(This column originally appeared in the Toronto Sun)
When outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama visited Ottawa last summer, he stopped by the Canadian Parliament to give a speech to the House of Commons.
Obama is perhaps most famous for his ability to deliver a powerful speech.
Being a strong orator is easily one of his greatest strengths.
I suppose it was this talent with words that threw the Liberal caucus into a frenzy.
Following Obama’s speech, Liberal MPs stood for an extended ovation that led to a giddy chant of “Four more years! Four more years!” for the lame-duck president.
It was a cringeworthy moment.
Watching Canadian elected officials swoon over a foreign leader was disrespectful of the place in which they stood.
Obama has that effect on people.
But he was no friend to Canada.
His North American legacy is most notably defined by his indecision and ultimate failure to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
This one decision set our economy back billions of dollars and denied employment to many Canadians, because Obama put his anti-development ideology ahead of smart policy and economic growth.
But Obama’s mistakes vis-à-vis Canada were a drop in the bucket compared to his foreign policy blunders and the disastrous international impact of his presidency.
The world is less stable, more chaotic, and less free than it was eight years ago.
The Obama doctrine of “leading from behind” has left power vacuums across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, which have been happily filled by nefarious, rogue regimes including Iran, Russia and China.
Obama ignored mass protests in Iran in 2009 over a fraudulent election, and passed up on an historic opportunity to encourage peaceful regime change.
Instead, Obama engaged with the wicked regime in Iran and, pretending it had taken a moderate turn, struck a convoluted deal to lift sanctions, remove long-term barriers to Iran’s nuclear program and provocatively undercut America’s long-time ally, Israel.
When it came to the civil war in Syria, Obama had an opportunity to stop dictator Bashar al-Assad before he ramped up his deadly rampage responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Syrians.
Obama drew a “red line” on Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
Assad crossed it, using chemical weapons to murder civilians, and Obama did nothing.
He was called on his bluff, and exposed as an isolationist — a president more comfortable using drones to drop bombs…(READ MORE)
