Posted on 10/03/2015 8:15:27 AM PDT by semantic
We attempted to cut through all of the Western and Russian media propaganda on the way to describing what Moscow’s involvement in Syria actually portends for the global balance of power. Here are a few excerpts that summarize what’s taking shape in the Middle East:
Putin looks to have viewed this as the ultimate geopolitical win-win. That is, Russia gets to i) expand its influence in the Middle East in defiance of Washington and its allies, a move that also helps to protect Russian energy interests and preserves the Mediterranean port at Tartus, and ii) support its allies in Tehran and Damascus thus preserving the counterbalance to the US-Saudi-Qatar alliance.
Meanwhile, Iran gets to enjoy the support of the Russian military juggernaut on the way to protecting the delicate regional nexus that is the source of Tehran’s Mid-East influence. It is absolutely critical for Iran to keep Assad in power, as the loss of Syria to the West would effectively cut the supply line between Iran and Hezbollah.
It would be difficult to overstate the significance of what appears to be going on here. This is nothing short of a Middle Eastern coup, as Iran looks to displace Saudi Arabia as the regional power broker and as Russia looks to supplant the US as the superpower puppet master.
In short, the Pentagon’s contention that Russia and Iran have formed a Mid-East “nexus” isn’t akin to the Bush administration’s hollow, largely bogus attempt to demonize America’s foreign policy critics in the eyes of the public by identifying an “axis of evil.” Rather, the Pentagon’s assessment was an attempt to come to grips with a very real effort on the part of Moscow and Tehran to tip the scales in the Mid-East away from Riyadh and Washington.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
Agree totally.
“Our largest foreign policy blunder was the 1965 Immigration Act.”
That will be the one that forever changes America.
California is already majority third world so we know how that turns out.
There are a handful of strategic chokepoints in the world seas that are critical for us to maintain unimpeded access but Democrat Presidents keep giving them away. Carter gave up the Panama Canal and now the Chinese control it. Obama is giving away the med and the Persian Gulf. If it comes to a shooting war this will matter quite a bit.
You make a good point at an existential level: the loss of reserve status would impact social spending first & foremost.
So, while DC, NYC, Chi, SF & LA would go up in smoke, the more conservative regions could form a bulwark.
Unfair to Benedict Arnold, who at one time had been a major Patriot hero.
It’s not about fixing. It was about dealing with a bad situation that was beyond fixing.
Nixon got most of the Americans out of there by the end of 1972, and had achieved a framework where South Vietnam could have been kept from going communist.
The collapse of that was Congress’s fault.
OK, I can see that viewpoint.
“A Republican president had to fix Vietnam, .....Viet Nam was a win. “
Hardly. A “win” would have meant the end of Communist North Vietnam. The ‘peace treaty’ that Nixon and Kissinger signed with Hanoi simply ended the fighting. It cost North Vietnam nothing. It even left a Communist field army intact inside of South Vietnam.
All that the Communist North needed to do was bide their time and rebuild their forces waiting for the opportunity to mount an invasion.
Karma
Barack Hussein Obama, a man with no record of personal accomplishment, no leadership experience, and a man with strong connections to terrorists, criminals, racists, and anti-American Communists pulled it off and was elected then re-elected President of these United States. What does this mean and what does it say about the American people? Could it be that karma will finally bestow the consequences of dishonorable behavior on the American people?
Why do I say this? In answer to my question, let me remind you of this statement and where these words took the American people:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Inaugural address, Friday, January 20, 1961
With these words ringing in our ears, my generation went to Vietnam and promised the Vietnamese people we would stand shoulder to shoulder with them until their freedom was secure and the enemies of liberty were defeated. By 1973, with the Paris Peace Accords signed by the United States, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam, the Vietnam War was effectively over and the United States and South Vietnam had effectively won the war.
But, it is to America’s eternal shame and disgrace that the American people then sided with Communist North Vietnam and betrayed the South Vietnamese people who had believed and trusted us. In 1974, the American people elected Democrats to our Congress who had rather see our country defeated than allow a Republican President to receive credit for defeating our enemies. This Democrat led Congress (the infamous 94th) cut off funding and support for South Vietnam and abandoned a valiant ally to their fate. American troops were withdrawn, but we departed with the hollow promise that we would return if the Republic of South Vietnam was ever invaded by Communist North Vietnam. As we all remember, in 1975 Communist North Vietnam invaded the South and the United States did nothing in response.
The tactic we had taught the South Vietnamese was to, when invaded by the North, fall back to a defendable position, stall the communist advance, force the communists to mass their forces before South Vietnam’s defenses, and this would allow time for American forces and air power to return to assist them as we had promised. South Vietnam did just that; for twelve days, outnumbered ten to one, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) held and stalled the communist’s advance outside Saigon near a little town called Xuan Loc.
Outside Xuan Loc during April 1975, in an effort as gallant as that of the Spartans at Thermopylae, the ARVN 18th Infantry Division held two North Vietnamese Army Corps at bay for twelve days. Every infantryman in the ARVN 18th Infantry Division died in that stand. None ran away and none survived. They died to a man fighting overwhelming odds and believing to the end we Americans would return as promised.
Just before the last ARVN soldier of the 18th Infantry Division died, he might have rolled over on his back and looked to the sky hoping to see the contrails of American B-52 bombers and he saw nothing. This last ARVN soldier then knew that he, along with all the Vietnamese people, had been betrayed. With his dying breath, this soldier must have then turned his gaze heavenly and beseeched God to Damn America.
Yes, there is such a thing as karma where dreadful consequences are meted out in recompense for dishonorable behavior. The American people’s just rewards for abandoning a valiant ally during their time of need could have been that the chickens came home to roost on the American people with an Obama Presidency, a Nancy Pelosi Congress, a Harry Reid Senate, a John Roberts Supreme Court, and it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving people.
The election of 2008 and re-election of 2012 was about more than just Obama, his arrogance, his empty resume, and his traitorous comrades. Just as karma provides consequences for dishonorable behavior, there are also adverse consequences for irresponsible behavior. As a people deserve the government they vote into office, they also deserve the consequences resulting from that government’s actions or inaction. The consequences of a government not securing a country’s borders is that a people will lose their country as we are now losing ours to an invasion of illegal aliens. The consequences of not securing a country’s electoral processes to prevent voter fraud is the country will lose its Democracy to a Thugocracy as we have lost ours to a Chicago-mob run Coup d’état.
But the final insult to our Republic is with the election of Barack Hussein Obama, an avowed Marxist Communist, a significant chapter in American History finally closed. Our sixty year long Cold War with Communism is over and the Communists won the war.
These words precede those of President Kennedy, so no one can say we didn’t see this coming:
“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of Socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”
Nikita Khrushchev, 1959
As we Americans continue to live out the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
By
D.J. Taylor
A Vietnam Veteran
At least SE Asia wasn't on NATO's doorstep. It was a mess, there were hundreds of thousands of refugees, and it set back American prestige several decades, but at least the direct blowback wasn't running through NATO allies, the lion's share of the world's oil supply wasn't at stake, and Russia was not set to flank NATO from three sides and gain total hegemony over all land-based petroleum supplies to NATO countries.
Heck, the Vietnam debacle even produced a far superior refugee - people who loved the United States, wanted its freedom, and were eager to assimilate. The Boat People and their children/grandchildren are among America's best citizens. That's not the case here, where the Muslim "refugees" are largely Jihadis in mufti.
It's hard to imagine a worse situation than what we currently have shaping up in the Mideast. The mind reels. Are we seriously going to allow Russia to control all the pipelines, not only gas and oil from Russia (they already have Europe by the shorts and have used the "gas" weapon several times) but also the roads and rail delivery systems that rune from the Gulf through Syria to NATO?
Watch Turkey, Russia's ancient enemy. It's hard to imagine that the Turks will watch the Russians arm the Kurds without responding. Turkey is a NATO country. What if there's a war with Turkey? It's hard to imagine that Zero would do anything about it. But then what's left of NATO?
We're looking at not only losing a war that we could easily have won but also the break-up of NATO, the institution that kept the peace for 70 years. Europe could well break up. There could be serious European wars. The stakes in Vietnam were as naught compared to that.
Worse yet, we are ruled by an Administration dedicated to nixing tracking, easy delivery of Canadian tarsands, and propping up a failed Socialist regime in Argentina, so that even if the entire Eurasian landmass collapses into chaos, we wouldn't be in a position to insulate ourselves and recover.
The Democrats are clearly trying to get us killed. And nobody seems to notice.
It's no wonder why treason is one of only 3 crimes defined in the Constitution. The existential threat created by high level treachery is unsurpassed. Libya was driven by personal corruption and resulted in the USA losing its moral authority. Syria was the natural outcome that allowed Russia to assume the mantle of the "good guys".
This Syrian debacle is a very bad turn of events. And it all can be traced back to a number of high level decisions motivated by personal aggrandizement. Putin correctly read the caliber of US leadership in the guise of Hussein, Clinton, Kerry, et al, but more importantly, understood the state of US society that willingly elected & elevated these people.
You have a great way with words.
The US, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, attempted to train and support Sunni extremists to overthrow the Assad regime. Some of those Sunni extremists ended up going crazy and declaring a Medeival caliphate putting the Pentagon and Langley in the hilarious position of being forced to classify al-Qaeda as "moderate." The situation spun out of control leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and when Washington finally decided to try and find real "moderates" to help contain the Frankenstein monster the CIA had created in ISIS...
Zero Hedge hits the nail on the head with this analysis of the debacle in Syria. This is a disaster of our making, and is going to have devastating results. To quote Admiral Painter in The Hunt for Red October, "This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it." But this is not a movie. War is coming.
It bears repeating: Hussein & Co. isn't the problem, rather, he's merely the symptom. When you look around you, your fellow citizens are the ones who elected these people. They are the ones who were manipulated by the media. They are the ones who simply have no clue what is going on. How can a nation comprised of these kinds of people (plus 20-30 million foreign invaders) hope to compete?
For those of us who understand history & essential governing principles, Syria is a very big deal. The ramifications beyond just the economic & geo-strategic impacts are going to hit at our very foundation.
“Syria is a side show. The real threat is the alliance between Damascus and Tehran..and the threat to Israel. Then there is the oil...”
All true.
The alternative is to draw a big red line around Israel. Once Obama is gone, of course.
Also, If the Saudis somehow lost oil production and sales to the US, no crying for them. But yes, we’d pay more for everything here, until we learned to find more sources in this hemisphere. Still, it appears survivable.
Plus Russia-Iran-Syria will crush ISIS.
Well put, my FRiend. Read the preceding post.
LBJ used Viet nam as a money making opportunity for companies his wife was connected to.
Bookmark.
Great post.
This not only bears repeating it has to become our mantra if we hope to survive, even as a remnant people.
It's just so hard for the conservative mind to grasp the fact that 51% of the voters in this country wish them ill because of who they are. Conservatives tend be optimists - Ronald Reagan is emblematic. Ronnie always wanted to see the best in people. And that's beautiful when most people are good and decent.
But that's not what we have now. Well over half of the American people still support Planned Parenthood even after they've seen (or should have seen) the videos. Well over half the American people see no problem with calling Bruce Jenner a "woman." The list goes on and on.
Hillary Clinton could perform a D & S abortion on live national television and over half would still vote for her
No, my fellow conservatives. It's over. We cannot hope to live in peace with such people. We have to get this.
Nixon did not fix Vietnam
He surrendered
But dressed it up as Peace with Honor and all that bullshit
Johnson hate him or not have them a hard fight for four years but grew weary of it all
The politics and media and casualties in particular if his notes are any indicator
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