Among those polled in the European Union and Turkey, about three-fourths, on average, said they supported Obama's handling of foreign policy compared with about a fifth who said the same for Bush last year, according to the survey. It was conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a nonpartisan policy institution that promotes trans-Atlantic cooperation, and the Compagnia di San Paolo, a research center in Turin, Italy.
The results were especially pronounced in Germany, where support shot up 80 percentage points to 92 percent, and in France, where it rose 77 percentage points to 88 percent.
But given the idea amongst the global Left that President Bush's war efforts were mainly responsible for our bad image, just what has changed in our foreign policy to affect those views? We still have lots of troops in Iraq. They aren't fighting, grant you, but we won. We are escalating the fight in Afghanistan. And many other Bush policies on fighting terrorism are continued virtually unchanged. Are the so-called nuanced Europeans so dense that mere presentation soothes them?
But more importantly, are the Europeans more willing to fight with us now that they have a far more positive view of us?
The answer is clearly "no." And I don't know how much longer our European friends will stick with us in Afghanistan--their new starry-eyed views of us notwithstanding.
As I long argued, Europe's lack of cooperation had nothing to do with Bush and everything to do with the Europeans themselves. Bush was just their excuse. We shall see who they blame now for their lack of commitment.
