Pres. Obama's foreign policy headed for disaster?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
The United States is threatening "targeted sanctions" against Syria in the wake of another bloody crackdown on protesters.
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The National Security Council has accused Syria of "brutal violence" against its citizens, calling it "completely deplorable." It's tough talk - much tougher than what President Obama had to say on Friday. When he learned that 70 unarmed Syrian protesters were murdered by government security forces, the president issued a statement calling on "all sides to cease and desist." Huh?
President Obama isn't exactly getting high praise for his foreign policy these days. More than a month into a bloody civil war in Libya, the conflict appears to have reached a stalemate. After weeks of hemming and hawing and not saying a whole lot on the matter, Obama gave the OK for airstrikes against Libya, without consulting Congress first.
He said we would be involved in Libya for a "matter of days, not weeks." It's already approaching months. He said no American boots would ever be on the ground in Libya. Wrong again. We've been on the ground there for some time. Then last week, the president authorized the use of unmanned drone strikes in Libya in support of NATO airstrikes. Yet another expensive escalation. And violence continues to rage on throughout the region.
A piece on the Daily Beast calls Obama "a persuasive politician and diplomat who gets others to crawl out on limbs, has them take big risks to break through to a new future and then turns around and walks away from them when the political winds in the United States threaten to shift."
To think his critics had the temerity to suggest he didn't have the necessary experience to be president.
Here’s my question to you: Is President Obama’s foreign policy headed for disaster?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
What does it mean that China's economy could surpass U.S.'s in 5 years?
(PHOTO CREDIT: MIKE CLARKE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
The year 2016… Mark your calendars.
It's the year the International Monetary Fund projects China's economy will overtake the U.S. economy. Or as Brett Arends, a columnist for MarketWatch writes, "The moment when the 'Age of America' will end." He says if the IMF is right, whoever wins the presidency in 2012 will be the last U.S. president to preside over the world's largest economy.
Kind of sad... and kind of scary.
Other forecasters have set the date the U.S. falls to second place a decade later. The IMF projections are based on something called "purchasing power parities," what people in both countries earn and spend domestically. Either way, China will pass us by in a matter of years.
It's just another kick in the stomach to this country's already-battered economy. The job market is still beaten down, the housing market remains horrible, and the federal government still can't agree on how to rein in spending or what to do about a debt ceiling that expires in weeks. Last week, Standard & Poor's announced that it was downgrading the U.S. debt outlook from stable to negative over concerns that the White House and Congress will not be able to agree on a deficit reduction plan for 2012.
Congress is still on Spring Break - perfect.
The Obama administration downplayed the S&P announcement, saying it was political and should not be taken too seriously. They're wrong. The markets took it seriously though. The stock market suffered its biggest one day loss since the threat of a nuclear meltdown in Japan last month. And what'll you bet the White House won't have much to say about this new IMF projection either. It's called whistling past the graveyard.
Here’s my question to you: What does it mean that China's economy could surpass the U.S. economy in five years?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
@jackcafferty on Twitter
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