Israel Matzav: Don't know much about history

Don't know much about history

John Hinderaker points out a bit of historical revisionism from President Obumbler's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

A reader points out a remarkable bit of revisionist history in Barack Obama's Nobel Prize speech. No doubt others have commented on it and I've just missed it; but, in any event, it bears repeating. Here is the excerpt from Obama's speech:

Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait - a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.

Really? "The world" "recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein"? Well, not all of the world did.

...

Our reader is right. The vote in the Senate on the authorization of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, which took place on January 12, 1991, was 52-47. The Democrats controlled the Senate at the time; they voted 45-10 against the "consensus" on "the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait." John Kerry, Joe Biden and 43 other Democrats voted to let Saddam Hussein keep Kuwait and expand his control over Middle Eastern oil from there, while continuing to develop nuclear weapons--which, we later learned, he would have had by 1992 or 1993, at the latest.

In the House, the story was similar. The vote was 250-183, with a large majority of Democrats voting with Saddam Hussein. Sure, it would be possible to be more pathetic on national security than the Democratic Party, but it wouldn't be easy. What is interesting about all of this is the Democrats' need to rewrite history. Can anyone doubt that if Barack Obama had been in the Senate in 1991, he would have joined 45 of his Democratic colleagues in voting for Saddam Hussein's control over the Middle East? Of course not.

I'm less bothered by Obama's rewriting history than I am by his refusal to learn from it. Obama is repeating the same mistakes with Iran that he would have made had he been in a position to do so on Iraq: He assumes that Ahmadinejad doesn't mean what he says, just like his Vice President and the current Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee assumed 18 years ago that Saddam Hussein did not mean what he said. As George Santayana said, “Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” And this time there's no Republican President to take charge.

Read the whole thing.

Israel Matzav: Don't know much about history