Obama Trip Inconclusive Despite Fawning U. S. Media

After trying to mend ties with the Arab world while incensing Israel  and encouraging Iran Obama set his eyes on old enemies and allies in Europe.

His visit to Germany and France on Thursday, Friday and Saturday is aimed at lowering tensions raised because of europe’s tepid support for the U. S. in recent years.

Obama flew his wife and two children to Euroipe at a taxpayer cost of $50,000 per hour for a holiday in Paris this weekend..

To lay the groundwork for Obama’s foreign policy initiatives, including bids to mend ties with Iran and Russia, a revamped Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy and ambitious measures to fight climate change have gone down well with European leaders. Moreover, Obama is hugely popular with ordinary citizens who have had and have intense anti-Americanism largely based on avarice and jealousy for what they see as a lavish lifestyle and cowboy demeanor replaced now by an appeaser

But, among polioticians and the more thoughtful  Obamania has subsided amid fears of inflation, waffling and a foreign policy of convenience and disarray. But, politically they still want whatever they can filch from Obama.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have felt snubbed by Obama recently. Not only did it take weeks for a video conference to be scheduled with the president (such conferences were held regularly with the former president), Merkel also failed in scoring a bilateral with Obama ahead of the Group of 20 summit in London plus she has openly criticized Obama’s profligate spending of more specifically borrowing.

Last week the high-ranking German negotiation team tasked with rescuing car maker Opel, a General Motors daughter, was very upset when the U.S. Treasury Department sent only a minor official to the negotiation table.

Even the current trip sparked frustration. Merkel had tried to bring Obama to Berlin, but the president refused.

The chancellor would have liked to clinch a photo-op with Obama ahead of regional and national elections this year in Germany.

Berlin is ripe with speculation as to what the reasons for the refusal may be.

Some say it’s due to a lack of personal chemistry; others say it’s a private revenge for Merkel’s refusal to have Obama speak in front of the Brandenburg Gate, Germany’s symbol of the peaceful anti-communist revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall.

But a third reason may be more likely: The German leadership simply isn’t that flexible right now.

Obama has tried to get Berlin to send more troops to Afghanistan and to dispatch a portion of them into the volatile southern provinces, where U.S., British and Dutch troops are suffering casualties in firefights with the Taliban.

Obama knows that before September, when Germans go to the polls to elect a new government, not much will happen in Berlin in terms of concrete security cooperation pledges.

That cooperation to fight extremism pays off is one of the central messages Obama will bring to Europe this week.

After arriving in Dresden Thursday, Obama visited the former Buchenwald concentration camp, which was liberated in 1945 by U.S. troops. Charles Payne, Obama’s great-uncle, was part of a U.S. infantry division that in April 1945 liberated Ohrdruf, a satellite camp to Buchenwald. Although it appears Obama exaggerated his intimacy with his great uncle.

Obama will finish off his visit to Germany by touring Ramstein Air Base and meeting with U.S. troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan at the Landstuhl military hospital. He will then go to France for bilateral talks with President Nicolas Sarkozy and extensive celebrations commemorating the 65th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe in Paris and Normandy.

Sarkozy, nicknamed “L’Americain” by his fellow citizens, courted Obama long before he became president. This has paid off. It seems that at the moment, America’s relations with France are trumping those with Germany — a historic first in many decades.

Obama told French television he enjoyed a “wonderful relationship” with Sarkozy, lauding the French president’s commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan and his strong stance against Iran’s nuclear program and appears bedazzled by Paris.