There is plenty to criticize in President Obama's record, but it never comes up because so much time is spent on unhinged analysis.

Reuters

Before running for Congress, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) spent more than 20 years in the military, served multiple tours in Iraq, retired as a lieutenant colonel, and spent time in Afghanistan working for a private defense contractor. Elected as a Tea Party Republican in 2010, you'd think he'd be perfectly suited to formulating a sophisticated critique of President Obama's foreign policy, or at least his actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's just how partisan politics works.

Instead Rep. West is one of many in the GOP whose foreign policy views are so disconnected from reality that they're self-discrediting. The most recent example concerns the agreement that Obama just reached with his Afghan counterpart. Though short on specifics, it commits the U.S. to helping Afghanistan's government until 2024, and calls for at least some U.S. troops to remain beyond 2014, when NATO troops leave, most likely to help train Afghans and fight Al Qaeda.

Perhaps its a good plan, given our options. Perhaps not. What sends the mind reeling is West's analysis. "I look at what happened between President Obama and President Karzai as a 1930s, Chamberlain, Hitler moment," he told an interviewer. "There is not going to be peace in our time."