The Fixer-Upper President

Apparently, he was supposed to "fix" things.

Truth is, when it comes to foreign policy, you'll always piss of people, make friends, make good with the people you pissed off, then piss off friends for making up with the people you pissed off. Follow?

I still don't get what's so special about Professor Obama's foreign policy.

Anyone? Please 'splain.

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Exhibit A: India.

I've been a proponent of maintaining and enhancing Indian-North American relations well before I established this blog. It's just makes sense to have a strong, democratic ally in Asia. Alas, they "steal" North American jobs thus sparking a protectionist impulse with some people, politicians and pundits. Obama, for the record, has already flexed a protectionist muscle with Canada.

 Pajamas Media, a conservative news service, addresses the ignoring of India under Obama:

Additionally, Secretary of State Clinton skipped a visit to New Delhi during her maiden voyage to South Asia, stoking concerns that the new administration was putting India on the back burner (opting instead to prioritize relations with an ascendant China). As former U.S. ambassador to India Robert D. Blackwill phrased it, “China today appears … to be on a substantially higher plane in U.S. diplomacy than India, which seems to have been downgraded in the administration’s calculations.” Validating this view, India was not mentioned
even once in the Obama administration’s official foreign policy agenda. The world’s largest democracy, more than one billion people — ignored.

Not wise.

The American left simply prefers to play hardball with allies than with adversaries. Recall President Carter’s handling of Iran: the allied shah was condemned as an autocrat; the enemy Khomeini, a “holy man.” For Carter, our anticommunist allies were violators of human rights first, second, and third; the Soviets, murderers of tens of millions, were benign enough for Carter to proclaim Americans had an “inordinate fear of communism.”

Contemporaneously, the left’s is a world where dictatorial Venezuela is to be apologized for, democratic Colombia economically punished; where the fascists and racists and bus-bombers in Palestine are “misunderstood” and the democrats in Israel are Nazi brownshirts incarnate. Anti-American terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Lebanon are euphemized as “guerrillas,” whereas pro-American militiamen are castigated as “warlords” — and on and on it goes.

Embroiling the Indians in such amoral nonsense would threaten not only our present rapport with India, but also what could potentially become the most significant American alliance with another country this century — an alliance rooted in a commonality of values, genuine companionship and affection for one another, and solidarity against the totalitarian evils of the world. The United States should welcome India’s rise. We’re largely the reason it’s occurring.