VDH's Private Papers::Sleeping Through Speeches

VDH's Private Papers::Sleeping Through Speeches

While Obama was praising the U.N., the U.N. was showing America why most of us don’t want much to do with it. The Gaddafi and Ahmadinejad rambling hate-filled speeches were lunatic and nutty; but, remember, they are typical, not unrepresentative of the sort of leaders that the world outside the West so often produces these days. A Chavez, Kim Jong Il, Assad, or Mullah Omar would say about the same. Why would Obama wish to brag of returning to the human rights council given the creepy regimes on it? Watching the U.N. watch Ahmadinejad, I was reminded of Europe circa July 1941. As Hitler swept through Russia, suddenly a Spain, a Sweden, a Turkey, a Romania, a Hungary, etc. as both Axis allies and as neutrals, all in varying ways were horse-trading with Nazi Germany for various trade deals, land grabs, and general profiteering. That the Wehrmacht slaughtered Jews by the thousands the day it entered Russia, mattered not at all; the Nazis looked like winners and it was time to cut deals. By 1944/5, the opposite was true: neutrals and formal allies were bailing and claiming they had been coerced, duped, had no choices, and were now our friends if not allies, after all. Take away oil, and Ahmadinejad and Gaddafi would be written off as two-bit psychopaths that no legitimate body would let in the service entrance.