May, 2015, Obama Administration Foreign Affairs Failure Update

We have made it clear when writing this blog that we are not fans of just about anyone currently involved in the American political class. And that certainly includes our current President. Never has someone been so highly thought of and so much expected of coming into the White House and never has anyone disappointed us so much with their failed performance in that job.

To get a sense of how much of a failure this administration has been over the past six years, just enter the phrase, “obama administration failure” in the search box above. You will then see a series of past posts where we document the dozens of failures.

Just last month we did a series of failure posts and in one of them we focused on foreign affairs failures. That post can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2015/04/meet-new-boss-same-as-old-boss-or.html

It was not a pretty post relative to the numerous times this administration has failed to develop and implement a coherent, integrated foreign affairs strategy. Unfortunately, just a few short weeks after that post went live, today we have to update it with another five foreign affairs disasters, from the dangerous to the mundane but embarrassing, that have happened since the post referenced above. That is how inept this administration and Washington in general has become.

1) The United States used to be the most powerful and respected nation in the world. Although you can make the case that it is still the most powerful along several dimensions, it is doubtful it is still the most respected. This reality was recently driven home when four Persian Gulf state nations, supposed allies of the U.S., decided not to send their most powerful leader to an upcoming summit of Persian states, hosted by the Obama administration. 

According to Fox News: “The White House was scrambling Monday to put a positive face on an upcoming summit of Persian Gulf states after learning leaders from four of the six invited nations are expected to skip. While those nations are still sending representatives to the summit being hosted by President Obama later this week at Camp David, the absence of crucial heads of state — notably, Saudi Arabia’s new king — could present an awkward situation for the administration.”

It is a summit for Persian Gulf states but two thirds of them decided it was not worth sending their top leader and office holder to the summit. Not sure this would have happened when the U.S. was respected around the world but it sure is happening now. Obviously, these leaders either thought they had better things to do than to listen to the President or they were sending a not so subtle message that Obama was getting much too cozy with their Gulf enemy, Iran, especially relative to the nuclear weapons that country is trying to develop.

In either case, this is a huge diplomatic snub to the this administration no matter how vigorously the administration’s spokespeople try to spin it.

2) And the President did not help matters much at all with the Saudis when he made two huge mistakes recently at a White House meeting with two powerful Saudi crown princes. Now, keep in mind that this administration has been in place for over six years. The following diplomatic failure cannot be attributed to just getting into power and learning on the job. The job learning should have been learned years ago from a diplomatic perspective.

So what happened at the White House meeting? Unbelievably, Obama screwed the deputy crown prince's name and also the name of the king who helped build America's relationship with Saudi Arabia, King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud. Specifically:

• Mistake #1: The deputy crown prince's name is actually Mohammed bin Salman (bin means son of in Arabic); his father's name is Salman.
• Mistake #2: The King whom President Obama called King Faisal is actually King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, who met with Roosevelt. That king's son was named Faisal.

This administration cannot even get basic names right and somehow we expect our allies in the Middle East to trust this Presidential administration on such topics as nuclear weapon development in Iran. According to Elliott Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations: Getting the names wrong "will deepen the sense in the Gulf and the wider Middle East that the president of the United States does not know what is doing in their region." 

Certainly cannot disagree with Mr. Abrams. 

3) Let’s stay with the Saudis and the Obama administration's total diplomatic failure with this country. One theory is that if Obama signs off on a nuclear arms deal with Iran that paves the way, either in perception terms or in reality, to get nuclear weapons, then other Gulf nations, especially Saudi Arabia, will follow suit and develop their own nuclear weapons programs to protect themselves and their interests. 

But that might be a faulty logic flow but for reasons that were not obvious up until now. According to some credible news reports, rather than set up research programs to develop nuclear weapons in response to an Obama/Iran deal, the Saudis have decided that they do not need to develop their own nuclear weapons capability. They simply have already gone out and bought nuclear weapons from Pakistan.

According to the BBC and the Times of Israel: “Saudi Arabia may be prepared to field nuclear bombs it has purchased from Pakistan in response to Iran’s alleged military nuclear program, and may already have deployed missile systems capable of delivering the bombs, the BBC reported on Wednesday. According to Mark Urban, diplomatic and defense editor for the BBC’s Newsnight, there are suggestions that the Saudis have paid for a number of nuclear weapons that are ready and waiting in Pakistan. If the reports are accurate, the kingdom could have atomic weapons on its missiles even before Iran has that capability. Urban said it was an assessment shared by the former head of the IDF’s head of intelligence, Amos Yadlin, and cited comments Yadlin made to that effect at a conference in Sweden last month. “The Saudis will not wait one month,” Yadlin reportedly said. “They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring.”

Great, Obama sets out to prevent Iran from going nuclear and possibly ends up forcing the Saudis to buy their way into the nuclear weapons club while he paves the way for the Iranians to develop their way into the nuclear weapons club. No way anyone in this administration can spin this evolving development into anything but incompetence.

4) Let’s move away from the Middle East because recent foreign affairs failures of this administration are not confined to that geographic area. It appears that two long time members of the nuclear weapons club, Russia and China, are now getting friendly with each other, a development that cannot be good for U.S. interests, militarily, economically, or strategically.

Specifically, China and Russia for possibly the first time ever,have decided to hold joint naval military drills. And they will conduct these drills in the Mediterranean Sea, right on the doorstep of NATO nations, not in some far away Far East location. The Chinese are sending two warships to participate in the drills and will dock them at the Russian port of Novorossiysk, the first time ever that Chinese war ships have entered a Russian military base.

Thus, after decades of cold and distant relationship between Russia and China, the failed foreign affairs strategy abilities of the Obama administration has been able to drive together two nations that usually had nothing to do with each other. Amazing ineptness.

5) One last foreign affairs fail.  According to recent Wall Street Journal reporting, Chinese nuclear weapons experts told the U.S. earlier this year that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is larger than previously believed. The experts estimate that North Korea has already made 20 nuclear warheads and has enough weapons grade uranium available to double the number of warheads by 2016. The Chinese estimates were presented to U.S. nuclear specialists at a closed-door meeting at the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing this past February. 

The Obama administration has not had high level diplomatic talks on nuclear weapons since 2012, according to the Journal, after the North held a banned nuclear missile test. In the interim, they obviously have been busy building up a sizable nuclear weapons capability.

So let’s review:

• In the past month the administration has been snubbed by the King of Saudi Arabia and three other Gulf nation leaders who are not coming to Obama's Gulf nation summit.
• The President insulted two Saudi princes by screwing up Saudi family names.
• The Saudis may have already cut a deal with Pakistan to buy nuclear weapons to counter the emerging deal the U.S. is putting together with Iran that most in the Gulf region are opposed to.
• China and Russia are taking the first steps of getting real friendly with each other on the military front.
• And while Obama has been busy dealing with Iran, besides golfing and attending political fund raising events, the North Koreans have been busy building nuclear bombs at a rate that was not believed happening until earlier this year.

And these foreign affairs disasters have come to light in just the past month or so. Hard to see how any Presidential administration could have been less effective than this one, from screwing up names to allowing a nuclear arms race to take hold around the world.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Obama Epic Fail Series, Part 3B - Foreign Policy

We are going to take a few days and discuss the track record of the Obama Presidency across several perspectives. The impetus for this discussion and review was the fact that when the world leaders and millions of French men and women rallied in France to protest and take a stand against global Islamic terrorism, this President embarrassed himself and the United States by NOT attending the gathering of world leaders in Paris. In our opinion, this was an epic fail and a missed historical opportunity.

Not only did he not attend, no high ranking member of his administration bothered to make the trip either. While world leaders of over 40 countries attended and high ranking officials of other countries made the trip, the highest ranking U.S. person was just the current French ambassador.

This snub of the French is a tremendous, and possibly historic, missed opportunity. This could have been a defining moment in the Obama Presidency where he rallied the rest of the world in its fight against global terrorism. The whole world was watching but apparently the President was back in the White House, rumored to be watching NFL football games instead of leading in Paris. 

If Obama was a true leader, he could have used the commonality of the fight against terrorism to also work on other global issues. The leaders of Israel and the PLO were at the rally with a common, shared goal of fighting terrorism. What a great time in might have been of using that common objective to move onto other problem resolution opportunities.

The Russian Foreign Minister was also at the Paris rally. Why not use the common goal of fighting terrorism to talk about the Ukraine and other troubling Russian and U.S. issues? But the President missed this historic window of leveraging this common objective across most of the world.

But missed opportunities seems to be the theme of this President. Whenever an opportunity to be bold, productive, epic, and a leader arose, this President, and the administration he has put in place, has usually failed and failed miserably. Bad economic policies, divisive race politics, a failing health care reform law, a clumsy foreign affairs management history, bad management processes as a Federal government bureaucracy teeters on the edge of total incompetence, etc., this administration has not been able to get out of its own way to attain any problem resolution at all.

Given that we are comfortable calling his absence in Paris an epic fail, we are going to take a few days and see if there are other epic fails that this administration has attained. We will discuss the policies track records of this Presidency over the next few days according to the following general topics and see if the failure as epic as his absence in Paris has been repeated in other areas of governance:

• Transparency and integrity
• Economic policy
• Foreign policy
• Healthcare policy
• Government management policy

Foreign Policy Part 2

1) This past week, the Yemeni government, a supposed ally of the U.S.in the fight against terrorism, collapsed under the weight of a Shiite rebel force supported and funded by Iran. However, this was not supposed to happen. As late as last September, Obama proclaimed that: "This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us,while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years."

However, most of us and the rest of the world might have a different definition of "success" than the President's, based on the overthrowing of the current government this week. Even with a supportive government in Yemen, Al Qaeda's most vicious and successful branch was in Yemen.With the collapse of the government and the support they gave to Obama in fighting terrorism in general and Al Qaeda in particular, his strategy is now in tatters and an epic fail.

2)This President, and his closest advisors such as John Kerry, blatantly refuse to admit the obvious: most of the current terrorism going on in the world is being done by Islamic extremists. This does not mean that the majority of Muslims are like this, it just means that much of the terrorism is being done in the name of Islam.

However, failure to recognize a problem means that you will never resolve that problem. Consider a recent article from the Heritage Foundation that listed out recent terror attacks, all of which had an Islamic slant to them:

• December 2010: Stockholm – An Iraqi-born Swedish citizen who had lived in the U.K. carries out a suicide car bombing, injuring two and blowing himself up. Although the planned attack failed, Swedish authorities believed the terrorist intended to detonate the vehicle remotely in an attempt to kill as many people as possible during the busy Christmas shopping season.

• March 2012: Toulouse and Montauban, France – A French national of Algerian origin kills three off-duty soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi in three separate terrorist attacks in southern France. Before being killed by police in a shootout, the terrorist, who carried out the terrorist attack in the name of Islam, told authorities he did so in part because he was mad over France’s military role in Afghanistan.

• May 2013: London – British serviceman Lee Rigby is brutally murdered in broad daylight by two British citizens who were converts to Islam. Rigby is run over by the terrorists before being hacked to death as the murderers shouted “Allahu akbar.” Both terrorists are convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

• May 2014: Brussels – A terror attack carried out against a Jewish museum kills four. A French terrorist who had returned from fighting with Islamists in Syria and Iraq is charged with carrying out the attack. The terrorist is described by one former hostage as a “publicity-loving sadist,” whose depravity knew no bounds even prior to the attack on the Jewish museum.

• December 2014: Joue-les-Tours, France - A 20-year old French national, who is a Muslim convert with known sympathies to radical ideology, injures three after attacking police with a knife while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” He is shot and killed by police.

But this denial should not come as a surprise since this administration went years refusing to acknowledge that the Fort Hood attacks was a terrorist attack, classifying the attack as "workplace violence," an insult to those who died and were wounded. Failure to declare the obvious is an epic fail and an insult to the intelligence to the rest of us that see what is going on.

3) The relationship with China has not gotten better during the Obama administration. China has been bullying nations in its region for a number of years now, claiming territorial and island rights that other nations have long held were theirs. There have been military and diplomatic confrontations with Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, and others, with the Chinese ignoring any Obama administration pleas to play nice.

In fact, some experts are saying that relations between the U.S. and China have not been this bad in decades: "U.S.-China relations are worse than they have been since the normalization of relations, and East Asia today is less stable than at any time since the end of the Cold War," Robert Ross, a political science professor at Boston College and an associate of Harvard's John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. 

So China ignores us and is not scared or respectful of us, Russia invades countries at will and is not scared or respectful of us, looks like the Obama administration has taken us back to the future with the advent of a Cold War atmosphere as a result of the bumbling foreign relations management of the Obama administration.

4) But it is not just Russia and China where the foreign affairs management of been an epic failure. By allowing the NSA to spy on foreign leaders, even those that were and are considered allies, the Obama administration ticked off a whole range of foreign leaders including such stalwart allies as Angela Merkel of Germany. You cannot spy on people and then expect them to embrace yourself or your foreign affairs policy.

The Prime Minister of Brazil was so ticked off by the spying that she cancelled herself out of a White House state dinner, a highest honor that the White House can bestow on anyone, that is how made the Obama administration made her. Time Magazine reported on how Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sirkorski truly felt about his country;s relationship with the U.S. during Obama's tenure: 

In tapes obtained by a Polish magazine, Radoslaw Sikorski sued an expletive to describe his country's alliance with the U.S. 

Polish magazine Wprost claims to have obtained recordings of a conversation in which Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski says that “the Polish-American alliance is worthless, even harmful, as it gives Poland a false sense of security. It’s bulls—t.

The quote is an excerpt of a longer conversation purportedly between Sikorski and former Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski that Wprost is expected to publish Monday or Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. The leaked recording comes just two weeks after President Barack Obama visited Poland.

Great, when an ally says the relationship is bulls--t, you really are an epic fail.

The following link to a CNBC news broadcast from earlier this year quite nicely summarized how erratic and non-effective the administration has been relative to all types of other countries, foes and friends alike:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2T304RS41k&app=desktop

From the collapse of Yemen to a new Cold War with Russia and China to ticking off many, many allies, this administration's voeign policy record can be viewed not other way than an epic fail. Today's and Yesterday's examples prove this conclusion, one could not do much worse if one was trying to encourage our enemies and piss off our friends.

This epic fail series will continue tomorrow when we switch gears to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

What Good Is Your Blackberry, Mr. President, If You Never Use It?

Just days after becoming President, I recall a picture of President Obama at the White House, using his Blackberry smart phone. The accompanying article swooned over how tech savvy this President was. Great, but it seems that the President rarely uses his Blackberry when it comes to governing and, more importantly, leadership. How much different would life be if he had picked up his Blackberry and made the following calls:

• Several months ago, a flotilla of ships headed for the Gaza Strip from Turkish ports, supposedly carrying only non-military, humanitarian cargo to relieve the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. This flotilla would be in violation of the naval blockade that Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip and had all of the potential for an ugly confrontation. And this is exactly what happened, Israeli ships and commandos attempted to stop the flotilla and violence erupted, resulting in numerous deaths. I would have hoped that the President would have made a few calls on his Blackberry (or whatever the President uses to call foreign leaders) to the leaders of both Israel and Turkey and tried to personally work out some way for the non-military goods to reach those in need and avoid a fatal confrontation. Apparently those calls were never made and many people lost their lives as a result.
• As most of you know, there is a highly volatile debate going on in New York City about whether or not a Muslim mosque should be allowed to be built in the same neighborhood of the World Trade Center footprint. Some Americans who had lost loved ones on September 11, 2001 felt that since they had lost their loved ones because of attacks by Muslim radicals that it would be better and more sensitive to their feelings if the mosque was moved a little further away from Ground Zero, even though the mosque supporters were well within their rights to build where they want to build. If he had any foresight, the President could have made a few calls and tried to mediate a viable solution before the entire matter got politicized. He did not make that call and now the debate rages on and extends into areas (e.g. freedom of religion) that never should have been reached to begin with. In fact, the President added to the firestorm by throwing a verbal grenade into the issue at a dinner he was speaking at and then spent the following few days trying to put the grenade back together. He reached out and conducted the "beer summit" to smooth over hurt feelings between one of his friends and a Boston area policeman, why not take the initiative early on, make a few calls, and smooth over hurt feelings in this case? It's called leadership and his Blackberry would have served him well in this regard.
• Now we have a small time, small town, and small minded minister in Florida that has been threatening to burn copies of the Quran on the anniversary of 9-11 to protest the Muslim religion. Rightly so, just about everyone in public office, both Democrats and Republicans, find this concept repugnant and are worried how it will affect the safety of our troops and ordinary American citizens overseas. Although this minister has the freedom to do this under the Constitution, shouldn't the President gotten on his Blackberry and maybe made a call to this gentleman and appraise him of the danger he could be causing and ask him to stop the burning? He made the call when his friend got entangled with a police matter, a matter that affected very few people? Why could he not make a call on a matter that has world wide repercussions? The press crucified Bush when he refused to talk to Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in fighting in Iraq. By not talking to this minister on this critical matter, Obama looks just like Bush on Sheehan, make the call, have the discussion. [On a side note, what does it say about the country's foreign policy when a small time minister in Florida can come up with a screw ball stunt like this and possibly upset the entire foreign policy strategy?]
• When Charles Rangel likened Americans opposed to Obama Care to the racists who opposed the civil rights movement of the 1960s or when a Texas Congresswoman did the same analogy or when Florida Congressman Grayson likened those Americans opposed to Obama's policies to terrorists, knuckle dragging Neanderthals in white sheets or when Pelosi called those opposed to Obama Care as being unpatriotic or when one of his czars called Republicans a__h___ s, the President, in my opinion, should have whipped out that Blackberry and told all of these Democrats to knock it off for a few reasons. First, he is the President of the entire country and allowing Americans citizens to be called these degrading names for expressing their opinions serves no constructive purpose and further divides the country. Second, from a political strength perspective, he has weakened himself since you cannot allow citizens to be called racist, Neanderthal, unpatriotic, white sheet wearing a__h___s and expect those same people to take you seriously on anything going forward. He should have made a few calls and told these people to cool the wild rhetoric, for the good of the country and the good of his Presidency. Alas, it does not appear any of these called were ever made.
• When the BP oil rig blew up in the spring, the President should have burned up that Blackberry on both domestic and overseas calls. Domestically, he should have made a call to every domestic oil industry company and immediately called them together in a search for the best ideas for stopping the runaway well. Overseas calls should have included calls to foreign governments and foreign companies that had any kind of expertise that we could have used to stop the well. It does not appear any of those calls were made since it took months and months to cap the darn well. We also now know that some foreign entities did offer their help only to have their calls symbolically not returned.

Imagine if the President had made those calls and how much better the world might be today. Humanitarian aid might be reaching the Gaza Strip in the absence of any deaths, Israel and Turkey might be on better speaking terms if they were brought together to work on a peaceful flotilla, we might be talking about the opening of the NFL season rather than a religious book burning or a controversial mosque in NYC, Obama's foreign policy relative to the Muslim world might still be intact rather than in imminent danger, the President might be governing a more united country if he had reigned in the name calling of ordinary American citizens, and the Gulf and the Gulf states might have incurred far less damage than they did from the BP well. Technology, no matter how up-to-date does not matter if you do not use it, Mr. President.



Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/