Over in the Twitter-sphere (hate that word), there’s a little dust-up over President Obama’s trip today to get ice cream with his kids. CBS reporter Mark Knoller tagged along, and seem surprised when some on Twitter took issue with the road-trip:
Surprised by the outrage at the ice cream outing. What is it you expect or want the US to do about Iran? Attack? War?
What do we want? Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but acting like Ronald Reagan would be a good start. Here’s an excerpt from a must-read op-ed by Lech Walesa in 1984:
GDANSK, Poland — When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can’t be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.
Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.
I often wondered why Ronald Reagan did this, taking the risks he did, in supporting us at Solidarity, as well as dissident movements in other countries behind the Iron Curtain, while pushing a defense buildup that pushed the Soviet economy over the brink. Let’s remember that it was a time of recession in the U.S. and a time when the American public was more interested in their own domestic affairs. It took a leader with a vision to convince them that there are greater things worth fighting for. Did he seek any profit in such a policy? Though our freedom movements were in line with the foreign policy of the United States, I doubt it.
While Iranians are dying in the streets, the president went and got ice cream. Yes, he deserves family time. But, as the president has said, “the whole world is watching.”