Monday, May 26, 2014

US foreign policy: Trouble abroad

The Financial Times

"Barack Obama is accused of timidity overseas, thereby raising fear and anger among allies."
 WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 17: U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks about Obamacare and the ongoing tensions in Ukraine in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House April 17, 2014 in Washington, DC. Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterparts from Russia, Ukraine and the EU issued a joint statement today on the crisis in Ukraine calling for all illegal armed groups to be disarmed, all illegally seized buildings to be returned to their owners, and for all occupied public spaces to be vacated. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
 
"When President Barack Obama ran for re-election in 2012, he pulled off what for Democrats was a remarkable feat – he took foreign policy off the table as a campaign issue.
 
"Ever since Harry Truman was accused of “losing China”, Republicans have sought to cast their Democratic opponents as weak in the face of foreign challenges. Yet fresh from his risky but successful military operation to kill Osama bin Laden, Mr Obama side-stepped the usual assault during his re-election campaign. His challenger Mitt Romney hardly brought up foreign policy.

"Eighteen months later, the political ground is shifting rapidly beneath Mr Obama’s feet. As he prepares to give an important address on foreign policy at West Point tomorrow, the president finds himself under attack over what critics charge is a record of indecisive leadership."

So many uninformed, uninterested Obama voters must be taught in the months ahead just how our foreign policy matters to the well-being of this nation. It will not be easy, given the anti-American point of view in academia and in the journalism graduates it turns out.

...  "The months of painstaking discussion in the first term over whether to put more troops into Afghanistan have been matched in the second term by a series of reviews of Syria policy, which have each ended with Mr Obama deciding to do little."
...
“ 'While the wolf is eating the sheep, there is no shepherd to come to the rescue of the pack,” former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal told the FT."
...
 "Assailed by complicated crises and mounting criticism, Barack Obama still has one clear shot at leaving a substantial foreign policy legacy – the nuclear talks with Iran."
 
"Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, all but said on Sunday that negotiations over the country’s illicit nuclear program are over and that the Islamic Republic’s ideals include destroying America."
Is this a declaration of war or isn't it?


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