Worse than Jimmy Carter (times 10)

by Nile Gardiner

Obama’s speech in Strasbourg, where he condemned America’s “arrogance”, has to rank as one of the most damaging, if not the most damaging speech by a U.S. president on foreign soil in modern times. It is impossible to imagine the leader of any European nation, with the unique exception of Germany’s contrition over its Nazi past, launching an attack like this upon his or her own country on foreign land. It was the humbling of a superpower in front of a largely French and German audience, who cheered every word the president spoke trashing his own nation’s record.

There was no mention by Obama in his speech of the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American GIs who died liberating France from fascist occupation, and no recognition of the huge role the United States played in keeping Europe free. It was a speech that quite easily could have been written in parts by Jacques Chirac or Dominique de Villepin, railing against the American “hyper-power”.

Barack Obama has launched a new era of self-flagellation for America that serves only to humiliate the American people, and embolden Washington’s enemies. From Tehran to Pyongyang, Moscow to Caracas, dictatorial regimes have been given a new lease of life by a U.S. administration that threatens little and barely talks about the advancement of freedom. The spread of individual liberty and human rights are hardly priority goals for a White House that is struggling to find a dictator it isn’t willing to talk to in the name of its weak-kneed new policy of “engagement”.