A Tale Of Two Leaders
By Mitch Berg
Earlier this week, on the seventieth anniversary of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II, President Obama announced that the United States is reneging on a promise to build a missile defense shield against future, likely Iranian nuclear missiles. This program was started under Bush, enacted in Poland and the Czech Republican at the cost of immense political capital to the Polish and Czech governments.
The date, of course, was Vladimir Putin’s way of telling the recalcitrant, west-leaning, NATO-joining Poles that he’s watching them.
But the reverse on the missile program? That was all Obama. The President seems to think, as Jimmy Carter did, that if he just gives a few more concessions to Putin, to the Mullahs, to the world’s thugs and gangsters, that eventually even they’ll start believing in all the Hope and Change.
Of course, as we saw earlier this summer, earnest promises of Hope and Change didn’t stop the mullahs from gunning down protesters in the streets of Teheran.
What a contrast with thirty years ago, as Jeffrey Lord noted earlier this summer in American Spectator:
One need look no further than President Obama’s cautiously timid response to the demands of freedom from Iranians. Contrast this with Reagan’s response to similar demands from Poles in the 1980s and the miserable inadequacy of the Obama foreign policy is thrust into a stark and shameful relief.
Finding historical parallels is a slippery slope that leads to madness. But sometimes they’re illustrative:
When Reagan took office in January of 1981, Poland had been a Soviet satellite for almost four decades. The American foreign policy establishment had long since settled into an acceptance of moral equivalency between the United States and the Communists. The policy was acted out in a thousand different ways ranging from so-called “détente” (a relaxing of tensions) to a vast, arcane arms control process which over time had substituted the process itself instead of the unconditional victory of freedom as America’s chief foreign policy goal.
Sound familiar?
As opposed to the example from the last time we had a thug-ocracy beating freedom-loving demonstrators in the streets, I mean?…:
Reagan had campaigned on a completely different idea, a very old principle when dealing with an adversary. He phrased it this way to his first national security advisor, Richard Allen: “We win, they lose.” It was this goal that Reagan sought, and thus caused him to speak bluntly about America’s adversary in the Cold War. An “Evil Empire” is how he early-on famously described the Soviet Union, completely horrifying the Obama-like striped-pants set in the State Department and Establishment foreign policy circles…
Joe Biden said during the campaign that Obama would face a foreign policy “test”. Well, Ronald Reagan certainly did:
One of the very first items that arose on Reagan’s watch was the rising demand for freedom from the Polish people. On January 21, his first full day in the Oval Office, word reached the White House that a young shipyard worker and union leader named Lech Walesa had informed the Communist government of Poland he had called a series of strikes in four Polish cities, beginning the next day. Within 24 hours hundreds of thousands of Poles in ten cities — not four — were publicly defying the Polish Communist dictator, General Wojciech Jaruzelski.
A fight for freedom was on — and Ronald Reagan had zero intention of standing on the sidelines…Liberals all over Washington paled. This, they insisted, was no way to conduct diplomacy. One just does not say these things in public. But Reagan had only just begun.
And we all know how that ended – in this case, with a free Poland; a nation that reveres the Reagan legacy; a place that is probably the best place in Europe to be an American; a place that has repaid Reagan’s efforts many-fold, by becoming not just a leading voice for freedom, but a leading supplier of muscle to defend it; Polish troops were among the largest allied contingents in Iraq.
Iran today and Poland in 1980 aren’t perfect analogues – but the similarities are strong enough to help us gauge the character of our nation’s leadership.
Which is bad news for Obama:
As Walesa and his fellow Poles demanded the most basic of human liberties, Moscow responded by sending troops on maneuvers along the Polish border, then installing a military government with instructions to stop Walesa in his tracks.
Distinctly unlike Obama’s reaction to the demonstrators filling the streets of Iran, Reagan looked at similar crowds in Poland and said the sight was “thrilling.” Said Reagan: “I wanted to be sure we did nothing to impede this process and everything we could to spur it along.”
And so he did. In a stiff note to Soviet boss Leonid Brezhnev, Reagan said that if the Russians kept up their thuggish response to Poland they “could forget any new nuclear arms agreement.” Gone too would be better trade relations, and in their place would be the “harshest possible economic sanctions” if they even thought of invading Poland as they had done with Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Hungary in 1956.
Of couse, Reagan did much more; he formed an unlikely alliance (according to Dinesh D’Souza) with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and AFL-CIO president Layne Kirkland to send financial as well as moral aid to Solidarity.
Hope and change didn’t come for free in 1980, either; as tensions ratcheted up, Reagan took the occasion of the normally-pacific Christmas speech to stump for the Poles…:
… “We can’t let this revolution against Communism fail without offering a hand,” he wrote that day in his diary. “We may never have an opportunity like this in our lifetime.”
Christmas or not, Reagan proceeded to write Brezhnev about the “recent events in Poland.” Warned the President: “Attempts to suppress the Polish people-either by the Polish army or police acting under Soviet pressure, or through even more direct use of the Soviet military force — certainly will not bring about long term stability in Poland and could unleash a process neither you nor we could fully control.” Reagan said the Soviets were encouraging “political terror, mass arrests and bloodshed” and they must either halt this behavior or “we will travel a different path.”
On Christmas morning, Reagan had a heated, angry reply from Brezhnev. Furious, he accused the President of “defaming our social and state system, our internal order.” It was a charge, Reagan said, “to which I pleaded guilty.”
Words were followed by actions – sanctions against Poland and the USSR – and then by years of committed agitation to bring down, not Poland, but the USSR itself. These efforts paid off almost twenty years ago, as first the Poles, and then the rest Eastern Europe, and finally the Russians themselves cast off the Communists. History’s bloodthirstiest regime fell without a shot in less than ten years, because of a show of backbone and resolve.
And some people know it:
Lech Walesa went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and later become the freely elected President of a democratic Poland. In 2007, Walesa’s successor as President of Poland traveled to the Reagan Library to present Nancy Reagan, who accepted on behalf of her late husband, The Order of the White Eagle, the oldest and highest honor within the gift of the Polish people. Today one can visit Ronald Reagan Square in Krakow, a Reagan statue is planned for Warsaw and Reagan streets and parks dot the country. He is considered, in the words of the Polish president, the “architect of democracy.”
Compare and contrast:
This is a lesson that one realizes the Obama White House simply doesn’t have the courage to embrace. As over a million Iranians fill[ed] the streets of Tehran, the message from this President of the United States is that he is afraid to be seen as “meddling” — precisely the charge Reagan faced down from Brezhnev. Instead Obama backs away from standing up for freedom, saying (as if Iran were a free country): “It is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be. We respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran.” He does say he is “deeply troubled.”
As those Iranians who seek freedom are literally shot dead in the streets, Obama observes cautiously that “the democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent — all those are universal values and need to be respected.” Instead of dealing with the mullahs of Iran in the fashion Reagan dealt with Brezhnev and the Polish Communist puppets, Obama refers deferentially to Ayatollah ali Khamenei, as the “Supreme Leader.”
And so inside a generation, American leadership has gone from embracing and pressing for freedom, to equivocating and waffling – and, worse, betraying it, allowing Vladimir Putin not only to use the symbol of Poland’s subjugation before the Soviets to deliver his message, but carrying Putin’s water for him. Obama’s selling-out of Poland in the face of Putin’s pressure was the sort of thing that might make pragmatic sense to those diplomats more allied to “process” than to the goal of liberty…
…and it’s the sort of thing that wouldn’t have gotten on Ronald Reagan’s short list.
September 20th, 2009 at 10:36 am
[…] Cross-posted at Shot In The Dark. […]
September 20th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
You guys go nuts when normal people mention the incompetent who was pResident a little over six months ago. Yet you continue to engage in far-fetched blame of Jimmy Carter and auto-erotic fiction about how Ron Raygun saved the world.
Dear SitD: I never thought it would happen to me…
September 20th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
You guys go nuts when normal people mention the incompetent who was pResident a little over six months ago.
Nuts?
Nah. We merely point out that even if Dubya was as bad as y’all claim he was, Obama is still worse.
Because he is.
September 21st, 2009 at 2:31 am
So, Mr. Clown, how many people has Obammy freed from tyranny?
That would be zero people. No freeing people on the horizon, either. Just ‘gimme your money’, over and over and over . . .
September 21st, 2009 at 5:13 am
Not so, Terry. You can start with the 300 million Americans he freed on Jan. 20.
September 21st, 2009 at 6:50 am
Obama “freed Americans” the same way the French Revolution “freed” the Frogs.
Which reminds me, clown – I wonder what all the pants-wetting moonbats on your side (the “Bush brought down the WTC crowd” that makes up over a third of your Democrats) who thought the Patriot Act and the invasion of Iraq and Guantanamo were just pretexts for Bush seizing power and not turning over the Administration last January think now?
September 21st, 2009 at 8:34 am
DUnno, you’d have to ask ’em. Angryclown speaks only for Himself.
The fact you wingnuts cycle between characterizing Obama as a Carter-style incompetent and a Hitler-like fascist shows you’re still throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. Not so much, it turns out. Though you do get style points for the pimp/witch doctor stuff.
September 21st, 2009 at 9:40 am
The fact you wingnuts cycle between characterizing Obama as a Carter-style incompetent and a Hitler-like fascist
Now, wait, Clown. I certainly do believe Obama is going to make Carter look pretty good by the time he’s done. No bones about it.
But, er, calling people “Fascists” is kinda you guys’ gig. He’s not. He’ s a chicago ward heeler with federal power behind him. Not Hitler, but not exactly reassuring, either.
September 21st, 2009 at 9:57 am
“Not Hitler, but not exactly reassuring, either. ”
More like a Mussolini, an incompetent fascist.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:04 am
I never called Obama a fascist. Now liar, on the othe other hand…
September 21st, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Hey, I hear Hillary is angling for a promotion to Foreign Policy Czar.
September 21st, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Mitch erred: “But, er, calling people “Fascists” is kinda you guys’ gig.”
I guess you haven’t seen any pictures from the teabag events.
Also you may have to reconsider your often-stated assertion that Republicans don’t protest cause they’re responsible adults with jobs and whatnot.
Jobs, firearms and pictures of Obama with a Hitler mustache, from the evidence Angryclown has seen.
September 21st, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Also you may have to reconsider your often-stated assertion that Republicans don’t protest cause they’re responsible adults with jobs and whatnot.
I might. We’ve been turning out for these things. Outside work hours, as a general rule.
Jobs, firearms and pictures of Obama with a Hitler mustache, from the evidence Angryclown has seen.
I’m not gonna vouch for every single person attending every single rally. I’ve met a few oddballs at the three I’ve attended. Very much a superminority, but a few. Que sera sera.
How many charges have been filed against teapartiers with firearms nationwide, again?
September 21st, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Mitch:
You are perhaps forgetting that despite Regan’s brave talk, Poland did indeed declare martial law and break the Solidarity strikes. Reagan’s bold response included ending Poland MFN status, access to U.S. commerical airspace, and terminating their fishing rights (?). Given that all this and far more is currently in place on Iran, it is Reagan, not Obama, who eschewed confrontation and went the route of diplomacy. If we wanted to pursue a Reganite policy in Iran we should drop our trade emargo and open the widest possible set of cultural contacts. It was only because of such contacts, that Kirkland was able to smuggle help to Solidarity.
September 21st, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Poland did indeed declare martial law and break the Solidarity strikes.
a) So you don’t distinguish between “Poland” and “The Polish Government?”
b) You’re right. There is no viable ground between “appeasement” and “invasion”. Reagan was such a wuss!
Reagan’s bold response included ending Poland MFN status, access to U.S. commerical airspace, and terminating their fishing rights (?).
And these measures – and you omit that they were also imposed on the USSR, and you omit not a few of them (a cancelled grain sale being the biggie) – are not “bold”, especially within the context of non-military sanctions, exactly how?
Given that all this and far more is currently in place on Iran, it is Reagan, not Obama, who eschewed confrontation and went the route of diplomacy.
Careful, Rick. If you keep torturing logic like that, Eric Holder will come calling.
a) All of that and more is NOT in place against Iran.
b) So you’re breaking with thirty years of liberal “thought” and saying that Reagan didn’t confront the Soviets? I’d ask you to elaborate, but you really can’t, and I think you know it.
If we wanted to pursue a Reganite policy in Iran we should drop our trade emargo and open the widest possible set of cultural contacts.
You came somewhat close to a point there, but only in error. Cultural contacts were of some marginal use; more useful was Reagan’s provision of “cultural contact” in the form of money and moral support to Solidarity, funneled through the Catholic Church (thanks to the Pope) and the AFL-CIO.
And that you state it as an either/or proposition is kind of…odd?
It was only because of such contacts, that Kirkland was able to smuggle help to Solidarity.
So you want me to say that Obama, and Bush before him, were correct in failing to emulate Reagan’s tactics in exerting diplomatic, economic and (via back-channel connections to the labor movement) financial and social pressure on the Iranians? You’ll search in vain for anything of the sort on this blog.
Unless your whole case is “making stuff up as you go”, of course.
September 21st, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Mitch:
“you omit that they were also imposed on the USSR”
This article, previously cited by you in another, says none were:
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer2005/puddington.htm
Please explain what actions Reagan took against the USSR as a consequence of martial law?
“a cancelled grain sale being the biggie”
Actually it was Jimmy Carter who canceld grain sales to the USSR after the invasion of Afghanistan. Shortly after taking office, Reagan RESUMED grain sales to the USSR and did not let the Polish situation get in the way. So much for your expertise in Polish history.
“are not “bold” exactly how” They are far less rigorous than anything in place against Iran now. Reagan did not end diplomatic relations with Poland, impose general trade sanctions on Poland, did not cancel travel permissions, did not withdraw an ammassador. Simply put, Reagan’s policy towards Poland then is nowhere near as restricitive as Obama’s towards Iran now.
“All of that and more is NOT in place against Iran. ” WTF. Iran is not a MFN. It has no commerical air rights, and I doubt it has any fishing rights. We have no diplomatic relations. All trade/travel is banned. It is listed as a state sponsor of terrorism.
“So . . . saying that Reagan didn’t confront the Soviets” No I said his policy was less confrontational that current policy towards Iran. Reagan maintained full diplomatic and commercial relations, engaged in wide ranging direct and multi-lateral negotiations, and supported vigorous cultural contact. None of that is part of current policy.
“more useful was Reagan’s provision of “cultural contact” in the form of money and moral support to Solidarity, funneled through the Catholic Church (thanks to the Pope) and the AFL-CIO” My point that such support was facilitated by existing diplomatic, commercial, and cultural contacts. Read the AFT atricle. Because Reagan maintained full and open relations with Poland it was far easier to smuggle help in than it would be for Obama.
September 21st, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Mitch
Learn to read a poll. 22% of Americans answered ‘Yes’ to the question “Did Bush Know About the 9/11 Attacks in Advance”. Probably because they remember he got a memo titled “Bin Laden determined to srike the U.S.” That is far different from “Bush brought down the WTC”. Failing to respond to a warning is different from actively participating in the act.
We can now resume discussing how Reagan’s lifting of the Carter grain emabrgo was a key moment in the end of the USSR.
September 21st, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Nah, you’re right, Rick. Carter had ’em on the ropes. He really rocked ’em on their heels. You’ve left me completely without an argument. I bow before your awesome rhetorical mastery.
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:45 am
Angryclown thinks the fallback is still nutty, RickDFL. There’s no evidence Bush had prior knowledge of an attack. Heck, if he did don’t you suppose he would have contrived to act a little more Giuliani-like and a little less like Don Knotts when the moment came?
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:31 am
Rick’s using an AFT article to make his point? First it’s two politically motivated blogs backed by a university sociology department, now it’s a union newsletter. I’ll be looking forward to his next comment with a link to the IWW.
And actually, lifting the grain embargo may have helped end the USSR, because nobody could pretend that the USSR could feed itself. The point was made in contemporary media, but not that liberals caught on that there was a problem when the former breadbasket of Europe was importing grain to feed itself.
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Mitch:
“Carter had ‘em on the ropes.” Didn’t say that. Just said Carten not Reagan halted the grain shipments.
“I bow before your awesome rhetorical mastery.” I make no claims for my rhetoric, I just check your facts, because I know you rarely do. That is what happens when you let idealogy trump science, history, and reality.
You are like Patrocles marching up to Troy and yelling “My cousin Achilles is invulnerable, try hurting him anywhere. Start with an arrow in the heel.”
Bubba:
I got the AFT link from Mitch who has used it before. If there is a more idealogically pallatable source for the same information feel free to provide it.
It was liberals like Carther who pushed the embargo. In fact, some unions wanted to go farther and tried to shutdown more food shipements to the USSR. They had to be compelled by court order to load the ships.
“The American Longshoremen’s Union thought the policy should have been stricter, and tried to totally cease loading grain on ships bound for the Soviet Union. Their resistance was so strong that the U.S. government had to offer to purchase grain which was supposed to be shipped,.but which was clogging traffic at the docks. On January 28, however federal admixustrators ordered the International Longshorements Association (ILA) in New Orleans to load vessels with the remain ing unembargoed grain, and the District Court upheld the decision.”
http://www.heritage.org/research/tradeandeconomicfreedom/bg130.cfm
Hope Heritage is an acceptable link.
September 22nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
That is what happens when you let idealogy trump science, history, and reality.
Er, I’m the one who correctly assessed Polish public opinion about the overall issue. You’re the one who wafts about on a wave of Obamian bliss.
You are like Patrocles marching up to Troy and yelling “My cousin Achilles is invulnerable, try hurting him anywhere. Start with an arrow in the heel.”
Didn’t Carter conquer Troy, too?
September 22nd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Mitch:
“I’m the one who correctly assessed Polish public opinion about the overall issue.” Too vague to respond to. What is the issue overall and when did you correctly assess it?
“Didn’t Carter conquer Troy, too?” No, but he did embargo grain shipments to the USSR that Reagan latter lifted.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Rick, has it ever occurred to you that other things might be a better way to pry open a dictatorship than an embargo? It’s not exactly like embargoes have a great record of ending tyrrany, after all.
Besides, you haven’t provided a bit of data to indicate that Eastern Europe does not significantly revere Reagan. You’re being silly, really.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Besides, you haven’t provided a bit of data to indicate that Eastern Europe does not significantly revere Reagan.
Well, to be fair, Rick’s “oh, pshaw” has the weight of empirical evidence behind it.
To Rick.
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Bubba:
“Rick, has it ever occurred to you that other things might be a better way to pry open a dictatorship than an embargo?” Sure. I agree with Reagan’s decision. Government mandated embargos (outside of actual war) have not worked from Jefferson to Cuba. But Mitch was trying to praise Reagan for doing something Carter did and Reagan undid. Aside from just being a funny example of right-wing myths getting the better of reality, it suggests that Obama is right to move towards greater engagement with Iran. That, not more embargo type policy, with end the dictatorship.
“Besides, you haven’t provided a bit of data to indicate that Eastern Europe does not significantly revere Reagan.” ‘Revere’ is a vague term. I have no data on Reagan’s popularity in Poland and how it compares to other Presidents. I assume Reagan and GOP figures are more popular in Poland vs. the rest of the world. I simply doubted that large numbers of Poles kept a picture of Reagan in the house. Anybody have any evidence on the topic?