“This century’s first test of our leadership arrived with terrible force on September 11, 2001. When the United States was attacked, the entire world stood with us. We could have pursued a broad policy of reengagement with the world, yet instead we squandered this broad support through a series of policies that drove away our friends and allies.”

I still don’t know what re-engagement means, but which policies “drove away our friends and allies”?

I can think of a few, specifically:

1. Demanding foreign institutions allow us to track the funds used to commit the terrorist attacks. This was particularly irksome to the owners of the fabled “Swiss Banks” who pride themselves on the selling point of untraceability that so many of their clients dearly love. A great bulk of our initial intelligence on Al Qaeda came directly from transactional data bullied from international financiers (who are allegedly all Zionist pigs, anyway, by the way.)

2. Exposing the Oil for Food scandal and its perpetrators in the UN and supposed allies such as France and Russia. This is what made us bitter enemies leading up to the Iraq invasion, and the duplicity of supposed friends including Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac, who lied and murdered to protect their filthy lucre. The United States showed incredible diplomatic grace by not immediately evicting the United Nations from our soil and declaring war on the government of France, who it was exposed was actively working with Saddam Hussein in opposition to weapons inspections and the embargo. France was materially at War with the United States from at least the mid 1990s until 2003 by proxy support of the Iraqi dictator in violation of the 1991 cease-fire. And from 2001 to 2003 and continuing after the invasion of Iraq openly incited every country whom it had influence with towards hostility to the U.S. Russia was hardly less complicit, but was hardly considered our ally, and by agreeing to US military forces (only a few hundred) to pass through it’s former (now independent) satellites including Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, gained a considerable amount of good will, which has definitely been squandered in more recent years through it’s open antagonism and increasing alliance with Communist China.

3. The invasion of Iraq itself. The deposing of Saddam Hussein, one would think, is hardly a thing to be lamented, but as mentioned above, his corrupt regime had bought the support of many individuals, including the Secretary General of the UN, many leaders in France and other countries. So the “friends of Saddam” were angered by his ouster, and the policy which had been at least nominally in place since 1998 when declared by then president Bill Clinton when brought into action forced many friends to choose sides between America and the Iraqi dictator. Sadly, many of them chose the latter, spurred by a reckless Chirac whose chauvinism and ignorance lead him to believe that America would lose the contest. Also, many Arabs, for different reasons, including those espoused by Al Qaeda’s leadership concerning “infidels on Muslim soil” (sounding curiously like a medieval crusade) and many states who were already directly hostile to the United States including Syria and Iran, who did not welcome increased American military presence in the area, but also other countries who feared that the ouster of one dictator could lead to the illegitimacy of the claims of others to lead, and this led particularly to animosity from otherwise neutral parties from Africa to Venezuela, spurred likely by the rhetoric of Russian, French, and Chinese diplomats who knew that by their own standing did not need to fear retaliation by a mostly peace loving USA but for their several reasons wished to see support weaken.

4. China in particular, whose pride was hurt by earlier accidents including the bombing of their embassy in Belgrade, a mid-air collision with a US survellance plane, increasing US support of Taiwan, especially the gift of Patriot missiles, and confrontation with their puppet satellite, North Korea. China, due to nearly infinite investment and credit backed by western bankers, has rapidly expanded and sees the US as a military competitor with old grievances from the Korean and Vietnam wars which fought against it. Those wars were to the Chinese the equivalent of the US invading Poland and the Ukraine would have been to the U.S.S.R. China has greatly expanded its influence in Africa, particularly in Zimbabwe and the Sudan. It’s influence is even felt in Latin America thanks to Fidel Castro’s communist ties and his “Bolivaran” allies Hugo Chavez and ilk. Also China’s lease of the Panama Canal Zone was a coup de grace and they see the Cocaine fields of Columbia and other South American countries as retribution for an imagined Opium War for which they blame the U.S., when it was in fact British, Dutch, and Portuguese merchants primarily who supplied the demand for the drug, which was a Chinese vice long before Commodore Perry steamed into Nagasaki bay and initiated the U.S. stake in the Orient.  Perceiving American weakness they seek to exploit it and undermine our support internationally, principally through bribery (using our own funds loaned to them for development), but also intimidation.