Posted on 03/10/2014 12:54:40 PM PDT by McGruff
WASHINGTON -- The rallying cry at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference here last week was that President Obama had failed to show strength on foreign policy, but a new CNN poll found that even among Republicans, few support U.S. military involvement -- or even military assistance -- in the Ukraine crisis.
A plurality of respondents (48%) approved of Obama’s handling of the situation in Ukraine, the poll found. That figure was higher than the president's overall job-approval rating, which has hovered in the low 40s.
Russia has sent troops into the Crimean peninsula and encouraged what Obama has called an “illegal” referendum on March 16 that is to decide whether Crimea secedes from Ukraine to become part of Russia.
About 59% of poll respondents said they favored imposing economic sanctions on Russia -- a move that the president put in play last week when he authorized the Treasury secretary to freeze the assets of people found to be involved in subverting Ukraine's democracy or invading its territory.
However, fewer than half, 46%, said they favored providing economic assistance to the Ukrainian government. Secretary of State John F. Kerry traveled to Kiev last week to offer $1 billion in loan guarantees, part of what the administration hopes will be a larger aid package led by European nations.
Some Republicans, most notably Arizona Sen. John McCain and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, have argued that the administration should be taking a more forceful approach. But CNN’s poll numbers indicate there is little public appetite for any sort of military involvement in Ukraine, even among Republicans, after a decade of intense engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Feinstein was on board with most of Clinton's foreign policy initiatives, she only opposed Bush's because he had an "R" rather than a "D" next to his name.
You're right about Nunn, I haven't followed Nelson very closely so I can't comment.
Usually, in any armed conflict or likely armed conflict, both sides are lying. The only question is whose tiny grain of truth is larger by a milligram or two.
Serious question. Are you historically challenged? What is going on right now is the same thing. I’m tired of people ignoring history because it has become fashionable to do so.
Read the history of the beginnings of WWI, the aftermath, the beginnings of WW2, the aftermath.
I don’t like using the much thrown around comparison either but this time it applies.
Saddam might not have applied but he did use gas to kill his own people and he did annex neighbors to exploit their resources, Milo was trying to cleanse mooslimbs, I have no idea why it’s used for Assad..
Your point noted but ignoring history does not help anyone.
yeah, the reconstitution of the Soviet Union is not optimal and to give the prior victims (Pole, Chechs, Uks, Georgians, Lats, Estons) some help (even if it’s token) might just be enough to make the ruskies think twice about Barry’s flexibility.
Interesting that you bring up WWI, allegedly to back up your point. That was one war that the US could and should have easily avoided involvement in, but Woodrow Wilson's tropes about "keeping the world safe for democracy" and British propaganda managed to dupe a lot of people into seriously believing that the Kaiser's army was on the verge of attacking New York and Chicago.
You see the same kind of empty fear-mongering every time neoconservatives and liberals agitate for another war.
The Putin/Hitler comparison is ludicrous for too many reasons to list. Let's start with the fact that Hitler was an ideologue whose goal was the conquest of all of Europe and the extermination of entire ethnic groups. Show me something similar from Putin, either his version of Mein Kampf or any plausible scenario under which he'd launch an attack against a western NATO nation and I'll take your (and Hillary's) assertions seriously.
Symbols mean different things in different cultures. Consider the meaning of the Confederate flag, in different parts of the U.S.A. The various wolf hook symbols go back a long way before Nazism. That's not meant in any way to defend any organization with Nazi tendencies. The parties in the coalition government in Kiev are only united in opposition to being absorbed by Russia. You have no reason to cast aspersions on all the supporters of the rebel alliance in Kiev.
Where did I say that I thought only one side was using propaganda? Of course, propaganda is being shoveled at us from several directions. I prefer to be skeptical about it all. Why are you so anxious to defend the Russian version of events?
NONE OF OUR BUSSINESS.
Our Narcissist in Chief is so jealous of Putin's popularity both in Russia AND here, that he's liable to pop a carotid artery...
I wonder how many Americans can even find Ukraine on the map, let alone want to get involved over there.
I don’t even want sanctions. It only hurts the average citizen, Putin the oligarchs have more than enough money to get around any sort of blockades.
Obama is just made that Putin made him look foolish on at least three separate occasions. This is just cheap vindictiveness on his part.
Nothing in politics is on accident
Putin doesn’t have the ovens in his master plan, but the means and the goals bear a striking resemblance. He hasn’t come right out and screamed that he wants to reconstitute the old soviet sphere of influence, but his actions make it clear that what he wants.
I’m not calling for invasion, military intervention or even useless UN sanctions (which was created to prevent what happened) but I was hoping we wouldn’t go limp-wristed when faced with a leader like Putin.
nukes are a big like a pet elephant. having signs you up for all sorts of additional expenditures, which Ukraine can not afford.
only the wealthiest or craziest countries have nukes.
If Obama does nothing on the Ukraine situation it’ll be the first time I’ve ever agreed with him.
I don’t have any appetite for military engagement in Ukraine. It is true if Obama really was President worth his salt he’d do more than offer up empty threats. He’d do something like Cheney suggested which is deploy anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland but he won’t do that. The part of the Ukraine that Russia is attempting to annex might as well be Russia proper given its population and the remaining Ukraine would be left with far larger majorities opposed to Putin provided they have some backing from Europe and the US which is the part that is in doubt.
That said I’m not overly worried about Putin. He isn’t going to start a war, nor does he desire to, he is simply doing what he did at the end of GW Bush Presidency when he say an opportunity of weakness. Russia may not be capable of extending a force even a fraction of what was possible with the former Soviet Union but the goal of Putin is to grow Russian influence where he thinks he can safely with little chance of true cost to him. He doesn’t give a damn about the UN or Obama or effete Europe and while he is a scumbag its hard to see him as much worse than what we are dealing with under the guise of a soft tyranny which in some ways is worse because it is harder to directly oppose.
Do you really think an extra 10,000 troops would have made a significant difference?
I don’t know, I am not a General, so that is not my area of expertise. The one who was there said it would have. Can I assume by your skepticism you have more information than Petraeus did? Sounds like you think it wouldn’t have helped, which means you agree with Obastard that shorting the general’s request was the right thing to do.
Tell me how there is any win/win situation by intervening militarily in the Ukraine if President Romney was at the helm?
Rumor has it that during the Kosovo conflict, Bill Clinton was initially reluctant to intervene until Hillary started egging him on.
There was a similar situation in 2008 with Russia basically seizing South Ossetia as protectorates after its skirmish with Georgian troops. Bush was President then, and I don't remember the US going to war with Russia over south Ossetia under his watch.
I have no use for Obama, but people who criticize him because he's not willing to risk starting a nuclear war over Crimea make their side look like idiots.
Clinton also retained Colin Powell(realist) as the Joint Chief, but Powell resigned because of Albright/interventionists were driving foreign policy
Similarly, Powell resigned from Bush because the neocons were driving Bush's foreign policy.
As for what you said in a previous post about Obama conducting foreign policy as a liberal interventionist, that is partially true.
Thru out 2009 and 2010, it was realism. But when he began his re-election campaign in Jan 2011, he didn't want to end up like Carter, so he shifted to interventionist.
Best Example: He hired Realist George Mitchell as an envoy to twist Israel's arm and hold their feet to the fire over the Palestinians.. But when he began his re-election campaign, he fired Mitchell and backed off Israel. After he got re=elected he hired Realist Kerry to twist Israel's arm.
Same with Libya. The realists were telling him not to intervene but he went with the interventionists and did intervene. But most recently, he defied the liberal interventionists and their allies the NeoCons on the Iranian sanctions, and apparently Obama prevailed because the realists were backing him.
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