The Obamas' Farewell Tour to Eight Years of Neo-Con Foreign Policy

[Purveyor]

The mainstream commentariat can nitpick all it wants about what President Barack Obama achieved or didn't achieve from the G-20 summit and NATO meetings in Europe last week but the far bigger story is how the First Couple's visit marked the total repudiation of the neo-conservative foreign policy project. It wasn't long ago when Donald Rumsfeld was crowing about "New Europe" and Republicans in the House forced the Capitol's cafeteria to serve "Freedom Fries" instead of French fries. Talk radio blowhards were even staging events across the country where "patriotic" Americans dumped French wine into the nearest gutter. And these embarrassing antics were because the Bushies were outraged that most of our traditional allies thought invading Iraq was a bad idea.

In 2004, when the American people re-elected George W. Bush -- after the claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were proven to be false; after Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo; after Falluja and the unleashing of the sectarian bloodbath in Iraq -- Who can blame the rest of the world for thinking that Americans had lost their minds?

This backdrop makes the Obamas' triumphant European tour all the more significant. Finally, after eight long years of a petulant and parochial American foreign policy -- articulated by a guy who thought John Bolton would make an awesome United Nations ambassador -- finally, at long last, the world has a U.S. president it can talk to and respect.

Recently, the people of the Czech Republic gave a vote of no confidence to their prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, for his botched leadership. Adding to the embarrassment was that it happened to be the Czech Republic's turn to head the European Union. The collapse of the Czech government, the New York Times pointed out, "cast doubts on Prague's ability to lead the world's biggest trading bloc during difficult economic times."

So much for Rumsfeld's "New Europe."

One of Bush's stupidest foreign policy moves was his decision to sacrifice U.S.-Russian relations on the altar of an ill-conceived "missile-defense" system for the Czech Republic. Bush and Condi Rice repeatedly told the world the insulting lie that the Czech ABM system was designed to counter missiles fired from Iran even though just about everyone knows that the system was aimed at the Russian Federation. Antagonize a giant country armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons in behalf of a rump state of "Czechoslovakia" with no power and little in exchange to offer? Yeah, that was a great idea. (No wonder Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili thought he could get away with attacking South Ossetia last August 7th -- he probably thought Bush would have his back.)

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HUFFINGTON: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/the-obamas-farewell-tour_b_183464.html

[acmavm]

1. I have one major issue with this article:

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"In 2004, when the American people re-elected George W. Bush..."

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No one will ever convince me that he was ever elected. Not even once.