Obama's Naivety on Foreign Policy

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This item tosses a reality checkon the underling failure of Obama’s obviously naïve approach to foreign policysome four years ago and only served to prove its naivety.   He has also made some mistakes and someserious omissions.  However, that ishardly a unique failing with presidents. Clintoncertainly fumbled the Osama file and Bush slept a full year on it before itblew up in his face. 
Whoever wins in November will berealistic about what can be accomplished and to be fair, the hand looks prettydecent today although little of that improvement belongs to Obama at all.  Sometimes neglect is a fine policy as itallows a number of players to resolve their own issues.
In particular Egypt is on the way to been properly governedand this will reinforce general stability in North Africaand bring major change there.  Presentfears will prove to be transient.
Whatever the outcome in Syria,it will be hugely weakened and this is a collapse of Iranian influence howeverpainted.
At the same time all the Islamistradicals in Southern Lebanon, Gaza, and Palestine who are allself governing are simply getting older and are not keen to turn over the reinsto younger hot heads.  They can alsocount and can see their best and brightest leaving Dodge while Israel itselfis booming in population and economic strength. Just how long can you rationalize sleeping in a gutter outside a palacefor the sake of a difference of opinion? Today, they have no allies in fact besides Iranwho has had its hands cut off in Syria.
Other problems have similarlyevaporated and that includes Burmaand now prospectively North Korea.
Irancontinues to challenge but that is the one special case needing attention as isPakistan.  Both have annoyed and have paid a price forthat.  China is on the verge of regimechange and that promises to be actually beneficial.  Iran needs regime change that isbeneficial.  Pakistanneeds a regime that gets back to the basics of good governance simply becauseits rival Indiais now pulling ahead with a vengeance.
The best that the USA may be ableto achieve is to be encouraging and that may be good enough.  Remember that the weight of history is on theside of the West and it is now overwhelming and happening rapidly.  All the turmoil is merely governments andcultures coming to grips with this and discovering how to adjust.  Remember Japanand Germany.  No one wishes to emulate their glowingexample by getting forced to do the right thing at gun point.  And yes, today the USA isnow a small part of the modern world even if everyone else is quite happy tostick them with the bill for preserving perpetual military superiority.



Obama failed to convince Muslims that America’s not their enemy
David Frum: Sep 22, 2012
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/09/22/david-frum-obama-failed-to-convince-muslims-that-americas-not-their-enemy/
All the way back in 2009, the newly inaugurated president Obama grantedhis very first TV interview to the al-Arabiya network.
Speaking to veteran journalist Hisham Melhem, the new president said:“My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not yourenemy.” As anti-American riots burn from Benghazito Islamabad, that hope looks distinctly “Mission Unaccomplished.”
In the immediate aftermath of the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya,the Obama administration insisted that the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairoand the U.S. consulate in Benghazi were spontaneousresponses to a YouTube video clip mocking the Prophet Muhammad. That claim,never very plausible, has by now nearly completely unraveled. (See Eli Lake’s report Friday inthe Daily Beast for the latest debunking.)
The attacks look elaborately planned and timed for the 9/11anniversary. The raising of the black al-Qaeda flag over the walls of the Cairoembassy was a challenge and a defiance — and a brutal repudiation of the hopesexpressed in Obama’s own speech in Cairo, delivered three summers ago:
“I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; onebased upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truththat Americaand Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition.”
That new beginning has not arrived. President Obama can claim importantnational security successes: the killing of Osama bin Laden and much of whatremained of the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan. But the level ofanti-American grievance Obama observed and deplored in 2008-2009 has notabated. If anything, the situation in important Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan and Egypt seems even more dangeroustoday than when Barack Obama took office. This is not to blame Obama formaking things worse. It is to recall to mind the unrealism of his promise tomake things better.
That promise was based on a series of assumptions that have one by onebeen falsified:
 That the Palestinian issuewas the driving cause of Muslim anti-Americanism — and that he could resolvePalestinian grievances by pressing Israel to make concessions; that theanger was somehow caused by President Bush and that it could be alleviatedby reversing Bush policies; and — finally — that his own personality andname could somehow reassure Muslims in and of itself.
[ Appeasement by any other namealways succeeds only in encouraging a dedicated enemy - arclein]
“I am a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family thatincludes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia andheard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk. As ayoung man, I worked in Chicagocommunities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.”
These words played a variation on the theme that launched BarackObama’s domestic career. At home, his personal story as the son of a motherfrom Kansas and a father from Kenya symbolized hopes of overcoming America’sracial divides. Might his personal story as an American-Christian descendedfrom East African Muslims achieve a similar resonance abroad?
Now we have the answer, delivered by rocket launchers. No.
Again, this is not to blame Obama. He didn’t make the anti-Americanism,and he faces few easy answers in responding to that anti-Americanism. But itdoes suggest that greater humility might have been in order back in 2008-2009.And it suggests that the problems faced in the Muslim world today go way deeperthan suggested by the glib answer, it’s all about Israel — or all about Bush.The anger goes back way further and lies way deeper.
 And it probably won’t be allayedby anything much that the United Statesor Israelor the larger Western world can do. It will be allayed by changes inside theMuslim world — changes that remove the incentives for local power-seekers toagitate mobs with stories about offenses against Islam; changes that reduce thereceptiveness of ordinary people to the demagoguery of local power-seekers.Economic development, the advance of education, the rise of forms of Islam thatare less political and more spiritual — these are the forces that will bringchange. They’ll be slow. And they are bigger than any one man, no matter howunusual his life story; how eloquent his tongue; or how grand his self-image.