Obama tours Europe, Turkey giving the impression of the anti-Bush

Stuart H. Loory, program moderator: President Barack Obama has embarked on a week-long tour of Europe and Turkey, but all is not sanguine for him or the United States. At the G-20 summit in London, he sought the help of the world’s richest nations in finding a way out of the global economic disaster. His plans for spending the way out of the crisis met strong opposition from French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Mirek Topolanek. After the London summit, he traveled to a meeting of the NATO nations in an attempt to win more support for the war in Afghanistan. It is virtually certain that the European powers will not send more troops there. From NATO, he goes to the Czech Republic, where he will meet with Topolanek, who called Obama’s worldwide stimulus plan “the road to hell.” He then travels to Turkey, looking for help in extracting troops from Iraq. Let’s start in London; Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain have won a major concession from the summit, a stimulus of $1.1 trillion to promote global trade. What will the impact be?