 |
Townhall...
Obama Foreign Policy:
Moral Muddle
By Mona Charen
The Obama foreign policy is a mess. In the first 12 months of his term
-- let’s call it the contra-Bush era -- the president’s chief aim
seemed to be to undo, to the degree possible, what his predecessor had
done. The U.S. would close Guantanamo; eschew the term “war on terror”;
withdraw from Iraq on a fixed timetable; befriend Iran, Syria, China,
Russia, and even Sudan; stiff-arm Israel; and make a concerted effort
(via the Cairo speech among other things) to ingratiate America with
the Muslim world.
It didn’t work. Guantanamo remains open. Changing the name didn’t
change the fact of the war on terror. American troops will remain in
Iraq and Afghanistan for a long time. Iran has become even more
belligerent, and so forth. Has experience affected the administration’s
approach?
The theme of that first year -- besides Bushophobia -- was that
American arrogance, unilateralism, insensitivity to other cultures and
peoples, and resorting to military force were what ailed the world.
That, and the lack of a solution to the Palestinian problem. If you’d
asked any of the president’s major foreign policy advisers in 2008 what
was roiling world capitals, you would probably have heard some version
of the American arrogance/Israeli intransigence theme. Accordingly,
American deference, modesty, respect for others, and above all,
willingness to shun leadership in favor of subordination into
international bodies, would serve both America’s image and her
interests.
If nothing else, the uprisings in the Muslim world have thrown this
narrative into turmoil, demonstrating as they do a continuing world
hunger for American moral leadership. In the streets of Tehran in the
spring of 2009, demonstrators flung a rebuke at Obama’s diffidence (he
had declined to condemn the regime that was shooting peaceful
demonstrators), chanting “Obama! Obama! You’re either with us or you’re
with them.” Since the Iranian regime was implacably hostile to the
U.S., and because Obama had invested time and prestige in the pursuit
of better relations, he resisted siding with the demonstrators --
though the moral and geopolitical case for doing so could not have been
stronger.
The demonstrators in Egypt and Tunisia, on the other hand, were arrayed
against leaders friendly to the United States. After a brief pause,
they received Obama’s blessing (deeply alienating the Saudis, which is
a problem for another day). Why? Were Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak less
legitimate than Khamenei and Ahmadinejad? Arguably, they were more
legitimate -- certainly they were less brutal, if no less corrupt. Why
the different standard?
Now the Syrians have taken to the streets in their thousands. Again,
the regime is a terror-sponsoring, American-killing (Syria helped ferry
terrorists into Iraq), Lebanon-undermining thugocracy -- Iran’s one
friend and ally in the Arab world. Obama had declared that Mubarak had
to go. He has not said the same about Bashar Assad.
One almost has the sense that Obama resents the people of Iran and
Syria for complicating his outreach efforts. How embarrassing that the
streets should be thronged with demonstrators asking for freedom when
Obama was going to strike deals with those very withholders of freedom.
(The U.S. had just dispatched an ambassador to Damascus for the first
time in six years.) How awkward that the people in the streets are not
expressing frustration at the lack of progress on Israeli/Palestinian
peace but instead outrage at the repression, brutality, and lack of
opportunity in their own societies.
All of the American modesty in the world cannot correct that. Quite the
opposite -- our unwillingness to take the side of liberty against
monstrous regimes increases the sum total of oppression in the world.
Only in the case of Libya has the Obama administration acted decisively
against an American antagonist. In that case, the president was able to
follow the lead of others (the U.N., Britain, and France) and convince
himself that he was averting genocide. He may have been. And there’s
nothing illegitimate in acting to prevent genocide. What’s inexplicable
is Obama’s resistance to the truth about other thugs in the world.
Gadhafi is a vicious killer. On the strength of that knowledge, Obama
was able to join a coalition against him (though not to finish the job).
Yet the world is well stocked with Gadhafis. Most of them are fanatical
enemies of the United States. The people in the streets of the Muslim
world proclaim that it is they, not we, who most need to change. This
was not at all the way things were supposed to go, when Barack Obama
steered his new course.
Read it at Townhall
|
