Tag Archives: eu

Whirling president

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Okay, so the man who turned Hillary is now turning Turkey on its axis. No surprise. Obama overthrew Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton only to pivot her to his side Lincoln-style as his Secretary of State. Now, after charming grumbling heads of state in the EU, he manages to steer Turks 180 degrees with his winning ways.

How does he manage this people magic? Consult columnist extraordinaire Maureen Dowd:

Like a good shrink, the president listens; it’s a way of flattering his subjects and sussing them out without having to fathom what’s in their soul. “It is easy to talk to him,” Dmitri Medvedev said after their meeting. “He can listen.” The Russian president called the American one “my new comrade.”

And, good evidence from Asli Aydintasbas, former Ankara bureau chief of the newspaper Sabah, writing today in an op-ed piece in The New York Times:

Mr. Obama’s visit to Ankara was a carefully calibrated series of messages and symbolic gestures that spoke to Turkey’s different segments. He met with the government leadership as well as opposition leaders from secular, nationalist and Kurdish parties. He pledged to support “Ataturk’s vision of Turkey as a modern and prosperous democracy,” as he wrote in the guestbook at the mausoleum of the founder of secular Turkey.

In our eternal identity crisis, we Turks have lately been thinking only in opposites — that you are either secular or religious, Kurd or Turk, European or Middle Eastern. It took a young foreign leader on his first visit here to remind us that we are all of those things, and much more.

U.S. to EU: we don’t do ‘hell’

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Okay, so this is how it works in the dysfunctional world we lead. The spoiled son embarrasses dad on the eve of the patriarch’s visit, knowing that pops’ll spring for the Wii he so wants just to shut him up.

So it is with Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, head of the European Union, who just blasted the U.S. stimulus measures as the “way to hell.”

President Obama, as it happens, is scheduled to arrive in Prague in less than two weeks. And this Topolanek, who, by the way just received a vote of no confidence from his government, will be looking for more than a Wii, perhaps enough to fund a whole high-tech industry. You think?

Thank you EU leaders. Once again, just as we’re all trying to get along so like the world doesn’t crumble around us, you shoot off your hypocritical mouths again. Recall the French arrogance (did I leave off an accent grave somewhere?) post 9/11. We can still take the freedom fries out of the freezer, you know.

Now, here’s the height of irony on two counts:

  1. On March 1, The New York Times reported that top EU governments trashed the idea of ponying up to bailout newer, Eastern members. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is facing elections this fall, rejected it soundly.
  2. In the midst of the AIG bonus scandal — on the Ides of March no less — AIG reported a much larger and equally-controversial giveaway: some $49.5 billion to 22 banks, 16 of which are foreign, many European, including UBS, Deutsche Bank and Société Générale. (Oddly, this story went virtually unnoticed in the fog of the bonus scandal, but for limited coverage in such reliables as The Gray Lady.)

So let’s sum up: a Czech leader, who also happens to head the EU, is gaming Obama and America because his own neighbors, like Germany, whose banks received mucho American cash via the AIG bailout, won’t ante up.

And what’s worse is this plays the hell card as the world’s house of cards teeters on the brink. Nice! (and like Elaine’s boyfriend Jake on Seinfeld, I eschew exclamation points).

P.S. Reactions to this news can also be found on the Fayetteville Observer blog.

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