Obama’s foreign-policy weakness encourages our enemies and disheartens our allies.
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Our Future Is 1979
Tag: Jimmy Carter
A New Obama Doctrine?
With his presidency in tailspin, Carter radically changed course. Will Obama do the same?
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
By the beginning of 1980, Jimmy Carter was in big trouble. Almost everything he had said or done in foreign policy over the prior three years had failed — and he was running for reelection.
Carter had come into office in 1977 promising a new American stance abroad predicated on human rights. He bragged of an end to our supposedly inordinate fear of Soviet-inspired Communism. He entertained the hope of not losing a single American soldier in combat during his tenure. And he rejected the realpolitik of the Nixon-Kissinger years.
The State Department would end the excessive influence of the bellicose National Security Council. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance would put a kinder, gentler face on American diplomacy. We championed Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe over more moderate black reformers. We broke with the Shah of Iran, who fled his country in January 1979. We for a while praised the Ayatollah Khomeini and sought ways to reach out to him. Carter’s U.N. ambassador, Andrew Young, called Khomeini “some kind of saint.” Young met secretly with PLO representatives in Kuwait. In an interview, he falsely alleged of his own country that “We still have hundreds of people that I would categorize as political prisoners in our prisons.” Continue reading “A New Obama Doctrine?”
Putinology
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner
Barack Obama’s cancellation of his Russian visit is the normal sort of diplomat payback for insult and injury — in this case the asylum offered Edward Snowden in the face of administration pleas to send him home for punishment. But with Obama, as with everything with Obama, the about-
face invokes irony, hypocrisy, and paradox, because it is just the sort of normal Neanderthal tit-for-tat that was not supposed to happen under an Obama pathbreaking foreign policy. Continue reading “Putinology”
Selective Transparency
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
We are in a transparency mania, but a rather selective sort of one. Bill Clinton, who chose not to tell the truth while under oath and as president, says he is “perplexed” that Mitt Romney did not offer more candor by providing more than a single year’s tax returns. Continue reading “Selective Transparency”
The 2012 Election Circus–the Acts, the Players, the Hype
by Victor Davis Hanson
PJ Media
The Latest Scandals
Taxes: What does it matter that Gingrich released one year of his tax records? Any candidate can prep them a year in advance. Continue reading “The 2012 Election Circus–the Acts, the Players, the Hype”
Obama’s Christmas Gift to Iran
by Bruce S. Thornton
FrontPage Magazine
As the last American troops roll south to Kuwait, the end of the war in Iraq invites unsettling comparisons to another war America declared over before losing its nerve and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Continue reading “Obama’s Christmas Gift to Iran”
The Demagogic Style
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
The noun dêmagôgos first appeared in Thucydides’ history, mostly in a neutral, only slight disparaging way (usually in reference to the obstreperous Cleon), in its literal sense of “leader of the people.” Continue reading “The Demagogic Style”
Obama’s 1979
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
Obama’s deer-in-the-headlights, finger-to-the-wind, “I can’t believe this is happening to me” initial reaction to the Mubarak implosion has eerie precedents. Continue reading “Obama’s 1979”