Paul Kengor: Obama's Walesa Moment

Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College, executive director of The Center for Vision & Values, and author of the new book, The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor. 

Last week, President Barack Obama rejected the world's most powerful living symbol of anti-communism, anti-Sovietism, and victory in the Cold War. The White House declined to have Lech Walesa stand in for the late Jan Karski, who posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Our president spurned Walesa, first president of free Poland, who had once risked everything to courageously join Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II in keeping Solidarity alive in Poland. Like Reagan and John Paul II, Walesa knew that Solidarity could be the wedge to split the Communist Bloc from top to bottom, as it indeed did, thereby making possible elections in Poland in June 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the execution of Ceausescu on Christmas Day 1989, the liberation of Eastern Europe en masse, and peaceful victory in the Cold War.

Obama's snubbing of Walesa follows several peculiar actions that upset the people of Poland. On September 17, 2009, he canceled plans for a joint missile defense system between the United States and Poland, one of our most dependable post-Cold War NATO allies. Obama did so for pro-Russian reasons. His action on that particular date was stunning: It was precisely 70 years to the day, September 17, 1939, when Russia invaded Poland, in compliance with the sinister Hitler-Stalin Pact. Poles certainly noticed the irony.

Obama's snubbing of Walesa also follows his recent private assurance to Dmitri Medvedev and Vladimir Putin -- inadvertently caught on tape by an open mic -- that, in regard to missile defense and nuclear issues, he would "have more flexibility" "after my election." In other words, more pro-Russia steps at Poland's expense.

Obama's snubbing of Walesa also came alongside a terrible gaffe about "Polish death camps."

Obama's staff seems surprised that Poles reacted so suspiciously to Obama's gaffe. Gee, I wonder why they're suspicious….

To me, none of this is a surprise...