Monday, February 14, 2011

Video: Niall Ferguson on Obama and Egypt

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Video: Niall Ferguson destroys Obama over Egypt - hotair
Obama gets good and bad reviews over Egypt
Historian Niall Ferguson, in his first column for Newsweek magazine, called it a "foreign policy debacle" that exposed Obama's lack of a "coherent grand strategy." Ferguson writes:
The president has alienated everybody: not only Mubarak's cronies in the military, but also the youthful crowds in the streets of Cairo. Whoever ultimately wins, Obama loses.

And the alienation doesn't end there. America's two closest friends in the region -- Israel and Saudi Arabia -- are both disgusted. The Saudis, who dread all manifestations of revolution, are appalled at Washington's failure to resolutely prop up Mubarak. The Israelis, meanwhile, are dismayed by the administration's apparent cluelessness....
The defining characteristic of Obama's foreign policy has been not just a failure to prioritize, but also a failure to recognize the need to do so. A succession of speeches saying in essence, I am not George W. Bush is no substitute for a strategy....
- further discussion of his article is in the vid, at msnbc