The American Spectator

If the Obama administration’s foreign policy apparatus were a dog, it would be the legendary dog which chases parked cars. It bangs its head, is momentarily confused, learns nothing, and does it again.

After a few years of utter failure in containing Iran (failure which, to be fair, precedes Obama by years and for which the Bush administration and prior administrations also share blame), Obama is going back to the negotiating table with the regime’s “negotiators.”

One of the few clear-eyed takes on this travesty comes, not surprisingly, from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who argues that Iran is being given a “freebie” and that “[Iran got from negotiators] five weeks to continue enrichment without any limitation, any inhibition.”

This in itself is not as remarkable as the fact that this was announced within 48 hours of the North Koreans showing the administration just what it thinks of America’s laughable sticks and carrots by attempting to launch a “satellite” on a ballistic missile despite our threats that we would — wait for it — not deliver food aid if they went ahead.

President Obama has intentionally projected an aura of weakness, from his Mideast apology tour to his stabbing our eastern European allies in the back regarding missile defense. The world knows that America has a president who objects to American preeminence and strength, and he’s doing all he can to make us just another nation. For those who didn’t already believe it, the “more flexibility” moment with Russian President Medvedev was an unvarnished insight into the mind of the most anti-American president in this nation’s history.

With this context, the administration’s apparent stupidity — by which I mean inability to learn even from a painful lesson — is equally well understood as a commitment to their goal of taking America down a peg in actual and perceived power. They’re not just the stupid dog chasing parked cars — though they are that in part. There’s a method to their madness, and it’s a method that has our enemies smiling as they stand around their uranium-enriching centrifuges while the Russians laugh all the way to the bank.