John Bolton was a tough U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and fought ably to expose corruption at the very top of the U.N. (Saddam Hussein's food-for-oil ripoff being number one) and to defend America's interests against the nations that would tie us down. His brilliant service ended because the Democrats in Congress refused to extend it.
Few writing today have the perspective John Bolton has of the place of America on the world stage and how the enemies of freedom are constantly plotting against us. Therefore, it is not surprising that he reacted to Obama's Berlin speech to his "fellow citizens of the world" with shock, dismay and sad disbelief. Obama exhibited no sense of history, no sense of the real world. Platitudes about "one world" and "the world stood as one" are just false, particularly in the Cold War context Obama was evoking in his speech.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Bolton calls the speech "radical" and "naive." Obama seems not to comprehend the historic role the U.S. has played and still plays in defending freedom. It's a hard business and suggestng that if we all join hands and take down all the walls that divide us the world will be at peace is juvenile nonsense. Something the Beatles might sing.
Obama used the Berlin Wall metaphor to describe his foreign policy priorities as president: "The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."This is a confused, nearly incoherent compilation, to say the least, amalgamating tensions in the Atlantic Alliance with ancient historical conflicts. One hopes even Obama, inexperienced as he is, doesn't see all these "walls" as essentially the same in size and scope. But beyond the incoherence, there is a deeper problem, namely that "walls" exist not simply because of a lack of understanding about who is on the other side but because there are true differences in values and interests that lead to human conflict. The Berlin Wall itself was not built because of a failure of communication but because of the implacable hostility of communism toward freedom. The wall was a reflection of that reality, not an unfortunate mistake.
Tearing down the Berlin Wall was possible because one side -- our side -- defeated the other. Differences in levels of economic development, or the treatment of racial, immigration or religious questions, are not susceptible to the same analysis or solution. Even more basically, challenges to our very civilization, as the Cold War surely was, are not overcome by naively "tearing down walls" with our adversaries.
Read it all.
After word:
Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe also notes that, out of blindness, historical illiteracy or just a refusal to acknowledge America's vital role, Obama praised the world's coming together (which it did not) rather than Truman's leadership and fortitude and America's military might for savng Berlin and Europe.
"People of the world," Obama declaimed, "look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." But the world didn't stand as one during the Cold War; it was riven by an Iron Curtain. For more than four decades, America and the West confronted an implacable enemy on the other side of that divide. What finally defeated that enemy and ended the Cold War was not harmony and goodwill, but American strength and resolve.Obama's speech was a paean to international cooperation. "Now is the time to join together," he said. "It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads." No - it was a Democratic president named Truman, who had the audacity to order an airlift when others counseled retreat, and the grit to see it through when others were ready to withdraw.
Sixty years later, it is a very different kind of Democrat who is running for president. Obama may have wowed 'em in Berlin, but he's no Harry Truman.
