After UN stunt, French see Obama weaker than ever

• 
  
• "It is shameful when the White House is accused of betrayal by close allies in eastern and central Europe, but utterly humiliating when

• even the Elysee Palace thinks the United States has been transformed from a lion to a lamb in the face of mounting global threats.

As The Wall Street Journal reported this morning, French president Nicolas Sarkozy was less than impressed with Barack Obama’s performance last week in the face of the Iranian nuclear crisis.

According to the paper,

• Washington urged Paris to delete key sections of Sarkozy’s UN speech that were critical of Iran and supposedly
  

• threatened to undermine Obama’s attempt to project himself
  
• as a global peacemaker:

“President Sarkozy in particular pushed hard. He had been “frustrated” for months about Mr. Obama’s reluctance to confront Iran, a senior French government official told us, and saw an opportunity to change momentum.

• But the Administration told the French that it didn’t want
  

• to “spoil the image of success” for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N.
  

and his homily calling for a world without nuclear weapons, according to the Paris daily Le Monde.

• So the Iran bombshell was pushed back a day to Pittsburgh, where the G-20 were meeting to discuss economic policy.”

“Le Monde’s diplomatic correspondent, Natalie Nougayrède, reports that a draft of Mr. Sarkozy’s speech to the Security Council Thursday included a section on Iran’s latest deception. Forced to scrap that bit, the French President let his frustration show with undiplomatic gusto in his formal remarks, laying into what he called the “dream” of disarmament.”

• Sarkozy was so annoyed with Obama’s weak-kneed approach that he reportedly told Le Monde that “we live in the real world, not in a virtual one”,
  

• a cutting and mocking reference to the US president’s drive for a new arms control treaty. The WSJ quotes him as saying:

“President Obama himself has said that he dreams of a world without nuclear weapons. Before our very eyes, two countries are doing exactly the opposite at this very moment. Since 2005, Iran has violated five Security Council Resolutions . . . I support America’s ‘extended hand.’

• But what have these proposals for dialogue produced for the international community? Nothing but more enriched uranium and more centrifuges. And last but not least, it has resulted in a statement by Iranian leaders calling for wiping off the map a Member of the United Nations. What are we to do? What conclusions are we to draw? At a certain moment hard facts will force us to make decisions.”

I cannot think of a more damning indictment of US global leadership than a French leader urging the president of the United States to show more backbone in confronting the world’s biggest state sponsor of international terrorism, a rogue nation about to acquire nuclear capability.

• It is highly embarrassing that President Obama is reminded of his leadership responsibilities yet again from across the Atlantic
  

• after the debacle over Washington’s appalling surrender to the Russians on missile defence.

Barack Obama’s weakness on the world stage will inevitably lead to the decline of America as a superpower. That’s not “smart power” - it’ is a policy of defeat."

• UK Telegraph, 9/29/09, "Even the French think Barack Obama is Weak," by Nile Gardiner, via mention on Rush Limbaugh program
  

(In Obama's eyes and those of his masters, US defeat equals success). framus