Overseas media ...how they view what is happening here.

This is a little long, but does a great job of summarizing what the foreign media is reporting that our U.S. media have been covering up. It’s from a BLOG I read called Red State, and represents their summary of the German magazine De Spiegel.

“For all the talk of how amazing and respected Barack Obama is in international circles, foreign media outlets fairly often end up doing the kind of reporting one might hope the American media would do on him. Yes, while the American media was busy manufacturing outrage over a Romney statement that was essentially right, foreign outlets were doing real reporting.

“I’ll start off with the German magazine Der Spiegel, which enjoys a level of respect similar to that accorded to TIME here. It has done some of the best work, rounding up what that country’s press has been saying. After assessing the situation themselves, Der Spiegel begins the round-up by quoting from the right-of-center paper Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, which says: “The murder of an ambassador in Libya and the attacks on US diplomatic missions in other Arab countries is sure to strengthen the skepticism that more than a few Americans feel toward Muslims and the political changes brought by the Arab revolutions. The deeply held American belief that all you have to do is liberate people from serfdom and dictatorship, and then democracy and a market economy will develop more or less on their own, burned to ash in the trial by fire of Iraq. A fact that academics and historically informed diplomats have always known can now be observed throughout the Arab world: Deeply ingrained cultural attitudes do not change simply because one political regime replaces another. In the long process of building a democratic society, it is not possible to simply skip stages.” the conservative Die Welt:
“US President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy is in ruins. Like no president before him, he tried to win over the Arab world. After some initial hesitation, he came out clearly on the side of the democratic revolutions. … In this context, he must accept the fact that he has snubbed old close allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Egyptian military. And now parts of the freed societies are turning against the country which helped bring them into being. Anti-Americanism in the Arab world has even increased to levels greater than in the Bush era. It’s a bitter outcome for Obama.“

“Obama was naive to believe that one only needed to adopt a new tone and show more respect in order to dispel deep-seated reservations about the free world. In practice, the policies of the Obama administration in the region were not as naive as they may have seemed at times, and the Americans have always been much more involved in the Middle East than the passive Europeans. But Washington has provided the image of a distracted superpower in the process of decline to the societies there. This image of weakness is being exploited by Salafists and al-Qaida, who are active in North Africa from Somalia to Mali.”

“One thing is clear: If jihadists believe they can attack American installations and kill an ambassador on the anniversary of Sept. 11, then America’s deterrent power has declined considerably. For a superpower, it is not enough just to want to be loved. You have to scare the bad guys to keep them in check.“

“And from the UK’s Telegraph, a right-wing paper, Tim Stanley strikes a chord that many of us have been playing: Obama has been trying to use this Middle East Crisis as leverage to persuade the voters to give him a second term, aided by the US media’s cheerleading. After analyzing (favorably) what Michelle Malkin has to say, Stanley says:

“Is Malkin being unfair? Possibly, but the story Toby Harnden tells of a conversation between Obama and his Las Vegas volunteers confirms the narcissism. Obama said, “The sacrifices that our troops and our diplomats make are obviously very different from the challenges that we face here domestically but, like them, you guys are Americans who sense that we can do better than we’re doing … I’m just really proud of you.” Think about that. Obama is comparing the dangerous work done by soldiers and diplomats with … an afternoon spent phonebanking the elderly or organising a fundraiser with Barbra Streisand (although, to be fair, the latter could be dangerous to your health).

Obama also told the volunteers, “’I had a chance to go to the State Department to comfort some of the friends and co-workers of the folks who had fallen and I reminded them that as hard as things are sometimes, as difficult as change is that if we’re resolute, if we don’t give up, if we don’t give in, if we don’t become cynical, if we continue to be realistic about how hard change is but also keep in our hearts that sense of idealism and sense of purpose then over time good things happen.”

“Change? Idealism? This is the language of the 2008 campaign transplanted to the supposedly cool, dispassionate world of the State Department. Diplomats are there to pursue American interests and represent their country. What grand manifesto of change are they supposed to be pushing for? And, if they are indeed putting the Obama campaign’s words into action, is that a healthy thing?” Does “the audacity of hope” translate well into trade deals and counter-terrorism?

“Most politicians are arrogant, but the best demonstrate an ability to separate personal narrative from policy. What is so irksome about Obama is his insistence upon seeing everything he does as a historic breakthrough, made possible by his unique abilities and validated by a few cheering students. More worrying still is the number of folks in the mainstream media who agree with him.”