March 17, 2005
HOW ARE THOSE BOLTON HEARINGS LOOKING?:
Annan's Bow at Arafat's Grave Sparks Outrage in City (MEGHAN CLYNE, March 17, 2005, NY Sun)
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's decision to lay a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat while on his way to the dedication of a Holocaust museum in Israel is infuriating New York politicians and Jewish leaders, some of whom are labeling Mr. Annan's gesture "outrageous," "grotesque," and an example of "mindless incompetence."The secretary-general joined world leaders in Israel on Tuesday to commemorate the opening of a new Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. His visit Monday to Mr. Arafat's grave rankled some representatives of the United Nations' host city, who said Mr. Annan had damaged the world body's already poor public image and may have further imperiled U.N. plans to expand into neighboring parts of Turtle Bay.
Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, a Democrat who represent parts pf Brooklyn and Queens in Congress, said yesterday: "It is almost grotesque to travel to Israel to pay tribute to the 6 million Jews massacred in the Shoah and use the opportunity to pay tribute to a terrorist who is responsible for murdering thousands more."
"Just when I think the U.N. and its leadership had reached a new low," Mr. Weiner added, "I am reminded that when it comes to Israel, and sensitivity toward the Jewish community, there is no bottom to their pit."
When Ronald Reagan stopped at Bitburg he was on a visit to the German people and paid his respects to their war dead at their request, so it was appropriate. Paying respect to Arafat specifically on a trip to a Holocaust remembrance in Israel is incomprensibly bad form.
MORE:
Bitburg also afforded President Reagan the opportunity to deliver one of his best speeches, in which you can see how clear a precursor he was to George W. Bush:
Four decades ago we waged a great war to lift the darkness of evil from the world, to let men and women in this country and in every country live in the sunshine of liberty. Our victory was great, and the Federal Republic, Italy, and Japan are now in the community of free nations. But the struggle for freedom is not complete, for today much of the world is still cast in totalitarian darkness.Posted by Orrin Judd at March 17, 2005 2:18 PMTwenty-two years ago President John F. Kennedy went to the Berlin Wall and proclaimed that he, too, was a Berliner. Well, today freedom-loving people around the world must say: I am a Berliner. I am a Jew in a world still threatened by anti-Semitism. I am an Afghan, and I am a prisoner of the Gulag. I am a refugee in a crowded boat foundering off the coast of Vietnam. I am a Laotian, a Cambodian, a Cuban, and a Miskito Indian in Nicaragua. I, too, am a potential victim of totalitarianism.
The one lesson of World War II, the one lesson of nazism, is that freedom must always be stronger than totalitarianism and that good must always be stronger than evil. The moral measure of our two nations will be found in the resolve we show to preserve liberty, to protect life, and to honor and cherish all God's children.
These Jewish "leaders" keep voting for the same type of people & policies that lead to the holocaust.
Posted by: ray at March 17, 2005 8:20 PMAnd like the Sharptons and Jacksons of the black community, they too are unelected & self-appointed.
Posted by: Oswald Booth Czolgosz at March 17, 2005 9:47 PMThere was no excuse for Reagan's visit to an SS burial ground. Once the SS butchered American POWs at Malmedy, the SS became war criminals as an institution. There were many in the veterans' community who opposed Reagan's trip at the time, including the VFW, so it was not merely a 'Jewish' issue no matter how some may wish to spin it.
Posted by: at March 18, 2005 9:20 AMYes, and vets still hate the Nips too.
Posted by: oj at March 18, 2005 9:25 AMThe only reason Bitburg became an issue is because the media found something to zing Reagan with right after winning 49 states.
Remember, his walk through the cemetery was covered LIVE on the networks, something they never would have done otherwise.
If moral outrage was so important (and consistent), where was the media when Arafat was sleeping at the White House?
Posted by: jim hamlen at March 18, 2005 9:45 AMoj,
And what American Head of State has laid a wreath at the Yasukuni Shrine? It is fair to say that Japan is a far more important ally of the US today than Germany ever was.
Posted by: bart at March 18, 2005 10:19 AMComparing apples and oranges.
Hirohito was no Hitler. He was instrumental in helping us to move Japan from being a militarist feudal state to being the friendly, mercantile power it is today. That is why he got the 'royal treatment.' Blaming him for the excesses of the Japanese regime is ahistorical. Lots of Japanese emperors have ended up sliced into sushi for opposing the military leadership. And our relationship with Japan has always been different. We reconciled with its samurai class, which is why Morita got to run Sony and why the longtime President of the Bank of Tokyo, the most important private sector position in Japan, was Marshall Tojo's eldest surviving son.
The Yasukuni Shrine is generally understood to honor, inter alia, war criminals. Members of the SS units that butchered American POWs at Malmedy and elsewhere were at Bitburg. So my question remains the valid one.
Posted by: bart at March 18, 2005 11:00 AMHis victims were only Chinese, not Jews?
Posted by: oj at March 18, 2005 11:03 AMWhat makes you think that Hirohito was more responsible for the crimes of the Japanese Empire than Victor Emmanuel was for those of Mussolini's Italy?
Posted by: bart at March 18, 2005 11:58 AMHerbert P. Bix
bart, you know i often agree with you, but supporting hirihito to score a debating point is no way to go about things. if he wasn't complicit he should have stepped down, left the country, and denounced the tojo regime from afar.
oj: regan could have found a better way to express his condolences, but in no way was he doing what the media jack asses were trying to say he was.
Posted by: cjm at March 18, 2005 1:21 PMThroughout Japanese history, the guy sitting on the Chrysanthemum throne has been more figurehead than power player. Often, when Japan was engulfed in feudal conflicts, the Emperor was little more than under house arrest. After WWII, Hirohito served a specific and noble function for which we need to give him some appreciation. He was a clear force for modernization and a close relation with the US for which he should be recognized.
Should he have done more to stop the militarists in WWII? Of course. But what could he have done? Flee the country? They'd have sliced his head off before he got to the pantry of his palace.
Reagan at Bitburg did take lemons and make lemonade, but he should never have been put in that position. It is only because of historical ignoramuses like Deaver and Nazi sympathizers like Buchanan that it happened. There were certainly Wehrmacht cemeteries where the same point could have been made. Might I respectfully suggest a WWI cemetary in Alsace called Hartmanswillerkopf which would have been perfect.
Posted by: bart at March 18, 2005 5:01 PM