|
Written by Jack Kelly |
| Thursday, 08 May
2008 |
In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Sen.
Barack Hussein 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
on the part of both.
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 had 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 Khrushchev 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 without 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.
A course in 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.
In the year Mr. Obama was born, 1961, a R&B singer, Sam Cooke,
came out with a hit song you still hear on Golden Oldies radio
stations. The song started, "Don't know much about history..."
What if voters realized that Don't Know Much About History
ought to be Obama's theme song?
Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former
deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan
administration. He is national security writer for the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
|
|