Posted on 03/15/2014 7:36:26 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Though Barack Obama is widely regarded as a weak president, is the new world disorder really all his fault?
Listening to the more vocal voices of the GOP one might think so.
According to Sen. Lindsey Graham, Vladimir Putin’s move into Crimea “started with Benghazi.”
“When you kill Americans and nobody pays a price, you invite this type of aggression,” said Graham. Putin “came to the conclusion after Benghazi, Syria, Egypt” that Barack Obama is “a weak indecisive leader.”
Also blaming Obama for Crimea, John McCain got cheers at AIPAC by charging, “This is the ultimate result of a feckless foreign policy in which nobody believes in America’s strength anymore.”
This “blatant act” of aggression “cannot stand,” said McCain.
How McCain plans to force Putin to cough up Crimea was left unexplained.
Now Marco Rubio seems to be auditioning to replace the retired Joe Lieberman as third amigo. His CPAC speech is described by the L.A. Times:
“(Rubio) said that China is threatening to take parts of the South China Sea … a nuclear North Korea is testing missiles, Venezuela is slaughtering protesters, and Cuba remains an oppressive dictatorship. He added that Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons and regional hegemony and Russia is attempting to ‘reconstitute' the former Soviet Union.”
What all these countries have in common, said Rubio, is “totalitarian governments.” Rubio proposes a U.S. foreign policy of leading the world to “stand up to the spread of totalitarianism.”
Not quite as ambitious as George W. Bush’s “ending tyranny in our world,” but it will do.
Where to begin.
First, it is absurd to suggest Putin felt free to restore Crimea to Russia because of Obama’s inaction in Benghazi. And while Castro’s Cuba and Kim Jong-Un’s North Korea are totalitarian, Putin’s Russia is not Stalin’s. Nor is Xi Jinping’s China Mao’s China.
Russia and China are great power rivals and antagonists, not the monster regimes of the Cold War that massacred millions. We must deal with them, and they don’t take direction from Uncle Sam.
As for Iran, 17 U.S. intelligence agencies say it has no nuclear weapons program. Moreover, Hassan Rouhani is an elected president now presiding over the dilution of his 20-percent-enriched uranium in compliance with our November agreement.
McCain points to Obama’s failure to enforce his “red line” in Syria with air and missile strikes, when Bashar Assad used chemical weapons, as the reason Obama is not respected.
But a little history is in order here.
While John Kerry and Obama were ready to attack Syria, it was the American people who rose up and said “no.” It was Congress that failed to give Obama the authorization to go to war.
If McCain, Graham and Rubio think Obama should attack Syria, why don’t they get their hawkish Republican brethren in the House to authorize war on Syria? See how that sits with the voters in 2014.
Last fall, Lindsey Graham was shopping around a resolution for a U.S. war on Iran. What became of that brainstorm? After Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are weary of what all this bellicosity inevitably brings.
Is Russia really reconstituting the Soviet Union?
True, Putin seeks to bring half a dozen ex-Soviet republics, now nations, into an economic union to rival the EU. But where the state religion of the USSR was Marxism-Leninism, i.e., communism, Putin is trying to restore Russian Orthodox Christianity.
There is a difference, as there is a difference between Stalin murdering priests and Putin prosecuting Pussy Riot for blasphemous misbehavior on the high altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
How do we think King Abdullah would have handled the women, had they pulled their stunt in the Great Mosque in Mecca?
While China is indeed moving to claim the East and South China seas, bringing her into possible conflict with Japan over the Senkakus, the GOP is not without culpability here.
It was a Bush-led Republican Party that voted to throw open America’s markets to China. Result: In the last two years, China ran up $630 billion in trade surpluses at our expense, a figure larger than the entire U.S. defense budget for 2015.
Our trade deficits with China provide her annually with enough dollars to finance her own defense budget twice over. Twenty years of such U.S. trade deficits have given the Middle Kingdom the trillions it needed to build the armed forces to drive us out of East Asia.
Are U.S. sailors and Marines now to die defending the Senkakus against a menacing China that the Bush free traders helped mightily to create?
If Sen. Rubio wants to “stand up” to China, why not call for a 50 percent tariff on all Chinese-made goods. Try that one out on the K Street bundlers and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Yet Marco Rubio in the primaries would be healthy for America. A showdown between non-interventionists and the neocon War Party, to determine which way America goes, is long overdue. Let’s get it on.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”
An argument can be made that modern technology has made it easier to hunker down behind a wall than in Washington’s day. As long as we take care of our strategic defenses and don’t deplete our manpower and wealth on the other side of the globe, nobody is invading the USA.
“What was it Washington said in his farewell address about foreign entanglements? (And said, with great wisdom, about so many other things pertinent to our decline since then).”
Washington and the founders were right about staying out of the affairs of foreign nations, particularly Europe. Russia has more business invading Crimea and Ukraine than we had invading Iraq.
Since WWII we’ve played international policeman to the detriment of our treasury, national security, and the blood of young people sent to fight wars that weren’t in the national interest. What we accomplished was allowing Western Europe, Japan and Korea to build huge competitive economies without having to fund their own defense. We also made the world hate us.
What our interventionist globalist politicians fail to recognize is there are and always will be rivalries in the world and regional balances to aggression. We wasted 50,000 lives and billions in Vietnam. Had we stayed out, North Vietnam would have taken over the south (same result we got anyway) and then would have been an economic and military counterweight to Chinese aggression. Sadaam’s Iraq was the buffer between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. We invaded Iraq twice, angering the Islamic world and removed the restraint on Iranian expansion. As a result we will soon face a nuclear Iran and we still have Islamic terrorists plotting to kill us. The Taliban are poised to return to power in Afghanistan as soon as we leave resulting in a trillion dollars and thousands of lives of wasted effort.
Heed the warnings of the founders. Bring the standing army home and deploy it to secure the border. Retain a strong navy to protect American shipping on the high seas and build an effective missile defense system. Let the rest of the world fight each other while we live comfortably in the homeland.
Russia and China are enemies. India and China are enemies. Pakistan and India are enemies. Iran and Saudi Arabia are enemies. Vietnam and China are rivals. Russia and Germany are natural enemies. France and Germany are rivals as are England and France. Absent US intervention countries will make the decision to fund their own defense or not. Either way, it should not matter to us.
The founders knew if we left these nations alone to fight with engage with real or perceived threats along their borders they would not spend resources trying to attack a strong but benign nation protected by two large oceans. It is imperialist behavior by the US that incites the hatred of other nations, not our economic wealth.
The real threat to US security is the ongoing invasion across the southern border by millions of uneducated, unskilled third world people who come to escape poverty and take advantage of our generous social services.
I hope you’re enlisted, if you want a war against Russia. But I’m sure you’re not.
Reagan was probably the most reluctant warrior of our lives and it paid big dividends. He didn’t talk tough unless he meant it and the world knew it.
Russia has a long history of drawing enemies in and letting them defeat themselves (See Napoleon and the Nazis). That strategy works great if you have an opponent dumb enough to be drawn in. Reagan wasn’t that dumb and it resulted in the collapse of the soviet union.
Reagan strengthened our military by using them sparingly while building our technological advantages. Today, we’re broke, our military is over extended, worn out and increasingly demoralized by endless social experimentation.
Nobody sane, but certainly Moose are not in that category... and it’s ominous that Putin called out to Chechnya “Here moosey moosey moosey”
It’s not what we would do now. It’s that we wouldn’t have sold out Eastern Europe by removing middle defense and sitting haplessly for the past 5 years showing that words from the white house mean nothing.
Anyone recommending military provocation toward Russia who is not willing to be at point on the first platoon forward, is a coward.
The only one doing the “provoking” right now is the KGB thug invading his neighbor with a fifth column and committing war crimes. Any NATO response at this point would be strictly self defense oriented. There is a threat and a response is necessary.
NATO countries fulfilling treaty obligations and defending themselves should not be an issue. Sad to see FReepers not understanding that while they ignore the murdering KGB thug in the room.
The Ukraine thought it was valid treaty and gave up the nucs.
What about the US.
The premise that Barry wants to do something is ridiculous.
Barry hates the US and its military as much as the Paulbot nutters here posting.
Ronald Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union through intelligent use of the world energy markets. Military intervention may not be needed to help Ukraine, but Barack Obama must be made to understand free markets for such a strategy to work again.
Which would pose a fairly significant problem since brain synapse does not appear to be a terribly high priority for him.
The GOP will continue to blame Obama. Obama will continue to blame Bush. Second guessing and Monday morning quarterbacks will pronounce their winning strategy. But even those that run as ‘followers of the Constitution’ will not step up and ask that a formal Declaration of War be passed by Congress. The ‘constitutionalists’ know in their hearts that the war mongers are again duping them and Crimea does not threaten us.
Tour hatred of the USA d our military forces is very revealing ,
How are thing at the DU today ?
Slow day I guess!
Your fellow America hater KGB Putin is surrounding us as you America haters lash out at the US .
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/russia-seeks-access-bases-eight-countries-its-ships-and-bombers
Useful idiot
I hope you’re enlisted, if you want a war against Russia. But I’m sure you’re not.
I don’t want a war with Russia. That’s why a firm response is required now. Putin needs to understand there are severe consequences for his war crimes. Otherwise, he. e will continue his adventures. That will in the end cause a shooting war in a NATO country.
Doing nothing now is the surest way to escalate this. So the anti-American haters like you are the one who really want war with Russia. Peace through strength, FRiend.
why do you care whether Russia takes over Crimea, seriously?
Like I said, Obama has been running troops, or bombing, in countries around the world. Should Russia “take a firm stand” against us for doing that?
That clown has been trolling here for a long time.
He and Barry are soul-mates and he thinks we don’t recognize it.They both hate the US and want to dismantle it .
I know he hates Putin and Russia because he can't control either.
And what might that be that doesn't then require a firm, in turn, response from Russia until there is no turning back?
Diplomacy is the only route in atomic warfare. It's as they say on Wall Street, avoiding war is too big to fail.
I still don’t see you at point.
What country are you from, Marguerite? You’ve mentioned that you’re here to stop ‘our President’ from going to war over Ukraine, and I’m just curious as to the context of your views.
That, and the most trustworthy American in modern times.
When the Soviet Russians expressed fear that they had no defense against American ICBMs while the US would have Star Wars missile defense, Reagan offered the Star Wars system to the Soviet Union in total, for free so they would have equal defense.
Immediately, trust was established and the greatest peace accord in modern history was established.
It took Socialist degenerate DemoRat Clinton to destroy that trust and Obama and the Neo-Con Fascistas to exploit the destruction.
Bottom line, Reagan won against Communism by NOT threatening, establishing trust, and supplying defensive weapons to the Soviet.
That was courage.
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