President Surrender Monkey’s cunning plan...but his wily foreign policy is paying off (UK Times)

[Jackeens]

President Surrender Monkey’s cunning plan

The right is calling Obama weak, but his wily foreign policy is paying off

The spluttering of the American right — and some European conservatives — over Barack Obama’s foreign policy reached a new level of vituperation last week. “Is Obama naive?” pondered Michael Ledeen at National Review. “I don’t think so. I think that he rather likes tyrants and dislikes America.”

Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation wrote in The Daily Telegraph: “ appeasement of Iran, his bullying of Israel, his surrender to Moscow, his call for a nuclear-free world ... have all won him plaudits in the large number of UN member states where US foreign policy has traditionally been viewed with contempt. Simply put, Barack Obama is loved at the UN because he largely fails to advance real American leadership.” Jennifer Rubin at the neoconservative publication Commentary declared Obama’s speech was “one of the more embarrassing and shameful displays by a US president before the UN”. For Gardiner, Ledeen and Rubin the model for foreign policy is that represented by Dick Cheney. He projected strength and decisiveness and America’s enemies allegedly cowered. Obama — or Obambi — is, in their eyes, an arugula-eating surrender monkey.

Let’s review the evidence. In Iraq, Obama postponed any rapid withdrawal, keeping troops there as long as the Bush administration had pledged. While ending torture, Obama has retained key provisions for extraordinary rendition and has recently scored real successes in the terror war. Last week brought the exposure of what looks like the first real Al-Qaeda plot within America, busted by the FBI and unaccompanied by any Obama grandstanding or fear-mongering. Several Al-Qaeda leaders have been taken out by drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Obama has sent more troops to Afghanistan and ordered a full review of strategy from one of Cheney’s favourite generals, Stanley McChrystal. For the first time in two decades Israel does not have carte blanche from the White House to do whatever it wants in the West Bank.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6850643.ece

[annabanana]

1. That warmongering crew has always been proven wrong in the past..

Why would that change now?

[bluestateguy]

2. If the neo-con pencil neck geeks and 40 year old virgins are bitching and complaining

then Obama must be doing something right.

[MadMaddie]

3. Well if he keeps getting it right he deflates the war contractors

dreams right? Halliburton or whatever it's new name is, Blackwater and all of the others. That's what Cheney and * were about it was never about protecting America it was about enriching their cronies...

[HopeOverFear]

4. President Surrender Monkey???

:(

[prostomulgus]

5. President Chess Master is more accurate

and a WHOLE LOT LESS RACIST!!!!

Jeez!

[bleever]

6. They had me at "spluttering".

The rightwingers don't even know what they're up against, so they're to be forgiven their spluttering.

But splutterers they are, because if you're falling over, at least you can still curse what you tripped on.

[lillypaddle]

7. Good article

K&R

[4lbs]

8. I loved how these 3 Al-Qaeda wannabes were taken down by the FBI, using non-torture methods, the day

after John Bolton whined publicly that President Obama was endangering the country with his stance against torture.

Doh!

[rasputin1952]

9. I find it amusing that they think that the use of diplomacy...

at the UN is somehow akin to sheep like behavior.

After knuckle dragging thugs w/clubs, an articulate, diplomatic individual at the helm is something most people would applaud.

[iceman66]

10. Obama's foreign policy so far has been masterful,

especially when compared to the blundering of his predecessor.

Of course his successes in this arena have been largely ignored by the corporate media.