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House Republican Policy Chairman Thaddeus McCotter on Thursday attacked Barack Obama for his use of a “pragmatic populist approach to the advancement of human liberty.”

In an op-ed article for the Berlin-based German newspaper, Die Welt, McCotter, writing in German, said it is ironic Obama would speak in Berlin about the relationship between the U.S. and Europe when he has yet to grasp the fundamental bond that constitutes that relationship.

The bond, according to McCotter, is the “belief that expanding human liberty will defeat its enemies.” He suggested Obama does not place liberty at the top of that list when it comes to places like Iraq.

McCotter criticized Obama’s label of the Iraq war as a “distraction,” continued opposition to the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq and so-called shifting positions against the War on Terror as problems with the Democratic presidential candidate’s foreign policy approach.

“Principled policies” of the past, rather than Obama’s approach, have served the U.S. better in the eras of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, McCotter wrote ahead of the speech that was to be delivered during the latest stop on Obama’s list of foreign travels.

McCotter wrote that he hopes Obama will refine his shifting policies to reflect the Transatlantic bond in the “universality of freedom.”