Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Enemies Approach

In Year Six of the Era of Hope and Change, it does seem all chaos-like out there, doesn't it?

Just a partial list of the troubles we face abroad is impressive for an administration that believed we were the problem:

As I write, the foreign policy of the United States is in a state of unprecedented disarray. ...

Above all, progressivism believes that the United States is a country that, in nearly every respect, treads too heavily on the Earth: environmentally, ideologically, militarily, and geopolitically. The goal, therefore, is to reduce America’s footprint; to “retrench,” as the administration would like to think of it, or to retreat, as it might more accurately be called.

Yes, in retreating, enemies eventually follow. As I wrote nearly five years ago, during that period of retreat when the enemy has yet to follow, you can believe you have peace:

Saying that foreign policy is a distant second in priorities for this administration might seem an odd thing to say for a president who has traveled abroad so much already.

But it makes sense if you think of the trips abroad as efforts to disengage from foes and retreat a bit by giving our foes what they want in order to buy time to pass domestic legislation.

Understand that when you retreat, it takes a while for an enemy to pursue you and fill the vacuum. And that time it takes for the enemy to re-engage will surely be much quieter.

And if you want to, you can argue that the period of quiet while the enemy approaches is actually "peace." It isn't peace, but you can pretend for a while that it is so you can focus on domestic issues.

Clearly, we aren't the problem.

The quiet is over. And multiple foreign problems compete for the attention of the president, who seems far more interested in golf.