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?”
It is not => is it not...?
Maybe we have no Stolichnaya we can pitch, but we can get our fingers out of the Roosky pie. Consider alternatives to the few Roosky products out there.
“What would the GOP do about Ukraine?”
What should the GOP do ANYTHING about Ukraine?
What should the Republicans do ANYTHING about Ukraine?
What should the Americans do ANYTHING about Ukraine?
Why should the United States care or spend money they have to borrow to do ANYTHING in Ukraine, 6,000 miles away from home?
WHAT’s the United States beef in Ukraine?
Ah, we see the bear hair on your tongue, Marguerite.
It’s past time that the US should start thinking about severing ties with NATO. It was created to deal with the problem of a war ravaged Europe facing a messianic revolutionary power. That situation no longer exists and NATO now is the ultimate entangling alliance that George Washington warned us about.
We should be a lot more concerned about Russian, Chinese, and Islamist movement into central and south America.
Buchanan, or his like, for President for the good of the USA. The GOP needs a war monger for President, like they need a nutcase.
... or the South border.
Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you
I think I am pointing out that this is serious. If Crimea couldn’t wait to get out, it sure didn’t look it till recently.
“Lock Kerry in a bathroom.”
Probably by far the best part of your suggestions. But you are right, the Ukraine is “none of our business”. The Russians shall continue to be Russians, and regardless of whatever social or economic schemes they adopt to keep the captured non-Russians as vassals, they will defend that hegemony to the death - either of all the subjugated people, or their own total annihilation.
The typical American taxpayer neither fights his own fires nor pursues armed criminals. That's why he pays taxes - so firefighters and policemen do it for him. The same analogy applies to military operations. If the American taxpayer wanted to fight all of the nation's wars on his own, the defense department should be disbanded and replaced with a levy that is imposed in military emergencies. Apart from average $5000 per capita tax imposed on the average taxpayer for having a defense department, in any confrontation with Russia, which has thousands of nuclear warheads mounted on missiles, the average American is risking his neck, as well as the necks of his entire family. To say that he is a coward for wanting Russia kept in check is more than an insult - it is factually wrong.
i know.
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).
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Washington%27s_Farewell_Address
And a good question it is.
If true Reagan philosophy Republicans had been in charge from the end of the Reagan Presidency until now, the answer is resoundingly no, this never would have happened.
And not because Reagan was strong, but because he was trustworthy. The Russians and Eastern Europe would not be reacting to empty threats of force and valid incidents of aggression, thievery, piracy and persecution of Christians.
Reagan didn't threaten force, he promised reasonably free market capitalistic growth, and he always kept his promises.
The American Socialist left has given rise to both the problem and the Neo-Con Faschista warmongers who won't have to risk their lives when they try to get tough with Putin.
My understanding is that it was an "Agreement" not a ratified Treaty and carries significantly less obligation.
It’s past time that the US should start thinking about severing ties with NATO. It was created to deal with the problem of a war ravaged Europe facing a messianic revolutionary power. That situation no longer exists and NATO now is the ultimate entangling alliance that George Washington warned us about.
The founders sent the U. S. Navy to Africa. We have always had “foreign entanglements”.
NATO has worked pretty good the last 60 years. It’s foolish to discard it cavalierly in the face of fascistic aggression.
The only thing I can say is if Crimea “wants” to be co-opted, let it BE Russia’s baby then. It’ll figure out that the post-USSR Russia will rape it as bad as the pre-USSR Russia. Sometimes it takes a disaster to show that something is more than a “mere political move.”
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