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According to the Christian Science Monitor, Europe’s “political elite” are happy about President Barack Obama’s decision to renege on agreements to build missile defense shields in Poland and the Czech Republic. They agree with the U.S. that Iran poses a threat, but disagree with the former president’s plan to deal with it.

A German politician said George Bush’s missile defense plan was expensive, untested, unilateral…and it made Russia mad. The former Soviet Union claimed the shields were a threat to its national security. Eberhard Sandschneider said, “The shield does not realistically protect the states it is designed to protect. It isn’t solving anything, and there are downsides.”

Arms Services Committee member Senator Lindsey Graham’s on-point Sunday morning talk show quotes are making the rounds. We’ll rinse and repeat: “This is going to be seen as a capitulation to the Russians, who had no real basis to object to what we were doing. And at the end of the day you empowered the Russians, you made Iran happy and you made the people in Eastern Europe wonder who we are as Americans.”

The article cites a Polish survey that shows about half the country’s citizens agrees with the abandonment decision, while 31 percent opposes.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said we’d offer a “defensive umbrella” to our allies, wrote an op-ed for the Financial Times denying that the U.S. is turnng its back on Central Europe. Obama’s plan, she writes, is to develop “a stronger and more comprehensive” system to protect the region.

Alexander Rahr, a Russian expert and member of the German Council of Foreign Relations, concedes that Russia is whiny and sees “grievances at every turn,” but adds that if Russia believes the shields would be a threat, the rest of Europe should be consulted about such defense plans.