"A foreign policy of penance has won America no friends."

[unixronin]

That's the subtitle of Fouad Amaji's WSJ article about the failure of Obama as an international statesman.  His policy of abasement, and apology has convinced the Islamic world that he is a weak, vacillating, untrustworthy President with nothing new to say.

Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine, and a policy, of American penance.  No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others.

The crowd may have applauded the cavalier way the new steward of American power referred to his predecessor, but in the privacy of their own language they doubtless wondered about his character and his fidelity.  "My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger," goes one of the Arab world's most honored maxims.  The stranger who came into their midst and spoke badly of his own was destined to become an object of suspicion.

We who have sat here watching the trainwreck could have told him that.  Does the man have NO competent advisors at all? Or is the problem perhaps that he believes he knows better and won't listen to his advisors?

Comments

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

Actually, this is a big part of the problem. Bush's (or Obama's) approval ratings in the Middle East are possible the single stupidest indicator of how well our foreign policy is going. The purpose of our foreign policy is not about being liked. Our foreign policy is about advancing our interests in the world.

For whatever reason, we've developed a desperate need to be liked everywhere and that is half of our problem...which makes solving the other half really hard, since many of the potential solutions will piss a lot of people off.

[dafydd.livejournal.com]

Again, I say "Bah." Putting the screws to Israel (http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090608_west_bank_settlements_and_future_u_s_israeli_relations) is not showing "a desperate need to be liked." Neither is doing the same thing to the Palestinians (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1070450.html).

Similarly, working with the IAEA and being part of the G5+1 regarding Iran is being part of the international community, something the first President Bush did wonderfully for Gulf 1. That's not a "desperate need to be liked." That's understanding that international problems require international solutions.

The second President Bush wanted Hussein al-Tikriti ("Saddam" was a nickname.) and used a flimsy pretext to get him. The rest of the world called Bullshit, but President Bush invaded anyway and tried to spin it as America doing the right thing alone. He ignored the fact that his father managed to do the right thing with the cooperation of many other countries.