WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL - AT 6:55 P.M. ET:  Last week, at his news conference, President Obama once more displayed his grasp of history by quoting Winston Churchill on the subject of torture.  And once more the president was wrong, as noted by distinguished author Arthur Herman, a recognized expert on British history:

Churchill recognized that torture -- the cruel, needless infliction of pain as a means of domination and control of others -- was emblematic of man's barbarism, as opposed to the values of what he called "Christian civilization." It was precisely this barbarism that he saw in the Nazi death camps and the Soviet gulag -- and that we see among the Muslim fanatics who will stone women to death for refusing to wear the veil or behead reporters.

But Churchill also understood that, if barbarism was one enemy of civilization, another was a moral cowardice disguised as moral qualms -- an instinctive flinching in the face of danger, dressed up as "upholding our values."

Churchill had seen this flinching in such 1930s appeasers as Neville Chamberlain, and he feared that he'd see it again among Britons and their leaders after the war.

There is no place for compromise in war," Churchill wrote. In choosing between civilized restraint and the British people's survival, he never hesitated.

COMMENT:  In the first weeks of his presidency, Obama haughtily sent back to the British a bust of Winston Churchill that had been in display in the Oval Office.  It was correctly seen as a slap in the British face.  Now, when convenient, he quotes Churchill.

As Arthur Herman points out, Obama has said that GI's liberated Auschwitz.  It was Russian troops.  He said that Austrians speak Austrian.  No such language.  They speak German.  Now he messes up on Churchill.

Of course, he hasn't released his college transcripts, so we don't know what grades he got in history, if he ever took history.  Books are available.

May 6, 2009