Obama’s Failure to Lead

By Douglas J. Feith & Seth Cropsey

In recent days, President Barack Obama has been stressing that his national-security record will help him get reelected. In a January interview with Time magazine, in his State of the Union address, and elsewhere, he not only recalls, with justifiable pride, the killing of Osama bin Laden, but also claims credit for “restor[ing] American leadership in the world.”

In common parlance, leadership abroad means something along the lines of identifying the U.S. national interest and enlisting foreign partners to join us in achieving it. What Mr. Obama means, however, is more or less the opposite.

Before entering office in 2009, Mr. Obama and his administration’s top foreign-policy intellectuals wrote extensively in favor of a less assertive, less militarily capable, less independent United States. This prescription fit their characterization of America’s post–World War II history as a story of bullying, selfishness, militarism, and violations of the rights of others.

Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/291868/obama-s-failure-lead-douglas-j-feith