EDITORIAL: Would Obama repeat his mistakes?

OPINION:

Washington’s chattering class is still buzzing over the question posed to Jeb Bush — would he, knowing what he knows now about his brother’s shock-and-awe campaign against Saddam Hussein and Iraq, do it again? (Having been burned once by sitting on a red-hot wood stove, would he sit there again?)

In the spirit of that question, similar questions might be usefully posed to President Obama, beginning with, with what he has learned about the Middle East, would he have made his famous apology in Cairo in 2009 for past American sins, and would he make reaching out to Islam his principle foreign policy?

With what he knows now about President Vladimir Putin of Russia, would he have removed the bases so laboriously negotiated in Poland and the Czech Republic, damaging the American worldwide anti-missile defense? With what he knows now about growing threats to international passage through the Sea of Japan, the South China Sea, the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb between Arabia and Africa, and the Suez Canal, would he continue to reduce the size and effectiveness of the U.S. Navy?

With what he knows now, would he have advocated a return to Israel’s indefensible 1967 borders, inviting a condescending public rebuke and lecture by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? With what he knows now, would he have sent the Churchill bust back to the British as a gesture of anti-colonial contempt, ignoring the Special Relationship, which he is now scrambling to repair?

With what he knows now, would he have tried harder to negotiate a status of forces agreement to preserve U.S. stability in Iraq, which likely would have prevented the approaching collapse of the Baghdad government? With what he knows now, would he have dismissed the Islamic State as the “junior varsity”, ignoring it, and only now fumble for a strategy to halt the growing power of its caliphate in the Middle East, North and Central Africa?

With what he knows now, would he have drawn a red line and threatened military action if Syria’s Bashar Assad used poison gas on his people, only to back down at the last minute, calling all American international pledges into question? With what he knows now, would he have lent American support to the overthrow of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak? Would he have supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s one-man, one-vote, one-election, only to deny support for Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, thus weakening the U.S.-Egypt alliance?

With what he knows now, would he have tried to “lead from behind” in the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi without on-the- ground support, throwing Libya into the chaos which Hillary Clinton’s State Department was not able to deal with? With what he knows now, would he have ordered American forces to rescue Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and his three colleagues from their six-hour fight for their lives?

With what he knows now, would he have initiated negotiations to enable Iran to reach the “nuclear threshold” and propose permitting the Tehran mullahs to continue to develop uranium enrichment facilities?

With what he knows now, would he have endorsed Hillary Clinton’s “pivot to Asia” without a strategy to halt Chinese aggression in the South China Sea? With what he knows now, would he have reopened diplomatic relations with Cuba, for which Raul Castro has made no concessions but opened a new round of oppression?

Alas. Probably.