Barack Obama has so ably repaired the once frayed ties with our Bush-abused allies that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown couldn’t do us the minute favor of keeping the convicted mass murderer of American citizens from being sprung and delivered into a Libyan hero’s welcome.
Hillary Clinton has been so levelheaded(so nonideological) in her pursuit of improved relations with Libya that Muammar Qaddafi simply had to meet terrorist Abdel Basset al-Megrahi at the airport to hug and kiss him and proclaim his love for both the killer and the British Crown before the world.
This is what all that goodwill and all those apologies have reaped? The unprecedented coupling of our best friend with one of our worst enemies?
And considering that this was all probably orchestrated in the interest of opening up British-Libya oil ties, the old nugget “blood for oil” seems particularly apt.
Hey, the important thing is: no more cowboy diplomacy, right? No more go-it-alone, unilateral, with-us-or-against-us, good-and-evil hooey. That was for simpletons. We’re in the hands of geniuses now.
So there’s no need for us mere mortals to get wee-weed up. The amount of gray matter that’s gone into this exquisitely calibrated foreign policy is beyond the grasp of regular folks like you and me. President Obama and Hillary Clinton have Qaddafi exactly where they want him. And Gordon Brown—you thought Tony Blair was Bush’s poodle? The same goes for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, of course, and Kim Jong-il, not to mention all Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Remember, we became universally adored last November 4. If you’re not feeling the love yet,
you’re just being ideologically rigid.
Smart power knows no ideology. Smart power, recall, is about approaching the proper problem at the proper moment with the proper tool. So look to the geniuses: the moment is now, the problem is our evaporating grasp on world affairs, and the selected tool? A little vacation time on the beach.
See also: David Pryce-Jones
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