printIn “Let’s Fret About Our Own Tyrants,” I awarded Obama his first brownie point for resisting the neoconning of the election upheaval in Iran. He now gets another brownie point for not emulating Bush and his neocon coterie in stepping on the Russian Bear’s claws and placing a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, over in Russia’s back yard.
In the business of fomenting friction, “America’s Russian experts say the move can only contribute to a warmer dialogue between Moscow and Washington, they say no one should expect any reciprocal concessions from the Kremlin on issues of key concern to the US, such as Iran.”
One doesn’t adopt and execute a reasonable foreign policy in order to please; a good strategy is aimed at America’s national interests. The Empire has got to cut back and return to defending the homeland. But while dropping the missile shield may be seen as one tiny step in the right direction, I have no doubt that the administration will “compensate” for this small anti-imperial concession by beefing up other fronts.
To repeat—and all in all—making nice with “Old Europe”—which is how the stupid, reckless Bush administration dismissed Europe (including its correct objection to the Iraqi invasion)—is a good thing. Sure, neoconservative war harpies get hot for over heated rhetoric against any and all. They’ll just have to get their kicks playing video war games. As will they have to get through their thick skulls that this country is no longer a super power.
It’s neither sexy nor smart to smite the world when you’re … broke and bankrupt.
This is good news! Why did we insist on taking advantage of Russian weakness after the fall of the Soviet Union? Russians are known for paranoia and we have to provoke them with NATO expansion?
Sheese! Some people really do hate peace is my only conclusion.
Those interceptors would have had trouble hitting the side of a barn if they were fired INSIDE the barn. Missile defense is a difficult problem and it has been run by mostly 2nd and 3rd rate people uninterested in the slightest inkling of quality control. They might as well have put up 100 foot billboards in Lithuania and Latvia saying “Putin has carnal relations with donkeys” (in Russia).
In that sense, with this and the F-22, Obama is doing a little better at dismantling some Defense Waste than Bush ever did with the welfare state – in fact, Bush increased education spending, etc. far more rapidly than Clinton.
As usual, the neocons are going nuts saying we gave away barganing chips (for Soviet arms reductions)with nothing in return
(huh!?). With that illogic, perhaps we should put interceptors in Bangeladesh to force Liectenstein to agree to cap ICBM’s at 1000! Oh yes, and even though we survived the 60,000 nuke Brezhnev era, Ahmadinejad will surely bury us ….
True tales of the fine minds working on America’s Strategic Defense:
Program Manager: “When you turn the laser on, how fast does it go from the laser to the target?”
Myron: “Speed of light” ***
Manager: “Is that fast?”
Myron: “Instantaneous” ***
Another source of amusement occurred when several of these same clowns who believed that the Soviets were going to have a fleet of maneuvering geosynchronous particle beam weapons (!!) in 1997 also insisted that the very same Soviets DID NOT HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY (such as wristwatches) to launch most of their missiles near simultaneously which would defeat strategic defenses – and I replied:
“Have all the Soviet missile operators turn on Johnny Carson and when Ed McMahon says ‘Heeeee’re Johnny’, you press the button!”
*** P.S. I goofed. The “correct” answer should be “give us $ 10,000,000 and we’ll study the problem”.