AND THERE HE GOES AGAIN – AT 8:34 A.M. ET:  The foreign-policy pundits are buzzing about Barack Obama's latest gaffe, where our closest ally, Great Britain, was again the fall guy.  Our old friend Andrew Malcolm, at IBD, sets the stage:

OK, picture this: President George W. Bush, he of the cast-iron Texas tongue, at a news conference concluding an international summit.

He's asked about a dispute involving Argentina and Great Britain, our closest overseas ally, the one that's lost 408 soldiers by our side in Afghanistan, where we've fought a decade together to prevent a second 9/11.

In his answer, Bush refers to the disputed territory by the wrong name, misplacing the islands by some 8,000 miles. Worse than his geographic ignorance, instead of backing Britain, whose prime minister he just buddy-buddied at an NCAA game and White House state dinner, Bush says, well, that's not really something he thinks the United States would take sides on.

Britain?

Or Argentina?

Seriously?

Do you think there might be some prolonged outraged news coverage back home about the latest Bush blunder, this time a two-fer?

Well, Bush never did that. But Barack Obama did last weekend.

And...this is painful:

“We’re going to remain neutral,” Obama said at a news conference with President Juan Manuel Santos at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia. “This is not something that we typically intervene in.”

Oh really? Except the United States did intervene in the very same dispute back in 1982, when Obama was almost 21, long after his Indonesian childhood. Back then, Argentina invaded the British overseas territory of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.

COMMENT:  We aided Britain back then, as well we should have.  Britain is always there for us, the Argentinians are not, and had no problem harboring ex-Nazis after World War II. 

The current Argentine government, not warm toward America, has reignited the Falklands dispute, and the American president refuses to take the side of Britain.  The Brits will remember the next time Obama needs a favor.  I dread the possibility of this man getting a second term...with a new secretary of state.

April 18, 2012