Wiesel asks some penetrating questions about Syria and Iran!
Wiesel did the same thing with President Bill Clinton regarding Bosnia at
the opening of the US Holocaust Museum.
I remember a cartoon from those days. It showed a filthy Serb soldier
standing atop a pile of skulls. Someone was handing him a slip of paper.
He said, "Aw, gee, not tougher sanctions!"
Let's hope it works better this time. :-(
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-visits-holocaust-museum-unveils-
syria-iran-sanctions-172140800.html
Obama visits Holocaust Museum, unveils new Syria and Iran sanctions
By Olivier Knox | The Ticket – 3 hrs ago
After a solemn walk through Washington's haunting United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, President Barack Obama on Monday unveiled new sanctions
targeting Iran and Syria and extended American aid in the hunt for Joseph
Kony, the Lord's Resistance Army warlord.
Obama, with Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel
at his side, toured the museum and wordlessly lit a memorial candle in
the cavernous Hall of Remembrance for the millions killed by Nazi
Germany.
"I say this as a president, and I say it as a father: We must tell our
children about a crime unique in human history," Obama said afterward
during a speech in the museum's packed auditorium.
"We must tell our children," Obama said. "But more than that, we must
teach them. Because remembrance without resolve is a hollow gesture.
Awareness without action changes nothing. In this sense, 'never again' is
a challenge to us all—to pause and to look within."
Obama announced sanctions on individuals who help Iran and Syria use
21st-century technology—like cellphone tracking or Internet monitoring—to
abet the crackdown on dissent in those countries. The sanctions include
freezing individuals' assets in the United States and banning people from
American soil. The White House did not provide a list of those affected
by the move.
"These technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to
repress them," Obama said, warning Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's
supporters that they were "making a losing bet." Obama, who sent a small
number of special operations forces to central Africa last year as
advisers in the hunt for Kony, announced an extension of that mission "to
bring this madman to justice, and to save lives."
"It is part of our regional strategy to end the scourge that is the LRA,
and help realize a future where no African child is stolen from their
family and no girl is raped and no boy is turned into a child soldier,"
he said.
Obama, whom Republicans accuse of shortchanging Israeli security, also
vowed he "will always be there" for the Jewish state.
"When faced with a regime that threatens global security and denies the
Holocaust and threatens to destroy Israel, the United States will do
everything in our power to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,"
he stressed.
Wiesel, who introduced Obama, wondered openly in his remarks whether
world leaders had learned from the inaction that made the Holocaust
possible:
If so, how is it that Assad is still in power? How is it that the
Holocaust's No. 1 denier, (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, is
still a president, he who threatens to use nuclear weapons—to use nuclear
weapons—to destroy the Jewish state? Have we not learned? We must. We
must know that when evil has power, it is almost too late.
In a direct message to Obama, Wiesel declared, "I hope you understand, in
this place, why Israel is so important."
He said: "Israel cannot not remember. And because it remembers, it must
be strong—just to defend its own survival and its own destiny."
Obama said he would award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's
highest civilian honor, to Jan Karski, a Polish Catholic who was among
the first to sound the alarm about the Holocaust.
And he announced that the governmental Atrocities Prevention Board he
created last August would hold its first meeting to discuss steps to
prevent mass killings.
"This is not an afterthought. This is not a sideline in our foreign
policy," Obama said.
The president also announced he would commission the first-ever National
Intelligence Estimate on mass killings—compiling the assessments of the
American intelligence community on the risks of and possible responses to
genocide.
"We need to be doing everything we can to prevent and respond to these
kinds of atrocities—because national sovereignty is never a license to
slaughter your people," he said.
After his speech, Obama shook hands with Holocaust survivors in the first
two rows of the audience.
John McCain, a frequent and vocal critic of Obama's foreign policy,
welcomed the president's announcements but said more must be done to help
Syria's opposition survive the government's deadly crackdown.
"The only way to stop the killing, force Assad to leave power, and create
the conditions for a negotiated political transition for Syria is to
change the military balance of power on the ground, including giving the
Syrian people the means to defend themselves," McCain, a Republican
senator from Arizona, said in a statement.