Campaign Literature
Barack Obama is much stronger on foreign policy than Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie suggest.
As a loyal reader of Foreign Policy, I must say I am disappointed that this normally excellent periodical ran such an illogical polemic by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie ("How to Beat Obama," March/April 2012). Admittedly I'm no international relations professor or U.N. official, but many of the piece's errors are painfully obvious after even a cursory reading.
As a loyal reader of Foreign Policy, I must say I am disappointed that this normally excellent periodical ran such an illogical polemic by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie (“How to Beat Obama,” March/April 2012). Admittedly I’m no international relations professor or U.N. official, but many of the piece’s errors are painfully obvious after even a cursory reading.
In terms of the president’s allegedly weak and naive Iran policy, Barack Obama has actually led the effort to ratchet up economic sanctions far beyond what the two writers’ former boss, President George W. Bush, accomplished, while keeping a military option on the table — policies that are indistinguishable from those of the Republicans. On Obama’s “failure” to open “markets for exports and jobs,” have these two gentlemen conveniently forgotten recent large-scale free-trade agreements between the United States and Colombia, Panama, and South Korea?
I won’t even bother debunking the article’s multiple ad hominem, unqualified assertions, such as “the president has few real friends abroad” and “Obama’s lack of regular close contact” with the leaders of Afghanistan and Iraq “has destroyed relationships with America’s erstwhile allies.” For a publication that prides itself on intellectualism and serious discourse, it’s a bad sign when I have to check the cover to make sure I didn’t pick up a campaign pamphlet by accident.
ANDERSON TUGGLE
Undergraduate in history, Hamilton College
Clinton, N.Y.
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