Israel/Palestine: The Politics of a Two-State Solution

  • Israel/Palestine and the Politics of a Two-State Solution
  • When Peace Fails: Lessons from Belfast for the Middle East

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Grading Obama's Foreign Policy

Here is a link to a review from the New York Review of Books that reviews new books by David Sanger and James Maan (author of Rise of the Vulcans on the Bush 43 administration) on the Obama administration's foreign policy. Sanger gives Obama a B +, the reviewer thinks that he is being stingy and too strict a grader. I think B+ is about right, with the stipulation that no president since Eisenhower has merited an A. (Carter probably merited an A- for the Panama Canal treaty, Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, upgrade of ties with China, handling of the Rhodesian peace process and mishandling of the Iran rescue attempt in 1980 and leaving the embassy staff in Tehran to be kidnapped after a previous temporary takeover of the embassy.) I am also a tough grader and regularly failed to vote for reelection of presidents whom I'd voted for in the first place because of their foreign policy. Obama will be the first president that I'll vote for twice since Reagan. I hope that he has a better second term than Reagan did.

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