The European Union has elected Herman Van Rompuy of Belgium (above left) as first president of the European Council and Baroness Ashton of Upholland (from the United Kingdom) (above right) as its first foreign minister. The commentariat in Europe, at least in "Old Europe" as Donald Rumsfeld would say (and won't his memoirs be delicious?) is uniformly disheartened. Non-entities is the word being use by them, not MC, though it seems hard to argue with the term. Herman (you know how informal we Americans are) is known best for his haikus. Wow! We knew Belgium was boring but ripping off another culture's poem form? The Baroness, fittingly enough, has no foreign policy experience. And Europe wonders why the Islamists see it as low hanging fruit?Click on the title of this post to read Charles Bremner's take in the TimesOnline.
