\jeff{krimmel}

What To Do When Your Foreign Policy Sucks

What do you do when your foreign policy sucks? You blame it on the other guy! Michael Abramowitz at The Washington Post has more:

Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan administration arms-control official who is close to Vice President Cheney, said he believes foreign policy innovation for White House ended with Bush’s second inaugural address, a call to spread democracy throughout the world.

“What they are doing on North Korea or Iran is what [Sen. John F.] Kerry would do, what a normal middle-of-the-road president would do,” he said. “This administration prided itself on molding history, not just reacting to events. Its a normal foreign policy right now. It’s the triumph of Kerryism.”

That’s right, folks. Somehow the foreign policy of the man who lost the last presidential election is triumphing, and that’s why America finds itself in the dubious international position it’s in.

Here’s a candidate for understatement of the year:

GOP lawmakers, meanwhile, appear to be lining up closely with the president on foreign policy. It has not helped the neoconservative case, perhaps, that the occupation of Iraq has not gone as smoothly as some had predicted.

“The occupation of Iraq has not gone as smoothly as some had predicted”? Really? Just like the Yankees spend a dollar or two more than a majority of teams in baseball? Right.

I think I like this next quote best, though:

Kenneth R. Weinstein, head of the conservative Hudson Institute, seemed more forgiving, recalling “the fury of the right” at Ronald Reagan in his second term for engaging then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. “Bush — like Truman and Reagan — is under attack from the left and the right,” he said. “Given the laundry list of global challenges, the administration has had to make dozens and dozens of tough calls — and overwhelmingly it’s been right.”

President Truman was in office for the conclusion of World War II, and President Reagan was in office for the conclusion of the Cold War. Those are two stirring victories for the United States. For what foreign policy success, exactly, has President Bush been in office? Escalation of violence in the Middle East? Sectarian civil war in Iraq? Advancement of the nuclear weapon capabilities of Iran and North Korea? Yeah, the resumes of these three presidents are nearly identical.

This is what passes as news at The Washington Post.