At a ceremony yesterday at the White House, president Obama awarded the Medal of Freedom posthumously to Jan Karski, a hero of the Polish resistance during World War II. In the middle of a one paragraph description of the reasons for the award to Karski, Obama spoke of the "Polish death camps" of world war II. More precisely, Obama read that description off the teleprompter that he uses for all of these speeches. The result is an uproar in Poland. The death camps were German; they just happened to be located in Poland. Since the Poles lost a greater percentage of their people during that war than any other group except for the Jews, calling these camps "Polish" is of major moment in Warsaw. With that one sloppy phrase, Obama has managed to offend a large segment of the Polish people.
All this makes me wonder who it is who decides what should be on the teleprompter. Does Obama read it first? If so, is it possible that Obama does not know that the camps were German? If Obama does not read the statements first, which genius in the Obama administration missed this fact?
Just once, I would like to see Obama do something that seemed remotely competent. Hopefully, he will be good at moving out of the White House next January.
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