3 November 2014

Notes From Norm: Nowhere on this Earth

Our Nobel Prize winning President has done more to undermine our nation’s safety and security through his bungled foreign policy than Jimmy Carter.

Harsh criticism, to be sure, but fair and entirely defensible.

With another story emerging about the President’s toxic relationship with Israel, and its leaders, its clear the President views his role in the world more akin to that of a Ward Boss from Chicago than the leader of the free world.

A story from The Atlantic where a senior (unnamed) Obama Administration official is said to liken the political leaders of Israel to the fecal output of poultry shows an amazing lack of maturity and a dangerous lack of understanding of the world we live in today.

Worse than the childish name-calling from this Administration is the very real efforts to keep our allies from meeting with key officials while they are in Washington as a way to punish them and make it clear that the Obama Administration dislikes the decisions that Israeli leaders are making to protect Israeli citizens.

But, it’s not just Israel that the President abuses with his hardball backroom political tactics.  Even Turkey, a long and reliable ally, is now feeling the same type of tactics from the Obama Administration.

When President Obama woke up a few weeks ago and learned that ISIS was a threat to the United States and our allies, he immediately went about assuring America that our allies would follow him to the end of the Earth to defeat the Islamic State.

That few nations felt compelled to fall in line behind a President who tells dictators and thugs not to cross imaginary and moveable red lines should not be a surprise to anyone.

Unfortunately, when our allies object to a strategy or lack of a strategy by the Obama Administration, they get vilified by “anonymous” Administration officials and met with locked and closed doors to Administration officials.

The only honest guy in the room who has the guts to attribute his name to his irresponsible comments and remarks insulting our allies is Joe Biden who blamed Turkey and the UAE for the rise of ISIS and then had to apologize for the insult.

All of this is stunningly puzzling given that the President, less than two years ago, was lauded for his prescient foreign policy vision and deftness.

Today, he, along with those who support his policies, are more vainglorious and enervated than they are capable of leading a nation, much less nations, in these times of peril.

Out of one corner of the President’s mouth he mumbles that no Administration has supported Israel more than his, while out of the other side of his mouth he condones the rampant rhetorical insults thrown at Israel’s leadership when they don’t adhere to his view of the world and the threats that are in it.

He rolls his eyes like a petulant child in meetings with other world leaders and complains about the difficulty of working with the Prime Minister of Israel.

When eye rolling isn’t enough his Administration applies pressure on Israel to abandon its commitment to self-preservation in favor of following a feckless President’s foreign policy meanderings.

Each path this President has taken us down when it comes to foreign policy has ended in disaster, or a roadblock or endless detours while he quibbles with the clear lines between reality and illusion.

This has always been the “as if saying it were so makes it true” Presidency. 

As if saying that terrorism was defeated with the death of Bin Laden were true.

As if saying that ISIS was the Junior Varsity of the terrorism world were true.

As if saying that Israel is a critically important ally were true.

History will ultimately judge this Administration years from now.  Perhaps long after many of us have gone to dust.

Yet, we do know the history of the future is being created today by the actions and policies of this President.  That its early stages are already reaping results that are far from favorable for our own nation is neither encouraging nor satisfactory.

There’s nowhere on Earth today that is more stable and peaceful because of the foreign policy hand of the Obama Administration.

Let me repeat that.  There’s nowhere on Earth today that is more stable and peaceful because of the foreign policy hand of the Obama Administration.

And, that includes the United States of America.