Politics

Steyn on Obama speech: ‘Narcissistic buffoon’ pushing ‘pansy left’s view of the world’

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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For many on the right, the stock of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy credentials went up after he authorized the U.S. raid that led to the death of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden earlier this month. But since then, the White House has left much to be desired by those on the right, particularly after his speech at the State Department in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

The latest critic, columnist Mark Steyn, who appeared on Thursday night’s Hugh Hewitt radio show, struck some critical blows at the president’s approach to Israel policy, particular his proposal to revert the international boundaries of Israel to 1967.

What have such policies brought the United States? They haven’t brought more respect around world, Steyn explained.

“Well, at a certain level it was filled with the usual narcissism,” Steyn said. “He said America failed to speak to the broader aspirations of people in the Middle East and that’s why two years ago in Cairo, ‘I began to broaden our engagement,’ unquote. I was interested to see the results of that. In 2008, which you’ll recall was the last year of the Bush-Texas cowboy terror, 83 percent of Arabs had a very or somewhat negative view of the United States. By 2010, which was the second year of the Obama-broaden engagement approach, 85 percent had a very or somewhat negative view. You know, so much for the outreach.”

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According to Steyn, Obama’s willingness to put himself first made him miss the point of what the discussion was really about.

The fact is this narcissistic buffoon gave a speech, placed himself front-and-center of developments in the Middle East and in fact, the United States for the first time in 70 years is utterly irrelevant to what’s going on in the Middle East,” he continued.

Steyn pointed out Israel’s untenable position, being surrounded by a volatile Syria, territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority and “the new so-called Facebook revolution Egypt,” that in his estimation will have a more hostile tack toward Israel than the previous government under Hosni Mubarak.

And Steyn explained Obama’s proposal goes back to a so-called “faculty lounge” mentality, which has found its way to western foreign policy by a strategy of Israel’s enemies to play public opinion.

“[I] think this is the war – if you have the western faculty lounge attitude, which is the sewer Obama has been marinated in in his entire adult life, then 1967 matters far more than 1973, or 1948, or 1922, because 1967 is as the faculty lounge left see it, the moment when the Israeli occupation began,” Steyn said. “Why by the way did it begin? It began because Israel’s neighbors launched another disaster war on them. The enemy, Egypt – Israel’s enemies are incompetent at fighting conventional war and they discovered that actually instead of sending your troops into battle and keep losing your wars, why not play western public opinion like a fiddle and eventually the pressure – you start with the low-hanging fruit, your average European foreign minister, but eventually if you keep the pressure up you will land an American president who basically is not prepared to stand by the state of Israel and that’s what they got right now.”

And unfortunately Steyn said having an enemy determined on one’s destruction, it’s the other party that is forced to concede when under the direction of what he deemed “the pansy left’s view of the world.”

“By the way, this I think is the pansy left’s view of the world that if you take — if you have two parties to a negotiation, one party wants to kill the other party,” Steyn said. “That’s why there was no peace in 1948, no peace under the British mandate in the 1930s, no peace at the time of the 1922 partition because one party to the dispute wants to kill the other. So, if they are wedded to that, then you got to put pressure on the party that doesn’t want to kill each other, to make concession – to keep throwing concessions in the face of the beast that wants to devour it and I think that’s – if you look at where he’s applying the pressure, I think that tells you a lot about the fundamental fraudulence of these negotiations.”