TedLipien.com, Truckee, CA, February 08, 2011 — One would think that the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birthday could be a perfect public diplomacy theme for all U.S. embassies in Central and Eastern Europe — a great opportunity for embassy-sponsored events to strengthen ties with America among diverse nations that owe their current independence and freedom in large part to President Reagan’s vision combined with his steadfastness in standing up to the “Evil Empire.” And yet, both highly-trained and highly-paid U.S. diplomats working in the countries of the former Soviet Block by and large completely ignored the anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birthday. Only two diplomatic post out of more than a dozen in the region sponsored a public event designed to remind older and younger generations of East Europeans of Ronald Reagan’s contribution to freeing them from Soviet domination. Read more…
All posts tagged Franklin D. Roosevelt
Reagan is Out, Obama is In – U.S. Embassies in Central and Eastern Europe Ignore 100 Anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s Birthday
Why U.S. Public Diplomacy No Longer Works and Can It Be Fixed?
Update: America.gov restored my comment.
TedLipien.com, Truckee, California, December 27, 2010 — On the day the U.S. Senate voted to approve the new arms reduction treaty with Russia, I found an article on the State Depatment’s website, America.gov, which gave a long list of the START treaty’s benefits lauded by the Obama administration but failed to note any of the objections from some key Republican lawmakers and other critics. I posted a short comment that a website devoted to public diplomacy, with a name that implies that it represents the views of the entire American government and the American public, should try to present a more balanced perspective and mention some of the difficulties in getting the U.S.-Russian agreement approved by the Senate. Read more…
Leaked U.S. Embassy Warsaw Cables – Obama to the Poles: Have some Patriot missiles that don’t work to protect you from Russia
Obama to the Poles: Have some Patriot missiles that don’t work to protect you from Russia
Opinia.US Truckee, CA, December 6, 2010 — The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. has released and commented on a number of leaked U.S. cables dealing with Poland. There needs to be a much greater scrutiny of these cables by mainstream U.S. media and political pressure from Polonia voters to force President Obama to change his course on Poland. Read more…
Media Disinformation Influenced U.S. Diplomatic Report from Russia
Opinia.US Truckee, CA, December 5, 2010 — A newly disclosed secret cable to the State Department in Washington shows that American diplomats in Moscow sometimes fall for Russian media disinformation and pass it on without questioning while adding their own pro-Kremlin commentary. Most diplomatic cables from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, which have been released so far by WikiLeaks, seem, however, far more sceptical and critical of the Kremlin.
Read more…
Leaked State Department Cables Show Obama and Gates Naive on Russia
by Ted Lipien
Opinia.US Truckee, CA, November 29, 2010 — Leaked secret State Department cables may help to resolve the mystery as to why President Obama chose September 17, 2009 to make his announcement on canceling President Bush’s missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The announcement pleased the Kremlin, which had been pushing for the cancellation of the planned system for years. But why the Obama White House made the announcement on September 17, the anniversary of the Soviet military invasion of Poland in 1939 under the secret terms of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, is still not clear. Read more…
Polish Americans and the 1944 U.S. Elections — Example of White House Manipulation of Polonia Voters
Update: The results of the mid-term elections have shown that American voters have had a chance to evaluate President Obama and have strongly rejected his leadership. While economic and other domestic issues played a major role, it was also a vote of no confidence in his foreign policy. Read more…
Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane’s warning about naive idealism in foreign policy should be a lesson for Obama
SAN FRANCISCO — Arthur Bliss Lane (16 June 1894–12 August 1956) was the United States Ambassador to Poland (1944–1947). He served earlier as the U.S. Ambassador to the wartime Polish government-in-exile in London and was with the U.S. diplomatic mission in Poland in 1919. During the interwar period, he had a number of other diplomatic assignments in Western Europe and Latin America.
Arthur Bliss Lane served as Minister to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from June 1936 to September 1937, and was later transferred to Yugoslavia. He remained in Belgrade until the German occupation of April 1941. Later during the war, he was Minister to Costa Rica, October 1941 to April 1942, and Ambassador to Columbia, until October, 1944.
From October 1944 to May 1945, he was Ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile in London. In May 1945, he became Ambassador to the Polish Government in Warsaw after the United States and the United Kingdom transferred their recognition to the Soviet-dominated regime in Poland.
Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane resigned from the State Department in 1947, after a distinguished career in U.S. diplomatic service, in protest against what he saw as the betrayal of Poland by the United States and other Western allies toward the end of World War II and in the immediate period after the war.
In his book I Saw Poland Betrayed An American Ambassador Reports to the American People, he criticized President Roosevelt’s naive trust in Stalin and his concessions to the Soviet Union at the expense of Poland and other East Central European nations. The cost of Roosevelt’s deals with Stalin was not only decades of Soviet domination and communist repression in Europe but ultimately the Cold War, wars in Korea and Vietnam, thousands of American lives lost and billions of dollars in U.S. defense spending.
Roosevelt’s intentions, however, were not evil. In fact, they were noble and idealistic by the standards of international politics of his time. Roosevelt refused to see Stalin for what he really was, a ruthless dictator who had earlier made a deal with Hitler to divide Poland and take over the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) and parts of Finland and Romania.
Naive idealism combined with appeasement are dangerous qualities in any U.S. president. Former Czech president, playwright and human rights activist Vaclav Havel, who has been a supporter of Barack Obama, had this warning in response to the U.S. president’s refusal to see the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama:
Appeasing the Kremlin and the Chinese communists in the hope of winning concessions makes such concessions far less likely, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found out during her humilating visit to Moscow last week. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Medvedev couldn’t be more brutal in telling her that putting pressure on Iran to end its nuclear programs was not in Russia’s national interest, when in fact they meant their own interest. Prime Minister Putin went to China and was not around to receive her.
In fact any Russian scholar with a good sense of realism could have told President Obama that the current leaders in Russia want the U.S. out of Eastern Europe but don’t believe that they owe America anything if the Americans leave. They will also continue to rely on anti-Americanism to consolidate their power internally. They want oil prices to be as high as possible, and therefore want tensions to be high in the Middle East. For that reason, they want the United States to be bogged down both in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The only thing that the Obama Administration should expect from the Kremlin are Russian concessions that would allow the U.S. to continue and expand military operations in these two Muslim nations.
During World War II, when the stakes were still much higher than they are now, Arthur Bliss Lane was not the only one to see the danger in Roosevelt’s policy of appeasing the Soviet dictator. In 1942, another American diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union William Christian Bullitt Jr. accurately predicted the “flow of the Red amoeba into Europe“. Roosevelt responded to Bullitt, Jr. with a statement summarizing his rationale for war time relations with Stalin:
I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. . . . I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Since President Obama’s vision of U.S. foreign policy seems to resemble to some degree President Roosevelt’s worldview — as seen by Obama’s unilateral concessions to Russia on the missile defense, his often expressed hope for a “reset” in relations in Moscow, as well as his refusal to see the Dalai Lama at the White House in order to appease the Chinese communist leadership — the following excerpt from Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane’s I Saw Poland Betrayed book, might be relevant to any media discussion of current issues in U.S.-Polish and U.S.-Russian relations:
The public has a right to know when the executive branch of the government makes far-reaching commitments which affect millions of persons and which might seriously endanger the security of the United States. (…) The peace of the globe itself calls for the maintenance of a policy of firmness by the United States backed by military strength. History has already proved that such a policy is a far more effective deterrent of international aggression than a policy of inertia, vacillation or appeasement. Arthur Bliss Lane in “I Saw Poland Betrayed”
Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane’s book was published in 1948.
A book about Poland which Arthur Bliss Lane had with him while serving at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Warsaw in 1919. The book is now in my library.
The Yale University Library, where Arthur Bliss Lane’s private papers and documents are archived, has on its website additional information about his diplomatic career and his public activities after he resigned from the State Department.
“From April 1947 until his death in August 1956, Arthur Bliss Lane undertook a number of lecture tours, radio programs, articles and letters by which he worked to stimulate public opposition to the activities of the Soviet Union, particularily in Eastern Europe. In his speeches and writings, … Lane denounced both the spirit of the Yalta Agreement and the manner in which it was carried out. He became a critic of the Roosevelt Administration and of the Democratic Party.
During this period, Arthur Bliss Lane was a member and participant in many Polish charities and anti-Communist organizations, including committees supporting the investigation of the Katyn Forest Massacre. Lane campaigned vigorously in 1952 among the Slavic ethnic groups for the Republican Party and Dwight D. Eisenhower. After 1952, he urged diplomatic relations with the Vatican.”
As the Wikipedia article about this remarkable American diplomat correctly points out, while in Poland, “Lane was so saddened” by the Soviet domination of the country and the communist suppression of Polish patriots and democrats that he resigned his post on February 24, 1947. He wrote I Saw Poland Betrayed, “which detailed what he considered to be the failure of the United States and Britain to keep their promise that the Poles would have a free election after the war. In that book he described what he considered betrayal of Poland by the Western Allies, hence the title, I Saw Poland Betrayed.” The book was translated into Polish and published by an underground publishing house in Poland in the 1980s.
The Polish Wikipedia has a much longer and more detailed biography of Arthur Bliss Lane.
If any relatives or friends of Ambassador Bliss Lane would like to contact me with more information about his life and diplomatic career, please send an email to mail@tedlipien.com.
Barred from the White House, the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner sends Obama a letter with congratulations
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner would not receive at the White House the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who was on a visit this week to Washington. President Obama apparently wanted to avoid upsetting Chinese communist leaders before his official trip to China.
Unwelcome at the White House at this time, (White House officials said that the Dalai Lama would meet with Obama after the presidential trip to China.) the Dalai Lama sent the US president a letter, congratulating him on being awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize and praising his work toward world peace.
In his letter, the Dalai Lama also urged the US president to be a champion of liberty. “I have maintained that the founding fathers of the United States have made this country the greatest democracy and a champion of freedom and liberty,” the Dalai Lama wrote.
“It is, therefore, important for today’s American leaders to adopt principled leadership based on these high ideals. Such an approach will not only enhance the reputation of the United States, but also contribute tremendously to reducing tension in the world.”
A letter with a similar message, signed by another Nobel Peace Prize winner, Poland’s former president and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, former Czech president Vaclav Havel and a number of other Central European leaders, had been delivered to the White House earlier and was promptly ignored.
In a statement released on October 5, human rights organization Freedom House warned that 
President Obama’s apparent decision to postpone a meeting with the Dalai Lama sends the wrong signal to the Chinese government at a time when the authorities in Beijing are intensifying efforts to silence peaceful critics at home and abroad.
The NGO noted that Obama reportedly delayed meeting the Tibetan spiritual leader this week to win favor from China’s leaders ahead of his first visit to Beijing as president next month. It will be the first time since 1991 that the Dalai Lama has not met with the U.S. president while visiting Washington.
“The doors of the White House should always be open to a globally-revered advocate for peaceful efforts to secure fundamental human rights,” said Jennifer Windsor, Freedom House executive director. “It is hard to see how shunning the Dalai Lama will advance American interests. The Obama administration is presenting an unfortunate profile by putting human rights so conspicuously on the backburner in its relations with repressive regimes.”
Freedom House also pointed out that already this year, the administration has given only muted support to pro-democracy activists in Iran and has withdrawn funding from independent, pro-democracy activists in Egypt. On China, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said earlier this year that human rights would not “interfere” with the U.S. dialogue with China on other global concerns. READ MORE
There is a danger that the decision of the Nobel Peace Prize committee will further convince President Obama that his approach to international politics is the correct one. The largely friendly, often admiring, and mostly uncritical media in the US – with the exception of the conservative TV and radio channels, which most of his supporters view with disdain – are not likely to examine his decisions to any great depth and offer constructive criticism.
This may further convince President Obama that he knows how to achieve world peace. He may, however, turn out to be more like President Roosevelt than President Kennedy. The former thought that he could win over Stalin by accepting his demands to change Poland’s borders and place Eastern Europe firmly within Russia’s sphere of influence. FDR once said “I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. . . . I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world… of democracy and peace.”
Several American presidents who followed Roosevelt, including Kennedy – also a young and progressive Democrat like Obama – had to defend the United States at a great cost to the American people from the results of the decisions and the deals made by Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill at the Yalta conference.
If one compares the content and the tone of Roosevelt’s statements on world affairs with Obama’s, they are strikingly similar. If one compares Obama’s statements with Kennedy’s – starting with their inaugural speeches – they are strikingly different. There was no doubt whatsoever that President Kennedy was fully committed to the cause of defending human rights, and would not sacrifice the interests of America’s allies to win favors with the Kremlin, the Chinese communists, or Fidel Castro. If anything, he may have been initially too willing to use the CIA and military force in defense of freedom rather than rely on more indirect means like sending the right messages and backing them up with America’s strength as a nation willing to stand by its democratic ideals and its friends.
Kennedy would have never barred from visiting the White House an important religious leader representing an oppressed nation. Knowing that, Soviet leaders still thought – mistakenly, as it turns out – that Kennedy was naive and weak, because to them he appeared idealistic and inexperienced.
Even if today’s dictators and authoritarian rulers are not to be compared to Stalin, it is because they are far more sophisticated and can take better advantage of their opponents’ misconceptions and weaknesses. Sending the right moral message to them and to pro-democracy forces, which they try to suppress, can determine the course of history, as President Reagan aptly demonstrated with his right balance of principles, strength and flexibility in dealing with America’s enemies.
By unilaterally deciding to withdraw the US missile defense system from Poland and the Czech Republic, and announcing his decision on September 17, the day of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland at the beginning of WWII, President Obama left an impression in East Central Europe that his worldview is much more similar to that of President Roosevelt than to Kennedy’s, Reagan’s or most other US presidents after 1945.
Poland and the Dalai Lama have become a nuisance for President Obama, just as Poland had became a nuisance for President Roosevelt. It seems that from now on, Chinese communists will determine when President Obama can meet with the Dalai Lama. If President Obama chooses the same approach in dealing with Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev – and all indications are that he has already moved firmly in that direction – Lech Walesa may be sending more letters to the White House, which will have no effect whatsoever.
The uncritical media will cheer on, and President Obama may never learn an important history lesson. Shunning allies who share your values for a promise of a deal with those who don’t at the expense of the former may be very costly for the American people long after he leaves office.
Speech of Senator John F. Kennedy,
Polish-American Congress, Chicago, IL
October 1, 1960
Walesa on Obama’s Missile Diplomacy – American Diplomacy Failed Obama in Poland Update
“It wasn’t that the shield was that important, but it’s about the way, the way of treating us.”
–Lech Wałęsa, the former Polish president and Solidarity leader, regarding the US decision to drop the missile defense shield in Poland; John Brown’s Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, Version 2.0
Dear Poland, Happy Soviet Invasion Day, Love Uncle Sam
Poland has not one but two Pearl Harbor Days in September: the anniversary of the start of World War II with the Nazi German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939 and the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland on September 17, 1939 under the terms of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Someone at the State Department should have explained the significance of these two dates for Poland to Hawaiian-born US President. There was no good reason for snubbing Poland by sending a minor US official to the anniversary observances in Gdansk on September 1 to stand alongside of the heads of state and Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. President Obama did not have to announce his missile shield decision on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. Ted Lipien
Update
2009 marks 90 years of diplomatic relations between Poland and the United States. This is the last week of US Ambassador Victor H. Ashe’s tenure in Poland. A holdover President George W. Bush’s appointee, he is scheduled to depart Warsaw permanently on September 26. President Obama’s Ambassador-Designate to Poland is Lee A. Feinstein who is on leave from the Brookings Institution, where he has been a Visiting Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies. He was National Security Director to Hillary Rodham Clinton during her presidential campaign. Ambassador Victor Ashe congratulated Mr. Feinstein: “President Obama made an excellent choice in announcing his intent to nominate Lee Feinstein as the next U.S. Ambassador to Poland. I know the Embassy and Polish-American relations will be in good hands under his leadership.” If confirmed, Mr. Feinstein will be the 25th U.S. Ambassador to Poland.
US Embassy Warsaw Farewell Interview with Ambassador Victor H. Ashe, Sept. 17, 2009
American Diplomacy Failed Obama in Poland
While American and international media blames President Obama for choosing to announce his decision on the removal of the missile defense system from Poland and Czech Republic on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet attack on Poland on September 17, 1939, surprisingly so far no one has called it a failure of American diplomacy. What makes this failure even more disturbing is that neither the State Department nor the White House has drawn any lessons from an earlier public diplomacy disaster when they gave grave offence by sending to Poland a low-level delegation to participate in the 70th anniversary observances on September 1 of the start of World War II, a date also of great historical significance to the Polish people.
Both missteps were completely avoidable. Why add insult to injury? Why offend even more a loyal US ally in the war on terror who has contributed troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan?
There may be some who think that the Obama White House deliberately snubbed and punished Poland because Warsaw was one of the strongest supporters among NATO members of President Bush’s foreign policy. I don’t think this was the case. President Obama and his closest advisors may be naive and historically challenged, but they would not sacrifice American national interests in such a way. The additional humiliation of Poland was not deliberate. It was unplanned, and much of it was certainly unnecessary and avoidable.
If only one US diplomat, one foreign service officer at the State Department, did his or her job well, some of the international headlines making fun of President Obama’s lack of appreciation of history would not have been written. Where was the US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale, one of President Obama’s appointees? (Photo) Where was the US Ambassador to Poland Victor Ashe?
As President Bush’s holdover appointee who is leaving his post in Warsaw this week, Ambassador Ashe would not have much influence with the Obama White House anyway. But where was President Obama’s Ambassador-Designate to Poland Lee A. Feinstein? The Brookings Institution Visiting Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies and National Security Director to Hillary Rodham Clinton during her presidential campaign should have been already advising the Obama Administration on a host of issues, including the sensitive area of history and trust in US-Polish relations. His statement made to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 15, just two days before President Obama’s ill-timed announcement, shows a certain appreciation of Poland’s history.
“Poland has endured great hardship and tragedy in its history. It has been occupied and dismembered by foreign powers time and again. It experienced a brief period of independence after World War I, but then fell prey to Nazi invasion and occupation, during which six million Polish citizens lost their lives, including three million Jews, most of Poland’s Jewish population. Then, following the war, the Soviet regime deprived Poles of their political liberty and imposed an economic system that kept the country in poverty and subjugation.”
President Obama’s Ambassador-Designate to Poland Lee A. Feinstein, September 15, 2009
Ambassador-Designate Feinstein did not specifically mention the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, but he undoubtedly knew about it, and knew about President Obama’s pending missile shield announcement. He probably also knows that the Poles still remember how the US Administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had betrayed Poland to Russia at the end of World War II. I specifically refer to FDR and his administration, and not the American people who did not want to see Poland being sold to Stalin.
Lee Feinstein should have called the White House to offer friendly advice on Polish history and perhaps quote from another part of his earlier statement: “As Secretary Clinton has said, Poland is ‘one of our closest allies.’ Poland was one of just three countries that entered Iraq with U.S. forces in 2003. It contributes forces for NATO’s KFOR mission in Kosovo. Polish forces have served in Afghanistan since the onset of the NATO mission in 2004.” Ambassador-Designate Feinstein summed up Poland’s special relationship with the US in this way: “In short, intrepid Polish forces stand with us in dangerous places with dangerous missions, and Poland has increased its contributions, which are prodigious.”
During World War II, Polish soldiers fought alongside of British and American soldiers against Nazi Germany. Those who understand how the Polish people feel about history and about America are reminded of Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane who served in Poland from 1945 until 1947 during the Truman Administration, resigned, and wrote a book “I Saw Poland Betrayed.” He described what he saw as the betrayal of Poland by the Western Allies at the end of World War II, with FDR playing a major part in selling out of Poland to Stalin at the Yalta Conference. Fortunately, subsequent administrations and the American people rejected Roosevelt’s naive assessment of Stalin and supported America’s participation in the Cold War until the Soviet Union collapsed and Poland along with other Central European nations became a member of NATO. The people of Poland can take some comfort in knowing that American democracy eventually corrects even some of the gravest mistakes made by US presidents.
Even if President Obama’s ideological preferences pushed him to embrace Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev rather than listen to Lech Walesa and Waclav Havel, who had sent him a letter warning him about Russia’s dangerous slide into authoritarianism and imperial expansion, there was still room for observing basic diplomatic protocol and good manners. At a lower level of US diplomatic corps, where was the PAO (Public Affairs Officer) at the US Embassy in Warsaw and dozens of other foreign service officers, each costing US taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars? Where was the Polish Desk officer at the State Department? Where were all the public diplomacy experts President Obama had promised to bring on board to correct the mistakes of the Bush Administration, whom he accused of dealing harshly with the rest of the world and of not listening to what others were saying?
Well, the Obama Administration is now talking softly to Moscow, Iran, and Cuba. But what about Poland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and other nations in Central and Eastern Europe which already are or want to be America’s allies? What about the future of independent and democratic Ukraine? Is Ukraine going to become like Russia? Where was in all of this President Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his chief diplomatic advisor? We have also not heard much from Vice President Biden.
Ultimately, the US President is responsible for any foreign policy and public diplomacy disasters, but American diplomats should have managed the process and tried to soften the blow to Poland and other nations in the region. Perhaps they did warn the White House, and their warnings were ignored. This would still qualify as a failure of American diplomacy — the inability of State Department officials to affect something as simple as the timing of a critical announcement and selecting who should represent the United States at an important event abroad.
If warnings were issued to the White House and were disregarded, I hope we will soon find out. Comments from those who may know are welcome. Whatever happened, this will hurt President Obama politically among Polish-American voters and other Americans with roots in Central and Eastern Europe. With headlines like these, this diplomatic fiasco will likely have a negative political impact for the President and his party across the whole spectrum of the American electorate. But while President Obama may eventually pay a political price for the mistakes that were both his and the State Department’s, the damage to America’s reputation and credibility among our true allies abroad will be long-lasting and will not be easily undone.
This op-ed was written by Ted Lipien, president of Free Media Online (FreeMediaOnline.org), a 501(c)3 media nonprofit promoting media freedom worldwide. Republishing is allowed.
Wired Headline: Dear Poland, Happy Soviet Invasion Day, Love Uncle Sam
P.S. (TedLipien.com)
By the way, we are taking away the thing that could prevent another one. Hope you don’t mind. Too much.
The Washington Times Headline: Obama not smooth on Gdansk: German attack that started World War II marked without him
Polish Radio Headline: US snubs Poland over WW II ceremony?
DigitalJournal Headline: Opinion: Obama chose wrong day to abandon missile defence shield in Europe
Polish News Headline: OBAMA ABANDONS MISSILE DEFENSE FOR POLAND: Makes Controversial Move on the 70th Anniversary of Soviet Invasion of Poland
examiner.com San Francisco Headline: Obama betrays Poland and every American EXCELLENT VIDEOS!
Drudge Report Headline: September 17: Obama kills missile defense for Poland on 70th anniversary of Soviet invasion…
And countless blogs:
Mother. Of. ALL. Snubs. Obama and the Polish Joke
Obama Celebrates 70th Anniversary of Soviet Invasion of Poland…
Obama’s second Polish joke: the Obama Doctrine
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