A Short Honeymoon With Europe

America under Barack Obama is taking a long, cold look at its transatlantic relations - Telegraph:

"So long as it was those rough and ready cowboys George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who were condemning it, Old Europe could afford to smirk – and its loathing was lapped up enthusiastically (and put to good use) by all those American liberals who saw the Bush administration as a crass international embarrassment. But now Europe has got the US president of its dreams and it has given him nothing in return for his pious declarations of global humility. So maybe, thinks mainstream America, Mr Rumsfeld was right all along about those cynical, self-serving Old World powers whose leaders seem not to understand that they have rendered themselves irrelevant by their refusal to help defend Western values militarily, and by their unsustainable economic policies which will see them marginalised in the global market place."

This opinion piece from the UK's Telegraph lays it right out. Being in the good graces of Europe has about as much value to the US as a warm mug of spit. The President has nothing to show for his Barack Obama - Being America Means Always Having to Say You're Sorry Tour of the Continent.