Weakling Hussein Needs a History Lesson
By Jack Kelly
In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Sen. Barack Obama said something that is all the more remarkable for how little it has been remarked upon.
In defending his stated intent to meet with America’s enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: “I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.”
That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit.
I assume the Roosevelt to whom Sen. Obama referred is Franklin D. Roosevelt. Our enemies in World War II were Nazi Germany, headed by Adolf Hitler; fascist Italy, headed by Benito Mussolini, and militarist Japan, headed by Hideki Tojo. FDR talked directly with none of them before the outbreak of hostilities, and his policy once war began was unconditional surrender.
FDR died before victory was achieved, and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Truman did not modify the policy of unconditional surrender. He ended that war not with negotiation, but with the atomic bomb.
Harry Truman also was president when North Korea invaded South Korea in June, 1950. President Truman’s response was not to call up North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung for a chat. It was to send troops.
Perhaps Sen. Obama is thinking of the meeting FDR and Churchill had with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in Tehran in December, 1943, and the meetings Truman and Roosevelt had with Stalin at Yalta and Potsdam in February and July, 1945. But Stalin was then a U.S. ally, though one of whom we should have been more wary than FDR and Truman were. Few historians think the agreements reached at Yalta and Potsdam, which in effect consigned Eastern Europe to slavery, are diplomatic models we ought to follow. Even fewer Eastern Europeans think so.
When Stalin’s designs became unmistakably clear, President Truman’s response wasn’t to seek a summit meeting. He sent military aid to Greece, ordered the Berlin airlift and the Marshall Plan, and sent troops to South Korea.
Sen. Obama is on both sounder and softer ground with regard to John F. Kennedy. The new president held a summit meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev in Vienna in June, 1961.
Elie Abel, who wrote a history of the Cuban missile crisis (The Missiles of October), said the crisis had its genesis in that summit.
“There is reason to believe that Khrushchev took Kennedy’s measure in June 1961 and decided this was a young man who would shrink from hard decisions,” Mr. Abel wrote. “There is no evidence to support the belief that Khrushchev ever questioned America’s power. He questioned only the president’s readiness to use it. As he once told Robert Frost, he came to believe that Americans are ‘too liberal to fight.’”
That view was supported by New York Times columnist James Reston, who traveled to Vienna with President Kennedy: “Khrushchev had studied the events of the Bay of Pigs,” Mr. Reston wrote. “He would have understood if Kennedy had left Castro alone or destroyed him, but when Kennedy was rash enough to strike at Cuba but not bold enough to finish the job, Khrushchev decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed.”
It’s worth noting that Kennedy then was vastly more experienced than Sen. Obama is now. A combat veteran of World War II, Jack Kennedy served 14 years in Congress before becoming president. Sen. Obama has no military and little work experience, and has been in Congress for less than four years.
The closest historical analogue to Sen. Obama’s expressed desire to meet with no preconditions with anti-American dictators such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the trip British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French premier Eduoard Daladier took to Munich in September of 1938 to negotiate “peace in our time” with Adolf Hitler. That didn’t work out so well.
History is an elective few liberals choose to take these days, noted a poster on the Web log “Hot Air.” The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling. But in a presidential candidate it’s dangerous. As Sir Winston Churchill said:
“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
RealClearPolitics
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REDICULOUS!!! I don’t want this asshat running my local grocery store, much less my COUNTRY…..
May 9th, 2008 at 5:56 amYeah, right, Old Harry sure talked to the Japs.. KaBoom!
(note to Pat. We need a nuclear explosion icon)
Hussein is insane.
May 9th, 2008 at 6:00 amThe re-writing of history always accompanies authoritarian movements. And make no mistake, the aim of Obamunists is exactly that.
I subscribe to their site and the cat that runs his blog, etc., a Sam Graham-Felsen, was (still is?) a free lance writer and wrote this in a rag called ‘The Socialist Viewpoint’:
“We continue to have an optimistic outlook about the revolutionary potential of the world working class to rule society in its own name-socialism. We are optimistic that the working class, united across borders, and acting in its own class interests can solve the devastating crises of war, poverty, oppression, and environmental destruction that capitalism is responsible for.”
The tip of the Socialist spear………..
May 9th, 2008 at 6:00 amLiberals teach history, giving birth to more liberals who don’t know history, who, then, give birth to little, future liberals who learn liberal history from liberal teachers who teach liberals liberal history…ad nauseum. I wish I had all the history text books from my school years. I’d make my kids read them so they can get a real feel for the greatness of this country we call the United States of America.
Hussein can’t be president. It’s unthinkable.
May 9th, 2008 at 6:31 amThis guy is a disaster
May 9th, 2008 at 9:12 am1. Jack Kelly hit the nail on the head.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:14 am2. We may be in a pendulum situation, sort of like the 60’s & 70’s, where it swings left and then back right again. Bush may have damaged the GOP so badly that the public is convinced we need to go in the socialist direction.
The GOP damaged the GOP, and Bush helped. Complete loss of fiscal constraint, major ruptures of ethics (Duke Cunningham, anyone?), out of touch with the people (amnesty for illegals, for example) etc. Politics in Washington is bad versus worse. And now that I’ve complained I’m obligated to help fix it. Sunlight helps - support Judicial Watch, Jihad Watch, LGF, Michael Yon, Michael Totten, Bill Roggio, and Pat Dollard.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:28 amWhen Obama negotiates with terrorist, the terrorists have won.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:47 amRadical Islams would own this fool. Hamas know this, Al-Qeada knows this, Qud force knows this, and all of Islam knows they have a friend in Barak Obama.
Talk only works with other democracies. Terrorists and dictators didn’t get into power by talking, so they won’t be removed that way either.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:08 pmGreat article Drill! I love how true history clarifies so much.
Mr. Abel wrote. “There is no evidence to support the belief that Khrushchev ever questioned America’s power. He questioned only the president’s readiness to use it.”
May 9th, 2008 at 1:16 pmWhat happened to rebeling against your parents!? (RE: Jarhead68’s description of The Gay-Circle-of-Liberal- Procreation). What goes around… brings America down.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:33 pmI believe Obama is the “Manchurian Candidate” read Marxist
May 13th, 2008 at 7:39 am