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Friends with whom?
by Ron Meyer
Conservative columnist
Published April 17th, 2009

OK – I get it – former President George W. Bush didn’t exactly have a warm and inviting foreign policy. He lost us some friends and some respect abroad. He did keep the United States safe, but I’m still not sure that excuses his poor communication and negotiation skills. I believe that one of the reasons the American people voted for President Barack Obama and other Democrats was to improve our image abroad.

However, I don’t think voters expected that the majority would attempt to achieve this objective through patronizing foreigners at the country’s expense.

President Obama’s remarks during his trip to Europe for the G-20 meetings were self-deprecating. He took pot-shots at America to gain acceptance in the global community. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer summed it up well when he said, “Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.” A global summit is not the right time or place to point out all of America’s supposed problems. It’s good for us to take a more humble and open approach to foreign policy, but how humble is too humble?

Along with his nearly anti-American words, President Obama is starting to be liked by some very curious people. Russian President and Putin puppet Dmitry Medvedev called Obama his “new comrade.” Making friends with the combative Russian leadership isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the problem is that this relationship will only be one-sided.

Obama immediately began talking to Medvedev about removing the U.S. missile shield in Alaska and stopping the plans for one in Poland. If this was Obama’s attempt at reciprocity, what did we get from the Russians? An endorsement of North Korea’s missile test. If Russia and the United States are going to work together in disarmament, let’s make sure they aren’t helping Iran and North Korea proliferate their nuclear programs. This is one reason we should be really skeptical when a sketchy leader like Medvedev calls Obama his “comrade.”

While Obama was getting buddy-buddy with Medvedev, the Congressional Black Caucus took a trip down to Cuba to visit the Castro brothers. Now, being friends with a grumpy Russian is one thing, but hanging out with a couple of Communist dictators takes it to an entirely new level. Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver from Missouri said in a press conference that Raul Castro was, “one of the most amazing human beings I’ve ever met.” Rep. Barbra Lee said that Fidel “looked directly into our eyes,” and “was very engaging and very energetic.”

Do these representatives forget what these men have done to restrict political and religious freedoms in Cuba? Do they not see the mass poverty and caste system that still remains strong?

We should normalize trade relations with Cuba, but there is no excuse for our leaders to go down there and glorify tyranny and oppression. We shouldn’t turn a cold shoulder to the world, but this is no excuse to kiss up to some of the most despicable leaders on the planet.

While being friendly is cool, bowing is a bit much. This is especially true when the person you’re bowing to is the leader of OPEC. Despite the White House’s clumsy denial, it is pretty obvious that President Obama took a bow when meeting with Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz during his trip abroad a couple weeks ago. This may have been a slip up, but either way, this grants the King too much respect. Not only is this act clearly against protocol, it also brings into question our relations with the leader of the world’s oil cartel.

In every opinion poll, the people in the United States overwhelmingly support moving away from foreign oil. The country wants to use domestic resources and renewable energy. Instead of being beholden to this dictator, I would hope that President Obama and Congress would start working on an energy policy that frees up our domestic resources.

President Bush was all too kind to the Saudi King because he knew we needed the oil. I was hopeful that when we elected President Obama, this would be one of those things he would “change.” I would have liked President Obama to have looked King Abdullah straight in the eyes and told him that America is heading in a new direction on energy. Instead we got more of the same.

I don’t want to be too hard on our rookie president. American foreign relations certainly do need repairing. However, instead of taking literal and symbolic bows to the international community, our government officials should be delivering firm hand shakes. We can talk to whomever we want as long as we do not give up our dignity or national security. There’s nothing wrong with reciprocity, but let’s make sure we negotiate from a position of strength and not subordination.