The World Is A Mess

"The world is a mess," declared former Secretary of State Madeleine Albreight on Face the Nation this week.

 Liberals act as though Putin's aggression, the rise of ISIS, the attack of Hamas on Israel, the gains made by the Taliban in Afghanistan, our forced abandonment of our embassy in Libya and ounce and our own border crisis are independent occurrences.  I assure you, they are not.  They are a direct consequence of the foreign policy (or lack thereof). It began with the "apology tour" early in the administration when Obama trotted around the globe beating his breast about America's sins, stating that America "has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward Europe, and that be believed in American exceptionalism the same way, "the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism."  In a unipolar world, Obama saw the U.S. as "getting too big for its britches" and a source of instability in the world.  The reality is just the opposite.  Without the moral, economic, and, yes, military force of America pushing back against totalitarianism, those forces envelope the world.  When America leaves a void, others fill it.  When America stops asserting its influence, others being to assert theirs.

Adversaries listen to what you say and watch what you do and respond accordingly.  When you draw red lines and then don't follow through, when you "pivot away" from a region, when you "let the Europeans come to their own conclusion [on Putin]," when you "lead from behind," when you announce precisely when you are going to withdraw your troops, when you slash your ability to fight 2 wars simultaneously to 1 and then to 1 but only if it is short, when you cut your navy to the lowest level in a couple generations, your enemies notice.  And so do your ever dwindling supply of friends.

No, it's no accident that in a single administration, the Islamic fascists have basically gotten a head start on establishing a caliphate in the Middle East and simultaneously Russia has begun the process of reassembling the Soviet bloc.  All the while, Hillary Clinton is asserting straightfaced that, "the reset with Russia worked,"  It did.....for Vladimir Putin.

If you are an adversary of the West, now is your time.  In 5 1/2 years, Obama has largely undone  the gains of the surge in Iraq and is on his way to reversing the collapse of the Berlin Wall.