News and stories about Poland as reported around the world
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Obama

No, Obama Did Not Abandon Poland

In the foreign policy debate last week, Governor Mitt Romney repeated an assertion he’s made throughout the campaign: that, in “pulling our missile defense program out” of Poland, President Obama failed to stand by a key NATO ally. This charge is simply untrue. Not only does Obama still plan to deploy missile defenses in Poland, he has done as much, if not more, than his predecessor to bolster the security of U.S. allies in Central and Eastern Europe. Continue reading

Poland to build own missile shield

Poland will build its own missile defence shield in the next decade, National Security Bureau head Stanislaw Koziej has told a late-night TV news show.

The comment came amid Poland’s increasing criticism of US President Barack Obama’s 2009 decision to scale back an anti-missile shield that his predecessor George W Bush had planned for Poland and the Czech Republic. Continue reading

The Abandoned Alliance

What might come of the U.S. eschewing its Eastern European allies.

Adding insult to injury has become a trademark of President’s Obama policies regarding Poland and other Central and Eastern European (CEE) states. After several political jabs and diplomatic mishaps, including referring to Nazi concentration camps as “Polish death camps,” Continue reading

Polish president accuses Obama of betraying Poland

The Polish president has accused Barack Obama of betraying Poland by cancelling a promised missile defence system.

Reflecting Warsaw’s long-standing anger over the 2009 cancellation of a controversial Bush-era anti-ballistic missile system President Bronislaw Komorowski said Poland should build its own missile shield to ensure national defence. Continue reading

Poland Calls ‘Mistake’ Cooperation with U.S. over Missile Defense – President

Poland needs its own missile defense shield while the agreement with the United States on the deployment of an anti-ballistic-missile defense system on its territory was “a mistake,” Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said in an interview with the Wprost magazine, published on Saturday. Continue reading

It Wasn’t a “Gaffe”

President Obama just slapped in the face one of America’s closest allies in Europe. I’m looking for comment in the American media, and I find … wire stories reporting a spokesman’s apology for the president’s “misstatement”?

The president intended to honor Jan Karski, a Polish-born U.S. citizen, who died in 2000. Karski was a hero of the Polish resistance, the courier who brought to the outside world the irrefutable proof of the Nazi extermination campaign against the Jews of Eastern Europe. But instead of honoring Karski, the president stumbled into the single most offensive thing he could possibly have said on this occasion: Continue reading

President Obama Shuns Lech Walesa

According to the Wall Street Journal, Polish officials requested that Walesa accept the Medal of Freedom on behalf of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish Underground during World War II who was being honored posthumously this week. The request makes sense. Walesa and Karski shared a burning desire to rid Poland of tyrannical subjugation. But President Obama said no. Continue reading

Polish PM hands Obama a copy of ‘Witcher 2′ video game

Here’s a canny bit of marketing, from the Polish PM no less – a copy ofThe Witcher 2 for none other than Barack Obama.

Released in Irish stores last week, the game is a sequel to the well-received 2007 predecessor, a medieval fantasy RPG from developers CD Projekt RED STUDIO. So why was The Witcher 2 thrust into the hands of the world’s most powerful man and why was it by the Polish PM Donald Tusk? Continue reading

Lech Walesa cold shoulders Obama: the US president is clearly no Reagan

Lech Walesa, the great hero of the Polish Solidarity movement, was in Washington earlier this week to receive the Ronald Reagan Centennial Award. He gave a terrific speech, which I attended, in which he referred to Cuba, one of the last remaining Marxist tyrannies, as a “Jurassic Park of Communism”. Walesa remains one of the great political icons of our time, a brave freedom fighter who stood up to the Soviet Empire and led his people to liberty. Continue reading

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