Last month we reported that news outlets in Poland were saying that the Obama administration had made the decision to abandon our anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Today Czech Premier Jan Fischer confirmed those reports telling reporters that President Obama phoned him overnight to say that “his government is pulling out of plans to build a missile defense radar on Czech territory.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration is justifying its decision on their determination that Iran’s long-range missile program hasn’t progressed as rapidly as previously estimated. This despite the facts that:
- On February 2nd, Iran successfully launched a satellite into orbit using a rocket with technology similar to that used in a long-range ballistic missile.
- On May 20th, Iran test-fired a 1200-mile solid-fueled two-stage ballistic missile.
- On July 15th, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, BND, announced that Iran will be able to produce and test a nuclear weapon within six months. BND also stated that it has “no doubt” that Iran’s missile program is aimed solely at the production of nuclear warheads.
- On August 3rd, The Times of London reported that Western intelligence sources concluded that Iran has not only perfected the technology to build and detonate a nuclear weapon, could assemble a weapon in just six months, and could deliver the weapon on Iran’s Shebab-3 ballistic missile.
- Just yesterday French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: “It is a certainty to all of our secret services. Iran is working today on a nuclear [weapons] program.”
The only country other than Iran that is happy with President Obama’s decision is Russia. State Duma foreign affairs committee head Konstantin Kosachev told the Associated Press: “The U.S. president’s decision is a well-thought (out) and systematic one. Now we can talk about restoration of (the) strategic partnership between Russia and the United States.” But, in fact, the missile defense capitulation is just one in a long line of Obama surrenders to Russia. Heritage fellow Ariel Cohen explains from Moscow:
All these concessions the Russians pocketed, smiled, and moved on to new demands: European security reconfiguration; additional global reserve currency which would weaken the dollar; and a strong push-back on sanctions against the Iranian nuclear program. …. While the Russians clearly like the better atmospherics, and somewhat toned down the shrill anti-American rhetoric, the Iranians and the Venezuelans, who also received Obama’s “stretched hand” and, in case of Hugo Chavez, a pat on the back, are refusing to play ball. They, like their friends in Moscow, are also pocketing concessions while continuing the mischief.
The decision to abandon the “third site” deployment of 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic violates President Obama’s pledge to support missile defense that is “pragmatic and cost-effective.” Ground based missile defense is effective, affordable, and available now. According to the Congressional Budget Office, alternatives to the third site do not provide a comparable level of defense. The CBO concluded that the estimated $9-14 billion 20-year cost of the third site was half of the estimated costs of a sea-based alternative. Abandoning our best missile defense option in Europe only encourages Iran to speed up their ballistic missile program so that they can get their threat in place before a European missile defense system is available.
The Poles and the Czechs know what it means to live under the boot of Russian domination. The third-site issue is of huge symbolic importance to both nations, and if Moscow emerges the victor, with an effective veto over U.S. policy in Europe, it would represent a massive surrender of American strategic influence and a betrayal of two of its closest friends in the region.
Go to 33minutes.com for more on missile defense, the threat posed to us and our allies by nuclear weapons, and the action plan necessary to revive a strategic missile defense system that only America can develop, maintain, and employ for its own defense and the peace-loving world’s security.
Quick Hits:
- Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) joined the anti-czar criticism of the Obama administration yesterday, sending a letter to the White House asking Obama to detail the roles and responsibilities of all of the czars in his administration and to explain why he believes the use of czars is consistent with the Senate’s constitutional power to offer advice and consent on top-level executive branch officials.
- Celebrate Constitution Day by reading former-Attorney General Ed Meese’s The Meaning Of The Constitution essay.
- Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) health care won’t work for Nevada, explaining: “During this time of economic crisis, our state cannot afford to shoulder the second highest increase in Medicaid funding.”
- According to Gallup, 56% of Americans do not believe President Obama’s claims that he can fund his health care plan through cost savings in Medicare and other parts of the existing health care system.
- The Senate voted 52-45 yesterday to preserve millions of dollars in federal funding for road signs promoting President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package.
As we reported yesterday morning, it now seems all but certain that the Obama Administration has abandoned our anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. This is a terrible decision that reduces NATO’s security, encourages Iran to proceed full speed ahead with its nuclear program, kowtows to Russian pressure, and stabs our Polish and Czech allies in the back, after they made the difficult decision to support us.
And now the administration appears to have added insult to injury. World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Germany attacked Poland. That was seventy years ago. One of the most significant commemorations of the war will be held on September 1, 2009, at Westerplatte, Poland. Westerplatte is a peninsula near the city of Gdask, which was then known as Danzig. By the terms that ended World War I, Danzig was a largely German-populated Free City under the control of the League of Nations. Early in the morning of September 1, a German surprise attack launched from Danzig failed to overrun a small Polish garrison, which held out against overwhelming force for a week and inflicted hundreds of casualties. The battle is to Poland what Pearl Harbor is to the United States.
There will be many representatives at the Westerplatte ceremonies: the German Chancellor, the Russian Prime Minister, the British and French Foreign Secretaries, and many other foreign ministers or prime ministers. On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department could only say – with the ceremony only five days away – that the U.S. would send “an appropriately senior person” to be announced by the White House.
But the Polish press is reporting that the U.S. will not send a senior representative. Polish Radio quotes the Prime Minister of Poland as saying that “Some countries are not sending high-level delegations. This is true of the United States as well.” The head of the Prime Minister’s office stated that, because of the low level of the U.S. delegation, no American would be asked to speak, and added cuttingly that “I would not attach a great importance to the fact that one country will not be represented by a member of the current administration.”
This morning’s report from Poland that the U.S. representative will be William Perry, one of President Clinton’s Defense Secretaries, adds weight to the previous Polish reports. It is no comment on Perry’s record of support for NATO and for its Partnership for Peace program to recognize that, as an official who left office twelve years ago, the delegation he leads will be very junior compared to those from Germany, Russia, Britain, and the other attendees.
The nation most responsible for the liberation of Poland was Poland itself, which after four partitions and fifty years of German slavery and Russian bondage never abandoned the desire for freedom. As Winston Churchill rightly said, Poland was like a rock “which may for a time be submerged by a tidal wave, but which remains a rock.” The Vatican, led by Pope John Paul II, also has immense claims to the title of defender of Polish liberties.
But neither Polish efforts nor those of the Vatican would have availed without the support, moral and material, of the United States. The cause of Poland was particularly near to the heart of President Ronald Reagan, and the assistance he authorized to Solidarity was vital to its survival and, after years of struggle, its complete victory over the Communist and Soviet dominated regime.
And it was Poland’s resistance, more than that of any other nation, that cracked the will of the Soviets to fight for their eastern empire, and that destroyed any remaining belief in the West that Soviet domination in Eastern Europe possessed popular support or moral legitimacy. Poland paid a terrible price in this struggle: World War II began in Westerplatte, but, for Poland and all Eastern Europe, it did not end until the fall of the Berlin Wall, fifty years later.
If the United States does not send a senior administration figure to Westerplatte, it will be a shameful embarrassment, highlighted by the fact that the two leading statesmen there will be representing Germany and Russia. The occasion is significant, Poland has been an important American ally since the end of the Cold War, and the American absence is already being commented upon in the harshest possible terms in Poland.
Not every Pole was for missile defense, but everyone in Poland suffered from the war and its long aftermath. To refuse to pay senior tribute to them would be an insult, and will only be interpreted as a statement that the U.S., while it cares a great deal about Russian sensibilities on missile defense, cares not at all about Poland. Not only do we appear to have stabbed them in the back on missile defense and slapped them in the face over World War II, we have not brought them – alone among their democratic neighbors – into the Visa Waiver Program, a failure that will go far to lose us any chance of winning the friendship of younger Poles.
All of this is a fine way to keep on doing what this administration has already done far too much of: alienating our friends while kowtowing to our enemies.