Good Question
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“How does a known anti-Semite walk onto a U.S. government plane with the Secretary of State, as a member of the President’s delegation – representing the United States of America – without anyone knowing how he got there or who recommended him?”
– Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, January 28, 2005
Congressman Emanuel raises the question in regard to Myron Kuropas, an adjunct associate professor at Northern Illinois University who somehow wound up as a member of the official American delegation to Ukraine for the inauguration of President Yushchenko. Mr. Kuropas, in a Saturday statement reported by the Associated Press, denied being an anti-Semite but allowed as how he did have “personal differences with certain Jewish behavior.” According to Mr. Emanuel, in 2000 Mr. Kuropas said, “Big money drives the Holocaust industry. To survive, the Holocaust industry is always searching for its next mark. Ukraine’s turn is just around the corner.”
A White House spokesman has said that if it had known of Mr. Kuropas’s record it would not have included him in the delegation. That is only appropriate, particularly with regard to a country like Ukraine, whose history is tainted by terrible outbreaks of anti-Semitism, the most famous being the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648 to 1649, when more than 100,000 Jews were killed. This tragic dimension to Ukraine’s story runs through the widespread collaboration by Ukrainians with the Nazi war against the Jews. Mr. Yushchenko, whose father was in Auschwitz, is widely admired in part because he is so determined to take the country in a different direction.
The point here goes beyond Ukraine or the Jews and has to do with the alertness of the White House. It is worth someone at the White House – not only the Democrats in Congress, but someone with Mr. Bush’s interests at heart – asking how, so soon after the Bernard Kerik debacle, this White House committed another failure of vetting. The Kuropas appointment isn’t the most important to come across the president’s screen. But the process is important, and if it isn’t improved, Mr. Bush is going to be in for a tough second term.
