It is now three weeks since the Sunday Telegraph first revealed the State Department’s extraordinarily rude response to concern in the U.K. over its handling of the Gordon Brown visit to the White House in early March:
“There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.”
The remarks are hugely insulting at a time when there are nearly 9,000 British troops on the ground in Afghanistan (almost the same number as all the major continental European powers combined), and after more than 150 British servicemen have laid down their lives fighting the Taliban.
The State Department official’s remarks have been highlighted on the Corner and numerous blogs, as well as by Glenn Beck on Fox, and a follow-up article in the Telegraph. And still not a word from the White House or Foggy Bottom disavowing them or apologizing for them. They are hugely embarrassing comments by an unnamed representative of the U.S. government against America’s closest ally, who has still not come forward to clarify the statement.
Before the president travels to Britain next week to meet with the Queen and attend the G-20 summit in London, it would be an important gesture by the Obama administration to unequivocally reject the sneeringly unpleasant views of one of its own senior officials.
The new administration has made a spectacularly bad start with the Special Relationship, from throwing a bust of Churchill out of the Oval Office to treating the prime minister in a humiliating fashion, and needs to start rebuilding its tarnished image in the U.K. Apologizing unreservedly for a State Department official’s undiplomatic remarks would be a good start.
— Nile Gardiner is the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation.