Public says America's world leadership has tumbled to 40-year low

fshnski Tue Dec 03, 2013 4:57 pm

For the first time in nearly 40 years, a majority of Americans believe the United States is less important around the world and that it should mind its own business, a stunning rejection of President Obama’s foreign policy just four years after he received the Nobel Prize.

A new Pew Research Center poll found that 53 percent of people believe that the U.S. is playing a less important role as a world leader than a decade ago, the highest figure since 1984.

Worse: 70 percent said that the U.S. is respected less than in the past, almost matching the high reached under former President George W. Bush, whose foreign policy Obama pledged to reverse.

Other key highlights from Pew’s release:

— By a 56 percent to 34 percent margin, more disapprove than approve of Obama’s handling of foreign policy. The public also disapproves of his handling of Syria, Iran, China and Afghanistan by wide margins.

— For the first time, 52 percent believe the U.S. should “mind its own business internationally.”

— Some 51 percent said the U.S. does too much in helping solve world problems.

— Most say the U.S. should engage internationally on economic issues. Fully 77 percent say that growing trade and business ties between the U.S. and other countries is good.

— Just 31 percent of the public say the war in Afghanistan has made the country safer from terrorism.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/poof-public-says-americas-world-leadership-has-tumbled-to-40-year-low/article/2540096

News Hawk Thu Dec 05, 2013 5:20 am

Why did we go into Afghanistan? There is no oil there, there are no natural resources that could benefit us. Their governance and life style are stalled in the 15th century. Before we went into Afghanistan, the country was a hot bed of tribal conflicts that guaranteed that the nation would remain a 3rd world backwater. For at least two hundred years, it was common belief that Afghanistan had never been conquered. Even the mighty Soviet Union/Russia was defeated and forced to withdraw.

So why did we commit billions of dollars and thousands of our service people to an assault on the Afghanis? The simple and honest answer is that the nation was a hotbed of Muslim fundamentalist terrorism. It housed training camps for terrorists. It provided money for terrorism by being one of the world’s top producers of opium, the precursor to heroin. The nation was home base to the 9/11 tragedy operatives. The nation presented a clear a present danger to us because of the terrorists it trained and harbored.

GWB, acting, with nearly total support of Democrat legislators, instituted the conflict shortly after 9/11. At any time in the ensuing years the conflict could have been ended by defunding it. The Democrat legislators nearly universally supported the efforts to behead terrorism, and never even threatened to defund it.

Even Obama signed onto the effort when he took office and he even copied GWB’s surge tactic. But he decided that he would surrender the field and flee from the nation in 2014 without any consideration as to the state of the original mission, to behead terrorism. He decided to lose.

But Obama also elected to follow GWB’s lead in attempting to keep an American military presence in country. To date, he has failed. Just as he failed in Iraq.

During Bush’s prosecution of the war, 575 of our service people were killed. So far, on Obama’s watch about 2292 American service men and women have died.

When we withdrew from Iraq as a result of the nation being mostly stabilized, it was anticipated that the new President, Obama, would negotiate a peace keeping American presence in Iraq. Obama failed to get that agreement.

Largely as a result of Obama’s failure to reach agreement with Iraq, it is now wracked with terrorist attacks. Muslim fundamentalism is surging in that nation. Iraq is quickly becoming a client state of Iran. Without doubt it will become a hot bed of terrorist activity aimed at us and the rest of the free world.

The bottom line is that our national effort to behead terrorism in Afghanistan has failed. That nation will nearly certainly begin again to be a keystone of terrorist activity. In that Obama has decided to fail, we should immediately withdraw all of our troops. Not an additional drop of American blood should fall on Afghani soil.

Obama’s legacy in the mid-east will be a massive increase in fundamentalist Muslim power, and a massive decrease in American influence. He will leave a mid-east that is exponentially more dangerous than when he took office.

It is nearly certain that Iran will have nuclear weapons. It is also nearly certain that the only way that can be prevented will be an alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia which would lead to a preemptive strike against Iran by Israel from Saudi bases.

The next few years bode ill for mankind.

No kidding...

scratch

Public says America's world leadership has tumbled to 40-year low

Public says America's world leadership has tumbled to 40-year low

...maybe it depends on who you ask...?