Monday, March 10, 2014

Barker's Newsbites: Monday, March 10, 2014


Let's see if I can get a few newsbites posted (in the comments section of this post).

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3 comments:

William R. Barker said...

* BY THE HON. SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY)

* ABBRIDGED...

Every Republican likes to think he or she is the next Ronald Reagan.

Some who say this do so for lack of their own ideas and agenda.

Reagan was a great leader and President. But too often people make him into something he wasn’t in order to serve their own political purposes.

Reagan clearly believed in a strong national defense and in "Peace through Strength." He stood up to the Soviet Union, and he led a world that pushed back against Communism. But Reagan also believed in diplomacy and demonstrated a reasoned approach to our nuclear negotiations with the Soviets. Many forget today that Reagan’s decision to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev was harshly criticized by the Republican hawks of his time, some of whom would even call Reagan an appeaser. In the Middle East, Reagan strategically pulled back our forces after the tragedy in Lebanon in 1983 that killed 241 Marines, realizing the cost of American lives was too great for the mission.

* ONE OF THE BRAVEST AND MOST SELFLESS ACTS ANY POLITICIAN HAS EVER BEEN CITED FOR!

Today, we forget that some of the Republican hawks of his time criticized Reagan harshly for this ... calling him an appeaser.

[The truth, is, however that] Without a clearly defined mission, exit strategy or acceptable rationale for risking soldiers lives, Reagan possessed the leadership to reassess and readjust.

(*THUMBS UP*)

I met Ronald Reagan as a teenager when my father was a Reagan delegate in 1976. I greatly admire Reagan’s projection of "Peace through Strength." I believe, as he did, that our National Defense should be second to none, that defense of the country is the primary Constitutional role of the Federal Government.

I also greatly admire that Reagan was not rash or reckless with regard to war. Reagan advised potential foreign adversaries not to mistake our reluctance for war for a lack of resolve.

What America needs today is a Commander-in-Chief who will defend the country and project strength, but who is also not eager for war.

Regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, there is little difference among most Republicans on what to do. All of us believe we should stand up to Putin's aggression. Virtually no one believes we should intervene militarily. So we are then faced with a finite menu of diplomatic measures to isolate Russia, on most of which we all agree, such as sanctions and increased economic pressure. Yet, some politicians have used this time to beat their chest. What we don't need right now is politicians who have never seen war talking tough for the sake of their political careers. America deserves better than that. So do our soldiers.

More than any other category of voters, our men and women in uniform understand the anguish that comes with their ninth and tenth tours in battle zones. These brave young patriots do their duty, they do as they’re told, but they don’t mistake their heroism for a love of war. Many agree with General Eisenhower who said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

There is a time for military action, such as after 9/11. There is a time for diplomacy and the strategic use of soft power, such as now with Russia. Diplomacy requires resolve but also thoughtfulness and intelligence. This is something Reagan always knew.

Reagan said his greatest regret as President was sending those Marines to Beirut in the first place.

(*NOD*)

How many leaders were as great as Reagan, willing to admit their mistakes, learn from them and put their country before their own reputation and legacy?

* EXACTLY...

(*ANOTHER SOLEMN NOD*)

Today’s Republicans should concentrate on establishing their own identities and agendas, as opposed to simply latching onto Ronald Reagan’s legacy — or worse, misrepresenting it.

* HEAR! HEAR!

March 10, 2014 at 7:11 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.humanevents.com/2014/03/04/tune-out-the-war-party/

What is the U.S. vital interest in Crimea?

Zero.

From Catherine the Great to Khrushchev, the peninsula belonged to Russia. The people of Crimea are 60% ethnic Russians.

* ONE... MORE... TIME...

The people of Crimea are 60% ethnic Russians.

And should Crimea vote to secede from Ukraine, upon what moral ground would we stand to deny them the right, when we bombed Serbia for 78 days to bring about the secession of Kosovo?

(*SMIRK*)

Across Europe, nations have been breaking apart since the end of the Cold War. Out of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia came 24 nations.

Scotland is voting on secession this year.

* ONE... MORE... TIME...

Catalonia may be next.

Yet, today, we have the Wall Street Journal describing Russia’s sending of soldiers to occupy airfields in Ukraine as a “blitzkrieg” that “brings the threat of war to the heart of Europe” - though Crimea is east even of what we used to call Eastern Europe.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The Journal wants the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush sent to the Eastern Mediterranean and warships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet sent into the Black Sea.
But why? We have no alliance that mandates our fighting Russia over Crimea. We have no vital interest there. Why send a flotilla other than to act tough, escalate the crisis and risk a clash?

The Washington Post calls Putin’s move a “naked act of armed aggression in the center of Europe.”

The Crimea is in the center of Europe?

* IT'S NOT...

We are paying a price for our failure to teach geography.

* WE ARE!

The Post also urges an ultimatum to Putin: Get out of Crimea, or we impose sanctions that could “sink the Russian financial system.”

(*STILL JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

March 10, 2014 at 7:44 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Putin’s actions, though unsettling, are not irrational. After he won the competition for Ukraine to join his customs union, by bumping a timid EU out of the game with $15 billion cash offer plus subsidized oil and gas to Kiev, he saw his victory stolen. Crowds formed in Maidan Square, set up barricades, battled police with clubs and Molotov cocktails, forced the elected president Viktor Yanukovych into one capitulation after another, and then overthrew him, ran him out of the country, impeached him, seized parliament, downgraded the Russian language, and declared Ukraine part of Europe.

To Americans this may look like democracy in action.

To Moscow it has the aspect of a successful Beer Hall Putsch, with even Western journalists conceding there were neo-Nazis in Maidan Square.

In Crimea and eastern Ukraine, ethnic Russians saw a president they elected and a party they supported overthrown and replaced by parties and politicians hostile to a Russia with which they have deep historical, religious, cultural and ancestral ties.

With Vladimir Putin’s dispatch of Russian troops into Crimea, our war hawks are breathing fire. Russophobia is rampant and the op-ed pages are ablaze here. Yet Putin is taking a serious risk. Time is not necessarily on Putin’s side here. If Russia annexes Crimea, no major nation will recognize it as legitimate, and he could lose the rest of Ukraine forever. Should he slice off and annex eastern Ukraine, he could ignite a civil war and second Cold War.

But as for the hawkish howls to have Ukraine and Georgia brought into NATO that would give these nations, deep inside Russia’s space, the kind of war guarantees the Kaiser gave Austria in 1914 and the Brits gave the Polish colonels in March 1939. Those war guarantees led to two world wars, which historians may yet conclude were the death blows of Western civilization.

When Red Army tank divisions crushed the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956, killing 50,000, Eisenhower did not lift a finger. When Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall, JFK went to Berlin and gave a speech. When Warsaw Pact troops crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, LBJ did nothing. When, Moscow ordered Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski to smash Solidarity, Ronald Reagan refused to put Warsaw in default.

These presidents saw no vital U.S. interest imperiled in these Soviet actions, however brutal. They sensed that time was on our side in the Cold War. And history has proven them right.

March 10, 2014 at 7:45 PM

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