Written by Richard Butrick   

President Obama delivered this year’s commencement address to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. on June 2. It contained several insights into his own vision as to the why and wherefore of his foreign policy of smart diplomacy and engagement.

For starters Obama claims that it is either engagement or isolationism. Either we engage in the “festering” problems “over there” or retreat into “isolationism” and ignore all festering problems “over there.” We should not “wash our hands of conflicts that seem intractable [and] let other countries fend for themselves.” The Obama administration is proud that the US is the 911 for the rest of the world:

"When there is a problem around the world, they do not call Beijing or Moscow. They call us. And we lead, not by dictating to others, but by working with them as partners, by treating other countries and their peoples with respect. Not by lecturing them."

Seems he forgot to mention leading [1] by drone strikes and covert operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Evidently smart diplomacy is abetted by a little drone diplomacy. The real kicker is, of course, leading by money and blood diplomacy - the Obama share [2] of the 6 trillion dollars and three thousand military lives lost since 9/11.

And then there is the astounding reason we are “over there” in Syria.

"As a father, I look at Syria's children and I see my own. That's why we've said the dictator Assad must go and why we support the moderate Syrian opposition. And it's why America provides more humanitarian aid to the Syrian people than any other nation,"

If they looked like Trump’s children - forget it? Umm? A little racism leaking from the President’s smart diplomacy?

Meanwhile, back on the farm, even HuffPo has pronounced [3] the Obama foreign policy a flop:

“Today, the credibility of America’s Middle East policy has been severely damaged by a White House whose Mideast strategy can best be described as unclear, inconsistent, and lacking follow-through.”

Indeed, not only has it been a flop, from Lybia to Afghanistan to Iraq and now Syria, our story over there has been a story of blood, money down the drain and turning a blind eye to genocidal persecution of non-Islamic religions. But in the mind of our President it has been a story of America being asked to use the great diplomatic kills of his administration to resolve international conflicts - a story of partnership and mutual respect:

"When there is a problem around the world, they do not call Beijing or Moscow. They call us. And we lead, not by dictating to others, but by working with them as partners, by treating other countries and their peoples with respect. Not by lecturing them."

As Victor Hansen concluded [4] in his review of the Obama “smart” foreign policy, which he sees as little more than appeasement gussied up in postmodern patois, “Appeasement continues not because it works, but because it serves the pretensions of narcissists.”

But it is worse than that. It is a narcissism that belies the reality of the blood, genocide, chaos and trillion dollar sink-hole in which his foreign policy is enmeshed and instead enables him to believe that under his leadership the US is the respected 911 call that resolves conflicts bloodlessly through a diplomacy of mutual respect and perceptive coalescence of interests.

Delusion is not a promising approach to solving real-world problems.


[1] https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/
[2] http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic
[3]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-v-micallef/a-legacy-of-failure-obama_b_8324094.html
[4]
http://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2015/02/04/appeasement-as-narcissism-n1952849