looks more and more like his Democratic predecessor Jimmy Carter: irresolute, unsteady, and overmatched. The president and members of his own party will find out soon enough, though, that Obama the Impotent isn't what they had in mind when they elected him. We are witnessing the unmasking, and perhaps the unmaking, of Barack Obama.

Wehner appropriately notes that it's no mystery as to why our allies are questioning America's will while our adversaries are becoming increasingly emboldened. President Obama's simplistic and misguided approach to international relations is premised on the belief that American concessions to our adversaries will beget goodwill and concessions in return; that American self-abasement is justified; that the American decline is inevitable (and in some respects welcome); and that diplomacy and multilateralism are ends rather than means to an end.

In other words, Obama's foreign policy is wrong on all accounts, and "Obama the Impotent" is causing serious damage to the United States. As Michael Barone suggested back in September, Barack Obama - whose college thesis has never been made public, seems stuck in a time warp in which the United States is the bad guy. He disrespects those who have been our friends and to bows to our enemies.

And to think that America actually thought this guy was something more than an empty suit. Instead all we got was a man whose foreign policy is what Edward Lucas, Eastern European correspondent for the Economist, describes in the Telegraph of London as, "[A] disturbing picture of timidity, clumsiness and short-term calculation. Some say he is the weakest president since Jimmy Carter.

Related: Riding the Back of the Tiger (Victor Davis Hanson on Obama not understanding What Causes Wars)

Posted by Abdul at November 30, 2009 12:16 PM

• 'Obama the Impotent' - Nov 30, 2009