Alfred Hitchcock dedicated his 1940 film "Foreign Correspondent" to "those intrepid ones who went across the sea to be the eyes and ears of America … who early saw the clouds of war while many of us at home were seeing rainbows."
Kind of brings into focus the old saw that history repeats itself. Only this time, it's our commander in chief who is seeing rainbows -- everywhere except, apparently, in America.
It's bad enough when the George Soros brigades continually disparage America, but it's almost unbearable for the president to do it -- and even worse when he's on foreign soil.
At a town hall meeting with French and German citizens in Strasbourg, France, President Barack Obama proved he hadn't just been posturing on the campaign trail when he castigated then-President George W. Bush for his "unilateralist" foreign policies. It's now clear that Obama wanted not only the American electorate to understand his disdain for his predecessor and the country he led but also the rest of the world to know it.
He told his European audience: "It's always harder to forge true partnerships and sturdy alliances than to act alone. … In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of … seeking to partner with you … there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."
It bears repeating that contrary to this tired line of liberal propaganda, President Bush diligently tried to "forge true partnerships and sturdy alliances," especially in building his case to attack Iraq to depose dictator Saddam Hussein. He did not dismissively disregard our allies (though many dismissively disregarded us); he painstakingly pleaded with them to join us in removing this brutal menace.
You're darn right it's hard to forge true partnerships and sturdy alliances, particularly with nations that have corrupt financial relationships with the dictator they should be helping you topple.
But Obama is obviously blind to such complicating realities, his vision being obstructed by his disbelief in America's righteousness and his reflexive inclination to side with our foreign critics.
Obama's attitude was abundantly obvious to conservatives during the campaign, except for the self-styled sophisticates who thought Obama was just trash talking America to placate his MoveOn.org leftist base. He didn't really endorse the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's opinion that America should be damned. His association with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers was only casual and reflected no common ideology. His wife's candid remark that Barack's electoral success to date had made her proud of America for the first time in her adult life was misunderstood and certainly not representative of her husband's sentiments.
Those of us who are more likely to believe that words and actions mean things thought Obama's rhetoric and relationships were significant and indicative that he truly embraced the leftist attitude that America has been too big for its britches, condescending to Europe, disrespectful to the Muslim world, and jingoistic rather than diplomatic toward jihadists, such as the Taliban, to whom we must extend an olive branch.
Why else would he have been so determined to make transformational changes to this nation and proceed to do just that?
Why else did he grovel to the Muslim world upon taking office (as if we owed them an apology for our aid packages to Somalia, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians and our liberating missions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq); apologize abroad for our war in Iraq, which he believes was unprovoked and a distraction from the war on terror (you could have fooled the terrorists in Iraq fighting us all this time); reveal his distaste for American exceptionalism; decide to close Gitmo; support the right of foreign-based terrorists to sue in U.S. courts; rename the war on terror and relegate it to a law enforcement matter; consider publicly releasing 2005 classified internal Justice Department interrogation memos that graphically describe our enhanced interrogation techniques, which would allow the enemy to see and study them; demean his office by bowing before foreign royalty; and demonize the U.S. for its nuclear arsenal and plan to resurrect the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which countless defense and foreign policy experts and past officials oppose as detrimental to our national security because it would permanently prevent us from field-testing our weapons and impede our ability to maintain and modernize our nuclear arms, while encouraging despots and terrorists to develop and augment their nuclear arsenals?
For all his sermonizing about bringing the world together, Obama hasn't even delivered on his promise to unify us here at home. With due apologies to "The Wizard of Oz," pay no attention to that latest Pew Research Center poll behind the curtain, which shows that "for all of his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades."