Obama’s betrayal of our Polish and Czech friends was absolutely disgraceful (removing their missile defenses). His stupidity with his “Polish death camps” remarks shows me that far from being the “smart guy” that Bill O’Reilly loves to always refer to him as, he has at best a pedestrian intellect and at worst, he embraces a left-wing version of the Cold War. I am disappointed that there has been not enough talk about foreign policy (understandably with the lousy economy) this year. As for the Obama administrations concern over Poles staying in America beyond their visas – I wish he would feel the same way about people from Pock-ee-stan overstaying their visas. The last I checked there was no Polish terror plots in the United States that the FBI and Homeland Security uncovered. It is interesting that Romney will be visiting Britain, Poland and ISrael – three nations that Obama has completely dissed and insulted, Britain with the return of the Churchill bust, Poland with the comment on “Polish death camps ” and the removal of U.S. anti-missile systems, and Israel – well the list is a long one.
by George Weigel
Cracow – Well-informed Poles know that, barring some cataclysmic international event between now and November 6, the 2012 U.S. presidential election will be fought and decided on domestic U.S. economic issues. My Polish friends and colleagues understand that high unemployment, sluggish growth, rapidly accumulating federal debt, the overreach of Obamacare, the administration’s embrace of gay marriage, and the Obama assault on religious freedom are of much greater concern to most Americans than foreign policy. Yet those same friends and colleagues are uncomfortable with, even nervous about, a variant of the Carvillian slogan that dominated 1992: “It’s the economy (and the culture), stupid.”
Their concerns are worthy of serious American attention.
Poland’s experience with the Obama administration has not been a happy one. It was bad enough that the administration abruptly cancelled the emplacement of missile-defense components that Poland had agreed to accept in the face of serious Russian pressure. But when the administration announced this betrayal on the 70th anniversary of the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, without even informing the Polish prime minister in a timely manner, it raised a very large question mark in Polish minds about the administration’s strategy, its grasp of the history of east-central Europe, and its understanding of the linkage between the two.
That question mark was transformed into an exclamation point when President Obama made an unimaginably inept reference to “Polish death camps” during a recent White House ceremony awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Jan Karski, a hero of the World War II Polish underground and a longtime professor at Georgetown University. Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski may have accepted Obama’s quick retreat and confession of a misstatement. Beneath the public veneer of reconciliation between the two presidents, however, Poles (including, one suspects, President Komorowski) remain shocked and angered at the ignorance of both Obama and the White House staff, who not only misrepresented the extermination camps of World War II but also seemed not to grasp that millions of Poles died in these Nazi death factories. As one Cracovian policeman said when the subject came up during a conversation three weeks ago: “This is no joke to me. My grandmother died at Auschwitz.”
In between the missile-defense betrayal of September 17, 2009, and the Karski fiasco of May 29, 2012, there was the infamous open-microphone exchange between President Obama and then–Russian president Dmitri Medvedev. Obama’s plea for “understanding” that he had “one last election” to contest before he could, presumably, cave in completely on missile defense was regarded by knowledgeable Poles as a danger signal reminiscent of what their parents and grandparents had heard during the heydays of appeasement.
And, like the earlier gaffe of kowtowing to Russian pressure by canceling the Polish-based missile-defense sites on September 17, the precise date of the Soviet stab-in-the-back that completed Poland’s vivisection in 1939, Obama’s plaintive request to Medvedev (obviously intended for the ears of Medvedev’s master, Vladimir Putin) confirmed Polish fears that, in addition to their ignorance of 20th-century European history, Obama and his foreign-policy counselers adhered to a Left-revisionist view of World War II and the Cold War that elides over the West’s double betrayal of Poland: the Anglo-French failure to attack Germany in September 1939, when the Reich’s western frontier had been largely stripped of armed forces in preparation for the Polish invasion, and the subsequent betrayals of the Tehran and Yalta conferences, which left Poland to the tender mercies of Stalin.
[........]
These concerns should not be misconstrued. It’s not as if Poles imagine that U.S. foreign policy today ought to be crafted as expiation for America’s pre–Pearl Harbor isolationism or FDR’s less-than-successful diplomacy with “Uncle Joe” Stalin at Tehran and Yalta. Poles are too smart, too well disposed toward the United States, and too experienced in the hard school of European power politics for that. The serious Polish complaint about the missile-defense betrayal, the open-mike pusillanimity with Medvedev, and the Karski gaffe — the complaint that ought to register in the 2012 campaign and that ought to form part of the Romney critique of Obama’s foreign policy — is that all of this reveals a deep misunderstanding of both European history and contemporary strategic realities in Eastern and Central Europe. That misunderstanding, in turn, seems to feed a policy of appeasing Russian efforts to recover the sway the defunct Soviet Union once exercised in these parts. If this is the famous Russian-policy “reset” that Hillary Clinton announced in 2009 (with a show-and-tell gimmick using the wrong Russian word for “reset”), thoughtful Poles want none of it.
[........]
Poland’s nervousness about the 2012 election is an important reminder to Americans that, as important as the economy is, and as crucial as the repudiation of Obama’s assault on civil society is, there is more at stake on November 6 than domestic matters. To borrow from the Marxist vocabulary, the correlation of forces here in Eastern and Central Europe has shifted in the past four years; that shift is due in no small part to the Obama administration’s misreading of the modern history of this region; and that shift is bad news for the future of freedom. What Polish nervousness about 2012 reminds Americans of is that Obama’s foreign-policy fecklessness has to be part of the debate in the next three and a half months — as does a new vision of responsible American leadership in the world.
Read the rest here: The Polish view of the 2012 campaign
Tags: George Weigel
Please, O People of Poland…pray for us so that we can gather more strength to vote that Filthy Communist Bastard Обама OUT! Amen.
Obama would love to rebuild the Berlin wall. Can you imagine what Brezhnev would have been thinking had Obama been sitting opposite him during negotiations?
@ Speranza:
To speculate on that I’d have to drop all political correctness
Speranza wrote:
BO-hole would assuage Brezhnev’s fears by whispering in his ear “after the election I’ll have more flexibility”.
This is a good article, but the author makes the mistake of assuming Obama doesn’t realize what he is doing. I think Obama laments the Fall of the Soviet Union, and is deliberately doing what he can to help Putin restore it.
huckfunn wrote:
Oh absolutely. He would have been the most left-wing leader pro Soviet leader of the Free World since Henry Wallace’s 1948 candidacy and McGovern’s 1972 disaster. They would have been Ronald Reagan compared to him.
Iron Fist wrote:
Heh a lot of the Republican foreign policy establishment (Bush, Sr. and his flunky Brent Scowcroft) preferred the USSR and Gorbachev to Russia and Boris Yeltsin.
Talk about being in a bad neighborhood, outside of Israel you would have to say Poland. Right smack between Germany and Russia!
Iron Fist wrote:
who are the soviets here?
lotsa red ink in the west
debtors of the world, UNITE!
the tax man isnt so big in russia…Remember the saying: “To the victors go the spoils”? It must not be true. We won the Cold War, but Russia gets a flat tax while America is stuck with a Byzantine tax system based on class-warfare ideology.
class warfare is the hallmark of a ‘soviet’ system
Speranza wrote:
Romney should incorporate that clip into a TV ad which also shows BO bowing and groveling to various dictators and potentates. Romney is a class act and won’t disparage BO’s policies while on foreign soil during his upcoming trip to England, Israel and Poland.
Can anyone clarify something for me? I understand that Romney is meeting w/Lech Welensa (sp?) and that is upsetting the Poles? Why?
@ eaglesoars:
i cant imagine why it would be upsetting? dunno….
huckfunn wrote:
He should show that in a clip and throw caution to the wind and go for the victory. he needs to emphasize Obama’s amateurishness.
President Obama shuns Lech Walesa
@ coldwarrior:
Bingo!
Putin is not trying to restore the Soviet Union. He’s trying to restore Czarist Russia. He’s a Rightwing nationalist who thinks he’s the new Peter the Great.
Too many Conservatives don’t get that Russia is Neo-Czarist, not Soviet. We are dealing with Nationalists, not Communists.
I was in Prague two days after Obama won the election and I told the Czechs that I spoke to that Obama was not their friend.
Speranza wrote:
Obama probably did have contacts with the KGB in the early 80′s. He had a mysterious trip to Pakistan with a Paki Commie, when the Soviets were next door. he was also involved in the Nuclear Freeze movement. So he did have KGB ties since they funded that movement. Hence why the Russian are able to blackmail him. They have his file and can destroy him politically if he doesn’t cooperate.
Speranza wrote:
I guess O-Dawg is just getting even. Walesa snubbed Obama last year when Obama was in Europe. Funny thing… same picture in both articles.
Rodan wrote:
It was very interesting to read David Marinis’ take on that trip in his Obama biography. It was all sweetness and light.
Not once did he ask “Where did he get the money?”
Altho I will note that his Paki friend came from a well-to-do family and is unlikely to be a commie.
Rodan wrote:
you’ll get no argument out of me on that.
putin does what he thinks will make russia strong. we have a weak president right now, so its time for putin and everyone else to make hay.
@ coldwarrior:
Yes, but Obama laments the Fall of the Soviet Union. It doesn’t matter what Putin’s real goals are. What matters is Obama’s mindset. Obama wants Russia to be a new Imperial power regardless of her internal policies. Obama wants someone to counter the United States.
@ eaglesoars:
Most Communists come from well to do families. Take Castro for example. He came from the cream of Cuban society. Many rich people are Communists out of guilt. I suspect Obama met with KGB agents in Pakistan in relation to the Nuclear Freeze movement.
@ huckfunn:
heh. I remember that! Maybe it’s that the Poles don’t want Romney pandering to him?
@ Rodan:
Point taken.
Rodan wrote:
And said, “I’ll show ya how it is done!”
Iron Fist wrote:
sure.
however, putin is not trying to restore the soviet union, as you said. putin is certainly trying to make russia stronger, after all that is his job.
eaglesoars wrote:
i tried to find a report about poles being miffed about meeting mitt with no luck…you have any details?
@ coldwarrior:
It still comes at the expense of the United States, so it is still hostile action. That Obama is weak and trying to appease this hostile action is a given. Hopefully the next president will do better. That doesn’t mean a return to the Cold War, but we should have never caved on missile defense as one example of what needs to change.
@ eaglesoars:
@ coldwarrior:
I looked, too, but found nothing. Maybe something lost in translation.
@ Iron Fist:
Putin just thinks he’s the new Peter the Great. He’s a Rightwing Neo-Czarist. Russia is enemies with al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. That to me is the real enemy.
As for the Missile shield, that was aimed at Iran to protect the Euros. They should pay us if they want protection. It was not to protect the United States.
coldwarrior wrote:
I don’t remember where but I remember when -- when Romney announced the trip. The piece said that the Poles simply no longer like Walensa.
lemme see what I can find.
@ eaglesoars:
I actually have read that. Its internal politics.
Guv Motors trading below its previous 52 week low.
@ huckfunn:
It’s a success! America is back!!!!!!!!!!!!!
///////////
Gee, nice of you to chime in aboutwhat we think. We have Rasmusen telling us what the Poles say, Pew telling us what the Poles say, CNN telling us what the Poles say, its the same every election cycle, we get to bask in a moment of glory, them BAM! the day after the election, we get blamed, “The Poles were WRONG!”
I’m proud of my Polish ancestery, just sick of getting blamed for every political failure.
got it.
Romney Plans Anger Polish Conservatives
I have no idea how to evaluate this.
Rodan wrote:
YAY! General Motors, Channel Stuffing And The Return Of 2008
@ JeremyR:
Hi! Can you tell ME how to evaluate the piece at my #36? True? Overblown? ???
@ eaglesoars:
Internal politics.
huckfunn wrote:
Note the moron in the comments of this IBD piece trying to spin this as “It’s better than it could have been!”. The stars aligned in Obama’s favor in 2008, in 2012, payback’s looking like it’s gonna be a bitch.
@ coldwarrior:
Maybe she’ll calm him down
juche erections
@ coldwarrior:
I’m just trying to imagine what a Nork amusement park looks like…
MacDuff wrote:
What a goon! The bailout bucks went straight to the UAW to prop up retirement and healthcare costs. Bankruptcy would have solved those problems.
@ coldwarrior:
Juche!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ eaglesoars:
?
wont affect the american election one iota
i dont know enough about these guys to know if they speak for anyone other than themselves.
@ coldwarrior:
Its internal Polish politics.
MacDuff wrote:
keep it up, komrade, and you will NOT be amused.
Rodan wrote:
yeah, i got nothin.
coldwarrior wrote:
me neither.
@ JeremyR:
I have to go but first I wanted to mention the author of the piece excerpted here, George Weigel. He wrote a wonderful book I highly recommend The Cube and the Cathedral
Contrasting the civilization that produced the starkly modernist “cube” of the Great Arch of La Defense in Paris with the civilization that produced the “cathedral,” Notre-Dame, Weigel argues that Europe’s embrace of a narrow and cramped secularism has led to a crisis of civilizational morale that is eroding Europe’s soul and failing to create the European future. Even as thoughtful Europeans and Americans wrestle with these grave issues, many European political leaders continue to insist-most recently, during the debate over a new European constitution-that only a public square shorn of religiously informed moral argument is safe for human rights and democracy. The most profound question raised by The Cube and the Cathedral is whether there can be any true “politics”-any true deliberation about the common good, and any robust defense of freedom-without God. George Weigel makes a powerful case that the answer is “No”-because, in the final analysis, societies and cultures can only be as great as their spiritual aspirations.
Rodan wrote:
JUCHE!
preach it!
@ coldwarrior:
WOW!
@ Rodan:
hipster olympics
Rodan wrote:
its poetry.
In Chicago Poles & Balcks have a tenuous relationship
at best. There is a mindset that Poles take jobs that
“rightfully” belong to Blacks.
Just speculating if BHO harbors some kind of grudge
against Poles.
@ RIX:
ok, i can see that from being out there
@ coldwarrior:
The Hipsters. They are part of the problem.
@ eaglesoars:
I’d agree with Weigel; no society or culture can be successful without a spiritual underpinning. That doesn’t mean we should aspire to a theocracy, or that all of our spirituality be necessarily uniform, but societies that owe only to the temporal invariably become dystopian nightmares.
Romney camp asks Va. to probe voter forms
Eric Holder needs to look into this. ///
///
RIX wrote:
Well he sure holds grudges against British.
riots in anaheim???
was this in the news?
RIX wrote:
For people who bitch incessantly about being victims of racism, blacks seem to have a lot of “issues” with Jews, Asians, Whites, Poles, etc., don’t they?
al-q in syria…
i dont need to mention whose side WE are on.
coldwarrior wrote:
I saw that on Drudge as well as this: Angry crowd confronts Dallas police after suspect shooting
@ coldwarrior:
i dont get it…putin/russia are evil for trying to help assad kill al-q who have attacked us and want to wipe out israel
meanwhile
we are the good guys helping al-q, who attacked us, and want to destroy israel.
@ huckfunn:
exuberant yoots
@ coldwarrior:
Take a look at one of the pictures. It has a person with a V for Vendetta mask. This has OWS written all over it.
Rodan wrote:
‘course it does.
@ huckfunn:
@ coldwarrior:
The Anaheim riots are OWS. Look at the pictures. The one dude kicking the police car has the Black Bloc uniform. They took advantage of protests and turned it into a riot.
@ coldwarrior:
The “popular uprising”!
Dear CW….I am a 55 year old male
living in the Ohio Valley. Is it
to late for me to become a hipster?
signed.. hipless in the valley/
coldwarrior wrote:
The proverbial long, hot summer… brought to you by 5 generations of welfare, food stamps and perpetual unemployment.
mawskrat wrote:
You have to bald and gray with a pathetic attempt at a ponytail. Otherwise, no can do.
@ huckfunn:
will my hipster transplant be
covere by Obamacare?
@ huckfunn:
OWS is behind the Anaheim one. They are led by a bunch of rich spoiled brats who can’t get a job because they have sociology majors.
mawskrat wrote:
I’ll have to refer you to the head commissar of your friendly local death panel.
There are a lot of disparate groups out there just waiting for a reason for insurrection and general mayhem. My, Obama has really brought us together, hasn’t he?
@ Speranza:
It’s too bad Lech Walesa couldn’t exactly tell Обама what was going through his mind!
MacDuff wrote:
A full bowl of rice.
@ coldwarrior:
The animosities between the two groups is notable
but not absolute.
Legend has it that the term Honkies orignated in Chicago.
The story goes that Balck letter carriers delivering
in Berwyn, Il referred to the dominant Bohemians
as Bohonks & it shortned to Honkies.
Will Consult for Food wrote:
NOT amusing…off to the re-education camp with you.
Rodan wrote:
The deal in Dallas in inner city blacks looking for an excuse to go on a burning and looting rampage.
RIX wrote:
aka ‘hunkies’ here in pgh to denote anyone from eastern europe
MacDuff wrote:
This is the “Popular Uprising ™” that OWS keeps saying they will start.
The two party evil money cult know we the people are on to their bath house of our tax money they wallow in.
So they prepare for U.S..
http://rt.com/usa/news/nsa-whistleblower-binney-drake-978/
Not sure these guys are not mis-direction on an anti-George Bush deal.
But the info they have tells me that all us who post here are known to nsa.
Navy Chief who worked on the swiftboat blog and had high security clearances lost them at the end because of the info we located on the magic Discharge of Lt. for Life Kerry.
He had trouble even getting a job after they got done with him.
@ MacDuff:
Lots of racism in the Black Community.
Just look at the White House Occupiers.
They share racism, probably one of the main
attractions to each other.
@ huckfunn:
Yes, there. But not Anaheim.
We should give the protesters Detroit and let them create their own utopia.
Rodan wrote:
Long lines at Disney got them all riled up. Nobody likes to stand in line in summer heat.
@ Will Consult for Food:
If only it was that. I would not be shocked if OWS joins in the Dallas riots as well.
coldwarrior wrote:
My cousin married the daughter of a Hungarian steelworker from up there. That wedding was the best time I ever had; geez those people know how to throw a party!
@ coldwarrior:
Right & now Honkies refers to all of us pale people.
@ RIX:
Charles Johnson is the ultimate honky!
The deal in Dallas was one drug running “family” gang, calling the cops on another “family” gang of drug runners.
They knew of a drug house where the other gang had “crack cocaine” stash being marketed, so they ratted the deal out via 911.
Cops show at the home thinking a family dispute and find a armed camp of known drug sellers “drug runners” .
Guns and cocaine get thrown down as they ones in the house scatter.
One of them arrested 20 times or more for all kinds of stuff gets the upper hand on a cop and the cop has to shoot the thug or get killed him self.
This deal may have been a set up done by the Black Panthers on the say so of local and national commie Democrats to stir up the pot.
Dallas County went Democrat last election and the R’s there are fighting back to get back local judgeships, sherriff, ect.
So they stage this deal to help with turn out.
imnsho
MacDuff wrote:
The more disgruntled people dependent on a hand out -- the better it is for him.
night yinz…i’m on mids and am up past my bed time.
Rodan wrote:
A pasty faced white man who thinks he is black.
@ taxfreekiller:
That makes sense.
The Anaheim riot is OWS taking advantage of protests.
@ MacDuff:
There are large Bohunk communities in Central Texas, and they don’t think of that as a derogatory term. I know people named Drgac (Dur-gotch) and Zagbay (Sky-by). I don’t know how they arrived at the pronunciation of that last one.
Rodan wrote:
Speaking of “honky” -- I am so sorry that Sherman Hemsley died.
@ RIX:
@ Rodan:
I’m a Cracka
He’s a Cracka
She’s a Cracka
We’re a Cracka
Wouldn’t you like to be a Cracka too!
RIX wrote:
You mean People of Noncolor?
Speranza wrote:
Melanin challenged.
Will Consult for Food wrote:
Something like that.
Will Consult for Food wrote:
Disgusted Mooch forced Obama as his first act to tax them for tanning
coldwarrior wrote:
Leading from behind…….
Rodan wrote:
He is really a pasty guy.
He needs to get out more, but he is certain
that neo Nazi snipers are after him.
Paranoia mixed with delusions of grandeur
Speranza wrote:
Exactly, otherwise Known as European Americans
and White Devils.
RIX wrote:
= shut-in
waldensianspirit wrote:
He is. He is not exactly wrapped tight.
@ MacDuff:
Back in the day a buddy of mine married a Jewish girl.
Catholics on one side, Jews on the other.
The Jewish mothers jerked us out of our chairs
(unfortunately not the daughters)
It was wild, we drank, boggied & partied all night.
Best reception that I was ever at.
Guggi wrote:
Leading from behind is another term for “following”.
What is the difference between “People of Color” and “Colored People”?
Speranza wrote:
Some make the crayons and others eat the crayons.
France 24′s coverage of US politics is interesting.
They just had a segment on the fact that Illinois is now the only state with no concealed carry law whatsoever.
They dutifully reported the fact that 500 people a year are murdered in Chicago with the guns that aren’t supposed to even exist there, since they haven’t yet gotten around to complying with the McDonald ruling. You’d think they could put 2 and 2 together and consider the possibility that if not allowing anyone to own a handgun results in 500 people being murdered, passing even more restrictions (although I’m not sure what those could be) aren’t going to make things better.
Oh, and they interviewed Obama’s pal Father Pfleger.
Hmm…it appears that France is borrowing another of Obama’s brilliant schemes. Peugeot is now “considering” not laying off 8,000 workers in exchange for a government bailout.
@ eaglesoars:
In a number of East European countries, there is speculation that some of the more prominent “dissidents” were actually secret police informers. Walesa in Poland and Vaclav Havel in Czech Republic are the two names I hear most of these accusations about. If you are familiar with Soviet defector Anatoly Golytsin’s assertions in his book, “New Lies For Old” the whole “collapse” of the Soviet Union was engineered as sort of a political Ju-Jitsu move against the West to get the Western nations to relax their guard against Communism both Soviet and Western fellow travelers, and at some point the Communist Bloc would be revived. Some days I think this is just grandiose paranoia…other days I am not so sure!
Idiot French person: “Peugeot’s workers have made enough sacrifice. It’s time for the stockholders to sacrifice, instead.”
Not even sure what to say to that…
Speranza wrote:
People of Pallor. POPS! The POPS are my peeps!
Holy crap…the average worker at Volkswagen generates 30,000 Euros in revenue for the company, while the average Peugeot worker generates 3,000.
I think I see their problem…
@ The Osprey:
Wow! I’m glad I checked back. Thanks Osprey