Posted on 08/18/2008 6:36:43 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Russia yesterday threatened to 'crush' anyone who dared to defy it, after moving missile launchers within range of Georgia's capital.
The provocative move throws down the gauntlet to Nato leaders meeting today in emergency session on the new Cold War crisis.
U.S. intelligence said the Kremlin had moved several SS-21 missile launchers into the rebel enclave of South Ossetia, putting them in range of Tbilisi.
The move allows Russia to pull out of Georgia proper as it has promised but punish Tbilisi at any moment at the push of a button.
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev vowed a 'crushing response' if Georgia or anyone else dares to defy Moscow's will in the tinderbox Caucasus region. ...
Mr Medvedev was at his most hawkish since the conflict erupted, telling war veterans: 'If someone thinks they can kill our citizens, kill soldiers and officers fulfilling the role of peacekeepers, we will never allow this.
'Anyone who tries to do this will receive a shattering blow.'
His warning followed Russian threats to unleash nuclear weapons on Poland in a future conflict because Warsaw agreed to installations linked to America's defence shield.
Moscow has also indicated that it will arm its Baltic fleet with nuclear weapons.
Awarding medals to servicemen involved in the conflict in Georgia, Mr Medvedev insisted that Russia has always been 'a peace-loving nation'.
He added: 'The Russian, Soviet state has never started a war. But even the most peace-loving state should have an effective army.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
There really is nothing so secret about the alliance. They are doing it right in front of our faces!! It’s always proxy wars, but at some point we would very well be going head to head with China and Russia. They are starting to defy while getting no pressure or serious consequences to their actions.
I agree, it is there, but it takes a direct threat, like a 9-11 attack, to bring it out, and it is not as strong as it was in WW2. Perceived threats in exotic places like Georgia, Iran and Waziristan will not get Americans very worked up for war at this moment in time. After the cold war was over, we all breathed a sigh of relief and figured it was done. Gearing back up for an unending board game against a stalwart foe would require a mental commitment to a different world view and to a long struggle, and I don't think we are readyfor it yet. It will take more than Georgia to get us there.
about having left and right, and all the freedom to voice in-between is that the spirit of "fight" remains a vital part of our country psyche
I strongly disagree. The left has been a dispiriting movement that has weakened the US considerably. If we didn't have great reserves of old-fashioned American spirit, we would have crumbled into a socialist and very weak country decades ago. Our churches, our families, our community organizations and the heritage of centuries of freedom have kept the worst part of the left from taking hold. But they gain more with every generation, and with their control of education, bureaucracies, the judiciary, the media, it will continue to gain until we would be the nation that Obama wants us to be--weak, humble, contrite, submissive and inactive on the world stage.
The left needs to be defeated and eliminated for America to maintain its status as the greatest nation, and for our culture to survive. The left tries to destroy our culture. Classic American political battles, between federalist and Anti-Federalist, between Whig and Democrat, between Republican and Democrat, were between two different visions of America that were entirely American. The political struggle between leftism and conservatism is one in which the left seeks to impose an Anti-American, authoritarian, utopian, and foreign, system upon the US. To gain its way, it must remove American's attachment to the old American, and to do that, it tears us down at every chance it gets.
It is not a healthy part of our politics, it is a disease that weakens us.
Just think of how Patton and MacArthur were right and that would have saved so much bloodshed/problems we have nowadays if we had gone after the two evil regimes at that moment in time.
That excludes me... :^)
This place is getting overrun with Buchanan LaRouche-ites.
In WW2, we had a strong isolationist element on the right, too, but that is a different story with different, pro-American origins, and it is mostly out of the picture now, with the exception of the (fringe) Ron Paul types. The consensus on the right and in the center is that the US must be a global power--not for imperial gain, but to spread free market capitalism for our own security. Free nations do not attack each other; they make each other richer.
The consensus on the left is that the US should be a global power, too. Make no mistake, if an Obama won, he would, like Clinton, use American power, but he would use it in ways that HARM America's interests, like Clinton did in Serbia. Yeah, we need to creat more Muslim states in Europe. Good work. A socialist America would exert its power to bring rogue states like Australia, Taiwan, and Chile into line. Breakaway movements in Spain, the Balkans, Central America, Columbia, the Philippines, Thailand, North Africa, etc. would be supported by the US, so that more Anti-American regimes could emerge. Any Muslim grievances would be nursed, since Islam is profoundly anti-western civilization, and the left needs to destroy western civilization in order to create its utopia.
In any event, the left is pro-war, just not pro-America.
Thanks for your post. It is unfortunate that we are back to having to deal with the Russian bear again. We have too lazily defended the victory in the cold war, and now it turns out to be a lull, not a victory. Very sad.
;)
I used to think the same thing. The standard teaching is that the US was very war weary, and after the war ended, the people would not have accepted several more years of war to defeat the Soviets. Not being alive back then, I can't judge the mood of the people, but it is also possible that the Communists who had the ear of the President influenced the decision-making, and then wrote the textbooks. Looking at it from today's vantage point, holding nukes and an Army in Central Europe, it would seem to have been quite doable--if we were willing to use the nukes. Another aspect of it is the US people were given so much pro-Soviet propaganda during the war that they needed some time to start viewing them as the enemy. People in general didn't think of the Soviets as our enemy until around 1947 or 1948.
After we won the cold war, I was more ambivalent about it. We won by playing it safe, so it all worked out, and maybe it would not have if we had gone to war with the Soviets early on. But maybe, just because we got lucky and it worked out, it was still wrong to risk defeat and have all those lives lost to communism, just to avoid a direct confrontation.
The most powerful man in the history of the world was Harry Truman, but he sat on his power after August 1945, and by 1949, he was no longer so powerful. What's done is done.
They also do pretty good with vacuum tubes. I bought some the other year for my guitar amp. Maybe I better stock up.
Me neither, but they would probably have been classified anyway. I know they are spending a lot of money upgrading their military, we may get to see how well that worked out for them sooner than we think.
What is shocking to me is that we failed to notice the Russians massing all those armored weapons and tanks, in what we knew was a hot zone for just that kind of action.
We are supposed to be able to tell whether a soldier has shaved, with our satellites, but we can't see a column of tanks on the move into an allies country?
Either we did know, and ignored it, or we have a bunch of incompetent, or worse traitors, working in our intelligence agencies, and State Department.
And I like the phrase that the left isn't anti-war but really anti-america.....which of course brings us back to our true enemy and how they should be fought and defeated.
My favorite quote from Burke is "The Revenue of the State IS the State ". Taking that as a truism and applying it to the left we can say that all the REVENUE of the institutions that make up the "LEFT" in this country ARE THE LEFT. Old Howard Phillips used to talk about de-funding the left to defeat it. Nixon failed,Reagan failed, and the Bush's have failed. More than failed, through their policies they have funded and empowered the left.
My point is that small government isn't just a convenience so we can live our lives as we choose , but a survival necessity.....small frugal government is not just a necessary cause but a sufficient cause to destroy the Left....the Left cannot exist without US and State government cash on the barrel head. Everything from our Universities and National Endowment for the Arts to Planned Parenthood are being kept alive and at a dangerous level by taxpayer funded money.It is no accident that they are Leftist through and through. And these institutions are destroying America
Conservatives ( like me ) have been wrong all these years because we thought that if we got control over Government spending we could direct it to enhance rather than destroy our culture. I am now convinced that the fatal flaw in that argument is that any institution, organization, school, family itself, etc that cannot stand on it's own two feet without Government funding must not exist in a free society....save for the military and other constitutional institutions. And the reason for that is that fighting for one's survival in a free society builds qualities in men that make healthy cultures and strong nations.
The left is populated by people who have lost the will and necessity to wrest their living from the free market. Witness the slums of our great cities. Anyone, including teachers, doctors, Catholic Bishops, Artist, even fathers and mothers,etc. who receive government money will eventually succumb to the siren song of leftist political assumptions. I honestly believe we have one or two generations left to destroy the funding for all of these programs and institutions, or this country will be finished. To paraphrase Burke, The Government Revenue of the Left IS the Left. Destroy that and we will destroy the Left.
I have been around since before W II and I don't recall Russia, ever giving a whit what the world though of them, although they did do a very good job of controlling what was known of them.
The New York Times printed propaganda for them, full well knowing how bad things were internally, they still do.
Absolutely true and a wonderful post (the rest of it too, but especially this).
We've always had the lunatic left, but never have they had the numbers they have now, due largely to the Teachers' Union sponsored deliberate DUMBING DOWN of otherwise healthy kids, many of whom are now adults.
It is a black comedy but without humor, clowns who are NOT funny. Human blood isn't funny.
OTOH I believe these fools will be overwhelmed in a landslide this election. The real battle will commence afterward--defeating the enemy within.
Well we know there is a traitorous left-wing cabal in the CIA working directly against US interests. Mary McCarthy and other scum who leaked info on what was working for us for one and Valerie Plame for another.
Nobody seems to have remarked much on the fact that Val, desk jockey though she was, was supposedly working on keeping track of WMD proliferation and yet she, working with her scum husband, did their best to CONCEAL the fact of Iraq trying to get yellow cake Uranium. Just recently we learned they did get plenty of it which has now been sent to Canada for safekeeping.
Whoever she was actually working for, it was NOT USA. State Dept. kind of goes without saying. I remember my father saying he wasn't sure whose side they were on over 4 decades ago. I didn't know what he meant then; I do now.
Not all of it, Mark. One idea from RusIvan is brilliant, but with two very dangerous likely results.
Russia handed her passports like candy? Isn’t it the sovereign right of any country to give up her passports? Did Russia forbid or any influenced to America to hand over her passports whoever you like? After all Russia just handed her passports but it is the free choice of Osetian people to get for it. Russia did never compel them to get Russian passports. It was thier free choice of Osetian people.
I think it could be quite wonderful if we sent a team to Russia to hand out USA passports/citizenship. Two problems: 1) KGB/Mafiya/Vlad dictatorship would probably machine gun the Russian takers down on the spot; 2) Our team would be trampled by the million or so Russian citizens rushing them who couldn't wait for the chance to escape that disintegrating crap hole. Many of the Russian people deserve soooo much better. (I don't know how many, but I know there are some.)
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