You might well be right, Craig.

But I do note that she takes the time to point out the most basic concepts that drive every foreign policy. These concepts are so Earth-shatteringly obvious that they really don’t need to be mentioned out loud, unless one is deliberately trying to insult the intelligence of their audience. (“Some countries and politicians have goals and interests that conflict sharply with the United States.“)

Could the author have been trying for an ironic tone? Could this have been an attempt to scold Obama supporters for their extreme naivete? It is certainly possible, but I don’t see much evidence for that. I just took the op-ed at face value.

During the Bush years, many believed Iran’s intransigence was the direct result of Bush’s threatening stance. Since Obama came to power, he has tried unsuccessfully to stop Iran from lying to the U.N.’s nuclear authorities and deceiving the world’s diplomats. Iran has dismissed all efforts despite Washington’s new conciliatory tone and its efforts to find a diplomatic solution.

It has become more difficult to blame America for the problem. And yet, some will continue to see the devil’s shadow and blame the US no matter how much America’s president scrubs his foreign policy.

She’s not expressing surprise, she’s explaining how foolish the Obama followers were. C’mon. Think.

Leftist really do believe that every event in the world revolves around them. If you talk to any leftist about any problem with any people of any part of the world, the conversation will eventually come down to the leftist explaining why some illiterate, hill people of a completely non-Western cultures are nevertheless angry about the exact same things that the leftist is angry about. The leftist will then confidently assert that if the leftists had more power and status within western society then no one would ever be angry at us.

So, yes, many leftists are honestly surprised and Frida Ghitis does feel she has to explain to leftist that indeed other peoples have their own cultures, ideologies, histories and local concerns that have nothing whatsoever to do with the culture, ideology, history and local concerns of Western urban intellectuals. This is actually a radical and disturbing thought for leftists. They really did believe that raising their own internal power and status would actually make foreign autocrats less belligerent.

Emotionally, leftists are children who cannot see the world in any other terms than their own needs and desires. They are the world in their own minds and what is good for them is good for the world. Leftists intellectual history is almost exclusively an exercise of creating an ever shifting set of rationalizations for why leftists intellectuals (and those who ego identify with them) should be the most powerful and high status individuals in society. To that end, they assert that all problems arise from the actions of their internal social/political competition and they assert that all real solutions are those that only leftists intellectuals can implement.

These people really did believe that putting a leftists articulate intellectual into the White House would produce a radical shift in the opinion and attitudes of the autocratic leaders of the world. Their egocentrism prevents any other conclusion. It’s why the leftwing Nobel Prize committee felt no shame in giving Obama the peace prize. They really did believe that just by the virtue of being a leftwing intellectual that he had brought peace to the world when he assumed power.

It’s terrifying that such emotionally immature people have such say in our world.

The visit of Saad Hariri to his father’s murderer is one concrete effect of the Obama fecklessness. The Cedar Revolution is over and Hezbollah has won. Libya’s brief period of repentance for past sins ended and the Pan Am 103 bomber has had his miraculous cure from terminal cancer.

The Christmas attempt is just the opening prelude to an offensive that will go well with my new bumper sticker (Which has already been stolen once): “I Miss W.”

I wish President Obama the best of luck in defending our interests while keeping the body count to a minimum. I suspect that he will do the right thing in the end but the body count for restoring our “I’m scary” reputation will be unconscionably high, unnecessarily so.