Obama's fool's gold foreign policy

And how the GOP can do better

President Obama
(Image credit: (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque))

Employing his usual King Solomon impression, President Obama gave a major foreign policy speech at West Point earlier this week, just days after more or less announcing the end of the war in Afghanistan. The president rather predictably dismissed trade-offs and cost-benefit analysis as "false choices." He positioned himself as the sane center between the extremes of isolationism and hyper-interventionism, the old band Stealers Wheel as commander-in-chief: "Clowns to the left of me/Jokers to the right."

The reactions, with a few exceptions, were largely negative. Colin Dueck of George Mason University, for example, dismissed both the address and the president's approach to foreign policy as "lukewarm porridge for breakfast." He listed several incidents where Obama made grave-sounding threats to bad actors on the world stage and then failed to follow through, one derailed red line after another.

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.