“And while his foreign policy has generally left chaos and disorder behind it — see: Libya, Egypt — it’s an obvious improvement on his predecessor’s.”
I’d like to see the author’s back up for this assertion. Here’s my scorecard:
1. The nations that liked Bush (UK, Australia, Eastern Europe, India, Japan, some ASEAN countries, the secular Arab states, sort of Israel) have been consciously or unconsciously blown off by Obama and dislike him and us now.
2. The nations who didn’t really like Bush but respected/feared him (Central Asian nations, much of Africa and Latin America) now have contempt for the US.
3. The nations that hated Bush (France, Germany, some other Western Euros) may say they like Obama better, but deep down they don’t trust him and don’t think they can count on the US any more.
4. The nations that hated not only Bush but the very idea of the US (Iran, Cuba, North Korea, China) are openly dismissive of the US, and with the exception of Cuba all of them are more militarily potent and threatening now than they were in 2008.
5. The “reset” with Russia, which Obama touted highly, is a bloody shambles.
Just how can anyone credibly claim that Obama’s foreign policy is an obvious improvement???
“Just how can anyone credibly claim that Obama’s foreign policy is an obvious improvement?”
Yeah, and Bush left Iraq basically as an American victory.
It took Obama’s failure to negotiate a status of forces agreement to turn Iraq into the worst terrorist haven ever — after we spent a billion dollars to stop it.