World anger at President Obama and his administration goes beyond the National Security Agency’s spying scandal. I guess Hillary Clinton jumped ship at the right time. Thanks to fugitive leaker Edward Snowden, the world has turned on the very country he claims he loves. President Obama should stop apologizing for what the NSA has done and fix the problem.  That might be a tall order, since the Patriot Act opened to the door to NSA’s far-reaching activities. Still, I can’t believe there isn’t more of a push-back from the Obama Administration on Edward Snowden’s revelations. Not a day goes by when we don’t hear another ‘bombshell’ about a NSA program. How did Edward Snowden get his hands on so much in such a short period of time?

I don’t believe President Obama had no knowledge that Angela Merkel’s cell phone was being tapped. Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot and Angela Merkel was tapping President Obama’s phone? Can you imagine the fallout? What’s equally troubling to me is the fact that we have yet another scandal for which President Obama said he had no knowledge of. If that is factual, then I am beginning to worry about what really happens in the Oval Office and who is calling the shots. This is reminiscent of the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney Administration. Kinda takes me back to Hillary Clinton’s campaign ad about that 3 a.m. phone call.

The quarrels differ in their causes and degrees of seriousness. As a whole, however, they pose a new foreign policy headache for an administration whose overseas track record is seen in many quarters at home and abroad as reactive and lacking direction.

In Europe and the Middle East, rifts that once would’ve been quietly smoothed over have exploded into headlines and public remonstrations.

The uproar in Europe over revelations from fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the United States spied on as many as 35 government leaders, including Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, has become so great that early Friday 28 European leaders said Merkel and French President Francois Hollande would open negotiations with the United States over a “no-spying agreement.”

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, already fed up with U.S. reluctance to get more deeply involved in the Syrian civil war, has become alarmed by Obama’s overtures to the Saudis’ archenemy, Iran, with which the Saudis are locked in a battle for regional supremacy. Reports indicate it is considering breaking over cooperation with the Obama administration on a range of issues, including training for so-called moderate Syrian rebels. Source: McClatchy

Spain’s government has summoned the US Ambassador James Costos to address allegations that the National Security Agency collected data on millions of telephone calls in Spain. The New York Times reports, Spanish newspapers El Mundo and El País reported that the NSA recently collected data on 60 million telephone calls in Spain. The papers based their reporting on documents viewed by Glenn Greenwald that were provided by Edward Snowden. This is very troubling and I don’t see how the Obama Administration will escape this unscathed.

I do believe much of the domestic problems President Obama has encountered is mainly partisan gridlock on the part of the Republicans, whose mission, as stated by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was to make him a one-term president. That failed miserably, so they went on to holding up nominations for government posts, stalling the jobs bill and the disastrous government shutdown, among other things. On the international front, it’s a whole other ball game. The Obama Administration’s foreign policy is a muddled mess. There’s just no other way to say it.

This was cross-posted from The Hinterland Gazette.