British pundits and a broad swath of the nation’s press are fuming tonight in the wake of comments by President Obama that the US has no stronger ally than France, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The comment was termed by many as a grave insult to the “Special Relationship’ between Britain and the United States, and sparked angry rebukes from Tory MPs, who insisted that Britain has been a much better shill for America’s assorted wars than France could ever dream of being, and has sacrificed far more troops in those disastrous conflicts.
Some were quick to point out that President Obama didn’t explicitly name France as “better than” Britain but was simply putting them in the same tier. The comments however didn’t prevent the anger and condemnations of France’s insufficiently pro-war history from being made a serious topic of discussion among Britain’s press.
The controversy is nothing new, of course. President Bush’s decision to end his final trip to Europe with a stop in Paris, and not London, sparked similar concerns that their role as America’s BFF was in peril.
