RIGHTIES have been railing against President Obama’s recent foreign-policy for ays. When Obama allegedly “bowed” to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, they screamed. When he told Europeans that at times America has been arrogant (talk about stating the obvious), they said he was bashing America.
But it was Obama’s warm greeting of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that undid them.
GOP leaders took to the airwaves to complain that Obama was hurting America’s prestige.
Seriously?
The last eight years have been one long lecture about how liberals are too worried about what other countries think of us. Now, suddenly, one handshake and a grin are poisonous to world approval.
But predictions of US weakness thus far haven’t been borne out. Conservatives seemed almost to root for failure during the Somali pirate episode so that they could paint it as Obama’s “Jimmy Carter moment” — until Capt. Richard Phillips was rescued and pirates shot.
So much for Obama as ineffectual weakling.
Much of the complaining seems to be merely anti-Obama rhetoric, employing blindingly obvious double standards. Conservatives say Obama “bowed” to Abdullah. Although I don’t see it that way, if he did, so what? President George W. Bush played kissy-face with Abdullah and held his hand.
Obama was friendly to Chavez, a thug if ever there was one. But Bush gazed into the eyes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, another thug, and saw a friend. We have a warm relationship with China, hardly a burgeoning democracy. We give oodles of aid to Pakistan. (Fun fact: Five women were buried alive last year for hurting their families’ honor, and Pakistan’s Parliament defended it as a part of “traditional customs.”)
In other words, Obama didn’t invent the idea of engagement with odious regimes to further American interests. He’s just taking it to its natural conclusion.
Obama is merely doing what he always said he would — engaging friends and foe alike. Those on the right are arguing for more of the same old, same old (ignoring some of the nations we don’t like), despite the small fruit that strategy bore.
Conservatives would be wise to take our culture’s temperature. People are fed up with the old ways of doing things, whether it is icing out enemies or reckless behavior on Wall Street. Obama seems to get the zeitgeist perfectly.
“I have come to listen” is what Obama said on his first trip to Europe.
Translation: Humility is in. Arrogance is out.
This is a far cry from the days of “you are with us or against us.” Obama said he approached his trips to Europe and Latin America with two principles in mind: First, America must act multilaterally to solve world problems. Second, it must represent and live out its values in a consistent manner. It’s being called the “Obama Doctrine.”
“The United States remains the most powerful, wealthy nation across the earth, but we’re only one nation,” Obama said, adding, “Problems can’t just be solved by one country. The fact that a good idea comes from a small country like Costa Rica should not diminish that idea.”
Showing humility is strategically smart, and it’s also good manners. Nobody likes the person who shows up to dinner and declares his house is nicer, his neighborhood is more interesting and his wife is a better cook. What makes conservatives think Europeans or Latin Americans want to hear a US president lecture them about how perfect America is?
As for the complaint that Obama went on a European apology tour: nonsense.
In his Strasbourg speech, Obama referred to instances “where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” But this was really just the set-up for his next line, which subtly confronted Europeans for an “anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious,” which ignored “the good that America so often does in the world” and instead “blame[d] America for much of what’s bad.”
Later, Obama called this approach “practicing what we preach,” saying that “if we confess to straying from our values and our ideals, that strengthens our hand.”
This view is premised on the idea that humility is a sign of strength. Conservatives seem to see it as a weakness.
I’m with Benjamin Franklin, who once said, “Humility makes great men twice honorable.”
It does at least that for great nations. kirstenpowers@aol.com