Digest

A propósito da visita de Obama à Europa, este editorial do LA Times coloca o dedo na ferida ao sublinhar que a responsabilidade está agora do lado da Europa (e há boas razões para cepticismo em relação à capacidade europeia de responder à altura): "words matter, and the respect that Obama engendered on this trip is key to reclaiming U.S. global leadership. Obama even exercised that leadership when he gently scolded Europeans for espousing what he called casual but insidious anti-Americanism. He urged them to acknowledge "the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America." Obama's challenge is to transform that partnership into concrete support from the Europeans, who must rise to the occasion and no longer blame President Bush's unilateralism for their unwillingness to help."

Sobre a visita à Turquia vale a pena ler este artigo no NYTimes, de um antigo correspondente de um jornal turco nos EUA, chamando a atenção para o modo como Obama soube ultrapassar visões simplificadoras da realidade turca que dominaram o modo como os EUA e, por arrasto, o Ocidente olharam para a Turquia nos últimos anos: "In our eternal identity crisis, we Turks have lately been thinking only in opposites — that you are either secular or religious, Kurd or Turk, European or Middle Eastern. It took a young foreign leader on his first visit here to remind us that we are all of those things, and much more."