In Case You Miss Foreign Policy

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly and Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish note today that with the killing of Anwar al-Awalaki, the American leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen, that President Obama has been relentlessly conducting a war against the jihadis and with far greater success than his predecessor. The Americans also killed the American editor of Al Qaeda's magazine Aspire. MSNBC notes that no American president has as many foreign policy successes since President George H.W. Bush. Of course, that didn't do him much good either.

Hamstrung by an obstructionist Republican Congress, President Obama has restored both the credibility of both America's soft power and the effectiveness of its military power. But you would never know it. Today, former Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton downplayed the meaning of killing al-Awalaki, the instigator of the Fort Hood massacre, and said we should read much into this. It's useful to remember that the House of Representatives could not bring itself to have a congratulatory proclamation on the successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden because they would have had to mention President Obama.

I would put up there with the successes the ratification of the New Start Treaty, solely negotiated by this administration with Russia, the nuclear proliferation summit and its aftermath of securing loose nuclear materials around the world, and the three Trade Treaties negotiated by the Administration, despite the fair objections to them.

President Obama has overseen the dismantling of Al Qaeda, the death of bin Laden and the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi. How much of the Arab Spring should be credited to the Administration, not all but a great deal. And President Obama has ended our military operations in Iraq. And by the way also ended the new American tradition of torture.

You might add a few more like the successful sabotage of Iran's nuclear program and the strengthening of sanctions against Tehran.

Some of this can be undone by recent House actions to try to cut foreign assistance funding, especially to the new regimes in the Arab World, the Palestinian Authority and the astonishing vote to cut off funding for the Organization of American States (OAS), the only regional organization outside of NATO where you must be a democracy to belong.

Will any of this matter come 2012? Does President Obama want it to matter? Can you trust national security to the present line-up of Republicans?