Making It Worse: Obama’s Middle East

The Economist inaccurately asserted in 2008 that "George W. Bush has presided over the most catastrophic collapse in America's reputation since the second world war." It was not an uncommon viewpoint, certainly, but inaccurate nonetheless, for W had presided over the destruction of the strongest Islamo-Arab imperial state and replaced it with a democracy stronger than its critics wanted to suppose. What Barack Obama has done is pretend the Economist's assertion was in any way accurate, and the result is that American victory was thrown away.