President Obama’s self-aggrandizing speech in memory of the Berlin Wall’s fall may or may not have made Germans like him more. But has his strategy of diplomatic obeisance made us any new friends there, or has he set himself up to disappoint everyone?
Consider the coming New York terror trials. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have both gone on the record demanding the death penalty for Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and four others implicated in the 9/11 plot. Obama went so far as to predict Muhammad’s conviction and execution.
But the Germans won’t stand for a terrorist death sentence. And as it happens, they have leverage:
A team of observers from the German government is going to New York to oversee the trial of five suspects accused of orchestrating the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday…Germany, which does not have a death penalty, provided evidence for the trial on the condition that it could not be used to support a death sentence. Several members of the al Qaeda cell that planned and executed the attacks of September 11 were previously based in the northern German city of Hamburg…The defense lawyer for one of the accused, Ramzi Binalshibh, said that a conviction of his client would “scarcely be possible without evidence from Germany.”
Assuming that Der Spiegel is correct about this deal he has apparently made, will President Obama abide by his agreement with Germany? Or will he break his word? And if he does, can he make up for it by bowing low the next time he visits Chancellor Merkel?
