By: Ronald Kessler
“For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world.” For stating the obvious in Oslo, President Obama is being applauded by liberals and conservatives alike.
“I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people,” Obama said.
Isn’t that the duty he undertook when he was sworn in as president?
“A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies,” Obama said. “Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida’s leaders to lay down their arms.”
The irony is that President George W. Bush made these points all the time — to the constant derision of liberals and the media.
“In the 1920s, a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan superstate in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews,” Bush said on Sept. 5, 2006. “The world ignored Hitler’s words, and paid a terrible price. His Nazi regime killed millions in the gas chambers and set the world aflame in war before it was finally defeated at a terrible cost in lives.”
Who can forget the controversy Bush generated by referring to Iran, North Korea, and Iraq as the “axis of evil?”
For engaging in war with Iraq and toppling a man who killed 300,000 people, Bush was compared to Hitler. Yet because of Bush, Saddam’s regime no longer inflicts torture on Iraqis by methods such as attaching electric prods to their genitals, drilling holes in their ankles and skulls. Nor does it force Iraqi men to watch gang rapes of their wives and sisters.
In all, Bush liberated 50 million people.
To be sure, Obama’s decision to support a troop surge in Afghanistan is to be applauded. But by saying when he will start withdrawing troops, Obama is sending Americans into battle under a heavy handicap. The enemy knows that Obama’s claim that “our security is at stake” is more hot air.
From deciding to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Manhattan to threatening prosecutions of CIA officers who used enhanced interrogation to obtain plans for devastating further attacks, Obama has shown that he is willing to risk more attacks on the U.S.
In doing so, he belies the fine words he uttered in Oslo.
