Impunity

The page is about to be turned. GWB has already checked out and is thinking about Crawford. The American public is not interested in the past and knows that impeachments are messy.And yet. As long as there is no accountability for the infractions to the Constitution, human rights violations, violation of the UN Charter, war crimes,and other crimes and misdemeanor committed by the Bush administration, World Public Opinion will not follow the United States.
To wit: Most Europeans accept Russia's invasion of Georgia as morally equivalent to the invasion of Iraq.What is good for the goose is good for the gander. As long as the US has not faced its recent past, it will have no real voice to defend human rights.

It is a real weakness for the US, but, worse, it is a fatal flaw for the world community or at least the West (what Americans keep calling the Free World"). The Putins of the world know full well that there is nobody out there that can shame them.

Shame on all those who, for ideological reasons, want to sweep this sad chapter in US history, under the carpet.

Obama and the Europeans

Just as the US media have mistaken the very protectionist Mr. Sarkozy for aan all out US sympathizer, I am afraid the European public is vastly mistaken about Mr. Obama. The 200,000 spectators from all over Europe who cheered B.O. around the Victory Column in Berlin (a monument honoring Bismarck and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine), stopped swooning when the US candidate asked them for more commitment to the war in Afghanistan.
Barack Obama is a great hero for the European left which sees in him a mix of Malcolm X and Jack Kennedy.Their adulation is in direct relation with their hatred of the hapless George W. Bush. I was amzed to see marginalized arab and black kids of French immigrant ghettoes sign petitions in favor of Obama. They too have illusions about the phenom.
The immense wave of hope and admiration raised by B.O.on the Old Continent shows that there is still great admiration and expectations about America. The recent disaffection was almost entirely due to the war in Iraq and the likes of Rumsfeld, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo etc. An Obama administration could actually regain credit rather quickly.

But Obama is not the Messiah the young Islamists of the Paris suburbs have been expecting, neither is he the gutless pacifist most Europeans have become. An Obama Administration would expect Europe to send more of its youth to the front, and will certainly nt put America's interest behind that of the rest of the Globe.