Victor Davis Hanson on BHO's Euro-Pandering

[Overpaid Slacker]

It’s America, Obama
A modest dissent to the citizen of the world.

By Victor Davis Hanson


What disturbed me about Barack Obama's Berlin speech were some reoccurring utopian assumptions about cause and effect — namely, that bad things happen almost as if by accident, and are to be addressed by faceless, universal forces of good will.

Unlike Obama, I would not speak to anyone as “a fellow citizen of the world,” but only as an ordinary American who wishes to do his best for the world, but with a much-appreciated American identity, and rather less with a commonality indistinguishable from those poor souls trapped in the Sudan, North Korea, Cuba, or Iran. Take away all particular national identity and we are empty shells mouthing mere platitudes, who believe in little and commit to even less. In this regard, postmodern, post-national Europe is not quite the ideal, but a warning of how good intentions can run amuck. Ask the dead of Srebrenica, or the ostracized Danish cartoonists, or the archbishop of Canterbury with his supposed concern for transcendent universal human rights.

With all due respect, I also don't believe the world did anything to save Berlin, just as it did nothing to save the Rwandans or the Iraqis under Saddam — or will do anything for those of Darfur; it was only the U.S. Air Force that risked war to feed the helpless of Berlin as it saved the Muslims of the Balkans. And I don't think we have much to do in America with creating a world in which “famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.” Bad, often evil, autocratic governments abroad cause hunger, often despite rich natural landscapes; and nature, in tragic fashion, not “the carbon we send into atmosphere,” causes “terrible storms,” just as it has and will for millennia.

Perhaps conflict-resolution theory posits there are no villains, only misunderstandings; but I think military history suggests that culpability exists — and is not merely hopelessly relative or just in the eye of the beholder. So despite Obama’s soaring moral rhetoric, I am troubled by his historical revisionism that, “The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love.”

I would beg to differ again, and suggest instead that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (as it had, in fact, wiped out millions of its own people) and much beyond as well — and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no danger to the world from American nuclear weapons “destroying all we have built” — while the inverse would not have been true, had nuclear and totalitarian communism prevailed. We sleep too lightly tonight not because democratic Israel has obtained nuclear weapons, but because a frightening Iran just might.

When Obama shouts,

Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don't look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?

it is the world, not the U.S., that needs to listen most. In this regard I would have preferred Sen. Obama of mixed ancestry to have begun with “In the recent tradition of African-American Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice,” rather than the less factual, “I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city.”

I want also to shout back that the United States does stand for the rule of law, as even the killers of Guantanamo realize with their present redress of grievances, access to complex jurisprudence, and humane treatment — all in a measure beyond what such terrorists would receive anywhere else. It is the United States that takes in more immigrants than does any country in the world, and thus is the prime destination of those who flee the miseries of this often wretched globe.

American immigration policies are humane, not only in easy comparison to the savagery shown the “other” in Africa or the Middle East, but fair and compassionate in comparison to what we see presently accorded aliens in Mexico, France, and, yes, Germany. Again, in all this fuzziness — this sermonizing in condescending fashion reminiscent at times of the Pennsylvania remonstration — there is the whiff of American culpability, but certainly not much of a nod to American exceptionalism. Politicians characteristically say to applauding audiences abroad what they wish to hear. True statesmen often do not.

In terms of foreign affairs, I think Americans will finally come to vote for a candidate, who with goodwill, a lot of humility, and a little grace, can persuade the world that universal moral progress, freedom, and material prosperity best advance under the aegis of free markets, constitutional government, and individual freedom, rather than for someone who seems to think, in naïve fashion, that these are necessarily shared and natural human practices, or are presently in force outside the West — or will arise due to dialogue or international good intentions.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

[Dottore]

Originally Posted by Overpaid Slacker

Unlike Obama, I would not speak to anyone as “a fellow citizen of the world,” but only as an ordinary American who wishes to do his best for the world, but with a much-appreciated American identity,

In terms of foreign affairs, I think Americans will finally come to vote for a candidate, who with goodwill, a lot of humility, and a little grace, can persuade the world that universal moral progress, freedom, and material prosperity best advance under the aegis of free markets, constitutional government, and individual freedom, rather than for someone who seems to think, in naïve fashion, that these are necessarily shared and natural human practices, or are presently in force outside the West — or will arise due to dialogue or international good intentions.

.

I have to say this guy completely misses the point.

BHO-Euro pandering? C'mon!

BHO's visit comes at a time when US/European relations are at an all time low because of a period unprecedented US unilateralism in global affairs under Dubya. BHO quite rightly wants to send the signal to Europe that he understands that we live in a global community, and that under his administration dialogue and multilateralism will replace unilateralism as the principal US response to foreign policy issues.

That is a welcome signal and should be applauded - as it was.

And despite what the writer tries to imply to the contrary, unilateral US good intentions have often been the cause of huge foreign policy mistakes - mistakes that OBH seems determined to avoid under his administration. That is a good thing.

[Overpaid Slacker]

Do you count Eastern Europe as part of Europe? Relations with much of E. Europe are fantastic, actually.

Also, the Serial US-Bashing Chirac is out, and Sarkozy has made it clear that he is a friend to the US, and increased France's commitment to participate in US efforts in the Middle East. Angela Merkel also replaced an ousted America-basher, and German relations, which were never "bad" are better.

How is this apocalyptic "all time low" of yours manifested? Cause some lefty Euros bash the US? Guess what, they always will. Guess who cares --> suckers.

Please explain the "unprecedented unilateralism". I realize they're catchy (and fun to say!), but it's Daily Kos fodder for the Bush Derangement Syndrome guys. Unless I haven't been paying enough attention to world events lately.

And VDH missing a point? Possible. Wildly unlikely, but possible. We can agree to disagree on that one.

JP

[Overpaid Slacker]

Do you count Eastern Europe as part of Europe? Relations with much of E. Europe are fantastic, actually.

Also, the Serial US-Bashing Chirac is out, and Sarkozy has made it clear that he is a friend to the US, and increased France's commitment to participate in US efforts in the Middle East. Angela Merkel also replaced an ousted America-basher, and German relations, which were never "bad" are better.

How is this apocalyptic "all time low" of yours manifested? Cause some lefty Euros bash the US? Guess what, they always will. Guess who cares --> suckers.

Please explain the "unprecedented unilateralism". I realize they're catchy (and fun to say!), but it's Daily Kos fodder for the Bush Derangement Syndrome guys. Unless I haven't been paying enough attention to world events lately.

And VDH missing a point? Possible. Wildly unlikely, but possible. We can agree to disagree on that one.

JP

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by Dottore

BHO's visit comes at a time when US/European relations are at an all time low because of a period unprecedented US unilateralism in global affairs under Dubya.

Really? So why aren't Schroeder and Chirac still in power and what kind of Bush haters succeeded them?

[Mule]

Originally Posted by Dottore

I have to say this guy completely misses the point.

BHO-Euro pandering? C'mon!

BHO's visit comes at a time when US/European relations are at an all time low because of a period unprecedented US unilateralism in global affairs under Dubya. BHO quite rightly wants to send the signal to Europe that he understands that we live in a global community, and that under his administration dialogue and multilateralism will replace unilateralism as the principal US response to foreign policy issues.

That is a welcome signal and should be applauded - as it was.

And despite what the writer tries to imply to the contrary, unilateral US good intentions have often been the cause of huge foreign policy mistakes - mistakes that OBH seems determined to avoid under his administration. That is a good thing.

We in America simultaneously welcome and discard the opinions of arrogant Euro-weasels.

[rusnak]

Victor Davis Hanson is from just down the road from me, a little town called Sanger, Calif. He grew up on a farm, and still farmed his family property 10 years ago, and would still be doing farming, if water and labor issues weren't messed up by too much progressive legislating.

Anyway, you'd never know he was a farmer by reading his writing, such is his intellect.

[Overpaid Slacker]

Rusnak - He is one of the most powerful and intelligent writers I've ever read. And he has not (to my knowledge) succumbed to the temptation to leverage his historical and policital expertise into opining on things he knows nothing about. If he's writing or speaking on something, you can be damned sure he knows exactly WTF he's talking about. He's like a layperson's Scalia ... and similarly despised by many on the left (who in other cases esteem to the point of fellatio academic and scholarly credentials far short of VDH's ... hmmm).

Anyhoo ... Cullinan picked up the mantle:

Obama Sings the Song of Himself
A flat performance in Berlin.

By John F. Cullinan


Wagner’s music is actually better than it sounds, Mark Twain liked to joke. The same can’t be said for Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign speech Thursday in Berlin.

Obama’s speech fell flat. It amounts to an unforced error, perhaps prompted by the need to score another historic “first,” like Obama’s embarrassing claim at the outset that “I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city.”

As Victor Davis Hanson points out nearby, two distinguished blacks have served as secretary of State, representing the U.S. at the highest diplomatic level in Europe and around the world for the past seven years. But Obama seldom lets facts get in the way of self-congratulation.

As always, there’s no lack of self-regard: “Now the world will watch and remember what we do here — what we do with this moment.” But there’s a complete absence of irony in a phrase that unconsciously recalls Lincoln’s modest prediction that “the world will little note or long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they” — the honored dead — “did here.”

Obama’s speech itself is an unusually restrained and cautious piece of work, crafted for delivery in Berlin and for its impact Stateside. Its aim was to skirt the Scylla of unabashed Europhilia (a la John Kerry) and the Charybdis of American exceptionalism (the Founding Fathers). The result is an intellectual shipwreck.

It does not help that Obama can’t quite make up his mind about walls, the metaphor meant to hold the speech together. “The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope,” Obama rightly says. “But that very closeness,” Obama goes on to say in the next sentence, “has given rise to new dangers — dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.”

But wait. This unwalled, borderless world where transnational threats abound is now threatened by — you guessed it — new walls. And these new walls in turn cut off the ties that bind, while “the burdens of global citizenship” — what’s that? — “continue to bind us together.” Obama thus concludes: “That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.”

By now most Americans are probably wondering what happened to the sound adage that good fences make good neighbors.

In any case, the speech’s metaphorical walls ultimately collapse under the weight of all the mix-and-match platitudes (see Jim Geraghty’s quiz) and historical inaccuracies or misjudgments. The latter are more troubling than the former, as their presence suggests that how a phrase reads matters more than whether it makes sense or it’s true. Consider this: “Not only have the walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic have found a way to live together.” That’s just plain wrong: There are now more “peace walls” in Belfast than at the time of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, while residential segregation has increased.

Such carelessness with easily verifiable facts is troubling, given Obama’s 300-person mini-State Department and all the former senior Clinton Administration officials along for the ride. Does no one check facts? Or are staff too awed by the One to tell him what he doesn’t want to hear? Or do they all think the rest of us are too dumb or awestruck to notice?

Consider also this throw-away line. “In this century — in this city of all cities — we must reject the Cold War mind-set of the past.” Does Obama mean to suggest that the West bears responsibility for the current frosty relations with Russia? More specifically, are Russian military threats and energy blackmail reasonable responses to Western provocations? Whose “Cold War mind-set” does he mean? Putin’s? Or NATO’s?

This sloppiness ultimately matters rather more than the silly platitudes (“This is the moment to give our children back their future”). But these were meat and drink for the youngsters who flocked to hear Obama say:

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking the coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.

This was the mood-music German youths came to hear, never mind the lyrics. How well it goes down Stateside is another matter, since there’s no largely post-Christian culture here that favors the growth of a neo-pagan environmental cult.

The upshot is that this speech was an unforced error, another judgment call that Obama got wrong. No one forced him to give the first-ever presidential campaign speech before a mass audience of non-voters overseas. And he can’t say he wasn’t warned, considering these pointed remarks from the German chancellor’s spokesman:

It’s unusual to hold election rallies abroad. No German candidate for high office would even think of using the National Mall (in Washington) or Red Square in Moscow for a rally because it would not be seen as appropriate.

In case the freshman Illinois senator missed the point, the chancellor herself later added: “If the candidate — or any other candidate is elected, then (he) is welcome to speak as president before the Brandenburg Gate.” Even some American reporters, heretofore Obama’s biggest boosters, raised the same concerns about a premature victory lap, as this little colloquy in Politico shows:

“It is not going to be a political speech,” said a senior foreign policy adviser, who spoke to reporters on background. “When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.

“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter reminded the adviser.

Indeed.

Here's the link to the article if you want to check out some of the materials it references: Cullinan.

[berettafan]

nothing positive about becoming a 'global' nation. it will be the final step in the castration of the American identity.

[Mule]

[rusnak]

Overpaid:

yep, I'm proud to say VDH was famous here before the rest of the world got to know him.

Thank you for these posts.

I would, to say it in common terms, say that B-OB went to Berlin and became a part time Berlinner in front of a whole city of full time Berlinners, and was discovered a fraud without a real identity.

[widebody911]

GWB just did a Euro tour a few weeks ago - was that 'pandering' too?

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by widebody911

GWB just did a Euro tour a few weeks ago - was that 'pandering' too?

No, Bush is not shy at all about saying unpopular things or going before audiences he knows don't like him.

[rusnak]

Originally Posted by widebody911

GWB just did a Euro tour a few weeks ago - was that 'pandering' too?

That's a good question. I look at it this way. Think back when you were a kid. Say you have a neighbor that your parents don't like so much. And also say your brother or sister goes to the neighbor's house, and starts bad mouthing your family, and your parents. Saying they are lazy, or stupid, or keep a dirty house, not like your clean house, etc. Now, say you go over there and just visit, be respectful, but remember which house you call home. In that case, the brother is pandering, and you are not.

[Dottore]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

Really? So why aren't Schroeder and Chirac still in power and what kind of Bush haters succeeded them?

You're not seriously suggesting that the election of Sarkozy and Merkel reflect current European approval of Dubya and his policies, are you? Or that there is any connection between them?

[Rikao4]

If I wanted to be 'global' I would move there.
As for the for caring what the germans think or want...
stick with Porsche & VW, leave the voting to us.
As for being a Berliner..he's almost right..it's being overun by those peaceful kill your own.

Rika

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by Dottore

You're not seriously suggesting that the election of Sarkozy and Merkel reflect current European approval of Dubya and his policies, are you? Or that there is any connection between them?

Not at all. I'm just saying that anti-American politicians in two of Europe's players didn't fare too well last time around.

However, it is telling that Schroeder made a campaign theme out of bashing Bush, while Merkel said she'd work to repair our relationship. Chirac wasn't running, but Sarkozy also campaigned partly on repairing our relationship.

[Dottore]

Originally Posted by Overpaid Slacker

Please explain the "unprecedented unilateralism".

Not to flog another dead horse, but Der Spiegel recently carried a Europe-wide survey of approval for US foreign policy (particularly the conduct of same by the current administration) which was pretty telling. You think this adminsitrations approval ratings are low in the US—check out this survey.

We divide our time between both sides of the pond. If you go to any politico parties in Europe you will hear nothing but stories about the heavy-handedness and arrogance with which this US administration is conducting itself abroad amongst it's allies. Stupid stories, all of them, but that's all you hear. Although these are anecdotal, I'm happy to give them some credence based of the manner that I see this administration behaving in public. You can dress this up any way you like — but that is the prevailing sentiment in Europe, and it is this sentiment that, I believe, BHO was endeavoring to defuse.

BTW, I still want to know where you got that ridiculous piece touting US foreign policy successes abroad that you posted yesterday. Was that a press release of some kind?

[Rikao4]

Der Spiegel ,is the german NYT / Huffy post.

Rika

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by Dottore

Not to flog another dead horse, but Der Spiegel recently carried a Europe-wide survey of approval for US foreign policy (particularly the conduct of same by the current administration) which was pretty telling. You think this adminsitrations approval ratings are low in the US—check out this survey.

If Europeans disapprove of our foreign policy, then that just further convinces me we're doing the right thing. If they approved, I'd be worried. They are weak-willed, narcissistic appeasers. Changing demographics will likely swallow up the U.K., France and Germany. When they become majority Muslim nations, I'll make the wild guess they'll continue to disapprove of the U.S.