Barack Obama’s scheme to deliver a major foreign policy address at the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin complicates German US-relations, as the government would like to avoid offending both Obama and John McCain.  It also mucks about with German domestic politics. It is a  move that is not only inconsistent with Obama’s complaint that the US is not sensitive enough to our relationships with our allies, but also indicative of Obama’s inexperience and hubris.
Obama suck-up Andrew Sullivan manages to not only gloss over these issues, but also misleads his readers about the nature of the controversy. He claims that President Bush is determined to meddle with Obama’s plans, which the German government denies. He ignores that the German government would likely be queasy about the proposal, regardless of what the current US government thinks of it. He then claims that “it turns out that speeches at the Brandenburg Gate are pretty much a dime a dozen,” when Der Spiegel actually reports that , as in the past, it has only been used on very special occasions for addresses by politicians, and then only by elected American presidents (photo ops are not uncommon, but that’s different from a major address).
It seems like only yesterday that Sully was pretending be concerned about Obama’s hubris, mostly because it was only yesterday. I guess that seeing what is in front of one’s nose really is a constant struggle for him. Maybe Sully should take down the Orwell quote from his blog and replace it with “I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day…”
Update: NRO’s Jim Geraghty links. Thanks!
Baracky and a throng of cheering obeisant Germans is really not at all creepy.
Obama suck-up Andrew Sullivan manages to not only gloss over these issues, but also misleads his readers about the nature of the controversy. He claims that President Bush is determined to meddle with Obama’s plans
So what if Bush wants to meddle with Obama’s plans? Obama wants to go there for political reasons, Bush wouldn’t (if indeed it’s true) want him to for political reasons. Obama doesn’t have any higher purpose for having a speech there than to gain a political advantage. Isn’t political pushback the proper response? I mean, it being politics and all?
MayBee,
How dare you? O! is above politics, above humanity.
His supporters are largely blind to his ego-tripping I guess. The Obamessiah can do no wrong.
Someone fool told Obama to act as if he is president already. This is a mistake.
What’s he going to say anyway? “Hey communist guys…put that wall back up!”
“Hey communist guys, and ladies…put that wall back up!”
I do try to withhold the my amateur diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder until I see some clear “tells,” so I think I’m not at all premature in saying that Barack is one of the NPDs that take to politics like flies to manure.
I mean, he was abandoned by both parents at a time when he could still remember it, which could very easily lead to delusions of extreme importance to compensate for the devastating reality of not being wanted.
It is increasingly apparent that his only true conviction is that he should be president and that he should be hailed by all as the Messiah. If that’s not NPD, nothing is.
I think these are the same Germans that won’t actually fight and stuff in Afghanistan. The same ones that a lot hosted our terrorist friends what made those towers fall down. I think for real Baracky and them have a lot to talk about.
He could start with “Ich bin ein gross schwartz-weiss schwangstucker”.
I wonder what kind of mark this will leave ..
Seems the Messiah like to sleep late.
The odd thing about Andrew’s post is that he links the same article twice, but links nothing to prove his “it turns out that…”. The previously twice-linked article, as Karl points out, seems to refute his assertion.
Someone fool told Obama to act as if he is president already. This is a mistake.
Is Mark Penn on Obama’s staff now? Or is Patty Solis-Doyle the culprit? Hillary Clinton made the same mistake early on. I can’t wait to see if Obama adapts the cackle.
I think for real Baracky and them have a lot to talk about.
Yeah. It’s too bad he hasn’t had a Senate committee position that would have given him an opportunity to meet with Europeans about their Afghan commitments, isn’t it? Poor guy has to wait for a presidential campaign to talk with our allies.
good point for real, MayBee… Even his fellow traveler people are crinkly-browed about how his stewardship of that committee he was entrusted with a lot highlights “the conflict between ambition and experience that has raised questions about his candidacy.”
Can You Wait Until the Inauguration?…
Barack Obama can just smell the oval office, so much so that’s he’s letting his eagerness to lead us down whatever unknown path of his capricious choosing overstep his sense of propriety. This summer, the Democrat nominee for POTUS will…
– I don’t think the Chancellor is going to touch this with a 40 foot Weiner Schnitzel. Shes already got a sparkling parade of nut bags running around, witness AH losing his head in that museum the other day. The last thing she needs is an xian convert Muslim apostate, Americas Baracky BuckWheat, running around stirring things up for jer.
– Sully must have been having a lovers hissy fit yesterday, and now hes remorsefully sorry, and wishes to be back polishing the royal crank of his major mancrush again.
Obama’s cowboy foreign relations
He rode a blazing saddle…
Salt Lick,
I caught a bit of Limabugh the other day spinning a parody titled “Blazing Liberal.”
I am shocked that there has not been more outrage about it.
Karl — I tuned in about the middle of the “Blazing Liberal” parody. I didn’t listen too closely — didn’t strike me as one of Shanklin’s best efforts — more outrageous and crude than funny. Rush has lost his edge.
Sullivan’s other problem is arguing with Max Boot. Sullivan knows jack all about military matters (for example he complained bitterly about the U.S. not shutting down the Syrian-Iraq border as if that was even a possibility) and yet tells us Max Boot is crazy. Mainly Sullivan is pissed that Boot isn’t ashamed of the U.S. having destroyed Saddam Hussein’s regime. He’s got so much animosity for his former fellow travelers pre-invasion, that he’ll saying anything they say is just ipso facto false.
I’ve lost so much respect for Andrew Sullivan as a human being it ain’t even funny.
IMHO, Rush lost his edge when he left NYC.
Well “Brack, the Magic Negro” is a classic.
“Barack”
Sullivan has all the emotional stability of a fourteen year old girl learning that her first crush doesn’t like her ‘that way’.
After all of the weeping, we’ll get over it.
Sullivan knows jack all about military matters
Sullivan’s thesis about Obama’s colored-person face also shows his provincialism. When I was in the Peace Corps in Kenya, some of our black American volunteers had a more difficult time fitting in to the local culture than did white volunteers. The black Africans had different expectations of them and ironically, their relationships were fraught with more potential for misunderstanding. I guess it was similar to how the French used to love black Americans but white not so much. The same thing will happen to Obama, but Sullivan is too wrapped up in the issue of race to understand the reality of culture.
Bush’s behind the scenes pressure on the German government has become known in Germany. Yet, another reason that most Germans have disdain for the Bush Administration. Bush’s efforts to limit Obama’s speech bespeak the Republican fear of the enthusiastic welcoming crowds that Obama’s speech would create. Bush is afraid that his non-welcome would further highlight his own failure as a leader of the free world.
Rush is like any other person, and occasionally misses the mark with his satires. But for the most part, he is still a very entertaining showman.
I have to say that my favorite spoof of his was the one about Hillary’s testimony before Congress.
“I can’t remember, my heads in a blender,it’s Jello”.
Oh. That’s a fun game. Let’s make a list of other things Germans disdain.
I’ll start: The French!!
Your turn!
Wherever he gives this speech, after his complaints about American tourists in Europe not speaking the local language, he’d better be delivering it in Deutsche.
Really? Care to link to any reputable source to that effect?
Or maybe the Germans don’t want to interfere with our political process. That would be the honorable thing to do — which explains why Democrats have a hard time believing it.
No, continuum, the word isn’t known, it is assumed. In fact, it’s a lie and you’re a liar. Bush isn’t running for anything and doesn’t like McCain; the American phrase is “has no horse in the race”. There is no reason whatever for him to care.
Merkel isn’t the smartest person in Europe, but she’s entirely bright enough to keep her fingers out of the meat grinder that is American politics without “pressure” from outside.
That’s OK. Lie louder. Bush is laughing at you.
Regards,
Ric
– I really do not care what fantasies the Lefturd liars spin about Bush anymore. He already ate their lunch, and now its just sour grapes pure and simple. Losers whining for having lost their asses, and no place to hide. Boo fucking hoo.
– Besides, the oil price tsunami I talked about a week ago is about to wash over the entire Dem party, and their gaggle of far Marxocrat shitheads, and its going to be mondo fun watching the whole troup of climate change assholes, and the politicians they have in their pocket, swept out to sea.
– Nancy, the harpie, will be riding the front of the wave with the scepter of anti-American Euro sukture clutched in her bony old fingers.
– Obamas going to get hammered by this too, and it doesn’t really matter what McGranPa does or doesn’t do.
– You know when they went against all common sense and bet against the Iqaq war, that might have worked if the surge went flat and failed. But I wouldn’t have believed they were so ideologically entrenched they would have misjudged this fuel issue so badly. You have to wonder just how blinded these assholes are by their partisanship. Did they actually think that they could stand blocking every effort to break the logjam, while every American that drives a car has to get it shoved in their face about two times a weak? How long did they think people were going to go on getting financially raped and just sit quietly listening to all the good reasons we’re getting fucked?
– It leaves you wondering just wtf they were thinking. Apparently the climate change nutbags have Pelosi and her fellow SecProggs in their pockets so deeply they’re frozen in place.
– Its going to be most enjoyable watching the “Fwenchies” crash and burn. Coming to a gas station near you soon.
The German’s appear to be reluctant to be used as an electioneering stunt and clearly see through the Obamessiah’s cheap trick to paint himself as the reincarnation of John F. … Good for them.
Mr Obama.. I knew John F. Kennedy and you are no John F Kennedy..
(ok.. not really.. but still..)
Okay, seriously. Feets won the thread in the first comment, managing to both prefigure and rebut Continuum by 25 comments and 14 words.
Bravo.
– Its ok Ouro, some of us actually did, and you’re right, hes about 20 shades of man below JFK.
Happyfeet does that a lot.
20 shades of man and LADY below
I would have liked to have met him.. A hot wife.. An even hotter girlfriend.. and the nuts to face down the Russian Bear.. So how did the Dems go from there to Jimmah to Slick Willy? It boggles the mind..
– JFK was not the “Liberal” these assholes know. In those days the far Left was a very small group, consisting of mainly left over Commies from the Hollywood “blacklist” days, and a few college profs and the SDS/Weather underground/Black Panthers, ect. They mostly did espionage, Kerrys “winter Soldiers” and that sort of thing. We were in the fight of our lives against Communism, and they kept their mouths shut and a low profile with Hoover and the FBI, and later the idiot Nixon, up their asses 24/7. They basically drummed Johnson out of office, but in his case he had no business being Pres anyway. It was just to much for a Texas Mayor who had risen far above his abilities.
– It wasn’t until the escalation in ‘Nam when the hippie generation latched onto the Left as a way to “stick it to the man” and just generally fuck off, that the hard Left gained any traction. The rest is sick history. But Kennedy would have thrown them all under the bus if they would have tried to support him.
You know when they went against all common sense and bet against the Iqaq war
I like that BBH — Message to Dems — never bet against America.
Never bet against an American when death is on the line..
– Or when your politics is attacking the electorate right in their wallets.
“Bush is afraid that his non-welcome would further highlight his own failure as a leader of the free world.”
What failure would that be?
We’re winning in Iraq.
He regularly beats the reactionary Dems in Congess like a rented mule.
And when he can’t get them to move in the right direction, they put their own cocks in the meatgriner.
See Policy, Energy.
I think #25 is satire.
O! had better be careful about those high falutin’ speech locations. It ain’t over yet. He could look like a big loser asshole for the rest of his life–what am I saying? He <is going to look like a big loser asshole for the rest of his life–when McCain wins in November.
Coming late the the ‘what the Germans disdain’ game:
Messy forests.
What, were you expecting consistency from Excitable Andy?
[…] Obama’s Cowboy Foreign Relations […]
BBH-
“Did they actually think that they could stand blocking every effort to break the logjam, while every American that drives a car has to get it shoved in their face about two times a (sic)weak? How long did they think people were going to go on getting financially raped and just sit quietly listening to all the good reasons we’re getting fucked?”
You left out the other two times a week – grocery shopping. And the feed lots are about out of affordable feed. Seems that the corn they usually use is just not there, and the other grains are too pricey to ship… on top of being too pricey to buy.
I think that by the by Barack Obama will try to have his picture taken on a derrick, next to the power tongs, before he gets many more shots with GreenPeace and Sierra Club activists.
They are out of time. And they are blind to the fact.
You know what?
The fucking Germans are the last people on the planet with any reason to doubt our ability to impose our will on a population.
After Eisenhower and Zhukov, what’s left of the German testicular psyche retreated into a marathon viewing of the Vagina Monologues and refuses to come out. They’ve been babysat and LIK
ED it for fifty years, and the only difference anymore between them and the french is that nobody has bothered to invade them for fear of dealing with the USA.
We should have closed our German bases and moved to Poland five years ago. No shit. If we must spend money overseas, how about we spend it on allies?
Let Obama speak to the Germans. They are his kind of folk.
Late but my take on what Obama would say is
“That’s not the wall I remember”.
I second that happyfeet gives great comment. :-)
TMJUtah: And you think I make no sense.
No Brain:
We’re winning in Iraq.
What does that mean? Are we at war with Iraq? Or does “winning” mean not “losing” and in that case would you please define the terms, please?
Uh… Cynn:
“TMJUtah: And you think I make no sense.”
“What does that mean? Are we at war with Iraq? Or does “winning†mean not “losing†and in that case would you please define the terms, please?”
Winning generally means meeting preestablished victory conditions. The parameters defining our objectives regarding the regime of Saddam Hussein were laid out in the resolution authorizing offensive action the president submitted to the congress… prefaced, of course, by the arguments supporting the use of said force.
The resolution passed with overwhelming majorities. Now almost seven years later we know that Saddam’s WMD capability was not what it appeared to be.
Booyah. Damn glad we didn’t have to fight it out in MOPPIV; if you’ve never suited and masked up and then tried to be effective, there’s not enough words for me to express how unpleasant it is. And if there had been chemical weapons, and they had been used in any efficient manner, the number of dead and wounded on both sides would have been horrific.
You cannot effectively decon in the assault. Not in the time limit defined by filter/suit duration in a desert. And the Iraqi civilians would be just as dead, just quicker.
But anyway – the war wasn’t about WMD. It was about changing the face of the most fucked up part of the world, with the intent of removing the obvious first baddest regional thug and fostering a constitutionally governed republic whose leaders would be elected via the ballot. You know, sort of like the way we do things. You may hate the air George W. Bush breathes… but ma’am, he’s done and gone in January, so you better get cracking on finding another reason to live.
(You don’t like Bush? If I had my choice of presidents, we wouldn’t be dealing with Maliki’s request for a timeline for troop withdrawls. But we’d still be paying reparations for the fallout damage in India, and trying to figure out how to most efficiently operate the Saudi and Iranian oil fields via robots. You come across as pretty ticked sometimes, cynn. You’ve got no clue what angry is. Trust me on this.)
Because … democracies, or more correctly in our case, representative republics, tend not to engage in international terrorism or wars of aggression. Saddam set himself up by punking the U.N., first by exploiting its corruption to confound the sanctions he was supposed to be subject to after the first gulf war, and then later by targeting overwatch aircraft operating in the U.N. authorized no-fly zones. He also tried to have Bush 1 whacked… which you probably don’t really have a problem with… and paid bounties to Pal and other terrorist organizations.
After 9/11, he needed to go. As a first step to ending the threat of Islamist terror. A real no brainer. That the Left side of American polity has since declared that they were duped… well, I’ve maintained for years that without government or universities, our liberal intelligentsia would be out of a job. But I kid – it’s dishonesty or simple dumb political opportunism that has driven our Left out of mere opposition and into enemy status
I’m cool with that. I knew that when we started fighting back in this war, we’d suffer from mistakes and poor leadership down the road. I admit to not having the cynicism to fully appreciate just how feckless our national parties and Bush’s successor pool would turn out to be so early… but the sun will come up on the battlefield tomorrow, and rest assured if we decide to take a break, the enemy will not, and eventually when we hurt enough we’ll climb back in.
It would be nice not to waste all the progress we have bled for in Iraq; I have had the pleasure to correspond with and actually meet several Iraqi folk and I have nothing but admiration for their willingness to step forward into what is for them an alien existence – freedom, with responsibility for their own futures. It would be great to not have to kill them all somewhere down the road, for want of not sticking out the current mission.
It’s a big world, a big war, and we sure do seem to have little people on most of the map right now. So, I really don’t care if you think I don’t make sense. Why you think the way you do, and that there’s really nothing I can do to change your opinion, are just things as they are. You may strongly dislike me this moment. Down the road, you’ll probably really hate me.
Have a fine day.
Congressional Resolution on Iraq (Passed by House and Senate October 2002).
Enjoy.
yeah, you won fucker. Good luck next week/
“yeah, you won fucker. Good luck next week/”
– When that oil tsunami hits Pelosi and the rest of the Congressional Donothing-crats in the nuts, you want your crow on white or rye?
What does that mean?
Saddam: dead.
Mooky: on the run.
Jihadis: mostly dead.
Looks like winning to me.
But then, you’re not on the same side as me, are you?
I’ll try to make it easy: cynn, winning – see Basrah, Mosul and Baghdad in 2007. See them now.
s’OK?
You da man, Major John, you da man.
If Obama were to speak in Germany, how many times would he mention Bush by name and say the words “failed policies of the past”? Bush never mentioned Obama by name in Israel and Pelosi almost shot her uterus out through her nose over the despicable behavior which was clearly beneath the office of the president. Obama’s JFK theme is lame and schoolyard gimmickry. Obama’s the type who thinks the Hot Pocket slogan is ingeniously nuanced. Obama is a fake intellectual which is another way of saying he is a moron. Obama is a cross between Huggy Bear and Cliff Claven.
cynn:
Why are you so attached to the idea of defeat–especially that of the United States? I’d think that most people would be happy to have contributed to a long-term positive effect on civilization. For four years, my dad had people trying to torpedo his ship–literally. In the end, his efforts resulted in 60 years of almost perfect peace in the United States. You’re free to gas up your SUV and buy your $5 cup of coffee. You don’t want to give anything back. You’re a spoiled, self-indulgent ingrate. I think you’ve been brainwashed.
Jeez, Cynn. If the idea that we’re succeeding in Iraq makes you this surly, it seems to me you might want to re-examine your attitudes.
Holy carp. I’d expect that kind of anger from almost any of our genuine trolls, but not from you.