1. President Obama took office amid clamoring that he had virtually no foreign policy experience - he's developing that and he gets incoming - if he wasn't doing it, he'd still be getting incoming.
2. Look at the list of days abroad and reasons vs number of trips.
3. The reasons for the trips all look valid to me.
- Feb 19 – Canadian Prime Minister (econ-nat'l sec-energy)
- Mar 31 – Apr 2 G20 meeting (econ-nat'l scty)
- April 3 – French President/NATO (econ-nat'l scty)
- Apr 4 – German Chancellor (econ-nat'l scty)
- Apr 5 – Czech president (nat'l scty)
- Apr 6-7 – Turkish leaders (econ-nat'l scty)
- Apr 7 – Troops in Iraq, Iraqi Prime Minister (CINC-econ-nat'l scty-energy)
- Apr 16-17 – Mexican President (econ-nat'l scty-energy)
- Apr 17-18 – 5th Summit of the Americas (econ-nat'l scty-energy)
- Jun 3 – King Abdullah (econ-nat'l scty-energy)
- Jun 4 – Speech in Cairo (nat'l scty)
- Jun 5 – French President (econ-nat'l scty)
- Jun 6 – 65th anniversary of D-Day (CINC)
- Jul 6 – President Medvedev (econ-nat'l scty-energy)
- Jul 7 – Prime Minister Putin and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (econ-nat'l scty-energy)
- Jul 8-9 – G8 meetings (econ-nat'l scty-energy)
- July 10 – Ghana (econ-nat'l scty)
4. Having worked at Theater Army and embassy level Civil-Military Ops, it is reciprocally important to
meet counterparts and their families on home turf to establish a face-to-face relationship which often becomes vitally important when having to deal with important international matters - such personal relationships were invaluable for us in moving Vll Corps (US) to GW1, moving the chem weapons out of USEUCOM (Steel Box), negotiating the orderly withdrawl of Soviet GFG for unification, implementing the terms of the CFE Agreements, moving the UN and EU forces into the Balkans, etc.
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He doesnt have the "testicular fortitude" to face and attempt to resolve this country's problems. So, he elects to appoint new "Czars" (ior "whipping boy" for when the problems go south) for each issue, while he runs away from a confrontation.
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5. A HUGE part of many of the issues affecting this country's important problems (economic, national security, energy dependence) and the
potential answers to them lie overseas with those on the list of visits made by the POTUS - and don't we use '
Czars' (e.g., USAF/USN/USMC/CA/PSYOP/LNO staffers on a CJSOTF) as SMEs for our operations.
6. I'm not a fan of the current POTUS - but IMO he is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't - and I don't find this
opinion piece all that damning - but YMMV.
Richard's $.02
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