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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Foreign policy debate shows a smug, glib Obama is willing to weaken America

The notable moment when Republican Presidential nominee's charge of  Barack Obama weakening the US Navy by allowing the number of vessels to diminish to its lowest levels since the First World War was answered by the president, "Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets..we have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them, we have these things that go under water, nuclear submarines.."

What may have escaped President Obama's military planning genius is that America's adversaries also have those technologies. Obama's unsurpassed arrogance doesn't seem to have allowed for the notion that his desire to reduce the massive trillion dollar debt he racked up by diminishing America's security capabilities is short sighted, both financially and by risking American lives.

As former US Ambassador to the United Nations put it last week, "it's American weakness, not strength, that America's enemies find provocative."

Obama is making the United States weaker than it has been at any time since Jimmy Carter was president. Carter's weak, inept handling of Iran in 1979 didn't save any American lives, it only deferred death which came back to haunt the United States with interest. Carter's weakness emboldened Iran, through its ally  Hezbollah, to murder 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983, to support the insurgency in Iraq and the Taliban in  Afghanistan. Together, these Iranian-sponsored acts have cost the lives of thousands of American military personnel and which would not have happened if Carter had effectively managed Iran.

There is a reason the Iranian mullahs want Obama to defeat Mitt Romney in the election next month. They see weakness in Obama.

Obama desperately wants America to be likes, but more damaging, he does not see the United States as a force for good in the world, which is why is keeps impairing its global power and influence. His promise conveyed to Vladimir Putin to be more flexible after his presumed reelection was a concession to Russian demands that America not have an effective missile defense.

Among the many foreign policy concerns Obama evidently doesn't understand is the difference between a geo-political adversary, which Romney correctly identifies and a terrorist threat, which Obama apparently thinks is the same thing.

When Obama said to Romney last night, "the 1980's are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back" he should have taken his own advice. American missile defense is not aimed at Russia but at smaller rogue states. Russia, like Obama still thinks in terms of 1980's era mutually assured destruction scenarios.  But warfare and strategy have moved past the dilettante who currently occupies the Oval Office.

At his Toronto talk last week, Ambassador Bolton joked that whenever they want to cheer themselves up at the Kremlin, they play the Obama "flexible" tape over and over to remind themselves what a weak adversary they have in the White House. It's no wonder that Vladimir Putin has endorsed Obama's reelection hoping to meet opposite a spineless American leadership for the next four years.

But with Iran rapidly moving towards nuclear weapons capability, the Muslim Middle East in turmoil, Russia looking to reassert itself by giving diplomatic cover to North Korea, Syria and Iran at the expense of American influence and China building up its military, a second Obama term is something both America and the free world can ill afford










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