Obama’s Foreign Policy: Consistently Inconsistent

Remember when back in August Russia invaded Georgia and presidential candidate Obama told both sides to show restraint? His 300 foreign policy advisors were unable to get Obama to at least appear as if he understood the difference between the aggressor and the aggressed in that situation. Had the invasion taken place only a few months later it might have been President Obama who would have said: “Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full-scale war.” before he would try to correct himself by echoing the statements of men like Senator McCain.

Currently though, Obama and his army of foreign policy experts seem to be more concerned about avoiding more blunders while Obama is still running for the presidency than about blunders he might make when actually being the president. At least this is the impression you get when you consider Obama’s silence on the cross-broder strike in Syria. If he has an opinion on the attack then he seems to prefer leaving voters ignorant about it.

What’s more: Noah Pollack points out that the Obama campaign’s communicated plans concerning Syria are to “talk” and marks the inconsistency between this approach and Obama’s stand on Pakistan:

Obama says that the United States should strike at al Qaeda in Pakistan without the consent of the Pakistani government. So, he favors attacking al Qaeda in Pakistan, but presumably not in Syria, even though al Qaeda thrives in Syria not because of lawlessness (as in Pakistan) but because the group enjoys the hospitality of the Syrian government. Maybe if the Pakistani government began openly collaborating with al Qaeda, Obama would withdraw his support for military strikes.

There’s another contradiction in Obama’s foreign policy message. Consider that Obama has denied that the Surge in Iraq has succeeded. He’s still saying that it should never have taken place. And yet he argues that a similar strategy should have been adopted in Afghanistan and promises to do as much if elected. You might conclude that there is consistency in the inconsistency of Obama’s foreign policies.