Posted on 02/20/2009 1:37:29 PM PST by bimboeruption
“The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating,” said President Obama, as he announced deployment of 17,000 more U.S. troops.
“I’m absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region, solely through military means.”
“(T)here is no military solution in Afghanistan,” says Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Said U.S. Commander Gen. David McKiernan yesterday, U.S. and NATO forces are “stalemated.”
Such admissions by our military and political leadership in a time of war call to mind other words heard back in 1951, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur delivered his farewell address to the Congress:
“(O)nce war is forced upon us,” said MacArthur, “there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.
“In war, there is no substitute for victory.”
But if victory over the Taliban has been ruled out by the United States, have the Taliban ruled out a victory over the American Empire to rival the one their fathers won over the Soviet Empire?
What price are we prepared to pay, in “prolonged indecision,” to avert such an end to a war now in its eighth year?
America had best brace herself for difficult days ahead.
For stepping back from the dreary prognosis for Afghanistan, a new reality becomes clear. The long retreat has begun.
Whether it is in the 23 months Gen. Petraeus favors, or the 16 months Obama promised, the United States is coming home from Iraq.
The retreat from Central Asia is already underway. Expelled from the K-2 air base in Uzbekistan in 2005, the United States has now been ordered out of the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan. Abkhazia and South Ossetia, ripped away from Georgia by Russia last August, are never going to be returned. And we all know it.
Georgia and Ukraine, most realists now realize, are not going to be admitted to NATO. We’re not going to fight Russia over the Crimea. And the U.S. anti-missile missiles and radars George Bush intended to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic will not now be deployed.
For Washington has fish to fry with Russia, and the price of her cooperation is withdrawal of U.S. military forces from her backyard and front porch. And the warm words flowing between Moscow and Washington suggest the deal is done.
With tensions rising in Korea, too, it is hard to believe President Obama will bolster ground forces on the peninsula, when even Donald Rumsfeld was presiding over a drawdown and a shifting of U.S. troops away from the DMZ.
In Latin America, the United States seems reconciled to the rise of an anti-American radical-socialist coalition, led by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and embracing Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Partisans of President Bush may blame Obama for presiding over a strategic retreat, but it is the Bush administration that assured and accelerated such a retreat.
As Robert Pape of the University of Chicago writes in The National Interest: “America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today’s world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back at the Bush administration years as the death knell of American hegemony.”
Pape’s harsh verdict is rooted in his reading of history, that the “size of an economy relative to potential rivals ultimately determines the limits of power in international politics.”
In other words, when a great nation’s share of world product shrinks, the nation’s strategic position follows. Between 2000 and 2008, the U.S. share of world product plunged from 31 percent to 23 percent, and is expected to fall to 21 percent by 2013 — a decline of 32 percent in 13 years. China’s share of world product over the same period will more than double to 9 percent.
Pape went back to the 19th century to correlate the rise of the great powers like Britain and the commensurate growth in their share of world product. He found the Bush decline had no precedent.
“America’s relative decline since 2000 of some 30 percent represents a far greater loss of relative power in a shorter time than any power shift among European great powers roughly from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to World War II. It is one of the largest relative declines in modern history. Indeed, in size, it is clearly surpassed by only one other great-power decline, the unprecedented internal collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.”
With an economy still three times that of China, America continues to be the world’s most powerful nation, fully capable of defending all of its vital interests. We can no longer, however, defend every ally to whom we made a commitment over the six decades since NATO was formed.
Obama’s assignment: Rebuild U.S. productive power, and execute a strategic withdrawal from non-vital commitments.
Is it too late for the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Can we who love this country and remember it as it once was, take it back?
Coming from Patty’0 who was rooting against us from the start.
LOL, “rooting”? What, do you think this is some sort of game?
““The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating,” said President Obama, as he announced deployment of 17,000 more U.S. troops.
“I’m absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region, solely through military means.” “
So he’s sending more troops to disprove his point? lol
Buchanan isn’t rooting against us; he believes in the tradition in American foreign policy, started by Washington and carried on until NATO of avoiding permanent alliances (”entangling”). We are now committed to go to war over Korea, Japan, Australia, Israel, all of NATO, Latin America, etc.
I’m with him in principle, although it’s hard to avoid the easy patriotism that comes when the war drums start beating.
Good Lord. Does Zero have no skills whatsoever?
And what about his crack administration team, cobbled together from ex-clintonites and lobbyists (18 so far)? Are they as clueless as he?
How, exactly, was Buchanan rooting against us?
I harkens back to the rudderless LBJ days when McNamarra & Clark Clifford were vying for LBJ's limited attention span.
I think his blame America first proclamations, declaring the war illegal is an obvious start.
Wow, I would recommend grabbing a history book, also re-reading Washington’s farewell address in full as it is about as misquoted as Eisenhower’s address on the ‘military industrial complex’.
>>I harkens back to the rudderless LBJ days when McNamarra & Clark Clifford were vying for LBJ's limited attention span.<<
I don't get it either. Has Barry explained his point?
To read later
I agree on all your points.
Well Obama may get us out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and maybe Korea, but he isn’t going to build up our productivity! He won’t even be trying since that isn’t what Socialist/Marxist/Fascist economies are all about.
Pat always seems to be six months or a year behind the times. Perhaps he's stuck in a time warp.
Chavez' influence was built on his massive income from high oil prices. He can just barely give the stuff away today. In fact, the market price may be below his cost of production.
No massive oil revenues, bye-bye international influence.
whats to pulverize? its 99% empty land and mountains.
Times have changed.
Relevant section:
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.
Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.
Well there is no obvious military task in Afghanistan besides maintaining a ‘presence’ to deny the use of its territory to the terrorists. You don’t need a whole lotta troops for that. So what is Obama up to besides upping the ante?
OTOH, if we remove ourselves from Afghanistan the terrorists will control the place within a few weeks. Kazai might be able to hold-on for a while, but that would depend on whether he could cut a deal with the Russians. Putin would love that.
Whoa, did you look at the sites that this website links too?
You’re looking at some real nutjobs.
I support the mission but not Obama.
Jeeze... good point.. I’m not sure even Pat Buchanan would be happy having his name on that site.. Some of the stuff posted there reads like stormwhatever...
http://buchanan.org/blog/brigade-forum/more-news-and-opinion-on-our-culture/supporters-of-the-white-race/page-2/#p506
I’ll be sure to just avoid this one.. thanks for the warning..
A sober and serious column by Buchanan. Thanks for posting.
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