[BRIGADE] PJB: The Apologists
Published: Tue, 04/21/09
by Patrick J. Buchanan
April 21, 2009
For 50 minutes, Obama sat mute, as a Marxist thug from Nicaragua
delivered his diatribe, charging America with a century of
terrorist aggression in Central America.
After Daniel Ortega finished spitting in our face, accusing us of
inhumanity toward Fidel Castro's Cuba, Obama was asked his thoughts.
"I thought it was 50 minutes long. That's what I thought."
Hillary Clinton was asked to comment: "I thought the cultural
performance was fascinating," she cooed.
Pressed again on Ortega's vitriol, Hillary replied: "To have those
first-class Caribbean entertainers all on one stage and to see how
much was done in such a small amount of space. I was overwhelmed."
Thus the nation that won the Cold War, contained the cancer of
Castroism in Cuba, liberated Grenada, blocked communist takeovers
of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, and poured scores of
billions in aid into this region was left undefended by its own
leaders at the Summit of the Americas.
Nor was this the only unanswered insult. Hugo Chavez, who has
called Obama an "ignoramus" and Bush "El Diablo," walked over to a
seated U.S. president and handed him the anti-American tract "Open
Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a
Continent."
The book blames Latin America's failures on white Europeans.
It opens, "Renaissance Europeans ventured across the oceans and
buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations."
Civilizations? Before Pizarro and Cortez, the Inca and Aztec
empires these conquistadors overthrew were into human sacrifice.
Evo Morales, the Aymaran president of Bolivia, who is using the
race card against Bolivians of European descent, implied a U.S.
role in an assassination plot against him.
Argentina's Cristina Kirchner, who allegedly received black-bag
money from Chavez, ripped into America for its role in the 1980s.
Under Reagan, America aided Britain in the Falklands War, after the
Argentine junta invaded the islands, and assisted the Contras in
their war of national liberation to oust Ortega's Sandinistas.
Again, Obama offered no defense of his country.
President Lula da Silva of Brazil, who blames the world financial
crisis on "white, blue-eyed bankers," told Obama that any future
Summit of the Americas without the Castro brothers was unacceptable.
Perhaps Obama believes in turn-the-other-cheek diplomacy, though it
is hard to find much success in history for such a policy. Perhaps
pacifism is in his DNA. Perhaps he shares the indictment of America
that is part of the repertoire of every Latin demagogue.
Whatever his motive, in Trinidad, there were not two sides to the
story. There were the trashers of America on the Latino left and a
U.S. president who wailed plaintively, "I'm thankful that President
Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was 3
months old."
But, the Bay of Pigs, had it succeeded, would have given Cubans 50
years of freedom instead of the brutal dictatorship they have had
to endure. And it took place four months before Barack was born.
Obama's silence -- signifying, as it does, assent -- in the face of
attacks on his country is of a piece with the "contrition tour" of
his secretary of state.
"Clinton Scores Points by Admitting Past U.S. Errors," was the
headline over Saturday's New York Times story by Mark Landler:
"It has become a recurring theme of Hillary Rodham Clinton's early
travels as the chief diplomat of the United States: She says that
American policy on a given issue has failed, and her foreign
listeners fall all over themselves in gratitude.
"On Friday, Mrs. Clinton said ... that the uncompromising policy of
the Bush administration toward Cuba had not worked. ...
"The contrition tour goes beyond Latin America. In China, Mrs.
Clinton told audiences that the United States must accept its
responsibility as a leading emitter of greenhouse gases. In
Indonesia, she said the American-backed policy of sanctions against
Myanmar had not been effective. And in the Middle East, she pointed
out that ostracizing the Iranian government had not persuaded it to
give up its nuclear weapons ambitions."
Sandler wrote that Hillary brought to mind Bill Clinton:
"On a single trip to Africa in 1998 ... Bill Clinton apologized for
American participation in slavery; American support of brutal
African dictators; American 'neglect and ignorance' of Africa;
American failure to intervene sooner in the Rwandan genocide of
1994; American 'complicity' in apartheid ... ."
Yet, as C.S. Lewis reminds us in "God in the Dock," "The first and
fatal charm of national repentance is ... the encouragement it
gives us to turn from the bitter task of repenting our own sins to
the congenial one of bewailing -- but, first, of denouncing -- the
conduct of others."
Bewailing the policies of Bush as failures and standing mute in the
face of attacks on his country and predecessors may come back to
bite Obama.
For when Jimmy Carter assumed a posture of moral superiority over
LBJ and Richard Nixon, by declaring, "We have gotten over our
inordinate fear of communism," it came back to bite him, good and
hard.
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