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Obama Quotes JFK on Terrorism w/o Realizing he was Denouncing Communist Terror in Europe and Vietnam
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On September 24, 2014 @ 6:22 pm In The Point | 4 Comments
This is what happens when you fill your speeches with unsourced quotations from QuoteBuzz or QuoteFeed.
Obama gave his big UN speech and he said that, “Terrorism is not new. Speaking before this Assembly, President Kennedy put it well: “Terror is not a new weapon,” he said. “Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example.”
Kennedy however was speaking of terrorism in a larger sense. He was condemning the Soviet moves in Europe and events in South Vietnam.
The first threat on which I wish to report is widely misunderstood: the smoldering coals of war in Southeast Asia. South Viet-Nam is already under attack–sometimes by a single assassin, sometimes by a band of guerrillas, recently by full battalions. The peaceful borders of Burma, Cambodia, and India have been repeatedly violated. And the peaceful people of Laos are in danger of losing the independence they gained not so long ago.
No one can call these “wars of liberation.” For these are free countries living under their own governments. Nor are these aggressions any less real because men are knifed in their homes and not shot in the fields of battle.
The very simple question confronting the world community is whether measures can be devised to protect the small and the weak from such tactics. For if they are successful in Laos and South Viet-Nam, the gates will be opened wide.
Leftists will doubtlessly find the correlation ironic. Kennedy’s language to some extent echoes Obama’s. Particularly his assurance that the United States does not seek to expand its borders.
It is absurd to allege that we are threatening a war merely to prevent the Soviet Union and East Germany from signing a so-called “treaty” of peace. The Western Allies are not concerned with any paper arrangement the Soviets may wish to make with a regime of their own creation, on territory occupied by their own troops and governed by their own agents. No such action can affect either our rights or our responsibilities.
If there is a dangerous crisis in Berlin-and there is–it is because of threats against the vital interests and the deep commitments of the Western Powers, and the freedom of West Berlin. We cannot yield these interests. We cannot fail these commitments. We cannot surrender the freedom of these people for whom we are responsible
The echo is again somewhat interesting as Obama addressed Russian actions in Ukraine.
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