Obama Fail Blog

Another Obama gaffe involving Great Britain:

An official statement from the US foreign policy chief paid tribute to the "Queen’s life and legacy,” despite the fact that the Monarch does not celebrate her official birthday until next weekend.

...

A spokesman for Mrs Clinton attemped to make light of the gaffe.

"We were a week early," Philip Crowley joked to reporters in Washington.

"As always, it is better to give a greeting a week early than a week late.”

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman added: “It was obviously a genuine mistake and there was no offence taken whatsoever”. She declined to say whether the State Department had apologised.

Source: UK Telegraph

Add this to the growing list of foreign policy snubs, gaffes and blunders. The UK has been the target of quite a few of these - including sending back the Churchill bust, multiple snubs of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, giving an iPod to the then 82-year old Queen Elizabeth, giving Gordon Brown a chilly reception at the White House and giving a cheap gift of 25 DVDs that won't play in European DVD players.

After the way he has treated the UK - giving the gift of DVDs, returning the Churchill bust, refusing to joint press conference with Gordon Brown - is this any surprise?

For a head of state to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of…

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on Jewish settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisors and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman who spoke to the Prime Minister said today.

“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House phone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”…

Newspaper reports recounted how Mr Netanyahu looked “excessively concerned and upset” as he pulled out a flow chart to show Mr Obama how Jerusalem planning permission worked and how he could not have known of the announcement that hundreds more homes were to be built just as Mr Biden arrived in Jerusalem.

Mr Obama then suggested that Mr Netanyahu and his staff stay on at the White House to consider his proposals, so that if he changed his mind he could inform the President right away. “I’m still around,” the Yediot Ahronot daily quoted Mr Obama saying. “Let me know if there is anything new.”

Source: UK Times via HotAir

Actually, this is very similar to the way Obama snubbed Gordon Brown one year ago:

Obama, breaking with precedent, wouldn't grant the prime minister the customary honor of standing beside him in front of the two nations' flags for the TV cameras. The Camp David sleepover that Blair got on his first meeting with Bush? Sorry, chaps.

Source: ObamaFailBlog via Washington Post

Hope! Change!

President Obama has taken a symbolic swipe at our strongest ally:

A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government's art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.

The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush's tenure.

Source: UK Telegraph

Don't overlook the 9-11 angle either. Obama doesn't have time for symbolism related to WWII, 9-11 or any reminder of American military strength. Hope! Change!

Obama has snubbed the UK, again. Well, he has actually snubbed the UK five more times, but we'll cover them all in one post:

Gordon Brown lurched from being hailed as a global statesman to intense embarrassment tonight, after it emerged US President Barack Obama had turned down no fewer than five requests from Downing Street to hold a bilateral meeting at the United Nations in New York or at the G20 summit starting in Pittsburgh today.

...

But Obama has held bilateral meetings in New York with the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and the new Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama.

Source: UK Guardian

Hope! Change! Diplomacy!

Source: Human Events

There are three words to describe the White House’s reception for the British Prime Minister last week: public relations disaster....

Even the ritual exchange of gifts was poorly handled by the White House. Brown brought several for the new president, including a first edition of the seven volume official biography of Sir Winston Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert, as well as a pen holder carved from the timbers of HMS Gannett, a ship used by the British to combat slavery in the 19th Century. In return, Obama presented his guest with 25 DVDs, ranging from “Psycho” to “ET.” And in case Brown is the last person in the galaxy not to have seen “Star Wars,” that was thrown in too. Quite what the prime minister made of the Wizard of Oz is unknown, but the London Daily Mail described the gift from the president as “about as exciting as a pair of socks.”

Source: Canada Free Press

The British press has offered several face-saving explanations for these serial rudenesses. Perhaps Obama is “exhausted.” Alternatively, he is simply “focused elsewhere” in the midst of cratering capital markets, collapsing automakers and skyrocketing unemployment.

The real answer, however, was supplied by an unnamed State Department official whom London’s Sunday Telegraph reported on March 8th “reacted with fury” when asked by the paper why the Brown visit was so, er, “low-key.” According to the Telegraph: “The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship. ‘There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.’”

First Obama returns the Churchill bust, now this:

Our British cousins are getting the feeling that the new administration doesn't fancy them.

The murmurs began when President Obama returned to the British Embassy the Winston Churchill bust that had been displayed in the Oval Office since Tony Blair lent it to George W. Bush.

The fears intensified when press secretary Robert Gibbs, announcing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's visit to the White House, demoted the Churchillian phrase "special relationship" to a mere "special partnership" across the Atlantic.

And the alarm bells really went off when Brown's entourage landed at Andrews Air Force Base on Monday night. Obama, breaking with precedent, wouldn't grant the prime minister the customary honor of standing beside him in front of the two nations' flags for the TV cameras. The Camp David sleepover that Blair got on his first meeting with Bush? Sorry, chaps.

Source: Washington Post

So, the question is... Are these incidents merely gaffes or are they part of a larger strategy aimed at humiliating our allies? And if it is the latter, then WHY?