President's Apology Tour

I struggle with our new adminstration’s approach to using apologies as an apparent cornerstone to making foreign policy inroads. There seems to be chronic need to be liked (and thus clearly demonstrate how the new administration differs from the old – what better way than to be able to claim that we are now “liked” again?).

The following articles touch on this topic:

When Slapped, Slap Back – by Eugene Robinson - Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042002814.html

“...One was his encounter with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, whose public persona is the polar opposite of Obama's. Chávez is all theater, all the time. He made the most of his introduction to the new American leader, enfolding him in an all-smiles handshake and presenting him with a book that harshly indicts the long, painful history of U.S. intervention in Latin America...
Chávez can be charming. But when Obama shook the man's hand, he should have telegraphed clearly, through posture, expression and language, that he was not amused. Chávez's gift of the book was meant to affront, not to enlighten, and I would have advised Obama to reciprocate in kind. ...
The other moment for presidential theatrics was Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's 50-minute speech excoriating, yes, the long and sordid history of U.S. meddling in Latin America. Asked later about Ortega's peroration, Obama replied curtly that "it was 50 minutes long." ...
Obama was correct not to walk out on the speech. But as was the case with Chávez's tendentious present, Ortega's speech was intended as a slap. When Obama spoke later, he should have prefaced his promising call for an "equal partnership" with other countries in the hemisphere with some strong pushback against those who would rather relive the insults of the past than move forward....
Chávez, Ortega and a few others, however, made a show of being rude. A flash of presidential anger from Obama would have been in order.
My argument isn't that Obama should try to be someone he's not. It's that he's declining to use one of the tools at his disposal. As public anger over the U.S. bank bailouts was rising, a well-timed burst of presidential outrage might have allowed him to get out in front of it....”
I, for one, don’t appreciate our country or our president being disrespected.

WSJ.com - Opinion: The President's Apology Tour* - Karl Rove, The Wall Street Journal 4/22/09-->
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124044156269345357-lMyQjAxMDI5NDIwMzQyNDMxWj.html



“President Barack Obama has finished the second leg of his international confession tour. In less than 100 days, he has apologized on three continents for what he views as the sins of America and his predecessors.
Mr. Obama told the French (the French!) that America "has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward Europe. In Prague, he said America has "a moral responsibility to act" on arms control because only the U.S. had "used a nuclear weapon." In London, he said that decisions about the world financial system were no longer made by "just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy" -- as if that were a bad thing. And in Latin America, he said the U.S. had not "pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors" because we "failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas."
By confessing our nation's sins, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that Mr. Obama has "changed the image of America around the world" and made the U.S. "safer and stronger." As evidence, Mr. Gibbs pointed to the absence of protesters during the Summit of the Americas this past weekend.
That's now the test of success? Anti-American protesters are a remarkably unreliable indicator of a president's wisdom. Ronald Reagan drew hundreds of thousands of protesters by deploying Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe. Those missiles helped win the Cold War.
There is something ungracious in Mr. Obama criticizing his predecessors, including most recently John F. Kennedy. ("I'm grateful that President [Daniel] Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old," Mr. Obama said after the Nicaraguan delivered a 52-minute anti-American tirade that touched on the Bay of Pigs.) Mr. Obama acts as if no past president -- except maybe Abraham Lincoln -- possesses his wisdom.
Mr. Obama was asked in Europe if he believes in American exceptionalism. He said he did -- in the same way that "the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism." That's another way of saying, "No."
Mr. Obama makes it seem as though there is moral equivalence between America and its adversaries and assumes that if he confesses America's sins, other nations will confess theirs and change. But he won no confessions (let alone change) from the leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua or Russia. He apologized for America and our adversaries rejoiced. Fidel Castro isn't easing up on Cuban repression, but he is preparing to take advantage of Mr. Obama's policy shifts.
When a president desires personal popularity, he can lose focus on vital American interests. It's early, but with little to show for the confessions, David Axelrod of Team Obama was compelled to say this week that the president planted, cultivated and will harvest "very, very valuable" returns later. Like what?
Meanwhile, the desire for popularity has led Mr. Obama to embrace bad policies. Blaming America for the world financial crisis led him to give into European demands for crackdowns on tax havens and hedge funds. Neither had much to do with the credit crisis. Saying that America's relationship with Russia "has been allowed to drift" led the president to push for arms negotiations. But that draws attention away from America's real problems with Russia: its invasion of Georgia last summer, its bullying of Ukraine, its refusal to join in pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, and its threats of retaliation against the Poles, Balts and Czechs for standing with the U.S. on missile defense.
Mr. Obama is downplaying the threats we face. He takes comfort in thinking that Venezuela has a defense budget that "is probably 1/600th" of America's -- it's actually 1/215th -- but that hasn't kept Mr. Chávez from supporting narcoterrorists waging war on Colombia (a key U.S. ally) or giving petrodollars to anti-American regimes. Venezuela isn't likely to attack the U.S., but it is capable of harming American interests.
Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoir "Years of Renewal": "The great statesmen of the past saw themselves as heroes who took on the burden of their societies' painful journey from the familiar to the as yet unknown. The modern politician is less interested in being a hero than a superstar. Heroes walk alone; stars derive their status from approbation. Heroes are defined by inner values; stars by consensus. When a candidate's views are forged in focus groups and ratified by television anchorpersons, insecurity and superficiality become congenital."
A superstar, not a statesman, today leads our country. That may win short-term applause from foreign audiences, but do little for what should be the chief foreign policy preoccupation of any U.S. president: advancing America's long-term interests.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.”


With the following editorial, Ms. Rabinowitz’s critique of this international campaign of “un-Bushness” resonates deeply and sums up my feelings on this liberal fixation with disempowering the United States, and reducing our role internationally to one of equivalence and subservience.


WSJ.com - Opinion: Obama Blames America* - Dorothy Rabinowitz, Wall Street Journal, 4/22/09

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124035759650041105.html

“The president of the United States has completed another outing abroad in his now standard form: as the un-Bush. At one stop after another -- the latest in Latin America, where Hugo Chávez expressed wishes to be his friend -- Barack Obama fulfilled his campaign vows to show the nations of the world that a new American leadership stood ready to atone for the transgressions of the old....

No sitting American president had ever delivered indictments of this kind while abroad, or for that matter at home, or been so ostentatiously modest about the character and accomplishment of the nation he led. He was mediator, an agent of change, a judge, apportioning blame -- and he was above the battle.

None of this display during Mr. Obama's recent travels could have come as a surprise to legions of his supporters, nor would many of them be daunted by their new president's preoccupation with our moral failures. Five decades of teaching in colleges and universities across the land, portraying the U.S. as a power mainly responsible for injustice and evil, whose military might was ever a danger to the world -- a nation built on the fruits of greed, rapacity and racism -- have had their effect. The products of this education find nothing strange in a president quick to focus on the theme of American moral failure. He may not share many of their views, but there is, nonetheless, much that they find familiar about him.

The same can't be said for the large numbers of Americans who caught up with the details of the president's apology tour. Presidents have been transformed by office, and Mr. Obama may yet be one of them. But on the evidence so far, he has, as few presidents before him, much to transform. Or, at least, to understand.

Since that bridge too far to Europe, ordinary Americans, including some who voted for Mr. Obama, have shown evidence of a quiet but durable resentment over the list of grievances against the United States that the president brought to the world's attention while overseas. There are certain things that can't be taken back. There are images that are hard to forget. Anger of this kind has an enduring power that could, in the end, haunt this presidency.”


Thank you Ms. Rabinowitz.



And now a quick glimpse on where all of this leads us.......!!


Bow & kiss the hand of the king and this is what you get:


** Saudi Arabia rebuke over US claim **
Saudi Arabia says the US must retract a claim that King Abdullah met Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2008.
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/8029435.stm >


Time to apologize again.............................................................