Ask Not What Obama Will Do for Freedom
FOR TO ASK IS TO ANSWER
“The first time I met President Reagan I told him this story. I felt free to tell him everything. I told him of the brilliant day when we learned about his Evil Empire speech from an article in Pravda or Izvestia that found its way into the prison. When I said that our whole block burst out into a kind of loud celebration and that the world was about to change, well, then the president, this great tall man, just lit up like a schoolboy. His face lit up and beamed. He jumped out of his seat like a shot and started waving his arms wildly and calling for everyone to come in to hear “this man’s” story. It was really only then that I started to appreciate that it wasn’t just in the Soviet Union that President Reagan must have suffered terrible abuse for this great speech, but that he must have been hurt at home too. It seemed as though our moment of joy was the moment of his own vindication. That the great punishment he had endured for this speech was worth it.”
Q: “Can it really be said that Ronald Reagan was actually responsible for an event as great as the collapse of the Soviet Union?”
A: “Yes.”–Natan Sharansky
Like prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, Iranian students ask:
“Obama, Obama, Are you with the regime or with us?”
An Italian Court asked Obama a similar question:
An Italian judge on Wednesday convicted 23 Americans in absentia of the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street, in a landmark case involving the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program in the war on terrorism.
Bob Dole e-mailed, Your Honor. He said you can have those agents back–when Italy gives him back the use of his right arm, which he left at Castel d’Aiano in the Apennines when your Nazi pals shot him in the back, you Mussolini-worshiping spaghetti-spined cognoscenti.
But then, why should an Italian judge show more regard for CIA agents than the President and the Attorney General of the United States? They have repeatedly used CIA agents as a political football as it suited their needs, threatening them even now with prosecution.
That judge was asking Obama the same question as the Iranian students: Are you on the side of freedom or not? And the same answer comes back both times:
“Not”.
By the way, shall we expect the Italian Court’s indictment of these gentlemen for rendition?
Richard Clarke: “The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, “That’s a no-brainer. Of course it’s a violation of international law, that’s why it’s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.”
E baciare il mio.
- Entries
There's a reason it's not called "Arab-rusalem", Grand Kleagle. And the CIA wasn't "running amok"; they worked with the help of Italian authorities, who this judge also convicted. The only one running amok here is Judge Castratti. Like you, he reflexively sides with the PLO in Israel, al Qaeda in Italy and Obama in America.
When Reagan spoke, political prisoners rejoiced.
When Obama speaks, their jailers do.