U.S. President George W. Bush has repeated a call for the European Union to admit Turkey, despite criticism by France’s President Jacques Chirac that he was meddling in EU affairs. Bush said Tuesday that Turkey belongs in the EU and that Europe is ‘not the exclusive club of a single religion’ in what amounted to a rebuff to the French leader.
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He said that Turkish EU membership would be a “crucial advance” in relations between the Muslim world and the West because Turkey was part of both.
The main message in the U.S. President’s speech was a bid to mend relations between Muslims and Americans that were left tattered by the Iraq war.
“We must strengthen the ties and trust and good will between ourselves and the peoples of the Middle East,” he said.
Bush held up Turkey as an example of a Muslim democracy.
“Including Turkey in the EU would prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion, and it would expose the ‘clash of civilizations’ as a passing myth of history,” Bush said.
Somebody needs to get Bush’s people some time off because they obviously can’t take the stress. Publicly lecturing Europe about religious pluralism is about as obnoxious as an American president can get. And to use Europe as his whipping boy to mend fences with muslims (a totally incomprehensible strategy) is to basically say, “those Europeans make much better targets than we do, Osama. They hate yer muslim guts. Have at it.”
Who the hell do these people think they are? It’s not that we have no right to politely advocate for Turkey being admitted into the EU if we choose. It’s that we don’t do it by publicly insulting the EU for our own purposes. Where did these people learn their manners, Attica?
Chirac was, unsurprisingly, pissed:
“If President Bush really said that in the way that I read, then not only did he go too far, but he went into territory that isn’t his,” Chirac said of a remark Bush made over the weekend.
“It is is not his purpose and his goal to give any advice to the EU, and in this area it was a bit as if I were to tell Americans how they should handle their relationship with Mexico.
Oh, we won’t mind. That’s what we call the new “go fuck yourself” diplomacy. You’ll feel better, too.