On the one hand, the Obama Administration seeks to charm Syria out of the Iran/Hezbollah camp. The current Syrian tyrant’s only virtue is that he is a more selective murderer than the previous tyrant, his father. He responded to our “open hand” by holding a press conference with the president of Iran, during which the latter expostulated on his dream of a future Middle East “without Zionists and without colonialists”. There is no sign that our President regards this performance as a rebuff.
Meanwhile, the State Department has declared above-it-all neutrality regarding Argentina’s latest threat to the British-inhabited Falkland Islands. The Administration offers not a shred of diplomatic, moral or military support to the nation that has historically been our closest ally and is fighting at our side right now in Afghanistan. If the Argentine government contemplates bolstering its shaky domestic prestige through a quick conquest, as its predecessor tried to do in 1982, the U.S. has done nothing to deter it. The precedent set by President Reagan, who furnished both material support and military intelligence to the Prime Minister Thatcher’s forces, has been hypovehiculated.
Why? Is this another instance of outsourcing our Latin American policy to Hugo Chávez? A display of President Obama’s ill-disguised hostility toward Great Britain? A mere product of State Department lassitude?
For those governments inclined to draw morals, the one here is as clear as a first grade Sunday School lesson: Reversing the old Greek maxim, the present American disposition is to do harm to our friends and good to our enemies. If that lesson is taken to heart in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, President Ahmadinejad will see his dream come true.
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