How to Lose Friends and Annoy Your Enemies

posted at 10:30 am on September 29, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
[ Moonbats ]   

Barack Hussein Obama had better savor those manufactured outpourings of love from school children while he can because at the rate he’s losing friends, those mindless ditties may soon be all he has left. The most recent casualty among his one-time admirers is French President Nicolas Sarkozy. According to the Wall Street Journal, neither Sarkozy nor British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (whom Obama had snubbed and alienated earlier) was too thrilled with Obama’s handling of the revelation at the G-20 Summit last week that Iran was maintaining a secret facility for making bomb-grade fuel.

The Journal reports that Sarkozy in particular “had been ‘frustrated’ for months about Mr. Obama’s reluctance to confront Iran” about its secret enrichment plant “and saw an opportunity to change momentum.” He had favored releasing the information a day earlier in front of the U.N. Security Council, seeing this as way of rallying international support for strong action against Iran. The Obama administration had scotched the idea, insisting that it would “‘spoil the image of success’ for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N. and his homily calling for a world without nuclear weapons.” Can’t have an international crisis upstaging one of Obama’s “moments” in his well-rehearsed role Leader of the Free World.

Nor was Sarkozy thrilled with Obama’s tone once he let the cat out of the bag. Iran, Obama said, is “going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice.” That’s it? Not exactly the sternest rebuke in the history of the U.S. presidency. In any case, it seems as though Iran has already made a choice, and that’s to poke a finger squarely in the eye of the pansy the American people elected to lead them. The day after Obama issued his statement, Ahmadinejad made a statement of his own, telling Obama essentially to take a hike.

As Richard Cohen notes in the Washington Post, Obama is all about issuing deadlines and ultimata and then promptly forgetting all about them. Ahmadinejad, apparently mindful of this, knows enough to ignore what little bluster Obama summons up.

Sarkozy in the meantime has not been so passive in his condemnation of Iran or Obama’s continued desire for talks. “[W]hat have these proposals for dialogue produced for the international community?” he said following Obama’s G-20 bombshell. “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.”

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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