http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ivan-eland/is-obama-weak-on-foreign_b_6179902.html

Ivan Eland Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty, The Independent Institute

Is Obama Weak on Foreign Policy?

Posted: 11/18/2014

One reason that Barack Obama is slumping in the polls is that Republicans have successfully painted him as weak on foreign policy. Yet, during his tenure so far, Obama has used air power to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, surged American forces in Afghanistan to satisfy the U.S. military, re-entered the civil war in Iraq, and extended the bombing to Syria. He found and killed Osama bin Laden, which George W. Bush was not focused enough to do for seven years, and also expanded Bush's drone wars against terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Obama's "pivot to Asia" really means beefing up U.S. alliances and military presence to run a neo-containment policy against a rising China. Finally, Obama is augmenting military forces and conducting more NATO exercises in Eastern Europe in response to Russia's mischief in Ukraine. Only to an American public that has long forgotten the nation's founders' military restraint, and embraced the post-World War II policy aberration of acting as the world's policeman, would this record seem weak.