Charlize Theron is looking really good these days; talk about aging well. I don't see a lot of the distinctions you are making between Bush and Obama here (and who the heck cares whether someone is a "natural" multilateralist or not, it sounds like he's more willing to streak at the UN or something). And I think when you talk about worldwide opinions you seem to be mistaking Western Europe for the world (Obama is around the same approval as Bush pretty much everywhere except in Europe). That said, Obama's foreign policy is definitely an improvemet, and light years ahead of Bush's first term, but it's more like he added a layer of subtlety to Bush's 2nd term.

I find myself siding with David Bosco on this exchange.

Here is his key observation:

'The vaunted shift toward a targeted killing policy in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere is not being done multilaterally. Quite the contrary. The Obama administration has had little time for the complaints of UN human rights officials, for example, about its targeted killing program. It does not seek Security Council approval for cross-border strikes, including the one that killed Osama bin Laden, even though international law arguably requires that. Very much like previous administrations, the Obama administration talks up multilateral instruments when convenient and mostly ignores them when they're inconvenient.'

One cannot separate(as you attempt to do) the unilateral, unaccountable, extra-judicial covert war undertaken by the Obama administration in numerous Middle Eastern nations, from the question of whether there has been a pivot to a 'more' multilateral approach to foreign policy.

Indeed, there is ample evidence that American exceptionalism has found renewed life in the secret machinations of the CIA, the Joint Special Operations Command & other instruments of 'unilateral' national power.

on surface it looks soso...below the surface, it stinks.

of course, no liberals would ever admit that...

The Middle East is in complete turmoil, Iran is leading the world to disaster, Russia and the stupid PR contrived "reset button" is a complete disaster, Pakistan is a disaster, South America is a disaster in the making, appeasement is on the rise, sacrificing allies is in vogue, confronting China is stupid, and the US is considerably weakened as a result of mistakes, misteps and failures in all of these areas.

I see nothing positive about his foreign policy. Nothing.

... it's extremely discouraging to find two self-applauding wise heads arguing about the degree of surgicalism in drone attacks. Surgeons, by and large, don't hack into the nurses, anesthetists and others standing inoffensively alongside the person lying on the operating table at the time.

When how lethal the drones are among the innocent became an embarrassment to Defense, it gave up its original and more (well, sightly more) honest practice of admitting that the drones killed bystanders, and attaching seemingly accurate estimates of just how many bystanders there had been. The estimates were usually low, and when this was proved, Defense stopped admitting it was droning any civilians to death at all. Bosco and Rothkopf seem to take this as evidence that magical drones today kill only baddies. A mistake, and a triumph for shabby Defense practice.

Well, a short-term triumph. It stains the Defense side of the current interchanges about how exactly the US air assets in Afghanistan killed those Pakistani soldiers. Reputations for honesty once lost are won back only with great difficulty.

It's irrelevant hair splitting and egotistical turf wars between globalists of pernicious think tanks and secretive organisations as blood continues to be spilled around the world. It's like an archontic circle jerk.

. . . at the deference seeming granted automatically to leaders and former leaders in this country.

Having said that, should Bush get credit for his own shifts away from his ghastly first-term policies to the extent that he made such shifts?

Having launched an unnecessary and self-harming war against the wrong country -- sending billions, perhaps trillions of dollars irretrievably down a rathole, killed almost five thousand Americans and at least a hundred thousand Iraqis and having as a result handed Iran a region-changing victory -- Bush gets the same golden parachute sendoff that a CEO who's wrecked his company gets?

Well, that seems to be the American way, now.

The man needs to be seen clearly -- while he's still alive to enjoy the reviews -- as a blundering incompetent who did more harm to his country than any mullah or al Qaeda fighter.

Whose team of clowns muffed the chance to nail Osama bin Laden.

Two entities are now widely despised among Muslims and other peoples of the world -- Osama bin Laden and the United States of America. Osama because he was what he was -- a murderous hypocrite -- and the US ever more so because of Bush's wars and our devotion to Israel.

Obama's pipsqueak actions following the Cairo b.s. have only emphasized the seriousness of the spectacle. Is America an evil empire, or just a pitiful helpless giant that can't control the actions of a client state?

Nice work.

Obama has "improved" the situation by adding the assassination of American citizens to Bush's repertoire of arrogant failures and assering the right to strike anyone, anywhere, at our discretion. This has been aptly described as the "Likudization" of American domestic and foreign policy.

Obama's policy, in my view, is even more pernicious and will blow back ever more serious consequences. He's a lot smarter and better-educated than Bush, but his aim is still to preserve the tattering world hegemony we should never have pursued.

People around the world are not fooled.

“Pull back on unilateral actions by the United States, except in extraordinary circumstances,” Blair urged during an onstage, hourlong interview with CBS’s Lesley Stahl at the Aspen Security Forum. “I think we need to change — in those three countries — in a dramatic way.”

“We’re alienating the countries concerned, because we’re treating countries just as places where we go attack groups that threaten us. We are threatening the prospects for long-term reform raised by the Arab Spring … which would make these countries capable and willing allies who could in fact knock that threat down to a nuisance level,” Blair said.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/60199.html

As the statement made by the Blair was correct now the time is that there should be a change in those three country due to which their thought against that people in the mind could get changed. by which the people who are not related in that action well get justice. Rose

Difference of opinion. Let it go.