Mr Obama’s visit to Britain is over, and we must be grateful for small mercies. Obama went for the tried and tested foreign policy gambit to re-election: when it’s going badly at home, show what a big swell you are abroad. In the process he had a good shot at making David Cameron look like a Statesman. Cameron’s coalition partners were allowed to meet the President, or it may have been just to talk soft furnishings with Michelle, but were not allowed to serve British sausages (as if they haven’t suffered enough) to the servicemen.
Britain for its part did its best, as with the Royal Wedding, to look as if it hasn’t yet escaped the nineteenth century. Can it really be that despite the defence cuts, despite the fact that our troops haven’t even got proper body armour, we still have a Royal Horse Artillery? What do they do all day? Col. Gaddafi has an excellent collection of Arab thoroughbreds so I expect they will be trying to get their hands on those. In fact I am beginning to think this whole exercise has been got up so we can appropriate the horses, the insanity of Gaddafi feeding the appetite of an empire which, no one seems to have noticed, imploded in 1948.
The US and the UK were, said Obama, preparing to turn a corner in Afghanistan. Heard this one before? We have turned so many corners that we have been going round in a circle, and are now facing the other way, preparing to leave, defeated.
At one point Obama, who is quite as militarily aggressive as his predecessor, seemed to be issuing a call to arms in the Middle East: ‘The US and the UK stand firmly on the side of those who long to be free’. ‘The time for leadership is now’. He actually said that. The film did not show parliamentarians slapping their sides, thrombotic with laughter, but I imagine that’s how it must have been.
So, it’s Saudi Arabia you are going to invade now is it, Barack?
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