WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — President Barack Obama sent a clear message in his State of the Union address that regime change around the world remains his order of the day, retired US diplomat and former Republican congressional advisor Jim Jatras told Sputnik.
The United States must avoid repeating the mistakes of the Iraq war and avoid attempting to take over nations where there is chaos, Obama claimed in his speech on Tuesday evening.
"In foreign affairs, Obama barely changed course from the disastrous policies of George W. Bush. ‘Regime change’ remains the order of the day," Jatras said. "Bush had his in Iraq. Obama had Libya and has tried, but so far failed, in Syria."
Obama’s support for forces toppling established governments across the Arab world in the-called "Arab Spring" of 2011 had rapidly backfired and created a series of collapsed states in which Islamic fanaticism now thrived, Jatras pointed out.
"The ‘Arab Spring’ has become the ‘Jihadist Winter.’ But Obama pretends the Islamic State is just a rag-tag band with some pickup trucks," the former diplomat argued.
Despite his claims to the contrary in his State of the Union speech, Obama’s years in office would be remembered for continuing his predecessor George W. Bush’s disastrous policies of waging war around the world, especially across the Middle East without regard for civilian casualties, Jatras maintained.
Obama had passively accepted, Jatras noted, the disastrous policies and commitments he inherited from Bush.
"This continuity reflects the fact that Obama doesn’t much care about foreign policy. He reads what [US Ambassador the UN] Samantha Power and [National Security adviser] Susan Rice (and before that, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) put on his teleprompter," he said.
Obama also remained committed to a disastrous "open door" immigration policy that would Islamic extremists to flood into the country and destroy domestic security, Jatras predicted.
The US president "won’t be happy until his mistake, like [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel’s, duplicates in America what we saw on New Year’s Eve in Cologne," where hundreds of German women were attacked by a mob of around more than a thousand Muslim men, Jatras said.
Obama had made great strides in transforming the United States from a center-right, basically conservative country with a recognizable national culture and historic traditions into a mini-United Nations: a multiethnic, multiracial, multi-religious, microcosm with no defining core, he observed.
"All in all, Obama should go down in history as our second worse president ever. I make that caveat only because first prize should go to his predecessor [George W. Bush]. Of course it might get even worse — if Hillary Clinton is our next president," Jatras added.
Obama’s contempt for the traditional American identity was palpable, he concluded.
