On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin and said: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
On November 9, 1989, just two years after Reagan made his Brandenburg Gate speech, the people of Germany did tear down “this wall” and in so doing they freed hundreds of millions of people from the tyranny of communism. Reagan by no means single-handily brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall, but his leadership against despotism was widely recognized by the victims of communism. When he visited Poland in 1990, a dissident leader presented Reagan with a sword explaining: “I am giving you this saber for helping us to chop off the head of communism.”
But the leftists in America do not want us to remember Reagan’s role in history. That is why President Barack Obama (the same man who found time to jet to Copenhagen at the drop of a rumor that his presence could win the Olympics for his hometown of Chicago) could not be bothered to attend the 20th anniversary of the wall’s fall last night. Instead, President Obama taped a video message that completely failed to mention Reagan or British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
More than petty partisan slights are at stake here. President Obama’s refusal to recognize the role President Reagan’s and Prime Minister Thatcher’s leadership played in defeating despotism goes to the core of Obama’s foreign policy priorities. Heritage scholar Nile Gardiner explains:
Barack Obama simply does not view the world as Reagan did, in terms of good versus evil, as a world divided between the forces of freedom on one side and totalitarianism on the other. For the Obama administration the advancement of human rights and individual liberty on the world stage is a distinctly low priority, as we have seen with its engagement strategy towards the likes of Iran, Burma, Sudan, Venezuela and Russia.
We commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall to celebrate the collapse of communism, to honor those who died resisting communism, and to resolve that never again will peoples and nations allow so evil a tyranny to terrorize the world.
Yet, at a time when the United States currently faces challenges as complicated as those confronted by Reagan (war in Afghanistan, the global fight against Islamist terrorism, the rise of a nuclear-armed Iran) Obama is bent on apologizing for our nation’s actions, betraying Cold War allies, and dithering on troop deployments.
Quick Hits:
- President Barack Obama told ABC News he does not support the taxpayer abortion funding ban in the House health care bill.
- The President also told ABC News that jail time is an appropriate punishment for not buying health insurance.
- According to Gallup, 67% of Americans believe Obamacare will either make their personal health care situation worse or no different.
- Even The New York Times admits the House health bill does nothing to control health care costs.
- In yet another effort to silence critics, the Obama administration has ordered two Environmental Protection Agency to take down a YouTube video that was critical of the Obama administration’s climate change policy.
What do President Obama and Chancellor Merkel have in common? They both believe that the defense part of a national security strategy can be subjugated to diplomacy and development.
In the wake of World War II, German foreign policy became wholly pacifistic whereby wars can’t even be called wars. Germany’s defense minister went on television recently to say that Afghanistan could not possibly be called a war because German soldiers are building schools and hospitals. And even with increased Taliban insurgency activity in the North where their 4,050 soldiers are based, and the loss of 33 troops, Afghanistan continues to be parked as an election issue by both Chancellor Merkel’s CDU and the opposition SPD. It sadly parodies the famous sketch from British comedy series Fawlty Towers, “Don’t mention the war!”
With the advent of President Obama’s new concept of ‘smart power’ (please note Eliot Cohen’s point that only fools would prefer stupid power), this Administration has now decided that Afghanistan would better be described as an “Overseas Contingency Operation.” With an injection of 21,000 additional troops, many of whom are serving alongside British troops in Helmand where some of the fiercest fighting of the Afghan campaign is currently taking place, it does an injustice to pretend that national and international security can be guaranteed by foreign aid and strategically deployed diplomats.
No leader has been able to get around the adage that if you wish for peace, prepare for war. President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher demonstrated that peace can be won only through strength. Instead of embracing the ‘strength through peace’ doctrine – epitomized in the United Nations’ trumping of human security as superior to national security, and the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights – President Obama should take a leaf out of Reagan’s playbook: better defenses including missile defenses, a modern military and enduring allies are indispensable to keeping America safe.