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Required Reading

By Dean Barnett
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1) From the New York Times, “Playing Innocent Abroad” by David Brooks Brooks takes a savage scalpel to Barack Obama’s soon-to-be- infamous Ich bin ein Weltburger speech. (“Weltburger” means “citizen of the world,” by the way.)

Obama speeches almost always have the same narrative arc. Some problem threatens. The odds are against the forces of righteousness. But then people of good faith unite and walls come tumbling down. Obama used the word “walls” 16 times in the Berlin speech, and in 11 of those cases, he was talking about walls coming down. The Berlin blockade was thwarted because people came together. Apartheid ended because people came together and walls tumbled. Winning the cold war was the same: “People of the world,” Obama declared, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together and history proved there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.” When I first heard this sort of radically optimistic speech in Iowa, I have to confess my American soul was stirred. It seemed like the overture for a new yet quintessentially American campaign. But now it is more than half a year on, and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more.

Here’s the big problem with the “citizen of the world” claim as well as the rest of the speech – it sells America’s sacrifices short, and it completely denies American exceptionalism. It’s a lovely sentiment for Obama to insist in regards to the Berlin Airlift that “Berlin kept the flame of hope burning” and then praise Berlin’s then-mayor for offering some rhetoric that inspired the world. It comes as little surprise that the hero of Obama’s little drama would be the verbally adept Mayor – we all know that Obama prefers focusing on the rhetorical side of things rather than on the actions that made a difference. I can even understand how it’s in the interest of trans-Atlantic relations to pretend that the Germans and Americans were co-equals in that particular episode. But we weren’t, and it’s interesting to note how Obama’s frequent forays into rewriting history seldom accrue to America’s greater glory. America did the heavy lifting during the Berlin airlift; Germany was the beneficiary of said heavy lifting. And when the talk turns to the Berlin Wall coming down, again it was America that led. While Ronald Reagan was implementing the policies that led to the Berlin Wall’s destruction, he and his policies were about as popular in West Germany as the Ebola virus. Or George W. Bush. Of course, things remain the same today. America bears the brunt of fighting the war on terror, while most of our Continental allies content themselves with carping about the means by which we do so. Mind you, I’m not complaining about our Continental allies. As Donald Rumsfeld might say, they are what they are. It’s America’s duty to lead in every necessary fight simply because no other nation is willing or able to pick up the burden. It’s been that way for almost a century. When Obama somberly mentioned to his German audience the problems in Darfur and Burma, he surely knew that nothing good would happen in either place unless America opts to bear still more burdens. If he doesn’t know that much, then even I’ve underestimated his historical ignorance. It’s a decided oddity that a guy who seeks the U.S. presidency is so reluctant to salute America’s greatness. It’s odder still that on foreign shores he granted his so-called global citizenship co-equal or perhaps superior status to his American citizenship. Then again, given the scant regard he’s willing to express for America’s accomplishments, I guess it all makes a sort of sense. 2) From The Daily Dish, “Citizen of the World” by Patrick Appel While Andrew Sullivan is on vacation, his roster of guest-bloggers are gamely attempting to dig Barack Obama out of his “citizen of the world” mess. Patrick Appel ventures into unintentional hilarity by running a letter that purports to show presidents have long used the phrase:

John F. Kennedy used the same phrase in his famous inaugural address in referring to his global audience. I also did a one minute Google search – and I’m sure I could find more if I did a 15-minute Google search – and discovered that President George H.W. Bush used the exact phrase “citizen of the world” in presenting the national medal of the arts to Vladimir Horowitz, the legendary Russian-born pianist who became a US citizen in 1940.

So let’s see – Kennedy referred to his global audience as “citizens of the world” and Bush 41 called a Russian born pianist a “citizen of the world.” Is it possible to distinguish those two events from a presidential aspirant declaring himself a “citizen of the world” (or a weltburger as one would say in German)? Apparently for Obama supporters, the answer is no they can’t. Know obtuseness! 3) From the Politico, “Obama Leaves the Gifting to Santa” by Mike Allen Remember long ago when the Obama candidacy seemed like fun? Remember when Barack Obama brought a certain joy to the campaign trail that even conservatives couldn’t deny? Those days are long past. We’ve long since discovered that Obama is about as much fun as a more dour Michael Dukakis. Today brings the most disturbing indication yet that an Obama presidency will be about as much fun as passing a kidney stone:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) tells People magazine in the issue out Friday that he and his wife, Michelle, do not give Christmas or birthday presents to their two young daughters. Obama tells the magazine’s Sandra Sobieraj Westfall in a seven-page cover story that he and his wife follow the unusual practice because they “want to teach some limits.”

No Christmas presents? What’s next? A Skinnerian box? For the entire nation? 4) From New Criterion, “Not Without a Fight” by Stanley Kurtz This is a long story, but you owe it to yourself to read the whole thing. It’s especially relevant in light of all the global harmony gobbledygook that’s been floating around the past couple of days. Kurtz documents how England’s libel laws have triggered book burnings right out of the pages of a Bradbury novel. The books being burned? Those that have the audacity to look into Islamic terror funding:

It’s been less than a year since the phenomenon of “libel tourism” first broke into public consciousness in the United States. On August 10, 2007, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Britain’s Cambridge University Press had agreed to pulp all unsold copies of the 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World. In several passages, embedded in a much broader study, Alms for Jihad suggests that businesses and charities associated with one of the world’s richest men, the Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, helped to finance terrorism during the 1990s. Bin Mahfouz’s threat of a libel suit in Britain was sufficient to extract from Cambridge University Press not only an agreement to pulp the book, but also a public apology, payment of substantial damages, legal fees, and a pledge to contact libraries worldwide with a request that they remove Alms for Jihad from their shelves. In the face of this legal challenge, Alms for Jihad’s American authors, the academic historian Robert O. Collins and J. Millard Burr, a retired employee of the U.S. State Department, stood by their work, offered evidence in support of their book’s assertions to Cambridge, and refused to join in the press’s apology. Indeed the manuscript of Alms for Jihad had been vetted and approved by Cambridge’s in-house lawyers prior to publication. Yet the mere threat of a suit in a British court was enough to push this publisher to abandon Alms for Jihad without a fight.

Kurtz goes on to explore in some depth the different cultures of different Western nations and how those cultures affect the global war on terror. It’s must reading for all of us, but especially so for naïve politicians who seem unable to recognize the differences that exist between different countries. 5) From the Wall Street Journal, “Obama Urges Iran to Accept EU Nuclear-Weapons Proposal” by some stringer for the AP Behold! Tough, principled diplomacy! The fierceness of Obama will surely bring results. The mullahs are on notice. They have officially been urged! We can all heave a sigh of relief. The Iranian nuke crisis is all but over.

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