Tongued-Tied about Bosnia
Of course, that omission didn’t surprise those of us who understand that the "agent of change” who never misses an opportunity to vacuously boast "this is our moment, this is our time” is nothing more than a made in Chicago retread liberal.
No, unlike Belfast’s Telegraph, we weren’t foolish enough to believe Obama really would deliver a message of "tough love” to Europeans "at a time when Germany is currently under pressure to send more troops to Afghanistan.”
Neither, like the Telegraph, did we buy a line of audacious but empty hope, only to admit later the reality that Obama’s speech in Berlin was "long on ideals and rhetoric and short on detail . . . just what his audience wanted to hear.”
Ironically, Barack Obama could have picked up some important things to say about Bosnia and the real world in general if he had sat down with kindred spirit Roger Cohen, the left of center cosmopolite who writes for the NY Times; for Mr. Cohen would gladly have let his favorite candidate in on some things he was preparing to publish in a piece titled "Karadzic and War’s Lessons.”
Yes, if he had arranged that sit down, glib Barack could later have passed on to Europe’s sophisticated masses the following observation Cohen made with himself in mind but should have applied sardonically to every contemptible leftist ideologue who plumes himself as a non-partisan war correspondent and therefore "reports” of psychopathic fascist murderers that "one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
"Objectivity and neutrality are not synonymous. The head is useless without the heart. War teaches that better than journalism school.”
Obama could have shared, too, the following lessons of war Cohen tells us he learned from the people he met in Bosnia, people who were victims of a madness that visited the greatest evil upon Europe since the years of Nazi fascism, people who fought against it, people who pleaded with the rest of Europe, with the rest of the world, for help:
"the stubbornness of love”
"the fierceness of moral clarity”
"the quietness of courage”
"the indivisibility of integrity and the importance of a single dissenting voice.”
If he had sat down with Roger Cohen, Barack Obama might have reminded Europeans of all those truths. But he would have had to recall two other crucial truths about Bosnia on his own because Cohen evidently regards them as so inconvenient that they tie up his tongue:
It was France — despite the horrific murders and the rape camps run by Karadzic and his thugs — that was in the vanguard of initiating and then maintaining an embargo on the shipment of arms to the Bosnians so that they could defend themselves.
It was not Cohen’s vague "U.S. government” that obediently and meekly followed the lead of the French but the administration headed by Bill Clinton, the arrogant, lying coward beloved in Europe for being, well, so exquisitely European.
Yes, Barack Obama could have spoken about an atrocity that happened in Europe only yesterday. He could have spoken about the egregious sin Europe committed when it denied help to a suffering people who asked only to be given the means by which to defend themselves.
And Obama could have done it politely, explaining that Europe can’t serve as the world’s policeman, must use its limited resources wisely, etc. before delivering a punch line that begins like this:
But when an unspeakable human tragedy occurs right in your own backyard, a backyard an hour away from most of the neighborhood’s major capitals . . .
Unfortunately Barack didn’t deliver, remaining tongued tied about Bosnia because he’s a liberal.
Therefore, he spoke vaguely to cheering throngs whose cultural history impels them to maniacally roar approval of political leaders who bluster empty words, words, words not just to pander but to protect himself and his ideology, because one day, when the Mexican border, for example, has degenerated into a hell that makes Columbia look like a playground, he’ll ascend a podium not to speak the hard truth but to prattle hazily, duplicitously, and cowardly about knocking down every wall his expedient mind can think of. |
