Quite Rightly
Potluck Bloggers
4/12/2010
It is not a surprise that leftists detested Lech Kaczynski.
Although Poland joined the European Union, Kaczynski was a Eurosceptic, because he believed more strongly in Polish independence than in following mandates from the European Union.
During the Russia-Georgia War, when Russia planned to annex two provinces of Georgia, Kaczynski strongly denounced Russia. He called the confrontation between Georgia and Russia a “test of strength” in which “Russia showed the face it wanted to show–an imperial face.”
Kaczynski saw Russia as “just the old Russia,” not the “reset” Russia imagined by Obama. Unlike Obama, Kacznyski knew Russia, his country’s next door neighbor and former brutal occupier, very well. He was a proponent of building alternative routes for oil and natural gas from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan to bypass Russia and thus break Russia’s stranglehold on European energy supplies. “We have to convince Russia,” he said, “that the imperial era is over. . . Those who were then appeasing Hitler were firmly convinced that they were right. Time showed something different.”
He backed plans with the U.S. under George W. Bush to deploy 10 interceptor missiles on Polish territory, a plan which Russia hated. From Kaczynski’s perspective, those missiles “would deepen the interest of the United States” in Poland. Obama later countermanded that agreement, in line with his usual treatment of American allies, like the UK, Israel, and India…
…In terms of religious belief, Kaczynski was a double-edged thorn in the side of leftist politics. He stood up for his religious faith, and was a founder of Poland’s conservative Catholic Law and Justice party, which was no friend to abortion or gay marriage. And, as William Jacobson pointed out, “Kaczynski also was a great friend of Israel and the Jewish people, as described in the Jerusalem Post.” Jacobson’s view:
A man who loved the United States, freedom for the individual, and the Jewish people. There are far too few such people in the world, and we just lost one of the best of them.
James Corum, posting at the UK Telegraph agreed. “The death of President Lech Kaczynski and many Polish national leaders yesterday,” he said, “is not only Poland’s loss — it’s also a loss for the Western democratic world.”
The entire article is at PotluckBloggers.
