They Love Him, They Love Him Not

The Messiah is still enjoying raging popularity with the Europeans, but not enough for them to put their money, and lives, where his mouth is. From Fox News:

President Obama may have been swinging for a home run in his debut on the world stage, but European and other global leaders held him to what might be called a ground-rule double.

Obama failed to get European leaders to commit to U.S.-style stimulus packages or to get NATO allies to send more combat troops to Afghanistan.

But he prevented French President Nicolas Sarkozy from walking out of the G20 summit, as he threatened to do earlier. He also helped persuade China to agree to publish lists of tax havens, and got NATO allies to agree to sending up to 5,000 more military trainers and police to Afghanistan.

It will be spun as a victory, of course.

Then on Saturday, he struck an upbeat note about the commitments he received from NATO.

"I am pleased that our NATO allies pledged their strong and unanimous support for our new strategy," Obama said at the end of a NATO summit that was heavily focused on Afghanistan and the newly retooled U.S. strategy to root out terrorists there and in neighboring Pakistan. "We've started to match real resources to achieve our goals," he said.

The White House said NATO countries agreed to send more personnel, including about 3,000 on short-term deployments, as the alliance steps up its campaign to stabilize Afghanistan before elections in August. An additional 1,400 to 2,000 will provide training for Afghanistan's national army.

All well and good, but given our recent commitment of an additional 21,000 troops in Afghanistan, and Obama's claims for months that he would secure more support from our allies, it looks like failure to me.

Obama spent the past few days trying to drum up support during a summit marking the 60th anniversary of NATO.

"These commitments of troops, trainers and civilians represent a strong down payment" toward securing Afghanistan, he said.

Obama downplayed the allies' refusal to send in more combat troops, saying the summit was "not a pledging conference."

"All these allies have combat troops on the ground," and "part of our strategy is to make sure we have a much more comprehensive approach," Obama said.

"The trainers we are sending in are no less important than those in direct combat with the Taliban," he said.

America's allies, he added, "are making significant commitments despite having participated in what's turned out to be a very lengthy operation."

Perhaps laying the groundwork for striking down claims of his perceived failure in Afghanistan, he went on:

"This effort cannot be America's alone," added Obama, who is working hard to prevent the anti-terror mission from being viewed as a U.S. war and, by extension, his.

Earlier in his weeklong European trip, Obama said Europe should not expect the U.S. alone to bear the combat burden, saying: "This is a joint problem. And it requires a joint effort."

So, we're sending in all the extra fighting forces. We're almost certainly going to pay the lion's share of the trillion dollars promised to the IMF. But the Narcissist-In-Chief won enough accolades to keep him smiling for a month or two...I guess that's what's really important, after all.