Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Yeah, that's a likely excuse...

...or, I just really don't know what to make of this...

White House officials travelled to France at the start of March to discuss a visit by Mr Obama to Omaha Beach, the site of the American Cemetery, established in 1944 just after D-Day and where 9,387 American personnel are buried. Among them is Theodore Roosevelt Jr the eldest son of the 26th US President.
French officials and senior American military officers walked with White House staff through the cemetery discussing how the two presidents might follow the same route. But even before their trip, the White House had decided that Mr Obama would not travel there this week.
"It wasn't going to happen," said an American official in Washington. "We went through the motions to placate President Sarkozy but giving special treatment to France was not on our agenda.
I am not so sure how exactly going to visit the graves of American soldiers who died liberating all of Europe is giving special treatment to the French. In fact, I don't understand how it's that at all — especially given the fact that those cemeteries are technically on American soil. That land on which those soldiers are buried, from what I've read in more than one place, was given to the American people as a gift from the French. Even if it was still French soil, that wouldn't make this any less of an insult to the memories of the soldiers buried there. More of that change we can believe in, eh?