There are gaffes and there are gaffes. However, when it comes to credibility, there is but a fine line between the ridiculous and the weighty. Perhaps the finest illustration is the current tug-of-war apparently on party lines, on which Great American Leader was mid-wife to the 'Arab Spring.' In the red corner we have GWB, in the blue there stands Barack Hussein. Take your pick: was it the Iraq Adventure that precipated, nay, created, this event? Or was it the Cairo Speech of The World's Saviour, he who was awarded a Nobel Prize for... nothing? To be sure, it could easily be neither. But on that point I believe there would be a touching bipartisanship : no, it was only the De Facto World Empire, the Shining City On That Dere Hill from which all spring and shall doubtless spring for all time to come.God says so, so it has to be true.

have fun & gossip of bollywood and hollywood!

The three words in this title answer the question. We need energy for our economy and military. We make goods at city A and sell them at cities A, B, C, D, E, and F, or we import goods at port G and sell them at port G and cities H, I, J, K, and L. Our military has ships, aircraft, and ground vehicles. Both our economy and our military require us to import oil from foreign countries, so a foreign policy is essential for jobs, purchases, paychecks, taxes, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Trade in energy is one part of our international commerce, but we import and export other products. Caterpillar had high growth in exports to China and Africa in 2011 with China's 12th Five Year Plan and with growing development in Africa. Both regions beat the US in GDP growth, but they gave the US jobs. Lastly, the US fights several wars at this time. Afghanistan is the biggest, but Somalia and Yemen are growing on both sides of a major oil tanker route. Mexico and Nigeria supply oil to the US and their growing insurgencies may bring US military intervention. Wars are part of foreign policy, and oil wars impact jobs and economic growth.

In order to appease the muslim "street", obama conjured up an approach called "muslim outreach" as the central plank of his FP coupled with his new miraculous "multilateralism"....specifically, he lined up foreign nations to isolate israel and thought that if the arabs thought he might sacrifice israel then he could appease the muslim world...appeasing your enemies by sacrificing your allies is NEVER a wise strategy.

obama was the one sticking it to israel first. He is on board with samantha power, rashid khalidi, zbigniew, freeman, malley, koh, reverand wright, and many many others... all of whom have well known anti israel viewpoints. no, its not because they are friends of israel and friends can talk this way, its because they really have issue with israel that have nothing to do with friends and everything to do with personal bias.

If netanyahu stood up to obama while obama was abusing him, so be it. He is the democratic leader of a free and sovereign state, whose friendship goes back decades....obama picked a fight with bibi for several reasons, not least of which is obama 's own narrative he was schooled on...he also picked the fight in order to APPEASE the muslims so he could be seen to be "fair"....thus tamping down muslim rage...bad advice he received.

obama has tried to interfere in israeli domestic politics from day 1....he has abused bibi in public and shown another head of state extreme discourtesy. His speeches in cairo, and ankara were subtle and not necessarily friendly...his handling of the freeze where he scolded israel and said nothing to the pals was frankly, a disservice to peace talks; he then made another huge blunder by declaring 67 lines IN ADVANCE of peace talks even beginning. Not that SOME aspects of that border wont come into play, but to declare it in advance, was stupid. Then you have his subtle mention of denuclearization for the region which is really a fantasy and smokescreen so he can hopefully get iran onside...

His WHOLE muslim outreach is a gigantic failure, and MUCH of it has to do with bad advice he's received that basically he sought out due to his own personal narrative about the region. He acts like he's still just a guy, but when your president, you HAVE to put your own narrative aside. He can't or won't.

Mr. Obama's whole foreign policy stinks; including the left's new fetish of leading from behind and the platform of muslim outreach, which has been tied to the so called "realists" notion of "treating Israel fairly". I also think the whole focus group contrived "RESET BUTTON" with Russia has been a GIANT failure, what with the removed missiles from Poland and Czech republic while receiving NOTHING in return...and NOW he wants to supply Turkey with an x-band radar (ostensibly through NATO as his cutout so he gets deniability so to speak) knowing that the x-band in turkeys hands drives a big whole through his whole medium range missile shield vis a vis Israel's protection. I think his foreign policy is weak, I think it is dangerous. If everyone wants to lead from behind on the toughest issues like Iran and Syria, then who will lead from the front? It is asinine and the republicans ought not be afraid to confront him on it. Using drones from cozy Las Vegas is fine, and it arguably helps, however, its ‘easy’ to do. Sending in seal team 6 was not easy per se, but it was THE call to make for any president. but these don't make a foreign policy...the whole surge in Afghanistan was made with wrought hands until his team devised a political win in it by suggesting they have a pro hawk FP BECAUSE of the surge , and yet at the same time they announced its departure!...which of course was for the left wing ....but it made NO SENSE FROM A NATIONAL SECURITY point of view...and THAT needs to be attacked...He played politics for domestic electoral needs and put that ahead of sound geopolitical strategy. I call that selfish and I call that a lack of leadership. What happened to the first “post partisan” president? I mean, could the media have been more deceived?

I think Iran will be his 3AM call and it will be his legacy. He PLEDGED in 08 to never allow Iran nuclear weapons...and ever since then, he has subtly been moving towards cold war containment theories, which wont work here, and to nuclear umbrellas which similarly wont work. He needs to be challenged on his words! His whole idea to float a world without nukes is if you ask me, a "direction" he wants to lay out so he can eventually try to denuke iran by ostensibly de-nuking Israel. I am sure this is his aim. Again, it’s naive. As for the "RESET" button with Russia; Just last week Russia announced it will recieve a delegation from hezbollah. Is that part of the new RESET? And what of China? Obama's whole new kinder MULTILATERAL approach was supposed to win over China for new FP initiatives and what does China do? They were offered Saudi oil to replace their Iranian oil (14% of China's oil needs) at lesser prices too and what did they say to Obama? No thank you. Obama should be challenged on all of these issues. I could go on about the handling of the peace process sham, or the Muslim outreach efforts re; Gitmo, “man made disasters”, morandizing on the battlefield, the fort hood Muslim terrorist they wont call a Muslim terrorist, asking NASA to make Muslim outreach its number 1 priority…etc..etc…

Obama’s sleight of hand FP needs to have a bright line shone on it…

Lastly, vis vis israel, his "unshakeable ally"; has he been to his Israel even ONCE since he's president? He's been to ankara, He's been to riyahd, He's been to cairo...but not his BEST FRIEND in the region????.

yes my friends, something in denmark stinks...if it walks and talks like a duck...well, you know the rest...

I'll probably vote for Calvin Coolidge again. I don't think a bunch of Military and FSO types understand the way the world works (and I include myself in that category) everything looks like a foreign policy nail.

To a great extent business and economics are not driven by Foreign Policy. Trade is not dependent on your policy it requires having something that other people need or value.

The rise of the Great American Economy happened between Civil War and WWI when US barely HAD a foreign policy (certainly did not have the muscle to enforce "Monroe Doctrine"), US certainly didn't engage in foreign wars prior to Spanish American War. Britain and Germany were rivals prior to WWI, Germany passed Britain in steel production and railroad miles etc... meanwhile completely un-noticed the US became the leader in both those (and nearly every category) and biggest economy in the World by about 1880.

Freedom of the Seas is a useful idea to promote trade, going around the world invading dung heaps does not do much to promote trade. We don't have to pull every string on the planet to have a robust economy.

Look at oil as an example: US is the number 3 oil producer in World, but need more just because we prefer to use oil in vehicles. US has plenty of natural gas; a simple shift to natural gas will make this Oil soaked foreign policy uneccesary. Then we can give up spending trillions of $$ fighting for oil, IOT buy oil for exactly the same commodity price as every other nation in the world.

"No foreign policy matters in elections." An observation with the verb 'matters' as in such a thing [foreign policy] is so unimportant to the process that it is not present.
"No foreign policy matters in elections!" A command. 'Foreign policy matters' are not to be discussed. Domestic issues only!
"No! Foreign policy matters in elections". The objection and counter-observation with the verb 'matters' in the sense that such things are important to the outcome.

Foreign policy obviously matters, and probably will as long as we're alive. But people are hurting and I don't see how a Republican can say he's going to be a tougher 'foreign policy' president when Obama sent more US forces to Afghanistan, killed bin Laden, etc. You can talk hard (see: Romney, Iran) but most of the country wants less war.

Just on message, and in this media and political climate, I don't see how Republicans win the foreign policy debate. The guy with legitimate chops hasn't seen any numbers.

But Republicans have proven to be better messengers time and again. Not only is foreign policy not en vogue, but it's not where Republicans can properly ding the president. Doesn't make sense to try and hammer Obama on foreign policy.