There is a remarkable
piece in today’s Washington Post by the paper’s Ruth
Marcus.
Titled “Romney Owes an Apology,” it’s a stunning example of
leftist appeasement that exhibits precisely the reasons appeasers
from Neville Chamberlain to Jimmy Carter always wind up getting
their nations in trouble.
Ms. Marcus is upset that Governor Romney has previously
described President Obama in this fashion:
“There are anti-American fires burning all across the globe;
President Obama’s words are like kindling to them.”
This, says Marcus, is a “falsehood.”
Then she linked — seriously — to a timeline of events that
emphasize — hello? — exactly how dumbfounding not to mention
naïve is Marcus’s reading of events.
Marcus triumphantly quotes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
this way:
“Let me be clear,” Hillary Clinton’s statement said. “There is
never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”
What Marcus deliberately leaves out, of course, is the
apologetic sentence that preceded those words. The full Clinton
quote reads like this:
“Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the
very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never
any justification for violent acts of this kind.”
In other words, Clinton begins her statement by doing precisely
what drew Romney’s ire in the first place. She apologizes to a
group of Islamic fanatics by trying to say “By the way…really…we’re
so sorry…we really believe in religious tolerance…we’re not
anti-Muslim. Honest. Please don’t be mad at us. We like you.”
Is Marcus truly that naïve that she doesn’t understand the
signal of weakness statements like Clinton’s send to American
enemies who are, as always, probing for weakness in the American
leadership? Does she not understand why, years ago, no less than
Osama Bin Laden famously said of America: “When people see a
strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong
horse.”
Answer: Yes, Ruth Marcus, like liberals everywhere, really
is that naive.
The idea of America as the weak horse plays perfectly with
statements like those not only first issued by the Cairo Embassy —
but by the words and actions of both Secretary Clinton and
President Obama. These people are telegraphing — OK, make
that texting — weakness to the world.
Marcus’s column is exactly the famous rationale behind Neville
Chamberlain’s perpetual annoyance with Winston Churchill. If he
could just get Churchill to shut up, Chamberlain believed, things
would just be fine with Herr Hitler.
Marcus ends her column by saying, “There is something
disgraceful happening here…”
Marcus is right. There is something disgraceful happening here.
But it isn’t Mitt Romney’s Reaganesque willingness to stand up for
freedom.
It’s Ruth Marcus’s inability to understand that weakness leads
inevitably to disaster.
Should Mitt Romney apologize?
Of course not.
What Mitt Romney should do is press the point — just as Ronald
Reagan pressed the very same point against Jimmy Carter.
What Mitt Romney needs to do is get on with winning this
election — before a government that thinks like Ruth Marcus brings
on complete disaster.
