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Ed Morrissey reviews recent foreign policy flops.
… President George Bush decided to pursue his own coalition of nations to dislodge Saddam Hussein from Iraq when then-French President Jacques Chirac double-crossed the US and the UK at the United Nations. Despite having dozens of nations in the coalition, the lack of an eighteenth resolution from the UN and the public opposition of Chirac’s France allowed the American Left to paint Bush as a go-it-alone cowboy on the international stage.
When Nicolas Sarkozy replaced Chirac, he and Bush created closer ties between the two nations than had been seen in decades. The two partnered on the war on terror, with France taking the unusual position last year of scolding its European partners for not contributing more combat troops to the effort in Afghanistan. Sarkozy and Bush also formed a tight alliance against Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Now who’s the go-it-alone cowboy? Obama has damaged relations with the UK, France, the Czech Republic, and Poland, which even Joe Biden was forced to admit yesterday. Instead, Obama has focused his friendlier attention on Russia and Iran. What has Obama and the US received in return? Laughter over Hillary Clinton’s amateurish “reset button” and zero cooperation on Iranian nuclear weapons. And this is “smart power”?
Steve Hayes reports on the detailed Afghanistan study the Bushies left for Obama and wonders why the present administration denigrates that effort.
… Not surprisingly, Republicans were among the most outspoken supporters of Obama’s strategy announced in March. And while Democrats on Capitol Hill did not, for the most part, voice their opposition in public, they registered their concerns in private conversations with White House officials.
They had a receptive audience. Several top White House officials, including Emanuel, Jones, David Axelrod, and Joe Biden, remain skeptical of escalating U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan. And according to the man who conducted the Afghanistan review for the Obama White House, Bruce Riedel, politics is at the center of those concerns.
“I think a big part of it is, the vice president’s reading of the Democratic party is this is not sustainable,” Riedel told the New York Times. “That’s a part of the process that’s a legitimate question for a president–if I do this, can I sustain it with political support at home? That was the argument the vice president was making back in the winter.”
It is a legitimate question for a president. Why then, as Obama again nears a decision on the way forward in Afghanistan, would Rahm Emanuel pick a fight with Republicans–the very people who gave the president his most ardent backing the last time he announced a new strategy?
Could it be that Emanuel hopes to foreclose one of Obama’s options–the one Emanuel opposes–before the president makes his decision?
Jennifer Rubin has thoughts about the Hayes piece.
What to make of this? Well, it seems as though the most “transparent” administration in history operates, at least in its “public” diplomacy, by deceit. The administration released the enhanced-interrogation memos but held back documentation substantiating that the techniques had worked. The president announces that he will look forward, not backward, with regard to CIA operatives but has unleashed Attorney General Eric Holder to gin up a special prosecutor to re-investigate CIA employees. The administration knew of the Qom facility yet remained silent and clung to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which declared that Iran had shut down its weapons program. And now the administration, lacking the will or the management skill to announce a new Afghanistan war policy, has concocted blatant lies about the preceding administration.
This administration’s thin skin is not its only point of similarity with the Nixon White House. It seems as though they also share an aversion to truth-telling.
Jennifer also posts on Liz Cheney.
… Cheney delivers a very tough message with serenity and with no trace of anger. It defies the image of the grumpy or angry conservative. To borrow a phrase, she has a “superior temperament.” And that temperament stands in contrast, ironically, to Obama’s. He used to be the calm one but now is increasingly seen as partisan and testy.
Second, there is an opening for Cheney’s message precisely because Obama has proved to be a more radical figure than most imagined. Had he made a definitive decision on Afghanistan or decided against throwing the netroots a bunch of bones by investigating CIA interrogators and discontinuing the full funding of key defense programs (e.g., F-22, missile defense), there would be much less for her to talk about. It’s only because Obama chose a George McGovern model over a Bill Clinton model that there is so much running room to his right. …
And on the other Cheney.
… Cheney showed in the Guantanamo debate that the president’s popularity (much reduced since then) is no substitute for cogent argument and smart policies. The White House once again will no doubt snarl in response, as they are wont to do in lieu of reasoned rebuttal. (And what would they say? ” We are not dithering!”) But Cheney’s point is the central one for the American people and for elected leaders: just how do Obama’s policies (e.g., reinvestigation of CIA operatives, release of interrogation memos and halt to enhanced interrogation techniques, delay on formulating an Afghanistan policy) improve America’s safety? Unless the president can provide a concrete answer, he remains vulnerable. More important, so does America.
George Will introduces us to Michelle Bachmann.
When Marcus Bachmann came home that Saturday evening in 2000, he checked the telephone answering machine and was mystified by the many messages congratulating his wife for something. “Michele,” he said, “do you have something to tell me?” She did.
The state senator from her district in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul had been in office for 17 years, had stopped being pro-life and started supporting tax increases, so that morning Michele Bachmann had skipped washing her hair, put on jeans and a tattered sweatshirt and went to the local Republican nominating caucus to ask the incumbent a few pointed questions. There, on the spur of the moment, some similarly disgruntled conservatives suggested that she unseat him. After she made a five-minute speech “on freedom,” the caucus emphatically endorsed her, and she handily won the subsequent primary.
After six years in the state Legislature, she ran for Congress and now, in her second term, has become such a burr under Democrats’ saddles that recently the New York Times profiled her beneath a Page One headline: “GOP Has a Lightning Rod, and Her Name Is Not Palin.” She is, however, a petite pistol that occasionally goes off half-cocked. …
Bjørn Lomborg thinks worrying about global warming misses the mark.
… Torethy’s life would not be transformed by foreign countries making immediate carbon cuts.
What would change her life? Having a boat in the village to use for fishing, transporting goods to sell, and to get to hospital in emergencies. She doesn’t want more aid money because, “there is too much corruption in the government and it goes in people’s pockets,” but she would like microfinance schemes instead. “Give the money directly to the people for businesses so we can support ourselves without having to rely on the government.”
Vanuatu’s politicians speak with a loud voice on the world stage. But the inhabitants of Vanuatu, like Torethy Frank, tell a very different story.
Writing in the Times, UK, Jeremy Clarkson says it’s not true he doesn’t think about the environment.
… “Recently, Boris Johnson jokingly wondered what had happened to all those Trots and Bolsheviks from the 1970s. Boris, my dear chap, they never went away. And now there are many more of them, living among us, posing as normal, respectable members of the human race. It’s just that they’re not called Trots and Bolsheviks any more. They’re called environmentalists and health and safety officers. Think about it. A single health and safety man can inflict more damage on business and industry than an army of Red Robboes. And the goals of an environmentalist far exceed the aspirations of even the most hardbitten 1970s communist.” …