Posted on 07/19/2009 1:35:26 PM PDT by lizol
deaf ears in DC. Sorry, gentlemen, your expendable to the new US President.
It would be better received had it been written in Swahili or Arabic.
Great post — lots to absorb — thanks for posting it.
“Dear Folks,
Hillary will get back to you as soon as she has quelled the street corner fight in Andorra.
Have a nice life,
Your pals, Barry, Joe, and Rahmbo”
I was thinking this was about 3,000 or twenty-five hundred words.
It is 3,220.
In John T. Flynn's The Roosevelt Myth are a number of revealing, pathetic passages such as:
"Be assured, gentlemen, that the restoration of the countries occupied by Germany and suffering under the Axis yoke is my greatest concern, which is shared in like degree by Mr. Churchill. We promise that all will be done to insure the independence of these countries."Churchill was present. He turned to the Polish Ambassador and said:
"We will never forget what glorious Poland has done and is doing nor what heroic Greece and Holland have done in this war. I hope I need not add that Great Britain has set herself the aim of restoring full independence and freedom to the nations that have been overrun by Hitler."44
Russia moves to crush Georgia--ali Hussein Obama counsels restraint on both sides, revealing his true Communist nature.
Please be advised this is the same Alinskenfuhrer who was taught by Frank Marshall Davis of the glories of the Red Army.
Do not waste words with the Communists' apparatchik in the Oval Office.
Soros and the Saudis and other sinister figures in the shadows have worked for decades to put him in the position to destroy America.
Good old anticommunist USA of Edgar Hoover, sen.McCarthy and then Ronald Reagan is unfortunately gone. Marxists seem to have injected much venom into America’s soul and I’m afraid Americans won’t cope with that red poison.
BTTT
F**k them. If they must criticize Bush to curry favor with Obama, then they lose any credibility with me. Bush helped expand NATO and offered an anti-missile system to protect Europe. The US spends more on defense than all of the other countries in NATO combined.
Europeans and Canadians are spending about 1% of GDP on defense. They have been on security welfare for decades with the US taxpayers footing the bill. It is high time Europe starts to pay its fair share of the defense burden. The truth is that the US can no longer afford its current global defense commitments as we sink below an ocean of debt that will force us to choose between butter and guns.
Unfortunately Friends and Allies Of America are Now Persona Non Grata in the White House. Your calls for assistance goes in one of Dumbos BIG ears and Out the Other
You are reading that incorrectly. These people (the ones I’m familiar with, at least), laid their necks on the line for the Bush Administration. If you’re not familiar with what they did, then you shouldn’t criticize them for pointing out the obvious.
I wish I knew Polish so that I could register on that forum and slap some commies around. The person who posted that Al Jazeera link, especially.
It was the Reagan and Bush [41 and 43] administrations that put out their necks for them. Reagan supported Solidarnosc' and his urging that the Soviets tear down the Berlin Wall. It is totally unnecessary for these leaders to deningrate the Bush administration to ingratiate themselves with Obama.
NATO has become a farce, mainly because the Europeans are not willing to spend money in their own defense. And the EU's desire to set up the European Rapid Reaction Force outside NATO is just another example of the Europeans wanting their cake and eating it too. And we can't even get NATO to provide their share of combat troops in Afghanistan despite the enactment of Article 5.
I can understand why these former Warsaw Pact nations are nervous about the Obama foreign policy that wants to accommodate Russia by getting rid of the ABM installations in exchange for Russian support on Iran. However, their quarrel should be with their fellow Europeans in the EU and NATO. They are not pulling their weight and the US can no longer afford to bail them out. We are broke. The US is in decline as a global power.
Obama is our first European President. He will enact his socialist agenda, which will cause us to choose between butter and guns. And we will choose butter just like the Europeans.
FYI: Americans were not very popular in Europe during the Vietnam War or when Reagan was stationing Pershing missiles in Turkey.
And to suggest that Valdas Adamkus (again, for example) is "denigrating" the Bush 43 Administration is simply odd. He was one of the Bush 43Administration's biggest supporters as President of Lithuania, and worked in the Bush 41 Administration.
These are people who know tyranny and doubtless understand what we’re up against. I see this as a very diplomatic effort to engage the administration productively in Europe. I doubt they expect a positive response, but they can’t stand by and watch without trying to influence things in a more positive direction. There’s a lot of collective wisdom in this group. Unfortunately, their wisdom isn’t welcome at the white hut.
ping
The US is looking towards the Pacific and Far East. Together, the Chinese and Japanese hold $1.5 trillion of our national debt or about one-helf of the foreign holdings. Our four largest trading partners are Candada, Mexico, Japan, and China. And the greatest potential military and economic threat is China.
Russia is a country in decline. Its population of 140 million people is headed for a major decline with an annual population growth of minus0.467% and a fertility rate of 1.41 children born/woman. The male life expectancy rate at birth is 59.33 years and the national rate is 66 years or 177th in the world. If it weren't for its nuclear arsenal and oil, Russia would be considered a third world country. Europe with a population of over 300 million and a much bigger economy should be able to deal with any Russian military threat, especially if the US provides the nuclear umbrella.
And to suggest that Valdas Adamkus (again, for example) is "denigrating" the Bush 43 Administration is simply odd. He was one of the Bush 43Administration's biggest supporters as President of Lithuania, and worked in the Bush 41 Administration.
Everyone who signed the letter should be held responsible for what is in it. I suggest you reread it. The letter also contains the familiar attack on the visa wavier system, which is set by Congress and not the WH. Moreover, it is based on specific standards, e.g., visa refusal rates, which countries must meet to be eligible. Poland does not meet those current standards.
Europe must be more responsible for its own defense. The US is the world's largest debtor nation. We cannot afford to absorb these costs any longer. We have been living beyond our means for decades. And Obama will quadruple our debt in the next 10 years without cap and trade and nationalized health care.
The third largest line item in the federal budget [after the entitlement programs and national defense] is the costs of servicing the national debt or about $400 billion. In less than a decade it will be about a $1 trillion. And by 2016 SS will go in the red followed closely by Medicare. You can bet that defense will be cut to make up the shortfalls. We already have a navy of less than 300 ships, down from the 600 we had in the 1960s when I was in the US Navy.
Let's cut to the chase: are you in the middle of some Pat Buchanan paleotard foreign policy fantasy? Because it would explain a lot.
You don't seem to get it. I acknowledged the reason why the former Warsaw Pact nations and Baltic countries are concerned about their future and the ability and will of NATO to meet its commitments. And they are also worried about internal forces that might revert back to their days under communism. My point is that they need to address these concerns to their fellow Europeans who are not pulling their weight in meeting the continent's security needs. And they don't need to attack the Bush administration to ingratiate themselves to Obama.
FYI: Lithuania spends 1.14% of its GDP (FY 2008) on defense and has an active duty force of 15,500. It has 5 personnel in Iraq and 141 in Afghanistan. It has lost one person in Afghanistan. It can do more. It is a nation of 3.5 million. It has a negative annual population growth rate of -0.279% and one of the lowest fertility rates in the world at 1.23 children born/woman.
Let's cut to the chase: are you in the middle of some Pat Buchanan paleotard foreign policy fantasy? Because it would explain a lot.
How can you possibly come to that conclusion? I have not advocated disengagement or an isolationist policy. The reality is that the US no longer has the resources to maintain its former level of global presence. We are broke and becoming more so. We must set some priorities on how and where we will use those resources. The Pacific has become more important and more in need of our attention compared to Europe. Russia is less a threat to our strategic interests for the reasons I stated. Europe can and must do more in its own self-defense. They need to increase their expenditures beyond the 1% of GDP they are spending.
NATO must develop a new mission to remain relevant. It must be willing to engage more in security issues outside Europe. NATO went into Afghanistan under Article 5, but most of the member countries are not providing the resources to meet their commitments. The Germans don't want their forces engaging in combat. The Europeans couldn't even handle Bosnia and Kosovo by themselves. The US bore the brunt of those operations.
A revitalized NATO can help the US by sharing some of the defense burden and promote security and democracy around the globe. Otherwise, NATO will cease to be relevant. The current gap between the US and other NATO forces is so great that it raises some basic questions about interoperability and the alliance's ability to function together effectively.
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