Comments on: Obama Hacks Off France In Latest Foreign Policy Blunder

By: Flagstaff

Flagstaff — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:26:36 +0000

Obama mis-identifying the President of France?

By: The_Gadfly

The_Gadfly — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:56:51 +0000

There’s no reason to be mean to airheads. And really, comparing them to Obama’s incompetence is really beyond the pale.

By: The_Gadfly

The_Gadfly — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:54:49 +0000

If he just would have had a facebook page or twittered the President about the change in leadership, none of this would have happened.

/end snark

By: Praying

Praying — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:35:22 +0000

infamous 25 DVD gift set - in U.S. DVD format to give to Mr. Brown!

By: Mike gamecock DeVine

Mike gamecock DeVine — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:57:43 +0000

check BHO’s mail before it leaves the White House to prevent international incidents. Kind of like a dead tree version of a teleprompter.

By: mbecker908

mbecker908 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:32:52 +0000

Buckner was a golden glove, top notch first baseman who would have been welcomed on any team in either league. He made an error.

B. Obama is a lightweight hack politician whose comparable skills on a baseball diamond wouldn’t get him on the bench at a “B” farm team.

By: $peciallist

$peciallist — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:59:10 +0000

should be great fun…

And as far as these little gaffes….we are NOT losing focus….we will throw them ALL up there and see what sticks..

the gloves are OFF

By: IL_Glock21

IL_Glock21 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:50:59 +0000

But afaik the Obama admin has already reached out to the Sarkozy admin and this letter was merely a response to Chirac’s foundation. My french is rusty but I just don’t see the insult/mistake here, unlike the redbutton incident, telling euros we had democracy first incident, the naive belief that youtube would make fundy iranians see the light and compromise with us incident, not to mention generally being an @$$ to our UK allies up to the point of slapping them on international tv.

This one, just seems like a bad example.

By: paulincolo

paulincolo — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:01:32 +0000

isn’t there someone in the administration that has foreign policy etiquette. Couldn’t the letter have said looking forward to working with you AND PRESIDENT SARKOZY. Is this really that hard?

By: $peciallist

$peciallist — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:14:41 +0000

way to go Barry!

By: nod90

nod90 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:55:26 +0000

…comment from Caspera from the Ace of Spades thread.

50 I read the original French. My take is not that Obama or anyone still thinks Chirac is the French Prime Minister — so it’s not a super-waterhead gaffe — it’s just that when Obama wants to compose a letter to France, he writes the letter to the out-of-power sympathetic lefty Chirac while blowing off Sarkozy. It’s almost a “Gee, my administration wishes your administration was still running things over there instead of that A-hole Sarkozy so we’ll work with you on your pet projects instead if you want” kind of missive. Pretty strange though. I take it back. I don’t know what to think of it.
Posted by: caspera at March 22, 2009 09:31 PM (vSuMy)

Some of the French commenters at Le Figaro also seem to think that Sarkozy might very well be offended by this. Here’s a link to the original article.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualites/2009/03/19/01001-20090319ARTFIG00357-confidentiel-barack-obama-a-ecrit-a-jacques-chirac-.php?mode=commentaires

My take on this is the same as caspera’s. The French aren’t super-mad, but it is a mis-step and it could sour relations with Sarko. Just one more example of “…not ready to lead.”

By: nod90

nod90 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:19:56 +0000

…you need a good French to English translation of the original article from Le Figaro. I ran it through Google Translate (I’m not claiming this is a good translation) and this is what I got:

Barack Obama wrote to Jacques Chirac

The U.S. President has just sent a letter “very sympathetic” to Jacques Chirac, in the words of the latter. “I am confident that we can over the next four years working together in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world,” writes the successor to George W. Bush’s predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy. In mentioning the word “peace,” Obama makes implicit tribute to the action of the former French president who opposed the war in Iraq. A U.S. intervention against which the future U.S. president had opposed as a senator, in a vote in Congress.

Some of the comments on the article say that Obama sent the letter to the Chirac Foundation as a reply to a letter that he recieved from them. For example:

Two birds with one stone?
21/03/2009 at 16:08

In writing to the Foundation Chirac, Obama may have had two objectives in mind: to allow the future by keeping open the option to use the services of the former president, who, like himself, had opposed the war in Iraq, ………

Apologies to Erick if you have already checked this out, but I just want to be sure that Redstate isn’t getting hold of the wrong end of the stick.

By: GuyInSD

GuyInSD — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:14:20 +0000

I would suggest after such a string of gaffes (apparently even scripted ones like the Special Olympics comment) and stupid mistakes that it is as if he wants to get caught.

I’ve felt for a long time, going well back into the campaign, that Obama has acted like a spoiled kid who keeps trying to find the boundary for acceptable behavior. Since the media did not call him on anything, he carried it through to the White House.

By: jimmuy8

jimmuy8 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:14:09 +0000

The way this idiot is going his next letter will be to the Iron Shiek and Nikolai Volkoff at the Foreign Legion . . .

By: tnjim

tnjim — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:09:01 +0000

“Sell Guam to China to fund windmills and solar panels - coming soon”

Don’t give them any ideas!

By: jimmuy8

jimmuy8 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:08:15 +0000

As I look at lefty sites, the one thing that keeps striking me is not that they are ignorant or stupid–it’s that they willfully insulate themselves from anything that opposes or contradicts their view.

If you purposefully live in a world where the sole source of your relevant news is hard-left sites and media, the fact that Chriac is no longer President of France is unknown, irrelevant and unimportant. The President of France usefulness was only in that he could be a foil to strike at and embarrass Bush. When the President of France was making news with comments and actions that made Bush look bad, that was news, when the President of France behaves like an ally and an adult, that’s not news.

This same view–only that which is useful to use against your enemies is important–is a prism through which their entire behavior passes.

Obama has surrounded himself with many of the type of people who argue with all candor and seriousness that the mainstream media are conservative and dominated by conservative owners. It is no surprise that none of them know or care that the world changes every day and most of the time Bush had nothing to do with it.

By: Mike gamecock DeVine

Mike gamecock DeVine — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:02:17 +0000

By: Mike gamecock DeVine

Mike gamecock DeVine — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:01:27 +0000

By: Mike gamecock DeVine

Mike gamecock DeVine — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:59:43 +0000

By: tnjim

tnjim — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:43:40 +0000

This guy’s supposed to be the smartest president we’ve ever had??

God help us.

Please!