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Did anyone squirm or feel embarrassed when President Obama allowed Dictator Chavez to give him a book about the evils of the United States? The initial diplomatic handshake could be overlooked, but it was definitely embarrassing to watch Obama accepting, with a smile, a gift from this guy who had previously called him an "ignoramus", and had called another U.S. President "el Diablo" at the United Nations.

This blunder, on the heels of his European fiasco where he apologized for the United States' policies before he took office, raises serious questions about his vision and understanding of what America is all about. Some critics attribute this ineptitude to naivety, but when viewed in the context of such additional actions as deliberately overriding his CIA advisors and releasing memos about interrogation methods, Obama's agenda has to be seriously questioned.

The Obama news consortium justifies these missteps as necessary to the "restart" process through which Obama will re-establish the United States as a respected partner in the international community. This is, after all, what he promised during the campaign, when he said he would engage in direct discussions with Iran without preconditions.

The idiocy of this policy was revealed when Obama's bootlicking backfired in Geneva during the U.N. Conference on Racism. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, must not have been impressed by Obama's apologies and promises. This Iranian President didn't turn down the volume one bit on his vicious, racist attacks on Israel or the United States. Incidentally, he didn't slow his quest to process uranium either. In fact, despite Obama's promises and groveling, Ahmadinejad spit in Obama's face, earlier this month, by announcing Iran's first nuclear Fuel Manufacturing Plant.

Obama continues to look more and more like a Neville Chamberlain in his foreign policy attitude. This posture produced nothing recently when he asked NATO partners to send more troops to Afghanistan. They yawned, promised a few "support" personnel, but flatly refused to provide fighting forces to do the heavy lifting.

This NATO posture also allows captured pirates to be set free. Critics of this "turn 'em loose" policy say that when pirates are caught red-handed attacking a vessel in international waters, that the thing to do is to "shoot the bastards and feed the sharks." It wouldn't take long to solve the piracy problems off the coast of Africa were this policy adopted. But it is not the politically correct way to handle the situation. The one captured pirate who escaped the more effective method of pirate-disposal, has been brought to the United States, given three squares a day, a defense attorney, and all the rights provided to law-abiding Americans. This policy will surely deter piracy almost as effectively as the NATO policy.

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