Posted on 06/10/2011 8:58:18 AM PDT by Bigtigermike
Usually when one hears from a critic of Sarah Palin now and days, one of the first set of criticism mounted against her is that she isn't schooled in talking about deep policy discussions, that she hasn't "boned up" on issues, that there seems to be no "intellectual curiosity" whatsoever in Mrs Palin political world.
Well, such criticisms from the Left, the Right and Mainstream Media reporters and talking heads are completely unfounded and is simply not true against the massive evidence of Palin's Facebook posts, Op-ed's, articles, and speeches which is readily available to those publicly if they choose to look for them.
But further more, compared to potential and announced Presidential candidates, Sarah Palin has stood alone on talking about some of the most important issues concerning the United States and the rest of the World.
Case in point, Has any potential or named Presidential candidate laid out a clear concise plan for proper use of military force around the World? Sarah Palin has with a simple 5 point approach to foreign policy:
A lesson here then for effective use of force, as opposed to sending our troops on missions that are ill-defined. And it can be argued that our involvement elsewhere, say, in Libya, is an example of a lack of clarity.
See, these are deadly serious questions that we must ask ourselves when we contemplate sending Americans into harm’s way. Our men and women in uniform deserve a clear understanding of U.S. positions on such a crucial decision.
I believe our criteria before we send our young men and women, America’s finest, into harm’s way, I believe that our criteria should be spelled out clearly when it comes to the use of our military force. I can tell you what I believe that criteria should be. I can tell you what it should be in five points:
First, we should only commit our forces when clear and vital American interests are at stake, period.
Second, if we have to fight, we fight to win. To do that we use overwhelming force. We only send our troops into war with the objective to defeat the enemy as quickly as possible. We do not send our military and stretch out the mission with an open-ended and ill-defined mission. Nation-building, a nice idea in theory, but it’s not the main purpose of our armed forces. We use our military to win wars.
And third, we must have clearly defined goals and objectives before sending our troops into harm’s way. If you can’t explain the mission to the American people clearly, concisely, then our sons and daughters should not be sent to battle. Period.
Fourth, American soldiers must never be put under foreign command. We will fight side by side by our allies, but American soldiers must remain under the care and command of the American officers.
And fifth, sending our armed forces should be the last resort. We don’t go looking for dragons to slay. However, we will encourage the forces of freedom around the world who are sincerely fighting for the empowerment of the individual.
When it makes sense, when it’s appropriate, we’ll provide them with support and help them win their own freedom. We’re not indifferent to the cause of human rights or the desire for freedom. We’re always on the side of both. But we can’t fight every war. We can’t undo every injustice around the world.
But with strength, and clarity in those five points, we’ll make for a safer, more prosperous, more peaceful world. Because as the U.S. leads by example, as we support freedom across the globe, we’re going to prove that free and healthy countries, they don’t wage war on other free and healthy countries.
The stronger we are, the stronger and more peaceful the world will be under our example.
Another policy point is Palin's criticism of Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve last year when they were implementing their plans of Quantitative Easing. She challenged the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, in a keynote address at a trade-association convention in Phoenix, Palin will urge Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to “cease and desist” his “pump priming.” The United States, she says, “shouldn’t be playing around with inflation.” Note at that time not one potential or rumored Presidential candidate came out to criticize the Federal Reserve action, (all forgiveness to Ron Paul the father of criticism of the Federal Reserve):
November 7, 2010
I’m deeply concerned about the Federal Reserve’s plans to buy up anywhere from $600 billion to as much as $1 trillion of government securities. The technical term for it is “quantitative easing.” It means our government is pumping money into the banking system by buying up treasury bonds. And where, you may ask, are we getting the money to pay for all this? We’re printing it out of thin air.
The Fed hopes doing this may buy us a little temporary economic growth by supplying banks with extra cash which they could then lend out to businesses. But it’s far from certain this will even work. After all, the problem isn’t that banks don’t have enough cash on hand – it’s that they don’t want to lend it out, because they don’t trust the current economic climate.
And if it doesn’t work, what do we do then? Print even more money? What’s the end game here? Where will all this money printing on an unprecedented scale take us? Do we have any guarantees that QE2 won’t be followed by QE3, 4, and 5, until eventually – inevitably – no one will want to buy our debt anymore? What happens if the Fed becomes not just the buyer of last resort, but the buyer of only resort?
All this pump priming will come at a serious price. And I mean that literally: everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher. And it’s not just groceries. Oil recently hit a six month high, at more than $87 a barrel. The weak dollar – a direct result of the Fed’s decision to dump more dollars onto the market – is pushing oil prices upwards. That’s like an extra tax on earnings. And the worst part of it: because the Obama White House refuses to open up our offshore and onshore oil reserves for exploration, most of that money will go directly to foreign regimes who don’t have America’s best interests at heart.
We shouldn’t be playing around with inflation. It’s not for nothing Reagan called it “as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man.” The Fed’s pump priming addiction has got our small businesses running scared, and our allies worried.....
We don't have enough time to go over Sarah Palin's thought on the Debt Ceiling, the Budget Crisis, Spending, Oil crisis, START treaty, Foreign Aid, Oil Drilling, the Middle East, Military spending, Inflation and Wall Street manipulations. No, Palin has talked about and discussed Policy Issues in speeches, interviews and in writing its just that many choose to ignore them
Has she spoken on the Korean and Vietnam wars?
HA! That's funny. She's gonna win anyway. I laugh.
She is mustard.
You can’t expect the news media to catch everything Palin has ever said. They are far too busy organizing to read her email releases to bother listening to carefully crafted and well-considered positions that don’t provide the dirt they are looking for. The story is already written by the media, they just need the facts to back up the conclusions they want, and those facts aren’t in your post or in her recent speeches and writings.
Zzzzzz. Yawn. Call me when she announces.
What do you mean by mustard? Spicy?
“discussed”
It wasn’t a trap of any kind, just a genuine question.
“Has she spoken on the Korean and Vietnam wars?”
Riding with Rolling Thunder I would guess she had something to say about Vietnam.
Alright, time for some energetic, young Conservative filmaker to take on this project: it will be called “Are You Smarter Than Sarah Palin...”
The interviewer will ask smarmy young Libs several questions, all concerning matters in which Palin has shown herself to be knowlegable.
At the end of the question session, the filmaker asks the young Lib his/her opinion regarding Sarah’s intellect....I’m putting my money on Palin....
Good comeback Hinckley...you beat me to it. Everyone knows you should be a scholar and historian on the Korean and Vietnam wars to be president in 2012. Hell, the one we have in their now doesn’t even know how many states we have.
“Has she spoken on the Korean and Vietnam wars?”
Bush’s fault.
What I want to know is her position on the War of 1812. ;)
Actually, understanding how we got involved in those two wars is probably a pretty necessary bit of information for a potential POTUS.
Finally somebody takes it seriously. My understanding was that we entered both wars to prevent the spread of Communism. It’s a somewhat-defined mission, but ways to achieve success could be extremely blurry.
She has stated she’d send in the military ONLY with a clearly defined objective, fighting to win.
“Zzzzzz. Yawn. Call me when she announces.”
Give you a call later this fall..... enjoy your nap.
That sounds like revisionism, at least with respect to Vietnam. The more pragmatic answer is that we originally got involved to aid the French (who still had Vietnam as a colony) hoping that the gesture would be repaid by French support for NATO.
Of course, France never did sign on, and eventually they pulled out of Vietnam, leaving the US to clean up the mess. Ho Chi Minh was actually American-educated and saw himself as his country's George Washington. However, in facing both the French (for a while) and the Americans, he wound up having to get support from the communist powers, which then snowballed as the thinking in the US was to not run away from a fight against "the commies". (Somewhat simplified history here, but you should get the general idea.)
I know less about Korea, though. Wasn't this a case of a UN mission gone horribly wrong (as UN missions invariably go)?
British idiom, sorry.
If someone is ‘mustard’ it means sharp, quick-witted, right on the facts.
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