It’s not surprising that conservatives have jumped on the Obama administration for sending ambassador to France, Jane Hartley, to the photo-op of free-press-hating world leaders (an issue that, in all fairness, the Obama administration has its own black eyes). It’s not even surprising that a conservative has stooped to the point of making a ridiculous, childish, and brainless Hitler comparison. It’s just politics and one side will criticize the other for…anything.
What is surprising is that conservatives think the Obama administration would even want their opinion when it comes to foreign policy, particularly when it deals with Europe.
A conveniently forgotten fact for conservatives is they pretty much got their way on foreign policy with the previous administration…and it was a complete disaster that the world mostly came to hate them for for implementing, especially Europe. Let take a quick look at some numbers from the chart linked and displayed to back up that fact.
European opinion of the U.S. was riding rather high toward the end of the Clinton administration in ’99 and ’00 with most of the countries listed well over 70% favorable. By 2002, the drop under the Bush administration had already begun despite this being prior to the Iraq debacle and coming off the sympathy the world showed after the 9/11 attacks. By 2007, four of the seven countries of which there is data had dropped below 50% with Germany coming in at a whopping 48% drop to 30%.
Enter the Obama administration. By 2012, all seven countries had returned to more than 50% favorable opinions with four countries at 60% or more. And this occurred despite widespread disapproval of U.S. drone strikes.
On top of all that is the other conveniently forgotten fact conservatives are ignoring: Bush administration torture policies helped radicalize the attackers.
Conservatives can choose to ignore these realities all they want but facts are facts no matter how inconvenient.
