OK, 30,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan, victory guaranteed by the summer of 2011 (or else) and the best part of all? President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, as expected, also envisions a major increase in NATO troop levels there, meaning of course more German troops too.

Go Germany! I’m impressed already, sort of (but not quite yet). What would never have been possible during the reign of his evil cowboy predecessor will now be given to Obama with a smile. Some 2000 troops, or so the rumor goes.

Poor Mr. President. He still doesn’t know who he’s dealing with over here. Here in Germany, I mean. Afghanistan he’s starting to get though, I think.

Die Nato-Staaten müssten ihr Truppenkontingent ebenfalls aufstocken – also auch die Bundeswehr.

Gerhard Schröder had his “reasons”, is Angie going to jump on the bandwagon now, too? Or is she already long gone down that road – ist der Zug schon abgefahren (did this train already leave the station)? It is a campaign year here in Germany after all, you know.

“Mr. Obama speaks of a global crisis that demands global responses. For the Germans, this is indeed a global crisis — but one that must be resolved primarily by the U.S., since it originated there. Therefore, German finance companies that became entangled in dodgy speculations are seen as weak victims who were seduced, while the clever American seducers who caused the real-estate bubble must now be punished.

Now the victims are claiming the right to say “no” to new stimulus packages. And they are demanding that the U.S. never again be permitted to seduce — that it be constrained by “more transparency on the financial markets, which Germany called for long ago,” as Mrs. Merkel says.”

“Before the Iraq war, George Bush succeeded in splitting Europe into the old and the new. In the financial crisis, the Continent is unified in its opposition toward his successor, Barack Obama.”