The Historical Illiteracy of Barack Obama and the Left

The Obama v. Bush appeasement altercation started innocuously enough with Bush’s speech to the Israeli Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Jewish state. The segment of Bush’s speech that was the ignition was this:

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

For clarity, the Senator he was referring to was William Edgar Borah of Idaho.

Obama has stated, on the record, that he would have direct negotiations, without preconditions, with countries within the “axis of evil” and various rouge outliers. Obama has since, with prevarication, stated that he did not say, exactly, that he would meet without preconditions. Obama and his partisans in the media have taken acute offense to Bush’s speech, as they believe he was making a direct reference to Obama.

At issue is whether or not Bush made a direct imputation of Obama’s foreign policy convictions or did Bush just throw a rock and the first dog it hit yelped?

The Obama salvos started as soon as he was able to convert his yelping into a wailing rebuttal. Obama called Bush’s statements “dishonest and divisive” and a “false political attack”. Bush’s statements, if he was referring to Obama, were accurate insomuch as Obama is on the record stating he would meet without preconditions with these terrorist.

Here is where Obama’s pronounced lack of qualifications to handle the most mundane of foreign affairs comes into play: Obama, in his defense of meeting with countries within the “axis of evil” et al, directly as the President, without preconditions, senselessly used the Kennedy card. Obama’s statement concerning Kennedy’s meeting with Khrushchev, “But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba.”. This statement is historically problematic for several reasons. Kennedy did meet with Khrushchev in June of 1961. At this juncture in time, the U.S. and Russia were not on brink of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was 18 months after the meeting. The only correlation between the meeting of Kennedy and Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, was to highlight the danger of appeasement.

Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis with Russia, of which the facts are apparently historically oblivious to Obama , consisted of , to put it idiomatically–we had the biggest stick and were prepared to use it for the sake of national security.

The historical illiteracy of Obama is being abetted by the media who created him.

J. Peter Scoblic is a visiting scholar in the Carnegie Endowment’s Nonproliferations Program, author, executive director of the New Republic, and lecturer. He is also an imbecilic sycophant. He and his ilk, to further their liberal causes, regardless of established actualities, assume that history is a moldable paradigm to be wielded like a magic wand for their egocentric contemplations.

Scoblic wrote an article for the LA Times insubstantially arguing the difference between appeasement vis-a-vis negotiating. His intent, along with his assumption that Bush was directly referring to Obama in his speech, was to defend Obama’s wanting to negotiate with terrorists. When the first sentence of an article is a canard, or sophomoric subjectivity, one can only suppose the ensuing prose would be subjected to the same degradation. The first sentence of his article stated:

In a speech to the Israeli parliament Thursday, President Bush took a swipe at Barack Obama for his willingness to negotiate with evil regimes.

Scoblic states with empirical authority that Bush did take a swipe at Obama.

He also stated, with almost identical duplicity, in another part of his article referencing how Kennedy’s negotiations averted the possible nuclear outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis:

… the Cuban missile crisis, during which the United States and the Soviet Union nearly came to nuclear blows over Moscow’s deployment of missiles 90 miles off the American coast. When President Kennedy successfully negotiated a peaceful conclusion to the crisis, conservative icon Barry Goldwater protested that he had appeased the Soviets by promising not to invade Cuba if they backed down.

Indeed, conservatives considered virtually any attempt to bring the arms race under control as a surrender to communism.

Once again, dismissing the fact that the peaceful resolution Kennedy achieved was the result of our having a bigger stick and the resolve to use it.

A few highlights of Kennedy’s negotiating with the Soviets prior to and during the Cuban Missile Crisis: John Kennedy met with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in June of 1961 during the Cold War. Kennedy left the meeting bruised and bloodied. He stated after the meeting, “He just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we won’t get anywhere with him.”

The results of the shortsightedness of appeasing a totalitarian despot: Two months after the meeting, Khrushchev started building the Berlin Wall, and eighteen months later, Kennedy was shown reconnaissance photos of Soviet missile installations in Cuba. Kennedy addressed the nation and announced the Soviet missile installations and proclaimed that any nuclear missile attack from Cuba would be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union and would be responded to accordingly. U.S. bombers were placed on high alert, fully armed, and ready to take off with a 15 minute notice. POLARIS submarines were shuttled to strategic positions. Intercontinental Ballistic Missile crews were placed on the same alert status. Kennedy ordered a complete navel blockade surrounding Cuba. The United States had a nuclear arsenal placed in Turkey, aimed at the Soviet Union, 150 miles from their border. With all this in order and the fact that the United States had more nuclear weapons than the Soviet Union, and was prepared to use them, the Soviet Union submitted to Kennedy’s demands to dismantle the missile installations in Cuba and remove them from the country along with all Russian supply ships in Cuban waters. Khrushchev conceded to President Kennedy’s demands. With the belief that the United States had more nuclear weapons than the Soviet Union, Khrushchev had no choice. The reason he had no choice was because Kennedy was not bluffing and Khrushchev was acutely aware of it.

Eighteen months after Kennedy met with Khrushchev, and a sixteen day standoff over Cuba, on October 28, 1962 Kennedy negotiated with Khrushchev by agreeing to not eradicate the Soviet Union and that punctuated the end of the negotiations.

Obama and his media followers believe the terroristic issues can be resolved by a direct meeting between them and the President of the United States. But not just any president–President Obama. Obama has stated that he would meet without preconditions, the leaders within the “axis of evil”. He has stated that Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s violence only weakens their legitimate claims. One must ponder what the legitimate claims of terrorist organizations would be? This statement is just shy from proclaiming that if Al Qaeda would stop their violence, Obama would listen to their legitimate claims.

For any self proclaimed rational individual to actually listen to what Barack Obama says, rather than his elocution, and disregard the innumerable use of the word “change”, and not suffer from a minor onset of cognitive dissonance, obviously manifests a direct correlation between the perpetually descending SAT scores and at least one half of the U.S. population’s nescience.

Barack Obama has demonstrated, with absolute ignorance, that he has negligible knowledge of U.S. history with regards to foreign policy; he is ideally challenged as to a workable plan to prevent Iran, or any other rogue nation, from continuing to enrich uranium. He has only demonstrated how to devolve this nation’s national security, and the security of our allies. As Obama continues to prop his parlous foreign policy agenda up by ignorantly referencing Kennedy’s negotiations with Khrushchev, he continues to perpetuate his illiteracy in myriad areas.

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