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Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Barack Obama\222s top 10 insult[...]

Barack Obama’s top 10 insults against Britain
By Nile Gardiner The Telegraph (UK)World Last updated: March 1st, 2010
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100027838/barack-obama%E2%80%99s-top-10-insults-against-britain/

Last week’s appalling declaration by Washington that the US would remain
neutral in the conflict between Britain and Argentina over the Falklands,
has prompted this list of the ten biggest insults so far by the Obama
administration against America’s closest friend and ally. For a government
that pledged to “restore” America’s standing in the world, it is doing a
spectacularly bad job, kowtowing to America’s enemies while consistently
kicking her allies.

Without a shadow of a doubt, Barack Obama has been the most anti-British
president in modern American history. The Special Relationship has been
significantly downgraded, and at times humiliated under his presidency,
which has displayed a shocking disregard for America’s most important
partner and strategic ally.

There are a multitude of reasons for President Obama’s dismissive approach
to the UK, and here are a few: an obsession with engaging and appeasing
America’s enemies rather than cultivating allies; personal animosity towards
Britain because of his grandfather’s role as a Mau Mau supporter in 1950’s
colonial Kenya; Democrat resentment over British support for the Bush
Administration over Iraq; left-wing disdain for the idea of Anglo-American
exceptionalism and world leadership; support for supranational institutions
such as the European Union over the supremacy of the nation state.

So here’s my top 10 list, which will no doubt be expanded to a top 20 in a
few months.

1. Declaration of neutrality over the Falklands

For sheer offensiveness it’s hard to beat last week’s incredible statement
from the State Department on the Falklands dispute, not least considering
the fact that 255 British soldiers died retaking the islands from Argentina
in 1982. Here it is:

“We are aware not only of the current situation but also of the history, but
our position remains one of neutrality. The US recognises de facto UK
administration of the islands but takes no position on the sovereignty
claims of either party.”

As I wrote previously, over the course of the last year, we’ve seen a
staggering array of foreign policy follies by this administration, from the
throwing under the bus of the Poles and the Czechs over missile defence to
siding with Marxists in Honduras. But this latest pronouncement surely takes
the biscuit as the most brazen betrayal so far of a US ally.

2. Downgrading of the Special Relationship

Barack Obama never refers to the Special Relationship, and has not even
mentioned Britain once in a major policy speech, either before or after
taking office. The Anglo-American alliance is barely a blip on Obama’s
teleprompter screen, and he acts as though it simply does not exist. The
Special Relationship has also been largely erased from the official lexicon
of the State Department, and is not even used by US officials in London.
Despite being America’s only major reliable ally when the chips are down,
London is now treated in Washington as though it were the same as any other
European power, albeit less charitably than either Paris or Berlin.

3. Support for a federal Europe

The Obama administration’s relentless and wrongheaded support for the
creation of a federal Europe, from backing the Treaty of Lisbon to the
European Security and Defence Policy, is a slap in the face for the
principle of national sovereignty in Europe. While the Bush Administration
was divided over Europe, the Obama administration is ardently
euro-federalist, despite the fact that the likely next British government
will probably fight them tooth and nail over it. British sovereignty is
non-negotiable, and Obama’s willingness to undermine it is both insulting to
Britain and self-defeating for the United States.

4. Undermining of British influence in NATO

Despite Nicolas Sarkozy’s distinctly unflattering opinion of Barack Obama,
the president has gone to great lengths to appease French interests, even
going as far as apologising to the French people in Strasbourg for hurting
their feelings over the war in Iraq. The Obama administration has also done
its best to give Paris a lead role in the NATO alliance at Britain’s
expense, granting it one of two supreme NATO command positions – Allied
Command Transformation (ACT). And this, despite the fact that France has for
decades been ambivalent and obstructionist over NATO, and is failing to
carry its weight in Afghanistan. And as I noted before, there is currently
not a single British general in charge of any of the big five supreme and
operational commands in the alliance (in contrast to two Frenchmen and a
German), even though Great Britain provides more troops for NATO operations
than any member apart from the United States.

5. Refusal to recognize Britain’s sacrifice in Afghanistan

It is particularly galling that the president cannot even be bothered to
acknowledge the sacrifice made by over 250 British servicemen and women on
the battlefields of Afghanistan alongside their American allies – especially
evident during his lacklustre speech at West Point in December. Britain
currently has as many soldiers stationed in Afghanistan – 10,000 – as all
the other major European powers combined. In contrast to George W. Bush, who
frequently thanked the British armed forces and people for their role in the
War on Terror, Obama has spectacularly failed to do so.

6. Throwing Churchill out of the Oval Office

It is hard to think of a more derogatory message to send to the British
people within days of taking office than to fling a bust of Winston
Churchill out of the Oval Office and send it packing back to the British
Embassy – not least as it was a loaned gift from Britain to the United
States as a powerful display of solidarity in the aftermath of the 9/11
terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Obviously, public diplomacy is
not a concept that carries much weight in the current White House, and nor
apparently is common sense.

7. Insulting words from the State Department

The mocking views of a senior State Department official following the Prime
Minister’s embarrassing reception at the White House in March last year says
it all:
“There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other
190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.”

One would have thought that this kind of hugely damaging gaffe would have
resulted in at least a formal apology and a reprimand for the official
involved, but unfortunately Obama administration apologies are strictly
reserved for the French and assorted enemies of the United States.

8. DVDs for the Prime Minister

Readers of this blog will know I’m no fan of Gordon Brown, but whatever one
thinks of his less than stellar leadership skills or his downright awful
policies, Brown travels abroad not as a private individual but as the leader
of America’s closest ally. He represents 61 million Britons including the
Armed Forces, as well as a huge amount of British trade and investment with
the United States. He was treated shabbily when he visited the White House
last March, and denied a Rose Garden press conference as well as a dinner.
To cap it all, the decision to send him home with an assortment of 25 DVDs
ranging from Toy Story to The Wizard of Oz – which can’t even be played in
the UK - was a breathtaking display of diplomatic ineptitude that would have
shamed the protocol office of an impoverished Third World country. And we
haven’t even mentioned Obama’s iPod for the Queen.

9. Refusal to meet the Prime Minister in New York

Not content with humiliating the Prime Minister with a bargain basement DVD
collection, President Obama proceeded to give him the run-around at the UN
General Assembly in New York last September in a farce worthy of an episode
from Benny Hill, declining to meet with him privately after no less than
five requests. I can understand why Obama might not want to spend much time
with the dour and easily angered Brown, who was apparently mightily enraged
over the whole affair. It is also the case that Brown himself has done a
good deal to undermine the Special Relationship and shares much of the blame
himself for this debacle. But it is insulting to the British people as a
whole when the president of the United States is happy in principle to sit
down and negotiate with tyrants like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but won’t hold a
bilateral meeting with the leader of America’s top ally, when thousands of
British troops are fighting in Afghanistan.

10. Robert Gibbs’ embarrassing attack on the British press

No list of Obama administration slights against Britain would be complete
without mention of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ sneering rant
against the British press (first reported by Politico) after spotting an
article in The Telegraph he disagreed with. Here’s what Gibbs said:

“Let’s just say if I wanted to look up, if I wanted to read a write-up of
how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I’d
might open up a British newspaper. If I was looking for something that
bordered on truthful news, I’m not entirely sure it’d be the first pack of
clips I’d pick up.”

As I wrote at the time, this kind of attack would normally be made against
the likes of the North Korean or Iranian state media, but in the current
climate of “engagement” with America’s enemies the White House is far more
likely to attack its own allies. And by the way, Gibbs, as my colleague
James Delingpole noted in a superbly penned response, it’s the “Champions
League” not the “Champions League Cup”.

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