Obama: You Say PotaTOE, I Say PotaTAH. You Call Them The Malvinas, I Call Them The Maldives.

Music to read by:

'Cuz you're the joke of the neighbourhood
Why should you care if you're feeling good?
Take the long way home
Take the long way home

 "Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact that I spent four years living overseas when I was a child in southeast Asia.  If I go to Jakarta and address the largest Muslim country on earth, I can say, ‘Apa kabar,’ — you know, ‘How are you doing?’ — and they can recognize that I understand their common humanity.  That is a strength and it allows me to say things to them that other presidents might not be able to say. And that’s part of what’s promising, I think, about this presidency."

- Senator Barack Obama, 20 November 2007

 

On Sunday, Sarah Palin addressed the Summit of the Americas in Colombia and spoke about the conflict between Great Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands.  As she has in the past, Mrs Palin appeared to be favouring the Argentine claim to the Islands by calling them the "Malvinas" rather than the "Falklands," which Argentina insists is their proper name. 

In keeping with her typically airheaded nature, Mrs Palin actually called the Malvinas the Maldives -- an entirely different group of islands...thousands of miles away...in the Indian Ocean.  One wonders if she can she the Maldives or the Malvinas from her house?

Oops!  What's that you said?  Mrs Palin wasn't a speaker at the Summit of the Americas in Colombia?  Which dummkopf made such a boneheaded statement?  Was Congressman Hank Johnson a speaker?  He has a thing about islands.  No?  It was the smartest man in the world, Barack Obama, not Sarah Palin, not Hank Johnson.

 

"Our system doesn’t allow those people to become President.  Those people meaning people that smart and that capable.  He’s probably the smartest guy ever to become President.  This is a guy, whose IQ is off the charts."

- Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss on Barack Obama

**eyeroll**

From Toby Harnden of the Daily Mail:

As British troops fight and die alongside Americans in Afghanistan, our closest ally remains 'neutral' over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands (or should that be 'Maldives'?)

You might think that it was the 11 Secret Service agents and some military colleagues who partied in a brothel and then brought prostitutes back to their hotel rooms who made the biggest mistake of the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia.

But President Barack Obama's answer during a joint press conference with President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia must go down as one of the most inept and misguided utterances of his presidency.

The question, from a Colombian reporter with RCN TV, cannot have been unexpected. Why was it, he asked that 'Cuba and the Malvinas issue weren't taken up as they should have' been in the final communique.

After giving a long-winded, boilerplate answer on Cuba, Obama then said: 'And in terms of the Maldives or the Falklands, whatever your preferred term, our position on this is that we are going to remain neutral. We have good relations with both Argentina and Great Britain, and we are looking forward to them being able to continue to dialogue on this issue. But this is not something that we typically intervene in'.

OK, so the Maldives is a group of 26 atolls off the South coast of India and the Malvinas is the Spanish name for the Falklands Islands (there are 778 of them) to the east of South America, some 8,123 miles away from the Maldives. To mix them up is laughable - the kind of error for which President George W. Bush or Governor Sarah Palin would have been mocked mercilessly.

But the bigger issue is that the Falkland Islands are a British Overseas Territory. This time 30 years ago, a British task force was en route to retake the islands after they had been invaded by Argentina. The death toll of that war included 255 British troops.

 Reading the riot act: Margaret Thatcher fought hard for US support in the Falklands War

As the movie The Iron Lady recalls, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher read the riot act to Al Haig, then US Secretary of State, over his reluctance to support Britain over the Falklands. She asked him how the US would feel about Hawaii being invaded. Documents show that she made the same point to a stammering President Ronald Reagan, though using the comparison of Alaska.

The Reagan administration eventually came around and supported Britain, with the Pentagon providing crucial military assistance.

Whatever the hesitancies of the Reagan administration, the British victory in the Falklands War - Thatcher's finest hour - made the sovereignty of the islands a settled matter. Not only did Britain have international law on its side but it had spent its blood and treasure to prove it had the will to assert the rights of the islanders to self-determination.

Amongst others, the European Union and even France strongly support the British position.

But with President Cristina Kirchner of Argentina trying to gin up domestic support by resurrecting the 'Malvinas' issue, the Obama administration is maintaining a studious neutrality.

To spell it out: Obama is 'neutral' over the sovereignty of islands that British troops, with American support, fought and died for at a time when British troops are fighting and dying alongside their American comrades in Afghanistan.

Not only that, Obama thinks that the term 'Malvinas' is just as valid as the correct name on all the maps: the Falklands. Except that he cannot read his briefing notes carefully enough even to get the incorrect name right, mixing up the Malvinas with the Maldives.

What a way to treat the foremost ally of the United States.

VIDEO: Obama's 'Maldives' gaffe (go to 20:00)