Obama’s Grand Tour

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The New York Sun

LONDON — Even before November’s presidential election, Barack Obama already is being treated as the most important person on earth. The mere prospect of his appearance in London on July 18 — as a brief stopover on a tour that will, we are assured, take him to Paris, Berlin, and Israel, and very likely to Iraq and Afghanistan — has the London press salivating.

Mr. Obama’s second coming — he spent 24 hours in Europe a decade ago — promises to be less a visit than a visitation. It does, however, run the risk of hubris. The main focus of the European leg of Mr. Obama’s trip will be a speech in Berlin, which he apparently hopes will be compared to John F. Kennedy’s speech there in June 1963.

On that memorable occasion, two years after the Berlin Wall had effectively cut off human contact between the two halves of the divided city, the then president of America told the beleaguered West Berliners that America would not abandon them. “Ich bin ein Berliner!” he declared from the Schöneberg Town Hall. “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.”

Does Mr. Obama really want to have comparisons made between Kennedy’s robust defense of a freedom and democracy agenda not unlike that of President Bush, and his own pledge to withdraw from Iraq within 16 months? Will Mr. Obama really have the chutzpah to contrast the Cold War, of which Kennedy was an enthusiastic proponent, with the War on Terror? It seems foolhardy.

Kennedy went even further that day when he visited the Berlin Wall itself. At Checkpoint Charlie, the crossing point to East Berlin, the president declared: “There are some who say in Europe and elsewhere, ‘We can work with the Communists.’ Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it’s true that Communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress … Let them come to Berlin.”

Note how uncompromising Kennedy was. His words were aimed at the contemporary equivalent of the “realists,” who today dominate much of the Democratic Party’s thinking on foreign policy. He saw them as appeasers, as indeed they were. He had in mind the kind of people who offer unconditional talks with sworn enemies of Western civilization. What was it that Mr. Obama originally promised to do with President Ahmadinejad of Iran?

Note, too, Kennedy’s use of the word “evil.” Which other American President used that word in connection with the Soviet Union? Yes, Ronald Reagan — not a Democrat — had a precedent for his “evil empire” jibe that upset the State Department so much. And it was Reagan who, in a conscious echo of Kennedy, appealed to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 to “tear down this Wall!”

Indeed, if there is a candidate who really deserves to assume the mantle both of Kennedy and Reagan as Cold Warriors, it is not Mr. Obama but John McCain. A man who fought the Communists in Vietnam, was imprisoned and tortured by them, yet remained undaunted and unbowed by them. Such a man has earned the right to echo and invoke the memory of presidential heroes of the past. Mr. McCain consistently has urged his countrymen to resist the Islamist threat, just as he did the Communist one, and he has never advocated retreat in the face of the enemy.

Mr. Obama may aspire to Kennedy’s aura, but his record of voting against almost every measure intended to support the War on Terror disqualifies him from claiming kinship with a president who fought Communism wherever he found it: in Cuba, in Vietnam, and in Europe.

Mr. Obama is reported to have embarrassed Chancellor Merkel by demanding to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, a privilege normally reserved for elected presidents only. This is a curious way to prove to the American people that he is fit to carry out diplomacy.

Barack Obama’s grand tour will take him on from the backwater of Europe to the much more politically sensitive theatre of the Middle East — to Israel and Iraq. It will be harder for him just to schmooze his way through these destinations, and the domestic audience will pay close attention to what he says there. He will probably try to tiptoe away from his 16 month timetable for leaving Iraq, while competing with Mr. McCain to sound more loyal to Israel and tough with Iran. Whether any of this will convince his Israeli or Iraqi hosts matters less to him than reassuring Americans that their vital interests are safe in his hands.

By the time Mr. Obama reaches Afghanistan, the novelty will have worn off. But what he says there may prove to have real significance if he becomes president. For he has real strategic choices there: American prestige is not at stake in the same way as it is in Iraq. The rest of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization could — and should — shoulder more of the burden. Pakistan and India are deeply involved — as the destruction of India’s mission in Kabul has just reminded us. So Mr. Obama’s words in Kabul, though they will probably receive less attention than whatever he says in Berlin, Jerusalem, and Baghdad, actually deserve more.

The arrogance that animates the Obama machine’s attempt to hijack the Kennedy myth is incredible. Yet Mr. Obama will probably get away with it — so eager are the Europeans to worship him. It hardly matters what he says — and much of what he says will necessarily be vacuous anyway.

It will be enough for him to smile and wave to adoring crowds. No American presidential candidate has ever been more feted in anticipation.

Mr. Johnson is the editor of Standpoint.


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