WarSclerotic

It was quite embarrassing on Wednesday to see how Barack Obama, the president of what is still the world’s top superpower, struggled to understand the material.

While Obama promised that the killers of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens would pay for their actions, this came after the U.S. Embassy in Cairo issued a weak response to the attack on the embassy there, including a condemnation of the slandering of religious beliefs, as if there were symmetry between the attack and the production of a low-quality anti-Muslim propaganda film.

That response actually gave support, even if indirect and unintentional, to terrorist acts against American targets, only a day after the U.S. marked the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. That is amazing.

If Obama wins the upcoming election, it will certainly not be due to the foreign policy of the U.S. over the past four years. Obama failed to understand what took place in Iran in June 2009 (the Green Movement), abandoned Hosni Mubarak and supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and let Britain and France lead the democratic change process in Libya while ignoring the al-Qaida threat there. Most of all, the Nobel peace prize winner has completely disappeared on Syria.

Regarding Iran, Obama continues to fervently believe in dialogue with the “rational” Iranian regime, even if it is at the expense of spinning centrifuges. Obama truly believes that under his watch the U.S. will reconcile with the entire Muslim world. And to achieve this, he thinks there are red lines on how far he can go.

But the murder of the ambassador and the attack on the consulate demand a resolute response. There has been talk of 50 U.S. Marines being deployed to Libya. What is Obama displaying to the world today? Weakness. No wonder there were anti-U.S. demonstrations on Wednesday in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Afghanistan.

Obama needs to understand that the world is changing, and not always in the way we’d like. Despite Obama’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood (you can’t define it any differently), this has not stopped the Muslim Brotherhood from threatening the continuation of Egypt’s relationship with the U.S. Imagine a situation in which a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman in Egypt demanded a U.S. apology for the work of a delusional and anonymous filmmaker. That is exactly what happened on Wednesday. But Obama does not understand that there is no connection between these things.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the Obama administration suspects that the attack in Libya that killed four American diplomats was planned in advance, nothing like the spontaneous riots in Egypt and Tunisia.

The Middle East is not safer now than it was four years ago, and the world is changing, but not for the better. Obama believes that another four years in the White House will allow him to complete his mission. This is reminiscent of a joke: We’re standing on the edge of an abyss, but next year we’ll take a big step forward.

Obama must understand that despite his support and kind words for the “new” Egypt and Libya, the burning of the American flags in Cairo and the killing of the ambassador in Benghazi cannot be ignored.

Perhaps, on second thought, Obama does not have trouble understanding the material. He simply sees the world a little differently. The problem is that he is apparently wrong, and we and the world will pay for his mistakes.