The President Fails Rule 1 of Geopolitics

It's gone from annoying to disturbing how often the president is making a habit of finding a foreign audience to criticize prior American foreign policy. Make no mistake, while a large majority of that prior policy is George W. Bush's, the current president's criticism isn't limited only to his predecessor. In 1952, Arthur Vandenburg presented a very simple geopolitical principle.

politics stops at the water's edge

In other words, whatever disagreements we may have, we present a united front outside our nation. Vandenburg believed that this is vital because in his words,

to unite our official voice at the water's edge so that America speaks with maximum authority against those who would divide and conquer us

President Obama seems to never miss an opportunity to talk to foreigners and find a point of prior foreign policy to criticize. The latest comes in a speech to the Parliament of Turkey.

An enduring commitment to the rule of law is the only way to achieve the security that comes from justice for all people. Robust minority rights let societies benefit from the full measure of contributions from all citizens.

I say this as the President of a country that not too long ago made it hard for someone who looks like me to vote.

As Powerline itself points, it wasn't even the federal government that stopped African Americans from voting but rather individual states. This may be a nit picking technicality however what's more important is that this follows in a disturbing pattern of the president using just about any opportunity to take shots at the country he is leading.

He has already gone overseas and accused America of torture, violating civil rights, violating the rule of law, acting arrogantly, not listening, and acting as imperialists. This disturbing onslaught on the country he purports to lead has real geopolitical consequences. From now on, any action which ally or foe alike doesn't like by his administration can be characterized by our adversaries as "imperialist", "arrogant", "torturous", etc.

By doing an endless string of mea culpa for all sorts of prior perceived bad policy, the president also by extension weakens the credibility of the nation as a whole. That's because he presents an image of the nation as a terribly flawed and failed nation. He presents a nation that has an image of doing wrong rather than right. What is really most troubling about all of this is how little time the president spends pointing out all the times that the United States has been a force for good rather. Instead, the president seems to always find any and all prior acts of bad and tells the world about the country's bad, but he rarely points out when the country has been a force for good.

If you were to only listen to the president, you might not realize that our blood and treasure freed both Western Europe and Eastern Europe. If you listen to the president, you wouldn't know that both Afghanistan and Iraq now have a chance at freedom because of the blood and treasure of the United States. It was also the United States that lead in the effort to isolate the Apartheid government of South Africa that ultimately lead to its disintegration. These are just a few examples of a history of good of our nation, and these examples rarely find their way into things the president says about the nation when he is overseas.