Posted on 12/21/2010 5:33:52 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Senate Democrats have decided the way to muster public support for President Obama’s START treaty with the Russians is to present the issue as a choice between rational, experienced, calm foreign policy heads . . . and an airhead.
Specifically Sarah Palin, or at least the Saturday Night Live cartoon version of Sarah Palin.
On their web site, Senate Democrats pose the question thusly:
In supporting ratification of the New START Treaty, Democrats are siding with the cross-party consensus view of virtually the entire foreign policy establishment – including former President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Gates, Secretary of State Clinton, and the secretaries of state from the last five presidents. In opposing ratification, many Senate Republicans are siding with the position supported by… Sarah Palin. The individuals in the first group have over a century of foreign policy experience between them, and have worked closely on U.S.-Russia relations for decades. On the other hand, Palin can see Russia from her house. Apparently, that’s good enough for many Senate Republicans.
Of course, Sarah Palin never said “I can see Russia from my house.” That was from a Saturday Night Live sketch. But since when can Democrats tell the difference between truth and fiction?
Let’s consider some of the oh-so-respected establishment types to whom they want us to genuflect:
James Baker III and Brent Scowcroft? These two patron saints of the foreign policy “realist” set are bastards who were perfectly happy to let people die at the hands of brutal dictators in the name of global “stability.” Screw them. They are evil men.
George H.W. Bush may be a good man, but when he was making foreign policy, he serially took the advice of the aforementioned bastards.
Hillary Clinton? Do you need a reminder of who this woman really is?
Colin Powell? Hey, wait a minute . . . isn’t that the guy who was sent to the UN by George W. Bush to lie us into the Iraq War? Or so Senate Democrats have been telling us for the past eight years? But we’re supposed to listen to him now?
Appeals to the authority of the “establishment” are particularly amusing given the current political environment, but judging from the pork-laden spending monster Democrats tried to cram through last week, there’s little evidence they’ve caught wind of how the nation is feeling about things.
At any rate, this isn’t a hard decision: I’ll side with Sarah Palin (the real one, not the SNL version) and her reality-based notion of the real stakes on the issue of geopolitical influence and nuclear proliferation, as evidenced by her thoughtful piece today in USA Today on the threat posed by Iran.
Palin is a bright, knowledgeable source of information and insight on foreign policy. Anyone who doesn’t think so should become more familiar with her actual thinking, not just the pop culture notions about her.
And if you would side with monsters like James A. Baker III and Brent Scowcroft on just about anything, honestly, you really ought to go to hell.
If Sarah Palin were campaigning for President, she probably would not have made the centerpiece of that campaign a cockamamie plan to divide Iraq into three autonomous regions.
Sarah Palin probably would not have told General Petraeus that he was “dead flat wrong” on the surge.
Sarah Palin probably would not have voted against the first Gulf War.
Sarah Palin probably would not have opposed the United States designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.
Sarah Palin probably would not have told top Israeli officials, as reported in the Israeli press, that Israel would just have to learn to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Sarah Palin probably would not have assumed that the answer to failed diplomatic negotiations with Iran was more diplomatic negotiations with Iran.
The word “probably” must be used because we can only speculate on the basis of her barracuda-like instincts.
But there is one thing of which we can be sure: If Sarah Palin had been in the Senate in 1973, she would not have been one of the five Senators opposing the Alaska Pipeline Bill.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2073523/posts
“Bolton.”
You might think that Bolton wrote this:
“Senate Republicans: Vote No on New START
December 17, 2010 12:13 P.M. By Sarah Palin
The proposed New START agreement should be evaluated by the only criteria that matters for a treaty: Is it in America’s interest? I am convinced this treaty is not. It should not be rammed through in the lame duck session using behind the scenes deal-making reminiscent of the tactics used in the health care debate.
New START actually requires the U.S. to reduce our nuclear weapons and allows the Russians to increase theirs. This is one-sided and makes no strategic sense. New START’s verification regime is weaker than the treaty it replaces, making it harder for us to detect Russian cheating. Since we now know Russia has not complied with many arms control agreements currently in force, this is a serious matter.
New START recognizes a link between offensive and defensive weapons – a position the Russians have sought for years. Russia claims the treaty constrains U.S. missile defenses and that they will withdraw from the treaty if we pursue missile defenses. This linkage virtually guarantees that either we limit our missile defenses or the Russians will withdraw from the treaty. The Obama administration claims that this is not the case; but if that is true, why agree to linking offensive and defensive weapons in the treaty? At the height of the Cold War, President Reagan pursued missile defense while also pursuing verifiable arms control with the then-Soviet Union. That position was right in the 1980’s, and it is still right today. We cannot and must not give up the right to missile defense to protect our population – whether the missiles that threaten us come from Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, or anywhere else. I fought the Obama administration’s plans to cut funds for missile defense in Alaska while I was Governor, and I will continue to speak out for missile defenses that will protect our people and our allies.”
Without ratifying the LOST treaty -- there is no assurance from administration to administration that oil & gas resources off Alaska would be protected for U.S. development until we got the insane enviromarxist influence out of our system and got serious about development. This is the problem Governor Palin addressed in taking the position she did. There's enough oil & gas up there to guarantee our energy independence and she wants the problem resolved. Her position (as governor) was that ratifying the treaty would reserve those resources for Alaska and the U.S., a perfectly reasonable position to take as governor. To blast her as some kind of RINO because she wanted this guarantee for the U.S. as governor is demagoguery of the worst order.
John Bolton would be in a dead heat with Sarah on foreign policy IMO. They each have an advantage over the other: Bolton has had more experience; Sarah has more common sense. However, Bolton wasn’t one of the choices.
You’re defending LOST, on America’s premiere conservative website?
What a contorted load of nonsense.
Sorry, but the financial interests of one state are not worth giving unelected UN bureaucrats control over a majority of the earth’s surface, along with its resources, or for the first time giving taxing authority to that awful body of tinpot despots.
Ronald Reagan killed this monster, and it must stay dead.
It makes me sick that for the sake of some political figure people who call themselves conservative will gladly go along with the destruction of our national sovereignty.
You must have that in a macro. I am getting tired of seeing it every time I click on a Palin thread. Want to come up with something new?
The subject of the thread is how awesome Palin is on foreign policy. Sorry, but that’s not a “gimme” sort of issue. It’s life and death for our young men and women, for our republic, and for our friends and allies around the world.
Do you support the Law of the Sea Treaty?
Not just no, but hell no. Why do you ask? What does that have to do with anything? Are you going to tell me that Sarah supports it?
On her official letterhead, with her signature at the bottom.
> “Sarah Palin’s top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, whom she inherited from John Judas McCain, is a Washington, DC lobbyist who has been, and still is, as far as I’ve been able to discern, on George Soros’ payroll.”
.
Sarah Palin’s top foreign policy advisor is Sarah Palin.
Whose payroll are you on troll?
.
Wrong again, chief!
The Reagan Administration's public position was that they opposed the "seabed mining" provisions of Part XI of the Treaty. The seabed mining provisions were amended to incorporate those objections and became a binding part of the Treaty when it went into effect in 1994.
I understand the incremental argument and agree with it. Sarah Palin understands it, Ronald Reagan understood it, John Bolton understands it, we all understand it. That doesn't solve the problem of how we protect 80+ billion barrels of oil and 1,500+ trillion cubic feet of natural gas from being frittered away by lunatic administrations like the Obama Administration.
Even though Reagan refused to seek ratification of UNCLOS, he directed that all portions of the treaty EXCEPT the seabed mining provisions would be adhered to as "customary practice" by the U.S. He also declared that a U.S. "Exclusive Economic Zone" in coastal waters consistent with UNCLOS would be in force.
President Reagan's 1983 Ocean Policy Statement
There are plenty of pros and cons. The U.S. Navy, for instance, has supported ratification of LOST since it was negotiated in the late '70s and further negotiated during the Reagan Administration. Their position is that it codifies very favorable "customary practices" as it relates to access to certain territorial waters to keep sea lanes open.
There are sound reasons to oppose this treaty and, on balance, I'm against it as long as we are willing to protect undersea resources (that the treaty grants to us as "ours") whether we are a signatory or not.
This was Palin's concern as governor of Alaska and she had every reason to be concerned about it with 25% of the undeveloped oil & gas reserves on the planet sitting off the coast in international waters in what would have been the "Exclusive Economic Zone" of the U.S. under the treaty, and with Russia and others chomping at the bit to get at these resources while we do nothing to develop or protect them.
The U.N doesn't even administer this treaty but the treaty DOES set up international tribunals to arbitrate seabed disputes. As the only major power not to ratify the treaty, we don't participate. Fine by me, but we must assert our rights to seabed resources that are ours. This was Governor Palin's concern. Presidential candidate Sarah Palin might very well "revise and extend" her position.; Maybe she'll station a couple of carrier battle groups in the Aleutians to protect the resources.
As I said, I'm opposed to the thing on balance, but the Navy and others disagree. There are plenty of pros and cons but it's extremely easy to demagogue this thing and that's exactly what's going on here with your nonsense.
What nonsense.
That's why we have a Navy. It's to protect what is ours, not to push the takeover of a majority of the planet by the UN.
Go ahead, spin it all you want. But conservatives aren't going to buy it.
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