Obama -- The World View

I watched the debate between Mitt Romney and president Obama in Instanbul, Turkey and shortly after that I found myself sitting at lunch with a group of English folks. A few of them had watched the debate and they were, to put it mildly, in shock. They could not understand how it could be that Barack Obama could look so uncertain, ill informed and (as one man said) foolish while Romney dominated the exchanges between the two. The Brits all told me that they knew that Obama was extremely smart and that something must have been off at the debate. After all, Obama could not be the babbler that they saw on the tv screen. I asked these people if they had ever actually heard Obama speak before when he did not have a teleprompter feeding him words that someone else had written. All but one man had never heard Obama speak except for soundbites on the news. They agreed that their views were just a repetition of what they had been told about Obama.

I also had a chance to speak to some of the Turks; none of them had watched the debate. These folks were much more worried about the fighting taking place a hundred or so miles away between forces of Turkey and Syrian army troops loyal to Bashir al Assad. Each one to whom I spoke asked me the same question: why is the United States ignoring the situation in Syria. They could not understand how the US could do nothing when the Syrian army was shelling refugees even in Turkey and at the same time slaughtering people in a wholesale manner in Syria.

Obviously, one small group of people in Istanbul are hardly representative of the world. These folks do tell us a lot, however. The media buildup for Obama was not confined to the USA alone, and the damage being done around the world due to Obama's inept foreign policy is extensive.