This strikes me as pretty minor, especially compared to skipping the President's funeral and pulling out our defensive missiles because Russia told us to. But my intuition for what people will take offense at isn't always spot on. Whether you think it was a small mistake or a big mistake the point to be taken is that our ally considers it a huge mistake. Isn't the first rule of diplomacy not to piss off your friends? Especially if it's not over a matter of principle. Isn't that the basic level of competence required of a president in foreign affairs? As I commented on another post, to me the gaffe really belongs to administration spokesman Tommy Vietor, who agreed that Obama "misspoke" and further described Obama's words as a "misstatement." What the administration should have responded is along the lines that Obama's phraseology is mildly ambiguous, and relies on everyone's understanding that the death camps were set up and operated by Germans That's what genuine "smart diplomacy" would have done. No, I take that back. Genuine smart diplomacy would have had a translator look over the text for potential problems in the translation. I don't know Polish but I have a working familiarity with a different Slavic language and the difference between "in" and "belonging to" is pretty thin. @"S", you may be onto something. Obama couldn't fly over the North Atlantic to reach the Polish President's funeral because of a volcanic eruption in Iceland (go here to see what happens