I wonder what the Atrocities Board would say about the dreadful betrayal of freedom in China. Only kidding. This Orwellian institution is surely designed to deal only with old horrors; you know, those during the dark ages of Bushitlercheney. Or even in the days of Obama’s bête blanche, Bill Clinton, about whom the flagrantly hypocritical Samantha Power raged so piously righteous some years back for his failure to save Africans from slaughter. Now that she sits in the White House, she joins the other organizers and activists who abandon those who share our national commitment to freedom, and embrace those tyrants who are crushing it as best they can.
To this grim gallery of rogues we can properly add Hillary, whose relationship with the president will some day entertain future students of the American presidency. What’s it like for her to get security briefings that are reportedly denied to her Bill, for example? But there is no reason to suspect that she’s any better on the big questions than the president, for whom she lies like the proverbial rug. On her account, we’ve been heroically supporting dissidents in Iran and Syria, for example, even though none of the victims of the bloodthirsty regimes in Tehran and Damascus has seen any help.
Which brings us back to the blind Mr. Chen, who somehow eluded house arrest and got into the American Embassy in Beijing. One wonders just how that happened, and the tyrants who rule China are no doubt wondering too. It’s hard to imagine that the Obama administration had much to do with Chen’s escape; they don’t give a damn about oppressed freedom fighters and dissidents anywhere, let alone the People’s Republic of China. As with Iran, North Korea, and Syria, Obama wants “good relations,” and such regimes won’t give you any if you insist on raising awkward subjects like freedom and democracy.
To be sure, if you play by their rules, you don’t get those good relations anyway. You get contempt, and, in all likelihood, war as well. Churchill said of Chamberlain that he had to choose between war and dishonor, chose dishonor, and got war as well.
Obama and his fellow conspirators should know all this by now, because he’s played by the tyrants’ rules and he’s quite obviously held in contempt by regimes who detest and fear the United States. These evil men know that, regardless of the identity or desires of a given American president, those of their own people who want to live freely will always be inspired by the American example. The tyrants are thankful for Obama, but not for the reasons he had assumed. He thought they’d like him because he is basically sympathetic to their cause. He thinks their complaints about America’s meddling in their affairs are legitimate, and he expected to be able to negotiate a series of deals that would rest on a shared vision of the world.
But that is not why they are grateful that Obama is in the White House. They are thankful for his weakness, and for his fear of supporting pro-American forces at a moment when such support could dramatically and fundamentally change the world.
Look around and you’ll see America’s enemies reaching for the oxygen mask. China faces insurrections in Buddhist Tibet and in the Muslim West, and from the likes of Mr. Chen. Iran’s regime is divided as never before (a few days ago President Ahmadinejad instructed the officials of his government to shred without reading any communications from the speaker of Parliament, a loyalist of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei). Meanwhile, attacks against installations of the Revolutionary Guards continue apace, as does the ongoing purge of the officer corps. Chavez is dying. Putin has millions of angry Russians yelling at him. And so it goes.
If America’s president had supported Mr. Chen and others like him, it would have given hope to the freedom fighters everywhere that things may change for the better, because, after all, America is still America.
Obama does not want that message sent. He has other concerns, like dragging American soldiers in front of television cameras at 4 a.m. to serve as extras in his latest political ad.
No wonder America’s enemies are contemptuous of the man and grateful for his weakness and his alienation from American values.
No wonder this moment is so very reminiscent of the last days of Jimmy Carter.
No wonder the war against America is gathering strength.
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