By God sir, I like you.
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 11/29/2009 7:09:50 AM PST by IbJensen
It is an interesting exercise to question all the assumptions of American foreign policy for the last sixty years -- that is, for as long as we've provided the defense umbrella for Europe, the free countries of Asia, and for our allies in the Middle East, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
That's after all the meaning of Pax Americana. We do the work, they do the bitching.
Obama and the Left don't have the least inkling of the vital peace-keeping role of America as the cop on the world beat for the last six decades. They hardly understand the idea of peace officers on domestic beats. It just doesn't get through those hard plastic space helmets around their heads.
Let's pretend there is no Pax Americana. Obama sounds like he's ready to shaft Israel, which certainly would be consistent with his whole upbringing and his locked-in Leftist worldview. Jerusalem, according to the administration, is doing the dirty on the Palestinians by adding housing in the city for Jews. Funny thing, nobody seemed to mind much when Obama sent that message to Benjamin Netanyahu. Least of all the Israelis, who just ignored it.
Well, the Left has managed to conceive an inveterate hatred of Israel while not losing many Jewish liberal votes. Shafting Israel is a no-lose proposition for them. And still they keep their liberal Jewish voters. It is a miracle to behold.
No wonder Obama wants to walk away from that troublesome little country that gets all the Arabs so angry. What's he got to lose?
Well, Taiwan, for one thing. There's another troublesome little country right off the coast of mighty China, which owns a lot of US debt, and has had lines into the last two Democrat administrations that have looked mighty suspicious. Nothing would please China more than having the US Navy withdraw its protection from Taiwan.
See, Obama's making peace already.
Then there's South Korea, another troublesome partner.
Why not have the Kim family take over the South? It's no skin off our noses. The conquest of South Korea could probably feed the hungry people of the North for years and years before the whole peninsula went kaput. And Kim Jong il could finally get his nukes to work.
We could dump Afghanistan, too. Obama is turning up his nose at Hamid Karzai because his re-election looked dubious. Which makes Kabul sound just like Chicago. It takes awesome gall for a Chicago Machine politician to criticize an impoverished and nearly ungovernable Third World country for its electoral imperfections.
Well, let's send Mayor Daley over there to fix Afghan politics. Maybe he can teach them to make the dead rise up on Election Day. That way Afghanistan will come up to high Illinois standards of democratic probity.
That solves our biggest foreign policy problems, right?
But that's not all. Why should the United States defend Europe against the Russians? Or protect the free nations of Asia against China and North Korea? Why not let them all go down? And why do we have to defend free trade in the world? Why are we in the Persian Gulf? Just think of all the money we can save -- and we'll need that money if O-Mob-O-Care passes Congress.
We've subsidized Europe's and Asia's defenses for sixty years. Maybe Uncle Vlad the Poisoner over in Moscow would be willing to protect Europe against militant Islam just the way he did with Chechnya. For a price, of course.
To be sure, if we walk away from our allies they will inevitably build up their own nukes and missiles. Japan could have WMDs rather quickly, with South Korea and Taiwan not so far behind. The French would be happy to supply nukes to the emerging EU army. Israel and the Saudis both want to stop the mad Twelver Cult in Tehran before it gets nukes. All nations want to survive; they may hate each other, but that has never stopped alliances. Europeans who hated each other still made alliances for a thousand years before the United States became a world power. They can do it again.
Pax Americana has been the most benevolent imperial enterprise in all of human history, bar none. Our good friends in Europe love to rant at us, especially if they can get us to knuckle under to Euro-Socialism, which puts them in charge of the United States. That's after all the reigning goal of the EU and UN corruptocracy. That's what the Global Warming Fraud has been all about.
The newly appointed President of the EU just declared that 2009 is the first year of global governance. Guess who gets to do the global governance? It's not us. No, this is Year One of the Belgian Empire.
Americans forget that we've defended the civilized world for almost a hundred years because the Europeans couldn't be trusted to do it. Europe has been the source of almost every single aggressive imperialism in the last two centuries, from Napoleon to Bismarck, Karl Marx, the Kaiser, Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin in the Cold War. Imperial Japan is the sole significant exception. Our liberal media constantly cover up that inconvenient fact.
But it is true, and we forget it at our peril.
Euro-Imperialism is rising again today under the smiling face of EU socialism. That's Obama's creed, as we know. That's why he keeps apologizing for the United States to all the socialists of the world.
Obama's mental blinders come straight from Karl Marx's Prussia in the 19th century, and from V.I. Lenin in 1917. Now those were real imperialisms, not the Coca-Cola kind that has our European friends crying in their beer.
If we walk away from the world, the Israelis, the Saudis, the Brits, the Czechs and Poles, the Germans, Japanese and South Koreans have to accelerate their own nuke and missile defenses, because in the nuclear age that's their only chance for survival. China may not really want to see Japan owning nuclear weapons and missiles. They still smart from the pain of Nanking. Obama's deep bow to Emperor Akihito did not buy him any friends in Beijing.
Tehran already tried to stir up riots in Mecca. Without the United States to control the Gulf, what is to keep the Iranians from overrunning Saudi Arabia? They have the population and the military power to do it. If the US goes home, all the Iranians have to do is bust through the desert (good tank country) and go straight to the Holy Cities of Islam. Think they wouldn't dare, if they owned a nice set of nukes and missiles? Who would stop them? Obama?
For sixty years we've lived with the fantasy that the world has become a safe place at last, and that peace is the natural condition of mankind. Let's see if Barack Obama is fool enough to tinker with that delicately balanced contraption.
The last time a delicate power balance broke apart, the immediate result was World War I, Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution and Hitler. If Obama walks away from Afghanistan, Israel and Taiwan, we will see Europe and Asia switching all their alliances very fast. Pull out that American peg from the Big Circus tent, and it won't look like peace on earth, good will to men, forever and ever, amen.
It might look a lot more like August, 1914.
Win, a war, come home. Peace through strength, not peace through welfare.
so you want the US to start a new world war?
because this pretty much sounds like this.
i mean saudi arabia,north korea,cuba, russia....
The Saudi government did not train the 9/11 hijckers. They were trained and funded by AQ. If we were to destroy the oil production capability of SA, the entire world's economy would descend into chaos.
According to the Oil and Gas Journal, Saudi Arabia contains approximately 267 billion barrels of proven oil reserves (including 2.5 billion barrels in the Saudi-Kuwaiti shared "Neutral" Zone), amounting to around one-fifth of proven, conventional world oil reserves. Saudi Arabia maintains the world’s largest crude oil production capacity, estimated to be around 10.5 - 11 million bbl/d, at mid-year 2008. It is the world's largest exporter of oil.
Or Jew York City.
Not as much as you might think. The military budget outlays for FY2008 was 4.3% of GDP, while federal entitlements were 12.6& of GDP. The FY 2010 military outlays are to be $524.8 Billion, which is $35.7B *less* than FY2009, and 30.8B less than FY 2008. As we know the FY 2010 total budget is going to be much much higher than the FY 2008 or 2009 budgets, so the fraction that is military (about 20% in Fy 2008) will be much smaller as well, since the defense budget is going down, while the total federal outlays is going up.
At least the fraction of GDP devoted to defense may go up, but only because the GDP is down so very much. Even in FY 2008 we borrowed more than total military outlays.
By God sir, I like you.
This headline is a very good question.
Jews in Haifa, Jerusalem are patriotic mostly practicing Jews.
Ah, you don't believe we can win...right?
I think we should try.
If our scheming government has its way and more illiterate Somalis are allowed in the same thing will happen to the USA!
When you can accurately sum up 60 years of European history in 25 words or less, you are pretty good.
That was under SEATO, which was trumped by the Paris Peace Accords. I can cite chapter and verse on what went wrong there based on my year in-country (including during the Tet Offensive) and another eight months off the coast.
Actually, I was thinking post-Paris; specifically, that we promised to support Vietnam if they were attacked, and that the Democrat-controlled Congress cut off funding.
Al Quaida's activities are funded in large part by the rulers of Saudi Arabia. This should be enough to cause massive drilling of our own oil potential which is number one of ALL world known reserves.
AQ is power that is not limitless. If SA's #1 customer tells them where they can shove their oil production then AQ is without financing.
The world economies are already descending into chaos.
The US is being used as a doormat both by our league of enemies and by our evil Congress and President.
The Saudi Royal Family has been the target of AQ. And if you read Bin Laden's fatwahs, he wants to take down the House of Saud.
The government of Saudi Arabia is not funding AQ.
True in general anyway.
But my point was that many see New York City as a "Jewish" city, never mind that these days there might be more Muslims in the city proper than Jews. Thus it's subject to the same sorts of attacks, and in point of fact, has already been hit, more than once.
If we can't defend Jerusalem, or just let the Israelis do a proper job of it, why would be bother defending New York, LA, Dallas-Ft Worth, etc, etc. We'd be like Chamberlain, hoping the alligator eats us last, forgetting that even if we are eaten last, we'll still be eaten. Better to kill the 'gator, drain the swamp, and/or whatever it takes, than to try to appease it. Both 'gators and Jihadis are not very appeasable. Being appeased just makes them want more and be more confident of their next "meal".
A little more complicated than that. Here is a good timeline- Vietnam the bitter end
The North Vietnamese violated the Paris Peace Accords. Here is the text.
We did nothing when the accords were violated. Congress and the public had little stomach to reenter the fight. The last US troops left Vietnam in March 1973. The last American to die in combat was January 1973.
January 14, 1975 - Testifying before Congress, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger states that the U.S. is not living up to its earlier promise to South Vietnam's President Thieu of "severe retaliatory action" in the event North Vietnam violated the Paris peace treaty.
January 21, 1975 - During a press conference, President Ford states the U.S. is unwilling to re-enter the war.
March 10, 1975 - The final offensive begins as 25,000 NVA attack Ban Me Thuot located in the Central Highlands.
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