It’s easy to forget…
…about Obama’s foreign policy in the midst of such pressing domestic issues. But John Bolton is here to remind us, and it’s not a pretty picture.
[ADDENDUM: This should also be a big, big story, although health care reform seems to be dwarfing just about everything right now.]
But Neo, he spent his childhood in Indonesia. He knows all about the world. If only we build some schools in Pakistan and make a few bows, our problems will be solved.
I don’t think he is capable of learning either. He may make a few accomodations as in his Afghanistan policy, but nothing seems to really penetrate to his core (if he has one). All we will get is blathering incoherence.
I read the Bolton article. I knew beforehand what it was likely to say.
Obama and the Progressives believe the cost of the military would be better applied to government entitlements. They see spending as a continuum with the military on one end and entitlements on the other with far too much weight on the military side and therein lies the seed of their foreign policy. Here’s a quote from the Kausfiles:
“All our military has to do is to be able to defeat our enemies. Once we have superiority, there’s no reason to pursue ever-more-expensive weaponry.”
Mickey Kaus is one of the more fair and down to earth liberal bloggers. I read him because he is capable of criticizing one of his own and I want to know what the Left is up to, what they are thinking, what their assumptions are. He’s relatively unbiased for a Liberal but he has all the usual Progressive blind spots, their willful tendency to NOT realize certain commonsensical truths.
Underlying the quote is a dangerous assumption. “Superiority” is NOT a constant that once achieved the effort that was expended to gain the superiority can then be terminated. Once attained, superiority must be diligently maintained or it will cease to be.
But if you believe that the expense incurred by pursuing military superiority would be better spent on a socialized society since the enemies of the USA and the danger they represent are largely a neoconservative fantasy then I suppose it makes sense. One can suppose that Mickey believes the victorious end to WW2 was essentially the end of our worries, threat-wise. Or perhaps the fall of the Soviet Union.
As I understand it Kaus recognizes that the proposed healthcare legislation is a train wreck in terms of both economics and the humane delivery of medical treatment but he also naively believes the dreadful aspects of the legislation will be corrected later by voter outrage — a sort of fail-safe democratic mechanism. This I think is a common attitude among the Liberals and Progressives — yet they cannot cite any instance where this corrective mechanism has operated in any other of the nations that have adopted universal healthcare as they assume it would here in America. Are the citizens agitating in other countries for LESS entitlements? Do they riot in France and Greece for LESS government handouts?
Entitlements are a strong drug best administered in relatively small, controlled doses lest addiction follow. Universal healthcare will probably be the hit that will hook America. Hello, total socialism. Hello, creeping totalitarianism.
The very matter-of-factness of Bolton’s tone about these depressing truths make it all the more powerful
John Bolton is my hero….
What this country needs is a couple hundred more like him!
Hear, Hear…I’m with Paddy ! Clone Bolton and Doug Feith and let’um rip.
The Commentary piece says it clear & bluntly. Obama is embarrassed by American superiority. He chaffs at having to ‘continue’ anything from President Bush. He’s more than eager for the day when he can be less manacled by history. Good Gawd. Clueless. Destructive. Sabotaging to American interests–National Security, for instance–and determined to bring the United States down several notches.
Additionally, your link to the Fanny-Freddie Mess and the inexcusable misuse of vast lending $-dollars to folks with no ability, or highly questionable at best, to pay back is an unforgivable Shipwreck of Leftist Engineering. Loathsome.
The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.
Some guy named Von Clausewitz said that, and that’s will happen if you don’t maintain your superiority.
Amen, Darth. It ain’t rocket science, been known well since the Ancients, yet were watching another bunch of clueless statist airheads wishful think America into more trouble. In a POST 9-11 America, for Gawdsakes.
This is a bit off-topic in this thread, but I think this should also be a big story:
American Republic replaced by “Council of Governors”?
Excerpt:
I found this link via a thread at Grouchy Conservative Pundits.
I cannot think of a single good reason for such a council of state governors under the authority of the executive branch of the Federal government. There is already plenty of Federal coordination of response to disasters. Isn’t that what FEMA is for?
I can think of some bad reasons, however. One commenter at GCP said it sounds like an attempt to get around the Posse Comitatus laws.
“synchronization and integration of state and federal military activities in the United States”
The key word is ‘integration’. It sounds like an attempt to lay the ground work necessary to place state militias under increased federal control.
If so, it is circumstantial evidence supporting the theory that Obama intends to take over the US, should circumstance allow it. Like if there was a successful nuclear terrorist attack and then declaring a national state of emergency, followed by declaring martial law with the suspension of rights such as Habeas corpus.
That presupposes that America’s military establishment would initially support and then continue to support the establishment of a dictatorship and suppress the inevitable public protests.
Given that the vast majority of the military are conservative, I can’t imagine what would give credence to that expectation. But then, ideology frequently causes human beings to embrace unsubstantiated assumptions…that is, until reality disabuses them of those assumptions.
Its really pretty easy to forget. In the midst of domestic issues that is creeping in U.S. governement, who dares to ask about Obama’s foreign policy? Perhaps Bolton may be right in presenting the direction of Obama’s remaining years as president of the U.S. And he is right in saying “the United States is exceptional and will not melt into any larger or global union; it will simply become less able to protect itself and its constitutional decision-making system. That is clearly where our first post-American president’s policies will take us.” If this is the case, what could be the future of the country based on Obama’s perspective?
President Obama seems to be off tangent in presenting his focus and concern if we are going to based our assessment on his predecessor’s end in mind: that makes him unique!
This is one thing that we, Americans should ponder on…..