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CRUZ or LOSE!Posted on 04/11/2015 7:57:25 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Riddle me this, fellow Republicans. An NBC survey April 9 reports that a huge majority (70%) of Americans doubts that Iran will abide by any agreement to limit its nuclear arms–but a majority (54%) still thinks Obama will do a better job than the Republicans in dealing with Iran!
A majority of Americans – 54 percent – trust Barack Obama to do a better job handling an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, compared to 42 percent who say they trust the Republicans in Congress. But nearly 7 in 10 Americans say that Iran is not likely to abide by the agreement that has been reached.
53% think Iranian nukes are a “major threat,” and only 37% think they are a “minor threat.” Most Americans, in short, think Iran is a major threat to American security and think that Obama’s nuclear deal is a joke–but they still want Obama in charge of the negotiations, not us.
Maybe NBC made the numbers up. Maybe a proofreader got the numbers reversed. And maybe pigs will sprout wings.
There is a much simpler explanation: Most Americans don’t trust Republicans on matters of war and peace. Not after the nation-building disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, that is. Why should they trust us? Our leadership has never admitted it made a mistake. Sen. Ted Cruz, to be sure, had the gumption last fall to say that “we got too involved in nation-building” and that “we should not be trying to turn Iraq into Switzerland”–and was excoriated for his trouble by the Bushies. The Republican mainstream is too busy trying to defend the Bush record to address the distrust of American voters.
One gets weary and grows shrill sounding the same note for a decade. I wish the problem would go away. A couple of weeks ago a friend who served in senior defense positions in the Bush administration remonstrated, “Why do we have to worry about what mistakes were made back then?” The American public doesn’t remember a lot, but it does remember the disruption of millions of lives after the deployment of 2.6 million Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan–not to mention 6,000 dead, 52,000 wounded in action, and hundreds of thousands of other injuries.
That’s why Obama still has the upper hand, and is likely to succeed in selling out American and allied interests to the mullahs. His trump card is the repeated statement: “The alternative is war.” That may or may not be true; over at Asia Times’ “Chatham House Rules” blog, several former senior officials of the Reagan administration are debating the merits of a military strike. But an air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities surely is an option.
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak had it exactly right: an airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities isn’t war. It’s half a night’s work, a pinpoint operation comparable to the killing of Osama bin Laden. But our leaders won’t say this, because the prospect of military force conjures up fears of a million Americans going back to war.
Republicans need a clear and simple policy about the use of force: We will use force only when we and our close allies are under threat. We will use the kind of force that least exposes Americans to harm. We will not sacrifice the time, let alone the lives, of American soldiers to fix the problems of other countries. I recommend that Republican candidates read Angelo Codevilla’s 2014 book To Make and Keep the Peace, and then ask Prof. Codevilla to design a bumper sticker for them.
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry, or both, and in what order. Here we have the least competent president in American history bungling a decisive foreign policy matter in full view of the public, and bungling so badly that 7 out of 10 Americans think that any agreement we make with Iran will be a piece of garbage–and Americans still want Obama to handle the negotiations! That is not only injurious. It is humiliating.
How much more humiliation at the hands of the public do we need before we straighten out and fly right?
BTTT
That was a very nice reply, and I think your reasoning is sound.
Those are all dynamics that need to be considered and evaluated.
I live in California, and I recognize a problem here that has spread out across the nation. We’re in a serious situation and it’s getting worse.
In my state, we have no Conservative voices. There are no highly visible vocal Conservatives getting the Conservative message out there. Absent that, the public doesn’t know what we stand for or why.
Who has stood up and explained with good detail why we do what we do around the world?
During the cold war we were everywhere. Today we are withdrawing from the world stage, and that is inviting adventurism from various very bad players.
Our NAVY has pulled back so much that Iran actually sent one of it’s destroyers down to Yemen, to threaten them. In the old days, the U. S. NAVY would have stepped in and told Iran to sail back home.
We have forgotten that the sea lanes were safe because we were out there making them safe, or better yet not having to because our presence did the job without further effort.
China is stepping up. Russia is to a lesser degree. Now even Iran has a high seas presence. India is advancing and even Pakistan is developing an deep water capability.
Voids, vacuums will be filled. If we leave a void by our withdrawal, another entity will fill that void.
I know there are a lot of folks who think it would be great to quit sending our boys overseas. Yes, it would be great. Someone elses boys would be doing what our citizens did, only the ideology behind their movement would not be our ideology.
Congress used to voice opposition to the Left. We used to have a man Ronald Reagan that did it. Who does today?
We have Cruz and a few others, on various topics, but I’ll be honest, taking issues one by one and clearing defining what the Conservative view on global or domestic issues is, we don’t really have a loud voice, and it’s getting quieter all the time.
Pretty soon, nobody will know what Conservatism stands for. What with one Bush or another, McCain, or Romney leading our side during the general elections, nobody has a clue what Conservatism is. It is called a terrorist group by some Republicans, and there are Americans who don’t know any different. That is our fault.
It’s why folks don’t understand foreign policy any better than they do. They don’t understand that this is a small world and getting smaller all the time.
We have to be involved. In California, in the U. S., and globally.
This has to change. We must explain why there was general peace over the last 40 years. There were wars, but not of the 1917 and 1941 variety.
We did a pretty good job. The need for it hasn’t ended.
I appreciate your nice reply.
Supporting the Iranian people attempting to overthrow their evil regime is one thing we could do. Unlike 0 who allowed the decent Iranians to be slaughtered, withholding any aid. Much to the dim’s delight. This should be a campaign issue.
That’s a valid point. My Facebook Icon still has a green corner on it, meant years ago to show support for the activist Iranians.
Now we know why Obama didn’t help. He liked the other side.
Re: “During the cold war we were everywhere. Today we are withdrawing from the world stage, and that is inviting adventurism from various very bad players.”
Absolutely true. And, whenever the U.S. has attempted to avoid world stage involvement, it has turned out poorly for us, as well as the rest of the world suffering under oppression by prolonging that suffering, and by contributing to longer casualty lists for us through unpreparedness and having to play catch up while our forces and those of our allies paid the price for our getting caught with our pants down.
Only this time, it won’t be our soldiers in far off shores of the Phillippines or Midway that will bear the brunt of our unpreparedness and avoidance of involvement - it will be on our doorsteps.
I pray I am wrong, but history has demonstrated over and over again that avoiding or wishing the problem to go away always has disasterous consequences.
Because the polls are bullshite?
We’re on the same page there. I agree with you.
We’re a victim of our own success. Our military did such a good job, folks think the peace will magically continue when the military is no longer involved around the world.
China will break out, and people in that region will pay a heavy toll in our absence. You alluded to that sort of thing, and you’re exactly right.
CRUZ or LOSE!On a different, but related topic - the “nation building” failure in Iraq - why do you think we were successful at it in Japan, which also had a far different world view of human life, as well as a different religion than us - yet we succeeded? While in Iraq, we spent billions on infrastructure and working with the Iraqi people to move their government toward a more democratic nation, yet failed?
In both cases, Iraq and Japan’s infrastructure, industry and government were destroyed by the war’s end, yet Japan recovered while Iraq didn’t. Was it because we didn’t have a realistic post-war plan, and we didn’t properly prepare for security and governance of Iraq? MacArthur was literally a military dictator over Japan for several years and I can’t imagine him allowing the looting and pillaging that followed Saddam’s fall in Iraq to occur in Japan.
Or, was it simply because or Islam? Is Islam, as it exists in Iraq just too much of a barrier? Also, Japan had an industrial establishment prior to the war that wasn’t based on just one resource, as in Iraq’s is with oil. Just wondering what your thoughts would be on this.
Very odd.
The defeat of Iraq utterly pales in comparison to the absolute devastation we visited on Japan. Japan was bombed into starving rubble, capped off with two nukes just to put a fine point on it.
We rolled in and basically dictated the way they would live.... and everyone knew we had teeth.
In Iraq, the brilliance of maneuver warfare and scrupulously avoiding civilian casualties left most Iraqis not really feeling “defeated”.
Immediately after the defeat, we allowed Iraqis to walk around armed,,openly.
Japan and Iraq were defeated VERY differently.
Obama lost Iraq.
This, American voters, is what happened.
Wasting your breath on Alberta chick. She doesn’t see the fact that if Iran gets the bomb, war is coming whether she likes it or not. I say that as a 20yr vet with both my sons currently serving. We take it to them, or eventually, they WILL bring it to us.
A word to the pollsters: Bullhockey! You can get any poll result you desire. Just poll the type of people who will give you the type of answers you want. Duh!
What it means is, A) the Demagogic Party can always rely on Partisan Media Shills, which includes the author of the op-ed, and B) that Partisan Media Shills use and abuse polls in their shilling. Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
Most Americans are idiots. That is why they elected Obama twice. Whomever takes power, he must deal with an electorate whose advice he largely must ignore.
I have been saying for quite a while that his saying that put us at least 25 years behind in dealing with the issue.
You're not making sense.
If a guy doesn't know how to pick great people to work for him, he's unlikely to be great at managing.
“They’re not afraid, they’re just lazy and ignorant. They don’t know the difference between straight reporting and commentary, and they don’t want to know the difference (of course this isn’t helped by the fact that the line between straight reporting and commentary over the past few decades, but I digress).”
Exactly. The dumbing down in our public schools for the last 40-50 years now has it’s intended consequences.
“I don’t think you have a highly visible Republican standing up and explaining what is wrong with Obama’s plan.”
Netanyahu has done a great job doing exactly that. Hopefully the Republican candidate will do the same.
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