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The GOP’s Dated and Shallow Foreign Policy Criticism (II)

Pete Wehner jumps on the manufactured outrage bandwagon over Obama’s “flexibility” comments: And can anyone guess what it means when Obama says he’ll have “more flexibility” after his “last election”? A hint: This is a president who shelved his predecessor’s plan to build a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic in order […]

Pete Wehner jumps on the manufactured outrage bandwagon over Obama’s “flexibility” comments:

And can anyone guess what it means when Obama says he’ll have “more flexibility” after his “last election”? A hint: This is a president who shelved his predecessor’s plan to build a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic in order to “reset” our relations with Russia – and Obama did this without receiving any concessions from Russia in advance or since. (Russia has, in fact, been a consistent thorn in our side.) This action was also (rightly) seen as a betrayal by our allies in Eastern Europe. We can only imagine what a second Obama term would mean in terms of unwise concessions and reckless agreements with Russia, Iran, North Korea and countless other nations.

I’m sure Wehner can imagine all sorts of things. The “betrayal” of eastern European allies is imaginary, and Wehner’s description of the concessions the U.S. has received from Russia also has nothing to do with reality. Most Poles didn’t support Bush’s plan anyway, and the radar installation in the Czech Republic was wildly unpopular. In fact, Poles favored Obama’s decision by a wide margin as good for Poland. The Polish and Czech governments were understandably annoyed about how they were informed of the decision, but that is a different matter. The idea that adopting a different missile defense plan represents a “betrayal” of allies when the U.S. is currently cooperating with eastern European allies on the new plan is absurd. Russia has obviously been cooperative on issues related to Afghanistan and Iran. It is this cooperation that so infuriates opponents of the “reset” because they prefer relations with Russia to be adversarial. Wehner’s summary of the last three years is revealing in that it shows how much he relies on accusations from three years ago that weren’t true at the time.

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