Daily Archives: 9 November 2012

The View from Liberal Europe

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…on President Obama’s foreign policy.  This is from Spiegel Online International:

…Obama is a known factor—even if his first term hasn’t exactly dazzled the world with an energetic approach to foreign policy.  Only after long hesitation did Obama engage in the aerial warfare that toppled Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.  In the case of Iran’s secret nuclear program, it was the United Nations that stepped in.  And in the ongoing civil war in Syria, Obama has not yet managed to budge Russia away from its support of Bashar Assad’s regime.

Obama has a great deal to do in terms of foreign policy—and at the same time new conflicts are arising, for example in Mali, where the rebel-held north of the country threatens to develop into a new center of international terrorism.

Even they are not impressed.

Four More Years

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One of the measures being voted on last Tuesday was a two-part question put before the citizens of Puerto Rico:

The two-part referendum first asked voters if they wanted to change Puerto Rico’s 114-year relationship with the United States.  A second question gave voters three alternatives if they wanted a change: become a US state, gain independence, or have a “sovereign free association,” a designation that would give more autonomy for the territory of 4 million people.

61 percent of those expressing an opinion chose statehood.

Typical of those who wanted this change in status is this from 25-year-old Jerome Lefebre (see the Fox News exit poll for an age break out of voting):

Puerto Rico has to be a state. There is no other option.  We’re doing OK, but we could do better. We would receive more benefits, a lot more financial help.

“We’re doing OK, but we could do better.”  Not on our own, but because government would do more for us, instead.

Puerto Ricans aren’t alone among Americans.