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The Confederate Lawyer
January 30, 2014
Lech Walesa
by Charles G. Mills
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GLEN COVE, NY — With the death last April of Lady Margaret Thatcher, only one of the five great heroes of the Cold War — Pope John Paul II, President Reagan, Baroness Thatcher, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Lech Walesa — is still alive. We hear very little in the American media these days from Lech Walesa; this is a loss, because he has a gift for expressing great wisdom in short sentences.
Before [Lech Walesa] courageously led the liberation of Poland from communism, he predicted that the Cold War could be won without fighting World War III. Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II apparently agreed and acted accordingly.
Before he courageously led the liberation of Poland from communism, he predicted that the Cold War could be won without fighting World War III. Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II apparently agreed and acted accordingly.
There can be no doubt that Walesa regards President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron as unworthy successors to Reagan and Thatcher. In 2010, Walesa warned that the United States was slipping toward socialism.
On April 10, 2010, a Polish airliner crashed in Russia. The President of Poland and his wife were killed in the crash. Others who died included 15 members of the Polish parliament, a former President of Poland, the Chief of the Polish General Staff, the Catholic and Orthodox Chiefs of Chaplains, and the Polish Deputy Foreign Minister. The fact that Obama played golf during the funerals has widely been viewed as an insult to Poland.
In his negotiations with Russia, Obama has repeatedly shown a lack of respect for Poland and the other former captive nations, especially in his decision to cancel the missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Walesa declined to join a group of prominent Poles invited to greet Obama as a group on May 28, 2011. It seems that he felt the occasion was not one in which he could tell the President what he really thought.
In 2012, the United States Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously to a Polish World War II hero. The Polish government suggested that Walesa represent Poland at the White House ceremony, but Obama vetoed the idea. According to administration officials, Walesa was too political. To make matters worse, Obama, in prepared remarks at the ceremony, referred to "a Polish death camp," instead of more accurately describing it as a Nazi death camp in Poland. This was a stinging insult to Poland, which lost so many of its people to the Nazis.
The next time Walesa was in Washington, D.C., he did not have time to meet with Obama.
Walesa's relations with British Prime Minister David Cameron are also frosty due to Cameron's attempts to curb migration from the former captive nations to the United Kingdom.
There can be no doubt that Walesa regards President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron as unworthy successors to Reagan and Thatcher.
Walesa's politics are a blend of Christian traditional social teaching, individual freedom, and patriotism. He believes all people are important, and he supports the right of privacy. He has become disillusioned with Polish intellectuals. He believes that the West underestimates the contribution of the people of the captive nations to the defeat of Soviet communism.
His beliefs are not very different from those of American conservatives. These beliefs are seldom heard in America because most journalists do not want a fearless and frank voice reminding us that Obama is no Reagan and Cameron is no Thatcher.
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The Confederate Lawyer column is copyright © 2013 by Charles G. Mills and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, www.fgfBooks.com. All rights reserved.
This column may be forwarded, posted, or published if credit is given to Charles Mills and fgfBooks.com.
Charles G. Mills is the Judge Advocate or general counsel for the New York State American Legion. He has forty years of experience in many trial and appellate courts and has published several articles about the law.
See his biographical sketch and additional columns here.
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