SUPERB CRITIQUE OF OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY – AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  The great Ed Lasky of American Thinker alerts us to one of the best critiques recently written on Obama's faltering foreign policy.  It's by Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins, published in The Wall Street Journal:

If the first year of President Barack Obama's foreign policy were a law firm in Charles Dickens's London, it would have a name like Bumble, Stumble and Skid.

This won't be posted on the White House bulletin board.

It began with apologies to the Muslim world that went nowhere, a doomed attempt to beat Israel into line, utopian pleas to abolish nuclear weapons, unreciprocated concessions to Russia, and a curt note to the British to take back the bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office. It continued with principled offers of serious negotiation to an Iranian regime too busy torturing, raping and killing demonstrators, and building new underground nuclear facilities, to take them up. Subsequently Beijing smothered domestic coverage of a presidential visit but did give the world the spectacle of the American commander in chief getting a talking-to about fiscal responsibility from a Communist chieftain.

Even a good decision was botched:

The decision to reinforce our military in Afghanistan came after an excruciating dither that undermined the confidence of our allies. Mr. Obama's loose talk of withdrawal beginning in 18 months then undid much of the good in his decision to send troops.

And...

One hopes that his advisers, and the president himself, recognize the weight of the query reportedly posed last April by the most formidable contemporary leader of a free country, Nicolas Sarkozy: "Est-il faible?" (Is he weak?). If a year from now world leaders think the answer is "yes," the U.S. will be in deep trouble.

And the answer, so far, is "yes."

In at least one way, Mr. Obama resembles his predecessor: He has enormous self-confidence. But where George W. Bush's certainty stemmed from moral conviction, Mr. Obama's arises from a sense of intellectual superiority.

Yeah, and people are starting to notice.

Part of un-Bushism as foreign policy has been a self-inflicted muteness by this most articulate of politicians on the topic of democracy, freedom and human rights. American foreign policy has always been a long and difficult dialogue between realpolitik and our values, our pursuit of our own interests, and our deliberate efforts to spread freedom abroad. Saying that the U.S. will "bear witness" to abuses and brutality around the world is, in effect, to say that we will send flowers to funerals. Mr. Obama needs to say something considerably more serious.

Very well said.  The remarkable fact is that George W. Bush was more idealistic, and more in tune with American values, than is Obama, the "idealistic" candidate.

It's a large agenda, but then, Mr. Obama likes to give speeches. And it still leaves plenty—articulating the need for and meaning of American primacy, for example—for 2011.

COMMENT:  Very well said, without rancor or insult.  Obama apparently believed that a few well chosen words from him could change the world.  But the world hasn't bought.  Words can have impact, but they have to be special words, like "We hold these truths to be self evident..."  This president hasn't come close to that magic.

January 11, 2010