Something is amiss...friendly with dictators?!

Chávez has attacked democratic traditions and has put Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of power, political persecution, and intimidation.

An autocratic dictator who abuses human rights and undermines democracy being warmly embraced by the American president. There's something wrong with that picture.

Then there was the incident of President Barack Obama seeming to bow before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the G-20 summit in London. The president's people denied it was a bow, but it certainly was a sign of great deference from the American president to the dictator of a country who just six weeks ago sentenced a 75-year-old woman to 40 lashes for having been secluded with her nephew after he delivered bread to her home. This is the same Abdullah whom, when asked why Saudi Arabia prohibits the public practice of religions other than Islam, said, "It is absurd to impose on an individual or a society rights that are alien to its beliefs or principles."

Obama is also pursuing a renewed relationship with Cuba, a country which engages in systemic human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials and extrajudicial executions.

Turkey, Obama boldly declared that "the United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam." But the person who was at war with Islam, Saddam Hussein, the man who killed nearly one million Muslims, was removed by a country which has already paid with the lives of 4,500 of its servicemen and women. The same is true of the Taliban, another group whom the Obama administration is considering talking to, who beat Muslim women in the streets of Afghanistan. Yet the president seems reluctant to publicly identify these real enemies of Islam.

While he was campaigning for the presidency, Obama promised, "As president I will recognize the Armenian genocide." But in a press conference in Ankara with President Abdullah Gul, he refused to use the word "genocide" when challenged by a reporter on the issue.