Posted on 03/04/2014 8:12:43 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Four years after CNN foreign policy analyst Fareed Zakaria praised President Barack Obama for scrapping the missile defense system in Eastern Europe, Zakaria swiftly backtracked on Sunday after top Ukrainian officials declared that Russia was invading the country.
Zakaria, the host of CNN's weekly Fareed Zakaria GPS program, said on his show that NATO should consider building a missile defense system in Eastern Europe that the Obama administration scrapped:
"Militarily there is less that can be done. After all, Russia’s military budget is about 18 times that of Ukraine. But NATO should restart talks on providing assurances to countries like Poland – including perhaps building the missile defense system that was abandoned."
During Obama's first year in office, though, Zakaria had a different tone. He said that Obama did not cave on scrapping the missile defense system in Eastern Europe because Obama "traded the fantasy of the system with the reality of what it is."
"The president's reasons for shifting gears on the antiballistic missile systems for Poland and the Czech Republic are sound," Zakaria said in 2009. "Look at the facts. Since the 1980s, the United States has spent well over $150 billion on missile defense. That's more than the total cost of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo mission to the moon. Despite this, in 25 years, the program has not produced any workable weapon system, something unprecedented even in the annals of the Pentagon's bloated budgets."(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
courtesy ping 2nd.
Perhaps Ukraine realizes Russia wouldn’t worry as much about enemy casualties like the US does. Our leaders haven’t wanted to win a war since 1945.
“I don’t like you because — you are going to get me killed!”
Origins: The above-displayed photographs of Barack Obama carrying (and presumably reading) the best-selling book, The Post-American World, is a real one, snapped by Doug Mills of the New York Times in Bozeman, Montana, in May 2008. However, the characterization of the pictured book as “a Muslim's view of a defeated America” is erroneous: The book does not posit a “defeated America,” nor does it express a Muslim point of view.
The The Post-American World was written by Fareed Zakaria, an Indian-born political journalist (commonly described as a “political moderate”) who specializes in world affairs and has written for (and edited) U.S. national news publications, hosted U.S. television news programs, and authored several books on international issues. A Village Voice profile described Zakaria (a naturalized citizen of the United States) thusly:
Although he was a rising star in the serious foreign-policy world of the ‘90s (The Nation once described him as a “junior Kissinger”), it was his post-9/11 Newsweek cover story “Why They Hate Us” that put him on the mainstream map as someone who could make sense of the now threatening outside world. And he has continued to win himself a substantial following with his thoughtful critiques of the Bush administration's activities in Iraq. He is America's go-to man for global chaos, providing some urgently needed outside perspective on our never ending war on terror.
His own upbringing was open-minded and secular; he sang Christian hymns at school and celebrated Hindu as well as his own Muslim holidays. “I do know a lot about the world of Islam in an instinctive way that you can't get through book learning,” he says thoughtfully, but admits he finds the role of token Muslim explainer in the American media slightly uncomfortable. “I occasionally find myself reluctant to be pulled into a world that's not mine, in the sense that I'm not a religious guy.”
Typical liberal BS. This guy is a Muslim. Period. He is a foreign policy/world affairs go to man for left of this country. Period. And it seems like Obama, he has no clue about "Realpolitik". Period.
Just like Madeline Albright told Saddam Hussein he could invade Kuwait.
Zakaria reminds me of a younger Z Brezinski: talks a lot of big words but is usually wrong.
Then again, he works for CNN where accuracy is not always a prerequisite for employment. (How to you say Piers Morgan?)
Stupidity, idiocy, incompetence, shamelessness.
Comrade, it seems we are at war with both Eurasia and Eastasia, or soon will be.
Obama wanted to reset relations with Russia, only the moron didn’t realize that reset would take you back to the 1960s.
A couple of problems with that statement. NATO isn't paying for it, we are. NATO isn't providing billions in military aid for the privilege of building the missile bases, we are. It provides no protection to the U.S., only Europe. So once again people are advocating we take steps without Europe's support and spend billions of dollars defending countries so that they don't have to. Yeah, makes perfect sense to me. </sarcasm>
Zakaria and Obama are Antiamerican frauds -
both guilty of TREASON.
Does your sarcasm tag apply to this statement also?
No. Missiles headed to the U.S. from Russia come over the pole. They don't go over Europe.
Our unilateral disarmament will continue to haunt for years. Peace comes thru strength. The US is getting weak.
Whut?
A couple of problems with that statement. NATO isn’t paying for it, we are. NATO isn’t providing billions in military aid for the privilege of building the missile bases, we are. It provides no protection to the U.S., only Europe. So once again people are advocating we take steps without Europe’s support and spend billions of dollars defending countries so that they don’t have to. Yeah, makes perfect sense to me.
The key thing right now is maintaining the threat of NATO deterrence. It’s better to pay for that radar than to have to decide what to do in the future when Putin rolls tanks into some place like Estonia and they invoke article 5. Doing less than nothing right now just encourages Putin to start rolling tanks through NATO countries.
While you are of course correct about this, the radar stations set up in Poland and the Czech Republic can monitor the skies over eastern Russia to include all their ICBM bases. In the event of a Russian launch they will pass targeting info to Ground-based Missile Defense(GMD) installations in Alaska and California, which will destroy the second stage warhead bus over the pole before the warheads and their decoys deploy. The Russians know this. That's why they're dead set against those radar installations ever coming on line.
Russia doesn’t operate under the same PC conditions that we do.
Nope... that was Bush's ambassador, April Glaspie who in 1990 greenlighted Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
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