Barack Obama: Baffled By Foreign Affairs

During the Bush years, all we heard from the Left was, “George Bush is a cowboy! He’s wasting all the goodwill the world had towards us! He’s making people not like us!”

Now Barack Obama is President and, yes, America is marginally more liked than we were during the Bush years — but, what liberals don’t understand is that “being liked” is not an end unto itself. Being liked is a good thing, but it’s a good thing only to the extent that it helps you achieve your national objectives.

Barack Obama does not seem to understand that. That’s why he is completely undoing all the excellent diplomatic work the Bush administration did in Eastern Europe — all in an effort to please Russia:

Scuttling a missile defense shield in the Czech Republic and Poland helps smooth relations between the U.S. and Russia. But at what price?

Some of America’s staunchest allies are the East Europeans – and on Thursday, they expressed dismay at what many see as a slight after decades of their support for the U.S.

Among them were some famous names, including Lech Walesa, the former Solidarity leader and Polish ex-president. “I can see what kind of policy the Obama administration is pursuing toward this part of Europe,” he said ruefully, adding: “The way we are being approached needs to change.”

…Obama’s decision got a positive reception in Russia, hailed by President Dmitry Medvedev as a “responsible move.”

“Now we can talk about restoration of the strategic partnership between Russia and the United States,” said Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament.

…Former Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose government signed treaties with the Bush administration to build the radar system – and took a lot of heat from Czechs who feared it would make their country a terrorist target – went on Czech radio to vent his frustrations.

“The Americans are not interested in this territory as they were before,” he said. “It’s bad news for the Czech Republic.”

…Even so, scrapping missile defense comes as a huge setback to many Polish and Czech leaders, who viewed it as a way to strengthen military ties with the U.S. in a form of defense against a resurgent Russia.
Fears of Moscow run especially deep in Poland, highlighted by a key anniversary Thursday. Exactly 70 years ago – on Sept. 17, 1939 – Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union at the start of World War II.

Aleksander Szczyglo, head of Poland’s National Security Office, characterized the change as a “defeat primarily of American long-distance thinking about the situation in this part of Europe.”

Don’t think the date of this announcement is a coincidence either. It’s designed to send an intimidating message to Poland. The message is: Russia can do anything she wants to you and America won’t raise one finger to stop her.

When we invaded Iraq, there were a lot of nations in the coalition with us, but only three nations were willing to risk the lives of their soldiers to stand with us in Iraq when the bullets started firing: Britain, Australia, and Poland. This is how Obama has thanked them for standing with America when it really mattered. How disgraceful. Under no circumstances should this announcement have ever been made on Sept 17th.

Setting that aside, Putin appears to have taken Obama for a ride. Even as Putin is holding Georgian territory, hindering us in Afghanistan, and helping Iran to build a nuclear bomb, we’re making a major concession and getting “talk about restoration of the strategic partnership?”

What a joke. You have to go all the way back to WWII to watch the way that Hitler led Chamberlain around by the nose with these sort of meaningless promises to see a politician who was so easily baffled. In a sense, Obama is worse than Chamberlain because he has had Chamberlain’s example to learn from.

Actually, perhaps the better comparison might be to Jimmy Carter. Obama has been a disaster for the country on the homefront while being weak and incompetent abroad. This deal, coming on the same day as a story about the International Atomic Energy Agency gives you an idea of the scale of the disaster:

Experts at the world’s top atomic watchdog are in agreement that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead, according to a secret report…

Russia is helping the world’s leading terrorist state make a nuclear bomb. Meanwhile, Obama is doing nothing about it, chastising Israel out of fear that: it might act while Obama dithers, and rewarding Russia for undercutting our country by tossing our friends in Eastern Europe under a bus.

Obama: can he do anything right?

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