Obama's Foreign Policy Blunders Multiply

There have been few weeks so much about President Barack Obama as this past week. Let's consider the trail he has left behind. ~~~~~ (1). Last week on Friday, the American government issued a worldwide travel warning for US tourists and closed 19 US embassies in the Moslem world because of what was called a serious but non-pinpointed terrorist threat. Many European governments followed the American lead. As last weekend rolled toward Monday, the threat was announced to be focused in the Arabian Peninsula, either as target or as perpetrator. Yemen took charge of its part of the problem, with the help of US drones, and by mid-week, Yemen said it had eliminated a current threat to oil and gas fields in its territory, adding that it was not certain that this was the same threat America was talking about. Some US and European intelligence experts began to ask if Obama had overreacted and whether the very public announcement had actually compromised the US intelligence gathering systems in the Middle East. Then, Thursday night, the US announced the closing of its Lahore, Pakistan, consulate because of a serious threat not related to the earlier worldwide warning, according to rhe Obama administration. And, except for a five-minute chat with the host of an American late-night comedy show, the world has had very little explanation from the President. (2). Obama unceremoniously and suddenly pulled tbe plug publicly this week on a scheduled summit meeting wirh Russian President Vladimir Putin that had been sheduled in September at the G8 meeting in Moscow. The first White House explanation was that the President was angry with Putin's decision to grant temporary asylum to the American who had stolen intelligence information and released it after fleeing US jurisdiction -- the Stockton affair. Later in an obvious scramble to recover the diplomatic gaff, the President and his spokesmen said there were other outstanding issues to be resolved at lower levels and the decision to cancel was not just because of Stockton. President Putin quickly seized the diplomatic high ground, without mentioning Stockton, saying he held no grudges and would not resort to reprisals. (3). President Obama made it known that he had asked Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham to go to Egypt and try to find a compromise to calm the waters between the Morsi Brotherhood faction and the military that had ousted him from the presidency. Obama apparently forgot to mention to McCain that "coup" was a forbidden word because it could trigger the freeze of military and other aid to Egypt under American law - because McCain, at his first Cairo press conference called the military ouster a coup. The US State Department scrambled to say the official position of the Obama administration is that there is no need to use the word coup in reference to the "transition" now underway in Egypt. ~~~~~ If, dear readers, when you try to follow what's going on in the White House this week, you get the feeling you are on a roller coaster or a rodeo broncing steer being tossed about from pillar to post - give a thought to President Obama. He must want to pull the bed covers over his head and stay there until 2016. But, things like this week's fiascos happen when you have no foreign policy, have no advisors capable of creating foreign policy, and are arrogant enough to believe that you are above the need for foreign policy because you are an Immortal sent by Zeus to smile upon us poor human beings.