Obama's European Trip-An Unqualified Success

After my initial disappointment at the election of Obama, and after brooding for about four days about it, I decided that I was going to make a serious effort to treat him as fairly as I could. I was not going to jump on every internet meme going that sought to belittle or denigrate him in any and every possible way. Not only that, I decided early on I would give him due credit where I thought it was due.

The American news media-at least the television network news media-has made it too easy to ignore all of that. Obama's recent trip to Europe is a case in point. I have to ask, in all seriousness, what was so great about it, other than the fact that he was met by adoring crowds who fell all over themselves in their attempts to outdo each other in heaping adulation on this newest American president?

What is it about Michelle Obama that she was considered more graceful and elegant than, say, Laura Bush? I have to seriously wonder about the mind-set of the news media when you hear them heaping such fulsome praise on her to begin with, but after a while, I honestly began to question not only their mind-set, but their collective sanity, when one of them mused as to whether Obama might quip, seemingly in all seriousness, that "he was the one who accompanied Michelle Obama to Europe"?

The American news media is actually suggesting, and apparently encouraging, the current President of the United States plagiarize the words of a former and late President. I hate to say this, but-WHAT THE FUCK?!

I understand, by the way, this was more of a get-acquainted kind of European tour, and to that extent the trip can legitimately be considered a successful one. Still, enough is enough. Not only was nothing of any real substance accomplished, there was actually a set-back. Obama failed to get any kind of firm commitment for the engagement of more European NATO troops to Afghanistan, the French being apparently the sole exception. In fact, NATO might well withdraw their troops from the country at a time when they might well be more vitally important than ever.

Our European allies, those same countries that previously criticized George W. Bush for being a cowboy, for acting unilaterally and determining to go it alone if necessary in Iraq, are seemingly going to let us go it alone now in Afghanistan. They seem determined to refuse Obama's request in this regard. Oh, but they did it ever so politely, just as they so graciously intimated they had no intention of any further investments of great amounts of funds to bailing out their own economies as we seem repeatedly determined to do with ours. Perhaps we, the US, should do more, they seemed to say with a friendly smile, even as Obama tried to discourage the growing protectionist trend that seems to permeate the economy of the European continent, and still does.

Nothing of actual importance was accomplished or settled, though there was a stated agreement that the world should aim toward full nuclear disarmament-which will of course probably never happen in any of our lifetimes. Aside from such petty and irrelevant displays of feel-good utopian ideology, and in otherwise viewing in total the sum and substance of Obama's trip overall, the Europeans, for the most part, came across as the more practical of the two, in retrospect.

Nevertheless, despite the relative insignificance of the trip in terms of actual firm agreements or accomplishments, this cotton candy show trip was hailed by the American television network news media as a major triumph.

Yet, if George W. Bush had ever intimated that there was an anti-Americanism in Europe that was insidious, as Obama did, they would probably have reported it as though it were to all intents and purposes the next best thing to a declaration of war. To be fair, they would not have been too far off the mark, as I rather suspect there would have been judges in Spain quickly preparing an indictment on grounds of engaging in hate speech had Bush ever had the temerity to publicly utter the words spoken by Obama in Europe-where he nevertheless seems to be a conquering hero, or at the very least, an American idol and icon.

When he went to Turkey, he was covered by a news anchor who, for the occasion, donned blackface greasepaint.

We are told that we should not take such actions as an intended insult, and probably, we should not take it as such. I am very much afraid that, in reality, Barak Obama is not taken seriously enough in Europe to warrant an insult.

That might be the scariest thing of all. While a great many European citizens genuinely seem to like President Obama and his wife, and have a great admiration for them, and what they think Obama stands for, I'm very much afraid that all too many European leaders and elites see him for what he very likely is in reality-an empty suit, a meaningless promise, and a worthless symbol.