Where Ronald Reagan tore down a wall, Barack Obama has hit one — and it’s made of bricks. European support for the American president is suffering. As Gregor Peter Schmitz asserts in Der Spiegel, “it has become clear that the most contentious issues [between the U.S. and Europe] have been shelved.” This means Obama is no longer asking Europe to replicate his idea of a stimulus plan and he’s not pushing for military help in Afghanistan. On both issues European leaders have declared, “No we can’t.”

And people say Bush squandered the world’s sympathy? Anyone remember nuggets like this from the Obama Summer of Love? 

Spend a few days in western Europe talking about American politics and you discover that you are in deepest Obamaland. Not much different from Berkeley, California, or the South Side of Chicago.

As a woman put it to me in Paris: “We want America back.”

Sure they do – preferably as a collection of taxpaying colonies. And on the campaign trail, Obama probably would have considered ruling that out bad form. Back then Former French Cultural Minister Jack Lang said, Obama is “the America we love …”; but the truth is Obama campaigned as the Europe Europeans love: anti-Bush, anti-war, pro-state, pro-green, and ever disgusted with American power. Europeans’ problem now is that, even though Obama is still Obama, he became “America” once he took office.

For starters, America cannot afford to casually “end” a war it is winning.  Obama’s anti-Iraq War agenda has evaporated. European publics are disappointed, but their leaders will let it slide so long as they don’t have to send troops. This is why Afghanistan is a problem. Obama can call the war on terror whatever he wants, but any concerted use of force against Muslims will be, from a combat standpoint, largely unilateral. European leaders have lost the will and the political capital to risk domestic Islamist upheaval should they raise guns in Muslim lands.  The war on terror’s biggest motivational challenge is not linguistic or stylistic, but demographic. 

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