Obama: The Self Gelded Horse

Osama bin Laden famously told the world that given the choice between the strong horse and the weak horse, people naturally favor the strong horse.

The peerless Mark Steyn points out that Barack Obama has not just made America into a weak horse–he’s gelded us:

Osama bin Laden’s strong horse/weak horse shtick is a matter of perception as much as anything else. On Sept. 12, 2001, the United States of America had just as many cruise missiles and aircraft carriers as it had 48 hours earlier. The only difference is that the world understood that, for once, America was prepared to use them. That’s why Moscow acceded to Washington’s ‘request’ to use its old bases in Central Asia for northern access to Afghanistan. That’s why General Musharraf took seriously the Bush administration’s ‘shockingly barefaced’ threat to bomb Pakistan ‘back to the Stone Age’ if it didn’t get everything it wanted out of Islamabad. By contrast, a couple of days before, Mullah Omar and the Taliban appear to have agreed to let their al-Qaeda tenants strike America with nary a thought for the consequences to their own country.

And so here we are, nine years, billions of dollars and many dead soldiers later, watching the guy we’ve propped up with Western blood and treasure make peace overtures to the Taliban’s most virulently anti-American and pro-al-Qaeda faction in hopes of bringing them back within the government. Being perceived as the weak horse is contagious: today, were Washington to call Moscow for use of those Central Asian bases, Putin would tell Obama to get lost, and then make sneering jokes about it afterwards. Were Washington to call Islamabad as it did on Sept. 12, the Pakistanis would thank them politely and say they’d think it over and get back in 30 days. The leaders of Turkey and Brazil, two supposed American allies assiduously courted and flattered by Obama this past year, flew in to high-five Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The new President wished to reposition his nation by forswearing American power: he thought that made him the nice horse; everyone else looked on it as a self-gelding operation—or, as last week’s U.S. News & World Report headlined it, ‘World sees Obama as incompetent and amateur.’