I know, right.
Posted on 01/27/2013 3:45:37 PM PST by drewh
Florida Senator Marco Rubio just made a small but significant move that indicates he is preparing to run for the presidency. He has hired Jamie M. Fly, until recently executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative and a former Bush administration official, to serve as his senior national security adviser. It's a shrewd decision, and one that further testifies to the mounting dominance of the neocons. By and large, they set the template for the discussion of foreign policy in the GOP. Their ascendance suggests that it is most improbable that a debate will erupt within the GOP over foreign affairs. On the contrary, the neocons appear to be more firmly in control than ever.
The Foreign Policy Initiative is an organization that was created in 2009 by William Kristol to groom new and younger cadres. The organization appears to be a success, boasting no less than three separate leadership programs, with one in New York and two in Washington, DC. Fly is himself a savvy and energetic neocon who has staked out a very hard line in foreign affairs on issues ranging from Syria to Afghanistan to Israel. This past fall, in Foreign Policy, he declared that Obama
'Has serially alienated allies and failed to speak out on behalf of those oppressed by despotic regimes, even as he engages the tyrants who threaten U.S. interests and crush dissent. As Iran gets closer to a nuclear weapons capability by the day, the gap between the United States and our ally Israel, grows and terrorist plots and attacks on U.S. personnel ordered by Tehran go unanswered.'
His appointment to Rubio's staff attests to the influence of the neocons within the GOP and Kristol's success at promoting his associates.
His most notable publication is an essay in Foreign Affairs co-authored with Gary Schmitt calling for an American attack on Iran:
'A limited military strike would only be a temporary fix, and it could actually do the opposite of what it intends—drive the program further underground and allow Iran to retain the ability to threaten the United States and its allies.If the United States seriously considers military action, it would be better to plan an operation that not only strikes the nuclear program but aims to destabilize the regime, potentially resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis once and for all.'
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that regime change would occur as a result of any air assault, no matter how massive, or, for that matter, that an assault would really be, as Oliver North once put it about the Iran-Contra caper, a "neat idea." It could just send the whole region up in flames or end up bolstering the regime. The more salient point, for now, is that Rubio is clearly staking out his territory—no enemies to the right when it comes to foreign affairs. His move will likely nudge other possible candidates to sign on neocons as well as a proleptic campaign defense measure.
As an important new article by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker shows, there has been little effort to reassess America's military stance after the cold war. Lepore, who cites the views of Boston University's Andrew J. Bacevich, a prominent critic of American militarism, makes a simple but fundamental point:
'The United States, separated from much of the world by two oceans and bordered by allies, is, by dint of geography, among the best-protected countries on earth. Nevertheless, six decades after V-J Day nearly three hundred thousand American troops are stationed overseas, including fifty-five thousand in Germany, thirty-five thousand in Japan, and ten thousand in Italy. Much of the money that the federal government spends on “defense” involves neither securing the nation’s borders nor protecting its citizens. Instead, the U.S. military enforces American foreign policy.'
It would be difficult to disagree. Obama has pulled America out of Iraq, and is pulling it out of Afghanistan, but no fundamental debate about the power and purpose of America abroad exists either in the administration or on Capitol Hill. Instead, an observer who had missed the past twenty years might be forgiven upon returning for concluding that America remained under the same siege mentality that prevailed during the cold war. Substitute China or Islamic terror for the Soviet Union, and all the same arguments can be heard. The most prominent exponents of ideas such as regime change remain the neocons.But as Lepore suggests, there is increasing unease among the American population with such truculence, not to mention among the military: "Younger veterans are critical, too. A 2011 Pew survey of veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq found that half thought the war in Afghanistan wasn’t worth fighting, and nearly sixty per cent thought the Iraq War wasn’t." There can be little doubting that Americans are not eager for more warfare in Iran or Syria or other hotspots. These sentiments, however, are not reflected in the GOP. Instead, Obama is signaling that he will elevate diplomacy above truculence in his second term, while the neocons denounce him for his alleged pusillanimity.Speaking on PBS on Tuesday night, for example, AEI's Danielle Pletka denounced the Obama administration in apocalyptic language for ignoring the myriad threats to American security:
'I think the entire trend has been troubling. And I think Benghazi was merely a symptom of a larger policy of retreat, of unwillingness to deal with the challenges that we're facing from al-Qaida, because it's not just in the Maghreb. It's not just in Libya and in Mali and in Algeria. It's also in Yemen. It's in Sinai. It's in Iraq. It's, of course, in South Asia and Afghanistan and Pakistan.'
The threats are anywhere and everywhere, in other words. Soon enough it is a neocon credo that Marco Rubio, too, will surely espouse. But until the GOP breaks with such shibboleths, it will face electoral ruin.
Jacob Heilbrunn
Skip ot dude. Luv Yuh but, you ain’t NBC and I will be true to my convictions.
I will not support you as more and more of the camel pushes its way into tent.
“Fly”, in name or as a means of “outing” the marxist pResident, should be the logo-symbol for the NWO.
It is certainly “appearing” more and more, lately.
(IMHO, Rubio is getting a big head. Seems he’s ready to sign on to the NWO and get his riches.)
Anyone assuming we can survive to 2016, and win a fraud filled election within a broken system are moving in the wrong direction. Mark Levin was correct when he said we live in a post-Constitutional era, and need to be thinking outside the box for solutions.
The Patriot movement is showing significant growth. I have been very surprised by the way Conservatives have come together on the fundamentals of the Constitution with a professionalism that stopped a lot of the infighting, which looked like it would be a bigger problem than it has been.
Most Conservatives understand they need to work together to have a chance to save the nation. I guess it's obvious that nobody wins an argument over an issue that will become irrelevant if our Nation collapses, but being obvious usually means little in politics it seems. I like seeing people across the Conservative political spectrum cooperating, but it's still going to take a hell of a fight to salvage anything of our once great nation.
www.OathKeepers.org
Crus was born in Canada, so he is ineligible to be President.
So is Rubio...his parents were not US citizens at the time of his birth...contrary to what some of our more leftist Rubio supporters he is not eligible
Believe me, the Dems will not wimp out if the GOP runs ineligible candidates....it will not be like our PhonyCon Liberal GOP Media who sided with Obama on the Eligibility issue
People need to dumpe the Cruz and Rubio for President talk NOW..they are not eligible. We need Real Conservatives who are eligible
I know, right.
Remember in 2016 the RATs will probably be running an old white person.
This makes sense now.
Neocons want ‘immigration reform’ at any cost because they need those poor Hispanics in the Army for those future invasions/land wars.
No surprise that McCain and Grahamnesty are big promoters of amnesty.
Ryan and Newt were on TV today repeating the new GOP amnesty buzz-phrase : "I support the Rubio immigration reform plan"
Rubio only has to neutralize -- not even flip -- 6% of the Latino vote, and he wins FL, NM, CO. Take that, with red 2012 + VA & IA, and he wins in 2016 by 274-264. Without OH!
If you have a divisive Donkey primary like most expect, that's realistically doable.
I guess anyone can be a candidate, but he is not eligible to hold the office.
Total and complete BS.
Rubio meets the requirements, period.
Yeah---the pukeneos never saw an immigrant they didn't want to subsidize with tax dollars---dating back to WW 11. The contemporary Russian trek to the US is s-o-o-o-o profitable, they got Russians pretending they're Jews so they can stop off in Israel first---grab all the freebies there---then fly here to sign up to ride the US gravy train. As refugees from "persecution" the US freebies are tripled.
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Mmmmm......sure would like to be a fly on the wall at the Four Seasons---where the elite meet. The pukes plan all the invasions over chilled Cristal, room temp Brie and water crackers.
Course there's gonna be a lot more invasions and land wars since the pukes duped Bush into invading Iran. Now that the entire 100 million-strong Muslim world is aflame with hatred for the US, Americans, and Christians.
I guess the pukes will have to use darts and a Mideast map to decide which country they want the US to invade next (cackle).
REFERENCE This past spring Kristol acknowledged that the NeoCons had successfully purged the isolationists from the GOP and were moving to purge the Realists, especially older realists----Hagel, Scowcroft, Baker, Kissinger, Schultz, Lugar etc.
NOTE: And let's not forget the pukeneos' very fave sport as they squat in the Repub party---kicking social conservatives to the curb.
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REFERENCE How did the neocons – a small group at odds with most of the US foreign policy elite – manage to capture the Bush administration---and be given paid jobs and an entire WH division----the WH Office of Special OPs?
Few neos supported Bush during the presidential primaries. They feared Bush II would be like the first – a wimp who had failed to occupy Baghdad in the first Gulf War and who had pressured Israel into the Oslo peace process – and that his administration, again like his father's, would be dominated by moderate Republican realists such as Powell, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. Neos supported the maverick senator John McCain until it became clear that Bush would get the nomination.
Then neos had a stroke of luck – VP Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the Nov election and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hard-line allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney's right-wing network of neos, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.
The neocons took advantage of GW Bush's ignorance and inexperience. Unlike his father---a Second World War vet, onetime ambassador to China, director of the CIA, and VP---GWB was a thinly-educated playboy who had failed repeatedly in business before becoming the governor of Texas, a largely ceremonial position (the state's lieutenant governor has more power).
The younger Bush was tilting away from Powell and toward Wolfowitz ("Wolfie," as he calls him) even before 9/11 gave GWB something he had lacked: a life's mission other than following in dad's footsteps. There were signs of estrangement between the cautious father and the crusading son: in 2002, veterans of the first Bush admin--including Baker, Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorization from Congress and the UN.
It is not clear that George W fully understood the grand strategy that neo Wolfowitz and other aides were unfolding. GWB seemed genuinely to believe that there was an imminent threat to the US from Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," something the leading neocons said in public but were far too intelligent to believe themselves.
The Neo's "Project for the New American Century" urged an invasion of Iraq throughout the Clinton years, for reasons that had nothing to do with possible links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. Public letters signed by Wolfowitz and others called on the USto invade and occupy Iraq, to bomb Hezbollah bases in Lebanon, and to threaten states such as Syria and Iran with US attacks if they continued to sponsor terrorism.
Claims that the invasion was not to protect the American people but to make the Middle East safe for Israel are dismissed by the neocons as vicious anti-Semitism.
Yet (in 2003) Syria, Iran and Iraq were bitter enemies, with their weapons pointed at each other, and the terrorists they sponsor targeted Israel rather than the US. The neocons urged all-out war with Iran next, though by any rational measurement North Korea's new nuclear arsenal is, for the US, a far greater problem. (EXCERPT: By Michael Lind circa 2003)
Thou saith.
Snappy comeback.
No logic. No facts.
Obviously can’t read.
Did you make it through the 8th grade ?
Actually I did, which is why you can't pull that cr@p on me. He is not a NBC and your howling will not make it so.
Please locate the words in the constitution that mention parents in regard to presidential candidates.
You can’t do it.
I can't find the part where it says Eric is an idiot, but I bet I can show why it should have been in there.
When you have no fact, use profanity.
Profane: Marked by contempt or irreverence for what is sacred.
I think Rubio could be our next president.
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