Well, it finally died a weird painful death, kind of like it lived it's life, till the Gods that be quit laughing, came down here and finally killed it. Thank you God.As much as Obama's aura has dimmed in the United States, his (and that of America's along with his) international standing is potentially in worse condition, and with more dire consequences -- so much so that as a WaPoreport (via Jennifer Rubin) explains, he's finding it hard -- no matter how lucrative the bribe -- to get any nation to make a deal:
From failing to secure a free-trade agreement in South Korea to struggling to win Senate ratification of an arms-control treaty with Russia, Obama has bumped up against the boundaries of his power at a defining moment of his presidency ..However, as Jennifer Rubin astutely points out, this is not a time for conservatives to cheer. It is deeply troubling that the president has imperiled our standing in the world. Congress is no substitute for a commander in chief, but responsible voices in the House and Senate should work -- by resolution, oversight, private conversation, and funding -- to guide the administration to more sober policymaking and less erratic execution. Unfortunately, once the credibility of the American president is diminished by hapless moves and unserious rhetoric, it's hard to get it back."He assumed that because he was liked so clearly and overwhelmingly he could merely assert what he wanted to achieve and people would follow" said Simon Serfaty, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Clearly enough, the world that he imagined proved to be different than the world as it is."The Middle East peace process he inaugurated two months ago has stalled. His mercurial ally in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai, is calling for scaled-back U.S. military operations there at the height of the 30,000-troop escalation Obama approved a year ago.His pledge to remedy one polarizing legacy of the Bush administration by closing the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, suffered this week when a jury convicted the first former detainee to face civilian trial on only one of 285 criminal counts.
Unfortunately the one and only remedy is to replace the current commander in chief with a competent one. Unfortunately, 2012 is two years away and Barack Obama can do a lot more damage between now and then. This could all have been prevented had not so many Americans be naive and so ill informed as to believe that all the "hope and change" rheteric really meant a radical change in the wrong direction leaving little hope, at least for now, that things will actually get better before they get much worse.
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