Posted on 01/14/2017 9:27:36 PM PST by Lorianne
January 20th cannot come soon enough. Instead of stepping back and trying to ensure a smooth transition for Donald Trump, Barack Obama has decided to go hog wild and use every ounce of presidential power still available to him. He has been establishing a bunch of new national monuments, he just stabbed Israel in the back at the United Nations, and on Thursday he even took time to give Joe Biden a Presidential Medal of Freedom. But one of the things that has people the most concerned is his endless provoking of Russia. Every few days it seems like Obama is doing something else to aggravate Russia, and if he wasnt leaving office in about a week I am sure that the mainstream media would be full of speculation about a possible war.
Lame duck presidents are not supposed to make risky moves like this once a new president has been elected. On Thursday, we learned that U.S. troops have been permanently deployed to Poland for the very first time
___ American soldiers rolled into Poland on Thursday, fulfilling a dream some Poles have had since the fall of communism in 1989 to have U.S. troops on their soil as a deterrent against Russia.
___Some people waved and held up American flags as U.S. troops in tanks and other vehicles crossed into southwestern Poland from Germany and headed toward the town of Zagan, where they will be based. Polands prime minister and defense minister will welcome them in an official ceremony Saturday.
Poland was once a key member of the Warsaw Pact alliance, and the Russians are quite alarmed that U.S. troops will now be stationed so close to the Russian heartland.
(Excerpt) Read more at theeconomiccollapseblog.com ...
Yeah, believe this manufactured news. Like the “White Helmets” in Syria (a jihadi-friendly CIA financed PR op), which was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Fortunately many Americans on the right saw this manufactured BS in this past election with the bogus news on Trump. Regarding overseas manufactured news it’s ten times worse.
Btw, do you believe this neocon globalist propaganda piece will readers on FR, especially when it praises Obama and takes swipes at Trump, who is not even President yet.
While I agree, overall, with what you wrote, USAEUR, etc was fully prepared to take on the USSR and trained accordingly. Now, they’re too busy taking diversity classes and transgender acceptance classes.
What worries me about the whole exercise is, what happens if a shot is fired? No matter why, but a GI is killed on the border. Who cleans up that mess? Trump is taking office under the premise that he isn’t going to take shit from anyone. Obama would sacrifice that entire brigade if it was politically expedient. I could be leaning a little in the Alex Jones camp right now, but there’s a lot more at stake now, than when the Cold War was up and running. If something pops off, obama we’ll be long gone and spend the rest of his days talking shit.
I’m not a neocon but I think it gives plausible deniability for Trump to move out.
I also believe it gives him latitude to stay in order to protect the west states.
What does it mean to you?
(Keep in mind that John F’N Kerry is NOT your SOS)
You are missing the word “reach” there.
Yes, you are on Free Republic.
This move is symbolic and almost meaningless. Presidents Trump and Putin will determine the tone of their relationship, and Obama will (for once) be harmless. Trump can if he wishes withdraw these troops with no damage at all, since there is not even an implied endorsement of this move by the incoming president.
No $hit.
This is a really complicated issue. I think it is important to give it perspective. These are just some of my thoughts on this:
1.) 2009 thru 2012 - Obama scraps the Eastern European missile defense shield, attempts Russian reset and to strike what people call the grand Russian bargain. Similar in scope to middle east peace.
2.) Back in 2012 Obama scoffed at Romney’s assertion that Russia was our number one external threat. That is debatable. It could be China, Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc. Obama and Clinton/Kerry begin Asia Pivot.
3.) Obama is re-elected. He makes a strategic error to turn his campaign rhetoric into policy and ignore Europe. Essentially turning it over to the EU and NGO’s. This is crucial because it feeds into the Russian narrative of the regime change mentality of Obama. Arab Spring serves as backdrop, including Libya (and now Syria).
4.) 2014 - Putin, sensing an opening as well as feeling threatened by U.S. regime change policy considers Ukraine the last straw and annexes Crimea. The debate on whether Ukraine was a western-backed coup or internal uprising is irrelevant. The pattern is already well established.
5.) Obama is made aware of his strategic error by whatever levelheaded advisor (they’re not all homos, trannies and NWO globalists)confronts him. And to avoid Eastern European allies from either making deals with Putin or furthering the militarization of the EU realizes that an American show of force is necessary.
6.) Summer 2016 - Deployment of U.S. forces to Poland is announced. They will spread out from Poland to the Baltics and other nations.
7.) If you listen to Trump he’s essentially said two things. One: NATO needs to up its contributions, and he’s against Obama’s regime change policy (phrased as endless wars, etc.) This has been interpreted by us, incorrectly, as Trump repudiating NATO as part of an anti-globalist stance. Not true.
The NATO alliance is crucial in order to avoid European chaos. Despite what we all think, Putin needs to be kept honest (trust but verify). This deployment does achieve that goal.
It is irrelevant that it was initiated under Obama’s watch. It’s not enough to just laugh at his stupidity or to blame him because of his policies. He screwed up and is trying to fix it. We shouldn’t be in this mess, but we are. The time for recrimination has passed. He is gone in five days.
This is what is really going on. With all of the bullsh*t stripped out of it.
Interesting that you mention the militarization of the EU. I have not seen that discussed (in the US) as a threat or a problem, though I think it should be. The issue has been discussed in Britain, because there it is understood as an eventual choice that has to be made between the EU and the USA. That choice was eventually made by the British people last summer... However the foreign policy establishment in the US appears to be unaware of the problem, or have I missed something?
Obama is a not an American. He is a 3rd world, tin pot dictator, who was elected because of his racial characteristics and cool shuck and jive.
His goal has been to be an apologist for America abroad to weaken traditional alliances, and to destroy America’s domestic institutions which insure public order.
Underneath the exterior coat of palatable paint is a minority nationalist socialist, that’s right , a fascist.
And now he is bearing his true face, which belongs in the pantheon of totalitarian dictators out of history, including Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, and the rest of those from Europe. These are the people Obama worships inside his private closet of petulant , narcissistic insanity.
Thank GOD Obama is now relegated to the dust bin of history, and that the People and the Constitution have prevailed.
read about it all here:
“Barrack Obama, The Quintessential Liberal Fascist”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html
I think the Poles may well argue the same way as the French general who was asked on the eve of the outbreak of WWI by his British counterpart how many British soldiers it would be necessary to post in France.
“One grenadier will be enough. We will make sure he is killed the first day.”
Even a broke n clock is riight once a day. But 3500 soldiers, a brigade, will hardly shift any balance of power. But 350,000 would.
This has to be perceived by Putin to be just the beginning.
Trump is going to have to fire a lot of military big shots. They’re all loyal democrats. Some of us hoped for the military to stop Obama. Now I’m worried they’ll try to stop Trump.
And to add to your point, my idea about EU militarization comes from the British, specifically Nigel Farage. He's really been on the front line talking about this issue.
I think it's also been confirmed by former Greek finance minister Yaris Varoufakis when he describes what occuered as essentially the state capture of Greece by Germany.
But the real moment of truth came after the EU released its plans for a EU army after Brexit. The mask came off at that point. Prior to that, the notion of an EU army or a revanchist France and Germany was relegated to the imagination of techno-thriller writers.
But it's really a matter of timelines. If you accept the premise that the next geopolitical threat to the U.S. is China over the next 20-30 years you kinda understood what Obama was thinking when he said the U.S. was going to pivot to Asia.
With that in mind, if you're a EU lackey you said to yourself, "U.S. is done with Europe," and we can't depend on them and have to do our own thing. If you talk to Nigel Farage he'll tell you that Obama essentially chucked the UK into the EU sausage machine from a diplomatic and geopolitical point of view.
So the pivot to Asia is good from a long-term perspective, but Obama made a short to mid-term error. Europe is not done. And just like with the Iraq pullout and the rise of ISIS, we're paying for that miscalculation with Europe.
I’m sure that was O’s intent, to get DJT into as many awkward situations as he can. I hope he can find a way to extricate the US without hurting Pole feelings. Perhaps agree to maintain the troops there as a trip wire, like in Korea, and slowly diminish the presence to a few hundred.
These are some good links and good information you provided. Thank you. It definitely fills out the broad outline. Specifically the Russian history timeline. It’s easy to forget that from the Mongols to the Nazis the invasion paranoia in Russia is alive and well. It’s woven into their national consciousness and we can’t get rid of it.
This gets into Russia’s long-term strategic goals. To listen to some geopolitical analysts, Russia, is in its death throes. Demography is upside down: essentially no kids and a crappy life expectancy. They simply don’t have the people to populate the country and their armed forces will suffer and their borders will become weak and open to invasion, again.
If you consider the Islamist threat to Europe I suspect that this is what occupies Putin’s mind to a large extent. So the old ‘buffer state’ strategy is in place. How much of that is based on NATO and EU expansion or on potential Islamist invasion is anybody’s guess. But I think it’s fair to say Putin views it as a double threat.
Zagan is on the western side of Poland, about 30 miles from Germany and several hundred miles from the border with Belarus / Ukraine.
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