[StBernard] Our Pushover President

[Westley Annis]

THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - November 27, 2009

Our Pushover President
by Pat Buchanan

"This state visit is... a terrible mistake," said Rep. 
Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the 
Western Hemisphere. 

"He is illegitimate with his own people, and Brazil is now 
going to give him the air of legitimacy at a time when the 
world is trying to figure out how to prevent Iran from 
having nuclear weapons." 

Engel was speaking of the state visit of President Mahmoud 
Ahmadinejad that began Monday, at the invitation of 
President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva of Brazil. 

Extending such an honor to the leader who hosted a 
conference of Holocaust skeptics and deniers, often 
predicts Israel will disappear from the map, stole his 
last election and is stiffing the West on Iran's nuclear 
program is clearly a poke in the eye of Barack Obama. 

Nor is this the only dissing of Obama and America by Lula. 

The Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa has, for two months, 
been host to Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, a Chavista, 
who was ousted by his own Supreme Court and booted out of 
the country by the army. 

America will survive such irritants. But they are 
symptomatic of something larger: the mounting disrespect 
Obama and America are receiving from friend and adversary 
alike. 

Under the new center-left government that broke a 50-year 
hold on power by the LDP, Japan will cease refueling U.S. 
warships off Afghanistan, is demanding renegotiation of 
a U.S. troop deployment deal already agreed to and is 
moving out of Washington's orbit -- and closer to Beijing. 
Pyongyang, having tested a second nuclear device, continues 
to dismiss all U.S. demands. 

China just backhanded Obama's request to revalue its 
currency to stanch the steady hemorrhaging of U.S. jobs, 
technology and factories to the mainland, and treated 
Obama's call for openness and better treatment for 
dissidents and minorities with dismissive contempt. 

Yet, had it not been for U.S. magnanimity in throwing open 
its market to Chinese goods, Beijing would never have 
registered the double-digit growth rates it has seen for 
the past two decades. 

Some gratitude China is showing.

Despite U.S. warnings, President Hamid Karzai has stolen 
the Afghan election in a fashion so brazen as to make a 
mockery of U.S. claims of his legitimacy. Corruption 
remains pandemic, and ignored, including in Karzai's own 
family. He knows we have no other option. 

Iran continues to slap away Obama's open hand, secure in 
the knowledge that China or Russia will veto any serious 
U.N. sanctions. 

Israel, too, has taken the measure of Obama.

"Bibi" Netanyahu, elected on a platform of no negotiation 
with Hamas, no Palestinian enclave in Jerusalem and no 
withdrawal from the West Bank, a la Gaza, has defied 
Obama's demand for an immediate halt to any and all 
expansion of settlements. Not only has Bibi gone 
unpunished, his poll ratings have soared in Israel, and 
Obama has capitulated completely, leaving Palestinian 
President Mahmoud Abbas so disillusioned and demoralized 
he is considering not running again. 

The hopes raised by Obama's Cairo speech have disappeared, 
as our traditional Arab friends like the Egyptians and 
Saudis have been hung out to dry. 

Hillary Clinton may have pressed the reset button on 
relations with Russia -- but there has been precious 
little reciprocity for the U.S. decision to scrap the 
ballistic missile defense in Poland and the Czech 
Republic. 

Moscow has recognized Georgia's breakaway provinces of 
South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent republics and 
is now busy meddling in Ukraine to inflict a humiliating 
defeat on our man in Kiev, President Viktor Yushchenko, 
in January's election. 

Again, none of the above represents a grave threat to 
any vital U.S. interest. Nevertheless, this lack of 
reciprocity, this lack of respect, this indifference 
to what the president is demanding or even asking is 
revealing about the era we have now entered -- and 
about Barack Obama. 

All that bloviation we heard for two decades -- about the 
"Second American Century," the "End of History," the "New 
World Order," America as "omnipower" and "indispensable 
nation," the "New Rome" seizing its "unipolar moment" to 
impose "benevolent global hegemony" on mankind and "ending 
tyranny in our world" -- it was, all of it, bullhockey. 

Second, though Obama may be liked and admired by people all 
over the world, this counts for next to nothing in global 
power politics. 

Brazil, Japan, China, Russia and Israel are all countries 
with their own national interests that do not necessarily 
comport with those of the United States. All have come to 
see Obama as a diffident, dithering, doubting dilettante 
who can be dissed with impunity. And none of these nations 
is going to sacrifice what it considers critical to win a 
smile from Barack Obama. 

Multilateralism and globalism are on the way out. 
Unilateralism and nationalism are on the way in. 

As other countries look out for their national interests 
first, why do we not do the same? 

If we Americans will not put America first, who will?