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Churchill quotes: “A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.” - AND - “The price of greatness is responsibility” – AND - “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last” - More Winston quotes here
Comment at end
24th January, 2009
OBAMA SENDS CHURCHILL HOME
This morning on BBC Radio 4′s ‘The Week in Westminster’ (listen here) I heard this interesting … disappointing piece of news.
Obama has sent the bust of Winston Churchill back to Britain
Where it belongs, eh? … I mean … huh?
Tony Blair arranged for this bronze bust to be loaned to President Bush in 2001. But it seems that it was not necessarily expected or required that it be returned. Still, Mr Obama is shipping it home.
On hearing this news, David Owen, former SDP leader and former Labour minister who hates Blair viscerally for pinching his expected job and actually leading the country said: “Good thing too.”
Oh, for the return of backbone in politics. Where are you Tony?
But I suppose the new President of the World thinks he will get away with this slight to Britain’s war hero without comment. He’s probably right. He WILL in the British mainstream press. After all, like our present prime minister, they too have been huddling around their phones waiting for Britain to be noticed by He Who Will Be Obeyed.
How nauseating.
The END of the "Special Relationship". President Bush kept a bust of Churchill and a picture of Tony Blair in the Oval Office.
But Mr Obama WILL get away with it. After all he rang Gordo The Great yesterday, BEFORE contacting any other European leaders. The Spesh Rel still lives. So that’s all right then.
I wonder if he packed Bush’s picture of Tony Blair in the same box?
Who needs leaders who stood up for FREEDOM when they’ve got Gordo the Invincible hanging on the line?
OBAMA RELATED TO CHURCHILL?
This article at ‘Open USA’, says that although Obama is (distantly) related to Winston Churchill (?!) and there is nothing to prevent him from keeping the bust, he is more likely to send it back due to Kenyan sensitivities over Churchill’s Kenyan policies.
We now know where Mr Obama’s historical references lead him.
And who said political niceties aren’t complex?
Excerpt from ‘Open USA’ (my bolding):
‘As it is often the case, family history cuts both ways. In Kenya, the land of Obama’s father, the signifier “Churchill” carries nothing but negative connotations. Several times in his long political career, Churchill was responsible for Britain’s empire, which until 1963 included Kenya. It was his government which in 1952 declared the so-called Kenya Emergency – an attempt to quash a rebellion against colonial rule known as Mau Mau. For the next eight years, suspected rebels were routinely detained, tortured, hanged and shot. According to Caroline Elkins, the colonial soldiers killed between fifteen and twenty thousand Kenyans in combat, while up to one hundred thousand perished in the detention camps. One of those who endured torture in a British prison was Hussein Onyango Obama, US president’s Kenyan grandfather. Traces of this story can be found in Obama’s memoir Dreams from my Father as well as in a few interviews; much more is sure to come. For now, it behooves us to remember it when Obama sends his Churchill packing. The time for the Anglo-American “special relationship” to move beyond Churchill is long overdue.’
Oddly, or perhaps not, the New England Historic Genealogical Society has dead links when you try to search for ‘Barack Obama’. The plot thickens.
I expect this miserable crowd at The Guardian will be happy anyway. I’m sure some of them thought that having the Great British War hero in the Oval Office from March 2001 did as much to coax Bush into invading Iraq as did our own war hero himself, Tony Blair.
I do not have a picture of the Churchill bronze. Few of us have seen it, as I understand it. But Jacob Epstein’s most famous sculpture at Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff, is well worth seeing. Huge, powerful and highly impressive, I recommend it.
OBORNE SAYS “I WAS WRONG ON BROWN”
Here today Peter Oborne, the Daily Mail scourge of Blair’s life, and thus erstwhile fan of Brown, now admits he got it wrong over the powers of the British Invincible One. How long before he also admits that he got it wrong over Blair?
And how long before another (American) Messiah is ground underfoot by such judgemental littlies as Oborne?
I give it a few months.
CHURCHILL QUOTATIONS
- Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
- Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.
- Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
- I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
- I was only the servant of my country and had I, at any moment, failed to express her unflinching resolve to fight and conquer, I should at once have been rightly cast aside.
- I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.
- If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
- In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.
- In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
- It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.
- It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.
- Kites rise highest against the wind – not with it.
- Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
- Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
- Never, never, never give up.
- Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
- Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
- Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.
- Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
- The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- The first quality that is needed is audacity.
- There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
- Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
- To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
- Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
- War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.
- War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
- We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years.
- We do not covet anything from any nation except their respect.
- When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.
- You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.
- You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
- A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.
Tags: 1. Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Brown (Gordon Brown & his Labour Government, christ in majesty, Daily Mail Peter Oborne turns on Gordon Brown, david owen, from June 2007, George Bush, Jacob Epstein, llandaff cathedral cardiff, Obama related to Churchill, Obama send Churchill back to Britain, special relationship usa uk, Winston Churchill quotes quotations
January 27, 2009 at 6:09 am |
i think bush took blair’s picture with him
January 30, 2009 at 12:45 am |
[...] Obama doesn’t want/need Churchill in the Oval Office [...]
March 12, 2009 at 11:06 pm |
Interestingly enough, my Mother’s name was Margaret Walters-wonderful woman.
I just want to sincerely apologize for America. Sad day indeed when Obama came into office but not too much more of an unhappy event relative to Obama’s handling of greeting of the British PM. Churchill, in my mind, was number ONE in the 20th Century fight for liberal western values and the fight against totalitarianism. I only hope that Obama felt uneasy when Brown gave him the Churchill related literature, in light of his returning of the Churchill bust. Weak Obama couldn’t hold up Churchill’s jock strap. The very best to all of you who have contributed to this interesting website.
March 13, 2009 at 1:20 am |
Hi Clif,
And thanks for your comment, and apology on behalf of Obama’s weird judgement. You didn’t need to. We know politicians can do silly things at times.
But still, not ALL of us were too impressed by the vote in America’s election. But that’s democracy for you. At least it should shut up the anti-westerners who accuse America of racism!
Interesting that it seems your president is feeling tired already! And we were all told that he was young and fit! If Blair had ever shown tiredness, and HE had a heart condition in 2003 and 2004 (now fixed) he’d likely have been out of a job. The press here LOVE to find pictures of Gordon Brown looking half asleep. Luckily for them, this isn’t difficult. He often looks shattered.
As for the gift of DVDs for Brown – well, that was amazing. It’s the kind of last-minute thing I buy for the kids when I’ve realised I’ve forgotten one of their Christmas presents.
The Churchill bust return might be excusable, if it was expected to be returned. I don’t know if it was. But the press here won’t try to find out. On the whole they are so dull and prejudiced against Bush and so seduced by Obama that they don’t want to find out anything nasty about him.
Ignorance is bliss.
Glad you enjoyed the site. Come back any time. If I’m still here! I am suffering from a crisis of confidence right now over my “hero” after he said that the furore over the Archbishop of Canterbury’s words on Sharia Law was a “fuss about nothing”.
I am most concerned about this issue here in Britain right now since we already have several Sharia Courts. I am prepared to give Mr Blair time to regain my confidence. But he’ll need to say something soon.
It’s kind of odd for me to feel that I am supporting Christianity more than, it seems, Mr Blair is, since I have no religious beliefs. But I consider myself a secular Christian, and I am not at all happy with the creeping Islamification in Britain and Europe that seems to be being ignored by the present government.
If I were a conspiracy theorist I’d be asking – what’s up Doc?!