I'm catching up on a couple of loose strands from last week. One is Charles Krauthammer's column on Obama's apology tour, It's Your Country Too, Mr. President. An excerpt:
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.But wait, there's more. Read the whole thing.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.
He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.
From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.
And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his bridge partner behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?
When Austria is mocking you, you're having a bad week. Yet who can blame Frau Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?
Bush fans might be interested in this article by Eli Saslow on the "insular" life George and Laura are leading in Texas. Mr. Saslow, that abject admirer of the current president's pectorals, is apparently immune to President Bush's charms but gives us a few insights nevertheless:
The classroom windows were covered with white paper to prevent outsiders from peering in. Secret Service agents were standing guard. The students were too star-struck to take notes. Bush stood at the center of the classroom, at home in the 33 percent, and offered an early summation of his presidency.
You make your decisions based on principles, he said. And you never worry about popularity or polls.
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2 comments:
All of Obama's apologies say to the world is, "I am weak." The rest of the national leaders that he dealt with (who actually have leadership and negotiating experience) don't care if he ever apologizes. But when they see the weakness it communicates they probably figure they can keep quiet and if he keeps talking he will eventually give up the farm. They're just waiting to see the depth of his weakness. I imagine some of them are convinced they'll get something for nothing from him as he will eventually need some kind foreign relations triumph to shore him up at home. The MSM merely telling people what a great success he is outside of the US is not going to fool people forever.
Glad to see everything likes to mention "shoring" things here and there... hmm...
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