Obama's Geography Lesson

At the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, the big news was that certain Secret Service personnel had prostitutes in their hotel rooms the day before President Obama arrived. Because of this, no one paid any attention to what actually happened at the summit itself. This is probably a good thing for Obama who made one of his worst mistakes ever at the conference.

First, here's a little background. The Falkland Islands are a group of islands a few hundred miles east of Argentina in the southern Atlantic Ocean. The islands have been British for centuries, and the local population has chosen to maintain the tie to the UK. In the early 1980's, Argentina invaded the islands which the Argentines claim as part of their country. The Brits, under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher sent a task force to the islands and retook them in a short but bloody war with Argentina. The area was then restored to peace, but in the last few months the Argentines are again making noises about how the islands are part of their country. This renewed interest in the islands is the result of oil drilling in the area of the islands which indicates that there may be major petroleum deposits in the waters of that area.

The Argentines refuse to recognize British rule in the Falklands. They will not even accept the name for the islands used by the UK. To Argentina these are the Malvinas Islands.

During the war in the 1980's, the USA supported the British against the Argentines who had invaded and conquered this British territory.

So, at the summit in Colombia, the subject of the Falklands was front and center on the agenda. President Obama spoke about the issue during his address to the assembled heads of state. So where is the problem with all this? First, Obama did not call the islands the Falkland Islands. Obama went with the Argentine name instead. This was a clear signal to the UK that America was now siding with the Argentine government in its claim to the islands. It was a clear signal that America was ignoring the wishes of the thousands of folks who live on the islands and who have voted repeatedly to maintain the tie with Britain. It was a clear signal that Obama, once again, will side against anything that has any vestige of colonialism associated with it, no matter what it is. In short, it was a direct slap in the face to the Brits.

But Obama did not actually call the islands the Malvinas. Instead, Obama called them the Maldives. The Maldives are a group of islands located in the Indian Ocean many thousands of miles away from the Falklands. So in one word, Obama managed to insult the Brits and make himself look like a fool. Sure, it may not be a big deal for the average person to mispronounce the name of a place, but this was the president of the United States speaking. Obama was making a speech and was using a teleprompter. That means that not only Obama got the name wrong, but his staff and the State Department folks who must have reviewed the speech before it was given also got it wrong.

Think of it this way: while the name switch may seem like no big deal, imagine instead that Obama arrived in Sydney Australia and made a speech about how happy he was to be in Austria. Those countries sound pretty similar but no one would confuse Australia with Austria. Well the same is true with the Malvinas and the Maldives. The president should not be confusing these places.

One interesting note: I checked this morning to see if any major news organization in the main stream media covered this mistake by Obama. I googled Obama, summit, Maldives and found that only Reuters mentioned Obama's mistake, but that was just one sentence at the end of a long article about the summit. None of the networks talked about the error. None of the big liberal papers mentioned it. After all, we were all told that Obama was the smartest man in the room, and this conflicts with that narrative.

For what it is worth, the British press had a number of stories about Obama's comments. The focus in London, however, was more on the slap in the face to the UK than on Obama's geography mistake.