Eastern Europe "Yearns" for Bush as Obama Backs Away From Them

One of the fallacies of the Obama myth is that he would "repair" relations with the rest of the world that Bush damaged. In reality Bush strengthened our ties with and improved relations with Eastern Europe, Iraq, Japan, and India. Obama on the other hand would prefer the cheering crowds of Berlin and the fashionable cause of warming then to fight for human rights or protect nations that have partnered with the US government. We saw this when he waffled on the Georgian war and we see it again with Clinton's ridiculous assertion that climate change is more important than human rights.

March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Eastern European governments that ran political risks to support former President George W. Bush’s security policies are now concerned that his successor, Barack Obama, will backtrack on those regional commitments.

Leaders in the Czech Republic, Poland and other former communist nations face a backlash at home over their support of Bush-era initiatives, including the proposed U.S. missile- defense system and troop participation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, concern is growing in eastern Europe that it will be put on “the back burner” as the Obama administration talks about working with Russia and western Europe on issues such as Iran, says Annette Heuser, executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation, a policy group in Washington.

Obama, 47, will have a chance to personally assuage concerns next month. After ignoring pleas from the east on his trip to Berlin, Paris and London as candidate last year, he will make his first visit there as president on April 5, Czech Premier Mirek Topolanek said yesterday. The president will travel to Prague to meet with European Union leaders, Topolanek said; the Czech Republic currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

While it’s too early to say what the president’s overall foreign policy will be, “we can see that Obama wants better relations with Russia and that he’s skeptical about missile defense,” says Jaroslaw Walesa, a lawmaker in Poland’s ruling Citizens’ Platform party and the son of the country’s first post-communist president, Lech Walesa.

They should be concerned, the Obama admin has already signaled they will sacrifice East European interests to Russia in exchange for Putin's help with Iran.