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Foreign Policy

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Still Leading From Behind

Trail meekly and close enough behind, and you may get dumped upon. The Obama administration attacks domestic political targets with whatever scurrilous tactics can be employed. In the foreign policy arena, it’s a different matter.

Read Jonathan S. Tobin’s post on the Commentary Magazine website:
The Russians Are Happy with John Kerry

Quote:

But the main result of all this schmoozing is the stark fact that the bottom line here is that the United States has buckled under to Moscow:

Mikhail V. Margelov, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the upper chamber of the Russian Parliament, said that Russia’s position on Syria had been consistent and that Mr. Kerry had finally accepted it

John Kerry isn’t the first American to be taken to the cleaners by the Russians, but it’s doubtful that any of his predecessors were fleeced so effortlessly.

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 05/19 at 11:08 PM
Foreign Policy • (2) Comments
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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Obama vs. American Foreign Policy Interests

It’s difficult to discern what interests of the United States might be served by influencing the UK to remain in the EU in the face of growing voter dissatisfaction in the UK. None the less, President Obama pressured the British Prime Minister to do so.

What seems obvious, however, is that the president is greatly attracted to promoting a world government under the UN or the EU. This strong plank of socialist doctrine was most forcibly articulated by Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto. It is of a piece with Obama’s public assertion, and the multicultural orientation of our educational system, that there is nothing special about the United States and the American Creed that underlay the Constitution in 1787. See the Unwritten Constitution in the right-hand column of this website.

Obama’s British Blunder, an editorial of The New York Sun, nails it.

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 05/14 at 04:29 PM
Constitutional Principles • Foreign Policy • (0) Comments
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013

The End Point of Democrat/Socialist Economic Policies

Obama and his party leaders in Congress are pursuing the same sort of inward-looking policy adopted by Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. Hitler’s approach was to rearm internally and to annex countries whose economic resources, such as oil, were then being imported into Germany.

Obama’s aim is essentially the same, via different methods: to become self-contained and independent of foreign influences, leaving American citizens entirely at the mercy of Washington’s unelected bureaucrats. Rather than expanding military operations, Obama apparently wants to withdraw the United States from its post-World War II leadership position, partly to support Islamic societies, to which he feels drawn, and to rebuild labor union control of economic activity in the United States.

For example: the “lead from behind” stance in Libya, Egypt, and Syria; abrupt and complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan; support for uneconomic renewable fuels in lieu of imported petroleum; torrents of regulations by agencies such as the EPA; and aiding labor union efforts to gain control of all industry, service organizations, and governmental institutions, this last by making products manufactured in this country uncompetitive with goods and services produced elsewhere in order to keep exorbitant salaries, medical benefits, and pension plans.

In furtherance of this agenda, the Federal Reserve has flooded the world’s financial markets with fictitious, fiat dollars in order to keep interest rates on Federal debt far below real interest rate levels.

The rest of the world is now fighting back.

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 04/23 at 03:29 PM
Economics • Foreign Policy • (0) Comments
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Friday, April 05, 2013

Democrat/Socialist Hope But No Change

Democrat/Socialists took over the White House in 2008 proclaiming a new, passive foreign policy that would cause the lion to lie down peacefully among the lambs. Obama announced that the United States would retreat from its military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan and turn to no-preconditions summit discussions with Iran. Personal charm and denigration of the United States was to replace military strength as our national defense.

That policy, under the direction of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has reduced much of the Middle East to a shambles and reinvigorated North Korean aggression.

Blame Hillary For Nightmare Of Nuclear North Korea

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 04/05 at 09:37 PM
Foreign Policy • Thought Police & PC • (2) Comments
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Thursday, January 31, 2013

Women In Wartime Combat?

Jeff Lukens gives his assessment.

Women Have No Business in Combat
By Jeff Lukens

The Obama Administration is forcing the military to assign female soldiers into combat infantry roles. In a future engagement, the result is certain to be additional lost lives and possibly failure on the battlefield.

The average man taking the Army Physical Fitness Test does better than 95 percent of the women. Today’s Space-Age military may seem to need only push-button level strength requirements. However, modern combat has not yet become a giant video game. Differences in body strength are not a male conspiracy to deny women their role in the military. It is not prejudice—120‑pounders just do not do well in physical confrontations with 200‑pounders.

All-male units experience bonding that enhances unit cohesion and effectiveness. When women are introduced, men stop relating to each other and begin relating to the women. It is simple human nature.

In World War II, Soviet and German armies desperate for frontline troops placed women into combat, but then later barred them. Knowing what the enemy would do to female prisoners of war, they found that male troops put aside their tactical objectives in order to protect women from harm or capture. This made combat units less effective and exposed the men to even greater risks.

In war, soldiers have to believe their fellow soldiers are going to cover them or die trying. Maybe some female soldiers can do that, but most male soldiers just do not believe it. Some may say this mind-set is bigoted and wrong, but for the soldiers on the front line it is very personal. Their lives are at stake. No lecture on decency and civil liberties will change their survival instinct. In war, soldiers have to believe they are invincible. When they start thinking they may not survive, the whole aura of invincibility quickly disappears. People start getting killed; and the engagement is lost.

Women who meet the highest of standards deserve to compete equally with men for the appropriate jobs. When this new policy is in place, regardless of what the politicos in Washington say, women will be placed in roles that they cannot perform as well as men. Readiness will be compromised and American lives will be lost, both male and female, when the shooting starts.

Gender politics has not allowed the question of whether equal opportunity is worth additional casualties and preparedness for war. Those who truly know this subject are forced into silence. Career military officers would destroy their careers if the spoke objectively about it. Unfortunately, reversing policy is unlikely until some conflicts are lost, or won at unacceptably high costs, and too many of our troops begin coming home in caskets.

We will owe our soldiers their best chance at coming back alive. An honest discussion on the role of women in the military is the first step.

Contact Jeff Lukens

Back to summary...

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 01/31 at 05:17 PM
Foreign Policy • Thought Police & PC • (0) Comments
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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Diplomacy Backed By Power

As far into the past as there are records, tribes and organized political states have sought advantages by gaining access to desired territory or resources in other political realms. Hence the unrelieved chronicle of diplomatic threats, invasions, and wars, everywhere in the world.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Obama’s Foreign Policy Collapse

The possible appointment of Senator John Kerry as Secretary of Defense suggests that the president is continuing and extending his first term pattern of degrading our national defense capabilities while moving toward the liberal-progressive-socialist goal of subordinating United States sovereignty to the UN.

An Insult to Veterans
Editorial of The New York Sun | November 13, 2012

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 11/13 at 06:01 PM
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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Quote Of The Day

Tim Stanley in the London Telegraph:

Romney tried his darnedest to bring everything back to the economy and Obama seemed to say in every answer, “So what we need to do in the Middle East is talk more about how rubbish my opponent is.” It’s almost lucky that Obama isn’t running unopposed in this election because then he’d have nothing to run on at all.

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 10/23 at 02:32 PM
Foreign Policy • (2) Comments
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