Obama fails in Pakistan and Turkey

Report: Pakistan rejects U.S. plan, wants drones
By Bridget Johnson
Posted: 04/08/09 11:56 AM [ET]

U.S. envoys met with Pakistani leaders on Tuesday to ensure that the $7.5 billion that President Obama plans to send their way over the next five years will be used to achieve common goals in the fight against extremism.

But according to a Pakistani newspaper, regional envoy Richard Holbrooke and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen came up empty-handed and received a "rude shock" when a proposal for joint operations against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the volatile tribal regions was rejected.

Dawn newspaper reported that Pakistan also asked the U.S. to turn over the unmanned drone missions over the territory to them, saying that the drone strikes were fueling extremism.

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...I question the premise that Obama "means well" in "O'S AMATEUR HOUR":

The real climax of President Obama's Spring Apologies Tour wasn't his photo op with our troops in Baghdad or even his "American Guilt" concerts in Western Europe.

While fans in the press cheered wildly at every venue, the real performance came in Turkey. And it was a turkey.

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And Drudge Report has the clincher: "SHOCK: Turkish TV Reports On Obama In Blackface? Turkish Flash T.V. MOCKS U.S President Obama

Welcome to the circus

Who would have thought the missing player in the first month of the administration would be Barack Obama? He let his signature economic legislation, the stimulus, be shaped by congressional Democrats. He let internal disputes over the difficult question of how to save the banking system result in a disastrous non-announcement of a non-plan by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last week. Before that, he let Geithner become Treasury secretary after cheating on his income taxes, and waived his own ethics rules to appoint a lobbyist as deputy secretary of defense--undercutting his promises to clean up Washington. He allowed Rahm Emanuel to politicize the Census Bureau, losing as a result his commerce secretary-designee, Judd Gregg, an ornament of his professed hope for bipartisanship.

In foreign policy, Obama has exerted no more control. He allowed both Super-Special Pooh-bah Richard Holbrooke and National Security Adviser Jim Jones to give interviews to the New York Times and the Washington Post, respectively, touting their own importance and presenting the president as a distant player in the formulation of foreign policy. Meanwhile, turf wars in the State Department and the National Security Council are even more bitterly fought than usual. The tale of Holbrooke shouting at Undersecretary of State Bill Burns that he'll keep Burns waiting as long as he wants, since he (allegedly) outranks Burns, makes the Rumsfeld-Powell drama look tame.

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Obama's like a bull in a china shop

If Obama's colonialistic fumbling first gestures towards India is any indiciation of what's to come, we are in a shit-load of trouble, folks! This is what happens when you put an amateur in charge of the world. Nice job.

Holbrooke and India