Wednesday - January 12, 2011

america’s newest best friend. one frenchman, as president obama shoots us in the diplomatic foot.

Hardly know where to begin.

OK, President Sarko of France is very pro American. He really likes us. I’m not certain about his wife, but he does like America. So I guess President Obama had to be kind, and why not?  Thing is, I’m not too certain Sarko speaks for most French ppl with regard to the USA. Please don’t read anything sinister in that remark. I have no certain way of knowing. Hell, I’ve only ever spent two days in France so I’m not to be relied upon on that score.  Actually, I’ve always had this gut feeling that the French don’t like the French too much either, it’s just that they dislike foreigners more.
On the plus side and only according to what I have read, lots of Brits who have left these shores for La Belle France are happier there. They write back in glowing terms about France. And one thing really stands out in everything these ex-pats write.  The French will accept you over time if you try to fit in. Learn their language and don’t try and get them to favor your culture over theirs.  Not long ago in fact, Drew alluded to much the same about the French.  So then, this is not a rant against France or the people. Rather ...  it might be gentle slap upside the head (verbally) of our own president who has managed to shoot our own beloved USA in the foot, and has I think possibly offended the Brits.

Brits have been fighting along side us since 9/11 and I think we owe em a bit more respect then that shown, if I can believe the press, then he has to date.
True, there’s a strong loony tune left here that’s anti-US and they are maddening. But we still owe some respect or at least not make these folks feel the way Stephen Glover describes things in his article.

Take a look.

Obama’s right. There is no special relationship… and the sooner we realise that the better

By Stephen Glover

President Barack Obama will have caused more than a few palpitations in Whitehall by suggesting that France, not Britain, is the United States’ most important ally. ‘We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy and the French ­people,’ he told the French President on Monday.

Not America’s best buddy? The best brains in the Foreign Office will be ­trying to persuade themselves Mr Obama did not really mean it. They will say he was only trying to be nice to Mr Sarkozy during the French ­President’s visit to Washington.

But what if he really meant what he said? During visits to the U.S. by ­Gordon Brown and David Cameron, Mr Obama has had every opportunity to say Britain was America’s ­strongest ally, but did not take it. Indeed, he seemed to go out of his way to snub Mr Brown by refusing to meet him.

There are other bits of evidence that Mr Obama does not cherish the ­‘special relationship’ so dear to the hearts of policymakers in Whitehall. As soon as he entered the Oval Office, he removed the bust of Winston Churchill that had been loaned to George W. Bush by the British government.

During Britain’s stand-off with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, the Obama administration has been at best neutral, at worst pro-­Argentine. And throughout the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year, the American President was keen to emphasise the British provenance of BP, the chief ­perpetrator, and to make it pay.

Despite what the Foreign Office Johnnies may argue to themselves, there is enough evidence to suggest that Britain is not greatly valued by Mr Obama. And although there might be personal reasons for this — the American President claims his grandfather was ­tortured by the British ­during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya — I would ­suggest his standpoint is shared by more American politicians than we might care to admit.

For most of the time we are regarded with indifference: an ally at once so loyal, depend­able and uncritical that we can be taken for granted. The ­special relationship, about which our politicians obsess, is scarcely ever mentioned even by Britain’s friends in the U.S.

If France is more important than Britain to Washington, might this be because French policymakers have robustly pursued a line independent of the U.S. and the British have not? After the Suez debacle of 1956 — when America pulled the plug on the militarily successful Anglo-French invasion of Egypt — the two European countries responded in ­diametrically different ways.

While Britain grew ever closer to America, relying on American technology to produce its supposedly independent nuclear deterrent, France increasingly went its own ­separate way. It developed its own nuclear arsenal — admittedly never proven — called the force de frappe, because it did not believe it could always rely on America to defend it from the Soviet threat.

There’s a lot more at the link and it makes for some interesting reading. See what you think.

A LOT MORE HERE

Posted by peiper     on 01/12/2011 at 02:24 PM   
Filed Under: • FRANCE • Politics •  
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