Nile Gardiner
Telegraph [UK]
3/1/2010
Last week’s appalling declaration by Washington that the US would remain neutral in the conflict between Britain and Argentina over the Falklands, has prompted this list of the ten biggest insults so far by the Obama administration against America’s closest friend and ally. For a government that pledged to “restore” America’s standing in the world, it is doing a spectacularly bad job, kowtowing to America’s enemies while consistently kicking her allies.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Barack Obama has been the most anti-British president in modern American history. The Special Relationship has been significantly downgraded, and at times humiliated under his presidency, which has displayed a shocking disregard for America’s most important partner and strategic ally.
There are a multitude of reasons forPresident Obama’s dismissive approach to the UK, and here are a few: an obsession with engaging and appeasing America’s enemies rather than cultivating allies; personal animosity towards Britain because of his grandfather’s role as a Mau Mau supporter in 1950’s colonial Kenya; Democrat resentment over British support for the Bush Administration over Iraq; left-wing disdain for the idea of Anglo-American exceptionalism and world leadership; support for supranational institutions such as the European Union over the supremacy of the nation state.
So here’s my top 10 list, which will no doubt be expanded to a top 20 in a few months.
1. Declaration of neutrality over the Falklands
For sheer offensiveness it’s hard to beat last week’s incredible statement from the State Department on the Falklands dispute, not least considering the fact that 255 British soldiers died retaking the islands from Argentina in 1982. Here it is:
“We are aware not only of the current situation but also of the history, but our position remains one of neutrality. The US recognises de facto UK administration of the islands but takes no position on the sovereignty claims of either party.”
As I wrote previously, over the course of the last year, we’ve seen a staggering array of foreign policy follies by this administration, from the throwing under the bus of the Poles and the Czechs over missile defence to siding with Marxists in Honduras. But this latest pronouncement surely takes the biscuit as the most brazen betrayal so far of a US ally.
The article continues at the Telegraph.
