Posted on 02/25/2005 6:56:47 AM PST by quidnunc
The little flute made the trite racket of meaningless "friendship" and the snakes all looked extremely European. Thus does the grand fence-mending excursion of George W. Bush now happily draw to a close. For a four-night tour, it had everything — fancy dinners, giant-sized photo ops, flatulent rhetoric, and close media analyses of handshakes and asides. In fact, Bush's charm offensive had everything — except charm.
That leaves only offensiveness, which of course was provided by the Europeans and their lighthearted media. Columnists and news items blasted Bush and the U.S. — one Guardian ranter: "Why are we welcoming this torturer?" — while polls showed that Europeans not only dislike Dubya, they don't care much for the electorate he rode in on either.
None of this was unexpected. In fact, we've all seen it before in Colin Powell's repeated and increasingly pitiful pleas for French and German support at the U.N. and elsewhere. The results of that ersatz strategy was to give strength to the arguments of our adversaries and to allow them to impede American policy in Iraq, despite the deep complicity of many of them, and especially France, in the corruption that kept Saddam's boats afloat.
In fact, one might argue that by allowing France and Germany to play the roles of arbiter and spoiler over and over again, the Bush administration's nice-guy ploys have done as much damage to U.S.-EU relations as the invasion itself. Every good cowpoke knows that if your livestock won't go where you want them to go, the best way to negotiate is to make sure all their other options suck. Maybe Bush is a frog-whisperer, but so far, it's not working.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Sometimes Bush absolutely amazes me. This trip to Europe was absolutely brilliant. With the upper hand, he rides into Europe knowing that there is nothing he needs from them. He makes the obligatory comments about working together, etc. It was as if to say, "the U.S. is marching onward and upward...you can be with us or you can be against us. It is up to you. I am through with you now. Gimme a call if you want to work together, otherwise, you are largely irrelevant to us." As usual, this is all IMHO.
excellent point
Little Vlad's gonna have 'some splainin' to do if his lost nukes detonate somewhere.
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