Obama in Strasbourg - a blind eye to putative tyranny

The speech by President Obama to an audience consisting mainly of students and dubbed as 'town hall style' with time for questions at the end was in most parts a brilliant demonstration of the new President's grasp of detail and oratorical gifts. If you missed it try and find an online version to watch on video, a link to the Washington Post gives the written version from here. Many might consider these two paragraphs as the grist of the message for Europe when he actually spoke of the Nato Alliance which celebrates its 60th anniversary today: In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad.

There could, however, be another passage which might be remembered by history as of far greater significance and it is this: We take for granted the peace of a Europe that's united, but for centuries Strasbourg has been attacked and occupied and claimed by the warring nations of this continent. Now, today in this city, the presence of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe stand as symbols of a Europe that is united, peaceful and free. (Applause.) It is one thing for the military minds in the Pentagon to allow strategic and military considerations to override the realities of democratic legitimacy as I discussed on this blog yesterday, linked here, but it is quite another for a recently elected new President of the USA and himself the head of a party bearing the proud name "Democrats", especially one so well-informed on a multitude of details about the world and its present parlous state, to turn a blind eye to the potentially tyrannical structure of the Strasbourg Parliament that he here extolled! The oft repeated claim that the EU brought peace to Europe is a blatant lie. The forerunners to the EU were merely discussing wine lakes and butter mountains while the real work was undertaken elsewhere. The USA has of necessity always been somewhat selective in picking allies with regimes lacking the basics of democracy, particularly in the second half of the last century in South America. It is distressing, to say the least, to find a new President, celebrating the 60 birthday of the organisation that truly has brought peace to the world, turn his back on the democratic aspirations of some half a billion Europeans! We must hope common sense prevails and that in the coming days, hopefully this weekend in Prague, President Obama will acknowledge the democratic deficit that increases each day within the EU and not turn a blind eye as was done in the 1930s with such horrific costs!