When one thinks about Presidents and foreign policy, we tend to have the image that Republicans, particularly Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush, are the great success stories, and to look down on Democrats as better in domestic policy than foreign policy, where they are perceived as weak!
In 2008, Hillary Clinton had commercials that made one wonder if Barack Obama was prepared to make tough decisions at 3 AM, in the area of foreign policy, where he was seen as a novice.
Well, here we are nearly three years into Barack Obama’s term, and what has happened?
1. Obama has had Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, arguably one of the very best in American history!
2. Barack Obama has had great success in improving the image of America worldwide through his cooperation with NATO, the United Nations, and the Arab League, a development no one would ever have believed when he became President!
3. Obama has been successful in the withdrawal from Iraq, which just today he announced would end by Christmas.
4. Obama has been able to move toward the idea of eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan, while not recklessly moving in that direction too quickly.
5. Obama intervened, in just the right amount, in Libya, and has now improved his image in that nation, many flying American flags, as Gaddafi has just, after 42 years, been removed finally as a threat to the international order. And it cost not one American life, only about $2 billion in expenditures, and showed that the international community could work successfully together!
6. Obama has been able to go after dozens of terrorists and eliminate them through our intelligence gathering and our drones, including Osama Bin Laden and Anwar al Awlaki, and these two terrorists, along with Moammar Gaddafi, have been successfully neutralized in a period of less than six months!
7. While there are certainly challenges in foreign policy, particularly with Iran, Pakistan and Venezuela, along with Russia and China, one notices a lot of rhetoric, primarily, as these nations and their leaders have realized that Obama is not a person to “mess with”! They recognize that he is one tough “hombre”!
Compare the record on foreign policy and national security of Obama to George W. Bush, and one wonders why Republicans and conservatives refuse to salute and honor the President for his accomplishments! The obvious answer is that they know this is his major strong point of all, and they are not about to give him the time of day!
Meanwhile, the GOP candidates for President sound like morons, as some of them actually are, when it comes to these issues, and it is clear that our foreign policy and national security would be undermined by a defeat of Barack Obama in 2012!
So the job of the Obama campaign team is to emphasize these achievements, and to work to convince the American people that Obama has more concern and better ideas about how to deal with the economic future, than members of the party who will not even allow funding of extra teachers and first responders because it might raise, very slightly, the tax responsibility of the obscenely rich!