Posted on 11/25/2014 2:18:19 PM PST by Kaslin
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam war veteran and the lone Republican on Obama's national security team, has been fired.
And John McCain's assessment is dead on.
Hagel, he said, "was never really brought into that real tight circle inside the White House that makes all the decisions which has put us into the incredible debacle that we're in today throughout the world."
Undeniably, U.S. foreign policy is in a shambles. But what were the "decisions" that produced the "incredible debacle"?
Who made them? Who supported them?
The first would be George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, a war for which Sens. John McCain, Joe Biden, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton all voted. At least Sen. Hagel admitted he made a mistake on that vote.
With our invasion, we dethroned Saddam and destroyed his Sunni Baathist regime. And today the Islamic State, a barbaric offshoot of al-Qaida, controls Mosul, Anbar and the Sunni third of Iraq.
Kurdistan is breaking away. And a Shia government in Baghdad, closely tied to Tehran and backed by murderous anti-American Shia militias, controls the rest. Terrorism is a daily occurrence.
Such is the condition of the nation which we were promised would become a model of democracy for the Middle East after a "cake-walk war." The war lasted eight years for us, and now we are going back -- to prevent a catastrophe.
A second decision came in 2011, when a rebellion arose against Bashar Assad in Syria, and we supported and aided the uprising. Assad must go, said Obama. McCain and the neocons agreed.
Now ISIS and al-Qaida are dominant from Aleppo to the Iraqi border with Assad barely holding the rest, while the rebels we urged to rise and overthrow the regime are routed or in retreat.
Had Assad fallen, had we bombed his army last year, as Obama, Kerry and McCain wanted to do, and brought down his regime, ISIS and al-Qaida might be in Damascus today. And America might be facing a decision either to invade or tolerate a terrorist regime in the heart of the Middle East.
Lest we forget, Vladimir Putin pulled our chestnuts out of the fire a year ago, with a brokered deal to rid Syria of chemical weapons.
The Turks, Saudis and Gulf Arabs who aided ISIS' rise are having second thoughts, but sending no Saudi or Turkish troops to dislodge it.
So the clamor arises anew for U.S. "boots on the ground" to reunite the nations that the wars and revolutions we supported tore apart.
A third decision was the U.S.-NATO war on Col. Gadhafi's Libya.
After deceiving the Russians by assuring them we wanted Security Council support for the use of air power simply to prevent a massacre in Benghazi, we bombed for half a year, and brought down Gadhafi.
Now we have on the south shore of the Mediterranean a huge failed state and strategic base camp for Islamists and terrorists who are spreading their poison into sub-Sahara Africa.
The great triumphs of Reagan and Bush 41 were converting Russia into a partner, and presiding over the liberation of Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the old Soviet Union into 15 independent nations.
Unfulfilled by such a victory for peace and freedom, unwilling to go home when our war, the Cold War, was over, Bush 43 decided to bring the entire Warsaw Pact, three Baltic states, and Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. For this project, Bush had the enthusiastic support of McCain, the neocons and the liberal interventionists.
Since 1991, we sought to cut the Russians out of the oil and gas of the Caspian basin with a pipeline through the Caucasus to Turkey, bombed Serbia to tear off its cradle province of Kosovo, and engineered color-coded revolutions in Belgrade, Tbilisi and other capitals to pull these new nations out of Russia's sphere of influence.
Victoria Nuland of State and McCain popped up in Maidan Square in Kiev, backing demonstrations to bring down the democratically elected (if, admittedly, incompetent) regime in Ukraine.
The U.S.-backed coup succeeded. President Viktor Yanukovych fled, a pro-Western regime was installed, and a pro-Western president elected.
Having taken all this from his partner, Putin retrieved the Crimea and Russia's Black Sea naval base at Sebastopol. When pro-Russia Ukrainians rose against the beneficiaries of the coup in Kiev, he backed his team, as we backed ours.
Now, we are imposing sanctions, driving Russia further from the West and into a realliance with Beijing, with which Putin has completed two long-term deals for oil and gas running over $700 billion dollars.
As the U.S. and NATO send planes, ships and troops to show our seriousness in the Baltic and Ukraine, Russian planes and ships test Western defenses from Finland to Sweden to Portugal to Alaska and the coast of the continental United States.
Who made these decisions that created the debacle?
Was it those isolationists again?
Hagel is an idiot if he thought it would have been any different.
The “give peace a chance” crowd .. just still don’t get it. There is NO peace .. and there won’t be as long as Obama is in office. It’s that simple.
The goal is to destroy as much as possible the wonderful country we used to live in. The other goal is to humiliate us around the world .. just to prove how awful we really are.
Call me for the STAMPEDE...
Heck.. the sheep MUST stampede at some point..
The wolves be getting pretty thick out there..
If not...... get used to the odor of lamb on the pot..
He left out a few steps in between.
Yep. I actually remember a brief period in the early 1990s where the Russians actually liked and admired us. I actually did business with Russians at that time.
This goodwill begin being p*ssed away when Clinton started bombing the Serbs to support the Bosnian Muslims and it has been downhill ever since, particularly being accelerated when BO was being elected.
Are any of the a$$h0l3s who voted for him twice embarrassed yet?
If Saddam Hussein had been left in place, we might not be worrying about when the Iranians would have the capability to lob a nuke in the direction of Tel Aviv, because Saddam Hussein might have done so already. I'm not sure what Buchanan's take on that would have been.
The best reason for the US to eschew an ambitious foreign policy when not absolutely necessary, is that we’ve never been really good at it.
Good article by Pat.
Admit it, Pat. W beat you because you seemed old, cranky, and a bit anti-Semitic, and he didn’t. I have often enjoyed seeing you on the Sunday shows. Not the same as running a country.
Chuck was the scapegoat for Obama’s policies. I’m no fan of Chuck, but how dumb was he to accept the job and not realize it was a set-up and that he would end up with a knife in his back.
Pat Buchanan ran in 1992 as republican against George H.W.Bush and in 2000 against George W. Bush in the Reform party.He had no chance whatsoever as no third party candidate has and I wished people would stop wasting their votes when they vote for third party candidates
Maybe, but he sure likes playing with matches.
He's anti-Israel.
He's a former GOP Senator who publicly called for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq while hostilities were ongoing.
He opposed “The Surge” in Iraq, and joined with the Democrats in a prolonged attempt to stop it.
He was frequently mentioned as a Vice-Presidential nominee - for Obama! - and he said he would accept if it was offered.
Right. I’m sure glad Bush’s war ended evil in the Middle East.
foolish statement
W never intended to end evil anywhere
Don’t forget he closed the national parks and especially the World War II memorial last year and the commissaries in the military posts in CONUS
I was responding to the foolish statement that we needed the 2003 war to keep Saddam Hussein from nuking Israel.
Today, Chuck Schumer gave a speech saying Obamacare ie, The Affordable Care Act............Was a big mistake, and that while a few things in healthcare were needing fixing, the people did not need this mess. I could not believe my ears. I mean he torpedoed the Obamacare bill and Obama with a direct hit broadside. The more senior senate democrats love Hagel. He is one of them more or less. I think a war has been declared on Obama's administration on many fronts now. When we can't even keep a secretary of defense on staff as long as Obama keeps a pair of golf shoes on his feet, something is very wrong.
The Rhodes, Rice, Jarrett, triad of treasonous incompetence is spilling over.
Hillary was very wise to get out when she did. She knows how bad this bunch is. And that’s the pot calling the kettle............well, that would be racist.
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