THE BOTTOM LINE IN FOREIGN POLICY – AT 8:59 A.M. ET:   The Washington Times has a fine editorial outlining the damage that Barack Obama has done to this nation's credibility in the conduct of his looney-tunes foreign policy: 

Osama bin Laden warned Arab regimes that the United States always abandons its friends when the going gets tough. President Obama is proving bin Laden was right.

Get this, and savor it:

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews admits he feels “ashamed as an American” for the way Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak is being treated. “We’re not handling it the way Americans should handle matters like this,” he said Friday. “I don’t feel right about it. And Barack Obama, as much I support him in many ways, there is a transactional quality to the guy that is chilling.” Mr. Matthews explained that in relationship politics, “You treat your friends a certain way. You’re loyal to them. And when they’re wrong, you try to be with them, you try to stick with them.”

Chris Matthews said that?  CHRIS MATTHEWS?  The guy who got a tingle up his leg in 2008 when he heard Obama speak?

Lyndon Johnson once said, during Vietnam, that if he'd lost Walter Cronkite, he'd lost America.  Is Obama now saying that if he's lost Chris Matthews, he's lost the entire lunatic fringe?

On Saturday, former Vice President Dick Cheney reminded us that Mr. Mubarak is a reliable U.S. ally. His government received billions in U.S. aid over the last 30 years and consistently lived up to expectations...

...Mr. Mubarak‘s government has been stalwart in the war on terrorism. In the 1990s, Egypt was one of the front-line states combating the rising wave of Islamic radicalism...

...One of the most dependable, pro-American members of the Mubarak regime is recently appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman, who since 1993 has been director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service. Mr. Suleiman has a long-standing relationship with the United States dating back to his training at the U.S. Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg and has worked closely with the CIA on critical issues such as the increasing radicalization of Hamas in Gaza and blunting Iranian influence operations in the region. He holds a dim view of Islamist parties – particularly the Muslim Brotherhood – and wants to keep his country on the path of Westernization and modernization.

The problem is, some elements in Obama's base, and probably Obama himself, believe that the United States is the bad guy in the Muslim world.  The Muslim Brotherhood?  Why, they simply have an alternative cultural perspective.  You actually hear talk like that.

What if the hardline Muslim Brotherhood actually takes power? The State Department simply shrugs that the brotherhood is “a fact of life in Egypt.” Unfortunately, no matter what government succeeds Mr. Mubarak’s administration, Egypt and the rest of America’s beleaguered allies will know one thing: They can’t trust Barack Obama.

COMMENT:  No they can't.  No doubt Obama will ask for further concessions from the Israelis to get the "peace process" back on track.  If you were the prime minister of Israel, what would you do?  Would you put your faith in a man who has a large bus parked outside the White House, under which he throws former friends?

February 8, 2011