What can you say about the Presidents foreign policy in general?

1. 61

   alexandriaruthkposted 12 years ago

   What can you say about the Presidents foreign policy in general?
   
   Condoleeza Rice criticized the President for not doing more in Syria and for not having an active role in Libya. Condoleeza asked the question - "Where does America stand? When our friends and our foes, alike, do not know the answer to that question, the world is a chaotic and dangerous place."  She was a speaker at the RNC - Republican National Convention.
   Do you agree with her?

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2. 0

   screamingposted 12 years ago

   America needs to step back and let others be the policemen of the world. Let them absord these costs!! We have issues of our own in this country that seems to be taking a back seat to other countries needs!

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3. 79

   Attikosposted 12 years ago

   Libya was the first time a US president imperially waged war without a shred of approval from the congress. It was an unlawful act. The government's role in that should have been hands off. The merits of that war never come into the question; it was not a constitutionally authorized one. Rice is wrong to take the position the president was too passive. He was instead too active, by far.
   
   Congress is unlikely to authorize military intervention in Syria, and so the same point applies there. From a practical view, the US can do little about it anyway. Direct intervention would bring confrontation with Iran. Libya showed that NATO is a paper tiger without the collective muscle to finish off a lightly armed, third-rate regime in the promised days rather than the actual months it took, and we have no reason to believe it would do any better in Syria, and we have every reason to believe it would meet disaster should it pick a war with the Iranians.
   
   The underlying reason the US will not go to war over Syria, though, is oil. The Syrians do not have enough. The humanitarian arguments are cover; Libya was turning to the Chinese for support and trade, the Europeans were alarmed by that, and warmaking by the French, the British, and the Obama administration was the response. That issue is not on the table in Syria. The western powers will not attack because they do not have enough at stake to make it worthwhile.
   
   Rice's remarks were political, not realistic. That is hardly surprising. Conventions are political theater, not forums for serious policy discussion.
   
   Obama's foreign policy stinks. It is the worst of any president in almost a hundred years, damaging to US interests, harmful to the US economy, bumbling and naive, stupidly ideologic and misguided. Rice's criticisms of it, though, are not on target. They should be taken as campaign rhetoric.

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4. 78

   Mr. Happyposted 12 years ago

   Condoleeza Rice is a devout disciple of Fear. She began her speech with those dramatic memories of 9/11 and she finished her speech with them as well. Her and her neoconservative friends (such as Karl Rove and the rest of the Bush the Second team) always drill on the Fear of people to build-up the army (which gives profits to the Military Industrial Complex), to start preemptive wars and to basically continue the expansion of the United States Empire through the idea of Manifest Destiny.
   
   Her thoughts are malicious in regard to the whole world - she only cares about the continuation and expansion of the Empire. To export the American ideology of capitalism is really all she cares about. The problem is, this mind state is what creates hostility around the world: not every nation on this planet wants America's freedom to have McNasty at every corner and to have obesity rage through children ... not everyone out there wants the American democracy which is nearly suffocated by lobbyists and interest groups.
   
   Condoleeza's warlike mentality is enraging many people world-wide. Not everyone wants a world policed by any one country - we are all equals no matter what social or political system we chose to have and Empires are not welcomed!
   
   P.S. And what a shame that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize when in fact he multiplied the bombing of other nations with unmanned planes (drones), he did not close Guantanamo Bay and he continues to feed the Military Industrial Complex, the Death-bringer ... He basically continued the Bush the Second foreign policy. Shame.

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