We Remember…

June 12th, 1987, was the day that President Reagan gave his famous ‘tear down that wall’ speech. His speechwriters took the phrase out of the speech more than once, fearing that it was too provocative, but President Reagan kept putting the phrase back in.

The Patriot’s Almanac posted the following today:

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall, symbol of a totalitarian empire that robbed millions of basic human dignity and freedom, and delivered one of the great speeches of the twentieth century. More than a quarter century earlier, Soviet-backed East Germany had built the wall to keep its people from escaping Communist rule. Reagan, who knew his words would be heard on the east side of the wall, spoke directly to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. . . . Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar. . . .[I]n the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health. . . . [T]here stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor. . . .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!

Less than three years later, the Berlin Wall came down. The Soviet Union and its puppet states crumbled as the Cold War came to an end. The United States, by standing firm for democracy and human rights, helped free millions from tyranny.

There are a few lessons we can learn from that speech. President Reagan was not afraid to speak the truth to the enemies of America. President Reagan understood that what he was saying was controversial but would give hope to those trapped behind the wall. America did not go to war to tear down that wall–we simply stood strong in our beliefs and did what we could to encourage those behind the wall. We need that kind of wisdom and courage in our leaders today.

 

 

For President Obama, Reality Is Optional

Bret Stephens posted an article in today’s Wall Street Journal about President Obama’s recent speech to the United Nations. Any resemblance between the speech and reality was purely coincidental.

The article reports:

Barack Obama told the U.N.’s General Assembly on Monday he’s concerned that “dangerous currents risk pulling us back into a darker, more disordered world.” It’s nice of the president to notice, just don’t expect him to do much about it.

Recall that it wasn’t long ago that Mr. Obama took a sunnier view of world affairs. The tide of war was receding. Al Qaeda was on a path todefeat. ISIS was “a jayvee team” in “Lakers uniforms.” Iraq was an Obama administration success story. Bashar Assad’s days werenumbered. The Arab Spring was a rejoinder to, rather than an opportunity for, Islamist violence. The intervention in Libya wasvindication for the “lead from behind” approach to intervention. The reset with Russia was a success, a position he maintained as late as September 2013. In Latin America, the “trend lines are good.”

“Overall,” as he told Tom Friedman in August 2014—shortly after ISIS had seized control of Mosul and as Vladimir Putin was muscling his way into eastern Ukraine—“I think there’s still cause for optimism.”

I like optimism, but I am also a big fan of reality. President Obama’s foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster. His latest ‘accomplishment’–the Iran Treaty–will bring a nuclear arms race to the Middle East and eventually war. The Treaty will fill the coffers of terrorists and lead them to new heights of terrorism. Great.

The article further states:

In late-era South Africa and the Soviet Union, where men like F.W. de Klerk and Mikhail Gorbachev had a sense of shame, the Obama theory had a chance to work. In Iran in 2009, or in Syria today, it doesn’t. 

(The Obama theory is was expressed in his 2009 contention in Prague that “moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon.”)

Then again, that distinction doesn’t much matter to this president, since he seems to think that seizing the moral high ground is victory enough. Under Mr. Obama, the U.S. is on “the right side of history” when it comes to the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine, or the killing fields in Syria, or the importance of keeping Afghan girls in school.

Having declared our good intentions, why muck it up with the raw and compromising exercise of power? In Mr. Obama’s view, it isn’t the man in the arena who counts. It’s the speaker on the stage.

Finally, Mr. Obama believes history is going his way. “What? Me worry?” says the immortal Alfred E. Neuman, and that seems to be the president’s attitude toward Mr. Putin’s interventions in Syria (“doomed to fail”) and Ukraine (“not so smart”), to say nothing of his sang-froid when it comes to the rest of his foreign-policy debacles.

I do believe that moral leadership is important, but I question how we can be moral leaders when we are killing over one million babies a year, selling their aborted baby parts for profit, and funding the organization doing most of the work. I believe that we have lost our morals and need to find them before we suffer the consequences of our deeds. Just because we choose to call ourselves moral does not mean that we are.