Posted on 04/11/2015 7:57:25 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Riddle me this, fellow Republicans. An NBC survey April 9 reports that a huge majority (70%) of Americans doubts that Iran will abide by any agreement to limit its nuclear arms–but a majority (54%) still thinks Obama will do a better job than the Republicans in dealing with Iran!
A majority of Americans – 54 percent – trust Barack Obama to do a better job handling an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, compared to 42 percent who say they trust the Republicans in Congress. But nearly 7 in 10 Americans say that Iran is not likely to abide by the agreement that has been reached.
53% think Iranian nukes are a “major threat,” and only 37% think they are a “minor threat.” Most Americans, in short, think Iran is a major threat to American security and think that Obama’s nuclear deal is a joke–but they still want Obama in charge of the negotiations, not us.
Maybe NBC made the numbers up. Maybe a proofreader got the numbers reversed. And maybe pigs will sprout wings.
There is a much simpler explanation: Most Americans don’t trust Republicans on matters of war and peace. Not after the nation-building disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, that is. Why should they trust us? Our leadership has never admitted it made a mistake. Sen. Ted Cruz, to be sure, had the gumption last fall to say that “we got too involved in nation-building” and that “we should not be trying to turn Iraq into Switzerland”–and was excoriated for his trouble by the Bushies. The Republican mainstream is too busy trying to defend the Bush record to address the distrust of American voters.
One gets weary and grows shrill sounding the same note for a decade. I wish the problem would go away. A couple of weeks ago a friend who served in senior defense positions in the Bush administration remonstrated, “Why do we have to worry about what mistakes were made back then?” The American public doesn’t remember a lot, but it does remember the disruption of millions of lives after the deployment of 2.6 million Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan–not to mention 6,000 dead, 52,000 wounded in action, and hundreds of thousands of other injuries.
That’s why Obama still has the upper hand, and is likely to succeed in selling out American and allied interests to the mullahs. His trump card is the repeated statement: “The alternative is war.” That may or may not be true; over at Asia Times’ “Chatham House Rules” blog, several former senior officials of the Reagan administration are debating the merits of a military strike. But an air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities surely is an option.
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak had it exactly right: an airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities isn’t war. It’s half a night’s work, a pinpoint operation comparable to the killing of Osama bin Laden. But our leaders won’t say this, because the prospect of military force conjures up fears of a million Americans going back to war.
Republicans need a clear and simple policy about the use of force: We will use force only when we and our close allies are under threat. We will use the kind of force that least exposes Americans to harm. We will not sacrifice the time, let alone the lives, of American soldiers to fix the problems of other countries. I recommend that Republican candidates read Angelo Codevilla’s 2014 book To Make and Keep the Peace, and then ask Prof. Codevilla to design a bumper sticker for them.
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry, or both, and in what order. Here we have the least competent president in American history bungling a decisive foreign policy matter in full view of the public, and bungling so badly that 7 out of 10 Americans think that any agreement we make with Iran will be a piece of garbage–and Americans still want Obama to handle the negotiations! That is not only injurious. It is humiliating.
How much more humiliation at the hands of the public do we need before we straighten out and fly right?
“Simple answer: George W. Bush destroyed any credibility the Republican Party ever had on matters of foreign policy.”
Amnesty and spending as well.
For those that say it’s fine if we end up with a less than conservative candidate- this is the long-term consequence of such.
McCain, Rove and Powell ruined foreign Policy for Republicans.
Rove is Satan.
Because the Republican candidates are far more hawkish and all too willing to start new wars. McCain and Graham talking about intervening in Syria. Cotton talking about bombing Iran. People are tired of having our troops dying in any third world cesspool that the happens to be in the news.
because Juan McPain made himself the face of the GOP in dealing with foreign policy?
Please feel fee to post photos of Juan schmoozing with Qadaffi, the North Vietnamese, and Syrian human liver-eaters
Americans rightfully don’t trust the gop wing of the uniparty on foreign policy. They’ve seen what it means: lots of dead Americans and lots of tax dollars for crony capitalists to bring democracy to countries that don’t want it and wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Kudos to Ted Cruz for stating the truth: we aren’t going to turn Iraq into Switzerland. We also aren’t going to turn Syria into Norway, nor are we going to turn Afghanistan into Costa Rica. They’re islamist hellholes that will never amount to anything else in our lifetimes.
The gop is the war without end party, and Americans aren’t interested.
Yup. But it even goes further than that. Take a hard look at American demographics. Particularly people of military age. The pool is drying up, and the military is loudly noting it of late. They have a very shallow pool of people to draw from who meet their basic qualifications. But what gop foreign policy seems to assume is that there is an endless pool of young people willing to sacrifice their time and perhaps their lives for the sake of crony capitalists and third world hellholes.
A draft isn’t coming folks and foreign policy is going to have to conform itself to the reality of a small pool of people who are willing to fight for whatever that policy is.
You make a very good point. Regardless of whether we agree with it or not, the majority of Americans are simply not interested in war at this point. It’s at best a hard sell for the gop wing of the uniparty. Perhaps an impossible sell.
I would take the analysis one step further and look at the people who would be responsible for bearing the brunt of the fight: those in the military and those of military age. If they’re not willing to join, all the policy pronouncements and arguments in the world are meaningless. A draft isn’t going to happen and the pool to draw from is shrinking, as the military has been very loudly noting of late.
Is this reliable polling? Who under heaven could possibly think that obama could do well with foreign policy after the way he’s treated our allies! Geez!
“.......(54%) still thinks Obama will do a better job than the Republicans in dealing with Iran!”......
The poll was more than likely taken in odumbo’s back yard. Every known conservative I have talked with these past several months must have been avoided in that “survey”.
Now you just sit there and act like it will all go away if only we stay inside our borders and act nice.
No, I don't.
Once Iran has nukes, there’s no going back. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other nations will have to develop their own bombs.
These countries are probably well on their way to this. I would assume this is the case because any nation that values its own self-preservation would do well to develop the advanced military hardware to protect themselves. That's what sovereign nations do.
Someone has to do the heavy lifting. Do you want Russia to China to step in?
What "heavy lifting" are you talking about?
Where do you get the idea Israel is just fine with Iran having the bomb?
I never said that. I said Israel would never launch any military action against Iran that required their own troops to occupy the country. They'll just lobby the United States to do it for them, as they've been doing for decades.
1. Democrats will never trust the Republicans, period.
2. A lot of conservatives -- including many right here on FreeRepublic -- who have voted for Republican candidates over the years don't trust the Republican Party, either.
You might be making the mistake of confusing "Republican" with "conservative" on many of these issues. The truth is that the Republican Party leadership is filled with big-government globalists who have no reason for anyone to trust them when it comes to looking out for America's best interests around the world.
As I said in an earlier post ... Hillary Clinton has the same problem among Democrats. With every passing day there are more and more reasonably intelligent people in this country from all points along the political spectrum who have come to believe that America's foreign policy -- and, by extension, its military assets -- are up for sale to the highest bidder (foreign or domestic).
There are more than a few of us out here who don't think its a coincidence that U.S. military campaigns over the last few decades always seem to be carried out for the benefit of nations whose leaders are major real estate investors with the Bush family in Texas, or who contribute millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
Hopefully, when Jeb Bush does NOT get the nomination; it will loosen Karl Rove’s influence over the party. I hope I’m not expecting too much .. but at some point, the true right (conservative), will get the picture and stop running to Karl about everything.
With you on this. Iran should have the nation we cleared out in the Middle East.
I too remember that time. Jeff Head got us going. I hope he is doing ok, he had a hell of a fight with cancer.
Why don’t Americans trust Republicans on foreign policy?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Because unlike the dems, Republicans actually tell the public what they are doing. The Dems hide everything and so,,,,,are trusted.
Republicans? It’s conservatives we need. Desperately.
That’s a better way of saying the same thing.
He destroyed GOP credibility on just about every issue. Prepare for the Rat nominee to run against Bush again in 2016. As long as the GOP defends W the GOP loses.
Well, I think the industrious nature of the Japanese can’t be discounted. While we can second guess what we did in Iraq, ultimately it depends on the Iraqi people and whether they want a stable unified government there.
I think the final Bush formula was rather decent. We’ve also have to recall that his plan called for leaving troops in Iraq so things could stabilize more, and there would be a better chance of success.
Obama knew better, so he pulled everyone out.
Then you’ve got idiots like McCain/Graham that saw to it that “our allies” in Al Qaeda got funding and guns. All of a sudden you have a well armed and well funded ISIS on your hands.
So what we wind up doing is second guessing ourselves while McCain and Graham go off shoot their mouths off on other international issues.
It’s a multi-headed beast the Iraqi question. Differing factions of Islam figure in too. It’s more of a mess now that it had to be. Some on our side, and some on the Left really screwed this up post Bush IMO.
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