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June 17, 2009

Ronald Reagan's statement on Poland's 1981 declaration of Martial Law.

"All the information that we have confirms that the imposition of martial law in Poland has led to the arrest and confinement, in prisons and detention camps, of thousands of Polish trade union leaders and intellectuals. Factories are being seized by security forces and workers beaten. These acts make plain there’s been a sharp reversal of the movement toward a freer society that has been underway in Poland for the past year and a half.

Coercion and violation of human rights on a massive scale have taken the place of negotiation and compr
omise. All of this is in gross violation of the Helsinki Pact, to which Poland is a signatory. It would be naive to think this could happen without the full knowledge and the support of the Soviet Union. We’re not naive.

We view the current situation in Poland in the gravest of terms, particularly the increasing use of force against an unarmed population and violations of the basic civil rights of the Polish people.
Violence invites violence and threatens to plunge Poland into chaos.

We call upon all free peop
le to join in urging the Government of Poland to reestablish conditions that will make constructive negotiations and compromise possible. Certainly, it will be impossible for us to continue trying to help Poland solve its economic problems while martial law is imposed on the people of Poland, thousands are imprisoned, and the legal rights of free trade unions — previously granted by the government — are now denied.

We’ve always been ready to do our share to assist Poland in overcoming its economic difficulties, but only if the Polish people are permitted to resolve their own problems free of internal coercion and outside intervention.


Our nation was born in resistance to arbitrary power and has been repeatedly enriched by immigrants from Poland and other great nations of Europe. So we feel a special kinship with the Polish people in their struggle against Soviet opposition to their reforms.
The Polish nation, speaking through Solidarity, has provided one of the brightest, bravest moments of modern history.

The peopl
e of Poland are giving us an imperishable example of courage and devotion to the values of freedom in the face of relentless opposition. Left to themselves, the Polish people would enjoy a new birth of freedom. But there are those who oppose the idea of freedom, who are intolerant of national independence, and hostile to the European values of democracy and the rule of law.

Two Decembers ago, freedom was lost in Afghanistan; this Christmas, it’s at stake in Poland. But the torch of liberty is hot. It warms those who hold it high. It burns those who try to extinguish it."
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Obama yesterday reacted to the uprising in Iran by saying:
"It's not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling."

Obama orders "kinder & friendlier" image for U.S. Navy

Voting Present on Iran


Victor Davis Hanson tosses in his two cents as the world cringes.
"For the probable majority of Iranians who voted against Ahmadinejad, the idea that the US was reaching out to him, despite his subsidies to terrorist killers in Lebanon and Iraq, and his brutality at home, was not necessarily a sign of American good will."

Apparently the Obama administration is quietly watching the situation, serially voting present, and unwilling to say much until the final outcome is certain. Meanwhile, debate here centers around whether Bush’s past “Axis of Evil” approach to Iran’s theocracy, or Obama’s “We are sorry for what we did in the past” lamentation is the better course for dealing with a thug like Ahmadinejad. Some thoughts:

1. Conventional wisdom insisted that we had “empowered” Iran by removing Saddam and allowing the Shiites to gain democratic majorities in Iraq. It is at least as possible that we are destabilizing the autocracy in Iran by promoting Iraqi democracy that is no longer just a warning about civil chaos, but a positive view of a Shiite-majority democratic society unknown in Iran. The notion of two large contiguous oil producing democracies in the Middle East is unacceptable to the radical Islamists and most of the Sunni Arab dictatorships as well.

2. When one apologizes to a contemporary terrorist-sponsoring regime for events that occurred 60 years ago at the beginning of the Cold War, and does so without context of the past, then naturally one is self-censored, and will be reluctant to comment on contemporary events in Iran — relegated to a bystander watching the flow of events, predicating the response on who wins.

3. We are seeing in Washington that the multiculturalism impulse — one does not use Western paradigms to judge others — is far stronger than the supposedly classical liberal idea that human freedom is a universal concept that trumps culture. In other words, multicultural foreign policy is a sophisticated and politically-correct version of the old, far more intellectually honest realist notion that we let the bastards do what they want to their own people, and then deal with the thug that emerges in the real world of mutual self-interest. (more...)

What would Ronald Reagan have said?

Click on this photo to view it full-size.

What would Ronald Reagan have said?

Click on this photo to view it full-size.

What would Ronald Reagan have said?

Click on this photo to view it full-size.

What would Ronald Reagan have said?

Click on this photo to view it full-size.

June 16, 2009

Bush worried them. Obama doesn't.


Ralph Peters of the New York Post gives his sober assessment of Obama's reaction to Iran's election farce.
THE OBAMA EFFECT
It must have been the viewing angle: The despots who run Iran somehow missed the halo gracing President Obama during his recent sermon to the Muslim world.

The ruling mullahs' contemptuous handling of Iran's presidential election was their response to "the Cairo effect" announced a tad prematurely by the White House.

Our president's public flagellation of America only emboldened the junta in Tehran -- leaving Iran's power brokers more defiant, determined and dismissive than they've been in years.

And the strongest response Obama can muster to the blood in Tehran's streets is: "I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television." How bold, how manly, how inspiring . . .

Our president's speechwriters made the same mistake no end of diplomats and pundits made before them: They didn't pause to consider the enemy's viewpoint. Like Obama himself, they didn't bother trying to understand the mullahs' logic for acting as they do.

Obama believed that his rhetoric would change the strategic environment -- and his White House apostles wasted no time before declaring that his Cairo speech was responsible for Hezbollah's electoral setback in Lebanon a few days later.

Then administration spokespersons panted to take credit for the "inevitable" election of Mir Hossein Mousavi in Iran. But the men who run Iran didn't play along: Every Basij (regime-thug) baton cracking a demonstrator's skull in Tehran is a -- distinctly clenched -- fist shoved in Obama's face.

(more)

The Gays & Iran — Why No Emotion?

Bruce at GayPatriot asks the big question.
It is the big inconvenient truth for The Gays(tm). Life in America for us is ashamedly better than nearly every other country on earth. But there always has to be something for The Gays(tm) to attack America and Christians about so they can raise money to keep themselves going. (Read the entire post)







Hat Tip to Ramirez

The Left attacks who they fear: Sarah Palin

Michael A. DeVine of the San Francisco Examiner speculates on the Palin-sux phenomenon.
Hence, its relentless attacks against her, Cheney, Rush and Newt

The Governor of Alaska is an unapologetic, unabashed Reagan conservative who echos the truth to power messages rarely heard from other elected conservatives too afraid of Obama and the Drive-by political correctness media police. Democrats have won the past two election cycles and now hold large majorities in both houses of Congress.

Yet, despite the triumph of liberalism, the Left doesn't use its precious media time to attack potential threats to its power from moderate Republicans that the Drive-bys' conventional wisdom deems more "electable" in the Age of Obama.

Rather, they regularly, relentlessly, and viciously attack the Sarah Palin, the Vice-Presidential loser that failed the Katie Couric test and returned to viewing Russia from her backyard.

Why does the Left perceive as the number one threat to retaining their power, a Republican loathed by a large and vocal minority of the GOP?

Why? Maybe because the Left has never lost its power to that particular minority of the GOP represented by Colin Powell and much of the beltway, country club blue blood Rockefeller elites.
When they lose, they lose to Republicans like Sarah Palin, and many recall their most anxious moments during the 2008 general election campaign were those weeks after Palin's nomination was announced when McCain actually lead for the first time, before he blew the race by embracing the bank bailout.

Recent polls show that a majority of Americans are now pro-life, that conservatives now out-number moderates, and that women are much more likely to vote Democrats.
Palin is a walking, talking repudiation of the entire feminist myth of the Left that declares liberalism as the only enlightened view. And her decision to bring to term a baby in her womb confirmed as having Downs Syndrome grossly exposes the barbarity of the Leftists' religious sacrament of abortion. DC wasn't down with her, baby? More...

Hat Tip to Angie Jordan



















Hat tip to Pajamas Media