U.S. High-Level Absence From Paris March Controversial — Except at AP
Thus far, the nation’s de facto news gatekeepers at the Associated Press, aka the Administration’s Press, have utterly failed to address the growing worldwide controvery over the absence of U.S. representation above the ambassador level at Sunday’s solidarity march in Paris in the wake of Wednesday’s Charlie Hebdo massacre. Crowd estimates for the Paris march range from “hundreds of thousands” to over 1.5 million.
The New York Daily News is calling the absence of a top U.S. leader “a glaring exception,” and devoting its entire front page to telling our government that “You Let the World Down.” The UK Daily Mail is treating the situation as a snub, also observing that Attorney General Eric Holder “was in Paris for a terrorism summit held on the march’s sidelines, but he slipped away and made appearances on four American morning television talk shows just as the incredible rally was starting.” But Angela Charlton and Thomas Adamson at the AP, in report carrying a 7:07 p.m. ET time stamp (saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes), apparently found nothing unusual in the U.S. non-presence:
MILLIONS RALLY FOR UNITY AGAINST TERRORISM IN FRANCE
More than a million people surged through the boulevards of Paris behind dozens of world leaders walking arm-in-arm Sunday in a rally for unity described as the largest demonstration in French history. Millions more marched around the country and the world to repudiate three days of terror that killed 17 people and changed France.
Amid intense security and with throngs rivaling those that followed the liberation of Paris from the Nazis, the city became “the capital of the world” for a day, on a planet increasingly vulnerable to such cruelty.
More than 40 world leaders headed the somber procession – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas; Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – setting aside their differences with a common rallying cry: We stand together against barbarity, and we are all Charlie.
… “The entire world is under attack” from radical Islam, (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu said, citing attacks in cities from Madrid to Mumbai. He said these aren’t isolated incidents but part of a “network of hatred” by radical groups.
(Paragraph 23 of 28)
… The U.S. was represented at the Paris rally by Ambassador Jane Hartley. At an international conference in India, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the world stood with the people of France “not just in anger and in outrage, but in solidarity and commitment to the cause of confronting extremism and in the cause that extremists fear so much and that has always united our countries: freedom.”
The Daily Mail’s take: “President Barack Obama and other top members of his administration have snubbed a historic rally in Paris today that brought together more than 40 world leaders from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and even Russia.”
One cannot fail to note that the same Eric Holder, who was on location and failed to participate — even though many of the heads of state who participated, particularly Netanyahu, clearly had far more to fear by appearing — has called the country which employs him a “nation of cowards” on race.
Reuters earlier tonight reported: “Lack of top-level U.S. official at Paris march raises some eyebrows at home.”
Even the notoriously left-leaning CNN, the crowd size outlier estimating only that “hundreds of thousands” attended, noted: “Obama, Kerry absent from unity rally in Paris,” and reported that Holder ”was not spotted at the unity march.”
But the Associated Press, which works daily to earn its nickname as the Administration’s Press, sees nothing out of order in any of this. In doing so, it may be sending a message to the country’s early morning news shows — except for Fox News, which as usual, is on it — to stay away from the otherwise recognized controversy. We’ll see if they comply.
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
The US absence is completely consistent with Obama’s M.O. He sends people to a thug’s funeral domestically but not to Margaret Thatcher’s. Obama’s engagement with the world can be summed up as “disengagement” in world affairs. Obama gave his operating principle at the beginning of his reign of incompetence when his flacks told the British they were to receive no more priority in their relationship with the US than any other country. The signal was clear, there would no longer be any US leadership in the world in their bid for multi-lateralism, it was everyone else’s turn, in other words, every country for itself.
You might be tempted to say that Obama is forcing Europe to act with unity and cease to lean upon the US as a crutch. The Europeans have since WWII end abdicated their defense responsibilities by outsourcing it to the US in exchange for conferring leadership to the US. It is an unhealthy relationship which at this point may finally snap the Europeans back to doing things for themselves. On the other hand, the sink or swim method at this juncture with Islam on the march spreading it’s violence across the planet is particularly bad timing for a swimming lesson with the unnecessary risk of drowning.
However, this is not Obama’s motive as far as I can tell, Obama’s is far more provincial ala Hugo Chavez. Obama can not run the US like Venezuela as leader of the free world. He can only run the US as Hugo Chavez would as an independent unentangled fiefdom that has zero responsibility to or for others. What Obama wants is the “moral” freedom among countries to do as he pleases like Vladimir Putin does with Russia, but you can not do that as a leader of countries. The Islamists have put a wrench in that plan by forcing Obama to act as a reluctant leader and this is why he leads from behind, reacting to events that are not helping his agenda. This is why he prefers drone warfare over boots on the ground. This is why he does the least possible effort to the point of less than necessary hoping vainly that someone else will step up or the Islamists will give up.
To sum up the actions of the quintessential liberal, i.e. their ideology, in order to effectively rule a country, to enjoy your standard of living on the backs of the masses in feudal fashion, you must minimize international relations, delegate them to the UN and ultimately shrink the military to the point it both serves as your means to hold power over a populace that might occasionally object BUT not numerous enough to over throw you…like the Communists have practiced, e.g. China.
You recognize the irony of what I just said?
Comment by dscott — January 12, 2015 @ 9:32 am