January 19, 2011

No Stronger Friend...than France?

By Robert Morrison
Even for an unapologetic Francophile like me, President Obama's latest diplomatic gaffe was too much to swallow.  Mr. Obama greeted the president of the French Republic with this comment: "We [Americans] don't have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people."The British, not surprisingly, took umbrage.  The Heritage Foundation's British-born commentator, Nile Gardiner, took to the pages of London's Daily Telegraph to point out that Britain supplied three times as many troops for NATO's war effort in Afghanistan and has suffered seven times as many battle deaths there as the French for our common cause. Gardiner also noted that Nicolas Sarkozy was decidedly less impressed with the new U.S. president than some in the media.  When the American president went to France for the 65th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy, Newsweek's Evan Thomas gushed that Obama hovered "above the nations, like a sort of god." ...(Read Full Article)