The American Right Hits Out

The Wall Street Journal, a house organ for the neo-cons, doesn't like what it saw in Bucharest yesterday. Matthew Kaminski's article accuses Germany of being "the new France", and for an American right winger there is no worse insult (American nationalists of Mr Kaminski's stripe appear to have forgotten the US owes its existence to France and Lafayette). He begins:

European security is supposed to be last century's problem. Tell that to Ukraine and Georgia, which had their bids to join the West effectively vetoed by Russia at yesterday's unusually dramatic summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In the halls of Ceausescu's Palace of the People, American idealism squared off against a belligerent Kremlin and its chief European proxy, Germany. The U.S. lost this battle. The clear victor in Bucharest was Russia's Vladimir Putin, who wasn't even in town.

While Summit results were mixed for the Bush administration, it is stretching credulity to suggest that everything went Russia's way. But if you work for a newspaper that persists in regarding the invasion and occupation of Iraq as a triumph, then reality must be a little skewed in other areas too.