The Russians Come Back to America
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union worked to establish military air bases within striking range of the US -- and to support their surveillance aircraft as they worked up the west coast of North America to Alaska.
In the last two years, the Russians have re-launched this initiative against what they perceived to be a weaker America:( The rebuilding of Punta Huete )
In the last two years, the Russians have re-launched this initiative against what they perceived to be a weaker America:( The rebuilding of Punta Huete )
We have done this in the past -- for a good cause -- but we are no longer credible here. The collapse, I think, was at the end of 2003.
When we went into Iraq, Iran shut down its nuclear program instantly. Saudi Arabia became suddenly very cooperative about their internal terrorism funding. Libya gave up its WMD programs. Others maneuvered to more or less stay on our good side, even Syria (while playing a double game, they were at least pretending).
But when the mostly-foreign insurgency erupted, and we mishandled the thing badly and showed signs of great weakness and loss of resolve, that harmed us. And much of the good of 2003 was unwound.
Since that time, we've not been able to mount a show of force that has changed any radical minds -- where we showed before that radical minds COULD be changed.
This foreign policy mode is dangerous, because a failure to make credible a war at last resort almost guarantees that the last resort will be reached quickly.
We cannot achieve peace by following the path of weakness with friends and foes. But, it seems, we are trying.
John F. Kennedy knew better. So should the current president, who has said that he holds JFK in high esteem.
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I'm personally of the mind that we tell ALL the neighboring countries that either they form a coalition to take out Iran's crazed govt. once and for all, or live forever under the shadow of their future nuke. Their choice. Either they can unite against their fellow Muslim (which doesn't seem to be an issue during all their other wars) or learn to lick those Iranian boots. Since it's not the US and Israel attacking (though we can lend air support) it's not the big bad west attacking poor little Iran. Problem solved without making it worse (for a change).
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This utterly ignores the history of 2003, in my opinion. I listed some things that happened as a result. You've read the National Intelligence Estimate that noted that Iran dropped their nuclear program when we went into Iraq. You're aware of Syria giving up WMDs when we went in, and Saudi's sudden increase in cooperation.
And you're aware that even the most pessimistic of the people investigating Iraq said that he'd have had a nuclear weapon in five years.
It has been more than five years. Do you think that this al Qaida-supporting madman was safe with a nuclear weapon?
You might also remember the previous time -- when we thought he was years away from a nuke, and it turned out to be six months.
It certainly isn't a quagmire now, is it? It was a matter of strategy and tactics and will.
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And taking reports shown to be cherrypicked data isn't really convincing me. That was one of my biggest hatreds of Bush -- that he wouldn't listen to anything that failed to back up what he already decided. It's why he failed as a businessman. it's why he failed to make money with a sports team in the sportsmad and very lucrative Dallas market. And its why he failed as a world leader. And we are going to be mopping up his failure for years to come. Had he listened to the 90% of the reports which said the whole yellowcake story was disinformation instead of outting CIA operatives to silence them (a federal crime you and I would never see the light of day for) then we would have focused on Afghanistan and not split our forces. And perhaps (hopefully) chased the Taliban into Pakistan, wiped them and their own nuke program out, say mea culpa, and been completely done by now. Instead we started a two front war, which any strategist will tell you is a foolish move. And we did so because Unca Bush decided it and nothing little like facts was going to dissuade him.
Having forces barely able to hold where they are doesn't scare Iran one tiny bit. Now forming an Arab Army with US air support to go in and clean house if those reactors aren't torn down within 3 months? THAT will make the nutjobs in Iran piss themselves.
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Conversely, with Hitler in the 1930s, the rationale for moving against Hitler wasn’t a doctrine of preemption because we knew he was a bad guy. It was because his country signed the Treaty of Versailles. He was violating the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Versailles did not have an end date on it. It didn’t say you cannot have forces for the first 2 or 3 years, or you cannot do the following things. We were fully within our rights as a world community to go after Hitler in 1934, 1935, 1936, or 1937. It was not based on the doctrine of preemption but a doctrine of enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles, and in a very limited time.
What we have here, I argue, as the rationale for going after Saddam, is that he signed a cease-fire agreement. The condition for his continuing in power was the elimination of his weapons of mass destruction, and the permission to have inspectors in to make sure he had eliminated them. He expelled those inspectors. So he violated the cease-fire; ergo, we have authority-not under a doctrine of preemption. This will not be a preemptive strike, if we go with the rest of the world. It will be an enforcement strike.
I recognize that you might think that a man who posed this argument for taking out Hussein should not be a political leader. But there it is. And he's right.
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I'm not sure what you mean by "cherrypicked data."
I suppose you're familiar with the "Bush at War" book that showed that Bush had no particular interest in going into Iraq after 9/11 -- despite being pressed to do that every day by reporters in the White House press pool.
His opinion changed as more information developed about Hussein's doing and his intent. Bush did not even know at the time that Hussein was supporting al Qaida -- he was, of course, though I'd guess you don't believe it even now. But Bush knew that Hussein was the largezt supporter of terrorism in the world, not to mention a murderous dictator.
The assassination attempt on Bill Clinton by Saddam-supported al Qaida in the Philippines was probably a factor; it proved that these two bad guys were willing to work together, despite ideological differences.
Picture an alternate future: Saddam was manuevering to get the trade embargo and sanctions lifted -- and had people like Imam Rauf campaining for him. (Rauf still talks about those sanctions today.)
Now it's eight years later -- and EVERYONE -- even you, I'd hope -- agrees that Saddam Hussein's plan was to resume building WMDs as soon as the santions were lifted -- and he had lots of people willing to help him with nuclear weapons.
Not to mention the misery that he kept his people in, that world threat would have already erupted by now.
Surely you don't think that Saddam Hussein was just trying to get along with everyone?
You don't even remember that Iran was so frightened in April of 2003 that they dropped their nuke program entirely -- confirmed by every single National Intelligence Estimate ever since. They were only emboldened later, when our resolve seemed to falter. The timing of this is irrefutable.
That NIE was trotted out years later to make Bush look bad -- but it accidentally confirmed the effect our going into Iraq had on the region.
Let me ask you this: Did you know that Iran dropped their nuclear weapons program in early 2003?
You can argue about what it means -- but did you know it happened?
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Clearly, they no longer consider us a credible threat. We are not evidencing the resolve in 2010 that we had in 2003.
This is not entirely Barack Obama's fault, though he's accelerated the decline. The loss of resolve was already starting to show in 2004, and by 2005-2006 it was substantial. People were on the Senate floor saying "the war is lost." Idiots, in my opinion.
The surge should have turned things around. It did of course, in Iraq. But we have Democrats who evidently are unhappy that the surge worked. One of them is now running our country.
You've seen me criticize Bush on some issues, and praise Obama on others. Have you ever seen Barack Obama publicly acknowledge that the Iraq surge strategy was successful?
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What, exactly, was disinformation here. Bush made a statement at one point that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium ore from Niger. Joe Wilson confirmed this. Later, the British investigation (the Butler Report) confirmed this, and pronounced Bush's statement true. A reading of Wilson's own report shows that Bush was correct.
Did you know this?
The Senate investigated, and proved (and got Joe Wilson to admit) that Wilson lied about the affair later, after he went to work for John Kerry's campaign.
And the person who outed Plame (hardly covert, as the New York Times proved in a legal brief) was Richard Armitage, a State Department official. Armitage admitted this. And Fitzgerald knew this before he even began the "investigation"; it was a purely political process.
While I'm jamming on a project, let me know if any of this wasn't known to you already, and I'll try to point you to sources.
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