Romney and Israel Give Obama Scathing Performance Reviews

There are times when President Barack Obama receives an unexpected job performance review. Yesterday he got two. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee defeated by Obama, kept his dignity and grace when, some time after he said during the 2012 campaign that Russia is America's "greatest geopolitical foe. They stand up for the world's worst actors," Obama seized the occasion to belittle Romney in the final debate of the presidential campaign. Obama tried to portray challenger Mitt Romney as a novice who lacks understanding of complex world issues, saying : "Governor Romney, I'm glad that you recognize that al-Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaida. You said Russia...the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years," Obama said. We now know that Mitt Romney was right and Barack Obama is the neophyte who doesn't understand the geopolitics of the world he is supposed to be leadung. Yesterday, Romney, still as polite as ever, told the Wall Street Journal that President Obama "has procrastinated in making foreign policy decisions, frittering away the chance to influence events until it was too late." The consequence, Romney said, is a litany of leadership failures on the global stage. There are no "good choices" because of the President's "terrible timing." Romney pointed out that it is the case regarding Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, Bashar al-Assad's persistence in Syria's relentless civil war, and the refusal of Iraq and Afghanistan to sign status-of-forces agreements with the United States. "Why, across the world, are America's hands so tied?" the former Massachusetts governor wrote. "A large part of the answer is our leader's terrible timing." Romney said the time to have acted on Ukraine was when the protests and violence first began to percolate and it was obvious Russia would try to exploit the instability : "That was the time to talk with our global allies about punishments and sanctions," Romney wrote. The time to have acted on Syria - seeing to it that the rebels were armed - was during the early stages of the rebellion when promoting moderate leaders and reassuring al-Assad's Alawite base would have been possible. Romney said that the United States should have pressured Hosni Mubarak to reform Egypt's political system before violence destabilized the country. It should have signed deals about force levels with Iraq and Afghanistan before announcing timelines for troop withdrawals. Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to "anticipate events, prepare for them, and act in time to shape them," Romney wrote. They failed "to act when action was possible and needed." As a result, Romney said, the world has diminished respect for the United States, and the troubles Washington faces have only been exacerbated. Romney wrote that "a chastened President" and current Secretary of State John Kerry "can yet succeed . . . Timing is of the essence." We can only say 'Amen' to Mitt Romney's analysis and ask why Americans were so lacking in judgment as to re-elect Barack Obama. But, more frontal criticism of Obama's foreign policy failures also came from another quarter yesterday. Israel's Defense Minister, Moshe Yaalon, gave an address at Tel Aviv University on Monday, which was reported by the daily paper, Haaretz, quoting Yaalon as saying that Israel cannot depend on the United States to lead any action against Iran's nuclear program and can only rely on itself. The comments by Moshe Yaalon came as world powers and Iran were about to start a new round of talks in Vienna over Iran's contested nuclear program. The background to Yaalon's remarks is well-known. The West fears the Iranian nuclear program could be used to make a nuclear weapon and seeks to scale it back. Teheran denies the program has a military dimension and insists it is for peaceful purposes only, such as power generation. If a deal with world powers is reached, sanctions imposed on Iran over the nuclear program could be lifted. Israel has criticized the ongoing talks with Teheran, saying an interim nuclear deal, struck last November, has left Iran's military nuclear capabilities largely intact while giving it relief from some economic sanctions. At the same time, Israel's strongest piece of leverage, the threat of a military strike on Iran, has taken a back stage to the talks, despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's insistence it remains on the table. Yaalon's remarks seemed to underscore that insistence. "We thought that the one who needs to lead the campaign against Iran is the US," Yaalon said, according to Haaretz. Yaalon reportedly said that the US began negotiations with Iran and Iran gained the upper hand in the talks : "If we wished others would do the work for us, it wouldn't be done soon, and therefore in this matter, we have to behave as if we can only rely on ourselves." Yaalon's office confirmed his remarks but refused to comment whether he was advocating an Israeli strike on Iran. Netanyahu's office also declined to comment. Yaalon criticized the West, saying its leaders prefer to avoid confrontation with Iran. As for the US, the defense minister alleged American influence is waning in other parts of the world, such as Ukraine over the crisis there : "Weakness certainly does not pay in the world,...No one can replace the US as the world's policeman. I hope the US will come to its senses." ~~~~~ Dear readers, there is little to add to these separate but accurate Obama performance reviews. Obama's complete lack of mastery of the larger world and its political, military and cultural dynamics has left us wondering how much more harm he can do before November 2016 and how long it will take to re-establish a balance in the world based on commonly-held beliefs in democratic values backed up by US military power. It may be that Barack Obama had a vision of a world roundtable where all are equal. But he sorely misjudged the nature of the players vying for places at that table. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Ukraine are paying the price for Obama's naive misconceptions. America must find a better equipped President - one who can deal with the world's reality. That is not Hillary Clinton. If America fails in 2016, the whole world will be at the longer-term mercy of bullying, vicious dictators.