Europe starts to sour on Obama?
Spiegel reports quite a bit of German dissatisfaction with the Obama administration’s economic policy:
It is an unsettling situation. The prosperity and well-being of ordinary people are more threatened than they have been in a long time, and yet Germany and its most important partner seem unable to agree on a common course. It isn’t even clear that the United States still perceives Germany and Europe as important partners. The emphasis is shifting toward China, and Merkel will find herself having to campaign on behalf of Germany — something which makes it difficult for her to voice criticism of the US….
A clash of cultures is raging between Berlin and the United States on the issue of financial policy…
Obama himself has also been a trial in his meetings with Merkel, foregoing protocol and putting her on the spot by asking questions (in public) that have not been agreed on in advance, forcing her to think on her feet. Too bad she doesn’t return the favor and let Europe get a dose of the non-teleprompted US President.
Here’s another Spiegel article in a similar vein. After the obligatory Bush-bashing appetizer, the meat of the piece is a condemnation of Obama’s economic policies.
And then there’s this especially interesting tidbit from the first article:
Obama’s visits to Dresden and Buchenwald also ruffled some feathers in Germany. The US president’s advance team, which had been sent to help prepare for the trip, made a negative impression on the Germans through their coarse language and overbearing behavior. German officials were shouted at, treated like schoolchildren and told to wait their turns…As it is, the US president in person is by no means the charming and smiling character many have come to expect from his television appearances. He cultivates a cool style or, as one of the members of the delegation describes it, “an almost unfeeling style.”
But but but—-Obama’s the nice one! He’ll make those Europeans love us!
[Hat tip: Rachel Lucas.]
I feel some Schaudenfreude here, as in you wanted him, you got him.
Der Speigel will find anything to criticize about the Amis. Perhaps instead of criticizing ∅bama, Der Spiegel should ask itself, what was missing last year in our assessment of ∅bama that we didn’t anticipate this?
The Russian no-hand-shake snub on video was harsh — but in Obama’s defense those provincial boneheads probably didn’t shake his hand because he’s a black man … but I’d like to read more about this before passing that judgment, though it is my suspection, I think there is at least sliver of truth to that — but I could be wrong.
That video interpretation has already been discredited, Nyom…Obama was introducing his own staff to Medvedev. For the record, I despise Obama, but that video was way misrepresented.
Richard Fernandez has a new insightful piece, Do not forsake me, on the Eastern Europeans who are not just disillusioned with Obama but concerned that Obama is throwing them to the wolves, i.e. Russia, by using missle defense bases in Eastern Europe as a bargaining chip.
Once again, Obama is making nice with terrible powers while letting principles and the little folk go hang.
The idiots who interpreted Obambi introducing members of the American delegation as a snub by Russians for him are as stupid as the people who voted for the LIAR Messiah in the first place.
Pragmatist…. cease and desist….
Off topic, from Babalu Blog, which translated this from an online paper from Catalonia province in Spain, breaking news from Honduras:
As others have asked, how long will this take to get into the ENGLISH LANGUAGE press, such as AP, Reuters, etc.?
Well, why be surprised? The man is a politician from the southside of Chicago. Thug.
I look forward to seeing how different supposed perceptions by Europeans of Americans are in another 3 1/2 years.
If the world had a poor perception of the US because of Bush, I wonder how the US will be perceived after Obonga snubs every ally we have?
They loved Obonga so much, well now they are getting a good dose of the dumba$$.
Heck, they may even look back nostagically at the Bush era.
European media is basicly the same as in the US (politically speaking) minus the conservative media. Therefore your average European is rather clueless about what is going on.
Since two decades the media, universities etc have been taken over by the postsixties Left and the population has been effectively brainwashed into anti-Americanism, hatred of Christianity, conservatism etc.
The Europeans have come to hate their own Christian ancestors even more than the Americans. And given the greatness of much of the old European Christian civilisation this hatred and arrogance of the present spoiled generation is as insane as it is on part of many of todays Americans towards their ancestors. All my life I have been aghast over how my fellow Europeans behaved like a spoiled teenager towards the US and their own ancestors.
Ironicly their is no better antidote for the Europeans to this than the antiAmerican presidency of Obama. Now the Europeans finally got what they wanted,
they will see more and more what it means to be on their own. That part is certainly very healthy.
It will be interesting to see how this new dynamics will work out between the US and Europe.
But one thing is very worrisome: BOTH the US and the EU are heading in a soft totalitarian direction.
It is not at all clear that the new US-EU dynamics will brake the leftist totalitarian momentum on either continent. It can lead the Europeans to rediscover their own identity and bring them to believing in themselves again, but it can also facilitate the ever expanding Statist spiritual inertia.
How do we know Europeans and others disliked us more during the Bush administration than during others?
Many have disliked us since the end of WWII, for one reason or another. Bush’s personal characteristics were merely an excuse to demonstrate the same old anti-American feelings.
Some folks, you don’t want them to think you’re a good guy. Castro, Chavez, Putin, most African dictators, the heads of, say, Syria, Iran, some folks in Latin America.
European journalists and intellectuals.
What you have to do to get them to pretend to like you you shouldn’t do.
So the entire question is irrelvant.
The question is whether we are respected (will we do what we say we’ll do and act more or less fairly with our interests in mind) and whether we are predictable.
They all made their career pushing against the other that wouldnt fall, now they are worried.
its easy to base a career on an issue you think would really never turn out to happen. then comes the question of what do you do when it does.
“He cultivates a cool style or, as one of the members of the delegation describes it, “an almost unfeeling style.”
Who does that remind you of? Perhaps any number of arrogant left-wing and/or muslim world tyrants now or in the past? At the end of the day Obungler is really just a two-bit left-wing lawyer with no real life experience in business, and a political shuck and jive artist with less than marginal experience in government. He’s a cardboard cutout of himself in real life, it doesn’t take much for people with any depth at all to see thru the facade. What’s most amazing of all is that this is the “leader” of the majority political party in America; What a tragic state of affairs….
The American military umbrella protecting Europe since WWII has allowed Europeans to sink into a peace at all costs defenseless posture, which has allowed them to sneer at the US as “warmongers.”
With Obama in charge, any defense of Europe by the U.S. is unlikely, which may hopefully rouse the Europeans from their slumbers. The world remains a dangerous place. And of course the European media is probably farther to the left than ours. We live in interesting times as the Chinese proverb suggests.
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Wandriaan hits it perfectly. I knew many people in Spain and England in my three year visit that were conservative in all of their core values but never had even the slightest notion of how liberal their news reporting and media reporting tilted. They assumed I hated George Bush just like everyone else and that I was thrilled to have Obama in charge. The anti-Americanism was staggering and I am very happy now to be back in America and somewhat removed from it. I found it very dispiriting and fought it every chance I had but it was hard. It probably shows my age, but I kept thinking I was listening to a broken record of everyone’s incessant drumbeating of how stupid and rotten and inhuman Americans are and most had never been to America and had no American friends or associates.
“Spiegel reports quite a bit of German dissatisfaction with the Obama administration’s economic policy:”
For a brief instant, I read that as “economic fallacy.”
To Wandriann and Bluewaterneocon’s observations I would add that the difference between speaking with Germans and Belgians versus Hungarians and Romanians is striking. Eastern and Western Europeans both have large gaps in their historical knowledge of the world since 1950, but only one of them knows this.
I lived in Europe for many years, and used to bristle inwardly at being introduced as “an American, but one of the good ones.” (If they’d only known…)
Europeans, for the most part, struck me as as idiots, frankly, for wanting the US to be as weak and ineffectual as themselves. In their position, I’d want a bunch of glowering Hell’s Angels across the pond, so I could tell nasty dictators that I had a lot of influence with the Angels, if the dictators played ball with me, I’d intercede with the Angels, but if not…I’d send flowers.
Surely that was the obvious strategy to adopt – good cop to our bad cop? Two limp-wristed lisping cops mincing around giving out fashion tips doesn’t work.
I also love Der Spiegel‘s characterization of Obama’s flunkeys as “overbearing.” Anyone who can strike Germans as overbearing has achieved something, that’s for sure. /g
Surely that was the obvious strategy to adopt – good cop to our bad cop?
Occam: That’s exactly the impression I get. Euros like the Good Cop/Bad Cop dynamic. They get to play the Good Cop and we play the Bad. They can sniff about what brutes we are and feel morally superior, but the job gets done and their hands are clean.
Also at far less expense, when it comes to blood and treasure.
What’s not to like?
It appears that Obama is beginning to run into trouble over here in the U.S. as well. See here:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/obama-s-summer-of-discontent-15208
and here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/17/AR2009071702093.html
It may well be that the excesses of Obama’s (and the Democrat congress) in relentlessly pushing forward their agenda of expansive government has finally caused some people to open their eyes. I was catious at first about this new administration, but by this point, I’ve seen enough. It has only taken 6 months for me to go from a mindset of giving the new, seemingly idealistic and seemingly well meaning president (who I had not voted for), a chance, to being frightened that there may be no way to put the brakes on this harmful agenda before its too late. But it looks like I’m not the only one getting alarmed.
The second article, above, begins:
“Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from political allies and foes alike.”
I can only hope.
From the Der Speigel article:
“As it is, the US president in person is by no means the charming and smiling character many have come to expect from his television appearances. He cultivates a cool style or, as one of the members of the delegation describes it, “an almost unfeeling style.”
As one who voted for McCain-Palin, but who was initially willing to give Obama a chance, this is part of what changed my mind. He seems to be plowing through an enormous list of clearly harmful policies with a reckless abandon that is either: (a) interntional, “with malice aforethought” as they say in criminal law; or (b) if unintentional, with a disturbing blind carelessness for what the actual results of his policiues are. And through it, the “almost unfeeling style.”
The so-called “stimulus” bill is a perfect example of this. I cannot imagine a bill put together, and rammed through, with so little regard for what it was alegedly intended to do… it was simply a bundled together patchwork of spending measures to which the name “stimulus bill” was attached, and then hurried through Congress with few member actually reading what they had wrought. There was this, and many other policies to follow, with Obama justifying it all by saying that it was he who won the election. It was he who gets to make policy, and dont look at the man behind the curtain. As noted by the blogger Rachel Lucas: “In other words, he’s arrogant and rather dickish?”
Huxley, my point was that Europeans logically should cleave unto the good cop/bad cop dynamic, but by undercutting the bad cop and trying to replace him with a aood cop they’re acting against their own interests – hence my assessment that, consonant with the historical record, they’re morons.
Occam’s Beard:
My artist cousin, who has dealt with Germans much more than the average Ami, though probably not as much as you, once told me that from observing her German friends, she understood why Germany was the country that started WW2. Something to do with never being able to acknowledge that the other person’s point of view might have some validity, with refusing to concede a point.
“I cannot imagine a bill put together, and rammed through, with so little regard for what it was alegedly intended to do…”
Sorry to be redundant here, but several steps, actually leaps more absurd is “cap and trade”; “Central planning” intended to reduce the planet’s temperature two degrees, and the biggest polluters aren’t even on board. Forget that the so-called “science” is so obviously contrived. “Imagine” what happens if there is a movement to run Obungler for a third term, after the votes have been rigged for his second run…
Obama made a campaign stop near our town when he was running for Senate in 2004. Rude doesn’t even begin to cover his attitude. And this was in a venue where he was supposed to be shaking hands and making nice with voters.
“Be careful what you wish for…” is being played out both domestically and abroad, and the results, painful as they are to watch for those of us who saw this train wreck coming and yelled “stop!”, are going to be very instructive. Those who rubbed the lamp and wished for “anyone but Bush/McCain” got exactly what they asked for. Curious thing, their displeasure.
‘nyothymus’ who appointed you moderator? By the way there is a way to avoid being criticised stop posting nonsense and having such a thin skin.
“”Those who rubbed the lamp and wished for “anyone but Bush/McCain” got exactly what they asked for. Curious thing, their displeasure.””
The election of Obama seems to me was shaped by a sort of masochistic bent in people. A weird dynamic where he may have been put in office precisely because he allowed victimhood as a valid excuse for peoples shortcomings in the game of life.
I contend this can be verified by a majority of Obama voters still being more comfortable playing victims of Bush rather than seeking or expecting any real benefit from Obama.
The commenters here have sure caught on to Europe’s game. After 24 years of watching and reading news and commentary from Germany, this post and its comments give me hope that there is some commonsense left in the world. Thanks, folks.
Would this make them sour krauts? Somebody had to say it.
Occam: Sure, I got your point. I was just agreeing with the first premise and fleshing it out a bit.
The Europeans weren’t thinking ahead to what it would mean for the US to go Euro-socialist.
But they are starting to.
Der Spiegel should ask itself, what was missing last year in our assessment of Obama that we didn’t anticipate this?
Western Europe has long had the habit of demonizing America and American leaders. Cultural jealousy and resentment no doubt played a part. American culture has dominated the Western world since the end of WW2. We occupied West Germany and while there has been some gratitude there has also been resentment. Occupiers are never completely loved, even when they are saviors from Soviet totalitarianism. The French are indignant — McDonalds franchises in Paris — Mon Dieu! I say, “Let them eat snails!” In the end, with Bush, the rancor became reflexive in nature.
The question is whether we[the US] are respected (will we do what we say we’ll do and act more or less fairly with our interests in mind) and whether we are predictable.
So true …
Those who rubbed the lamp and wished for “anyone but Bush/McCain” got exactly what they asked for. Curious thing, their displeasure.
Doubly true
Would this make them sour krauts? Somebody had to say it.
Ha ha ha. Nice.
OFFTOP: I’m sure many have heard about this but it’s worthy of attention if you haven’t.
Group Reportedly Linked to Al Qaeda Holds First U.S. Conference
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,533880,00.html
….”Hizb ut-Tahrir is one of the oldest, largest indoctrinating organizations for the ideology known as jihadism,”
I can only hope that the CIA is all over this, I hear a lot of CIA basing in academia, talk about low hanging fruit — thank goodness for freedom of speech coupled with reasonable war time domestic surveillance, phew! Go get em!!
Back on topic:
A friend just got back from an extensive series of academic conferences including London, Prague, Zagreb Croatia, Ljubljana Slovenia, Vienna, Bratislava Slovakia, Riga Latvia and many other place and I asked the question, What does Europe think about the Obama European tour.
I’m happy she is the kind of person who gives honest remarks, she said Europe loves Obama, that he’s the new savior, that most European so called intellectuals at least, think 9/11 was orchestrated by he Bush Administration, and that they blame America for all thee financial problems.
On the 9/11 issue we agreed well if Europe had something more of a freer and more diverse press maybe they’d actually be a little smarter. 9/11 conspiracy crap particularly pisses me off.
She’s Bosnian, naturalized US citizen, so she has an interesting perspective and was disgusted by what she heard. We discussed how America subsidizes so much of what Europeans enjoy from imports, to financial aid, to military protect.
Some of the specific points included how Latvia is like stepping back into the Soviet era — no sense of individualism. How former Yugoslav republics are bickering over border disputes and how some are using their European Union status to bully the other.
If you don’t have friends from other countries you’re missing a lot of personal perspective — there are lots of good people from around the world living in America, find them and make them your friends.
“…. – thank goodness for freedom of speech coupled with reasonable war time domestic surveillance, phew!”
The Dems are squelching minority party (Republican) commentary and debate in congress, it may not be long before this blog is monitored by the Dem’s arms in government. The Dems, typical of the far left-wing, do not like being criticized. The way things are going it’s only a matter of time, give them an inch, they’ll try to eat you alive. Obama has all the traits, as well as a well established background, to emulate a Hugo Chavez. He may do it in a more subtle, so-to-speak, kind of way, but the result will be the same. It’s materializing before our eyes every single day now, from Obungler’s demands to enforce Judenrein in Jeruselum to our now quadrupled deficit in six months. What’s coming will be a kind of soft-totalitarianism…
Sorry, “Jerusalem”…….
“Europe starts to sour on Obama?”
They won’t be happy with any American, way too many there are essentially spoiled children and ingrates….
Just ran across this, George Carlin, don’t miss it….
http://ker-plunk.blogspot.com/2009/07/george-carlin-planet-is-finebut-people.html
What’s coming will be a kind of soft-totalitarianism…
IMO Obama has already overreached and peaked.
He gave the country a mighty shove to the left, but the country has taken a look at him and stiffened up.
Americans see that the huge stimulus bill that Obama rushed through has not worked as he said it would. One million Americans lost their jobs in the past two weeks. Obama promised that the stimulus would keep the unemployment below 8%; it’s 9.5% and still going up.
More and more Americans see that Obama is a far left president who is driving us into terrible debt with his agenda and they don’t like it.
The cap-and-trade bill is shelved. The Obamacare bill has gone back to committee after CBO gave the terrible news on how costly it was. Obama spent much face time last week on a hard sell and people still don’t like it. See Mickey Kaus’s piece, Obama as Health Care Salesman: He Sucks!
If Obama can’t get healthcare through, what can he do? Stage a coup? No, I don’t think so. He’s mostly show and little substance.
I hope you’re correct huxley, but the Dem’s majority control of the Senate, House, Executive, and the appointment of Sotamayor to the Supreme Court is an ominous trend. “Stage a coup?” No, simply get the Whip out, starting in congress…. What has happened in the last six months is profoundly important, we’ve not yet begun to see the negative results, 9.5% and climbing unemployment may only be the tip of the iceberg that is coming….
I think grackle’s comment hits the nail on the head.
The European’s resentment of America reflects their jealousy and their own impotence. While America bashing became almost universal under Bush, they still respected the ‘cowboy’ because they knew that he meant what he said (and hated him for it) and that he would act on it.
Under Obama, they have no lost even that respect.
Europe is totally jealous of America, and that’s 95% of the issue, the weirdest thing of all is … they don’t have to be that way, chill out and share the happiness.
Perfected democrat: Well, consider that during her confirmation Sotomayor felt she had to lie through her teeth about her lefti-multi-culti beliefs. She had to pull an Obama!
To me that’s another sign of Obama & Co.’s weakness. Americans may not be as center-right as they used to be but they are definitely not to the left. Obama and his people know that they have to disguise and lie and declare urgency to get their agenda through. They knew, as Obama and Sotomayor knew when going for office, that their unvarnished arguments would be soundly rejected.
Each time they do it, though, people catch on a little more. Obama’s checks are starting to bounce.
Oops.
That’s …
Under Obama, they have lost even that respect.
Perfected democrat
THANK YOU FOR THE CARLIN VID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here’s another funny vid; http://www.facebook.com/home.php?
wrong link :\
There is another factor fuelling Germany’s current outbreak of resentment: the environment and global warming. Greenpeace has replaced God as the source of all wisdom,and the preaching is relentless. I have a friend who is totally into the guilt trip. Just this week she mentioned the horrible air condtioning in American malls and how wasteful it is. Of course, she only experiences heat like ours on vacation, and she doesn’t know what 90+ humidity for weeks on end is like. People like her are easily convinced by the most ignorant statements about our building styles and car dependence. Joschka Fischer once made a snotty remark about our McMansions. Yet I don’t have to go far to see pseudo-Bauhaus people warehouses that infest much of Germany.
Bush hatred really started before 9/11, when he said he was not going to submit Kyoto to the Senate. BO pushed the right populist button when he talked about stopping the rising of the seas. Of course, German media never report American research on energy. Without the internet,I would probably also think that every energy saving discovery was invented here. Our cap and trade legislation passed by the House was portrayed as an Obama victory. When I explained to my friend that it was a lousy law, she didn’t get it–good intentions trump everything. This country is a very strange meld of engineering, romanticism and feudal obedience.
The news says Obama is starting to get frustrated and hot under the collar. Let his show his teeth, and we’ll see how fast the “I think he’s such a nice man” talk will last.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
On health care, cost not coverage is the issue, and 78% say the program will require “middle class” tax increases. In other words, it’s DOA.
What will they try next? Best bet is some kind of race or gender hysteria.
What will they try next? Best bet is some kind of race or gender hysteria.
Oblio: Good question. They need to do something, but they are running out of moves.
Obama is over-exposed as a speaker and his little lecture on health care didn’t do them any good at all.
Best would be some good economic news, but that’s a no-hoper for now. They may go back to the well and blame Bush some more, but that’s getting old and embarrassing.
Attacking Cheney or Limbaugh ditto.
Ginning up some foreign crisis won’t work because that’s not their long suit and might easily become something serious.
I’m not sure what hysteria they could put together on the race or gender front. I kinda think they ought to watch it on the race front. There may be a nasty backlash coming.
Maybe they’re still breathing the fumes from their 2008 victory and they will assume they can just regroup during the recess and kick some bottom in the fall.
Helian, a frequent commenter at Davids Medienkritik, now has his own blog and weighs in on Der Spiegel:
http://helian.net/blog/
Huxley, I think your analysis is on the mark.
Race and/or gender-based appeals are getting a bit tired and shopworn. They’ll do in a pinch, but it’s best not to go to the well too often.
A foreign crisis could easily get out of control, and make them look like Laurel and Hardy trying to paint out the same bucket. In addition, their expertise and armaments run to smears and leaks (a la Ryan), which doesn’t do any good in foreign affairs. Opponents who put people in wood chippers are pretty hard to embarrass.
For that reason, the campaign has to be a domestic issue. Blaming Bush personally is in the same class as race and gender, but disclosing some embarrassing document from the Bush Administration (making up a fake but accurate one, if necessary) would fit the bill. There must be document produced in the last eight years where someone in the Administration raised a substantive question regarding official policy and turned out to be right. Ideally the issue would be economic or financial, to deflect opprobrium from the Messiah.
Documents pertaining to Iraq and/or Afghanistan won’t do it, because that issue 1) concerns foreign policy, 2) is now off the public radar screen, and 3) would focus attention on Obama’s policy there, and stir up the nutroots to surrender to everyone forthwith, thereby putting the Messiah in a bind.
So my guess would be the release of a memo from a third assistant deputy secretary in the department of bureaucracy (or someone else Bush probably never heard of) to the second assistant deputy warning of impending economic or financial problems and urging action.
Yes, it’s lame, and yes, the Dems are pretty largely to blame for the subprime mortgage fiasco, but that’s reality, which is invariably trumped by the perception thereof. Cue the MSM.
Expat, your quote “This country is a very strange meld of engineering, romanticism and feudal obedience,” reminded me of a quote attributed to Churchill, who said of the Germans. “They are either at your throat or at your feet.”
Race and/or gender-based appeals are getting a bit tired and shopworn. They’ll do in a pinch, but it’s best not to go to the well too often.
With normal people you would be right, OB, but normal people would have thought these shopworn 30 years ago. They have a great advantage in that they appeal to strong feelings, and everyone can have opinions.
When in trouble, you need to go to the old reliables.
Environmentalism won’t work. Anything that deals with economics will simply make people’s eyes glaze over, and just leads back to the question, What are you going to do now?
New affirmative action program? Push on slavery reparations?
Oblio, you may well be right. I was referring not to Obama’s giving lectures on Keynesian economics, but rather descending into populist demogoguery against “the rich” and “greedy financial interests” and alleging that Bush had protected them.
For my part, I hope the Messiah springs for a new affirmative action program, or reparations. Highly divisive, and race-based favoring…his race (as it is perceived). A white President could pull that off (much like Nixon, but not a Dem, could make overtures to the PRC), but a black one would look unbelievably self-serving.
It would gain him no advantage with blacks, who are totally in the bag for him anyway, would alienate some liberals who currently support him, and would utterly galvanize Americans against him (while providing them with priceless campaign ammunition).
So while he may well plump for one of these, he would be foolish to do so.
Danger every way he looks, I agree. Old fashioned class warfare will make liars out of everyone who pooh-poohed his early Marxist environment and the Ayers connection.
What about criminal trials for Bush administration officials? It’s a truly terrible idea on the merits, but it plays directly to the power of the legal-media-academic complex to generate stories.
Repeal Defense of Marriage Act? It has a kind of civil rights proxy vibe.
Hate speech regulation!
Repeal Defense of Marriage Act? It has a kind of civil rights proxy vibe.
It does, but it mostly appeals to the fruits. Normal people don’t really care about this in a visceral way. It’s a “bike path” kind of issue for them.
What about criminal trials for Bush administration officials?
Actually going all the way to trials would be stupid, for several reasons, not least the precedent it would set.
Furthermore, it would focus attention on Iraq, which I doubt very much that Obama wants. How could he look good? Despite the left’s best efforts, there’s little disagreement that we were justified in invading Afghanistan.
In Iraq, Obama has more or less continued Bush’s policies, even keeping the same SecDef, so trials would invite comparison between Bush and Obama. Moreover, if there should then be a successful terrorist attack, the comparison with Bush would be too invidious even for the MSM to bury.
In addition, who knows what nuggets the Bush Administration could make public in the course of a trial if they thought it necessary? For example, they could probably cite terrorist attempts foiled, with documentary proof, or reveal now-classified intelligence that would make themselves look good, and the Dems bad. (After all, Sandy Berger must have had some reason for pillaging the National Archives.)
Trials would also infuriate loyal Americans, regardless of outcome, which would only affect the magnitude of their fury. Acquitals would wind up liberals, while convictions would enrage the Americans, and could lead to civil war.
So, all in all, trials are too problematic. Leaking some awkward documents would be a better bet. It’s more Obama-style to cheap shot people that way, and if doing so provokes a backlash, the leak won’t have his fingerprints on it, so he can always deny it was his doing. Leaking some equivocal document that implies – but does not frankly establish – malfeasance in the Bush Administration would refocus attention on Bush (without Obama’s having to do this personally), and stir up his base, who would be howling for prosecution.
That would position Obama to pardon Bush prospectively, which would make Obama look magnanimous and statesmanlike, while at the same time imply that Bush had done something for which he needed to be pardoned, without ever specifying what that was, or giving Bush a chance to defend himself. (He could only defend himself by first reciting every conceivable charge against him, in effect accusing himself, before he could then address them.)
So that would be my guess.
It wasn’t so much the end of the war as it was the beginning, why did America take Frances failed colonial adventure?
To Expat: I feel for you. Having to live as an American with these Germans must be excruciating. But if anyone may have illusions: it is the same in the UK, Holland, Belgium, France etc. It is not a specific German problem at all. It is all over Western Europe; in Eastern Europe the situation is different, but these poor people, who remember Ronald Reagan quite well and accurately, are being bullied by the Western part when they are making proAmerican sounds. And they can be blackmailed through the EU.
The problem is largely the statefunded broadcast- media, that almost everywhere during the last three decades have been taken over by the postsixties liberal Left.
Imagine the US without any real conservative voices in the media. That’s Europe. And so the Europeans live in a fog of liberal halftruths and lies, that are not really challenged at all. You have to go the internet to American conservative websites to hear a clear and different story. I know; I have gone through this myself. Before that, though I sensed that things were foggy, I was basicly brainwashed on many key things by the BBC. (Most European statefunded broadcasters can be seen as clones of the BBC, politically AND ideologically).
Now, of course the people who control the European media know this. They fear the rise of conservative media and voices in Europe, that would simply and clearly say that the Emperor has no clothes. And therefore they attack every rising new conservative voice immediately as fierce as the libmedia in the US attacked Sarah Palin. They simply are resolute to brutally destroy each and every conservative voice. Because they sense that the light of truth might quite easily take over a large part of the population.
It takes huge courage to speak in a clear conservative way here, and there are at present no large conservative organisations to back you up.
And by the way, this goes for all topics: whether it is the Environment and Global Warming, the US, Islam, Religion and the Church, abortion, the economy, history, sexuality and the family, on nothing the conservative voice is allowed be heard in a clear and unapologising way.
Now there are of course two powerfull conservative ‘organisations’ outside the EU. One in Europe and one outside: the Catholic Church on the one hand and Conservative America on the other.
There is no organisation so ruthlessly and viciously attacked by the villains in the EUmedia as the Church. It really is disgusting to watch it, even though I am no member. And that while at this moment the Church has almost no political or financial power, and is really timid in Europe. Things have gone so bad that as result of the years of vile demonisation in the media Catholic priests in Holland are advised by the police to not wear their religious garb in public for fear of molestation.THIS is the truth of socalled ‘TOLERANT’ Holland today. My country was far more tolerant a few decades ago, before the leftists took over.
And then there is the other Satan: American conservatives, esspecially the Religious Right. The EU media have attacked these people even more viciously than the Church. It almost unbelievable, the amount of slander and venom I have seen thrown to these people. It is on par with the attacks in the US on Sarah Palin, but then for years and years. When you know the truth about these people, as I do, its horrendous. But your average European has no idea and sucks it all up.
I have said it before and I say it again: the EU now is a soft totalitarian society, and by that I mean it is no longer a classical liberal society, a society where all voices that sincerely try to speak the truth are allowed to be heard.
It is by no means only soft intimidation: prolifers who dare to speak outside their getto’s have been thrown in jail: ONLY for speaking their conscience. The Catholic Church is BY LAW forbidden to run their age-old adoptionorganisation in the UK, because they are not allowed to prefer a tradional family over a homosexual couple to give the child to, EVEN all other things being equal. Labour MPs said it clearly: ‘we will no longer allow Catholics to be different.’ Nobody in Europe, that I know of, said it : this Labour voice is the voice of vicious totalitarianism. Of course the same thing is creeping in the US: Massachusets has already done the same outragious thing.
But things are far worse here in Europe. Former Soviet dissidents have said this: the difference between the polically correct indoctrination in the former USSR and todays EU is that in the USSR nobody believed it and in the EU the population does believe it.
It all comes down to the unique brainwashing power of television. You can actually talk in the livingroom of the people. Therefore when you control the tv-broadcasters, you can brainwash the people even in a relatively free society.
That’s Europe.
And in America we now have Obama. One of the first things he said to the Republicans was, that they should stop listening to Rush Limbaugh! For a president to say that, goes beyond what is today current in Europe. The politicians leave the really dirty work to their cronies in the media. But you see that Obama clearly senses that he has just one serious enemy: the conservative media.
I expect therefore that the fairness doctrine will not be long away and then you Americans will enter the brave new word of soft totalitarian Europe.
Unless, of course, you fight…
Occam, Oblio: Great discussion! According to Politico Team Obama is going to get feisty!
The cool president has turned hot on the stump, stripping to shirtsleeves to lambaste doubters in New Jersey Thursday. He departed from his prepared remarks last week to accept a Republican challenge to take personal ownership of the economy: “That’s fine. Give it to me,” he said.
Even Obama’s scripted speeches are deliberately more forceful, aggressive and direct in taking on critics, aides say. Friday remarks at the White House had a trash-talk edge — count me out and you’ll be sorry.
Apparently they are putting on a full-court press to get moderate Democrats to stay in line. Not a bad strategy — they have the votes if the can whip their own people hard enough.
The problem is that bluster doesn’t change the numbers: employment, the price for health care, the burgeoning debt, and the declining revenues.
Getting hot is a mistake on Obama’s part. He can’t do hot; he’s too brittle, narcissistic, and emotionally insecure. If he had any sense, he’d stay cool and aloof, above the fray, thinking great thoughts of state, and sic some nasty piece of work such as Emanuel or Axelrod on his opponents. Thumbs in the eye and knees to the groin come naturally to those two; it’s where they live.
Obama can no more enter into the rough and tumble of political debate successfully than he could prevail in the townhall meeting format against McCain, and for the same reasons: he’s too fragile psychologically, and he’s not really an American (paperwork notwithstanding), and so in the heat of argument could well utter a catastrophically revealing comment (think “redistribute the wealth” to the nth power). If I were a Republican strategist, I’d lay awake nights coming up with ways to induce Obama to go hot, and thereby to forsake his strength.
For my own part, I’m not sure right now whether I hope he goes hot or not. If he comes totally unglued, 2012 is a long way off.
Occam’s Beard,
You are right about Obama not being an American, and it has nothing to do with birth certificates. He first experienced America through his mother’s eyes–as an anthroplogist studying a primitive tribe. The emotional ties are missing.
Wandriaan,
Thanks for your support. Fortunately, my German husband has his head screwed on right. He is a sweetheart.
I think you are all missing the Elephant in the room in your discussions as has amply been demonstrated by all the arrogant Americans posting on here . Its American arrogance and demands for respect that gets up the nose of many Europeans. As we see it WW1 started in 1914 America RELUCTANTLY joined in in 1917 after sitting on the fence and selling to BOTH sides. WW11 was the same it started in 1939 American only woke up in 1941 and that was only because Germany declared war on YOU. Of course the same fence sitting and selling to BOTH sides went on then too . Did you know ESSO was exporting OIL to Germany from Venezuela right up until 1945 and Ford factories in Germany were churning out armoured vehicles for the Wehrmacht all through the war and IBM designed the accounting method to count Jews and their assets in the concentration camps.
As Winston Churchill so wisely said:
“Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.”
That insightful adage is amply proved by writers to this blog.
He also said this too over a 100 years ago and it is just as true today as it was then. Which is yet more proof of how wise he was he wrote this in his 20’s
“How dreadful are the curses which Islam lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property‹either as a child, a wife, or a concubine must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
Far from being moribund, Islam is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -the science against which it had vainly struggled -the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
~~ Sir Winston Churchill~~
Pragmatist,
It could also be that older school kids in Berlin and Brandenburg think than Americans built the Berlin Wall (test results from a year or so ago.). Please don’t credit all Europeans with a superior knowledge of history. Ignorance is rather widespread throughout the human race. I am certainly willing to accept valid criticism of America’s actions and policies. It is the condescending cheap-shot stuff that angers me, especially when it is used to deflect attention from Europe’s own problems. And let you think I look down on all Germans, I am quite happy that Angela Merkel is doing splendidy in the polls here. I am glad for every grown-up on the international stage, and I am quite willing to admit that the US did not add to the number in the last election.
‘expat’ Most Germans hate America and have done so for years with a virulence which is inexplicable considering America largely rebuilt Germany after the war. However they fell in love with Obambi largely because I think they know he will destroy America and in that they are correct. The French have never forgiven Britain and America for saving them from the Germans twice and have had a love hate relationship with America since the revolution ( American that is) and the ingratitude you showed the French for their invaluable assistance in that war by not subsequently falling into their sphere of interest . The British were very pro American at least until Nu Labour got hold of them and now they too love Obambi for the same reasons the Germans do.
not only that, but we find that he got his school like clinton who went to learn in soviet russia, from the same fulbright…
Obama is a foreigner!
In a move certain to fuel the debate over Obama’s qualifications for the presidency, the group Americans for Freedom of Information has Released copies of President Obama’s college transcripts from Occidental College Released today, the transcript indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate at the school. The transcript was released by Occidental College in compliance with a court order in a suit brought by the group in the Superior Court of California. The transcript shows that Obama (Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program. To qualify, for the scholarship, a student must claim foreign citizenship. This document would seem to provide the smoking gun that many of Obama’s detractors have been seeking.
technically this means that all these ‘laws’ may be defunct. that the candidates who were elcted may be defunct due to endorsements. soldiers who have acted under his orders..
and i think that this would qualify the crisis that would cause riots such as others said no way.
what will be the racial flash point when he gets thrown out, and the rest of the natino is told that its not cause he lied, and such (like honduras), but that it was cause he was not white.
boy are we in the crapper..
[the left just allowing him office without vetting will appear as a way to break the constitition!!!]
An out-of-context one-sided accounting can always make any country or any person look bad.
I’m sure there are some Europeans who hate America based on Pragmatist’s list of grievances. There are some Americans who hate America for much the same reasons. But I’d be surprised if there were many Europeans who base their hatred of the US based on fence-sitting in WWI and WWII.
Heck, until she died my grandmother would launch on tirades against Europeans for not paying their WWI debts to the US. That’s a fact too, but she’s not typical.
So unless Pragmatist can point up some polls or other sources documenting European hatred of the US based on his or her laundry lists, I don’t take the posts seriously. (At first I thought the posts were satire.)
And if Pragmatist’s claim are true, then Europeans are in worse trouble than I thought. It’s a shocking irresponsibility, close to scapegoating, to hate the US on account of WWI and WWII when Europeans themselves started those wars, and the US did eventually enter those wars at considerable loss of blood and treasure.
The Occidental records report is an internet hoax.
That’s certainly one perspective, one I heard many times in Europe, and one that consistently pissed me off. From the American perspective, WWI was a squabble between imperialist powers and imperialist wannabes jockeying for position over colonies and hegemony over Europe. As the world’s leading (make that “only”) anti-imperialist power (leftist propaganda notwithstanding), we had no interest in determining whether Britain and France kept their colonies, or Germany obtained some. Please note that all European powers leapt to war with alacrity and joy (read Tuchman’s Guns of August) at this opportunity to obtain glory and settle old scores into the bargain. Staying out of it just showed good sense, and a higher moral plane. We do not exist to clean up Europe’s messes, which Europeans are so good at producing.
WWII was basically just round two of WWI, thanks to the bungling of French diplomacy (Versailles Treaty), which virtually guaranteed that there would be a round two. Britain and France compounded their bungling on the battlefields of WWI (four years of infantry charges into massed machine guns — what could go wrong? — had wiped out a generation of men, and made Britain and France gunshy thereafter) by then bungling diplomatically and militarily in the 1930s. Hitler could easily have been stopped at five junctures before 1938, starting with remilitiarizing the Rhineland, but Britain and France caved at each instance, and Hitler gained power domestically apace.
The thing that really irritated me living as an American living in Europe was being taxed with the above nonsense because we tried to stay out of those wars, and then on the next breath hearing Americans accused of being warmongers. Which is it, anyway?
Occam’s Beard: Excellent reply.
How prevalent among Europeans is the blaming/hating that Pragmatist describes? I’ve met some Europeans, not many, but I haven’t heard that.
If true, it really sounds like Europeans are displacing their own shame, despair, and guilt for those wars onto America.
OK, IBM sold its machines to Nazi Germany and those machines were used for implementing the Holocaust. But for goodness sake, Germany designed, organized, and executed the Holocaust with rather enthusiastic help from the French, Polish and Dutch. How can a European point a finger at the US with any decency?
This kind of thinking goes a long to explaining the resurgence of anti-Israel and antisemitism in Europe today.
Occams Beard how very interesting so perhaps now you will explain why America EVENTUALLY joined in the Imperialist WW1? To sit at the victors table and to share the spoils of the war no doubt .You also seem to cast all the blame for the failure of the peace and thus WW11 on Britain and France why are you so keen to airbrush the USA out of the story you were a part of the WW1 peace negotiations too weren’t you. I know you were ONLY minor players but you were there and you NEVER stop telling us how you saved us.
Lets take up your Anti Imperialist BS too if you think the drive to establish AMERICAN world wide financial domination played no part in that stance then you are more arrogant, gullible and naive than I thought you and most Americans were.
Occam please lets hear you theory on why HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of Americans both North and South died in the Civil War with stupid charges right in to the guns if you think WW1 was such a mistake . Please also explain why the naive arrogant boastful Yanks completely ignored what the British and French told them in 1917 and proceeded to make the SAME mistakes the British and French had ALREADY learned from costing thousands of American lives. An arrogance and naivety REPEATED by the US Air Force in WW11 I might add who thought they knew better than RAF Bomber Command and suffered terrible losses over Germany because of their arrogant stupidity. Arrogance and gullibility really does seem to be an American affliction which you continue to this day by electing Obambi and posting the Jingoistic nonsense you do on here.
pragmatist…
there is a wide difference in weapons and tactics which changed during the civil war because the north got breach loaders from france. the first bullets so to speak.
in truth, the guns of the civil war and our colonial war fighting were not that accurate. there were more accurate rifles like the kentucky long rifle, but most were not as accurate in any way like todays firearms.
and thats the difference that you dont realize. a gun is a gun is a gun is movies. where the musketeers guns never explode in their faces (they often did, so they were not used like in the movies).
when wwi started, we had interesting rifles and guns. and there were already guns like the gatling gun (and bardner guns)… but until then no one had been up against maxim.
the earlier machine guns really didnt have that long a life and were certainly gone once hiram maxims new idea was put into use. unlike the gatling and such no one had to crank it. it used the gasses from the bullets round to put the next round into place. also, to mitigate the barrel heatig up, deforming, and blowing up in teh face, the barrel was surrounded by a water tank. so long as one could pump fluid through this to take away the heat (with many a story up to modern times of gunners urinating on them), you can fire.
almost no one i have met has learned much about the actual fighting going on.
do not think that it was like Black Adder or such. they were not stupid as we paint them (or as the pacifists try). they really did try everything.
it was wwI that saw the invention of tunneling as a battle constant (in the middle ages they tunneled to the walls of a castle and packed it with dead pigs and other ‘ingredients’).
so now i can explain what you wanted.
prior to the civil war you had rifles that were not that accurate. so the battle field looked like toy soldiers. you also didnt have communications by wire. all that forced battles into a very regimented form. seems silly, but lots of things seem silly if you have no idea why or what for (too bad feminists and left never learned that about culture).
these formations made up for the shortcomings of the weapons AND communications limitations.
depending on how they lined up, you could get massive fire (like the british liked to use), and pauses in fire to reload. or you could get less fire per round, but in rows have them reload and move to the new positions.
neither could really advance till the fight went to fire at will. then, a fast advance would overhwhelm the weaponry. while it seems foolish, there really is no other way.
because moving into thye civil war and later wwi, this became solidified as no other way.
why?
because not to do it was to have a long drawn out war of attrition. in wwii the art of defense in this area advanced beyond the weaponry, so that they either charged the site, or they sat there for years in stalemate, slowly killing and replacing soldiers.
and you can see this progression from the red coats, to the civil war when pickets charge became pickets retreat at gettysburg.
the weapons at the start of the war were weak enough that a charge would then reduce the battle from attrition at a distance, to a all out bayonet, sword, and knife fight. this lowering of function happens in every war under certain conditions (sometimes accidental and circumstantial, some times intentional like stalingrad).
so from the revolution, you see the invention of guerilla tactics by the americans, who like the iraqies under saddam could not fight much in the open field.
as the formal thread died out, this less formal more abstract form started to increase. and in essence thats what your focusing on.
how in hindsight it seems like idiocy.
but remember, nto that long before you could charge a line, and you could break that line if you were fast and furious enough…
come wwi, and maxim and mortars, that no longer could or would work. and the battles rather than be these heroic charges some succeeding some not, it became a literal stalemate.
worse, the trenches were often below the water table. so they lived i mud and muck for years. they shelled each other constantly… to the point where mens nerves would be completely shot.
often people dont realize that charlie chaplains odd walking and nervous ticks were immitating the shell shocked. they completely fell apart. forget ptsd… thats light compared to what many got.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRv56gsqkzs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS1dO0JC2EE
so what you see as lunacy was the choice between two ways to die.
you could get up and charge, or you could sit there till your nerves jangled to the point you cant function ever again in your life. or you get disfigured horribly. dont forget that they also used chlorine gas shells too.
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
Yet again you cant see the wood from the trees. So many words so little sense . WW1 had the machine gun and effective artillery which made trench warfare virtually inevitable. Not until the BRITISH invented the TANK was trench warfare made obsolete and this was the main reason for the allied victory. The Americans as I previously pointed out due to their arrogance and naivety lost thousand so of men in WW1 because they thought they were so superior to the British and French and needed no lessons and similarly suffered because of the same arrogance and naivety in WW11 with the Bomber offensive against Germany.
pragmatist, you will never make a case against the Americans as being especially arrogant and naive by bringing up mistakes in military doctrine, strategy, and tactics. Mistakes are inevitable, and every country has made its share of blunders out of pride and arrogance. It goes with the territory. A balanced accounting wouldn’t support your claim, and even if it did, it wouldn’t extend to Americans as a whole. It’s a really stupid argument.
prag, do you really think that my knowlege just dove off a cliff before the point of tanks were reached, or if you actually read it rather than belittle things you might realize that i stopped before that so that the post wasnt even longer.