Last week, President Barack Obama rejected the world’s most
powerful living symbol of anti-communism, anti-Sovietism, and
victory in the Cold War. The White House declined to have Lech
Walesa stand in for the late Jan Karski, who posthumously received
the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Our president spurned Walesa,
first president of free Poland, who had once risked everything to
courageously join Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II in keeping
Solidarity alive in Poland. Like Reagan and John Paul II, Walesa
knew that Solidarity could be the wedge to split the Communist Bloc
from top to bottom, as it indeed did, thereby making possible
elections in Poland in June 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall in
November 1989, the execution of Ceausescu on Christmas Day 1989,
the liberation of Eastern Europe en masse, and peaceful victory in
the Cold War.
Obama’s snubbing of Walesa follows several peculiar actions that
upset the people of Poland. On September 17, 2009, he canceled
plans for a joint missile defense system between the United States
and Poland, one of our most dependable post-Cold War NATO allies.
Obama did so for pro-Russian reasons. His action on that particular
date was stunning: It was precisely 70 years to the day, September
17, 1939, when Russia invaded Poland, in compliance with the
sinister Hitler-Stalin Pact. Poles certainly noticed the irony.
Obama’s snubbing of Walesa also follows his recent private
assurance to Dmitri Medvedev and Vladimir Putin — inadvertently
caught on tape by an open mic — that, in regard to missile defense
and nuclear issues, he would “have more flexibility” “after my
election.” In other words, more pro-Russia steps at Poland’s
expense.
Obama’s snubbing of Walesa also came alongside a terrible gaffe
about “Polish death camps.”
Obama’s staff seems surprised that Poles reacted so suspiciously
to Obama’s gaffe. Gee, I wonder why they’re suspicious….
To me, none of this is a surprise. And it’s also uniquely in
line with the thinking of Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a
stalwart pro-Soviet, CPUSA member (card no. 47544), who, in his
propaganda columns for Communist Party organs like the Chicago
Star, defended Yalta and the Soviet takeover of Poland and
other Eastern European countries. Davis attempted to argue that
Stalin was creating “new democracies” in Poland and the Communist
Bloc, and insisted that Eastern Europeans were welcoming the
Soviets with open arms. He blasted U.S. policies like NATO and the
Marshall Plan.
There’s so much that could be said about Obama’s snub of Walesa.
It truly is enlightening. But two things stand out to me,
especially in light of the fact that we Americans have a historic
election coming up this November 2012, arguably the most pivotal
since November 1980:
Shortly after the election of 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated
Jimmy Carter, a fearless Lech Walesa stood on a snowy, windswept
plain on the outskirts of Gdansk and spoke openly about the U.S.
election and its effect on the world. “It was intuition, perhaps,”
he said, “but one year ago I envisioned what would happen. Reagan
was the only good candidate in your presidential campaign, and I
knew he would win.” Walesa spoke presciently that December day:
“Someday the West will wake up and you may find it too late, as
Solzhenitsyn has written. Reagan will do it better…. He will make
the U.S. strong and make it stand up.”
Lech Walesa foresaw Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America.”
What did a young Barack Obama think of that election, of that
dawn of a new day in America, of that change in the national mood
for the better — and not just for America, but for Poland, for the
Communist Bloc, for the world, for freedom, for history? Obama told
us the answer in his memoirs. In chapter 7 of Dreams from My
Father, Obama described his arrival in Chicago, the step in
his sojourn that would change his life and America’s. The ambitious
Obama employed the word “change” seven times, including the need
for “Change in the White House, where Reagan and his
minions [emphasis added] were carrying on their dirty
deeds.”
Obama was not exactly inspired by Reagan’s election. Obama was
the anti-Walesa. “Reagan was on his way in,” Obama sniffed,
“morning in America.”
Obama perceived an America that needed a “change in the mood of
the country.” Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” needed
change.
This is a mesmerizing insight into Obama’s ideology and
political mind. Consider: Even among liberal academics and
journalists, both at the time and today, there is a consensus that
among President Reagan’s greatest achievements was his dramatic
change in the mood of the nation, and decidedly for the better,
lifting up America and restoring its sagging morale after the years
of Carter and Watergate and Vietnam. As even the cynical Reagan
biographer Edmund Morris agreed, Reagan had “changed the mood
overnight,” and decidedly and wonderfully for the better. That was
one thing about Reagan where conservatives and liberals alike, plus
literal millions of Reagan Democrats, came together and applauded
Reagan — except for the young Obama.
No, Obama wanted to change the mood that Reagan changed. To
what, one might ask?
Well, we’re finally getting that answer, thanks to the millions
of oblivious Americans who blithely voted for Obama’s “change” in
November 1980. Really, it’s unthinkable to imagine that an America
that elected Reagan to landslide victories in 1980 and 1984, and
today regularly judges Reagan not only the greatest president of
all time but, in one 2005 poll, the “greatest American” of all
time, could elect Barack Obama — and may do so again. But, hey,
these are Americans. And they do not vote rationally. In 2008, they
elected a man who shunned Lech Walesa and missile defense with
Poland, both of whom/which Reagan vigorously supported.
Obama’s Walesa moment is yet another defining moment. So is the
election of November 2012. I’d love to hear Lech Walesa’s thoughts
on that one. Will Americans “wake up” and “do it better” this time
around?
