It wasn’t a particularly good day for President Obama to tout the “success” of his foreign policy.
“I believe in a smarter kind of American leadership,” Obama declared Tuesday night in his State of the Union address. “We lead best when we combine military power with strong diplomacy; when we leverage our power with coalition building; when we don’t let our fears blind us to the opportunities that this new century presents. That’s exactly what we’re doing right now — and around the globe, it is making a difference.”
President Obama’s foreign policy is certainly making a difference — it’s just that it is often making a difference for the worse.
On the very day President Obama was patting himself on the back for his deft handling of foreign policy, his State Department issued a new travel warning about Libya.
“The Department of State warns U.S. citizens against all travel to Libya and recommends that U.S. citizens currently in Libya depart immediately,” the warning reads.
You remember Libya, right? That’s the country Obama authorized military action against to remove its longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who while a vile man and brutal leader, no longer posed a threat to the United States. The consequences of the military action have been a parade of horribles. Since Gaddafi fell, the North African country has turned into a haven for Islamist terrorists, like those who killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and other American personnel in Benghazi in 2012. The action also helped destabilize Mali. The only surprise about Tuesday’s announcement is that we are only now telling Americans to get out of the country.
We also saw on Tuesday Shiite rebels backed by Iran, the Houthis, take over the presidential palace in Yemen in an apparent coup. You remember Yemen, right? That’s the Arab country Obama touted as a War on Terror success story just four months ago.
Considering the events of the day, it’s not surprising Yemen and Libya didn’t make cameos in Obama’s address Tuesday night.
But Iraq and Afghanistan did.
“Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over,” Obama proclaimed. “Six years ago, nearly 180,000 American troops served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, fewer than 15,000 remain.”
Someone may want to inform the president that victory isn’t measured by the amount of troops one has in a country. We may have fewer troops in Iraq today than we did when Obama came into office, but the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has more and now controls a large swath of the country. Its predecessor organization, al-Qaida in Iraq, was near defeat when Obama took office. It’s hard to see how one can count Iraq as an Obama administration success story.
“[P]resident talking about stopping isis..and successes in iraq and afghanistan. not what it looks like where i spend my days,” NBC’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel tweeted in response to Obama’s speech.
Then there’s Iran. Obama touted America’s negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program during his address as a great breakthrough, but the Islamic Republic is just making the United States look weak and foolish. While Obama begs Congress not to anger Iran’s mullahs by passing sanctions that wouldn’t even go into effect unless a nuclear deal did not materialize, Iran continues to jail a Washington Post reporter and announces construction of two new nuclear reactors without any worry that it will upset the U.S. How many times does Iran have to make clear that it has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons program before we get the message?
On the threat of Islamist terrorism, Obama won’t even identify it as having anything to do with a violent interpretation of Islam. It was only recently President Obama was going around the country bragging how his administration “decimated” al-Qaida and how he put the terror group “on the run.” But al-Qaida and its offshoot, ISIS, hardly seem in terminal decline. In fact, ISIS and al-Qaida now control more territory than al-Qaida did before 9/11. Such safe havens may help produce more bloody incidents like we saw in Paris earlier this month.
This is a pretty bad record in-and-of itself — and that’s without even mentioning the administration’s handling of Syria, its alienation of American allies and its lackluster response to the persecution of Christians in the Arab world, among other foreign policy failures.
But the most disingenuous line in Obama’s State of the Union address was this one: “And no challenge — no challenge — poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.”
Obama doesn’t believe this. How can one know this? Because if he believed global warming or climate change — or whatever the kids are calling it these days — posed the greatest threat to humanity of any challenge we face, he would have used his political capital in 2009 to fight it, instead of using it to increase the percentage of Americans with health insurance from 84 percent to 87 percent.
This is not to say President Obama has gotten everything wrong on foreign policy. His decision to change America’s relationship with Cuba, for instance, was bold and will likely turn out to be one of his few positive foreign policy legacies. (RELATED: Obama is right on Cuba)
But the rosy picture President Obama painted Tuesday night of his foreign policy just doesn’t square with reality.