Posted on 03/10/2009 4:01:26 AM PDT by SonOfDarkSkies
Americans anxiously watching their 401ks melt away may not have noticed the Obama administration is off to a rocky start in foreign policy, too.
We were told often during the campaign that Mr. Obama would repair relationships with foreign governments allegedly damaged by the "cowboy"diplomacy of George W. Bush. But in his first weeks in office, President Obama gratuitously has offended allies, and has made clumsy overtures -- contemptuously rebuffed -- to adversaries.
Most puzzling has been the back of the hand treatment the president has given to our closest ally.
Most in Britain were ecstatic when Mr. Obama was elected. None more so than Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who hoped proximity to The One would boost his own flagging standing in the polls back home.
It didn't work out that way.
"The murmurs began when President Obama returned to the British embassy the Winston Churchill bust that had been displayed in the Oval Office," wrote Dana Milbank of the Washington Post.
"The fears intensified when press secretary Robert Gibbs...demoted the Churchillian phrase 'special relationship' to a mere 'special partnership' across the Atlantic.
"And the alarm bells really went off when Brown's entourage landed at Andrews Air Force Base," Mr. Milbank said. "Obama, breaking with precedent, wouldn't grant the prime minister the customary honor of standing beside him in front of the two nation's flags for the TV cameras."
...
When Mr. Obama did hold a truncated press availability from which most of the British press were excluded, he went right to questions, skipping the usual words of welcome for his guest. The hapless Mr. Brown didn't even get invited to lunch.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Sorry, but to those so minded in Hussein’s life, Churchill was just some old white guy.
Get used to it.
Are they making hussein toilet paper yet?
LLS
We need professionals and all we have are a bunch of clueless, classless amateurs.
Previous President have an ancestral tie to Britain.
The Kenyan doesnt.
Obama thinks he’s ruler of the Universe, and that he’s two people taller than PM Brown.
You can track everything Obama promised and see that we are getting the opposite, and this was predictable.
It takes outrageous gall to immediately screw up everything you said you would improve.
Obama is just arrogant. There’s no other way to describe it.
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What are you talking about? He is doing exactly that which he said he would.
Apparently, he does on his mother’s side, but he judging from his autobiography, he identifies more with his father’s side, even though he abandoned him as a child.....
Obama’s putative father was a British subject.
Kenya gained independence from British rule in 1964 and Indonesia did the same in 1962. Who needs to see a birth certificate? I think it’s pretty clear Obama doesn’t identify with American history.
Kenya was a British colony when Obama’s father was born. It decolonized from Great Britain in the 1950’s.
What else can ypu expect? We got what we voted for. When you think that you can tell some one to pop over to Walmarts and pick a couple dozen DVD’s out of the big basket and think it is a classy gift for a head of state.I rest my case.
barbra ann
I found the particular 25 DVD set at Amazon the other day, price? $17.95 on clearance.
"The fears intensified when press secretary Robert Gibbs...demoted the Churchillian phrase 'special relationship' to a mere 'special partnership' across the Atlantic."
Maybe that "special partnership" alludes to Gordon Brown's expressed displeasure and obsession with Proposition 108 in California???
Or, maybe the gay porn videos Obama gave him weren't the 'rough trade' he was looking for?
"...function is smother'd in surmise and nothing is, but what is not." (Macbeth, act I, scene III)
Ding ding ding.
As a Briton (hence the name) I can only see this as extremely bizarre behaviour.
In the diplomacy of the civilised world (exclude the loonies of the Middle-East for a minute) you don’t even insult your enemies never mind your friends.
If the UK only talked the talk I could understand, but we walk the walk as well, alongside Americans in battlefields and intelligence.
It is either extremely childish or extremely amateurish. I don’t know what is worse. The only good thing is that although this has stunned the UK, there is an awareness that this is a snub by this administraion and not the people.
He’ll learn though. Just wait till the next major crisis and let us see who is there with him. The French? Germany? Italy? Japan?
Or will it be the UK, Australia and Canada as usual?
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