FISKING KRAUTHAMMER.

Yes, it's another Friday morning with America's favorite columnist! Or something! Watch and learn as Charles Krauthammer attempts to criticize Obama's trip abroad:

President Obama took note of North Korea's missile launch just hours earlier ... A more fatuous presidential call to arms is hard to conceive.

How about "Bring them on"?

What "strong international response" did Obama muster to North Korea's brazen defiance of a Chapter 7 -- "binding," as it were -- U.N. resolution prohibiting such a launch?The obligatory emergency Security Council session produced nothing. No sanctions. No resolution. Not even a statement. China and Russia professed to find no violation whatsoever. They would not even permit a U.N. statement that dared express "concern," let alone condemnation. ... The very next day, his defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs.

I'm not sure why Krauthammer is so exercised about the lack of a U.N. resolution; if there had been an agreement on one, he would be complaining about how toothless the U.N. is for merely offering "condemnation." His latter point seems to be 'if we only wasted billions of dollars on our non-functioning missile defense system, we'd be able to defend ourselves from non-functioning North Korean missiles.'

How does U.S. ratification of that treaty -- which America has, in any case, voluntarily abided by for 17 years -- cause North Korea to cease and desist, and cause Iran to turn nukes into plowshares?

If we've voluntarily abided by it for 17 years, why not ratify it? Also, I'm pretty sure no one is predicting that ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty will end our conflicts with North Korea or Iran, but I guess Krauthammer is used to simplistic policies. Bonus John Dickerson fail: Slate's King of False Equivalence accused the president of exaggeration for arguing that his opponents unfairly criticized his initial diplomatic outreach for not immediately stopping Iran's nuclear program. Dickerson writes that "no one said that." But somebody is just did! Back to the Kraut...

Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

Does Krauthammer think that Americans haven't been complicit in any of those things? Or does he just prefer lying about history?

And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.

Or not. The 5,000 new European soldiers who are coming to Afghanistan represents a larger increase than President Bush was able to secure from our allies during his second term.

From Russia, he got no help on Iran.

From Fox News, today: "Russian President Dmitry Medvedev admitted to President Obama during their summit meeting last week that American intelligence estimates about the pace of Iran's progress toward nuclear weapons capability have been more accurate than Russia's ... As a result, Moscow is now said to be open to "much more severe" punishment for Tehran if the regime there persists in enriching uranium into 2010."

After all, it was Obama, not some envious anti-American leader, who noted with satisfaction that a new financial order is being created today by 20 countries, rather than by "just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy."

Who says imperialism is dead?

It is passing strange for a world leader to celebrate his own country's decline.

If Krauthammer is admitting that the United States is in decline, I'd be interested to hear who he thinks is responsible for that. None of this, incidentally, is to argue that Obama's trip abroad was an unqualified success. But it has been the most successful round of American diplomacy in at least a decade. Krauthammer's determination to stick his head in the sand and ignore the realities of global politics would be risible except that he is such an influential columnist. I suppose as George Will goes, so goes the Post op-ed page...

-- Tim Fernholz