Maybe Obama Isn't American Enough

The Obama administration has dissed one traditional American ally after another, with Britain the worst example, writes Charles Krauthammer. In trying to figure out why, he quotes a British diplomat who notes that President Obama is someone who "grew up in Hawaii, whose foreign experience was of Indonesia and who had a Kenyan father. The sentimental reflexes, if you like, are not there." Krauthammer thinks he's on the right track.

"I'm not personally inclined to neuropsychiatric diagnoses, but [this] guess is as good as anyone's. How can you explain a policy toward Britain that makes no strategic or moral sense?" he writes in the Washington Post. "And even if you can, how do you explain the gratuitous slaps to the Czechs, Poles, Indians and others? Perhaps when an Obama Doctrine is finally worked out, we shall learn whether it was pique, principle or mere carelessness." (More President Obama stories.)