‘When people are dying, you must come back from vacation': French foreign minister seems to slam Obama for golfing while Iraq burns
- Obama is on Martha’s Vineyard while Iraq undergoes regime change and terrorists slaughter ethnic and religious minorities
- Calling heads of state to lobby participation in humanitarian assistance program – in between golf and fundraising
- Washington Post columnist wrote that the president ‘risks fueling the impression that he is detached as the world burns’
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has a message about Iraq for Barack Obama: Get back to the White House and do something. ‘I know it is the holiday period in our Western countries,’ Fabius told a radio interviewer Tuesday in France,’ but when people are dying, you must come back from vacation.’ Full-time workers in France are guaranteed a whopping five weeks of paid vacation every year, making his plea all the more urgent. Obama is on a family and golfing holiday in a ritzy neighborhood of Martha’s Vineyard but says he will come back to Washington this weekend before returning on Tuesday to fun, sun, and more golf.
French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius (C) visited Iraqi refugees in Nineveh province on Sunday, saying upon his return to France that vacations for certain world leaders should cease while people are dying there
What a putt: Obama risks looking aloof as Iraq burns
As town after Iraqi town is conquered by ISIS, an Islamist terror group that claims it has established an ‘Islamic state,’ Obama’s approach has consisted so far of airlifting humanitarian supplies to victimized groups, protecting the aid drops with airstrikes, and begging for help from allies. Britain, France, Italy and other European nations have backed the humanitarian assistance with material and personnel, reported The Wall Street Journal, which first broke news of the French diplomat’s criticism. Meanwhile Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have been encouraging a nascent Iraqi government from a safe distance, while assuring Americans that the U.S. won’t enter another prolonged war with boots on the ground.
Eyebrows went up Wednesday in Washington, though, when the White House announced that Obama was leaning toward deploying ground troops to Mount Sinjar, a northern Iraqi hideout to which tens of thousands of Yadizis, a persecuted religious minority group, have led from ISIS.
No comments:
Post a Comment