Gordon Robison: Obama Toes the Bush Line on American Foreign Policy

Gordon Robison teaches political science at the University of Vermont.

A number of US actions over the last few weeks — the Al Awlaqi killing, the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, even the State Department's slightly crazed pursuit of a diplomat who published a book it did not like — all lead back to the same basic question: why, when it comes to foreign policy, is US President Barack Obama so much like George W. Bush?

The most recent example of the Obama administration's mirroring of its predecessor is the alleged Iranian terror plot. This focuses on an Iranian sleeper agent who has supposedly been lying low in Texas for almost three decades, failing to make a living as a used car salesman.

According to the Justice Department he agreed to act as a middleman, using Iranian government money to hire a Mexican drug gang to assassinate the Saudi ambassador by blowing up a Washington restaurant.

An odd-sounding plot supposedly ‘foiled', even though it was far from fruition. Law enforcement officials who may have crossed the line into entrapment in their eagerness to announce yet another high-profile terror arrest. A suspect who looks more like a deluded loser than a terrorist mastermind. Where have we seen all of this before?..