by Carl in Jerusalem
January 20, 2012, Friday
In an interview with Fareed Zakaria in Time Magazine, Barack Hussein Obama gives a(n incomplete) list of American allies and then lists Israel as a country with which the US has 'close military cooperation.' I'm going to give you the entire question and answer so no one tries to claim it's out of context. Emphasis is mine.
Fareed Zakaria: When we talked when you were campaigning for the presidency, I asked you which Administration’s foreign policy you admired. And you said that you looked at George H.W. Bush’s diplomacy, and I took that to mean the pragmatism, the sense of limits, good diplomacy, as you looked upon it favorably. Now that you are President, how has your thinking evolved?
President Obama: It is true that I’ve been complimentary of George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy, and I continue to believe that he managed a very difficult period very effectively. Now that I’ve been in office for three years, I think that I’m always cautious about comparing what we’ve done to what others have done, just because each period is unique. Each set of challenges is unique. But what I can say is that I made a commitment to change the trajectory of American foreign policy in a way that would end the war in Iraq, refocus on defeating our primary enemy, al-Qaeda, strengthen our alliances and our leadership in multilateral fora and restore American leadership in the world. And I think we have accomplished those principal goals.
We still have a lot of work to do, but if you look at the pivot from where we were in 2008 to where we are today, the Iraq war is over, we refocused attention on al-Qaeda, and they are badly wounded. They’re not eliminated, but the defeat not just of [Osama] bin Laden, but most of the top leadership, the tightening noose around their safe havens, the incapacity for them to finance themselves, they are much less capable than they were back in 2008.
Our alliances with NATO, Japan, South Korea, our close military cooperation with countries like Israel have never been stronger. Our participation in multilateral organizations has been extremely effective. In the United Nations, not only do we have a voice, but we have been able to shape an agenda. And in the fastest-growing regions of the world in emerging markets in the Asia Pacific region, just to take one prominent example, countries are once again looking to the United States for leadership.
That’s not the exact same moment as existed post–World War II. It’s an American leadership that recognizes the rise of countries like China and India and Brazil. It’s a U.S. leadership that recognizes our limits in terms of resources, capacity. And yet what I think we’ve been able to establish is a clear belief among other nations that the United States continues to be the one indispensable nation in tackling major international problems.
And I think that there is a strong belief that we continue to be a superpower, unique perhaps in the annals of history, that is not only self-interested but is also thinking about how to create a set of international rules and norms that everyone can follow and that everyone can benefit from. So you combine all those changes, the United States is in a much stronger position now to assert leadership over the next century than it was only three years ago.
We still have huge challenges ahead. And one thing I’ve learned over the last three years is that as much as you’d like to guide events, stuff happens and you have to respond. And those responses, no matter how effective your diplomacy or your foreign policy, are sometimes going to produce less-than-optimal results. But our overall trajectory, our overall strategy, I think has been very successful.
Oh gosh.... Where to start? George H.W. Bush was the most anti-Israel President between Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
He hasn't ended the war in Iraq - he's removed the United States from it and squandered all that the United States had accomplished there. He's redefined the enemy as the al-Qaeda bogeyman, ignoring the fact that there are Islamic terrorist organizations like Hezbullah and Hamas, which feel just as warm and fuzzy about the US as al-Qaeda does. He pretends that there is no such thing as militant Islam.
Outrageously, he refers to 'allies' like the UN(!), Japan and South Korea, and military cooperation with 'countries like Israel.' Clearly, to Obama, Israel is something less than an ally. Even less than the UN. His assertions about the UN and about the US controlling its agenda would be laughable were they not leading to such disastrous consequences for the West.
Obama tries to pass on American leadership to countries like India, China and Brazil. That's simply outrageous, but it's in line with Obama's continuing denial of American exceptionalism. Quite simply, he believes that America is no different than anyone else, that it can't lead, that it can't innovate, and that it's just another middling power. But he says that thanks to his degrading of American capabilities, the US is in a better position to assert leadership in the future. Huh? Amazing.
Finally, 'stuff happens and you have to respond'? Doesn't a superpower (oh - Obama thinks the US is just a 'power') try to shape events?
He goes on to once again refuse to commit that Iran won't get a nuclear weapon (but that the US will 'do all we can' to stop them). What a disgrace....
You can all read the rest of it. What really got me was that he clearly doesn't consider Israel to be an ally, and that Israel's Jewish friends in the US are - as best as I can tell - ignoring that.