Ralph Peters is one of the New York Post’s best columnists. After serving over twenty years in the U.S. army, he retired in 1998, which permitted him to write and speak freely on subjects he knows a great deal about. One of them is U.S. foreign policy. He views Barack Obama’s performance as catastrophic. He writes: Right up to the final days of the Bush administration, rogue states stepped lightly, casting a careful eye at Washington over their hunched shoulders. Today, the world’s worst actors are playing Dictators Gone Wild.
It turns out that Barack Hussein Obama isn’t much of a negotiator when it comes to dealing with such heavyweights as Vladimir Putin, who took the American president to the cleaners. He cancelled the agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland to provide them with missile protection in order to placate the Russians. And what did the Russians give him in return? He got a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), in which the Russians got everything they wanted and Obama came home with nothing of value. But since Obama is a man of the left, he no doubt has been for nuclear disarmament since college days, even though we now live in a world where the mullahs in Iran are working overtime to acquire a nuclear capability.
Peters writes: “Obama also gave away dual-use systems that would be essential in a conflict with Beijing. This particular strip-tease was all strip on our side, all tease on Putin’s, a mortifying example of unilateral disarmament by a president who still despises the military.”
And so, while China and Russia are maintaining and improving their strategic nuclear arsenals, Obama is acting like a high-school student doing a project on nuclear disarmament. And as a socialist, he will do nothing to oppose Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, who has joined with Iran to pursue a deadly anti-American military alliance. Once Chavez receives Iranian missiles that can hit America, there’s no telling what that crazy dictator might do. But remember that Obama shook hands with Chavez at some UN meeting and promised to read his book.
Also, one should not forget that when Obama attended Occidental College, he associated with the far-left radicals on campus, whose heroes were Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, not Ronald Reagan. So I would imagine that Obama still has a soft spot in his heart for far-left radicals like Chavez and other leftist radical leaders trying to socialize their countries. They are only doing in their countries what Obama is trying to do here: destroy capitalism.
When the Chinese communist leader came on an official visit to Washington, Obama bowed and scraped and gave the Chinese leader a lavish state dinner. (A right-wing Israeli prime minister got a boot in the pants let alone a state dinner.) Despite all the lavish entertaining of the Chi-com dictator, did Obama get any concessions on China’s manipulation of its currency? No. Did he complain about Chinese piracy of American intellectual property? Not that we know of. Did he defend the human rights of Chinese dissidents? Why would Obama defend Chinese anti-communists?
The Chinese, by the way, are the largest holder of American debt.
Meanwhile, in Africa, China is making all sorts of economic inroads, while we continue to tolerate Robert Mugabe’s destruction of Zimbabwe. And when Muslims slaughter Christians in Nigeria, does Obama rise up in indignation? How can he, when he strongly believes that Islam is a religion of peace and love?
As for Obama’s relations with Israel, they’ve gotten so bad that even some of his loyal Jewish voters are upset. He bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia and praised Islam to the heavens in his Cairo speech, but he made no suggestion that the Arab states might stop hating Israel and Jews just for starters. It was up to Israel to make concessions, but it was perfectly normal for Arabs to continue opposing the very existence of Israel. And what was the Arabs’ reaction to the Cairo speech? Peters writes:
They knew Obama didn’t know what he was talking about. They know the historical score. They even know the real deal regarding Israel, although they dare not admit it publicly. Obama offered them strategic baby-talk. And they nailed him as a strategic baby.
As for Obama expressing outrage at Muslim Egyptians attacking Coptic Christians, we haven’t heard anything yet. As for al Qaeda, the president scored some points by giving the order to attack and kill Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani home. Although, plans to get rid of the al Qaeda leader had been in the works since the Bush administration, Obama got the credit for the spectacular job done by the Navy Seals.
What about North Korea and its belligerent leader Kim Jong II? Not a word from the American president who is probably relying on South Korea to threaten the North Koreans.
As for Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama seems to be relying on the Pentagon for instructions on how to proceed. Our success in Iraq is due to Bush’s surge decision, but the present Afghan policy is probably motivated by the need to make sure that the Democrats do not become labeled as the party of defeat and surrender.
But it is becoming clearer every day, that the future of Afghanistan is in the hands of the Afghan people, who have a largely primitive tribal society saddled with a religion that prevents that nation from attaining any degree of modernity. So why are we there when there is nothing we can do to change the basic attitudes of the Afghan people?
As for Mexico, the president won’t even permit Arizona to police its own borders. His attorney general is suing Arizona for passing a law that would do something about the illegal drug smugglers crossing a border unprotected by the federal government. When a nation fails to protect its own borders, it is negating its own sovereignty. Maybe Obama believes in his heart that the United States unlawfully appropriated Mexican territory, and that we ought to give it back. Just a thought.
Be that as it may, American foreign policy is in shambles, and there is not much that Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, can do about it except mouth the usual platitudes and clichés. Meanwhile, Obama, in conformity with the UN’s decision against Libya, has gotten the United States involved in a third war. And even there, the Obama administration seems to be in a state of confusion. It did not get a mandate from Congress to enter this new war, and there doesn’t seem to be any easy exit.
What else can we expect from this high-school student pretending to be president of the United States? Stay tuned.
