Lech Walesa: Obama 'Wasn't Ready' to Be a World Leader

Anti-communist crusader and former president of Poland Lech Walesa tells Newsmax that of all the national leaders currently on the world stage, the one who has "disillusioned" him the most is President Barack Obama.

Walesa also asserts that Obama "wasn't ready" to take on the task of leading the world's most dominant superpower.

And he calls for reforms at the United Nations so the world body can help fill the vacuum left by the United States' failure of leadership under Obama.

Walesa played a key role in freeing Eastern Europe from the clutches of Soviet communism and ultimately in the breakup of the U.S.S.R.

In 1980, he co-founded Solidarity, the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union. Later in that decade he helped form the first non-communist government in the Soviet bloc, beginning the downfall of communism in Europe.

Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as Poland's president from 1990 to 1995. Today he heads the Lech Walesa Institute.

As for his views on Obama, Walesa declares: "Personally, I feel that two politicians disillusioned me the most — myself and President Obama. I prefer to skip talking about myself, but let's discuss why Obama has been such a disappointment.

"When he was elected, everyone hoped and expected that he would reform not only the United States but also the rest of the world. But he failed to implement any constructive reforms. Moreover, it seems like perhaps he doesn't even care if America is still perceived as the superpower it once was."

He added, with tongue slightly in cheek: "If that's the case and if the U.S. doesn't really want to be a superpower anymore, I'd say let Poland take over that leadership and we'd take care of the rest. I promise you, we'd know what to do."

Note: "SMART POWER"---a post-Bush term coined by Hillary.

Behold what "Smart Power" hath wrought: Debacle after debacle---Obama's careening and incomprehensible handling of the Syrian crisis.....doing a Costa Concordia with US ntl security and foreign policy. Obama outed himself as naive, isolated....and outlandishly stupid. Not to forget then-Secy of State Hillary's part in the "Smart Power" debacle.

Democrats' 'Smart Power' Lies in Ruins; Suddenly
Realizing What They Miscalculated About the World:
National Review | Sept 3, 2013 | Jim Geraghty / FR Posted by kristinn

....... Democrats are suddenly realizing that their foreign policy brain-trust completely misjudged the world.

Being nicer to countries like Russia will not make them nicer to you. The United Nations is not an effective tool for resolving crises. Some foreign leaders are beyond persuasion and diplomacy. There is no “international community” ready to work together to solve problems, and there probably never will be.

You can pin this on Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Susan Rice, but most of all, the buck stops with the president. Those of us who scoffed a bit at a state senator ascending to the presidency within four years on a wave of media hype and adoration are not quite so shocked by this current mess.

We never bought into this notion that getting greater cooperation from our allies, and less hostility from our enemies, was just a matter of giving this crew the wheel and letting them practice, as Hillary Clinton arrogantly declared it, “smart power” (and fronted Time magazine cover).

(These people can’t even label a foreign policy approach without reminding us of how highly they think of themselves.)

They looked out at the world at the end of the Bush years, and didn’t see tough decisions, unsolvable problems, unstable institutions, restless populations, technology enabling the impulse to destabilize existing institutions, evil men hungry for more power, and difficult trade-offs.

No, our problems and challengers were just a matter of the previous hands running U.S. foreign policy not being smart enough. (Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...

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OH, BTW, AT THE SAME TIME Smartpowertics, O and HILL, staged military raids in Libya, they gained access to the National Bank of Libya. (No, no paper money there---just solid gold bars. Solid Gold. Not the Chinese tungsten filled bars that flooded the gold market).

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LET'S STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE In 2009, Obama made a "Smart Power" suck-up speech in Cairo----"apologizing" for America's historical role in the Middle East. By snubbing Mubarak, Obama set the stage for the Egyptian president's overthrow by the Islamic mob.

When the worst-case scenario happened, when Obama's personal choice---Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, was elected president----Obama sap-happily sent his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, to Cairo to personally kiss-up to Morsi....perhaps at that time hatching their plans to destroy Westen civiliation in compliance w/ Muslim dictates.

Obama's treacherous ill-advised component of US foreign policy----sucking up to the very people who want to kill us and destroy our churches. He portrayed teeming Muslim majorities there as "victims of Western colonialism and Cold War policies," stupidly promoting American-style democracy for these conflicting cultures w/ thousands of years of religious and territorial factionalism.

OBOBO'S SUCKUP "The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars," Obama said in the June 2009 speech in Cairo. "More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies, without regard to their own aspirations."

Fast forward to 2013: the savage Muslim Brotherhood torched some 63 Egyptian churches and many Christian businesses. Obama ignored the bloodbath and spent the crisis dining out, golfing, power-partying, and vacationing in exclusive Martha’s Vineyard on the taxpayers' dime.

At the Hay Literary festival in Wales, author and PBS historian, Niall Ferguson, spent much of his time dissing Obama's "smart power" speech delivered in Cairo in 2009......describing it as "touchy feely nonsense"...

Ferguson has sent out warnings about Obama's failure to come to terms with what Ferguson sees as the potential rise of the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt and the possible "restoration of the caliphate and the strict application of Sharia"........themes at the heart of this new book "Civilization: The West and the Rest"...............

Ferguson's standpoint is that Western dominance has been a progressive civilizing force.....his new book reinforces these arguments postulating that there were six killer "apps" which propelled the West to a position of predominance.

These were competition, science, property, modern science, consumption and work ethic, each with a dedicated chapter in the book.

Ferguson contrasts how China was the world's most advanced civilization in the 15th century but stagnated and was overtaken by Dutch mercantilism and the rise of capitalism employing the six "skills".

In his books, and on his compelling PBS series "Civilization," Ferguson lists "morality" as a strategic strength of Western Civilization. He points out the successful Chinese business city Wenzou also has 1,400 churches.

It is extraordinary how observers even after all these years scrape the margins of reason to find excuses for the manifold failures of Obama. In this case Lech Walesa puts Obama's failures down to "unreadiness." This is understandable in a foreign observer and, as an observer living in Germany, I saw the same phenomenon here, Obama was regarded as a demigod and the enthusiasm for awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize was as widespread as it was ignorant.

We see the same phenomenon, however, in America by Americans concerning Obama's domestic failures. Time and again the establishment Republicans excuse his failures as matters of judgment rather than putting the blame where it belongs: Obama is a dangerous radical. He wants to transform America which means that he wants to undo our constitutional system, eliminate capitalism, and impose his version of social justice. Internationally, he is quite happy to have diminished America's role in the world which Walesa quite accurately describes. That is because Obama as a radical leftist, and anti-imperialist, a sympathizer of expansive Islam, who knows that America is the greatest obstacle to the worldwide spread of his radical ambitions.

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