Obama's foreign policy -- in complete state of shambles. Poor leadership.

I'm not a huge supporter of Obama's foreign policy, but are European countries really surprised that the US is spying on them? Every country with the means spies on every other country; why is that so upsetting?

 

Because if said countries weren't visibly upset about it, then its own people would start wondering what the governments themselves are spying on them.

FP isn't too bad. I think they deliberate a lot wrt the ME like the coup-not-a-coup question and the Syria-red-line, but are we in another ****ing war? Does anyone want to be? I thought after Iraq, the American people didn't want absolute power projection considering the trillion dollarS price tag that comes with it...

As always, things could be a lot better. He's handcuffed to mending fences with both the American people and abroad. I personally don't want him to do bat**** things when his own backyard needs a lot more attention paid upon it.

The domestic/intl spying bit is extreme bull****.

 

Glass half full mentality litetexxx. We could have started another unnecessary war that killed thousands of Americans and Iraqis on a false premise. I mean ANYTHING is better than that. AMIRITE?

 

Let me answer this for you bigtexxx..

"Stay on topic. Deflecting questions is a sign of weakness. Don't be lazy and educate yourself"

But yes I agree with you. Bad foreign policy = not policing other countries...not invading 2 countries. Osama bin Laden attacked our country so we better invade Iraq!

 

Clearly the Obama administration has struggled mightily with foreign policy. It's been a rough ride. No real debate there.

The question is would Mitt Romney have been any better. I doubt it very much.

 

What exactly was Obama supposed to do about Snowden?

In the recent past the U.S. has given back a few individuals they have asked for. So I'm sure the U.S. will take what happened in consideration in the future.

But bigtexx or whomever else thinks Snowden is some easily unavoidable mistake. What other avenue would you take besides pressuring Russia to turn him over?

 

Maybe Obama could stop the govt from spying on everyone and then lying about it when they are caught.

 

I don't think Snowden is the point here, rather what he has exposed and reaction of the government since then. So your question should be "What was/is Obama supposed to do about the NSA spying on its own citizens?"

 

If you want to make qualitative statements like Obama is bad at foreign policy, first you have to compare it to other examples or suggest what you think he should have done. "This is bad"; compared to what?

The world is always in crisis, managing the safety of Americans and American solders is the President's top priority; but even that has factors that are not controllable; internal and external.

The NSA was built on post-9/11 paranoia. They have been in full tilt panic mode building the security of the American people for a decade.
I think people highly underestimate their mandate with their sudden outrage over what they do.

 

Should he go after Snowden like he did Bin Laden?

Rocket River

 

Allegedly Snowden has far worse material than has been released to date, but has hinted to the U.S. government he will keep under wraps. My wild guess is if the U.S. killed him, those floodgates would open.

That's a pretty good life insurance policy.

 

Free health insurance?

 

It's been hard for all presidents for all time. I'm not sure that's a measure of anything. The Cold War started under Truman; does that make him bad at foreign policy? FDR has WWII and the Holocaust to answer for. James Madison was in charge when the British freaking burned down our capital. I'll take Obama's foreign policy 'failings' over that one.

 

I've seen multiple individuals discuss that the biggest problem with Snowden was putting so much pressure on people that the only reason people would deal with him was in order to try and poke the USA in the eye, and once he was stuck in Russia, they basically had to keep him unless they were interested in looking like the USA's b****.

A smarter way about it would have been a softer touch and behind the scene pressure shunting him towards a nominally friendly country like Iceland, with a deal that effectively fire-walled him off from revealing anything else.

Honestly, did anybody ever believe that once he was in Russia, that US pressure on Putin was going to make them more likely to get rid of him? At the time, it seemed pretty evident to me that they were not helping the situation.

Basically, he did a terrible job of predicting how others would react and thinking strategically. That having been said, Snowden case, I think the only thing a Republican president would have done was apply more pressure and make the situation even worse.

 

So what you are saying is the U.S. was calling and texting too much and seemed needy. And should have pretended not to care so much. Kk thanks