It’s bad enough that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is giving short shrift to American manufacturers and our economy by ordering extravagant new crystal stemware from Sweden to make the crystal cabinets in America’s embassies sparkle impressively, but now we learn that Barack Obama has told the U.S. relief forces in Haiti not to fly the U.S. flag over its own military compounds. He says that it will “send the wrong message.”
Never mind that all the other nations have their flags proudly flying above their military relief installations in Haiti. Even Croatia has its coat of arms flying outside its base. Yet not the U.S. Army. No U.S. flag flies anywhere despite that we are far and away the largest force and have supplied the most relief supplies and money to the earthquake recovery effort.
According to USAID, as of January 19, 2010 the U.S. had spent $130,864,571 on aid to the Haitian people to help them recover from the devastating earthquake. By Jan. 25 that number had already increased to $179,883,065. It is only going up from there.
So why did the Obama administration forbid flying our own flag in Haiti?
“We are not here as an occupation force, but as an international partner committed to supporting the government of Haiti on the road to recovery,” the U.S. government’s Haiti Joint Information Center said in response to a query about the flag.
If it is so important to be seen as just another member of that international force, then why are all the other nations still flying their flags? Oh, I remember now… unlike the U.S. they don’t have a president that is more comfortable apologizing for his country than being proud of it, even when it is engaged in saving lives through relief work.
As far as Obama is concerned, we should be ashamed of our nation even when we are digging children and the aged out of mounds of crumbled ruins, even when we are feeding the hungry, and administering life saving medicines — all for free mind you. Even those efforts aren’t good enough for us to be proud to fly our flag above them, apparently.
The NavyTimes.com report reveals a craven attempt by the Obama Administration to pin this no-flag decision on our troops, too. Obama’s Army flak, Colonel Billy Buckner, spokesman for Joint Task Force-Haiti — “a group representing various Obama administration agency heads” the NavyTimes.com report tells us — says that our commanders are “smart” not to fly the flag.
“Our commanders are smart and intuitively understand their mission here in Haiti, and clearly the sensitivities that come with supporting the mission,” Buckner said. A U.S. flag went up at a temporary consular station set up in the first few days on the airport tarmac, according to Charles Luoma-Overstreet, a State Department spokesman in Haiti.
“Apparently, the prime minister (Jean-Max Bellerive) saw this” and thought it appeared as if the United States were taking over the airport, Luoma-Overstreet said.
He said Bellerive said something to U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten, who agreed that flying the flag wasn’t a good idea and told the consular officials to take it down.
Notice how it went from “the commanders” being “smart” enough to understand the situation to Obama’s Ambassador to Haiti ordering the flag be removed? In other words, despite the Colonel trying to make it seem as if the commanders on the ground are all for this dearth of Old Glory, it really ends up being a political decision by Obama and his cohorts who are ashamed of America and willing to let anyone denigrate her.
Does anyone really think that PM Bellerive would have persisted in his loose observation that the U.S. was an “occupying force” amidst all the aid flowing into his country? And even if he did, so what? The aid we were supplying is obviously far more important than a cheap political maneuver by Bellerive.
Still, this shows the lack of spine Obama has when standing up to foreign criticism. Even this offhanded comment from Bellerive was enough for Obama to slight his own army and his own countrymen by removing Old Glory from sight in Haiti.
If Obama is this much of a linguini-spined sort of a leader, what will happen to us if he faces a real foreign crisis?
How can this be? What with all the bowing Obama’s engaged in and talking with enemy regimes and giving the Queen of England a cool iPod with his own photos and vids, how can this happen? Heck, Barry was given a Nobel Peace Prize!
A majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than it was two years ago and think President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security, a new poll finds.
The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin — 51 percent to 41 percent — Americans think the standing of the U.S. dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama’s presidency.
The two groups who did the survey are left leaners, so no claiming this is a “reich wing” survey, Lefties.. Democracy Corps was started by Clinton advisors. Third was/is a “moderate progressive” think tank.
On the national security front, a massive gap has emerged, with 50 percent of likely voters saying Republicans would likely do a better job than Democrats, a 14-point swing since May. Thirty-three percent favored Democrats.
“The erosion since May is especially strong among women, and among independents, who now favor Republicans on this question by a 56 to 20 percent margin,” the pollsters said in their findings.
Shocker! Obama and the Donkeys are losing support among women and independents, something they seem to be doing on all fronts through their insane policies. The administrations timorous response to the Crotch-bomber was a reason often cited, as was the idiotic plan to try terrorists in civilian court in NYC.
Remember this quote as delivered to Obama from TOTUS?
The Bush administration has done so much damage to American foreign relations that the president take a more active role in diplomacy than might have been true 20 or 30 years ago. If we think that meeting with the president is a privilege that has to be earned, that reinforces the sense that we stand above the rest of the world at this point in time. It’s important for us in undoing the damage that has been done over the last seven years, for the president to be willing to take that extra step. (Source: 2008 Democratic debate at University of Texas in Austin Feb 21, 2008)
I recently asked several senior administration officials, separately, to name a foreign leader with whom Barack Obama has forged a strong personal relationship during his first year in office. A lot of hemming and hawing ensued.
One official mentioned French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is scheduled to bring his glamorous wife to the White House residence this month for a couples dinner with Barack and Michelle Obama. But in France, Sarkozy’s bitterness toward Obama, the product of several perceived snubs, is an open secret, reported widely in the French press. In a speech at the U.N. General Assembly in September Sarkozy appeared to mock Obama’s signature disarmament initiative, saying “we are living in a real world, not a virtual world.”
Angela Merkel’s name also came up: Obama and the German chancellor, I was told, share a down-to-business pragmatism. But Merkel, too, has been conspicuously cool toward Obama ever since he made Berlin a stop on his 2008 election campaign. She stopped him then from appearing at the Brandenburg Gate and was said to be miffed last November when Obama didn’t show for ceremonies celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Anyway, diplomats say that Merkel has a much warmer relationship with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
No one named Gordon Brown. That’s fairly remarkable: The relationship between the sitting British prime minister and U.S. president has been consistently close over the past 30 years. Think Reagan and Thatcher, Clinton and Blair, Bush and Blair. But Obama has been portrayed as dissing Brown ever since he presented him with a set of DVDs as a gift during their first meeting in Washington a year ago. Last fall the British press reported that the White House had turned down five requests for Obama to meet Brown one-on-one at the United Nations or the G-20 summit.
No matter what one can say about Bush, he charmed many world leaders, and had a good working relationship with even those who had a different political opinion than he did. Even those who slammed him. He understood that world diplomacy was not about Bush, but, about the interests of the United States, and, that when push came to shove, it was “just business.” Obama treats everything as personal and being about Obama. For him, he seems to believe that meeting POTUS is a privilege, ergo the idiotic gifts to Brown’s and the Queen, blowing off the British press, a poor relationship with Sarkozy, and blowing off Germany for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Things did not go very well for Obama when he went to Germany for the WWII remembrance ceremony, where he managed to annoy, well, everyone.
Bush made friends with leaders all over the world. Remember the dancing he engaged in during a visit with Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Africa? Remember his great relationship with Israel? He had an excellent relationship with Putin, a wise decision. Bush took the time. He perhaps attempted to charm world leaders too much at times, but, he tried. Obama can hardly be bothered to pick up a phone, and he and his administration have made gaffe after gaffe, offered insult after insult. Someone needs to explain to President Neophyte that international diplomacy is about political interests, not about himself.
Barack Obama, it was claimed, would “repair” our reputation both with our enemies and our friends. So how has he done? Let’s take Britain for example. Has he “fixed” our special relationship with the British Isles? Well, if by fixed you mean he has fastened that relationship to a negative track, well then “fixed” it is.
Let’s review some of the slights that Barack Obama delivered to our closest allies, the British.
In February, immediately after he entered office, President Obama summarily rejected the most famous bust of Winston Churchill in England loaned to the U.S. for display in the Oval Office by the people of England. The bust was sent to us by the people of the U.K. as a gesture of solidarity and friendship in the aftermath of 9/11. Despite their generosity, Obama returned the generously loaned statuette without alerting the Brits that he intended to do so, blindsiding Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government.
Then in March Obama slighted the British once again by refusing to meet PM Brown at the airport in the previously arranged welcome-to-America press conference when the Brown’s came for a state visit.
During that same visit Obama callously gave Brown, a man who is nearly blind, a set of American DVD movies as an official gift from the U.S.A., movies that won’t even play on English DVD machines (America is “Region 1” while England is “Region 2” in DVD formats). To add insult to injury Mrs. Obama gave the Brown’s boys a few cheap toy helicopters from a Washington gift shop — likely made in China. On the other hand PM Brown gave some significant and thoughtful gifts to the Obama’s and our nation.
For his part, PM Brown gave two symbolic gifts and one that expressed national pride. Brown came bearing a pen holder carved from the timbers of the sister ship of that which gave the wood to create the famous “Resolute Desk,” the desk that has been in America’s charge since 1880. He also gave Obama the framed commission for that famous ship, the HMS Resolute. His third gift was a seven-volume biography of one of England’s greatest leaders, Winston Churchill.
Also during this state visit at least one person in Obama’s administration denigrated the famed “special relationship” that the U.S. and the U.K. have had since WWII. When Brown’s aids tried to interact with Obama’s, one of Obama’s aids reportedly said that there was no special relationship and that the Brits would be treated like any other nation in the age of Obama. Not very diplomatic that.
During March, British officials began to complain that Obama’s administration was neglecting the diplomatic phone calls that British officials were making to try to coordinate international policies. Apparently no one was picking up the phone in Washington when the Brits rang.
Later in April, the Obama’s showed an utter lack of protocol when visiting the Queen of England. Obama’s wife broke protocol by placing her hand upon the Queen’s back, a definite no-no. Michelle, it seems, was entirely too casual about her appearance before the Queen and the British were appalled by Michelle’s lack of respect. By itself this incident might seem small, but taken with all the others it seems apiece with how unimportant the Obama’s consider the British. Even long-standing protocol isn’t important enough to observe as far as the Obama’s are concerned.
It should be remembered that the D-Day incident occurred around the same time that Obama was bowing in supplication before the Saudi King showing the world that Obama would pay more deference to a repressive regime than any western democracy.
By June the British press was beginning to wonder why Obama hated them so much. Even the New York Times worried that, “on a more basic level, there is a sense that the Obama administration is ignoring the needs and counsel of longtime allies.” And so, during June several other western democracies were pronouncing their disgust at how they were being mistreated or ignored by Obama and his administration. Along with the British, the Germans, the French, and the Israelis were also becoming miffed at their treatment at Obama’s hands.
We should contrast these slights with how Obama had been bowing and scraping (both figuratively and literally) to Saudi Kings, North Korean madmen, dictatorial Iranian regimes, and South American strong men throughout this entire time. Obama was also seen in November bowing nearly to the floor before another national leader, this time before Japan’s Emperor Akihito. The Brits must have really been confused by this one. He bows to a Japanese Emperor — whose predecessor was an enemy to the U.S. — but shows little interest in their Queen — who was herself one of our longest allies and fought with us during WWII?
And now Obama’s upturned nose is again shown England as she fights to retain control of the Falklands. Instead of supporting the Brit’s assertion that the Falklands are their lawful possession Obama ignored the whole question, saying nothing, and leaving the British to twist in the wind lending Argentina’s claims upon the Islands more credence than it otherwise would have had if the U.S. had officially upheld the Brit’s rights to them.
The word in London is that Obama is punishing the British for having released sensitive U.S. intelligence on a terror suspect recently. In retaliation Obama has refused to uphold the U.K.’s long-held sovereignty over the Falklands.
This wasn’t the only punishment Obama dealt the Brits over this incident. Last week Obama also abruptly canceled a planned conference to celebrate 60 years of the two nation’s intelligence sharing arrangement.
In the final analysis it seems that Obama can act tough with the British, can callously dismiss the French and the Germans, but goes all soft in the face of murderous regimes like Iran, the Saudis, and North Korea. One would suspect that Obama hasn’t the spine to deal with real problems but, like the cuckolded hubby, lashes out where he knows its safe to do so but not where some lashing out would do some good.
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