Obama Slams Churchill

Winston Churchill once described American diplomacy as “a bull who carries his own china shop around with him.” President Obama took over a hundred years of diplomatic asset known as the “special relationship” and smashed it into smithereens. The candidate who promised diplomacy not war, as president declared a kind of cold war against our oldest ally.

Not coincidentally, the man who coined that phrase describing the relationship between United States and Britain, Winston Churchill, would be the symbol Obama would use in breaking off these special ties.

Upon the arrival of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the first head of government to visit the White House, Obama let word out the bust of Churchill that Prime Minister Blair had presented to the United States as a gift from the British people had been returned to the British Embassy.

That offensive act without explanation gave substance to an unconfirmed story making the rounds in D.C. that, when President Obama walked into the Oval Office for the first time and saw the Churchill piece, he said, “Get that goddamn thing out of here.”

While the story was never fully substantiated, despite frequent repetition on radio talk shows, the sentiment seems to have been confirmed by Obama's subsequent actions.

Perhaps Obama, the son of a Kenyan, took umbrage at Prime Minister Churchill’s actions in 1953 of wiping out the Mau-Mau, the Kenyan terrorists who made a specialty of slitting throats of sleeping white and Black Kenyans.

Just to make sure that Prime Minister Brown got the message that the special relationship was finito, Obama canceled a joint news conference with Brown. That tradition began with Churchill and FDR and continued with presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy (with Macmillan) up to recent presidents Bush (1) (with Major) and both Clinton and Bush (2) (with Blair).

Not only did Obama exclude Brown but also the British reporters from covering Obama’s press conference.

The London Daily Telegraph stated, “Obama has been rudeness personified towards Britain.”

Labour Prime Minister Brown had been anxious to cultivate the close relationship with Obama that his predecessor had with Clinton.

To that end, Brown picked just the right gifts that a visiting prime minister would present to Obama on behalf of his country. The first was a desk pen holder made from the oak timber of the first anti-slave ship HMS Gannet.

Another treasure presented to the U.S. president was the framed commission for HMS Resolute from whose timbers the Oval Office desk is fashioned — a gift from Queen Victoria to President Hayes. A third was a signed first edition set of the seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.

What did Obama give Brown? Twenty-five DVDs of classic American films (that included "Psycho"), a DVD that anyone can buy in any chain bookstore in Britain!

First Lady Michelle Obama joined her husband in ungraciousness with her personal gifts to the prime minister’s wife, Sarah Brown, who had brought necklaces and Top Shop dresses in correct sizes for the Obama daughters.

Michelle handed to the Brown boys something right out of the White House souvenir shop — two models of Marine One, the presidential helicopter.

Prime Minister Brown, during his trip, also announced that Sen. Edward Kennedy would be given an honorary knighthood. Brown had recommended that Queen Elizabeth award the honor to the senator, who was an original backer of Obama.

Barack Hussein Obama (who insisted that his Arabic middle name be included in the inaugural oath) has instructed the State Department to play kissy-face with Syria, Iran, the PLO, and the Taliban.

A meeting is being set up with the Iranians for Secretary of State Clinton, and Obama has given $900 million in aid to Hamas. It is worth remembering that Carter tried sucking up to Iran, and the hostage crisis was the result.

So not only is Obama dissing our oldest ally, he is distancing himself from our staunchest ally in the Middle East, Israel.

The Iranian president has preached the annihilation of all Americans and Jews.

Obama is aware that Churchill is esteemed in Israel. Churchill, a Zionist, was the first politician to call for the creation of Israel in 1905.

So Obama’s dissing of Churchill is sending a message to Israel. It is support of the appeasement policies that Churchill so resolutely opposed: “an appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”

The special relationship that Churchill cited was sealed by the blood Britons shed fighting with Americans: two World Wars, Korea, Desert Storm in Kuwait, Bosnia (defending Serbian Muslims), and Iraq in Basra. (The first joint military cooperation was in Manila Bay 1898 when a British warship assisted the Americans in the defeat of the colonialist Spain.)

That is not even to mention the coordinated military and diplomatic policy that ended the Cold War.

It is an alliance cemented by our common heritage of language, the common law, and a representative democracy. Churchill, whose mother was American, embodied that relationship.

Churchill is revered by Americans.

In 1963 he was the first person to be made an honorary U.S. citizen by President John F. Kennedy who described Churchill thus: “whose achievements as a statesman are unmatched in history.”

Colin Powell, who endorsed Obama, deems Churchill as “the greatest world leader in history.”

The British in 2000 voted him the "Man of the Millennium.”

For Obama to disrespect him and our oldest ally is not only egregious diplomacy it is also dishonoring history’s singular giant in the fight against tyranny and the championship of freedom and democracy.

As Churchill once said: “In reaching out to foes, take care not to reject your friends.”

Professor James C. Humes (Colorado University at Colorado Springs) was awarded an O.B.E. by Queen Elizabeth for the award-winning, Pulitzer Prize finalist, "Churchill: Speaker of the Century." Humes is a former presidential speechwriter.