Photo credit: Gage Skidmore
There was a time, early in Barack Obama’s presidency, when it was considered outrageous to worry out loud that the new president might treat enemies better than allies, run down friends and elevate foes, show solidarity with anti-American leaders, maybe even release dangerous terrorists or sympathize with traitors.
And here we are.
Obama has accommodated leaders hostile to America, like Vladimir Putin in Russia and Bashar al-Assad in Syria. He strengthened a rogue regime in Iran and boosted despotic leaders in Cuba. At the same time, he chastised and isolated Israel and abandoned friendly governments in places like Afghanistan and Ukraine.
He's freed from Guantanamo dozens of jihadists and high-ranking al Qaeda terrorists, including some who have promised to kill Americans upon their release, and he's done this even as U.S. men and women in uniform and in the intelligence community fight and die to protect us from the threat that these enemies represent.
When the anti-American leader of Uruguay accepted five "high-risk" Guantanamo detainees and slandered U.S. troops and intelligence officials for having perpetrated a "heinous kidnapping" to capture them, Obama didn't challenge the statement but thanked him for his humanitarian gesture. When Obama sought the return of Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who had abandoned his unit in Afghanistan and had been taken captive by jihadists in Pakistan, he released five senior Taliban operatives, all deemed high-risk for a return to terror. Bergdahl's platoon-mates considered him a traitor; Obama's national security adviser portrayed him as a hero, "an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield" who had served his country with "honor and distinction."
And on Tuesday, of course, Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, who leaked hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. intelligence and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, causing irreparable harm to U.S. interests. The damage wasn't theoretical. According to an Associated Press article from the prosecution of Manning, the U.S. government argued in court, "al Qaeda leaders reveled in WikiLeaks' publication of reams of classified U.S. documents" and "al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden asked for and received from an associate the Afghanistan battlefield reports that WikiLeaks published."
Obama defenders would no doubt argue that such an analysis of Obama's presidency leaves out important context and greatly simplifies complicated matters. That's true. But it's also true that Obama did all of this. And that's the real outrage.
With two days left, what more will he do?