President Barack Obama and other top members of his
administration have snubbed a historic rally in Paris today that brought
together more than 40 world leaders from Europe, Africa, the Middle East
and
even Russia.
'France is our oldest ally,' Obama said during a speech
Friday in Tennessee. 'I want the people of France to know that the United
States stands with you today, stands with you tomorrow.'
But he wasn't standing in Paris as Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas put aside
their differences and linked arms.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian Foreign
Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov made the same unifying gesture in the march down
the Place de la Concorde in defiance of the Islamist terror attacks that rocked
the city last week.
According to an administration official, President Obama
spent part of his Sunday afternoon watching a National Football League game on
television. Both games were broadcast hours after the march.
Heads of state from every major European power, including
British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
joined French President Francois Hollande.
But the U.S.A. was M.I.A.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden remained in Washington,
despite having no events on their public schedules Sunday. Secretary of State
John Kerry was a world away in India, on a pre-planned trip.
Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris for a terrorism
summit held on the march's sidelines, but he slipped away and made appearances
on four American morning television talk shows just as the incredible rally was
starting.
The US was represented at the march only by Jane Hartley,
the American ambassador to France who is unrecognizable to most Americans, let
alone the rest of the world.
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