Guess who's missing from this picture?:
As many as 1.6 million people marched through Paris on Sunday in a massive show of unity and defiance in the face of terrorism that killed seventeen people in France's bleakest moment in half a century.
The march ended without major incident by 9 p.m. Sunday, Paris police said.
Their arms linked, more than forty world leaders headed the somber procession, setting aside their differences for a manifestation that French President Francois Hollande said turned the city into "the capital of the world."
Figures a Frenchie would say something like that, but I guess he had ample cover for it.
Amid intense security and with throngs rivaling those that followed the liberation of Paris from the Nazis, the city became "the capital of the world" for a day.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood near Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also marched.
Notable for his absence was President Barack Obama.
Even U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who was in Paris for a pre-march terrorism summit convened by Hollande, skipped the historic event. [emphasis added]
Oh, but don't worry, O went to the French embassy in Washington and scribbled a missive on a post card with the pencil he uses to cheat on his golf score cards. He called President Hollande and left a nice voice mail. And he sent our ambassador to France.
Meanwhile, other countries sent somewhat higher-ranking poobahs:
French President Francois Hollande
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
British Prime Minister David Cameron
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker
European Parliament president Martin Schulz
European Union president Donald Tusk
NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg
Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz
Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras
Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny
Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho
Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka
Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico
Latvian Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban
Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel
Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat
Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven
Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko
Swiss President Simonetta Sommaruga
Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibachvili
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz
Canadian public safety minister Steven Blaney
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman
Jordanian King Abdullah II and Queen Rania
Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas
United Arab Emirates foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan
Qatari Sheikh Mohamed Ben Hamad Ben Khalifa Al Thani
Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled ben Ahmed Al Khalifa and Prince Abdullah Ben Hamad al-Khalifa
Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita
Gabonese President Ali Bongo
Nigerian President Mahamadou Issoufou
Beninian President Thomas Boni Yayi
Tunisian Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa
Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra
Sure, the Muslim contingent was there for PR cover, but rather than any genuine opposition to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, but it at least indicates enough awareness of the mass public revulsion to the attacks that they needed to be present for so visible a display of global solidarity. Even the leaders of other warring nations (Israel-PLO, Russia-Ukraine) created the appearance of setting aside their differences, at least temporarily. But Barack Obama? He couldn't be bothered. Wasn't important. He's played all of France's golf courses. Couldn't even spare Incontinent Uncle Joe Biden or interrupt Eric "The Red" Holder from his industrial evidence-shredding (otherwise known as "cleaning out his desk"). "Let the little people attend to that, I've got better things to do."
It's said that "The absence of the leader of the world's most powerful nation did did not go unnoticed," but I guess that's Vladimir Putin's and Xi Jinping's problem.
It brings us back to that endless question of Barack Obama's "incomptence" versus his malevolence. The fact that his Regime has announced a "world security summit" for February 18th in Washington suggests that the White House is belatedly realizing what a huge faux pas skipping this Paris anti-terror rally really was:
Barack Obama will invite allies to a February 18th security summit in Washington to try and prevent violent extremism, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Sunday after meeting his European counterparts in Paris.
The gathering of justice and interior chiefs came as France mourned seventeen victims of Islamist gunmen this week in the worst assault on its homeland security in decades.
‘We will bring together all of our allies to discuss ways in which we can counteract this "violent extremism" that exists around the world,’ Holder told reporters.
Yeah, but they already gathered in Paris yesterday, and you couldn't be bothered to show up.
I still tend to think it isn't incompetence, but rather the same cognitively dissonant dichotomy that has always characterized Obamunist foreign policy: Barack Obama wants to rule the world, but he also wants to reduce America to the rest of the world's level. I think he judged that if he showed up at the Paris rally yesterday, all the world would have looked to him as the leader of the United States of America, and he didn't want his country to receive that, or any, kind of prestige. In other words, yesterday was a meaningful event precisely because of its symbolism. But by cobbling together a dog & pony show "security summit" where the word "Islam" and its derivatives will never be mentioned, but at which he will be the master of ceremonies, he can ensure that he will get all the glory, he can "lead from behind," and his jihadist allies won't be dissed.
Anybody who expected anything else from this douchebag either refuses to pay attention or is an incurable optimist.
I, fortunately for y'all, am neither.
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