President Obama Shuns Lech Walesa

[lostinblue 1,989]

President Obama Shuns Lech Walesa

The Polish Solidarity leader is “too political” for the administration.

By Rory Cooper

Lech Walesa was once a trade-union activist. He was often arrested for speaking his mind against Communist oppression behind the Iron Curtain in Poland and for defying the Soviet Union. He was an electrician who, with no higher education, led one of the most profound freedom movements of the 20th century — Solidarity. He became president of Poland and swept in reforms, pushing the Soviet Union out of his homeland and moving the country toward a free-market economy and individual liberty. And President Obama doesn’t want him to set foot in the White House.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Polish officials requested that Walesa accept the Medal of Freedom on behalf of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish Underground during World War II who was being honored posthumously this week. The request makes sense. Walesa and Karski shared a burning desire to rid Poland of tyrannical subjugation. But President Obama said no.

Administration officials told the Journal that Walesa is too “political.” A man who was arrested by Soviet officials for dissenting against the government for being “political” is being shunned by the United States of America for the same reason 30 years later.

Meanwhile, one of the recipients of the Medal was Dolores Huerta, the honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. So socialist politics are acceptable, but not the politics of a man who stood up and fought socialism.

This revelation follows an eruption of outrage in Poland after President Obama referred in his remarks at the Medal of Freedom ceremony to “Polish death camps,” a phrase that Poles have battled since the end of the Cold War. The phrase suggests that Poles were complicit in Nazi concentration camps, which of course is not the case. In fact, Poles were exterminated in the camps.

The White House’s flippant response to the uproar caused the Polish president and prime minister to demand more thoughtful and personal reactions. But White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that the president has no plans to reach out to his Polish counterparts and has shrugged off the outrage in Poland.

Few observers are suggesting that President Obama’s written remarks noting “Polish death camps” were intentionally malicious. The comment was more likely a result of historical ignorance and careless inattention. This is the same ignorance and carelessness that would cause a president to turn away Lech Walesa and label him as “too political.”

Ironically, Lech Walesa shares a distinction with President Obama: They both won Nobel Peace Prizes. Walesa earned his in 1983 after years of fighting for peace and freedom, and being monitored, harassed, and jailed for it. President Obama received his award in 2009. Some may think that this would be enough of a bond for President Obama to set aside political differences for the greater good. But instead, President Obama treated Walesa the same way he treated the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, who was ushered out the White House kitchen past piles of garbage in 2010.

The likelihood is that President Obama didn’t want Walesa in the White House because Walesa has made critical remarks toward the president’s policies and in 2010 warned that the United States was slipping toward socialism. But rather than taking the mature and diplomatic path and respecting Walesa’s right to have a differing perspective, Obama chose to shun his lifetime of achievements.

Congratulating Walesa on his Nobel Prize in 1983, President Ronald Reagan said: “For too long, the Polish government has tried to make Lech Walesa a non-person and destroy the free trade-union movement that he helped to create in Poland. But no government can destroy the hopes that burn in the hearts of a people. The people of Poland have shown in their support of Solidarity, just as they showed in their support of His Holiness Pope John Paul II during his visit to Poland, that the government of that nation cannot make Lech Walesa a non-person, and they can’t turn his ideas into non-ideas.”

The White House should not treat President Walesa as a non-person, and they cannot turn his ideas into non-ideas.

— Rory Cooper is director of communications at the Heritage Foundation. You can follow him on Twitter @rorycooper.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301474/president-obama-shuns-lech-walesa-rory-cooper

Lech Walesa should feel proud -- he now joins Winston Churchill and Bibi Netanyahu in the small, but growing, club of those Officially Disapproved of by Barry "in a daze " Soetoro

Obama's Enemies List is less an Enemies List than an Honor Roll.

[Pooky 3,830]

If so, this is a serious error in judgement on the part of this administration.

Lech Walesa earned his Nobel Peace Prize for bringing about real political change and freedom in Poland. Unlike trades unions in the USA, the leaders of which are in it for the money and for political influence in spite of public opinion, he was a trade unionist who stood up for his members' interests and for the interests of the Polish people, in the teeth of Soviet domination.

To have welcomed Lech Walesa, with all that he represents about a the best of trades unions, into the White House this past week would probably not have gone down well with the unions in Wisconsin, as they face what could be an embarrassing recall result

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

That's okay. Senior Vietnamese officials did not attend Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's inspection tour of Cam Ranh Bay.

http://www.wsbtv.com/ap/ap/international/panetta-wants-more-us-access-to-vietnam-harbor/nPK72/

[Darnell 8,479]

Obama Shuns Walesa? such a 'tard, Mr. O.

[Dan and Judy 614]

Obama's not the only one that snubbed this guy

http://en.wikipedia....a%C5%82%C4%99sa

Wałęsa ran again in the 2000 presidential election, but received only 1% of the vote

Over the years, Wałesa has been accused of having been an informer for the Polish secret police Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB) in the early 1970s, codenamed "Bolek". Although this was long before Wałęsa emerged as a hero of the Solidarity, questions remain whether it had an effect on his later decisions; for example, making him a probable target of blackmail. On 11 August 2000, the Warsaw Appellate Court, V Wydział Lustracyjny, declared that Wałęsa's lustration statement was true – that he had not collaborated with the communist regime.^[40] Nonetheless, periodically the question resurfaces.

A 2008 book by historians from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Sławomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, presenting new evidence, received substantial coverage in the media, provoked a hot nation-wide debate, and was noted by the international press.^{[41][42][43][44]} The book is seen by some as very controversial; however, it contains over 130 pages of documents from archives of the secret police (which were inherited by the IPN) to support its claims, and Cenckiewicz defended his discoveries on a factual basis.^[45] Janusz Kurtyka, president of the Institute of National Remembrance at the time, staunchly affirmed the thesis of the book while admitting that it does not contain a "hundred-percent" proof that Wałęsa was the agent Bolek, as some of the documents went missing during Wałęsa's presidency of Poland (1990–1995). He expressed hope the book would be subject to a wider debate.^[46]

Wałęsa himself denies having collaborated with the secret police, and others have noted that the Polish secret police commonly falsified documents.^[26][47] In November 2009 Wałęsa sued the then president of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, over his having repeated the collaboration allegations.^[48]

On 15 April 2010, during a civil trial brought by Wałęsa against former fellow activist Krzysztof Wyszkowski over the collaboration allegations, a retired MO and Służba Bezpieczeństwa officer appeared in court and confirmed the fact of Wałęsa's collaboration in a sworn testimony.^[49] The officer, Janusz Stachowiak, was in charge of keeping documentation on Wałęsa from December 1970 to 1974 (which shows these documents were not fabricated later), although never met him in person. He stated that Wałęsa was convinced to cooperate by SB Capt. Henryk Rapczyński and SB Capt. Edward Graczyk, after a two-hour interrogation, albeit without the use of threats, and signed an agreement to keep his cooperation with SB in secret.^[50] The officers asked him to "calm down" the atmosphere in the shipyard after protests were bloodily suppressed. Wałęsa kept meeting regularly with the secret police, reportedly receiving substantial sums of money,^[50] but after about 4 months he started to "withdraw" (although it was not until June 1976 when he was unregistered, because of his "reluctance to cooperate").

Previously, in 2008, Capt. Edward Graczyk (long thought to be deceased and as such not summoned to testify in the 2000 trial) was interrogated by the IPN about his contacts with Wałęsa^[51] and subsequently interviewed by Gazeta Wyborcza.^[52] In the interview, which somewhat contradicts his earlier testimony, Graczyk recounted Wałęsa's cooperation, but denied his own actions had been "recruitment" of an agent. He also denied giving money to Wałęsa. The other of the two officers, Capt. Henryk Rapczyński, was never interrogated.

On December 22, 2011, it was reported that the Polish National Remembrance Institute had determined that communist secret security had forged documents in the 1980s that suggested Walesa was their agent.^[53

Edited June 4, 2012 by Dan and Judy