The Blog @ Spolitics

Allies to Obama: Stop Freaking Us Out

Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama said Republicans will try to make voters fear him because of his inexperience (and his race, but that’s another issue).  Why Obama considers his lack of experience a cheap shot is mind-boggling, but I digress.  Turns out there’s a much more urgent need to be worried about an Obama presidency: policies — at least as far as our allies are concerned.

Obama keeps giving our enemies reasons to cheer and our allies reasons to worry.  He’s promising pow-wows with Chavez, Kim Jong-Il, and the leadership of Cuba and Iran.  Hamas once voiced their preference for him as well as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Sadr movement.  Meanwhile Obama has spooked the Canadians with his anti-NAFTA tirades and calls for unilateral revisions and has the Europeans concerned about free trade as well.  He’s threatened to ditch trade deals with South Korea and Columbia and revisit others.  And, he has Iraq wringing their hands about a premature withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Most recently he has the EU worried about their efforts to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb.  They fear Obama will hamstring Security Council resolutions that offer financial and diplomatic incentives to Iran if they suspend enrichment with his promise to sit down for a private confab with Iran’s leadership without preconditions.

“Dropping a unanimous Security Council condition would simply be interpreted by Iran and America’s allies as unconditional surrender, and America’s friends would view this as confirmation of America’s basic unreliability,” said François Heisbourg, a Paris-based military analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “A hell of a way to start a presidential term.”

So much for all this talk about how Obama is going to improve our standing in the world.  From the looks of it, it may be that Obama will have our allies longing for the good ole days of George W. Bush.