[RKBA Democrat]

A good article Nathan, but I disagree with you on this point:

“So before we conservatives rejoice over the personal humiliation of Barack Obama, let us consider as patriots the harm to our country. “

What harm? I say we count our blessings as the psychopaths weren’t able to start WWIII today. They’ll try again, of course. And soon. But frankly, having my family burnt to a cinder or having other American families burnt to a cinder or blown up or poisoned or irradiated ad nauseum is a high price to pay so dear leader can look butch.

[nathanbedford]

My argument is not with the climbdown but with the breathtaking incompetence that pushed Obama first up the pole and then down again. I quite agree that to strike Syria was not just ill-conceived but undoubtedly counterproductive and certainly dangerous with 1 billion Muslims, 1 billion Chinese and and a lot of Russians lining up against us.

A larger view, which I think you probably share, is that Obama's foreign policy has been a muddle for the last five years which has been extremely dangerous but because he is superficially nonconfrontational it has not appeared to be so. Where he should have been aggressive, with Iran when the people were on the streets and just about any other time to stop them getting the bomb, he has been pusillanimous.

I have a vanity going back some years arguing that it is a mistake to conceive of Obama as another Jimmy Carter. Obama is a radical ideologue who sees foreign policy myopically through that filter. History shows that leftists from Trotsky to Pol Pot have been bloodthirsty in the extreme when it comes to advancing or protecting their ideological agenda.

That is why there does not seem to be any identifiable connection between Obama's foreign policy and America's national interests-Obamas interests are ideological.