Victor Davis Hanson has a way of bringing things down to earth and stating brute facts which too often get forgotten:
With all due respect, I also don't believe the world did anything to save Berlin, just as it did nothing to save the Rwandans or the Iraqis under Saddam — or will do anything for those of Darfur; it was only the U.S. Air Force that risked war to feed the helpless of Berlin as it saved the Muslims of the Balkans. . .
Perhaps conflict-resolution theory posits there are no villains, only
misunderstandings; but I think military history suggests that
culpability exists — and is not merely hopelessly relative or just in
the eye of the beholder. So despite Obama’s soaring moral rhetoric, I
am troubled by his historical revisionism that, “The two superpowers
that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too
often to destroying all we have built and all that we love.”
I would beg to differ again, and suggest instead that a mass-murdering
Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (as it
had, in fact, wiped out millions of its own people) and much beyond as
well — and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US
superpower and its nuclear deterrence. When the Soviet Union collapsed,
there was no danger to the world from American nuclear weapons
“destroying all we have built” — while the inverse would not have been
true, had nuclear and totalitarian communism prevailed. We sleep too
lightly tonight not because democratic Israel has obtained nuclear
weapons, but because a frightening Iran just might.
When Obama shouts,
Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don't look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?
it
is the world, not the U.S., that needs to listen most. In this regard I
would have preferred Sen. Obama of mixed ancestry to have begun with
“In the recent tradition of African-American Secretaries of State Colin
Powell and Condoleezza Rice,” rather than the less factual, “I don't
look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city.”
I want also to shout back that the United States does stand for the
rule of law, as even the killers of Guantanamo realize with their
present redress of grievances, access to complex jurisprudence, and
humane treatment — all in a measure beyond what such terrorists would
receive anywhere else. It is the United States that takes in more
immigrants than does any country in the world, and thus is the prime
destination of those who flee the miseries of this often wretched
globe.
American immigration policies are humane, not only in
easy comparison to the savagery shown the “other” in Africa or the
Middle East, but fair and compassionate in comparison to what we see
presently accorded aliens in Mexico, France, and, yes, Germany. Again,
in all this fuzziness — this sermonizing in condescending fashion
reminiscent at times of the Pennsylvania remonstration — there is the
whiff of American culpability, but certainly not much of a nod to
American exceptionalism. Politicians characteristically say to
applauding audiences abroad what they wish to hear. True statesmen
often do not.
In terms of foreign affairs, I think Americans
will finally come to vote for a candidate, who with goodwill, a lot of
humility, and a little grace, can persuade the world that universal
moral progress, freedom, and material prosperity best advance under the
aegis of free markets, constitutional government, and individual
freedom, rather than for someone who seems to think, in naïve fashion,
that these are necessarily shared and natural human practices, or are
presently in force outside the West — or will arise due to dialogue or
international good intentions.
Update 7/26/08: The Wall Street Journal editorialized on Obama's Berlin speech. The WSJ liked these lines: "In the darkest hour, the pof Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up..." but noted "This, from a U.S. Senator whose consistent message to the people of Baghdad, a similarly besieged city, also dependent one America's protection, has been, in effect, to give up.
Update #2 7/26/08 - John Bolton ofers his own critique.
Update #3 7/26/08 - David Pryce Jones explains the European adulation:
They’re all hoping for a president who will dismantle everything the United States stands for, and so prove them to be the intellectual and moral superiors they think they are.