Wolfowitz made a nice speech at the Hungarian Embassy today. I shouldn’t really pick on it; it’s a semantically meaningless speech designed to make Hungary feel good. And Hungary should feel good about itself; it’s emerged from some really nasty totalitarianism.
Still, he had one of those quotes, and I can’t resist.
“And, frankly, it is particularly important to have friends who really understand the value of freedom. And I think countries that regained their freedom relatively recently seem to have that sense more strongly sometime than others.”
So I’m guessing he doesn’t mean that France, which finally got rid of their monarchy in 1871, feels the value of freedom more than the United States. Or maybe he means that France, which was under foreign rule during World War II, feels the value of freedom more strongly than countries which were inviolate during World War II? Hard to say, hard to say.
Either way, one might assume that he’s saying England doesn’t feel the value of freedom as strongly as India, since England’s been free for much much longer. There’s something about Britain and India I can’t quite recall, something about their relationship up until 1947. But India’s the country that doesn’t want to send troops to Iraq. Well, maybe they don’t understand the value of freedom properly.
In any case, I’m still really happy for Hungary. It’s a country that deserves its freedom, and it’s a country that fought hard for freedom. We can only regret that America was preoccupied with the Middle East during Hungary’s struggle.
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In any case, I
Mmm, nah, I’m still feeling pretty much OK with it. I’m not saying we could have dropped paratroopers. I’m saying we should have done something.
This article is fairly revealing.
“Among the most significant releases is a July 1956 policy paper adopted by the U.S. National Security Council, in which the United States government disavowed any political and military intervention in the Soviet satellites.”