Does this qualify as "epic fail"?

That is a term my teenagers use all the time... "epic fail". Not sure what it means to them, but I kind of like the term in reference to our President's biggest foreign policy failure, as I see it.

Background: I'm up early today, as the kids are back to school on a Monday and it is "officially" winter outside... snow everywhere, less than 20 degrees, and everyone needs help finding gloves, hats, boots, etc. While things are getting settled, I read a headline that the Indian Navy has acquired the former Soviet Kiev-class aircraft carrier/cruiser Baku (later changed to the name Admiral Gorshkov) for an estimated US$1.8 billion dollars. This is an absolute STEAL when compared to what it would have cost the Indians to make a modern aircraft carrier, and for what they intend to use it for, I'd say the 22 year old Gorshkov will do them very well.

So, while I'm reading about the Indian plans for expanding their naval influence in the region, I encounter an article stating that the US had (important... HAD) a deal under the Bush Administration to supply the Indians with US$1.6 billion dollars worth of aircraft (mainly F-16 and F-18 variants). It would seem, however, that the deal has "gone south" since the Indian Prime Minister's visit to the White House in November, because Pakistan was "concerned" about the sale of the planes and Obama can't afford to offend our "biggest" ally in the Afghan war.

So a deal that would have made the US government $1.6 billion dollars and put more than 5,500 people to work at Boeing and Lockheed Martin for as long as 7 years (hows THAT for beating back unemployment?) is CANCELLED because Obama doesn't want to upset Pakistan? Excuse me?

India is the second largest population on the face of the earth, the fourth largest economy (and it is booming, by the way), and will have the fourth largest standing armed forces globally by 2012. It has more Muslims within its borders than Pakistan does, but with less than 1% of the conflict and strife (meaning terror attacks) associated with radical Islam. It is the single, largest democratic society to ever have existed in all of human history. It is (without question) a regional "super-power" that has the capacity to reach targets from East Africa to SE Asia with a variety of nuclear weapons on any one of four delivery platforms. All this... and PAKISTAN is our biggest ally in the War in Afghanistan???

Didn't Pakistan spawn the Taliban? Isn't Pakistan where Osama bin Laden is right now? Didn't seven very large and particularly deadly suicide bombers just strike there recently, killing more then 170 people in two of the largest (and supposedly safest) cities in the nation? Isn't Pakistan the reason that the contract for $1.6 billion in planes was CANCELLED?

So, we cancel the deal for the planes, and who gets the money instead? Putin's "mini-me" Medvedev and the Russian Federation. India gains, Russian gains, Pakistan gains (sort of) and the US LOSES AGAIN.

Bush didn't have a lot of success in the region when it comes to foreign policy... but his ability to build a relationship with the Indians was definitely one of them, and one that could have been a HUGE boon to the Obama White House. Obama could have reaped the benefits of Bush's relations and never had to give any credit at all... but because it was Bush that began the effort, it HAD to be abandoned as another failed Bush policy. The Indians have the cash, and they have the need to modernize and expand their military capability, and if the US isn't going to keep its word on contracts and sales of arms and military technology, they will go to places like Russia, France, and China to get what they need. Win-win for the Indians... lose-lose for the US and Obama.

Yep... I call that "epic fail".