It’s easy to imagine the reaction of Republican critics of former President Barack Obama if tiny, semi-autonomous Gibraltar had released an impounded Iranian oil tanker in direct defiance of his administration’s request to turn it over to American authorities.
“No one fears him, not even Gibraltar,” we would have heard. Or perhaps, “Obama lost Britain.”
Curiously, there have been no such attacks so far on President Donald Trump, on whose watch this actually happened Sunday. But it has become fashionable to pin all of the world’s current troubles on Trump’s mishandling of U.S. foreign policy. These attacks do echo Republican criticisms of Obama. They are just as unwarranted and just as reckless.