International Affairs: September 2016 Archives
It's obviously fine for President Obama to campaign for Hillary and to express a strong preference for her victory in November, but he crosses the line when he meets with world leaders and denigrates Trump as unfit for office. Lots of people say that, lots of people believe it, but President Obama has a responsibility to the office and to America not to undermine a potential successor. Even if Obama is right, if Trump wins the election he will be the next President, and he'll have a tough enough job without this condemnation hanging over his head.
On many occasions, Obama has been explicit about the fact that his words are intended specifically about Trump. He's said questions about the GOP nominee come up in every meeting with a foreign leader, and he's emphatically declared Trump to be unfit to inhabit his role as commander in chief.
Andrew C. McCarthy says it well: Relations between governments are best handled through diplomacy, not legal proceedings.
Why, when the Republican-controlled Congress is finally willing to fight President Obama to the point of forcing and potentially overriding a veto, do they pick an issue on which Obama is right?In a grandstanding exhibition, Congress has enacted legislation that would enable private litigants -- the most sympathetic imaginable, the families of 9/11 victims -- to sue the government of Saudi Arabia. Obviously, even if it is sued successfully, the Saudi government is never actually going to pay any judgments. More to the point, legislation of this kind will spur other countries to enact laws allowing their citizens to sue the United States -- and maybe even criminal laws allowing the arrest of current and former American government officials (including military personnel) -- for actions taken in defense of our country and pursuit of our interests.
Since we have interests throughout the world and a military that acts globally (and lethally), our nation has far more to lose than most nations by playing this game. Consequently, while I get the populist zeitgeist, it is disappointing to see people who ought to know better claiming that a veto would represent Obama's prioritizing of Saudi interests over American interests. It would do nothing of the sort.
President Obama isn't solely at fault for the systematic collapse of American foreign policy over the past eight years, but there sure have been a lot of failures.
The Era of Hope and Change has been one prolonged act of suicide. If anyone had said that Obama would manage to alienate Israel and the Philippines, lose Turkey, pay Iran a hundred billion dollars, preside over the loss of a won war in Afghanistan, lose billions of dollars in military equipment to ISIS, watch a consulate burn, restart the Cold War with Russia, cause Japan to re-arm and go the knife's edge with China would you have believed it? If someone had told you in 2008 millions of refugees would be heading for Europe and that the UK would leave the EU after Obama went there to campaign for them to remain would you not have laughed?
