Why did Obama snub the European leaders in Paris?

@realjohnboy,

Good one.

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@engineer,

engineer wrote:

...The administration was caught flat footed.

I'll agree with that. Unfortunately for us that is its normal posture. From "If you like your doctor, you can keep ..." to 'We'll have to pass the bill (Obamacare) to find out what' s in it' ; to the inept rollout of the web based exchanges; to the ISIS "junior varsity"; to leading from behind in Libya & Syria in the early stages; and its petulant and juvenile style of governing with the other branches of government, this administration has set new lows for intelligence, wisdom and elementary proficiency in managing anything but campaigns (even there it appearts to be losing its touch).

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

In any case, IF that was a conscious step by the US administration not to be represented at a political level, it could well reflect the lack of appetite or understanding in the US for satire à la Charlie. These are pure speculations from my side of course, and not very important.

Personally, from all the reports I've read, I believe the White House underestimated just how many people this tragedy in France impacted. Given that 17 people were murdered––––not a head of state––––by terrorists, the US administration did not anticipate the resulting consequence would be over 1.8 Million attending. Large numbers of people are murdered every day, and the world does not react to this degree....and the administration doesn't attend. Even the defiant Charlie Hebdo magazine did not anticipate such an attending audience. At first they were determined to print a million copies of the French satirical magazine...after seeing the overflowing crowd, now they're printing 3 million.

It was quite an error of judgment on behalf of the White House. The media and partisan Republicans have been lambasting Obama all day. One Republican, Congressman Randy Weber, apologized for comparing President Obama to Hitler for failing to come to the French Unity Rally for the murdered victims. One Israeli official blamed Obama publicly for not showing up and inviting French Jews to come to America to live.

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@Moment-in-Time,

Quote:

One Israeli official blamed Obama publicly for not showing up and inviting French Jews to come to America to live.

Did he say so??? If yes, that's a bigger faux pas than not showing up. In any case, Bibi said the same thing (that French Jews are welcome in Israel) so I don't see what the Israelis are complaining about. Competition perhaps.

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@Moment-in-Time,

Quote:

Even the defiant Charlie Hebdo magazine did not anticipate such an attending audience.

The guy in charge said that he was expecting 1 million, the number that I saw after was 1.2, which calls your analysis into doubt.

Quote:

It was quite an error of judgment on behalf of the White House

I have yet to see any jouralism accounts on what Team Obama was thinking at the time, have you? I am still going with the theory that Obama in his heart of hearts does not support free speech when people claim offense at that speech, and so he told he people that they could blow off the event since it was mostly an EU and French immigration issue, not an American Immigration issue. The thing that tripped Obama up I think is that he totally blew off 60 years of the European American alliance, because he does not have much use for that either. But Everybody wanted to know why on such an important issue we were not visably supporting our European friends.

Obama has certainly shown us over time his tendency for massive miscalculations, this is nothing new from him.

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It's as much a media frenzy as anything else. Can you say Benghazi?

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@edgarblythe,

Yes, the interesting thing is that the major criticism of Obama is not coming from other world leaders and certainly not from the French government. It's mostly from his own countrymen, Americans of the opposition party. This isn't a matter of a serious faux pas but, rather, an example of the continuing partisan backbiting.

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@Olivier5,

That sentence can be taken two ways. I take it the official didn't like Obama for not showing up, and also didn't like him for not inviting french jews to leave for the U.S.

1 Reply

Here's a translation of an accusation of CH racism by one of its own former editors.

http://posthypnotic.randomstatic.net/charliehebdo/Charlie_Hebdo_article%2011.htm

1 Reply

@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

Yes, the interesting thing is that the major criticism of Obama is not coming from other world leaders and certainly not from the French government. It's mostly from his own countrymen, Americans of the opposition party. This isn't a matter of a serious faux pas but, rather, an example of the continuing partisan backbiting.

If you throw a party and one of your best friends calls off do you call them out in front of all of your other friends? No, you make excuses for them no matter how pissed off you are. I dont know if the Europeans are pissed or not but them not saying anything critical now means nothing....surely you know this.

Or maybe you are not as smart as you think you are.

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@Olivier5,

@Moment-in-Time wrote:
One Israeli official blamed Obama publicly for not showing up and inviting French Jews to come to America to live.

Quote:

Olivier wrote:
Did he say so??? If yes, that's a bigger faux pas than not showing up. In any case, Bibi said the same thing (that French Jews are welcome in Israel) so I don't see what the Israelis are complaining about. Competition perhaps.

Forgive my error....I wasn't clear. The Jewish official in question being interviewed for TV, was a French citizen not "Israeli" as I had written. His words were highly incensed, blaming President Obama for not attending the Unity Rally in honor of the murdered victims, and in the current climate of escalating anti-Semitism, wanted to know why Obama did not invite French Jews to come live in America.

I've read over the years from various sources that a large number of Jews would prefer living in Europe, including England, and or America to living in Israel. A few years ago, in the 90s, Israel airlifted a significant number of Jews from Russia. Some of these same Jews would have preferred going to Germany, England or the US before Israel. But the trip was one-way, to Israel exclusively.

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@ossobuco,

Oh, of course. What an idiot i am. Thanks for the heads up.

To my defense, it DID surprise me... :-)

1 Reply

@Lustig Andrei,

Sorry but criticizing Islamic extremists or even Islam as a religion is not considered racist in French law, especially as they have always lambasted all religions. Blasphemy is not a crime in my country, thank God!

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@Olivier5,

I figured that, ; ))

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@Olivier5,

Did you read Olivier Cyran's piece?

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Maybe Obama just thought his appearance might be taken as support of Charlie's content. I've never seen it, but it does sound kind of tasteless, and giving equal treatment of other religions makes it worse rather than better. We might defend freedom of speech, but must we also defend plain bad taste.

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@Moment-in-Time,

Moment-in-Time wrote:

Olivier5 wrote:

And from this viewpoint, Obama did well to stay away.

It looks as if the media is looking for a story,

and who controls American mainstream media? the right

the whole thing was to be expected as was the OP's position on the matter

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Another reason for the Europeans to be nice to Obama at this point is that as things stand now he owes them one.

When are they going to collect? Ukraine/Russia perhaps, to save their economies from collapse? They are facing deflation right in the eyeballs, and the global economy is slowing down which will sink the last European economy that is doing ok, Germany.

Scary times.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

Yes, the interesting thing is that the major criticism of Obama is not coming from other world leaders and certainly not from the French government. It's mostly from his own countrymen, Americans of the opposition party. This isn't a matter of a serious faux pas but, rather, an example of the continuing partisan backbiting.

the very same folks who about 2 years years after a global outpouring of support following 9/11, coined the phrase "Freedom Fries", because France refused to support they're dirty little war

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I like freedom fries. But I call them french fries.

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Why did Obama snub the European leaders in Paris?

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