Yeah, I remember those days. It was to be a dawn of multilateralism.
Well:
During the presidential campaign, it sometimes seemed that Barack Obama was even more popular in Europe than in the United States. If anyone could span transatlantic differences on fighting terrorism, you might have thought it would be Obama.
But since he took office, Europe has consistently opposed the Obama administration's counterterrorism initiatives. The latest rebuff may be the most serious -- and a last straw for the administration. That's because it strikes at the heart of Obama's effort to construct a less controversial strategy for stopping terrorists. Everyone knows about his expanded use of Predator drones. Less dramatically, the administration has also begun to rely heavily on travel and reservation data at the border to spot suspicious travelers.
I mentioned this controversy before. It bears repeating. Whether it is our jihadi enemies or our reluctant and cautious allies, our problems with each aren't so much our fault as their issues.
We can never be nuanced enough or sensitive enough to avoid complaints. That's just the way it is.
