Thursday, March 12, 2009 10:29 AM
By: James Humes
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Winston Churchill once described American diplomacy as "a bull who carries his own china shop around with him." President Obama took over a hundred years of diplomatic asset known as the "special relationship" and smashed it into smithereens. The candidate who promised diplomacy not war, as president declared a kind of cold war against our oldest ally.
Not coincidentally, the man who coined that phrase describing the relationship between United States and Britain, Winston Churchill, would be the symbol Obama would use in breaking off these special ties.
Upon the arrival of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the first head of government to visit the White House, Obama let word out the bust of Churchill that Prime Minister Blair had presented to the United States as a gift from the British people had been returned to the British Embassy.
That offensive act without explanation gave substance to the reported story that when President Obama walked into the Oval Office for the first time and saw the Churchill piece, he said, "Get that goddam thing out of here."
Perhaps Obama, who grew up in Kenya, took umbrage at Prime Minister Churchill's actions in 1953 of wiping out the Mau-Mau, the Kenyan terrorists who made a specialty of slitting throats of sleeping white and Black Kenyans.
Just to make sure that Prime Minister Brown got the message that the special relationship was finito, Obama canceled a joint news conference with Brown. That tradition began with Churchill and FDR and continued with presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy (with Macmillan) up to recent presidents Bush (1) (with Major) and both Clinton and Bush (2) (with Blair).
Not only did Obama exclude Brown but also the British reporters from covering Obama's press conference.
The London Daily Telegraph stated, "Obama has been rudeness personified towards Britain."
Labour Prime Minister Brown had been anxious to cultivate the close relationship with Obama that his predecessor had with Clinton.
To that end, Brown picked just the right gifts that a visiting prime minister would present to Obama on behalf of his country. The first was a desk pen holder made from the oak timber of the first anti-slave ship HMS Gannet.
Another treasure presented to the U.S. president was the framed commission for HMS Resolute from whose timbers the Oval Office desk is fashioned — a gift from Queen Victoria to President Hayes. A third was a signed first edition set of the seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.
What did Obama give Brown? Twenty-five DVDs of classic American films (that included "Psycho"), a DVD that anyone can buy in any chain bookstore in Britain!
First Lady Michelle Obama joined her husband in ungraciousness with her personal gifts to the prime minister's wife, Sarah Brown, who had brought necklaces and Top Shop dresses in correct sizes for the Obama daughters
