* * *
This week, SU-24 fighter-bombers buzzed a U.S. destroyer
in the Baltic Sea.
* YOU FOLKS KNOW WHERE THE BALTIC SEA IS... RIGHT?
(*LOPSIDED SMILE*)
The Russian planes carried no missiles or bombs.
Message: What are you Americans doing here?
In the South China Sea, U.S. planes overfly, and U.S.
warships sail inside, the territorial limits of islets claimed by Beijing.
* WELL, PAT, WHILE I GET YOUR OVERALL POINT, THE FACT IS
THAT CHINA IS CLAIMING ISLETS IT HAS NO RIGHT TO CLAIM AND WHICH IF THEY'RE
ALLOWED TO FORTIFY ACTUALLY DO THREATEN OUR LEGITIMATE WORLDWIDE INTERESTS AND
NATIONAL SECURITY.
* CHINA IS OUR ENEMY. ON THIS ONE PAT AND I MAY DIFFER.
(*SHRUG*)
In South Korea, U.S. forces conduct annual military
exercises as warnings to a North Korea that is testing nuclear warheads and
long-range missiles that can reach the United States.
* WE MADE A MISTAKE IN NOT "WINNING" THE KOREAN
WAR IN THE FIRST PLACE. WE MADE ANOTHER MISTAKE IN ALLOWING NORTH KOREA TO DEVELOP
NUCLEAR WEAPONS. FRANKLY... I WOULD HAVE RISKED USING NEUTRON BOMBS AGAINST
THEM IF NECESSARY TO PREVENT THEIR DEVELOPMENT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. (BUT THAT'S
FOR ANOTHER THREAD; I'M JUST FLESHING OUT WHERE PAT AND I MAY NOT BE EXACTLY ON
THE SAME PAGE.)
U.S. warships based in Bahrain confront Iranian subs and
missile boats in the Gulf. In January, a U.S. Navy skiff ran aground on an
Iranian island. Iran let the 10 U.S. sailors go within 24 hours.
* LETTING IRAN "CAPTURE" OUR SHIPS/SAILORS
WITHOUT A FIGHT WAS A HUGE MISTAKE - A DERELICTION OF DUTY, IN FACT. IT DOESN'T
MATTER WHETHER WE WERE IN THE RIGHT OR THE WRONG. AMERICAN NAVAL VESSELS AND
THEIR CREWS SHOULD NEVER JUST SURRENDER WITHOUT A FIGHT AND THE FACT THAT IRAN
WOULD HAVE NO DOUBT ACTUALLY FOUGHT SHOWS YOU HOW BADLY OUR MODERN LEADERS -
OBAMA AND BUSH BEFORE HIM (REMEMBER THE HAINAN ISLAND "INCIDENT") -
HAVE TARNISHED OUR NATIONAL HONOR.
In each of these regions, it is not U.S. vital interests
that are threatened, but the interests of allies who will not man up to their
own defense duties, preferring to lay them off on Uncle Sam.
* EXCEPT FOR THE SITUATION WITH REGARD TO CHINA...
AGREED; AND EVEN THERE, YES, WE ASSUME AN UNFAIR BURDEN.
And America is beginning to buckle under the weight of
its global obligations.
* YEP.
(*NODDING*)
* IF WE'RE SO FUCKING TOUGH... HOW COME WE CAN'T WIN A
WAR AND KEEP IT WON? (SEE: AFGHANISTAN; IRAQ.)
* IF WE'RE SO FUCKING TOUGH... HOW COME OUR AIR FORCE
(HAINAN ISLAND 2001) AND NAVY (IRAN 2016) SURRENDER RATHER THAN FIGHT WHEN PUSH
COMES TO SHOVE?
And as we have no claim to rocks or reefs in the South
China Sea — Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines — why is this
our quarrel?
* BECAUSE PREVENTING A HOSTILE AND AGGRESSIVE CHINA FROM
EXPANDING HER MILITARY REACH TOO FAR FROM HER SHORES IS IN OUR NATIONAL
INTEREST, PAT.
(*SHRUG*)
* AGAIN, FOLKS... BUCHANAN IS MOSTLY RIGHT... USUALLY
RIGHT... (*GRIN*)... BUT EVERY SO OFTEN HE'S "OFF" ON SOME OF THE... PARTICULARS.
(*WINK*)
If these rocks and reefs are so vital they are worth
risking a military clash with China, why not, instead, impose tariffs on
Chinese goods? Let U.S. companies and consumers pay the price of battling
Beijing, rather than U.S. soldiers, sailors and airmen.
* ABSOLUTELY!
Let South Korea and Japan build up their forces to deal
with the North, and put Beijing on notice that if China will not halt Kim Jong
Un’s nuclear weapons program, South Korea and Japan will build their own
nuclear deterrents. Half a century ago, Britain and France did.
(*SHRUG*)
* MAKES SENSE.
Why must we forever deter and, if need be, fight North
Korea?
* AGREED. (BUT KEEP IN MIND MY PREVIOUS STATEMENTS
CONCERNING NORTH KOREA.)
And why is the defense of the Baltic republics and East
Europe our responsibility, 5,000 miles away, not Germany’s, whose economy is
far larger than that of Russia?
* BINGO!
Even during the darkest days of the Cold War, U.S.
presidents refused to take military action in Hungary, Czechoslovakia or
Poland. When Moscow intervened there, the U.S. did nothing. When did the
independence of Eastern Europe become so vital an interest that we would now
risk war with a nuclear-armed Russia to ensure it?
* IT STARTED WITH THAT FRIGGIN' IDIOT BUSH...
(*SIGH*)
Under Article 5 of NATO, an attack upon any of 28 allied
nations is to be regarded as an attack upon all.
* TIME TO WIND DOWN NATO. (FOLKS... HOW MANY OF THOSE 28
NATIONS ARE WORTH ONE DROP OF AMERICAN BLOOD OR ONE CENT OF AMERICAN TREASURE?)
But is this the kind of blank check we should give
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, a few months back, ordered a Russian
fighter plane that crossed into Turkish territory for 15 seconds be shot down? Do
we really want to leave to this erratic autocrat the ability to drag us into a
war with Russia?
* NO!
When Neville Chamberlain in 1939 handed a war guarantee
to a junta of Polish colonels, who also had an exaggerated opinion of their own
military power and prowess, how did that work out for the Brits?
(*SNORT*)
* NO, FOLKS... I'M NOT SAYING WE WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER
OFF HAD WW2 NOT PLAYED OUT AS IT DID, WITH HITLER'S GERMANY AND IMPERIAL JAPAN
BEING CRUSHED... BUT... YOU GET BUCHANAN'S POINT - RIGHT? THERE'S TALKING THE
TALK AND THERE'S WALKING THE WALK AND SOMETIMES PEOPLE CALL YOUR BLUFF - WITH
TRAGIC RESULTS.
America should not write off the Baltic Republics or
Eastern Europe. But we should rule out any U.S.-Russian war in Eastern Europe
and restrict a U.S. response to Russian actions there to the economic and
diplomatic. For the one certain loser of a U.S.-Russian conflict in Eastern
Europe — would be Eastern Europe.
* BY THE WAY... THE RUSSIANS AREN'T GOING TO INVADE
EASTERN EUROPE.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
As for Iran, the U.S. intelligence community, in 2007 and
2011, declared with high confidence that it had no nuclear weapons program.
* THAT IS TRUE!
Since the Iran nuclear treaty was signed, 98% of Iran’s
enriched uranium has been shipped out of the country; no more 20% enriched uranium
is being produced; the Arak reactor that could have produced plutonium has been
scuttled and reconfigured; and nuclear inspectors are crawling all over every
facility.
* HMM... I DO FEAR PAT IS OVERSTATING THE CASE HERE. (BUT
FRANKLY... LET ISRAEL DEAL WITH IRAN; LET OUR ABAB "ALLIES" DEAL WITH
IRAN.)
Talk of Iran having a secret nuclear-bomb program and
testing intercontinental missiles comes, unsurprisingly, from the same folks
who assured us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
(*BITING MY LOWER LIP*)
The goal is the same: Stampede America into fighting
another war, far away, against a nation they want to see smashed.
Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, this country has
been steadily bled and slowly bankrupted. We are now as overextended as was the
British Empire in the 1940s.
* YEP...
(*PURSED LIPS*)
And like that empire, we, too, are being challenged by
nations that seek to enlarge their place in the sun — a resurrected Russia,
China, Iran. And we are being bedeviled by fanatics who want us out of their
part of the world, which they wish to remake according to the visions of their
own faiths and ideologies.
Time for a reappraisal of all of the war guarantees this
nation has issued since the beginning of the Cold War, to determine which, if
any, still serve U.S. national interests in 2016.
* YES, MY FRIENDS - U.S. NATIONAL INTERESTS - THAT SHOULD
BE OUR FOCUS!
Alliances, after all, are the transmission belts of war.
(*NOD*)
* TOO MANY "ALLIANCES," THAT IS; THE WRONG
"ALLIES," THAT IS.
* FOLKS... YOU ALL HAVE MANY FRIENDS... MANY FAMILY
MEMBERS; DON'T TELL ME YOU'D DO ANYTHING FOR ANY OF THEM... BECAUSE YOU KNOW
THAT'S NOT TRUE. WE ALL HAVE LIMITED RESOURCES - TIME, MONEY - AND WHAT YOU
MIGHT DO FOR YOUR KID OR YOUR SIBLING OR YOUR BEST FRIEND IS A FAR DIFFERENT
MATTER THAN WHAT YOU'D DO FOR SOMEONE NOT AS CLOSE.
(*SHRUG*)
* AND THAT'S NOT A BAD THING. THAT'S ACKNOWLEDGING
REALITY!
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