Posted on 06/19/2009 9:48:05 AM PDT by LSUfan
Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan.
One need look no further than President Obama's cautiously timid response to the demands of freedom from Iranians. Contrast this with Reagan's response to similar demands from Poles in the 1980s and the miserable inadequacy of the Obama foreign policy is thrust into a stark and shameful relief.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
SWEET! I did not know that.
I don't expect the Obaminator to be memorialized as such anywhere in Europe, Asia, the Mid East, or South America.
He will be presented in galleries of losers and dubious achievers everywhere.
Without an American presence in the West Pacific, Japanese aggression would have been a threat to China and the European powers that held a colonial presence in the Pacific. Annexation of the Philippines (and Guam, for that matter) from Spain put the USA sufficiently far forward in the WestPac that it was ultimately threatend by Japanese expansion.
Hell, 0bama is not even Jimmuh Carter. He's a moron.
Even if we weren’t in the Philippines, Japan would have attacked us... They where upset is that we wouldn’t have given them oil and other materials. Plain and simple.
It would only take one Ohio-class SSBN to turn most of Iran’s cities and infrastructure into glass skating rinks. Of course, the Iranian goverment knows this, which is why it would not use any primitive atomic weapon it might cobble together against the USA. Why take out Manhattan or part of LA, when your whole nation will be destroyed? And if a “Fat Man/Little Boy” were smuggled in via an airliner or merchant vessel, it would be a pretty pathetic intelligence apparatus that would not be able to trace its origin.
We can gather information from around the world in 80 seconds. Travel across the ocean in mere hours, and ballistic missiles can do it in 20 minutes or less.
The days of taking our ball and going home to fortress America have long since passed.
“...if we keep sticking our nose where it does not belong it will get smacked sooner or later...”
We could just let evil flourish and annihilate the innocent until it absolutely surrounds and engulfs us.
‘Getting our noses smacked’ once in awhile is certainly more preferable than having our heads separated from our bodies in the future, isn’t it?
Our framers were certainly isolationist. This explains why they accepted help from the French and others during our Revolution.
Sarcasm aside, discerning what George Washington and his peers would have done in today’s world is a false analogy and logically fallacious.
Should Reagan have remained silent and not opposed the Soviet Union at the Brandenburg gate?
—Reagan spoke words of support for the Poles, was that wrong too?—
Different situation. We we facing a fresh, purposeful Soviet Union, a nation with nearly 200 Army divisions (versus maybe 20 divisions for the US if you count the 3 USMC divisions), 55,000 main battle tanks versus maybe 12,000 for the US, a navy and nuclear delivery force larger than those of the USA and its allies put together. An existentially greater threat than a bunch of modernity-hating goathumpers.
Oh bullcrap. The Japanese had designs on the Panama Canal for crying out loud. But I guess in your alternative world that would have been our fault too since we had no business building that canal in the first place, right?
The Japanese were not worried about US presence in the Philippines or Guam. They were worried about the US Pacific Fleet. Which, I guess in your world was also our fault because we shouldn’t have had a Pacific Fleet...
The Paulestinians are as bad as the Obamunists in your own way.
—This explains why they accepted help from the French and others during our Revolution.—
Sure. But France joined the party when it was almost over. The northeast and mid-Atlantic were largely free of British rule when the French joined in. The British were making a desperate last stand in the southeastern US. After all, the last major engagement of the war (Yorktown) was in Virginia.
You are assuming that the government of Iran is rational the way the Soviets were. I'm not sure that is a good assumption.
—The Japanese had designs on the Panama Canal for crying out loud.—
And I’ve got designs on winning PowerBall. Doesn’t mean it could ever happen.
“It would only take one Ohio-class SSBN to turn most of Iran’s cities and infrastructure into glass skating rinks...”
Certainly an isolationist such as yourself should be against this, right? The eventual outpouring of ‘dreaded’ international condemnation would be enough of a ‘nose smack’, as you put it as to make this a non-starter, correct? I am only using your own logic.
Deterrence in and of itself is insufficient. Our enemies have gauged our dear leader as lacking in having the male endowment necessary to follow through on deterrence, if needed.
Obama doesn’t posture to our enemies, he makes it clear to them that they can roll him. Instead, Obama wants everyone to believe that Holocaust deniers and leaders that have professed a desire to wipe Israel off the map are actually nice guys who would quit hanging their gays and stoning raped women if we were just nice to them.
The French gave material and logistical assistance throughout.
Today we face a purposeful enemy with a definite doctrine. The fact that they don’t have 200 divisions and 50,000 MBTs actually works in their favor in a new generation of warfare. We underestimate their capabilities and intentions at our peril.
Iran doesn’t need to USE an atomic bomb to do much harm. A Bomb gives them an umbrella under which to ramp up the harm that they are already doing in the world through proxies. (For instance, the Iranians are ALL over Latin America.
In the event that they were to use such a weapon, they are likely to do so through a covert proxy to give them plausible deniability.
We need to get away from the Cold War mentality and recognize the threats today and in the future.
Good point. I hadn’t thought of that, but then Reagan doesn’t quickly come to mind when considering Obama’s actions.
Bill Kristol wrote a great article this month on this subject. Obama told Harry Reid when he was in the Senate that he (Obama) “has a gift.” Obama truly believes that he is the premier mediator. He believes that no one who has gone before him had the ability to communicate effectively with Muslim countries because they didn’t understand the culture. He believes his “life experience in Indonesia” prepared him for this moment in history. Only he can heal Middle East tensions because he understands their culture. He believes that mere words can change their hearts.
Narcissistic and naive ... a dangerous combination.
Our intelligence community wasn't all that sharp leading up to 9/11.
The Iranian government should know we could turn them into a nuclear wasteland and wouldn't take the risk, but that assumes:
1. The Iranian leadership is sane; and
2. Our leadership has the cahones to retaliate.
With the current regimes in Teheran and Washington, neither is guaranteed.
That is not correct. The French joined the party 1778 after Saratoga and began supplying Washington's army with weapons, and Congress with money. Most of their early combat against the British during the war occurred on the high seas in the Caribbean and even as far off as India. In 1779 they dispatched the first troops to N.America and forced to British to withdraw from Newport R.I. when Admiral deTiernay and General Rochambeau landed with 20,000 French regulars. I'd remind you that the British still occupied New York and even the combined strength of the American and French forces was not sufficient to dislodge them.
It was from Newport that the French army marched to the final confrontation at Yorktown when Cornwallis was forced to surrender. But even with that surrender, the British were far from beaten militarily. What caused the war to conclude was internal politics in Britain where the war was decidedly unpopular and increasingly unaffordable. Parliament under Whig leadership finally forced King George to call an end to it.
The southern campaign was anything but a desperate last stand by the British. It was the Americans who were increasingly desperate at that point in the war. The best they could do was to slowly deplete Cornwallis' strength while also avoiding any full scale battles which they knew they could not win. They were powerless to stop the British from going anywhere in the south they chose to go as can be seen by Cornwallis' march from Charleston all the way to Virginia. The British easily captured the two largest cities in the south and occupied them to the end of the war.
Only some very skillful unconventional warfare on the part of General Nathanial Green in simply keeping his army in the field coupled with the inexcusable failure of General Howell to relieve Cornwallis before the French fleet arrived, allowed Washington and Rochambeau to corner the British at Yorktown and force their surrender. More than a military defeat, Yorktown swung the tide of opinion in Britain away from continuing the war.
We did not really beat the British in a military sense during the Revolution. We outlasted them, and avoided being beaten ourselves. But without French aid, French troops and French sea power, we would not have had much of a chance.
Who the he** ever said he was?
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