{"id":20764,"date":"2013-10-20T07:33:05","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T11:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=20764"},"modified":"2013-10-20T07:33:05","modified_gmt":"2013-10-20T11:33:05","slug":"america-is-rapidly-losing-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=20764","title":{"rendered":"America Is Rapidly Losing Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the campaign claims of Barack Obama<\/a> was that George Bush’s foreign policy had resulted in America being disliked around the world and that he, Barack Obama, would change that. Well, it hasn’t exactly worked that way.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Richard Fernandez posted an article at PJ Media<\/a> about the changing relationship between America and Saudi Arabia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

Today Saudi Arabia rejected a seat on the UN Security Council to which it had been unanimously elected in protest against \u201cits long-time patron United States\u2019<\/a> overtures to Iran, among other peeves,\u201d according to the Times of India<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alienating Saudi Arabia is not necessarily a good thing. I understand that the government of Saudi Arabia is a repressive Islamic state. It is a dictatorship that severely limits the rights of women. However, the Saudis have been the major support of the U.S. dollar as the trading currency for oil. That is one of the major things that has prevented the U.S. dollar from becoming worthless paper.<\/p>\n

The Saudis understand the threat that Iran presents. On October 3rd, the National Interest <\/a>reported:<\/p>\n

The Saudi royal family has seen Iran as a threat to their survival ever since 1979, when Iranian leaders began encouraging Shi\u2019ite communities in Saudi Arabia\u2019s oil-rich Eastern Province to rebel. Subsequently, the Kingdom<\/a> has been engaged in a regional battle for influence with Iran, and the fall of Saddam Hussein<\/a>\u2019s regime in Iraq removed a traditional counterweight to Iranian power. Sunni rulers now fear a Shi\u2019ite crescent<\/a> stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean\u2014and possibly south into the Arab Gulf states<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fearing Iranian advances, the Kingdom spearheaded a 2011 military intervention<\/a> by the Gulf Cooperation Council that was designed to rescue the minority Sunni regime in Bahrain from its Shi\u2019ite opposition. But of late, Syria has been the biggest regional source of conflict between Riyadh and Tehran. Saudi officials insist that Syria\u2019s Assad regime is guilty of genocide<\/a>, and they see Iran\u2019s efforts to rescue Assad as aiding and abetting this slaughter.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have lost faith in the idea that any of the Muslim countries in the Middle East will form governments that will actually promote freedom. Sharia Law<\/a> is not compatible with freedom, and Sharia Law is one of the basic tenets of Islam. I suspect our best course of action is to understand who we are dealing with and distance ourselves when necessary. Saudi Arabia is an ally in the fight against radical Shiite Islam<\/a>, but the Wahabi brand of Sunni Islam<\/a> in Saudi Arabia gave us Al Qaeda. We would be better off the let the radicals deal with each other and stay out of the way.<\/p>\n

This is how Richard Fernandez sums up President Obama”s foreign policy:<\/p>\n

Obama sold himself to the voters as the candidate of the future.\u00a0His real talent however, apparently lies in missing every opportunity that history presents. It has been said that \u201cgenerals always fight the last war, especially if they have won it\u201d. With Obama it\u2019s different. He always fights the last war and can\u2019t even remember who won it, except to remain confirmed in his conviction that the future is some other country\u2019s past.<\/strong><\/p>\n

President Obama may be a very intelligent man, but he obviously does not have a gift for dealing with (or understanding) the complexities of the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the campaign claims of Barack Obama was that George Bush’s foreign policy had resulted in America being disliked around the world and that he, Barack Obama, would change that. Well, it hasn’t exactly worked that way. On Friday, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,246,6506,245,5575,2167,342,223,285],"class_list":["post-20764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-iran","tag-kingdom","tag-middle-east","tag-saddam-hussein","tag-saudi","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-united-nations","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20766,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20764\/revisions\/20766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}