Foreign policy president

Let me preface this by saying that I was a very reluctant supporter of Barack Obama during the general election.

I had become heavily involved in Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign and was less than enthusiastic – to say the least – about having to vote for a candidate whom I sincerely believed to be frighteningly less qualified in many areas than his opponents.

I never drank the Obama Kool-Aid, nor did I ever buy into the messianic personality cult surrounding him, and I have always thought of Obama more as a demagogue than a great leader. 

So, now that you know a bit about where I’m coming from, I want to tell you that I genuinely believe that change, that over-used word with an ever-elusive definition, has come to America – in one area of policy, at least. 

No, it’s not in the form of health care, which will still suck even after the Obama administration rams through its completely toothless “reform” bill. And it’s certainly not in torture or security policy, either. In no other area have things stayed more close to the way they were under Bush than in domains like Afghanistan and revealing the contents of torture memos.

This administration hasn’t even significantly changed in areas that would be relatively simple, like gay rights. Obama’s White House even continues to actually instruct its lawyers to defend the government from gay couples suing over the Defense of Marriage Act, which Obama pledged not to do when campaigning. 

So where’s the “change we can believe in?” It’s in foreign policy. In no other area has the Obama administration delivered on its campaign promises like it has on foreign policy, despite the constant (and accurate) reminders during the campaign from Hillary Clinton, John McCain and others that Obama was completely untested in foreign policy.

The president has defied all expectations in this area, especially my own.  
From the results of dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Iran, the president has shown that his foreign policy acumen was seriously underestimated prior to his election.

A perfect example of this are the actions the administration took last week on the foreign stage.

After successfully passing a Security Council Resolution aimed at reducing and eventually eliminating the number of nuclear weapons, the president stood, with the rest of the world at his back, represented by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy (with German Chancellor Angela Merkel sending her words of support) and gave an assertive and powerful statement revealing that Iran had developed a hitherto unknown secret nuclear processing facility.

Within days, Iran conceded the plant’s existence and agreed to welcome international weapons inspectors. 

And for the first time in recent memory, we have a president who actually seems to be applying something close to a fair share of pressure on both the Palestinians and the Israelis, which – for America, at least – is completely revolutionary. 

So while Obama – so far, at least – has done a lackluster job in the domestic policy arena, he’s more than making up for it on the world stage.