A PRESIDENT OUR ENEMIES DON’T FEAR OUR ALLIES DON’T TRUST AND NO ONE RESPECTS

Leaders of other countries don’t respect President Barack Obama, say 53 percent of respondents in Gallup’s annual World Affairs poll, conducted Feb. 3-6.

That only 53 percent of Americans think this is a clear indictment of the news media’s coverage of foreign affairs.

He would lead the world by "deed and example," not try to "bully it into submission," Sen. Obama wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2007.

In a major foreign policy speech in 2008, Mr. Obama said he would focus on: "ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century."

The key elements of his foreign policy were to be a "reset" of relations with Russia, and outreach to Muslims.

To symbolize "reset," when they met in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a red plastic button modeled on the "easy button" in the Staples ads.

"I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world," Mr. Obama said in a much ballyhooed speech in Cairo in June, 2009.

No president has talked the talk so well, or walked the walk so badly.

The plastic button Ms. Clinton gave Mr. Lavrov was supposed to say "reset" in English and Russian.  But "peregruzka" means "overcharged." Relations went downhill from there. 

To appease Russia, President Obama cancelled a ballistic missile defense treaty with Poland and the Czech Republic. But the more concessions he made, the more Russian President Vladimir Putin treated him with contempt.

His Russian policy has been a total failure.  But it hasn’t backfired as badly as has Mr. Obama’s "outreach" to Muslims:

*Iran is closer than ever to a nuclear weapon.  The president weakened economic sanctions as a gesture of goodwill, so now the mullahs have the money they need to finish to job.

*Saudi Arabia is so angered by Mr. Obama’s appeasement of Iran it refused a seat on the UN Security Council; the Saudis are so frightened by Iran they are talking quietly with the Israelis about joint military action.

*In what had been our foremost Arab  ally, Egypt, Mr. Obama’s dalliance with the Muslim Brotherhood has alienated both the military and the people.

*Mr. Obama waged war of dubious legality to oust Muammar Gadhafy in Libya, an evil mean nasty rotten guy, but not, since 2005, a threat to the United States.  (He gave up his nuclear weapons program because he was afraid what happened to Saddam Hussein might happen to him.)

In the chaotic aftermath, al Qaida has established a stronghold there.  An al Qaida affiliate murdered U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

*Seventy percent of the 2,313 Americans killed in Afghanistan died after President Obama escalated the war.  They died in vain.  The Taliban is expected to take over when U.S. troops leave.

*Barack Hussein Obama isn’t the  first U.S. president to lose a war.  But he’ll be the first to lose a war his predecessor had won.  The fighting in Iraq was over when Mr. Obama took the oath of office. His inept diplomacy and premature withdrawal of all U.S. troops permitted an al Qaida resurgence there.

*Worldwide, al Qaida is as great a threat today as it was in 2001, the Director of National Intelligence told Congress last month, controls more territory than ever before.

*Peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians have gone nowhere, which is nothing new.  But Barack Hussein Obama is not only the first U.S. president with one, much less three Muslim names, but also  the first to lose the trust of both Israelis and Palestinians.

"Before Obama, the sides were at least talking," said three Brookings Institution scholars in their book on his foreign policy.

*More than 130,000 people have been killed in the civil war in Syria.  President Obama threatened to intervene militarily, then after pressure from the Russians, in effect switched sides, to the dismay of our European allies, who also were upset to learn the National Security Agency has been bugging their leaders.

Mr. Obama’s policies in the Middle East have created "an arc of stateless space that begins in Libya and Egypt, is briefly interrupted by the tiny, embattled, belittled, and bullied Jewish State, and extends through Lebanon into Syria and western Iraq," said Matt Continetti. 

"Within its confines murderers and barbarians roam, butchering each other and anyone else who is caught in the crossfire. Within its confines followers of al Qaeda gather and plot.

"They will not remain within its confines for long, though. Anyone who pays the least attention to the articles inside the New York Times will have noticed leaks by officers of our intelligence agencies, leaks desperately warning that the jihadists have turned their eyes to Europe and to the United States."

Because he so often has "led from behind," drawn "red lines," then erased them; blustered and retreated; has demonstrated so little knowledge of or interest in world affairs, our enemies don’t fear our president, our allies don’t trust him; no one respects him.

During the crisis there, Ukraine’s defense minister refused to accept calls from our secretary of defense, a sign of how much American influence has shrunk along with the president’s stature.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are widely considered abroad to be buffoons.  Mr. Obama has made so many scandalously unqualified ambassadorial appointments, the State Department union is considering opposing his nominees, who’ve been mocked by late night comedians.

No president ever before — not even the hapless Jimmy Carter — has made such a mess of foreign policy, with such dangerous implications for our security.  Relations have soured even with Canada, which is tired of being jerked around on the Keystone pipeline.

It’s time the news media noticed.  But they are too busy licking Obama’s boots to look up and see.

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.

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