October 4, 2009

America's Standing Abroad: 'A Political Puzzle'

By Clarice Feldman
It was an article of faith among the left that President Bush had damaged our standing abroad and cost us the good will of the world so evident to them after 9/11. As the theory went, we'd have had a broader alliance in Iraq if only Bush hadn't been such a unilateral cowboy, that the UN was working to resolve the matter of Saddam and we needed only to give it more time, and that diplomacy by a more charming multilateralist would have resolved the problems of nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran. The notion always seemed preposterous and contrary to fact to me. One wonders if the left can fashion a way to extend that theory much longer into Obama's term of office. Did we lose the Chicago pitch for the Olympics? Blame Bush? I don't think so.I've always thought the notion fairly nonsensical. I believe foreign leaders who are reasonably sentient (granted a diminishing breed in the age of Chavez, Kim Jong-il and Ahmadinejad) ally with us or not based on their own national...(Read Full Article)