'They Don't Want Us. They Don't Care About Us'

Nothing like pissing on our friends while busy sucking up to every two bit tryrant and leftist government out there.

Czech and Polish leaders bristle at America's new ambivalence over a Bush administration plan to base a missile defense shield in the two ex-communist countries. The system, which would put 10 interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, had been touted as a strategic way to counter a threat from Iran.

But recently, senior U.S. Defense Department officials said they're considering other options. The Czech-Polish plan had infuriated Russia, and the Obama administration has been working to improve relations with the Kremlin.

It gets even more complicated: Although the Czech and Polish governments agreed to host the system, it's been highly unpopular among ordinary citizens, who staged boisterous protests. Now, some leaders fear they may have exposed themselves to needless flak.

"I would consider it a dirty trick if the Czech Republic and Poland would end up unprotected," Alexandr Vondra, a former deputy Czech prime minister and one-time ambassador to the U.S., told The Associated Press.

Vondra was among a group of prominent Eastern European ex-leaders who wrote to Obama in July, saying the region is gripped by anxiety that his overtures to Russia could lead him to ignore them.

"If we don't take care of relations between the U.S. and Central and Eastern Europe, it could lead to a certain worsening of relations in the future," he told the AP.

Poles have other reasons to be rankled at Washington.

On Sept. 1, the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was there for the commemoration. So was French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. The U.S. sent National Security Adviser James Jones — a move seen as a snub by Poles who expected Vice President Joe Biden or Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"They don't want us. They don't care about us," commentator Lukasz Kwiecien wrote in a scathing editorial for the national daily Dziennik under the headline: "We are paying for our blind love for America."

And there could be consequences, warned Bartosz Weglarczyk, a columnist for the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper.

"I have no doubt that under the new administration, Washington has neglected relations with Poland and with Central Europe as a whole. Some say, and I count myself among them, that it is a mistake and that one day Washington may pay dearly for it," he said.