Marco Rubio made an excellent speech to the Council on Foreign Relations; on how bad US foreign policy has been under Obama’s disastrous leadership, and what it ought to be.

He says “the three pillars of his doctrine” are “American strength, the protection of our global economy, and a proud advocacy for America’s core values.”

Here’s the video:

David Solway writes brilliantly about the terrible mistake American voters made when they elected Obama to the presidency:

An open letter to Americans:

As a Canadian, I’ve been observing for some time now, with great concern and even greater disbelief, the political farce enacted day after day in your country. And I keep asking, what have you done? For it seems to me, and to many others as well, that you have embarked upon a truly destructive course that may eventually bring the United States to the brink of ruination.

What have you done? You have elected a president on the strength of an ellipsis, neglecting to fill in the three dots trailing after his every echoing jingle—“Yes we can”…what? You have credited a nimble spinner of tales, a pretty fellow with no significant experience of the real world of risk, hard work and the hazards of survival, a thug with a beguiling smile. You have elevated to the highest office in the land a man without discernible qualifications who is plunging the nation into unredeemable debt for generations to come. You have installed possibly the most consummate liar in POTUS history, who breaks campaign promises as if he were cracking eggs for the skillet and changes his mind almost daily like a weathervane on steroids. You have put your trust in an intellectual lightweight and geopolitical bungler who makes Jimmy Carter look like a paragon of acute intelligence, moral substance and rare diplomatic foresight.

What have you done? You have bought into a fraudulent narrative. You have made a Faustian bargain with a suave Mephistophelian who offers hope and change but delivers instead inevitable suffering and a violated people. As in all such compacts, the price for a brief state of euphoria is subsequent prolonged distress. You have given carte blanche to a man with a personal dossier blacked out in many places like a letter from the front, so as not, apparently, to divulge sensitive information. You have raised among you a man whose friends and influences would surely have precluded him from meriting your confidence had you paid attention to plain facts rather than to quasi-mystical incantations. You have anointed a man with a sinister agenda. You have voted for your historical nemesis who with his every move and decision renders you increasingly insecure in a violent and unforgiving world.

If you need a slogan to trigger a reaction, it should not be “Yes we can”—whatever that might conceivably have meant—but “What have we done?”—whose implications should now be obvious. I pray it is not too late to reverse the trajectory you have unthinkingly plotted for yourselves. It may be a shame to let a serious crisis go to waste, as your president’s intimate adviser cynically put it, but it would be a much greater shame to let a crisis reach the point of no return. And there is little doubt that you are now facing an impending crisis of the first magnitude, both domestically and globally.

Let us count the ways. ….

Which he proceeds to do. His list of the disasters Obama is preparing is well worth reading in full.

This is how Solway concludes his denunciation of the worst president in American history:

Who am I to address the citizens of another country? A loyal friend, and a citizen of a nation whose fate is inextricably bound up with yours. My interests are also at stake. That is why I am glad to note that many people are now awakening to the nature and extent of their folly, but far too many still malinger in the grip of a profound narcosis. To these latter, I would say that, in your desire for novelty, your pampered sense of frivolous grievance and your hypnotic suggestibility, you have chosen to cohabit with an incubus. You have shown a readiness to be seduced not by a lover of freedom but by a votary of his own malign gods. Despite the recent surfeit of Hollywood films, TV programs and neo-gothic novels fondly rehabilitating the undead, deep down you must know there is no such thing as a good vampire.

And so, in conclusion, I ask once again. What have you done?

One has to admire the skill with which Obama and Hillary Clinton are handling relations with Iran, China, North Korea, Israel, Britain, Russia, Canada, India, Honduras, Brazil, Czech Republic, Poland, and France. They’re managing to strengthen America’s enemies, weaken its friends, and anger all with great dispatch and – this is the really impressive part – to no discernible end. It’s not as if America’s interests are being served. Nothing selfish like that.

Oh yes – and Afghanistan. There, with thrilling arrogance, and the daring misuse of armed forces, they are demonstrating, through victory after victory, the ultimate impotence of American power.

And are the Afghans grateful? Like hell they are.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

President Hamid Karzai lashed out at his Western backers for the second time in three days, accusing the U.S. of interfering in Afghan affairs and saying the Taliban insurgency would become a legitimate resistance movement if the meddling doesn’t stop.

Mr. Karzai, whose government is propped up by billions of dollars in Western aid and nearly 100,000 American troops fighting a deadly war against the Taliban, made the comments during a private meeting with about 60 or 70 Afghan lawmakers Saturday.

At one point, Mr. Karzai suggested that he himself would be compelled to join the other side —that is, the Taliban—if the parliament didn’t back his controversial attempt to take control of the country’s electoral watchdog from the United Nations …

The Afghan leader seems as mistrustful of the West as ever—and increasingly willing to tap the resentment many ordinary Afghans feel toward the U.S. and its allies. Many here view the coalition as enabling the Afghan government’s widespread corruption, and blame U.S.-led forces for killing too many civilians.

At the same time, Mr. Karzai is working to improve relations with American rivals, such as Iran and China. The result is further strain on an already-tense partnership. …

Associates of Mr. Karzai say the events around last year’s vote left the president feeling betrayed by the West. Those feelings were clear in a speech Mr. Karzai gave Thursday, accusing “foreign embassies,” the U.N. and the European Union of being behind the electoral fraud and of trying to force him into a coalition government with his opponents.

On Saturday, Mr. Karzai went a step further, saying foreign interference in Afghan affairs fueled the insurgency, according to five lawmakers who attended the meeting.

“He said that the only reason that the Taliban and other insurgent groups are fighting the Afghan government is that they see foreigners having the final say in everything,” said one of the lawmakers.

All five lawmakers said Mr. Karzai told those who gathered at the palace that the Taliban’s “revolt will change to resistance” if the U.S. and its allies kept dictating how his government should run. The word “resistance” is a term often used to convey a legitimate struggle against unjust rulers, such as the Mujahedeen’s fight against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Mr. Karzai’s remarks were the latest sign of the growing rift between the Afghan leader and the U.S., which is pouring troops into the country in a bid to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and win the support of ordinary Afghans.

Key to the surge strategy is restoring the battered domestic reputation of the Karzai administration. President Barack Obama, during a brief visit to Kabul Monday, pressed Mr. Karzai to clean up the pervasive corruption in his government.

If anything, Mr. Obama’s visit appears to have backfired. A businessman with close ties to Mr. Karzai said the Afghan leader was insulted by Mr. Obama’s comments and left with even greater doubts about the American commitment to Afghanistan.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful puppet!

(Please someone, remind us what the US is in Afghanistan for, what the ultimate aim is, what Afghanistan will look like when that aim is achieved?)

Israel has been too co-operative with the treacherous Obama administration.

John Bolton thinks so too. He writes in the Wall Street Journal:

On the Palestinian front, Mr. Netanyahu’s government has tolerated 14 months of feckless administration diplomacy that has not altered geopolitical realities between Israel and the Palestinians… On Iran, Mr. Netanyahu has faithfully supported Mr. Obama’s diplomacy, hoping to build credibility with the president against the day when Israel might have to strike Iran’s weapons program pre-emptively. Jerusalem, for example, currently backs U.S. efforts to increase sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, doomed to failure though they are. As time passes, Israel’s military option grows more difficult and the chances for success shrink as Iran seeks new air-defense systems and further buries and hardens nuclear facilities.

Mr. Netanyahu’s mistake has been to assume that Mr. Obama basically agrees that we must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But the White House likely believes that a nuclear Iran, though undesirable, can be contained and will therefore not support using military force to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

What’s more, Mr. Obama is also unwilling to let anyone else, namely Israel, act instead. That means that if Israel bombs Iranian nuclear facilities, the president will likely withhold critical replenishments of destroyed Israeli aircraft and other weapons systems.

We are moving inexorably toward, and perhaps have now reached, an Israeli crisis with Mr. Obama. Americans must realize that allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons is empowering an existential threat to the Israeli state, to Arab governments in the region that are friendly to the U.S., and to long-term global peace and security.

Mr. Netanyahu must realize he has not been banking good behavior credits with Mr. Obama but simply postponing an inevitable confrontation. The prime minister should recalibrate his approach, and soon.

And destroy Iran’s nuclear sites as completely as possible.

You thought Hillary Clinton was not doing a great job as Secretary of State? You’ve noticed that she has not achieved diplomatic successes with Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, Britain, Honduras, Colombia, Brazil, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Czech Republic, Poland, Georgia, Pakistan, India, or anyplace in Africa? Or, in sum, any foreign country wheresoever?

Ah, but she’s done wonders with Foggy Bottom.

The Washington Post reports in a tone of admiration:

A little over a year into her tenure as secretary of state, allies and detractors alike say Clinton has made a vigorous effort to widen her circle, wooing and pulling into her orbit the agency’s Foreign Service and civil service officials, many of whom said in interviews that she has brought a new energy to the building.

“We have had other secretaries of state who have cared deeply for the institution,” said Patrick F. Kennedy, undersecretary for management and a senior Foreign Service officer. “None who have done as much internal outreach.” …

It is well known that Clinton has long placed a high premium on loyalty, some say too high, leaving her open to criticism that she values it over job qualifications. And at State, she is still surrounded by advisers from her days as a first lady and a senator — often referred to as Hillaryland. In addition, her vast network of former White House, Senate and campaign aides, as well as some supporters, permeates every floor of the building.

But before she was confirmed, Clinton was expanding Hillaryland: She asked two popular Foreign Service officers — Kennedy and William J. Burns, undersecretary for political affairs — to stay on. She has approached this new constituency of 60,000 worldwide like a seasoned pol trying to shore up support.

Those interviewed inside and outside the agency say Clinton has done a good job of heading off the historical tensions between career employees and quadrennial political newcomers by relying on the counsel of senior Foreign Service operatives and reaching out in general.

She has walked the halls and popped into offices unexpectedly, created an electronic “sounding board,” and held seven internal town hall meetings to listen to gripes about everything from policy to cafeteria food to bullying in the workplace. She installed six new showers that joggers requested, is taking steps to remedy overseas pay inequities and instituted a policy that allows partners of gay diplomats to receive benefits. She became a heroine to the Foreign Service when she went to bat to get funding for 3,000 new Foreign Service positions for State operations and the U.S. Agency for International Development — the first boost of this magnitude in two decades.

It cannot be said that the mess Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made of foreign relations amounts to a failure, because it is highly possible that the mess is what Obama wanted her to achieve, in which case it’s a success.

Her latest betrayal of an old ally is in connection with the Falkland Islands, for the retention of which Prime Minister Thatcher fought and won a fierce war with Argentina.

Ken Blackwell writes this about it at Townhall:

During an official visit to Argentina, Mrs. Clinton referred to the Britain’s Falkland Islands as “Las Malvinas–the Argentine name for them. She said the U.S. was willing to mediate the conflicting claims of Argentina and Britain to the collection of rocky crags that have been British since 1833. The Falklands have been British a decade longer than Texas has been American. Argentina still claims these crags–and is even keener to have them back now that oil is rumored to be bubbling beneath the stormy seas of the South Atlantic.

Every one of 3,000 living souls on the Falklands is British–and defiantly so. …

Is the Obama administration determined to undo everything Ronald Reagan accomplished? In 1982, Argentina’s rogue government got into trouble because of its insane economic policies. The military junta then in charge in Buenos Aires in 1982 started yelling “Remember the Malvinas!” They hoped to distract their tormented people from their hardships at home by naked aggression abroad. The Argentine military invaded the sparsely populated Falkland Islands–there are almost 800 of them, most of them uninhabited.

The Argentine junta reckoned without the Iron Lady, Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. There was never a doubt that Mrs. Thatcher would respond to this brazen aggression with force.

She quickly assembled and sent to sea a Royal Navy battle fleet. She personally went to the fleet’s embarkation point to see off the young warriors. Not since World War II had Britain’s people been so united about anything. …

The Falklands War was short, sharp, and bloody. …

Thousands of young Argentine draftees, poorly trained, poorly supplied, and even more poorly led, were quickly rounded up on the islands. Britain lost 255 dead in this war while 649 Argentines were needlessly sacrificed to the Buenos Aires dictators’ vainglory. As a result of this humiliating defeat, Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri and his fellow thugs were soon sent packing.

Back then, the Reagan administration quietly but firmly backed Britain with critical intelligence and re-fueling stations. But now, we face another possible crisis over the Falklands. And all because of Hillary Clinton’s clumsy attempt at “even-handedness”–which is in fact ham-handedness.

Britain loyally supported us in Iraq. She is our strongest ally in Afghanistan. Tied down fighting at our side, Britain would be hard-pressed to eject the Argentines should the left-wing government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner decide once again to invade the homes of those staunchly British Falklanders. …

The Argentines are crowing over the Clinton Coup. He’s never seen “such substantial support” from the U.S., says Argentina’s Ambassador in Washington Hector Timerman. Buenos Aires’ official mouthpiece, Ruperto Godoy called Mrs. Clintons’ comments “very significant, very important.”

Blackwell recalls some other notable failures/successes:

Hillary’s comments are indeed significant. She is buying trouble for us around the globe. From a failed “Re-Set” button with the Russians, to a dangerous appeasement of Iran and China, from bribing the PLO on the West Bank with $900 million to shutting down missile defense for Eastern European democracies, from siding with the dictator in Honduras, to opening the door to a second Falklands War, this administration’s foreign policy is in shambles. And we’re only 14 months into it.

Trying to justify Obama’s foreign policy towards North Korea and Iran, the Secretary of State salvages small successes out of a morass of failure. The unimpressive exhibits she holds up for admiration only serve to prove how poor a catch she has netted, how very little she has achieved.

From Commentary’s ‘Contentions’, by Jennifer Rubin:

In a rather devastating interview with Candy Crowley on CNN, Hillary Clinton reveals the misguided premise at the heart of [Obama’s] Iran engagement policy and the disastrous results that have flowed from it. This sequence sums up the failure of engagement:

CROWLEY: I want to bring your attention to something that President Obama said in his inaugural a little more than a year ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: “We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CROWLEY: Has Iran unclenched its fist?

CLINTON: No. But…

CROWLEY: How about North Korea?

CLINTON: No. Not to the extent we would like to see them. But I think that’s — that is not all — all to the story. Engagement has brought us a lot in the last year. Let’s take North Korea first, and then we’ll go to Iran. In North Korea when we said that we were willing to work with North Korea if they were serious about returning to the six party talks, and about denuclearizing in an irreversible way, they basically did not respond in the first instance. But because we were willing to engage, we ended up getting a very strong sanctions regime against North Korea that China signed on to and Russia signed on to. And right now is being enforced around the world.

The effectiveness, however, of the sanctions remains to be seen.

CROWLEY: Did the extended hand of the U.S. help in any way that you point to?

CLINTON: It did, because — because we extended it a neighbor like China knew we were going the extra mile. And all of a sudden said, “You know, you’re not just standing there hurling insults at them. You’ve said, ‘All right. Fine. We’re — we’re willing to work with them.’ They haven’t responded. So we’re going to sign on to these very tough measures.” Similarly in Iran — I don’t know what the outcome would have been if the Iranian government hadn’t made the decision it made following the elections to become so repressive.

So China awarded full marks to the US for effort. Or was it for humility? Anyway, Hillary Clinton gives the impression that the US is on trial for good conduct, and China is the judge. The merits of sanctions against North Korea, the desirability of the ends they are intended to achieve, are not by her account what concerns, or ought to concern, China and Russia. What matters to them is, did America go about it in a manner they approved of? It did, and its Secretary of State is proud to have earned their approval.

CLINTON: But the fact is because we engaged, the rest of the world has really begun to see Iran the way we see it. When we started last year talking about the threats that Iran’s nuclear programs posed, Russia and other countries said, “Well we don’t see it that way.” But through very slow and steady diplomacy plus the fact that we had a two track process. Yes we reached out on engagement to Iran, but we always had the second track which is that we would have to try to get the world community to take stronger measures if they didn’t respond on the engagement front.

So let’s unpack that. For starters, even Clinton admits that the policy has failed. No unclenched hands in North Korea and Iran. And her justification — that our Iran policy was justified because “the world has really begun to see Iran the way we see it” — is simply preposterous. She would have us believe the world would not have seen the nature of the regime by its own actions (constructing the Qom enrichment site in violation of international agreements, stealing an election, and brutalizing its own people), but only now has begun to understand the nature of the regime because we have engaged in a futile Kabuki dance with the mullahs? It boggles the mind. And where is the evidence that Russia and China see it our way? When last we heard from them, the Russians were supplying missiles to Tehran, and the Chinese were rejecting sanctions.

There is no flicker of recognition that the president might have used his vaunted charisma and eloquence to get the world to “see Iran the way we see it” — that is, as an illegitimate and tyrannical regime. Indeed, she doesn’t even mention the democracy protestors other than to observe that she doesn’t know ”what the outcome would have been if the Iranian government hadn’t made the decision it made following the elections to become so repressive.” Not even a rhetorical bouquet to throw their way. Perhaps we are not even “bearing witness” these days. She seems oblivious to the notion that world opinion might be rallied to the cause of displacing, rather than soliciting the attention of, the despotic regime. And she gives no indication that the engagement policy has bestowed legitimacy upon the regime at the very time its citizens are seeking to overthrow it.

She also makes the bizarre claim that Iran really is not the greatest threat we face:

CLINTON: But I think that most of us believe the greater threats are the trans-national non-state networks. Primarily the extremists — the fundamentalist Islamic extremists who are connected Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula. Al Qaeda in — in Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Al Qaida in the Maghreb. I mean the — the kind of connectivity that exists. And they continue to try to increase the sophistication of their capacity. The attacks that they’re going to make. And the, you know, the biggest nightmare that any of us have is that one of these terrorist member organizations within this syndicate of terror will get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction. So that’s really the — the most threatening prospect we see.

Where to begin? She seems to suggest that we shouldn’t be so concerned about an Iranian regime with a full-blown nuclear-weapons program because there are also non-state terrorists (some of whom are supported by none other than Iran) who pose a similar threat. But wait. Isn’t this further reason to do what is necessary to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons? After all, they might be supplying those very same groups with nuclear materials.

In one short interview, Clinton has pulled back the curtain on the intellectual and moral hollowness and abject confusion at he heart of Obama’s engagement policy.

Even the left, and his foreign fan club, are beginning to see that Obama cannot do the job he was elected to do.

Peter Wehner writes at Commentary-contentions (see the whole article here):

The President is “Obama the Impotent,” according to Steven Hill of the Guardian. The Economist calls Obama the “Pacific (and pussyfooting) president.” The Financial Times refers to “relations between the U.S. and Europe, which started the year of talks as allies, near breakdown.” The German magazine Der Spiegel accuses the president of being “dishonest with Europe” on the subject of climate change. Another withering piece in Der Spiegel, titled “Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage,” lists the instances in which Obama is being rolled. The Jerusalem Post puts it this way: “Everybody is saying no to the American president these days. And it’s not just that they’re saying no, it’s also the way they’re saying no.” “He talks too much,” a Saudi academic who had once been smitten with Barack Obama tells the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami. The Saudi “has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory,” according to Ajami. But “he is hardly alone, this academic. In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment [for this we’ll not be too hard on him – JB]. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth.”

Indeed he has — and only Obama and his increasingly clueless administration seem unaware of this.

On almost every front, progress is nonexistent. In many instances, things are getting worse rather than better. The enormous goodwill that Obama’s election was met with hasn’t been leveraged into anything useful and tangible. Rather, our allies are now questioning America’s will, while our adversaries are becoming increasingly emboldened. The United States looks weak and uncertain. It’s “amateur hour at the White House,” according to Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former official in the Carter administration. “Not only are things not getting fixed, they may be getting more broken,” according to Michael Hirsh at Newsweek. When even such strong Obama supporters as Gelb and Hirsh reach these conclusions, you know things must be unraveling.

It’s no mystery as to why. President Obama’s approach to international relations is simplistic and misguided. It is premised on the belief that American concessions to our adversaries will beget goodwill and concessions in return; that American self-abasement is justified; that the American decline is inevitable (and in some respects welcome); and that diplomacy and multilateralism are ends rather than means to an end.

Right now the overwhelming issue on the public’s mind is the economy, where Obama is also having serious problems. But national-security issues matter a great deal, and they remain the unique responsibility of the president. With every passing month, Barack Obama looks more and more like his Democratic predecessor Jimmy Carter: irresolute, unsteady, and overmatched. The president and members of his own party will find out soon enough, though, that Obama the Impotent isn’t what they had in mind when they elected him. We are witnessing the unmasking, and perhaps the unmaking, of Barack Obama.

The Obama administration is trying to stop restitution being paid out of Iranian assets in the US to  families of marines killed in the 1983 Beirut bombing.

Via the Daily Alert section of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, this news from the Boston Globe.

241 U.S. servicemen were killed in the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, in what many consider the first major terrorist attack against the U.S. In 2007, a federal judge ruled that Iran was liable for $2.65 billion in damages to be shared by 150 families seeking restitution. But now, the Obama administration is going to court to try to block payments from Iranian assets that the families’ lawyers want seized, contending that it would jeopardize sensitive negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

Despite legislation passed by Congress to make it possible to sue foreign governments that sponsor terrorism, in a filing in federal court, the Justice Department is arguing that giving the money to the victims “can have significant, detrimental impact on our foreign relations, as well as the reciprocal treatment of the United States and its extensive overseas property holdings.” Over the years, Iran, which since 1984 has been designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. government, has been found liable for nearly $10 billion in damages for attacks on Americans attributed to the Lebanese Hizbullah and Palestinian terror groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad that the U.S. says are financed and trained by Iran.

Thomas Sowell writes about the Obama administration’s decision to try 9/11 terrorists in a federal court in New York. Read the whole article here.

This is how he concludes:

The mindset of the left … was spelled out in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle, which said that “Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will be tried the right way — the American way, in a federal courtroom where the world will see both his guilt and the nation’s adherence to the rule of law.”

This is not the rule of law but the application of laws to situations for which they were not designed.

How many Americans may pay with their lives for the intelligence secrets and methods that can forced to be disclosed to Al Qaeda was not mentioned. Nor was there mention of how many foreign nations and individuals whose cooperation with us in the war on terror have been involved in countering Al Qaeda — nor how many foreign nations and individuals will have to think twice now, before cooperating with us again, when their role can be revealed in court to our enemies, who can exact revenge on them.

Behind this decision and others is the notion that we have to demonstrate our good faith to other nations, sometimes called “world opinion.” Just who are these saintly nations whose favor we must curry, at the risk of American lives and the national security of the United States? 

Internationally, the law of the jungle ultimately prevails, despite pious talk about “the international community” and “world opinion,” or the pompous and corrupt farce of the United Nations. Yet this is the gallery to which Barack Obama has been playing, both before and after becoming President of the United States. 

In the wake of the obscenity of a trial of terrorists in federal court for an act of war — and the worldwide propaganda platform it will give them — it may seem to be a small thing that President Obama has been photographed yet again bowing deeply to a foreign ruler. But how large or small an act is depends on its actual consequences, not on whether the politically correct intelligentsia think it is no big deal.

As a private citizen, Barack Obama has a right to make as big a jackass of himself as he wants to. But, as President of the United States, his actions not only denigrate a nation that other nations rely on for survival, but raise questions about how reliable our judgment and resolve are — which in turn raises questions about whether those nations will consider themselves better off to make the best deal they can with our enemies.