Originally Posted by
JSLeFanu
Where did you get the idea that Eisenhower was ever a supporter of Israel anyway?
As for Obama he seems to have achieved the impossible. He's made Jimmy Carter look (semi) competent. He's basically toast anyway. His domestic policies have failed and his famed foreign policy is in ribbons.
The original poster above said that the Arab world sees america as now being weak. I agree with him about that but as to causes I believe he is completely wrong.
Looking on, what the Arabs see is a weak, or deranged, US President who gives way to his enemies in a misguided effort to make them like him and who'll go further by undermining his own allies in this attempt to curry favour.
Traditional Arab US allies in the gulf are so spooked by Obamas weakness towards Iran that it's one of the Middle Easts worst kept secrets that they're half hoping Israel takes matters in hand for them. Either way his dithering scares them ********************less.
Then as opportunity knocked in the form of the mass uprising in Iran last summer he was virtually mute as the Iranian regime, clubbed, shot, murdered, tortured and raped the protestors into submission. See he didn't want anything to come between him and his new bessie friends as he courted them with his charm. It was a betrayal of disguisting proportions and one which will have been noted in all the wrong places.
He dithered for 8 months over committing more forces to Afganistan as the body count rose for lack of support. This pissed the Brits off bigtime as their boys got slaughtered. To rub salt in Obama then snubbed Gordon Brown on his first visit to Washington. Whatever you think of Gordon Brown, or the UK, such a snub was stupidity on a stick. The UK is one of the US's mist dependable friends in the world you don't, simply don't, leave its Prime Minister looking like an idiot, at least not if you know what's good for you.
Meanwhile in eastern Europe he pulled the rug out from under two of the most atlanticist states in Europe by unilaterally pulling the missile defence shield systems that they'd had an agreement with the US to go ahead with.
The Arabs have no shortage of faults of their own but frankly whatever else Obamas disrespect towards the USA's allies convinces them of there are two lessons we can count on them drawing from his behaviour
1. This man can't be relied upon to stand by his own allies so why should we trust him?
2. He's weak, whatever else that might mean it hardly makes him, and by extension the US, worthy of our respect.
US influence on the world stage is at it's lowest point since the disaster that was Jimmy Carter and for some of the same reasons too. I'm sure there are plenty here who like him for precisely this reason but that's not his job. It's the job of Americas enemies, or rivals, to diminish their power not the job of the US president. So while those who dislike the US no doubt like Obama the Americans themselves have woken up to the fact that this guy is a goof and that's why he's a lame duck president only 15 months into the job.
Like many Irish people I watched Obamas speech, upon assuming office, that night infront of the masses and was filled with optimism. That's now gone. He looks like the political lightweight it was claimed all along that he was.
I've little doubt that had he lived Kennedy would have crashed and burned. America, and democratic policy goals were saved by his death. His successor LBJ was a machine politician of almost supernatural gifts who knew how to ram through rafts of reforming legislation which, at the time, were a lot more polarizing than Obamas rather timid healthcare plans.
Obama's gonna get kicked to the curb come the next election let's hope he doesn't ruin the US, at home and abroad, before he schuttles off to write his autobiography. The next US president will have to repair the alliances that this novice has spent 15 months sundering and undermining.
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote