The ‘smartest man in the world’ pisses off yet another American ally.
“The White House will apologize for this outrageous error,” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted. Sikorski said that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “will make a statement in the morning. It’s a pity that this important ceremony was upstaged by ignorance and incompetence.”
ABC News — Poles and Polish-Americans expressed outrage today at President Obama’s reference earlier to “a Polish death camp” — as opposed to a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland.
“The White House will apologize for this outrageous error,” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted. Sikorski said that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “will make a statement in the morning. It’s a pity that this important ceremony was upstaged by ignorance and incompetence.”
The president had been trying to honor a famous Pole, awarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a resistance fighter who sneaked behind enemy lines to bear witness to the atrocities being committed against Jews. President Obama referred to him being smuggled “into the Warsaw ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself.”
Sikorski also tonight tweeted a link to an Economist story noting that “few things annoy Poles more than being blamed for the crimes committed by the Nazi occupiers of their homeland. For many years, Polish media, diplomats and politicians have tried to persuade outsiders to stop using the phrase ‘Polish death camps’ as a shorthand description of Auschwitz and other exemplars of Nazi brutality and mass murder. Unfortunately this seems to have escaped BaracK Obama’s staff seem not to have noticed this.”
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement, “The President was referring to Nazi death camps operated in Poland. The President has demonstrated in word and deed his rock-solid commitment to our close alliance with Poland.” Keep reading…
At this point, on the one hand, President Obama’s statement is pretty accurate; the death camps WERE in Poland..thus..Polish Death Camps. His words were taken out of context and were not intended as an insult. However the deliberate insult to Mr. Obama from that skinhead foreign minister of calling our president incompetent and ignorant definetely deserves an apology from the Polish government. As for insulting 38 million Polish people, I am certain the President did not do that. But the Polish people must ask themselves how many times over the years have they hurled outrageous ugly insults at people of color and not apology has been issued from the todate. I would call this an incident blown out of proportions on the one hand and an ugly, deliberate retaliation remark from this scuzzbag foreign minister that can not go unchallenged.
Would you show such indignation if George Bush or any Republican had similarly misspoken? No way.
Wow, I think I have stumbled on a communist fueled website here judging from your “10 Most Recent Posts” but I am about to unsubscribe to this horror right now.
>> I think I have stumbled on a communist fueled website
Projecting aren’t you? That’s the oldest Lib trick in the book, accusing others of what they themselves are.