Over 90,000 Americans were killed in the Pacific during World War II defending the United States and the world from Japanese aggression.  Thank God many of the survivors passed on before they had to witness the President of the United States bowing low to the Emperor of Japan.

To those veterans of the Pacific still living today, I say thank you.  And I apologize on behalf of my generation for producing a president so bent on dishonoring your service and your buddies’ sacrifices.

Mr. Obama, you are an embarrassment.

That long-running leftist delusion about how “We will make the world love us again” sure got old fast, didn’t it? (Never mind that outside of the jet-setting cliques of babbling salon intellectuals, our reputation around the world has always been pretty good - unlike the salon intellectuals, your humble correspondent actually gets out on the ground and meets real people with real ideas. But I digress.)

I don’t know how much you can trust polling inside Russia, but even so… consider this:

What is most surprising to me is that Russians’ attitudes toward the United States have actually worsened during Obama’s first year in office compared with what they were during the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush…

(Emphasis mine.)

After not even a year of this vanity-fueled ineptitude on the international stage, we are weaker at home and less-respected around the world.

As part of part of Hillsdale
College’s DC-based Kirby Center for the Constitution and Citizenship
“First Principles on First Fridays” lecture series, John Bolton spoke at the Heritage Foundation today.  9/11 is of course a somber anniversary for our country, and a fitting moment to reflect on how how American foreign policy is being shaped in the post-George W. Bush era.

In Ambassador Bolton’s view, it is not a pretty picture.  He graded President Obama’s performance as ”absent.”  As Bolton pointed out in his remarks, the administration is pursuing a course of “Neo-Isolationism,” the point of which appears to be withdrawing American forces and refraining from using American influence around the world because such actions might be objectionable to the global community.  Ambassador Bolton noted that while President Obama has declared he believes in “American exceptionalism ,” the President followed up that assertion by saying he believed in it just as he suspects “that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”  By this logic all countries are exceptional in their own view–which should make everyone feel good–but the problem is that then no country is truly exceptional, including America.  This approach, Bolton surmised, has been the guiding principle that unites the President’s repeated offers to negotiate directly with Iran, enabling of the dog-and-pony show that was former President Clinton’s visit to North Korean, and eagerness to cede power to the International Criminal Court–while presiding over the evisceration of the Defense budget.  Ambassador Bolton was particularly outspoken on the current situation in Honduras, in which the administration is siding with Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro and against Honduras’ constitutional process.  He gave that situation “an F.  No question about it.  This is a disgrace.”

After the lecture, Ambassador Bolton graciously granted Redstate an exclusive interview to follow up on the formation (or lack thereof) of foreign policy by President Obama’s national security team, Hugo Chavez’ mischief-making around the globe, and the ramifications of the Obama administration’s policy towards Israel.  Click here to listen to the full podcast.

Note from Erick: Thanks to Liz for sending this on. This is the full transcript of her remarks to the Redstate Gathering, as prepared for delivery.

It is such a pleasure to be here in Atlanta to join you at the first Redstate annual gathering. I wanted to come to thank you personally for everything you do. First, to Erick Erickson, a true trailblazer, who has been making this all possible for many years. And to all of you who make the conservative blogosphere such a vital tool in 21st century politics and policy, it’s an honor to be with you. You all do hugely important work educating the American people, and holding our elected leaders and the mainstream media accountable. We are living at a critical moment in the history of the nation. We need you now more than ever, so I am here to say thank you and to urge you on.

It has become somewhat fashionable today to talk about conservatives and conservatism as a movement in peril. In some quarters, we’re said to be near death. I am here today to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. All across the country, Americans are standing up to be heard at meetings like this, at tea parties, on blogs, at town hall meetings, and we see it in the polls — the message to the Obama Administration is clear — we have grave concerns about the path they’ve put us on.

As we meet today, six months into President Obama’s Administration, we have learned much. We have learned that President Obama will not govern from the center, that he does not believe in American exceptionalism, that he thinks there is a moral equivalence between America and our adversaries, that he wants to expand the federal government until it permeates every corner of this land, and every aspect of your life, that he will raise everyone’s taxes, and that he thinks bureaucrats should choose our doctors, prescribe our medical care, and ration it if need be. At his last press conference, we also learned that he doesn’t have much faith in policemen or pediatricians. This is not change we can believe in. It’s not the change the American people voted for.

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Tragic and serious news from TPM today, folks. Not that we couldn’t see this coming.

According to eyewitness sources, under the apparently blind eye of the global media, the two leaders had lengthy conversations. The media covered the friendly photo of the initial handshake between the two leaders, then made much ado about an apparently-impertinent Chavez handing Obama a book in Spanish by Eduardo Galleano.

What has not been reported is that Obama, leaving his advisers behind, held lengthy private conversations with Chavez where only an interpreter was present.

We have a South American marxist oriented dictator who funds paramilitary groups and drug cartels intent on undermining democratic, capitalist leaning governments in the western hemisphere having private friendly conversations with the American President, and no one seems concerned?!

To remind you, Barack Obama was/is a member of the New Party, a known communist oriented organization that, to get their political endorsement back in the 90’s, Obama had to pledge allegiance to them.

Now, as President, Barack Obama is undermining the democratic government of Honduras, a long time American ally, and doing nothing to help Columbia fend off the drug cartels being funded by Chavez.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re so busy watching Barack Obama destroy American capitalism in his domestic policy, we’ve failed to pay attention that he is also destroying our long time foreign policy ideals too.

Tragic and serious news from TPM today, folks. Not that we couldn’t see this coming.

According to eyewitness sources, under the apparently blind eye of the global media, the two leaders had lengthy conversations. The media covered the friendly photo of the initial handshake between the two leaders, then made much ado about an apparently-impertinent Chavez handing Obama a book in Spanish by Eduardo Galleano.

What has not been reported is that Obama, leaving his advisers behind, held lengthy private conversations with Chavez where only an interpreter was present.

We have a South American marxist oriented dictator who funds paramilitary groups and drug cartels intent on undermining democratic, capitalist leaning governments in the western hemisphere having private friendly conversations with the American President, and no one seems concerned?!

To remind you, Barack Obama was/is a member of the New Party, a known communist oriented organization that, to get their political endorsement back in the 90’s, Obama had to pledge allegiance to them.

Now, as President, Barack Obama is undermining the democratic government of Honduras, a long time American ally, and doing nothing to help Columbia fend off the drug cartels being funded by Chavez.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re so busy watching Barack Obama destroy American capitalism in his domestic policy, we’ve failed to pay attention that he is also destroying our long time foreign policy ideals too.

Speaking to a French reporter while on his Middle East trip, President Obama said that the United States would be “one of the largest Muslim countries,” if its Muslim population was the measure. Jake Tapper fact checked that claim and reports that the White House used the CIA World Fact Book as a source for Obama’s erroneous statistic that there are seven million Muslims in the U.S. The actual size of the Muslim population in America, according to the CIA, is 0.6% of the total, or just under 2 million.

Tapper points out that the president did not say, and does not believe, that the United States is a Muslim nation, as some have lamented. As evidence for this, he recalls Obama’s speech of April 6, in Turkey, in which the president said that America, “does not consider itself a Christian nation, a Jewish nation, or a Muslim nation.” While Tapper may be correct on the literal meaning of the president’s words, the rationale behind them is utter nonsense.

The idea that America would be one of the largest Muslim nations is silly not just because the president’s figures were grossly over-inflated. It is silly because population size is not what makes a nation inherently Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. Culture does.

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If you’ve spent any time at all on Internet message boards or in college debate class you’ll have seen the rafters vibrate with righteous condemnation against the “slippery slope argument.” It is claimed that a worst case, ultimate extrapolation of a thing is a bad argument because it isn’t necessarily a truism. Supporters of the Second Amendment, for instance, are scolded by liberals when the supporter says that any new gun law is “one more step to banning guns.” The gun restricter says that the gun supporter is employing a “slippery slope” argument and that it is idiotic to claim that one new law must mean that a gun ban is the ultimate outcome. One doesn’t necessarily follow the other.

It is a logical conclusion, of course, that one step won’t necessarily lead to a series of other steps. But, humanity isn’t ruled by logic and those small steps that ultimately lead down the road to ruin are far more common than not. Here is another example of how one step led to another to bad effect and, as is far too often the case, the situation at hand was made in the arena of the law. And recently that slope descended even further down that road to hell.

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Obama is well into his ongoing adventure I’ll call TWAT (The World Apology Tour). And while he is bowing to Saudi Princes, groveling at the feet of South American communists, and promising radical Islamists that the U.S. wants to be their bestest buddy, all the while telling the world how wrong we are on everything, he also seems to be steadily torking off our allies.

Well, don’t take my word for it. Even The New York Times is saying it. In a June 4 story, the Times worries that, “on a more basic level, there is a sense that the Obama administration is ignoring the needs and counsel of longtime allies.”

Let’s take a look at some of the snubs and missteps that Obama has perpetrated in his short time in office, shall we?

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Though it falls outside his original target of being within 100 days of taking office, President Barack Obama is keeping a pre-inauguration promise by “mak[ing] a major speech from an Islamic capital” this week in Cairo, Egypt.

Obama made what was considered by many to be the safest (and most “obvious”) choice in selecting Cairo for his “high-profile speech that would seek to mend rifts between the United States and the broader Muslim world.” Unfortunately, by deciding to play it safe, a president whose life to this point has revolved around an obsession with being “historic” missed out on a truly historic opportunity.

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Wanna be an Ambassador in the era of “change”? OK, then what do you have to do? Do you need to speak a foreign tongue? How about have some training in diplomacy? Maybe exhibit familiarity with any particular foreign culture? Nope, not in Obama’s Washington. All you need to do is donate a hefty sum to the Obama campaign and voila, you are in like Flynn. It may not bother Obama, but this big donor cum ambassador situation is striking a sour note with those Europeans that thought that Obama was going to be a man more interested in professionalism, qualifications and a serious attention to foreign policy than in paying off big donors.

So much for “change.”

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President Barack Obama nominated Second Circuit appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor as his first nominee to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor, when she is confirmed, will become only the third woman and the first Hispanic to serve on the Court, replacing the retiring Justice David Souter. No word yet on the reaction from Pyongyang.

Pyongyang? Yes, Pyongyang. North Korea test fired not one, not two, not even three, but five new missiles yesterday and today in response to the United Nations Security Council’s condemnation of its recent nuclear test. The two moves have sparked a new international nuclear crisis that has implications for Asia, the Middle East, and the United States.  This is North Korea week in capitals around the globe from Tokyo, to Beijing, to Seoul, to London, Moscow, and even Tehran.  But not in Washington.  The Obama Administration’s response is essentially to change the subject and distract media and public attention from the one thing it does not want to talk about, foreign policy.

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Chinese hookers have a drinking problem. Obama has the answer: U.S. Tax money. So it appears that the President of “change” seems to be The One that drunken Chinese prostitutes “have been waiting for.”

Our informative friends at CNSNews.com discovered that the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse (NIAA) has been awarded $2.6 million U.S. tax dollars to help train Chinese prostitutes to “drink responsibly on the job.” Yes, I said Chinese prostitutes… in China. One wonders if the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse missed the salient fact that they have the word National in their moniker? Or perhaps the NIAA just missed that the nation in their title is supposed to be our nation, not China’s?

I guess it’s heartwarming that the NIAA cares so deeply about China’s FSWs (that is university speak for whores — Female Sex Workers), and all, but what of American prostitutes? Are they unworthy of the attention of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse? Don’t our oh, so intellectual university pinheads care about our own home-grown drunken whores?

Guess not.

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I respect Polish concert pianist Krystian Zimmerman’s moxie. Oh, he hasn’t a clue what he is talking about, but he has the courage of his convictions at least, which is more than I can say for all those wild-eyed, half-informed, hypocrites in the American entertainment industry.

You see, a few days ago, pianist Zimmerman announced in the middle of a concert that he would no longer be playing concerts in the U.S. because he is against U.S. foreign policy. If you truly want to know this loon’s political complaints, there is a long, pointless and boring story about it in the L.A. Times on April 28.

Me, I couldn’t care less about this half-wit’s gripes. But I do applaud him for having the backbone to do something about it. He will forgo his money, cancel his concerts and leave this country. I say good for him. It’s about time one of these pampered “stars” in the entertainment industry finally has the stones to live up to the blather.

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The newest false meme invented by the Old Media is this claim that ex-presidents and ex-vice presidents have some sort of “tradition of silence” where it concerns commenting on those that take residence in the White House after they leave. The reason the Old Media is pushing this false claim is because Dick Cheney has been commenting on Obama’s security mistakes and the Old Media wants to scold Cheney for his efforts to get the truth to the people.

Certainly it is true that some ex-chief executives have maintained silence after they left office. Still, it isn’t really true that there has been any long tradition of staying silent out of some sort of respect for the new president. But, no matter how many past presidents/vice presidents have remained quiet, the one glaring exception to that so-called tradition is the vp just before Cheney: Al Gore. And this man has been absent in the Media’s attack on Cheney.

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In May of 2008 when Barack Obama was running for president he made a stop in Miami, Florida, a place well known for being a hotbed of anti-Castro, anti-communist sentiment. Miami is a place where many thousands of self-exiled Cubans settled after they fled a life of religious and political oppression and torture at the hands of Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro. While in Miami candidate Obama made some strong and passionate statements about how if he were to be elected president his administration would not bow to Castro’s tyranny.

He excoriated Castro’s oppression and sympathized with the Cuban people pledging that as president he’d help bring freedom, liberty, and democracy to Cuba. At the height of his passion, Obama said, “I won’t stand for this injustice” and promised that, “together we will stand up for freedom in Cuba.”

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The Associated Press has for years been good for inventing the news out of its own vivid imagination. But now, not only is the AP inventing news it is inventing an entire national self-image, then batting it down all in an effort to prop up the feckless foreign policy of its messiah Barrack Obama. Obama’s “The U.S. Sucks” tour isn’t over yet and the AP is loving it.

Did you know that everyone in the U.S. has a “deeply held belief” that this country “does not make mistakes in dealings with either friends or foes”? Well, neither did anyone else, but the Associated Press sure does. And what’s more the AP is praising Obama for “goring the ox” of this obviously “deeply held belief” in which we stupid Americans are prone to believe.

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Barack Obama has just taken the next step towards a complete disregard for America’s foreign policy by back slapping self-professed enemy to the “great Satan,” tin pot dictator and oppressor, Hugo Chavez. As Obama grins and associates with such low-end characters, treating them as worthy members of the international community, he drags down both the United States and any country that strives to treat its people with the dignity they deserve as human beings.

But, Obama is, at least, fulfilling a campaign promise to treat all foreign leaders as equals no matter how evil, oppressive, and murderous they are. His compatriots on the left agree with this sort of engagement claiming that such “diplomacy” can only be a good thing. Despite this, though, this basic engagement-is-good ideal is not a principle held consistently by the left proving that situational ethics are the only ethics that the left can muster.

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USA Today’s Chuck Raasch has decided that President Obama is a “transformational American leader abroad” and that his America Stinks tour of Europe is a “confirming stamp of that new reality.” This effluvia of over indulgent praise heaped on Obama is ubiquitous in the media, we all know, but what makes Raasch’s piece egregious is the assumption of historical “truth” that posits that Obama has already succeeded as president even though he’s only been in office a few short months. Raash states as fact that Obama has “transformed” America’s image with this one tour and that all sorts of new and better relations have followed.

But, the main problem with Raasch’s sycophancy is that “followed” hasn’t even arrived yet. In fact, Raasch writes this article before Obama’s trip abroad is fairly done. It is idiotic to say what “has” come of it all before the president has even set his feet back on American soil. And this is a key problem with all these fake assessments of the “success” of Obama’s presidency. There hasn’t BEEN any “success” because history has yet to see the outcome of anything he’s done thus far.

But this doesn’t stop the slobbering Obama love affair that mediots like Raasch wallow in. It all amounts to little else but propaganda as opposed to serious analysis — serious prOpaganda, if you will.

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Mort Kondracke - who comments on Fox News and serves as Executive Editor of Roll Call - notes that while Barack Obama gets a wonderful reception abroad, he doesn’t seem to accomplish much:

But it’s not a good sign that NATO allies did not answer [Obama's] call for more troops for Afghanistan. They will provide 5,000 trainers, but no more combat forces.

Nor did Europeans — especially Merkel and Sarkozy — go along with Obama’s request to pump up economic stimulus to fight the global recession.

The G-20 summit did agree to an increase in funding for the International Monetary Fund to help emerging economies, including Eastern Europe, but that was not a contested issue. In fact, it relieved the European Union from the burden.

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