One thing that, as an American who is proud as anybody of my country, I am always jealous about European trains. And I said to myself, why can’t we have — (applause) — why can’t we have high-speech rail? And so we’re investing in that as well.
So on the transportation front, on — with respect to building construction, on a whole range of issues, we are investing in new technologies that will make us more energy efficient. And that is one of the building blocks that’s needed in order for us to reduce our carbon footprint and to work with other countries to achieve the climate change goals that I think are going to be so important.
I’m getting the signal that I’ve only got time for two more questions. Oh! I’m going to ask that young man in the suit — because he got dressed up today. I know he doesn’t usually wear a suit — yes. Go ahead, go ahead.
Q I just want to know what do you expect from the French and the European countries regarding the war on terror?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good. That’s a good question. Look, I think that over the last seven, eight years, as I said in my speech, a lot of tensions have developed between the United States and Europe. And one of the legacies, I hope, from my administration is, is that we start bringing our historic alliance back together in a much more effective way.
Now, that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have honest disagreements. All countries have disagreements between themselves. But I think that we can work much more effectively and cooperatively, and maintain that core trust that we have towards each other.
Nowhere have we seen more suspicion than around questions of war and peace and how we respond to terrorism. When 9/11 happened, Europe responded as a true friend would respond to the United States, saying, “We are all Americans.” All of us have a stake in ensuring that innocent people who were just going about their business, going to work, suddenly find themselves slaughtered — all of us have an interest in preventing that kind of vicious, evil act.
But after the initial NATO engagement in Afghanistan, we got sidetracked by Iraq, and we have not fully recovered that initial insight that we have a mutual interest in ensuring that organizations like al Qaeda cannot operate. And I think that it is important for Europe to understand that even though I’m now President and George Bush is no longer President, al Qaeda is still a threat, and that we cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as President, suddenly everything is going to be okay.
It is going to be a very difficult challenge. Al Qaeda is still bent on carrying out terrorist activity. It is — don’t fool yourselves — because some people say, well, you know, if we changed our policies with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or if we were more respectful towards the Muslim world, suddenly these organizations would stop threatening us. That’s just not the case.