Analysis: Obama gores foreign policy ox (AP)

[jefferson_dem]

Analysis: Obama gores foreign policy ox
Sun Apr 19, 2009
Steven R. Hurst, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has gone abroad and gored an ox — the deeply held belief that the United States does not make mistakes in dealings with either friends or foes.

And in the process, he's taking a huge gamble both at home and abroad, for a payoff that could be a long time coming, if ever.

By way of explanation, senior adviser David Axelrod describes the president's tactics this way:

"You plant, you cultivate, you harvest. Over time, the seeds that were planted here are going to be very, very valuable."

While historic analogies are never perfect, Obama's stark efforts to change the U.S. image abroad are reminiscent of the stunning realignments sought by former Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev. During his short — by Soviet standards — tenure, he scrambled incessantly to shed the ideological entanglements that were leading the communist empire toward ruin.

But Obama is outpacing even Gorbachev. After just three months in power, the new American leader has, among many other things:

— Admitted to Europeans that America deserves at least part of the blame for the world's financial crisis because it did not regulate high-flying and greedy Wall Street gamblers.

— Told the Russians he wants to reset relations that fell to Cold War-style levels under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

— Asked NATO for more help in the fight in Afghanistan, and, not getting much, did not castigate alliance partners.

— Lifted some restrictions on Cuban Americans' travel to their communist homeland and eased rules on sending wages back to families there.

— Shook hands with, more than once, and accepted a book from Hugo Chavez, the virulently anti-American leader of oil-rich Venezuela.

— Said America's appetite for illegal drugs and its lax control of the flow of guns and cash to Mexico were partly to blame for the drug-lord-inspired violence that is rattling the southern U.S. neighbor.

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http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2009/04/19/2703965-analysis-obama-gores-foreign-policy-ox

[dkf]

1. I'm glad Obama doesn't feel it is necessary to perpetuate such

stupidity.

I voted for a reality based President and I got one. Thank goodness.

[annabanana]

2. So AP.. I put it to you. .

Which one of those points is incorrect? He's putting forward a GROWNUP view of the world.. It is a huge change from the adolescent, hormone poisoned crap that the RW was putting out all those years.

[Cha]

3. Oh, for fuck's sake..

"President Barack Obama has gone abroad and gored an ox — the deeply held belief that the United States does not make mistakes in dealings with either friends or foes."

That "ox" as they call it needs to be gored! Gore would have done it.

And, it is the Year of the Ox, is it not?

[SemiCharmedQuark]

4. The Tinkerbell theory...if you believe in American Infallibility enough, it makes it so.