Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reports that President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are “soul mates.” Why? Because Obama “disdains. . .needy, showboating allies and [Merkel] is neither.”
That’s hilarious. Who on the world stage is more of a showboater than Barack Obama — he of the speech in front of Greek columns, the shockingly pretentious Cairo lecture to Muslims, and the receding ocean tides? Obama’s “disdain” for “showboating” suggests that he’s self-delusional, self-hating, or both.
Now that we know how Obama views America’s allies (other than Merkel), it might be instructive to ask how America’s allies view Obama. Jaffe (along with the Post’s Griff Witte) has the answer to that one too. Many view him warily.
In the Post’s telling, however, that’s mostly the fault of America’s allies, not Obama. It seems that Obama’s “cold eyed view of [the] allies” and his “cerebral, dispassionate approach” has been off-putting. In short, he’s too smart and too cool for the rest of the world’s leaders (other than Merkel), many of whom, in Obama’s estimation, are “out of their mind.”
The Post must be kidding. The contempt in which Obama is held in the Middle East isn’t about his allegedly cerebral approach. It’s down, first, to his tilt to Iran, which culminated in a nuclear deal that’s unacceptable to most of the nations in the region. It’s down, second, to his failure to deal with the rise of ISIS.
Tell me what is so “cerebral” about dismissing ISIS as “the jayvee.”
Obama’s problems with many of Europe’s leaders are also the result of his policy decisions, coupled with his arrogance. They are only marginally less turned off by American weakness and disengagement than their Middle Eastern counterparts.
Early on, Obama sold out Poland and the Czech Republic by scrapping a planned missile defense system. Early on, he thumbed his nose at Great Britain. Later, he blamed the debacle in Libya on David Cameron.
Furthermore, European leaders surely understand that Obama bears considerable responsibility for the rise in terrorism and the current refugee crisis that afflict Europe. If Obama had acted more decisively in Syria and had not pulled the U.S. out of Iraq, ISIS would not have become a power capable of attracting, inspiring, and training so many terrorists, and Syria might not have deteriorated to the point that millions of Syrians want to flee.
No wonder Angela Merkel is now Obama’s lone soul mate among world leaders. No wonder Merkel is facing what the Post’s Jaffe calls “unprecedented pressure” domestically.
Socialism is not the Answer 