Free Republic

Jeff Gedmin lured me to Berlin the other week with the prospect of good talk — specifically, an interesting exchange of views with some journalists, politicians, policymakers, Foreign Ministry planners, Britain's ambassador to Germany, and the U.S. chargé d'affaires (our old ambassador has left, and no replacement has been named). Jeff, who is fluent in German, runs the Aspen Institute Berlin, which he has made the de facto U.S. embassy. I was curious to learn whether the Rice-Bush charm offensive had had any discernible effect on Germany's decidedly anti-Bush, anti-American policies. I suppose I should have divined the answer from...

For his 50th birthday, a wealthy German placed a full-page ad in a left-leaning newspaper thanking America for 50 years of freedom and peace. He says the ad and the response it generated were well worth it. For Manfred Petri, an independently wealthy former businessman from the Bavarian town of Hof, the day George W. Bush arrived in Mainz for his visit to Germany was a day to celebrate. It was February 23, 2005, which also happened to be Manfred Petri's 50th birthday. The day began with breakfast in bed, which would be followed later by a family celebration with...

PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: Earlier today, President Bush telephoned Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to express deep sorrow after the wounding by U.S. forces of freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena and the killing of a member of her Italian escort in Iraq. Also today, Syrian President Bashar Assad announced a two-stage pullback of his forces to the Lebanese border, but failed to address broad international demands that he completely withdraw Syria's 15,000 troops after nearly 30 years in the country. Assad also did not respond to President Bush's demand just a day earlier that Syria withdraw all its troops and...

Condi Rice is heralding a shift in long-term US policy to transform the Middle East Timothy Garton AshThursday February 10, 2005The Guardian We are told that Condoleezza Rice received her unusual first name because her parents liked the Italian musical term condolcezza , meaning "with sweetness". What might condoleezza mean? A gifted Italian translator emails me that "it doesn't immediately suggest sweetness to an Italian ear". Yet there's no doubt that the new US secretary of state has conducted an impressive charm offensive during her lightning tour of Europe. She has presented a more elegant face, spoken a more nuanced...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. President George W. Bush's "charm offensive" in Old Europe largely fizzled, but that was okay. The issues that divide the United States and the European Union are still there, and that's good. The EU still wants Washington to join the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty and the International Criminal Court, while planning to sell weapons to China and still criticizing American policy in Iraq. In opposing the EU on all these issues, the Bush administration is acting wisely in defense of U.S. national interests. An issue that was missing from the various...

Dick Morris: US is ready for an Iron Lady 11feb05 AS she toured Europe this week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was like a rock star - her every movement, her every meeting covered by an adoring media. The first black female US secretary of state is doing in public what she has always done in private - speaking frankly about her nation's priorities and the realities of the post-Cold War world. As she jokes with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, loosening up his dogmatic anti-US policies, lectures Russia about freedom and warns Israel of tough decisions ahead, one thing...

Five days that shook world politicsBy M K Bhadrakumar There is no Cold War ahead. Yet the period between February 20 and 24 was extraordinary. Seldom have fault-lines in world politics surfaced with such clarity. If the principal objective of President George Bush's European tour (February 20-24) was to heal trans-Atlantic rifts stemming from the great differences over the Iraq war, it was a success. Europe was willing to let bygones be bygones. But it became apparent during Bush's harmonious tour of "Old Europe" that profound differences remained between the European vision and the neo-conservative world view that the Bush...

The conservative Die Welt comes up with the day's oddest and most weirdly thought-out editorial in which the author manages to both compare Bush to Franklin D. Roosevelt and to crown him "the Steve Jobs of world politics." Essentially, the paper says, Bush wants to be a great reformer, both in terms of domestic and foreign politics. Domestically, he wants to revamp America to the same degree FDR did with his New Deal, only for Bush, the program might be called the "Ownership Society," the paper says. "The target is: We want to break with all losers, domestically that means...

US leader fails to win over Germans By Rhea Wessel FOR THE STRAITS TIMES FRANKFURT - CITIZENS in Mainz and Frankfurt gave a collective sigh of relief last week when US President George W. Bush left Germany. It was not just the inconvenience: blocked autobahns and a clogged airport. Germans, in general, are sceptical about a love affair between German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Mr Bush. 'They smiled a lot for the camera, and since there were lots of cameras, they smiled all the time,' said Frankfurt finance worker Claudia Ehler. Few Germans seriously believe the two leaders have put...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived at the Wiesbaden Army Airfield on Wednesday dressed all in black. She was wearing a black skirt that hit just above the knee, and it was topped with a black coat that fell to mid-calf. The coat, with its seven gold buttons running down the front and its band collar, called to mind a Marine's dress uniform or the "save humanity" ensemble worn by Keanu Reeves in "The Matrix."

Nearly two years ago I wrote that the liberation of Iraq was changing minds in the Middle East. Before March 2003, the authoritarian regimes and media elites of the Middle East focused the discontents of their people on the United States and Israel. I thought the downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime was directing their minds to a different question: how to build a decent government and a decent society. I think I overestimated how much progress was being made at the time. But the spectacle of 8 million Iraqis braving terrorists to vote on January 30 seems to have moved...

The United States of America and the uniting states of Europe are the two richest, most democratic and most powerful entities on Earth. The split within the European Union over Iraq, and persisting tensions in the trans-Atlantic relationship, do not diminish their unrivalled capacity to influence global affairs. What is at issue is the manner in which threats are perceived and confronted, not the core democratic values which define the West. The aggressive, go-it-alone style of President George Bush's first term was the very antithesis of the cumbersome consensus-building required within the 25-nation EU. However, Mr Bush's lauded visit to...

George Bush knew Vladimir Putin would be defensive when Bush brought up the pace of democratic reform in Russia in their private meeting at the end of Bush's four-day, three-city tour of Europe. But when Bush talked about the Kremlin's crackdown on the media and explained that democracies require a free press, the Russian leader gave a rebuttal that left the President nonplussed, TIME magazine will report on Monday. If the press was so free in the U.S., Putin asked, then why had those reporters at CBS lost their jobs? Bush was openmouthed. "Putin thought we'd fired Dan Rather," says...

# NEW YORK, Feb. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- When George W. Bush confronted Vladimir Putin last week about the freedom of the press in Russia, Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe reports, Putin shot back with an attack of his own: "We didn't criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS." Details of the meeting, which included just the two presidents and their translators inside the historic castle that overlooks the Slovak capital of Bratislava, are reported in the March 7 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, February 28). It's not clear how well Putin understands the controversy that led...

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia The popular uprisings in Georgia and Ukraine have raised the morale of the small opposition movements in Belarus and Moldova, and they said Wednesday that they were more determined than ever to continue the struggle for democracy. . "It will take time, but it will come," said Andrei Safonov, a political analyst and journalist from Transnistria, a separatist and internationally unrecognized enclave in eastern Moldova that is ruled by an authoritarian group backed by Moscow. . Civil society groups attending a conference in Bratislava on Wednesday, the day before President George W. Bush was to meet with President...

Bratislava (Slovakia), Feb. 25 (Reuters): Incensed by US talk of a lack of press freedom in Russia, two Russian reporters tried to turn the tables on President George W. Bush during his summit news conference with Vladimir Putin yesterday. After Bush said he had raised concerns about Russia’s democracy in talks with the Russian President and felt reassured, he suddenly found himself on the defensive. “What is that lack of freedom all about?” a reporter from the Russian news agency Interfax asked the US President. Before Bush could answer, the reporter then turned on Putin and demanded to know why...

PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: The President and First Family returned safely from Europe late Thursday. They are spending a quiet weekend in Washington, where GWB went for one of his now-famous "maniac" bike rides this morning. Yesterday, the White House website put up a lot of photos from last week's trip. Most were taken by WH photographers. They frequently show different perspectives from those taken by the media, and many are only available on the WH website. Today and tomorrow, the Dose threads will have a retrospective on the trip, using mostly WH photos. Today's Dose covers the events...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Imagine a world where Russia and the European Union of 25 nations, and Russia and China, and the EU and China, all find more in common with each other than with the United States? Unimaginable, you say. And you would be right. But the seeds of such an anti-U.S. entente were planted in Europe this week. In Brussels, President Bush told the EU3 - France, the UK and Germany - that it was their responsibility to quash Iran's nuclear ambitions, and the U.S. would not negotiate directly with the totalitarian theocracy in Tehran. The U.S....

Recent books have raved that the European Union is the way of the future. In contrast, a supposedly exhausted, broke and post-imperial United States chases the terrorist chimera, running up debts and deficits as it tilts at the autocratic windmills of the Arab World. That caricature frames the visit of the President to Europe as transatlantic pundits demand a softer George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. Stop the childish bickering and the tiresome neocon preening, we are lectured ad nauseam by Euro and American elites. Don’t divide Europe, we hear endlessly. Even though the European press, EU leaders, and...