America has been arrogant, admits Obama
US President Barack Obama looks on as First Lady Michelle is greeted by Carla Bruni, wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Strasbourg yesterday.
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America had "failed to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world", President Barack Obama said yesterday.
The United States had "shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" towards its allies, he said. His speech in Strasbourg went further than any US president in history in criticising his own country's actions while standing on foreign soil.
But he tried to use the comments as leverage to alter European views of America and secure more troops for the war in Afghanistan.
He said there had to be a fundamental shift on both sides of the Atlantic.
"America is changing but it cannot be America alone that changes," he said. Addressing a crowd of about 2,000, mostly students from France and Germany, Mr Obama said: "In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role.
"Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."
He then balanced this admission with a tough message to Europeans that blaming America and using its actions as an excuse to avoid tackling the global Islamist threat was unacceptable.
"In Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious," he said.
"Instead of recognising the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what is bad."
In a speech which his aides billed as a commitment to rebuild transatlantic relations, he offered himself as the figure to bridge the gap that had grown over the eight years of President George W Bush's administration.
Attitudes
"On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common," he said. "They are not wise. They do not represent the truth. They threaten to widen the divide across the Atlantic and leave us both more isolated."
Although a central message was that he represented a clean break from his predecessor, Mr Obama -- in a rare use of his Muslim middle name -- emphasised that some of the problems Mr Bush had faced would not miraculously disappear.
"We cannot pretend that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything's going to be OK. It is going to be a very difficult challenge. Al-Qa'ida is still bent on carrying out terrorist activity." (© Daily Telegraph, London)
- Toby Harnden in Strasbourg
