November 30, 2011 - You thought it was pretty funny when Herman Cain messed up the name of Uzbekistan, didn't you? Sure you did. "U-becky becky becky becky stan stan," is what he called it, albeit tongue-in-cheek, as he said in an interview in October.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quickly had a good laugh about it with none other than Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan. Yep, pretty funny when a conservative politician intentionally mispronounced Uzbekistan, eh?
But what about Barack Obama's expertise on foreign affairs? In a press conference last night, Obama had no teleprompter. In a remarkably ignorant statement, he called condemned
the recent storming of the British Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Problem is, he called it "the English Embassy."
For those of you who, like Obama, are as ignorant about foreign affairs as the average 3rd grader, the correct term is "British Emabassy," not "English Embassy."
This is succinctly explained by Nile Gardiner at The Foundry in a Nov. 30 column:. "In case the president is unaware," he wrote, "England forms part of Great Britain, which also includes Scotland and Wales, though not Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. There is no such thing as an 'English' embassy anywhere in the world, and there hasn’t been one for several centuries."
What Obama did, in effect, was to refer to a foreign embassy that technically
does not exist. There is no such thing as an "English Embassy" anywhere on Earth. Gardiner also wrote that "One can only imagine the kind of howls of derision that would greet any presidential contender if that kind of basic error were made..."
Great Britain has no embassies, just England does not. England is part of Great Britain, which in turn is part of the United Kingdom.
The "Know Britain" website tells us that many Brits are confused by what the term "Great Britain" means. "Try asking a person living in the United Kingdom the exact meaning of the expression they have on their passports: 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Many will not be able to provide an adequate answer. No wonder, therefore, that confusion also exists outside the United Kingdom and that in other European countries people erroneously group together the English, Scottish and Welsh under the word in their own language meaning 'English'."
Will Hillary Clinton yuk it up with any world leaders about Barack Obama incorrectly calling the British Embassy in Tehran the "English Embassy?" No, I don't think so either, and the Mainstream Media won't play it up either.
Obama's defenders might call his "English Embassy" reference an understandable gaffe, but it clearly was not. Rather, it was the result of Obama's ignorance.
In the press conference, Obama said the following: "All of us, I think, are deeply disturbed by [pause] the [pause] aaahhh [pause, brain fart] crashing of, uh, the English Embassy. Ah, thuh, the embassy of the United Kingdom in Iran." He got it wrong not once, but twice. It is not the "embassy of the United Kingdom." It is the embassy of Great Britain, or "British Embassy."
The President of the United States should certainly know this. But we'll give him this much: He's on a par with some of the lesser educated citizens of the UK for not knowing the basic political makeup of the British Isles.
Here's something else we can (and should) all laugh at: Michele Bachmann has stated that she would close the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Problem is, the United States does not have an embassy anywhere in Iran. We haven't had one since the Iranian hostage crisis during the Carter administration, when
revolutionaries stormed our embassy there and held it for 444 days.
Talking Points Memo reports that, "According to a tweet from NBC News’ Jamie Novogrod, Bachmann responded to the recent raiding of the British embassy in Iran, by saying that if she was President, she would close down the U.S. embassy there."
What's especially disturbing about Bachmann's statement is the fact that she is a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
