Two of the Presidents that Obama cited in his post-North Carolina victory speech as negotiating with U.S. enemies did no such thing. These would be FDR and JFK.
FDR negotiated with the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France in Yalta. However, at the time, the U.S. and Russia were allies against Germany, with whom the FDR did not negotiate, unlike the infamous appeaser Neville Chamberlin. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. did not become become adversaries until the post-World War II period, and the impetus for that actually was Roosevelt's Yalta concessions to Stalin which condemned half of Europe to Soviet Oppression for 50 years. If that's Sen. Obama's model for negotiating with our allies, he has no place in the Oval Office, let alone the U.S. Senate.
Additionally, the Soviet Union, while an adversary and competing power whose values we despised, was not an enemy, which is why the 1945-1991 period is called The Cold War. JFK's conversations/negotiations with them were aimed at preventing conflict and containing their ideology. He never negotiated with actual U.S. enemies such as Cuba's Fidel Castro (whom he tried to overthrow during the Bay of Pigs Invasion and then lost the cojones to call in U.S. air support to help our allies). In fact, JFK negotiated a secret treaty with Cuba promising not to invade in exchange for removal of the Soviet missiles - hardly a profile in courage. JFK also did not negotiate with our enemies in Vietnam, the war against whom he took over from the French.
If these are Senator Obama's models for negotiating with our enemies, I'd hate to see how he handles Iran, Hamas and Al Queda. He might as well just sell out Israel and abandon all hope of human rights and freedom East of the Mediterranen. And let's not forget that the real puppet masters of Hamas reside in Tehran.
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Rush Limbaugh would be proud. Pick a couple of names out of an entire speech, show how the use of those names doesn't fit within the strict bounds of one definition of "enemy", and write an entire post about how the speaker of those words has no business in the Oval Office, let alone the Senate. I think most people who experienced the Cold War would classify the USSR as "the enemy". I was there.
ReplyDeleteUsing your level of argument, I could focus on your misuse of an apostrophe in the word "president's" at the very beginning of your article, and the fact that what you meant to say was that Mr. Obama shouldn't be in the Senate, let alone the Oval Office ("let alone" implies that something shouldn't even be in an inferior place, much less a superior place), and I could trash your entire article based on what are probably two typographical errors. This is the level to which politics and political critique has sunk.
Uneven Steven's Response to Gilah:
ReplyDeleteStruck a chord did I?
Poor grammar is not the same thing as historical ignorance - and Ad Hominem attacks on the messenger do not undercut the message. Negotiating with our enemies with no pre-conditions is central tenet of the Obama campaign - so his misappropriating previous Presidents' actions, or lack thereof is worthy of criticism and debate. And if FDR and JFK are his examples of negotiating with our enemies, he should walk over to the University of Chicago History Department and have some long discussions with them the next time he's at home in Hyde Park/Kenwood. I'd recommend Bruce Cummings and Stephen Walt - the first of whom is very liberal the second of whom is not - just to get some balanced perspective on this.
I was there during the Cold War too, and I'll accept your criticism of my post that the Soviet Union actually was our enemy, and not just an adversary. However we did not fight any "hot" wars against them, which is why I called them our adversary and not enemy. But you are essentially correct on that point.
I had family fight and die in the proxy wars against the Soviets. The German Reunification and Soviet collapse are some of the best moments of my life. Communism was a very real threat to the U.S. and we had a bi-partisan consensus to fight it everywhere in the world, the Truman Doctrine, until Jimmy Carter was elected.
Unfortunately, Senator Obama and his apologists fail to comprehend that the radical hijacking of Islam by a core group of fanatics is just as much of a threat to the U.S. as Communism ever was. Negotiating with the Iranian backers of Hezbollah and Hamas with no preconditions reveals a level of naivet'e that utterly disqualifies him to serve as President.
I very much apologize if my response came across as an ad hominem attack. That was not my intent. I was actually simply trying to point out how a couple of small mistakes can be removed from a much larger picture and focused on to the detriment of the whole, which conservative pundits tend to do to the extreme.
ReplyDeleteI did not in any way mean to imply that your opinions were not well thought-out, well researched, and, overall, well written. It certainly got ME to read it all the way through.
And, to be fair, now that I re-read the post, you do say at the beginning "Two of the Presidents", so it's not as if you were indicting the entire speech, which is sort of how I read it the first time.
Please accept my apology for anything that might have been deemed a personal attack. It appears that I was not a careful-enough reader and may have been too hasty to hit the "publish" button on my comment.