Good on him.There’s a certain quality of leadership that people appreciate — a blunt recognition of reality, and a reorienting of policy toward national and international interests. Usually people look to the Oval Office for that quality, but these days the only apparent source comes from the Pentagon. While the White House blathers about safety issues after Russian provocations,PresidentDefense Secretary Ash Carter minces no words about the threat Vladimir Putin represents and Russia’s return to nuclear brinksmanship against the West:Defense Secretary Ash Carter is criticizing Russia for aggression in Europe and is promising to continue a military buildup to deter war on NATO’s eastern flank.In remarks Tuesday at a ceremony installing a new commander of U.S. Forces in Europe, Carter said he is particularly troubled by what he called Russian “nuclear saber-rattling.”Carter plans to put his money where his mouth is. He discussed a new rotating deployment of up to 4,000 troops in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, NATO members who have become unnerved about Russian aggression. Carter envisions four battalions of troops, adding to 4200 US forces who have already been deployed to the region.
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
On at least one issue, at least one regime official gets it - and it's not the Most Equal Comrade
SecDef Ash Carter is so alarmed by Russia's recent machinations that he's speaking out about it and taking action:
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Yep, that's all it is, sabre rattling. So you don't think Obama will listen to Carter who he nominated and fought for? Good to know it's not the complete cluster you complain that it is. Notice we're in this with NATO too. I'm in complete agreement. Obladi, oblada, that's how it works. Let's roll....
ReplyDeleteWho are Cheney, Rummie, Wolfie, Boltie, et al rattling for this election cycle?
ReplyDeleteIn his nomination hearing before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, he said he was “very much inclined” to increase U.S. military aid to Ukraine.[30][31] Speaking on the Middle East, he said the US must militarily ensure a “lasting defeat” of Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria.[30][31] He said he is not in favor of increasing the rate of prisoner releases from Guantanamo Bay.[32] He also opined that the threats posed by Iran were as serious as those posed by the Islamic State forces.[30][31]
ReplyDeleteHe was approved unanimously on February 1, 2015, by the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was confirmed by the Senate on February 12, by a vote of 93–5,[29][33] and sworn in by Vice President Biden on February 17.[34]
The United States is coordinating closely with Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Qatar, and the other Sunni Arab allies in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against the Shia Houthis and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh,[35] who was deposed in the 2011 uprising.[36]
In May 2015, Carter warned China to halt its rapid island-building in the South China Sea.[37]
In October 2015, Carter has condemned Russian air strikes against Islamic State (ISIS) and other rebel groups in Syria. On October 8, 2015, Carter, talking at a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels, said he believed Russia would soon start paying the price for its military intervention in Syria in the form of reprisal attacks and casualties.[38]
A controversy arose in December 2015, when it was revealed that Carter had used personal email account when conducting official business during his tenure as Secretary of Defense.[39]
Wiki
SecDefs - with the exception of the hapless Chuck Hagel - seem to be the sanest people in the MEC's nomenklatura.
ReplyDeleteAnd even Chuck has expressed frustration about how hampered he was in his mission.
Pat Buchanan says Putin thinks God is on Russia's side. The more things change, the more they stay the same. One God, so many discernments....
ReplyDeleteWhat is going on here?
With Marxism-Leninism a dead faith, Putin is saying the new ideological struggle is between a debauched West led by the United States and a traditionalist world Russia would be proud to lead.
In the new war of beliefs, Putin is saying, it is Russia that is on God’s side. The West is Gomorrah.
In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity. His recent speeches carry echoes of John Paul II whose Evangelium Vitae in 1995 excoriated the West for its embrace of a “culture of death.”
What did Pope John Paul mean by moral crimes?
The West’s capitulation to a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide — the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values.
Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum writes that she was stunned when in Tbilisi to hear a Georgian lawyer declare of the former pro-Western regime of Mikhail Saakashvili, “They were LGBT.”
http://buchanan.org/blog/whose-side-god-now-6337
Is alcoholism still rampant in Russia? Nectar of the gods?
ReplyDeleteThere's a mega-edifying piece at Claremont Review of Books by Christopher Caldwell on Putin and his rise. (Makes me wanna read the bios that it is a review of.) He was actually a fairly low-level functionary until shortly before meteorically taking it all. But the relevant point here is that he raised eyebrows at the KGB for forthrightly expressing a belief in God.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.claremont.org/crb/article/the-prince/
"I looked into his eyes and saw a stone-cold killer."--Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense under Bush/Obama
ReplyDeleteI dunno,as I cannot compare Putin's eyes to those of Michael the Archangel's eyes, into which I would hope to see sadness and some compassion. Hoping for a bit of the ole Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison on earth today as in everyday since Adam & Eve were cast out of the garden for heeding the recommendation of a snake.
ReplyDelete