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?”
I must have missed the part in the constitution about paying taxes to fight wars for other countries.
pre-USSR => USSR
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1992 - 22 years ago. Why does NATO still exist?
Ahead of the reunification of Germany in 1990, there was a promise not to expand NATO eastward. The West did everything it could to give to M.Gorbatchev the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia. Why did NATO break its promise?
Certainly one option would be to hunker down behind a great wall. That was feasible in George Washington’s day. Today when a full navy can arrive at your doorstep without having to undergo Columbus-era tribulations, not so feasible.
Whether that's true, whether it would have worked, and what a Republican president would do if Putin acted up against Ukraine are all debatable questions. To judge from what was said in the election campaigns, though, Palin, McCain, and Romney all were under fewer illusions about Putin and Russia than Obama was.
Not objecting to your comment, only that a history of the importance of the religion aspect of Crimea gives insight into it’s future, and the rest of the world.
Lots of tough guys on line hoping for a good war they can watch on TV. Too few of you are on a flight to fight your glorious war.
Actually, you are wrong. I spend a good bit of time over in Europe. I have seen the graves there of those murdered by Russians. Many times. History shows that whereever Russians march misery follows. Crimea is the end of the beginning of Putin’s adventures. Ignoring him now will just increase the bloodshed in the end.
You want the US to go to war over the Ukraine?
You’re right, though, Putin is trying for an empire with global domination. He’s using military force in nations all around the world. Russia has 400 bases in countries around the globe., Russian troops are fighting in Afghanistan; they bombed Libya; they invaded and occupied Iraq; and Putin wants to bomb Syria.
.. oh wait, that’s the US that is undertaking all that global military action. But you’re worried about Russia meddling in a country that’s right next door. Double standard, anyone?
You want the US to go to war over the Ukraine?
You’re right, though, Putin is trying for an empire with global domination. He’s using military force in nations all around the world. Russia has 400 bases in countries around the globe., Russian troops are fighting in Afghanistan; they bombed Libya; they invaded and occupied Iraq; and Putin wants to bomb Syria.
.. oh wait, that’s the US that is undertaking all that global military action. But you’re worried about Russia meddling in a country that’s right next door. Double standard, anyone?
GFY, RedNeck
Catholic vs. Orthodox disputes can make things somewhat testy, yet the most devoted of both faiths respect one another as do the most devoted Evangelicals. (There is a significant evangelical presence in Ukraine.) It’s “Churchianity” people that get in the worst fights over religion. Those who are on the level of seeing a passion play as presenting a figure who must be humanly avenged.
Bear REAR hair, that is.
And no, George Soros cannot let his tax money or his other money stand in for him.
For ANY military intervention, NATO has to receive mandate from United Nations Security Council authorizing NATO to undertake the action. Otherwise, it is a violation of international law of respecting state sovereignty and principle of non-interference as stipulated in UN Charter.
And in this case, they will NEVER get it, not with Russia and China veto power in the Security Council. Besides, Ukraine is NOT member of NATO.
Crimea is next door to Russia, but it’s supposedly a monstrous outrage for Russia to meddle there,
Meanwhile, US overthrows Libyan gov’t half a globe away — and wants to do the same in Syria now. Goose and gander anyone?
What we learned from WWII is that wars started by major powers don't necessarily stay local. What we've learned from history is that acquiring land and population makes powerful countries more powerful, in some cases making them so powerful that resisting them once they reach that state becomes ruinously expensive in men and material. That, ultimately, is why we resisted the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War - to prevent them from acquiring control of enough land and manpower to overcome the non-Communist countries of the world.
Ultimately, I am against a direct intervention in Ukraine. But if the Ukrainians choose to resist a Russian incursion, we need to be offering them aid to fight the Russians. We also need to be telling the Russians that we will help Ukraine send tens of thousands of Russians home in body bags - via billions of dollars in aid to the Ukrainian resistance - if they intrude any further into Ukraine.
Actually some early militia schemes DID allow people to hire other soldiers for them, but Soros? You think he hates Russia?
Well, with Obama the US strategy for Moose went all wopperjawed. Maybe Russia has aped Obama, too much.
.. oh wait, that’s the US that is undertaking all that global military action. But you’re worried about Russia meddling in a country that’s right next door. Double standard, anyone?
Take you anti-American garbage to the DUmp.
Any military person who's not prepared to carry out the will of the civilians who pay his salary probably would be better off in some other occupation. Because he's ultimately gonna be cashiered when he mouths off about his contempt for civilians. MacArthur was merely the most prominent example of this, but he won't be the last.
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