John Bolton grades the Obama Administration’s foreign policy record
Friday, September 11, 2009
RedState.com
As part of Hillsdale College’s “First Breakfast” lecture series, John Bolton spoke at the Heritage Foundation today. 9/11 is of course a somber anniversary for our country, and a fitting moment to reflect on how how American foreign policy is being shaped in the post-George W. Bush era.
In Ambassador Bolton’s view, it is not a pretty picture. He graded President Obama’s performance as “absent.” As Bolton pointed out in his remarks, the administration is pursuing a course of “Neo-Isolationism,” the point of which appears to be withdrawing American forces and refraining from using American influence around the world because such actions might be objectionable to the global community. Ambassador Bolton noted that while President Obama has declared he believes in “American exceptionalism ,” the President followed up that assertion by saying he believed in it just as he suspects “that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” By this logic all countries are exceptional in their own view–which should make everyone feel good–but the problem is that then no country is truly exceptional, including America. This approach, Bolton surmised, has been the guiding principle that unites the President’s repeated offers to negotiate directly with Iran, enabling of the dog-and-pony show that was former President Clinton’s visit to North Korean, and eagerness to cede power to the International Criminal Court–while presiding over the evisceration of the Defense budget. Ambassador Bolton was particularly outspoken on the current situation in Honduras, in which the administration is siding with Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro and against Honduras’ constitutional process. He gave that situation “an F. No question about it. This is a disgrace.”
Read the entire article at RedState.com
