As the new president and the Democrat-controlled Congress take an inherited recession and turn it into a depression, a parallel meltdown is occurring in matters of foreign policy.
The core of Obama's foreign policy can be expressed simply as "Embrace enemies, slap friends."
Examples of this are legion in just the first 50 days of this administration. While Obama embraced Hamas, Russia, Cuba, Iran and the Taliban, Israel and Britain got the slap.
For example, by executive order, President Obama ordered money for "refugee resettlement" of Gazans (deemed "victims" of the Israeli invasion) to the U.S. Press reports led to the administration lamely contending, despite the order's explicit language, that the money would aid Gazans in Gaza, and not bring Hamas terrorists to America.
Then, Secretary of State Clinton announced in Cairo a new American Initiative to spend $600 billion (money we don't have and would have to borrow) to rebuild Gaza. Responding to criticism that the money would aid Hamas, Clinton said a U.N. agency would administer the money. But that same U.N. agency routinely hires Hamas members, for example, to teach in the schools that it runs in Gaza.
These two initiatives were widely seen in Middle East countries as aid to Hamas in its war of extermination against Israel.
The consternation of America's friends increased when Obama reacted to the news that Iran was closer to a nuclear weapon than previously thought by asking the Iranians to help broker a negotiated "peace" with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The new Obama theory seems to be to apply the Bush/Petraeus surge strategy to Afghanistan. Yes, the same strategy that candidate Obama relentlessly criticized will now be misapplied as Obama seeks first to talk to the same Taliban that sheltered Osama bin Laden and made the Sept. 11 attacks possible.
In another example, Obama cavalierly trashed the most important bilateral relationship the U.S. has – with Britain.
For almost 100 years, American G.I.s and British Tommies have fought side by side defending liberty and fighting tyranny all over the world. A special relationship with Britain is a cornerstone of American foreign policy – think Roosevelt/Churchill; Reagan/Thatcher; Bush/Blair.
Not anymore. One of Obama's first acts in the Oval Office was to remove a bust of Churchill that had been there, I think, since at least Reagan. The bust, a gift from Britain, was not moved to another site but was returned to the British.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was welcomed by President Bush last year with a joint press conference in the Rose Garden, a state lunch, an exchange of gifts and a private weekend in Camp David.
President Obama welcomed P.M. Brown with a press availability in the Oval Office (four questions from four pre-selected reporters), no joint press conference (it was snowing in the Rose Garden that day and all the rooms in the White House were unavailable), no lunch, no visit to Camp David, and an exchange of gifts which raised slapping friends to a new art form.
Brown gave the president three significant gifts. First, he gave him a wooden desk pen holder made from the timbers of the HMS Gannet, a Victorian-era anti-slave ship. Second, he gave him a framed commission for HMS Resolute, a British ship saved from the Arctic ice by Americans, and third, a first edition set of the seven volume classic Churchill biography by Sir Martin Gilbert.
In return, Obama gave the prime minister 25 American movies on DVD, apparently in American Region 1 NTSC format incompatible with British (Region2) PAL format.
Trying to blunt criticism of these gaffes coming from both sides of the Atlantic, the Obama administration told London's Telegraph that the president was "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and was "too tired" to give Brown a proper welcome. What? The American media tells us that the powerful and popular Obama is "creating and saving" 3.5 million jobs, creating alternative energy, free health care, better education for our kids and making the rich pay for it – and he tells the British media that he is "tired" and "overwhelmed"?
There is an alternative explanation for the slap at Gordon Brown. Obama's birth father was a British subject. Barack Sr. was born in the British colony of Kenya. He was a nationalist and a lifelong anti-colonialist and anti-British activist. From the way this relationship is described in the Obama autobiographies, it is understandable that Barack Jr. carries this bias with him to this day.
To hide the real reason for the Brown slap down, the same Telegraph article quotes a source "close to the administration" that Obama has not had time to "even fake an interest in foreign policy." Really? The same week he was slapping Israel with his embrace of Hamas, Obama was including in his budget a relaxation of restrictions on the Cuban dictatorship, endorsing the U.N.'s bid for global taxes to support more world government, and applauding the Pakistan/Taliban truce in the Swat Valley which gives the Taliban a protected stronghold in their war to eject America from Afghanistan.
Weirder still was Secretary of State Clinton's embrace of the Russians.
A week earlier, it was revealed that Obama had sent a letter offering to stop deployment of anti-missile (anti-Iranian) missiles in Eastern Europe if the Russians would help stop the Iranians from deploying their nuclear tipped missiles. The Russians said they would accept Obama dropping the anti-missile plan but declined to trade restraint of their client Iran.
Then Clinton meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva. Signaling a new era in American-Russian relations, Clinton presented Lavrov with a cheesy "reset" button gift in front of the world's press. Not only did the red button remind American viewers of the "easy" red button in Staples TV ads, but the Russian word for "reset" emblazoned on the button actually was the Russian word for "overcharge." At least Clinton's predecessor, Condi Rice, could speak Russian.
I think Obama has a clear foreign policy. He is slapping our traditional friends and embracing our enemies to bring the same sort of "change" to foreign policy that he is bringing to the reordering of the American economy.