AMERICA’S ENEMIES ARE OBAMA’S FRIENDS AND VICE VERSA

President Barack Hussein Obama is an ignoramus and a boor, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said on CNN Sunday (3/28).

Mr. Axelrod did not, of course, use precisely those words.  What he did say on CNN’s "State of the Union" program is that there was "no snub intended" when the president abruptly walked out of a meeting at the White House Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to have dinner in the family quarters.

Most news accounts described the event as did the London Times: "Binyamin Netanyahu humiliated after Barack Obama ‘dumped him for dinner’."  But it is not the object of boorishness who ought to be embarrassed by boorish behavior. 

Barack Hussein Obama is plainly a boor, with no understanding of diplomacy.  You don’t treat your brother in law like that, much less a head of state who is a guest in your country.

The snub was, of course, intended.  Prior to it, the president had denied to the prime minister the traditional joint press conference, and had even forbade having news cameras record their meeting.

Last week, as Barack Hussein Obama was insulting and bullying Israel‘s prime minister, the foreign affairs committee of Britain‘s House of Commons declared the "special relationship" that Britain had long held with the United States to be over.

For more than a year, Britain has endured a series of insults from Mr. Obama, who reportedly is peeved with Britain for its conduct during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya (1952-1960).  Last month, insult became injury when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sided with Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, a Hugo Chavez pal, who is trying to revive Argentina‘s dispute with Britain over the Falkland Islands.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama has been treating our enemies as friends.  President Bush withdrew our ambassador from Syria in 2005 to protest Syria‘s involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.  In a unilateral, unreciprocated gesture, President Obama has decided to restore diplomatic relations.

How has Syria responded to this peace overture?

"Syria and Libya teamed up Sunday to pressure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to quit peace talks with Israel and return to violence," reported the Israeli newspaper Haaretz Monday (3/29).

Though Mr. Obama has been quick to condemn Israel — in language typically reserved for rogue regimes — for announcing the construction of additional housing for Jews in its capital of Jerusalem, he hasn’t uttered a peep about Syria‘s continued arms shipments to Hezbollah terrorists. 

Mr. Obama wants to "reset" relations with Russia, despite the fact that the Russians (along with the Chinese) continue to block effective UN sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, and are lobbying to get us kicked out of air bases in Kyrgyzstan critical to our supply lines in Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama also wants a fresh start with North Korea.  How has North Korea responded? With threats of war against South Korea.

The soft line Mr. Obama has taken toward the mullahs in Iran has not softened their repression of their own people, nor slowed their pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Democrats as well as Republicans in Congress are concerned about the Obama administration’s tilt against Israel.  On Friday, 327 House members sent him a letter which said: "We are concerned that the highly publicized tensions in the relationship will not advance the interests the U.S. and Israel share."

"All new administrations stumble a bit as they seek their footing," noted my friend Ralph Peters, a former Army intelligence officer. "But President Obama’s foreign policy botches have set new records for instant incompetence."

But what if Mr. Obama’s friendliness to our enemies and enmity towards our friends is more a product of ideology than of incompetence?  This is, after all, a guy who spent Sunday after Sunday in Jeremiah Wright’s church, listening to sermon after sermon on the evils of Amerikkka and why God should damn it.

Rookie mistakes can be overcome with experience.  Not so easily overcome is an ideological hostility to the United States and our allies.  We need to face the fact that our friends are not his friends, and to ponder the implications of that fact.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.