We could hardly believe our ears. Bill Kristol, the hawkish editor of The Weekly Standard, was on TV the other day, commenting on the Obama administration’s repeated drone strikes against jihadist plotters and admitting that President Obama actually has a “decent” anti-terrorism strategy.
Then Kristol launched into his usual criticism that the White House is a chump when it comes to Russia.
That pretty much sums up the mixed perceptions of President Obama’s foreign policy. Conservatives — well, some conservatives — concede he has kept America safe. There have been no mass-casualty, landscape-altering terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since he took office, at least partly because he’s using remote-control technology to kill scores of terrorist leaders.
But critics on both the right and left are frustrated at what seems to be weakness when dealing with rival superpowers … and indecision when dealing with smaller global flare-ups.
Last summer, Obama said using chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line” that Syrian strongman Bashar Assad didn’t want to cross. But Assad crossed the line anyway, and Obama didn’t strike back. Instead, he made a deal with Russia to try to get Assad to behave.
On Monday, the president responded to his critics. He said his foreign policy philosophy is to “avoid errors.”
That’s no small thing. Most Americans believe that George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were errors that cost 6,700 American lives. The wars certainly took longer than planned and accomplished less than hoped.
Obama also believes that arming Ukrainians to help them resist Russian aggression — as critics have urged — would be an error. “Do people actually think that somehow us sending some additional items into Ukraine could potentially deter the Russian army?” he asked.
A reasonable argument. But the perception that Obama is waffling and weak is starting to make allies wonder if they can count on the United States to be tough when it needs to be.
During the president’s recent Asia trip, The Associated Press reported, “anxious allies … (sought) assurances from the president that he would have their back if China used military force to take advantage of the region’s numerous territorial disputes.”
Avoiding errors is good. But it isn’t always good enough.
— Copley News Service
