Few things illustrate the foreign policy incompetence of the Obama administration better than its handling of the situation in Honduras. I've written about this before, but there's a new article up at the Washington Post called, "
Honduran election puts U.S. in a spot," that further lays out just how badly Obama screwed up. Not only did he bully an ally and attempt to intimidate it into restoring a president hostile to American interests, but he's managed to put the U.S. in a situation where pretty much everyone is dissatisfied with our behavior. It's one thing to incur the anger of other countries because you acted in the U.S. interest. But Obama acted against our interests, and still made everyone unhappy. As the article states,
The Obama administration finds itself accused by regional allies and others of abandoning its commitment to democracy for a more pragmatic solution.
Never mind that it had little to do with "democracy," or that most of the countries complaining couldn't care less about it.
"This will leave a bad aftertaste in people's mouths, the way the U.S., rightly or wrongly, rushed to condemn the coup, then for its own reasons, tried to backpedal," said Chris Sabatini, policy director at the business group Council of the Americas. "It will make the U.S. less of a trustworthy partner diplomatically."
Countries are generally expected to act in their own best interests. But countries that are fumbling, indecisive and led by clueless incompetents are clearly not trustworthy diplomatic partners. States that stab allies in the back to curry favor with others generally don't engender a great deal of trust either. In his actions toward Honduras, Obama projected weakness, indecision and stupidity, and acted against the best interests of the U.S. And in return, he got nothing but irritation, dislike or outright contempt. Great job.
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