While America Sleeps...

HumanEvents:

While America Sleeps...
by Caspar Weinberger Jr.
03/09/2009

During the 1990’s, my father said “I don’t care who Bill Clinton sleeps with, I just can’t stand his foreign policies, which he seems to make up as he goes along.”

Similarly, I don’t care, and I hope no one else cares, what President Obama’s skin color is, it is just evident that he, his Secretary of State and his other foreign policy advisors are badly informed concerning America’s friends and enemies around the world.

While all the mainstream media attention remains on Obama mania and on America’s massive monetary troubles, around the world the beat goes on. And the new rhythm suggests that we may well have more to fear from our traditional adversaries than we ever have to fear from even the Administration’s current ridiculous monetary “policies.”

Witness:

-- The White House gave England, our staunchest and most important ally, the cold shoulder when Prime Minister Brown arrived here in an attempt to work together with us on the myriad problems most certainly first centered on the global fiscal crisis. No press conference, no formal dinner was offered, just a “working” lunch worthy only of a third rate power seeking a meeting purely for some publicity. Think that stuff doesn’t matter? See how the British press reported the slights. Of course the White House spin masters said the Rose Garden press conference was cancelled because of “snow.” The simple fact is that there was little to no re-affirmation by our new President that Britain is our strongest ally.

-- Meanwhile we are now actively courting a full diplomatic relationship with Syria, a known terrorist state with a hatred of both Israel and the United States.

-- A week ago, President Obama apparently sent a personal message to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggesting that we would be willing to drop our proposed European missile shield if Russia would help us to talk some sense into Iran so that they would give up their nuclear program. The Russian response: we’ll talk, but no haggling! Perhaps that was also a racial slur at our President as the word “haggling” is perhaps most associated with the film, “Driving Miss Daisy.” Whatever, but the real problem is that the President should be the final authority, not the initial back channel messenger to foreign powers.

---Secretary-of-State Clinton has already started bad mouthing Israel while embracing the Palestinian cause, seemingly ignoring the Hamas militants or acknowledging that Israel has a right to protect its homeland against the hundreds of rockets Hamas has fired at it from the so-called “Palestinian” lands. Instead she castigates the Jewish state for destroying the homes of known terrorists while the Obama Administration pledges $900 million to “rebuild” the bomb damaged country even though the government there has no control over the imported terrorists who appear to run the show in Gaza and the West Bank. All of that signals strongly to Israel that she is on her own in the coming direct battles on the war on terror throughout the mid-East. That is what helps to make the world a much more dangerous place, because our ability now to influence Israel is diminished. Why indeed should they listen to us as they deal with their international affairs when we won’t listen to them and offer them the weakest show of support?

-- Now Madame Clinton seeks a new attitude where we hold hands, kiss and make-up with Russia, currently ruled exclusively by the dictator Vladimir Putin through his puppet President. But Russia is no friend and they love to exploit what they see as weakness and right now they see a lot of that here as our new foreign policy love children seek peace at any cost with this virtual dictatorship. Even former Russian leader Mikal Gorbachev is criticizing harshly the Putin autocracy, but still we plunge in and seek favor at his court.

---meanwhile China is now pledging to raise defense spending by 15%, recognizing that the U.S. economy is weak and that the new U.S. President is already criticizing his own Defense Department for cost inefficiencies, etc. This is laughable, of course, given the horrendous pork, and non-defense domestic spending already signed and sealed on Obama’s watch. Then there is the little problem of the fact that he is really criticizing his own Secretary of Defense who obviously presided over the Department when this so-called “massive misspending” occurred.

China’s new spending can hardly be seen as needed for its own defense but it is certainly a sign of their desire to be mightily offensive.

Now mix-in the on-going problems with North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran and the continued insanity of Hugo Chavez in South America. Watching this administration so far one would not be surprised if we were to learn that in February the President sent a valentine to Bin Laden inviting him to a “dialogue” at the White House.

If America does not awake and awake quickly from this dangerous course, our ship of state is in much danger of plowing straight into the reefs of disaster.

Mr. Weinberger is the son of the late U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. A 1968 graduate of Harvard College, Weinberger is a writer and lecturer on world events. A former television writer, producer and director for NBC affiliate KRON-TV in San Francisco, he served in both California Gov. and President Ronald Reagan's administrations. He now resides in Maine.