the first time. (Which often provides a degree of schadenfreude to us more cynical Brits)

But what the rest of us tend either forget or overlook is that Americans are usually fast learners and, in the past, have been flexible enough to recover from their initial mistakes (often due to a mixture of over convidence and an assumption that everybody else is playing by American rules) to get the final result that the USA wants.

Obama has been shown to be over naïve and over optermistic, and has come into the role of president with an unrealistic expectation of what can be achieved simply by wishing for it to be changed (Closing Gitmo is proving to be a similar "easier said than done" problem). He's not jean luc picard and cannot simply say "make it so" for it to happen.

However the real test for Obama is not these initial failures (mostly of expectation) but how quickly he and his team learn and adapt.

It's not over until the fat lady sings.

Too bad the Americans can't learn from the Brits, whose more clever foreign policy brought you India/Pakistan, the current demographics of Iraq, most of the problems in Africa, the second Iraq War ("yes, we'll go along with this invasion because we will be able to shape American policy with the resulting influence we obtain" lol).

that it better to be an enthsiastic amateur than a hard nosed professional.

However, as mistakes go, if all you can list are the above then either you are no student of history or I can claim that muddling through has worked for us Brits.

Correct me if I am wrong, but, are you claiming "enthusiastic amateur" status for the British? If I have mis-read your comment, my bad... but didn't the British institutionalise professionalism with their civil service? Enthusiastic amateurs are common amongst the non-influential general populous, but not amongst the connected. I'll leave it at that. I am no fan of many of the institutions that domicile in the UK.

is actually run by professionals and not by people who knew somebody who knew somebody?

That means that it's even worse than I thought.

Hey, the British Empire ran fine for over 300 years. It was only the ending they sorta messed up. Now let's compare it to the US empire which is unraveling after 60 years...;- )

As a cynical Brit, you should be aware of your own history. As I recall, wasn't the region including palestine and Israel controlled by British mandate until the advent of the UN? Also, did not the British promise said region to the arabs for help in WW1, and then subsequently flip around and offer it to the Jews? In essence, British bungling caused the palestinian-Israeli conflict which the Americans are trying to resolve.

The problem with Americans is that when we see a problem, our first instinct is to fix it. Even when the problem was caused by one of our allies (see also: vietnam).

Palsetinian/Israel is down to American meddling.

The Balfour delcaration was (to paraphrase) an aspirational document what basically said that a Jewish home land should be created in Palestine as long as it didn't piss off the indigenous people.

Typical muddled thinking and a case of solving a short term problem but creating a much bigger long term one.

Following the end of WW1 and the collapse of the Ottoman empire the Brits, along with the French, were given the task by the league of Nations (something that the USA chose not to join) of keeping the newly emerging middle east states in some sort of order.

After WW2, an damn near bankrup and knackered Britain was given the task by the new UN of managing the situation in Palestine and of trying to stop the influx of thousands of post WW2 jewish refugees and immigrants into the "promised land".

Britains efforts to control this destabilising influx was deliberatly undermined by the USA (due to guilt?) and we bailed out of this thankless task following a short but vicious war against jewish terrorist groups.