Posted on 03/18/2008 4:56:09 PM PDT by calcowgirl
Americans and Europeans share a common goal – to build an enduring peace based on freedom. Our democracies today are strong and vibrant. Together we can tackle the diverse challenges we face, whether radical religious fanatics who use terror as their weapon of choice, the disturbing turn towards autocracy in Russia or the looming threats of climate change and the degradation of our planet.
But the key word is “together”. We need to renew and revitalise our democratic solidarity. We need to strengthen our transatlantic alliance as the core of a new global compact – a League of Democracies – that can harness the great power of the more than 100 democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.
At the heart of this new compact must be mutual respect and trust. We Americans recall the words of our founders in the Declaration of Independence, that we must pay “decent respect to the opinions of mankind”. Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed.
We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe that international action is necessary, whether military, economic or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must also be willing to be persuaded by them.
The nations of the Nato alliance and the European Union, meanwhile, must have the ability and the will to act in defence of freedom and economic prosperity. They must spend the money necessary to build effective military and civilian capabilities that can be deployed around the world, from the Balkans to Afghanistan, from Chad to East Timor.
We welcome European leadership to make the world a better and safer place. We look forward to France’s full reintegration into Nato. And we strongly support the EU’s efforts to build an effective European Security and Defence Policy. A strong EU, a strong Nato and a true strategic partnership between them is profoundly in our interest.
We all have to live up to our own high standards of morality and international responsibility. We will fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundations of our societies. We cannot torture or treat inhumanely the suspected terrorists that we have captured. We must close the detention facility at Guantánamo and come to a common international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.
International responsibility also means preserving our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. Americans and Europeans need to get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand over a much-diminished world to our grandchildren. We need to reinvigorate the US-European partnership on climate change where we have so many common interests at stake. The US and Europe must lead together to encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.
I have introduced legislation that would require a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but that is just a start. We need a successor to Kyoto, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner. New technologies hold great promise. We need to unleash the power and innovation of the marketplace in order to meet our environmental challenges. Right now safe, climate-friendly nuclear energy is a critical way both to improve the quality of our air and to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources.
That dependence, I am afraid, has become a vulnerability for both the US and Europe and a source of leverage for the oil and gas exporting autocracies. The US needs to wean itself off oil faster. Europe needs a comprehensive energy policy so that Russia’s oil and gas monopolies cannot behave as agents of political influence.
The bottom line is that none of us can act as if our only concerns are within our own borders. We cannot define our national interests so narrowly that we fail to see how intimately our fate is bound up with that of the rest of humanity. There is such a thing as good international citizenship. If we wish to be models for others, we must be model citizens ourselves.
Certainly the US must be that model country. Leadership today means something different than it did in the years after the second world war, when Europe and the other democracies were recovering from the devastation of war and the US was the only democratic superpower. Today, there is the powerful collective voice of the EU, India, Japan, Australia, Brazil, South Korea, South Africa, Turkey and Israel, to name just a few of the leading democracies. And there are the struggling young democracies, such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, that need and deserve help – more, in fact, than we have been giving. In Russia, democracy has been temporarily suppressed, but we all have an interest in seeing this great nation return to the democratic path soon.
This is not idealism. It is the truest form of realism. It is the democracies of the world that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build an enduring peace.
The writer is senator for Arizona and is the Republican nominee for the 2008 US presidential elections
“We are the world!”
Come on everybody, sing along!
Excuse me while I go puke...
What is he doing over there wiht two other American Senators?..He is conducting a look see as a Senator like he is suppose to be doing..What is it that you would have him do...stay at home and fight over who said what and where, or get about the countries business like the Senator he was elected to be..As for stabbing Bush?..It appears to me that he has been a staunch backer of Bush’s Iraq policies.Pay attention!
I never said he stabbed Bush. I quite rightly questioned his motives for going overseas right now, and to whom he was going to see.
These are diplomatically sensitive areas he is visiting, and the visiting of heads of state is troublung to me, because that is the President’s prerogative as the official conductor of US foreign policy, not Senators who are going on a junket. McCain’s embarassing misstatement of Al Qaeda in Iran(which he was right thr first time, but he listened to the correction given by his former Dem friend, Joe Lieberman) is proof of why Senators need to stay the hell home.
Besides this little junket is little more than cover for his little fundraiser meeting in London on March 20th.
His disloyalty to the President is a correct statement in light of the following:
1. McCain was willing to jump parties and become a Democrat. This would have turned control of the Senate over to Tom Dashcle. Jim Jeffords jumped first, and that stynied the President’s agenda. McCAin was willing to do the same thing.
2. He was in talks to become VP on John Kerry’s ticket in 2004. He should have been bounced out of the party for that, knowing what a dishonorable person Kerry is and the disaster a Kerry administration would be.
3. Mr. McCain’s Gang of 14 completely pulled the rug out from under Bill Frist, who finally found his testicles and was ready to make the Dems put up or shut up on the President’s judicial nominees.
So, maxjax, take your own advice: pay attention!
And don’t put words in my mouth.
Norm, well said.
All well and good.
However, I requested for you to back up your assertion that Calcowgirl, and I, by association, are Hillary lovers.
To refresh your memory, see my post # 69.
Feel free to search my posts, all the way back to 1998 if you like. Tell me what you find re: Hillary.
I wonder if this is the reincarnation of FairOpinion, but yet I'm pretty certain it's not due to intellectual inconsistency that's even more pronounced in this case.
It's enough to make a saint cuss and sometime I might even slip!!!
I like the old broad brush treatment that a few like to wield here, slam anyone and everyone that deviates from or even tries to question a candidate’s stands on issues and can actually back up their arguments in doing so.
A few here just toss mud , mostly to divert attention from their own inability to have a civil discussion, instead, my suspicion a few here are only out to besmirch old timers who don’t buy into the progressivist agenda that the New Majority RMSP movement counterconservatives the GOP is overrun by today are pushing.
soft-headed Seniturd ?
How dare you call “the anointed Juan” that.
What is it that you would have him do...stay at home and fight over who said what and where..
—
Just an idea but being as he has a son who is a Marine, he might make an appearance at one of the recruiter offices under attack here of recent.. just a thought
now now,, we all know conservatives in California are all rebels.. and if the Ca GOP has its way, dang near eligible for protection as an endangered specie ;-)
I really love the broad brush technique, it usually leave more paint on those that wield them than their targets, but hey,, its not like they care who they malign anyway.
The political hermaphrodite II (Whom you call "the anointed Juan") is the CONTRA-Conservative in a class with Schwartzenswindler!!! (If only either of 'em had any class)(their FR sickophants certainly don't)
These are the ravings of an Algore class LOON ranting against his own exceptional nation while trying desperately to pass himself off as some kind of believeable "conservative!" Unreal!!!
The only modicum of sanity in his whole ridiculous tired tirade!!!
Well, lets see you run your campaign on horseback or horse and buggy, you idiot!!!
Our national security and economy are based on two key ingredients... Oil and freedom and neither are free Senator hothead/knothead!!! (OMG I wish we had a legitimate candidate I could vote FOR!!!)(I hate voting for Nader!!!)
@katiedidit1:
I'll second that one. The only good sense y'all could show by now is to back way off.
Tomorrow should be teliing when we see news of his London events. I expect he’ll be meeting with the global-warming movers and shakers.
btw, Maxjax is a brand new freeper—just signed up to post to you, apparently.
There have been a ton of unanswered questions on this thread from our liberal friends. Don’t feel alone. :-)
(I suspect that you have just about as much love for Hillary as I do—Zilch!)
I think the mission was to kill any real discussionof McCain’s op-ed. NOt one of his supporters said much positive about it—they seemed to imply that posting it was “bashing.”
You folks are crackin’ me up!
Now don't go quoting McCain--that would be bashing! (Just kidding).
I didn't realize how much McCain had drinken the koolaid until I started really reading the legislation that he has introduced over the years. That and watching some of his videos on youtube. It's enough to gag a maggot.
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