The post immediately below, about Robert Gates's new book, confirms what we've known for a long time: the MEC is a declinist, but also a lazy narcissist who basically finds foreign policy boring, and the entire Freedom-Hater party is actively orchestrating Western decline, for a mixture of reasons including ideological conviction and cynical political calculation.
So shameful developments will continue to come down the pike. Of course, there is the ongoing economic collapse of Egypt, the de facto legitimization of the Assad regime's rule in Syria, a new wave of rocket attacks into Israel, Iran's nullification of the Geneva agreement, political chaos in Turkey, and the still-unanswered questions about the September 2012 jihadist attack in Benghazi, Libya.
Add to that list the beginnings of an al-Qaeda state on either side of the Iraq-Syria border, and Karzai's dithering on signing a secutiry agreement that would provide at least a glimmer of hope that Afghanistan will be characterized by order, safety and what passes for freedom in Muslim countries as the US winds down its presence there.
The West has essentially no influence in the most dangerous yet strategically important area of the world.
It's long past time to shed the mindset of our youth, when, even as the cultural, economic chaos and global challenges of the last three decades of the 20th century unfolded, we could be confident that American leadership could be roused on short notice and employed to thwart the unthinkable. Let's be clear: Even more than the nation's economic prowess or cultural influence, our basis for such an assumption rested on its military might. We may still outnumber and out-fancy the rest of the world in terms of battleships, fighter jets, and elite teams of highly-trained assassins and rescue personnel, but, as the Gates memoir drives home, that whole apparatus is rife with resentment of, and contempt for, the commander-in-chief of it all.
We're not safe at all. We need national prayer - and lots of it - for a three-year breather from the kinds of consequences of the FHer worldview that, while unthinkable, are - admit it - likely.
What a bucket list of problems over there and you look to our government to solve them? How? By bringing back the Cheney-Bush crew like Romney was going to do? I don't think the American voters were in any mood to do that back in '12. Keep hoping for more disasters and even that your folks get back in what you seem to call "control." The American people expect somebody to get this crap off our plates because we want to live the dream, man.
ReplyDeleteThe ongoing economic collapse of Egypt
the de facto legitimization of the Assad regime's rule in Syria
a new wave of rocket attacks into Israel
Iran's nullification of the Geneva agreement
political chaos in Turkey
the beginnings of an al-Qaeda state on either side of the Iraq-Syria border
Karzai's dithering on signing a security agreement
Brilliant idea for a national day of prayer. Maybe Obama will get attacked at the next White House Prayer meeting like he did last year so you can have a good (knowing?) chuckle.
ReplyDelete"This crap" is occurring because the entire world smells American decline.
ReplyDeleteYou can worry about all that, especially about your beloved Netanyahu, all you want. It's your blood pressure bippy. A strong argument can be made that the election of Obama was Cheney's fault, given the mess they made of their shock & awe in the Middle East. You made your bed, lie in it. There likely isn't a huge majority here where it matters in the good ole USA which you so conditionally and provisionally love so much that are going to lie in it with you. And Nettie of course.
ReplyDeleteThe military can gripe all they want. Apparently they only willingly serve
ReplyDeleteRepublican administrations because they didn't like Clinton either. They need to follow orders like they are brainwashed to do.
So the Middle East is not a breeding ground for jihaidsts, a collection of failed states, and about to come under the nuclear shadow of Iran?
ReplyDeleteSo Barack Obama actually is a conscientious commander in chief and a patriot who understands the importance of American leadership on the world stage?
ReplyDeleteEven your beloved Ronnie saw the Middle East as a scorpion that will sting regardless. We tried diplomacy and it apparently has not worked any better than shock and awe. Mission there will never be accomplished, short of divine intervention which you invoke when calling for national prayer. How does your prayer go? Do you tell God how to work his strategy? You might try listening, because it's not in your control you armchair general you.
ReplyDeleteAre you aware that al Qaeda controls more territory in the Mideast than ever before? http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/opinion/bergen-al-qaeda-terrority-gains/
ReplyDeleteWhy do you advocate doing nothing? How far would you go in that? Pull all our intelligence resources out of the region? Immediately leave Afghanistan? Reduce the staffs at all our Mideast embassies by 80 percent?
ReplyDeleteIt is not that I advocate doing nothing it's more that I and many others have been frustrated that doing anything does not work. This is a thy will, not mine kinda thing for me. So that's what I'll be praying for besides peace which I am told is his will for us all. At least eventually.
ReplyDeleteWe may suffer a catastrophic attack from either the Sunni jihadists or Iran before then.
ReplyDeleteYou seriously don't care if your grandchildren live to see a happy adulthood?
ReplyDeleteWar is not the answer, but they can decide for themselves.
ReplyDelete"This seems to be a lesson we have to keep re-learning. Never go to war without a plan and an exit strategy, but above all else, never go without a reason. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of Iraq's history and societal construct could have predicted this outcome. That is why George H W Bush stopped our military at the Kuwait border. There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before we invaded. The Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds need to resolve their issues, and a three state solution is probably the most workable one. When things settle down they will most likely root out Al Qaeda and other disrupting elements. But they have to do it. We've already done enough. I'd like to think we learned our lesson about wasting American military lives, but I thought we learned that after Vietnam. I was wrong."
ReplyDeletemore at http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-veterans-despondent-over-al-qaedas-resurgence-in-iraq/2014/01/10/ad692918-7a2a-11e3-af7f-13bf0e9965f6_story.html
"I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way."
ReplyDeleteGeorge W. Bush
The truth is something few people in the national security establishment are willing to confront: Confusing capability with utility, the United States knows how to start wars but has seemingly forgotten how to conclude them. Yet concluding war on favorable terms — a concept formerly known as victory — is the object of the exercise. For the United States, victory has become a lost art. This unhappy verdict applies whether U.S. forces operate conventionally (employing high-tech "shock and awe" tactics) or unconventionally ("winning hearts and minds").
ReplyDeleteAs a consequence, instead of promoting stability — perhaps the paramount U.S. interest not only in the Islamic world but also globally — Washington's penchant for armed intervention since the end of the Cold War, and especially since 9/11, has tended to encourage just the opposite. In effect, despite spilling much blood and expending vast amounts of treasure, U.S. military exertions have played into the hands of our adversaries, misleadingly lumped together under the rubric of "terrorists."
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-bacevich-failed-wars-20140112,0,5920178.story#ixzz2qKG4iUwO
What then is to be done? That which Washington is least capable of undertaking: Those charged with formulating policy must think anew. For starters, that means lowering expectations regarding the political effectiveness of war, which is demonstrably limited.
ReplyDeleteTake force off the metaphorical table to which policymakers regularly refer. Rather than categorizing violence as a preferred option, revive the tradition of treating it as a last resort. Then get serious about evaluating the potential for employing alternative forms of power, chiefly economic and cultural, to advance American interests. The result won't be a panacea. But it won't cost as much as open-ended war. And rather than creating new problems, this alternative approach just might solve some old ones.
Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-bacevich-failed-wars-20140112,0,5920178.story#ixzz2qKGu848o
The AK-47 is the world's most popular firearm, with an estimated 100 million spread around the world.
ReplyDelete"The pain in my soul is unbearable. I keep asking myself the same unsolvable question: If my assault rifle took people's lives, it means that I, Mikhail Kalashnikov, ... son of a farmer and Orthodox Christian am responsible for people's deaths," he said in the letter.
Kalashnikov also shared his bitter thoughts about humankind.
"The longer I live, the more often that question gets into my brain, the deeper I go in my thoughts and guesses about why the Almighty allowed humans to have devilish desires of envy, greed and aggression," Kalashnikov continued. "Everything changes, only a man and his thinking remain unchanged: he's just as greedy, evil, heartless and restless as before!"
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ak-47-designer-kalashnikov-wrote-penitent-letter-21514870
The set of alternatives, though, is ultimately binary - submit to your enemy or prevail. Anything else is an ancillary issue.
ReplyDeleteSince you sometimes stress what a Christian country we are please link me to that beatitude.
ReplyDeleteAs many observers have pointed out, it's a bit rich for Gates to decry the role that politics plays in policymaking in a tell-all memoir published before his last boss has left office. It seems likely that the principal debate inside the Beltway will be about the ethics of Gates writing his tell-all so soon after leaving office. This would be a shame, however, because it would elide the bigger flaw in Gates's worldview: his appalling understanding of the history of American foreign policy. If Gates thinks that the insertion of politics into foreign policy is a recent phenomenon, he needs to do his homework. It used to be worse -- a hell of a lot worse.
ReplyDeleteRead more at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/01/16/bob_gates_doesn_t_know_much_about_history
Also from the same article:
ReplyDelete"Gates acknowledges in his memoirs that despite the role that politics played, Obama likewise made the right foreign-policy calls. What seems to offend the former secretary of defense is the idea that politics played any role in foreign-policy decision-making. Which, if you think about it, is insane. Foreign policy and national security are inherently political bailiwicks. It is increasingly difficult for presidents to launch major foreign-policy initiatives without a modicum of popular and congressional support. To accuse the Obama administration of factoring in the political is to accuse it of not committing political malpractice. In retrospect, had Bush and his advisor Karl Rove factored politics into their National Security Strategy, maybe it would not have been so unsustainable. "