Obama’s Body Count

American Thinker

Barack  Obama and Hillary Clinton feel that Osama bin Laden’s death and the drone  attacks show that they have mastered national security and foreign policy.   They are wrong.

Counting  bodies and sorties proves little.  As Einstein said, “[n]ot everything that  counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted  counts.”

President  Obama’s term in office has left entire  regions where U.S. influence has waned and U.S. interests have been defeated.   Thousands protested in the Islamic world, seeking “Hope and Change,” but  found that it was only a cynical slogan.  Millions now wonder: does America  remember what it means to be “the leader of the free world”?

Obama  sent an ambassador to Syria — over Congress’s express objection.  Bashar  Assad began slaughtering 20,000 of his people.  Obama did nothing about the  bloody repression in Iran, but he did help oust a far less despotic regime in  Egypt, ushering in the Muslim Brotherhood — the organization that spawned Hamas  and al-Qaeda.  Now Obama-Clinton pretend that the Muslim Brothers are  moderates.

Secretary  Clinton is often struck dumb by Arab-Islamic extremism.  In 1999, she  hugged Suha Arafat, wife of the PLO leader.  Arafat said (in Clinton’s  presence) that Israel used poison gas on Arabs and poisoned their wells.   Clinton was silent.  Clinton, who hugged Arafat, now embraces Obama’s  bashing of Israel.

When  an Israeli judge found that Israelis have a right to build on land bought  in the West Bank, the State Department said all Israeli settlements  were “illegitimate” — a term Obama likes.

Clinton  kept quiet when Egypt’s Islamist foreign minister declared, in a joint press  conference, that keeping the peace treaty with Israel was contingent on Israel  getting out of the West Bank entirely.  Clinton acquiesced when Islamist  Turkey banned Israel from taking part in NATO exercises and top counter-terror  forums.

Turkey  helps Hamas.  Israel is the world’s greatest foe of terror.  Clinton  helps Turkey.

Clinton’s  sad performance is not limited to the Mid-East.  She led a “reset” in ties  with Russia that is now a fiasco.  She unveiled a huge button ostensibly  labeled “reset” in Russian but actually reading “overcharge” — an apt depiction  of the failure of U.S.-Russian ties and the Obama-Clinton foreign policy in  general.

There  was no reset.  Russia’s leaders returned to brutal autocracy, invading  Georgia, threatening Ukraine and Poland, assassinating political foes, and  opposing the U.S. wherever possible.  But Obama-Clinton think they can  charm Russia into moderation.

Obama  put his arm around Dmitri Medvedev — the puppet of Russian chief Vladimir Putin  — and confided that, after the inconvenient U.S. elections, he (Obama) would be  “flexible” about Russian demands.

Obama’s  first major foreign venture was to Islamist Turkey, whose leader, Recep Erdoğan,  dreams of leading a caliphate (like Egypt’s leader Muhammad Morsi).  Obama  thinks Turkey’s Erdoğan is a “moderate” and might mediate between the U.S. and  Iran.  For America’s most pro-Islam president ever, this makes sense.   Both Erdoğan and the ayatollahs share the dream of leading a new Islamic  caliphate.

This  is but a small sample of Obama-Clinton foreign policy failures.  The list  of successes has only bin Laden on it, and Obama should paraphrase what he just  said about success: “you didn’t do that by yourself” and “somebody helped  you.”

Obama’s  biggest terror test is yet to come: dealing with a terror state that wants to be  a nuclear power — Iran.  During this testing period, Obama will listen to  his “inner voice,” his closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett, who speaks Farsi and  was born in Iran.

Jarrett  has also been Obama’s emissary to U.S. Muslims, many of them rich Iranian  donors.  The day after the Iranian-aided terror attack on Israelis in  Bulgaria, the White House hosted a day-long conclave with Iranian-Americans,  including the leader of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), who said  Israel invited the terror attack in order to have an excuse to attack Iran.   Ms. Jarrett was featured at the event.

Later,  perhaps coincidentally, The New York Times reported that a senior Obama official said the Iranian terror attack was  “in retaliation for the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, for which  Iran has blamed Israeli agents.”  The Times report again quoted  the senior Obama official saying, “This was tit for tat.”

In  other words, the day after an Iranian terror attack, the White House hosted  pro-Iranian groups, and a senior U.S. official adopted the Iranian narrative:  “tit for tat.”

As  President Obama wonders what to do or — more likely — not to do about Iran, it  is good that he has both the ear and the inner voice of Iran.  As they say  in Farsi, “o-ba-mah”: “He is with us.”

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/obamas_body_count.html#ixzz22RjZD3dx