President Obama delivered this year’s commencement address to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. on June 2.  It contained several insights into his own vision as to the why and wherefore of his foreign policy of smart diplomacy and engagement.

For starters, Obama claims that it is either engagement or isolationism.  Either we engage in the “festering” problems “over there” or we retreat into “isolationism” and ignore all festering problems over there.  We should not “wash our hands of conflicts that seem intractable [and] let other countries fend for themselves.”  The Obama administration is proud that the U.S. is the 911 for the rest of the world:

When there is a problem around the world, they do not call Beijing or Moscow. They call us. And we lead, not by dictating to others, but by working with them as partners, by treating other countries and their peoples with respect. Not by lecturing them.

Seems he forgot to mention leading by drone strikes and covert operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.  Evidently, smart diplomacy is abetted by a little drone diplomacy.  The real kicker is, of course, leading by money and blood diplomacy – the Obama share of the 6 trillion dollars and three thousand military lives lost since 9/11.

As this article from American Thinker points out, even former heads of Obama’s intelligence agencies admit that the Obama administration’s foreign policy has been a flop.  Indeed, not only has it been a flop, from Libya to Afghanistan to Iraq and now Syria, but our story over there has been a story of blood, money down the drain, and turning a blind eye to genocidal persecution of non-Islamic religions.  But in the mind of our president it has been a story of America being asked to use the great diplomatic kills of his administration to resolve international conflicts – a story of partnership and mutual respect:

When there is a problem around the world, they do not call Beijing or Moscow. They call us. And we lead, not by dictating to others, but by working with them as partners, by treating other countries and their peoples with respect. Not by lecturing them.

As Victor Davis Hansen concluded in his review of the Obama “smart” foreign policy, which he sees as little more than being in the disastrous appeasement mode, “[a]ppeasement continues not because it works, but because it serves the pretensions of narcissists.”