If you happen to work for the Obama Administration and you’re reading these words, get ready for an earful. According to columnist Marcin Bosacki of Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, Eastern European and particularly Polish discontent with the White House is high, and the reasons essentially boil down to the following:
The decision to ditch the Bush-era anti-missile shield which was to be built in Poland and the Czech Republic and come along with substantial military assistance – offering a measure of security that if push came to shove with Moscow, the U.S. would step up to the plate; and driving this, America’s ‘great power’ desire to cozy up to Russia at Poland’s and Eastern Europe’s expense.
The straw that seems to have broken the camel’s back, Bosacki indicates, was Washington’s failure to grasp the importance of the passing of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of WWII – by ‘dispatching a nobody’ – Clinton-era defense secretary William Perry rather, than someone who means something in Washington. After Poland expressed incredulity, National Security Adviser General Jim Jones was sent instead.
For Gazeta Wyborcza, Marcin Bosacki writes in part:
On March 12, 1999, former Foreign Minister Bronis?aw Geremek signed the independence protocols for Polish accession to NATO. In his speech, he mentioned the famous 1989 Solidarity poster with Gary Cooper and said: ‘For Poles, today is ‘High Noon …’”
“That was the very height of the Polish-American love affair. Today it is the twilight – punctuated by Obama’s withdrawal from national commitments with Poland and the Czech Republic on missile defense and by dispatching a nobody in the Washington political world – William Perry – to the 70th anniversary commemoration of the outbreak of war [WWII], an event pregnant with meaning not only to Poland but for world history. Only after indignant noises from Poland was he substituted with someone more important – [National Security Adviser] General James Jones.
“We were in Bosnia and Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Our soldiers, as Americans have repeatedly emphasized, did actual combat in those places – this was not for show. Polish intelligence collaborated hand in hand (sometimes excessively) with the U.S. war on terrorism. Poland awarded the United States the biggest contract in our military history – for F-16 aircraft. For helping with Iraq, the biggest gambit of Polish foreign policy of the last 20 years, we gained nothing.
“Americans don’t make gifts to those they like. They give when they consider it necessary, or to those who have powerful lobbies in Washington. Poland has no such lobby. … let’s be grateful to Obama because – I hope – he has taught us something. The so-called realists around him, with their fixation on the great game of the world powers and rejecting the linkage between values and politics may often be wrong. But Obama and the realists may teach us that in international politics, not only is there no place for romance, but for leaving oneself without alternatives.”
By Marcin Bosacki
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
August 31, 2009
Poland – Gazeta Wyborcza – Original Article (Polish)
Tomorrow’s date is one worth remembering (September 1). Not only as the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of war [WWII], but also as the date of the symbolic end of a historic Polish-American love affair.
On March 12, 1999, former Foreign Minister Bronis?aw Geremek signed the independence protocols for Polish accession to NATO. In his speech, he mentioned the famous 1989 Solidarity poster with Gary Cooper and said: “For Poles, today is “High Noon …” [Poland’s first free elections after Communism were held in 1989. Solidarity – a party formed out of Polish trade unions and led by Lech Walesa, won. See poster below].
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