RSS Feed MenuSept. 17, 2009, is the day that the Obama administration yielded to Russian pressure and canceled the proposed missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Today also happens to be the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, when Russia gulped down its share of the territories assigned by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
Everyone in Poland remembers that anniversary. Apparently the Obama White House does not.
sinz54 // Sep 18, 2009 at 8:57 am
greg_barton: I think the Iranian leadership knows that if it did nuke a neighbor it would be quickly turned to a smoking crater of glass.
By whom???
Not by Obama.
I can’t envision Obama launching nuclear weapons, even if the U.S. was about to be obliterated.
After all, he’s a modern liberal.
They think civilian casualties are just too icky.
balconesfault // Sep 18, 2009 at 9:09 am
I can’t envision Obama launching nuclear weapons, even if the U.S. was about to be obliterated.
I can. And I assume that 53% of the American electorate thought so too, or they wouldn’t have voted for him.
balconesfault // Sep 18, 2009 at 9:27 am
Re-reading Frum here … and seeing McCain’s comments … I’m wondering – when did Republicans come to believe that it was a good idea to be propogandists for our opponents?
There are a myriad of reasons why not moving forward with the deployment of an uber expensive defense system that may or may not have strategic value in countries that largely don’t want it is a good idea for America’s interests.
But you have McCain running around trying to give Putin a propoganda victory for it – free of charge.
Country first? Piffle.
mlindroo // Sep 18, 2009 at 10:03 am
Well…forget about the Weekly Standard, Commentary, NRO and Power Line. Here is El Rushbo’s take on what Obama’s recent “grand capitulation” supposedly means:-) (via Rod Dreher)
“…He got in bed with Putin; he got in bed with the KGB; got in bed with Medvedev, which is essentially getting in bed with Iran because that shield was also going to be some sort of protection for anything launched out of Iran. And he makes this announcement to Poland and the Czech Republic 70 years to the day of the Soviet invasion of Poland. This is not an accident, it is not a coincidence. …
So let’s take some things in order. The president, not only is he weakening our economy, not only is the president attacking the US economy, he is now weakening our foreign policy, he is weakening our military, he is weakening national defense. And it’s all being done on purpose. Obama turned 9/11 into a day of serving the state. … Barack Obama is bankrupting the United States. He is severely weakening our economy. We’re not going to be able to afford to defend ourselves even if we wanted to before this guy gets through. The dollar rapidly declining in value, as is America’s military might.
You know, I started the year by saying I hope Obama fails. I’m actually wondering, I’m asking myself, is it maybe that Obama wants America to fail so that he can rebuild it and remake it? Is it not eerie? “
balconesfault // Sep 18, 2009 at 10:34 am
What is remarkable is that Obama got Gates and McHugh to sign on to helping him weaken our military and destroy our national defense. He got Bernanke and Bair to stay over to help him destroy the economy, and Huntsman to come aboard to weaken our foreign policy.
Who knew that the Republican Party was so full of people who really wanted to harm America!
sinz54 // Sep 18, 2009 at 1:05 pm
balconesfault: But you have McCain running around trying to give Putin a propoganda victory for it – free of charge.
Country first? Piffle.
Wow, this is the 1970s all over again.
Back during the Carter Administration, SecDef Brown used to beg congressional Republicans not to raise the issue of how the military balance of power was tipping in favor of Russia and against America–because it would hurt Western morale and give further encouragement to Russia. (As if Russia’s own KGB didn’t already have a complete accounting of the relative decline of Western defenses.)
I happen to believe that the truth, however painful, is the best way. If canceling this system is a boon to Russia, then let’s face that truth instead of camouflaging it behind a smoke-screen of idealistic hopes.
Putin knows he rolled Obama on this one.
BTW: For a system you’re so convinced won’t work, the Russians were frantic to see it canceled. Were their scientists all stupid, or were they being prudent in being willing to deal with the worst case (for them, which would have been the best case for us)?
balconesfault // Sep 18, 2009 at 1:18 pm
There is no problem with Congressmen being critical of the Administration. Even making their case for why the missle defense system is critical for America is part of being the loyal opposition.
But McCain is simply running propoganda for the Kremlin when he declares it a “Win for Putin”.
The Russians didn’t like it simply because deploying weapons systems in former Soviet bloc countries was an insult to them. And besides the boondoggle factor for DOD contractors from a President who never met a military boondoggle he didn’t like, I think the childish “piss off Putin” factor was Bush’s main reason for pushing the program.
The only way to say Putin “rolled” Obama would be if Obama didn’t want to cancel the program independent of Putin’s wishes. The only “rolling” going on here is Putin getting a prominent US Senator to act as a promoter of Putin as some brilliant geopolitical tactician.
EscapeVelocity // Sep 18, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Barack Obama, Berlin, July 2008 – “In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if we’re honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.”
Politico, September 2009 – “Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed today that he declined last night to take a call from the U.S. informing him of the decision to scrap planned missile-defense bases in his country. Two U.S.-based sources close to the Polish government said Thursday that Tusk also rejected a call from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — on the grounds that, as the head of the government, he should speak to the president.”
(From the comments) “Rebuild our international relationships after eight years of unilateral action” much, Mr. President?
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/
stuiec // Sep 18, 2009 at 8:56 pm
sinz54: SecDef Brown… hmmm… rings a bell.
Oh, I remember. Wasn’t he the guy who announced to the world the existence of America’s Stealth technology program? Which was about the most important and most secret military-industrial program of the 1970s?
Him and his boss Jimmy: not really so big on keeping America’s edge over the Soviets.
stuiec // Sep 18, 2009 at 9:01 pm
balconesfault:
I can’t envision Obama launching nuclear weapons, even if the U.S. was about to be obliterated.
I can. And I assume that 53% of the American electorate thought so too, or they wouldn’t have voted for him.
Yes, but if you’re the sheikh of Dubai, how much comfort do you get from America promising to avenge your death and the deaths of all of your subjects? Enough to stand up to Iran’s threats to annihilate your sheikhdom?
Fortunately, the Iranians did something very stupid when they funded a plot to blow up the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building. I would not be surprised if the Israelis were getting a backchannel message that, should their aircraft need an emergency landing & refuelling spot in the Gulf during a strike on Iran, Dubai would not be averse to letting them stop there.
greg_barton // Sep 18, 2009 at 9:02 pm
sinz, if you can’t envision it, then you simply lack vision. I can easily imagine Obama launching a nuke in retaliation. And that’s the difference here: I see him as human. You see him as a straw man.
sinz54 // Sep 18, 2009 at 9:21 pm
greg_barton: I see him as human. You see him as a straw man.
You’re wrong.
I see Obama as entirely human.
I see him as that subspecies of human, called Late 20th Century Liberal Human: Morally relativist, transnationalist, nonjudgmental, supremely self-righteous.
In short, exactly the wrong type of human to be depending to keep America safe in a dangerous world.
sinz54 // Sep 18, 2009 at 9:23 pm
From the Financial Times:
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, on Friday welcomed the Obama administration’s decision to scrap plans for a missile defence shield in Europe as a positive step – but he said that other US concessions should follow.
In his first public comments since the White House announced its decision on Thursday, Mr Putin said that he wanted the US to support efforts by Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan to join the World Trade Organisation.
“I expect that after this correct and brave decision, others will follow,” Mr Putin said in a speech at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. These should include “the complete removal of all restrictions on the transfer of high technology to Russia and activity to widen the membership of the WTO to [include] Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus”, he said.
That’s what you get for being nice to Russia. Demands by Russia that you be even nicer.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aea8e54e-a43b-11de-92d4-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
agentprovocateur // Sep 19, 2009 at 2:27 am
Dick Cheney scare tactics didn’t work for the GOP last year and they aren’t going to work as a legitimate argument now, either. What a sad, pathetic idea it is that the president will not do what he has to do to keep us safe. This message is especially ironic coming from many of the same people who supported a president who did fail in that goal on 9/11. What is it with some conservatives? Here’s a little newsflash–the Cold War is over, and we won. But some people seem to be unable to function without having a bogeyman out there to oppose. So, of course, when this new missile defense policy is announced, we see a knee-jerk reaction that the president is “weak” in defending our country and the new Stalin in the Kremlin has somehow won a victory. To echo what someone wrote up thread, is Defense Secretary Gates also “weak”? Does he also lack the balls to defend our country? This is all sounding very similar to the lead up to the Iraq War. We were told by armchair generals that we had to invade before Saddam got the nukes to destroy us all. Now we are told that we must stand up to Putin! Does anyone seriously believe that Russia will invade Poland? Or, on a similar note, we are told that we must do something about Iran! Even though any military option would be worse than the nonmilitary alternatives. Perhaps some people need to stop the bedwetting. While it is true that we live in a dangerous world, some people really do need to let go of their particular bogeymen.
mlindroo // Sep 19, 2009 at 6:57 am
Sinz54, on Obama:
> Morally relativist, transnationalist, nonjudgmental, supremely self-righteous.
> In short, exactly the wrong type of human to be depending to keep America safe in a dangerous world.
As if the morally absolutist, fiercely nationalist and judgmental, self-righteous George W. Bush’s decisions regarding Iraq were any better!!
I don’t know what world you and Frum are living in. The neocon approach was tried once, and the result was a disastrous and hugely controversial invasion of another nation for reasons that turned out to be false. It’s taken five long years plus enormous sacrifices in monetary and human terms to rectify that decision. And the key foreign policy decision of that era is THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT REASON for the total implosion of political support for the Republican party during Bush’s second term, followed by the unlikely ascendancy of Obama and the Democrats.
—
Say what you will about Obama, at least he seems to be making rational decisions based on what the current threats are as opposed to paranoid fantasies about what Iran “might” be doing ten or twenty years from now. Geopolitical decisions that are costly/risky in military or diplomatic terms have to be based on the current realities as opposed to paranoid speculation and guesstimates about what the bad guys “might” be doing a decade from now.
MARCU$
balconesfault // Sep 19, 2009 at 7:32 am
The problem is that there are many in the Republican Party who are still infected with the Cheney gene … and thus still embrace the One Percent Doctrine in some form or another.
“If there’s even a 1% chance that WMDs have been given to terrorists, we need to treat it as a certainty, not in our analysis or the preponderance of evidence, but in our response.”
Dick Cheney
This starts filtering all the way down through every aspect of foreign policy. Every action by a foreign power that’s not specifically aligned with American interests becomes interpreted as hostility … every other nations desire to act for their own security, when that action isn’t performed in concert with America, becomes a challenge to our global hegemony.
It is good for America to have diplomats, and intelligence community, and military planners who do look at the world through such a filter, vigilant for things which may turn into real threats. It is not good for America’s future security or prosperity to have politicians who react to each potential threat as an existential threat to us and our way of life.
EscapeVelocity // Sep 19, 2009 at 2:48 pm
This starts filtering all the way down through every aspect of foreign policy. Every action by a foreign power that’s not specifically aligned with American interests becomes interpreted as hostility … every other nations desire to act for their own security, when that action isn’t performed in concert with America, becomes a challenge to our global hegemony. — balconesfault
That is just absolutely ridiculous.
mlindroo // Sep 19, 2009 at 3:21 pm
As far as I am concerned, these people (=the neocons and their various apologists in this forum) just ought to keep their heads down in shame. They were running the show for eight years ( although they complain Bush only paid attention to their advice in 2001-04 which is just as bad,really).
I think the results speak for themselves.
MARCU$
EscapeVelocity // Sep 19, 2009 at 9:34 pm
I agree the results speak for themselves….and they are very good.