JVLV.NET: “Hope and Change” Cannot Wait Until 2016! “Let Us Not Give this Posthumous Victory to Hitler.” By Jiri and Leni Friedman Valenta, 1-17-2015

 “I’ve never made such extreme and far-reaching proposals in all my years in this business. I’ve never proposed such a drastic overhaul,” wrote Leslie Gelb, Emeritus President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR),  in the January 13, Daily Beast.  “This is  Obama´s Last Foreign Policy Chance.” 

Kudo  to Leslie, an  old wise man of the Democratic Party’s establishment, for his  courage to speak up and  propose the replacement our entire National Security Team.  Leslie rightfully worries he may sound extreme, but to those of us with expertise in analysis  it is deeply painful that it takes so long for the rest of America to catch up.  We are also running out of time. Leslie took the plunge, and hopefully has emboldened more of us.

I have known Leslie since the early 1970´s when I worked at Brookings.  He is one of the most thoughtful, careful and experienced former senior officials we have. I am familiar with almost all his publications and follow his columns in the Daily Beast, The National Interest  and the New York Times religiously.  There is no more dedicated and more heartfelt patriot.  He has suggested some brilliant National Security Council (NSC) replacements and certainly he should be one of them. So should present CFR president, Richard Haas.  Leslie fully comprehends we are facing  the rise of a Nazi-like horror with Muslim face.   As Claud Landzman, producer of Shoah, opined  in Le Monde, “Let us not give Hitler this posthumous victory.”

Gelb is surely not alone in noting the incredible symbolism of the president´s absence at the Paris solidarity rally.  We too have noted  the president´s stubborn, pubescent rejection of foreign policy realities at jvlv.net  --  “President Obama Missing in Action in Paris”  and   “We Are at War, Mr. President – Yes, With Islamist Terrorists” (scroll down).  The Paris massacres must be clearly classified as an Act of War. No more “lone wolves” blather.  We are discussing global war, invasions of homelands and actions inspired and financed from abroad.  Up to 150,000 police and troops are being tied down in the French homeland to protect Jewish schools, synagogues, shops and Muslim mosques, while pursuing sleeper cells. Yet our president, unlike Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron,  is unwilling to even define the enemy as “Islamist terrorists” much less admit that we are now in a global war. 

The President´s M.I.A. at the Paris solidarity rally was the last straw.  As Leslie put it, “ it demonstrated beyond argument that the Obama team lacks the basic instincts and judgment necessary to conduct U.S. national security policy in the next two years.”   Frankly, Johnny-Kerry-Come-Lately´s  belated guitar diplomacy in Paris is an additional embarrassment.  But we´re more concerned about his diplomacy with Iran and its slow ride towards possession of nuclear weapons.  Leslie describes Kerry as “quixotic” a term evoking the metal mercury. 

Let us add to  Leslie’s observation about the symbolism of the President’s absence in Paris.  Days later came his release of four Islamist terrorists from GITMO.  Ask yourself if the timing could have been worse!   Ask yourself why this was done without congressional knowledge, and is coupled with the President´s determination to close GITMO.  Incompetence?  Stupidity?  Chamberlain-like appeasement?

Consider  Obama´s  early removal of the Winston Churchill bust from the White House –another symbol.    One can understand that a man  who spent his early childhood in the  Muslim, former colonies of Kenya and Indonesia,  might not necessarily worship the former leader of the British empire. Nevertheless, Churchill, for America  and Europe has a different meaning.  He, FDR  and de Gaulle helped to save Western civilization from the Nazi terrorists.  The understanding of Churchill´s role and legacy  is the bedrock for any President´s successful execution of his duties.

Unlike in Europe, the WWII war theater was remote to many Americans.  For full disclosure, this writer was born on April 9 1945 to a Czech Jewish mother hiding in the basement of her future Christian in-laws in the German-occupied protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.   A Kafka-sequel story.  Illegitimate! The Nuremberg laws did not permit my parents to marry.  I grew up with the tales of surviving relatives about relatives who did not survive.  Among those who lived were two unsung heroes, my Christian grandfather, Frantisek and my Russian Orthodox, White Guard uncle, Ivan. Both were incarcerated as “White Jews” for refusing to divorce their Jewish wives, Fanny and Irma Stein. They were the first to say, “Je suis Juif,” the cry of some of those at the Paris rally.

Grandfather  also told me that my mother only survived because she became pregnant with me.  The Nazis were nothing if not methodical.  They killed the full Jews first.  In the summer of 1944, as the Red and allied armies were approaching the Nazi “caliphate,” Nietzsche-like, diabolic predecessors of today Islamists began to also incarcerate the Mischlinges [mixed race Jews] according to our degree of Jewish blood.  I had less of  that tainted “blood”  than my mother so she made it to Liberation. My uncle, Lada, long received  German reparation for his incarceration and I just received a small inheritance from my slaughtered great grandfather, Arnold Stein, gassed in Auschwitz, 1942)

Now, as the terror and counter-terror  have spread through Belgium to Ann Frank´s homeland in Holland and through Germany to my native, Bohemia, both my mother and Uncle Lada, holocaust survivors,  are again trembling.  While to the Nazis all Jews, mischlinges and  Christian “White Jews” had to die, to the Islamists, wearing the mantle of Nazis extremism,  it is necessary to behead  those who do not convert to Islam.  

Leslie´s crucial point was, “It’s simply too dangerous to let Mr. Obama continue as is.” It is indeed heartbreaking to attack the man whose 2008 election one of these writers supported.  Mea Culpa.  Why did we not vet the President more carefully to learn how his upbringing, outlook and  ideology might shape his policies.?   

 Sadly, Mr. Obama is no FDR or Reagan and we desperately need one --  a leader whose patriotism,  out-of-the-box  thinking,  and executive experience can win the war that this President denies even exists. His dereliction of duty is of such  magnitude that dismissing the incompetents of our National Security team as Gelb has proposed is at least a step towards our own salvation.  Time may prove Gelb right  “This is Obama´s Last Foreign Policy Chance.” It may be our last chance as well!