Posted on 04/25/2008 9:17:41 AM PDT by Para-Ord.45
THE US war in Iraq has strengthened its strategic position, especially in terms of key alliances, and the only way this could be reversed would be if it lost the will to continue the struggle and abandoned Iraq in defeat and disarray.
Surely the author of this sentence is on the ganja, you might say. Something a little weird in the coffee? It goes against every aspect of conventional wisdom.
But the author of this thesis, stated only marginally less boldly, is one of the US's most brilliant strategic analysts. Mike Green holds the Japan chair at Washington's Centre for Strategic and International Studies and was for several years the Asia director at the National Security Council. He is also one of America's foremost experts on Japan and northeast Asia generally.
- More generally, in a world supposedly awash in anti-US sentiment, pro-American leaders keep winning elections. Germany's Angela Merkel is certainly more pro-American than Gerhard Schroeder, whom she replaced. The same is true of France's Nicolas Sarkozy.
- Green cautions that a US failure in Iraq, a retreat and leaving chaos in Iraq behind, would gravely damage US credibility in Asia.
What is clear from Green's analysis is how different the Asian environment is from the European environment, or even from the US domestic debate.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
Anyone else not give a cr@p about the supposed “esteem” America is held in around the world.
Two facts:
1) America leads the world in almost all measureable ways. We are a hyperpower on an unprecedented scale. Despite the clear fact that we are also uniquely benevolent, much of the world chooses to adopt a hate-America stance NO MATTER what we do.
2) The international Left hates the US and will use the “esteem for the USA in other countries” club to attack America whenever it wants to alter US policy.
I’M SO bored with the concept of other country’s opinion of us.
The entire point is that esteem is earned through strength.
Green cautions that a US failure in Iraq, a retreat and leaving chaos in Iraq behind, would gravely damage US credibility in Asia.
The question then should be , “Why do liberals/democrats
want to damage US credibility?
That is what they want and what they have been trying to achieve since the Iraq/Afghanistan situation started. The same result they did achieve with the abandonment of South Vietnam.
They hate America as it is presently.
A BTT for a very interesting piece, and thanks for posting it.
How I wish that it were true. Sadly though, our children are among the most poorly schooled in developed countries...
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