THIS PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION SEASON, FOREIGN POLICY MUST TAKE CENTER STAGE
|| By RICK MANNING || Presidential primary season is upon us, and handlers of candidates of both political parties will attempt to control how the public perceives them.
It should be a time of great debate about the future of the country. Wage deflation, a national debt approaching $20 trillion, the government’s culpability in the student loan bubble, and a graying population destined to consume more and more taxpayer resources are all big problems confronting the nation.
But perhaps the most significant problem is America’s declining status in the world. This past weekend, images from Libya of another two groups of Christians being executed for their faith were seared into our consciousness, just another of a series of horrific actions by an enemy that we dare not speak honestly about lest we be called bigots.
Conversely, this past weekend, hand-picked businesspeople, who were wined and dined by the government of Iran, regaled the media with stories of a country that is ready to be transformed. The eager-to-please group apparently never once thought to ask their hosts about being allowed to bring American Christian pastor Saeed Abedini home with them. The Iranian-born Abedini was in Iran visiting family and helping build an orphanage when he was arrested in 2012. Subsequently, he has been threatened with the death penalty due to his refusal to renounce his Christian faith.
Abedini’s story doesn’t fit the administration of Barack Obama‘s narrative that the Iranian government wants to join the responsible nations of the world and can be trusted with the means to develop a nuclear device, so his name dare not be mentioned, and it rarely is by official sources.
While hosting the either gullible or willfully ignorant businesspeople, Iran also announced that they were moving warships to the coast of the country of Yemen, escalating the probability of wholesale war in the Middle East, as Yemen controls the Red Sea choke point for exporting oil from Saudi Arabia. The peaceful Iranian mullahs also are receiving sophisticated air defense missiles from Russia to protect their nuclear bomb-making capacity from air strikes.
The kind and misunderstood mullahs also marked their “Army Day” with chants and officially-sanctioned billboards saying “Death to America” with others urging “Death to Israel.”
President Obama, who knows something about lying to achieve his ends, discounts the words coming out of the Iranian leaders’ mouths as political rhetoric, and trusts that they, like him, are willing to tell the public what they want to hear in order to thrive politically. Of course, his very contention that death to America is politically popular in a rapidly-becoming-nuclear Iran should send shivers up the spine of any thinking person, but our nation seems in short supply of this type of citizen …
(To continue reading this column, click the link below …)
Rick Manning is the vice president of public policy and communications for Americans for Limited Government. Follow him on Twitter @RManning957.
22 comments
Rick Manning channeling John McCain:
“Bomb, bomb, bomb… bomb,bomb, Iran!”
Ha Ha Ha! So funny! What characters! War is funny. Let’s all sing! (while at the same time being afraid)
So a Koch brothers whore decides it is time to hold an adult conversation? Too little, too late. It will be YEARS before any voter with half a brain in their head takes a republican seriously again let alone a Democrat. Fuck off and die!
?? Non sequitur alert ??
America’s role in the world is to kick ass. The worst money we spend is on the mamby-pamby State Department, which a punch of Ivy League wimps running around the world saying “let’s talk, let’s talk.” When Ronald Reagan was President we had 20 aircraft carriers, and 500 other ships in the Navy, and our Army had over 4 million soldiers and we had 1 million Marines. Now we have like three aircraft carriers, and only 20 other ships, and there is only 4,000 soldiers and Marines. What we need today is more nuclear bombs, and more Trident submarines and B-52 bombers. These “dip-lo-mats” out there should all be fired, and the savings could be spent on keeping the A-10 flying – the Warthog Terrorist Asskicker plane. And we should be nation building. Look at Iraq today, a shining example of democracy in the Middle East, a close ally with Israel. We can do the same with Lybia and Yemen, just start off with some carrier strikes, a couple hundred of inexpensive Tomahawk missiles and a few trillion dollars to the local government. That’s America’s role. We are the worlds policeman, and ain’t nobody gonna take phone videos of us taking out some thugs. OK, proceed——
I can’t help noticing your tongue poking your cheek in this spew … And least we all forget, the president has a Santa’s Toy Bag stuffed full with heavily armed drones.
Darn it, we need moer horses and bayonets. Everyone knows that. Even Grand Tango.
Ha! I don’t even think GT would touch that ;)
Good God almighty, foreign policy is not this country’s number one problem. Our infrastructure is crumbling, we are broke (much of it from foreign policy), we have too many people sucking off of the Govt tit, and we are being overrun by third world immigrants (illegal or otherwise), and I’m supposed to think our great problems are 5,000 miles, and an ocean, away? bwahaha… whatever!!
I wonder if George Washington would agree – they were hungry, tired, many sleepless nights, harsh weather, but they pressed on. That is why we have America as we know it today.
It wasn’t because someone said, we don’t have enough money for freedom, we can’t afford this infrastructure – it was because they decided they preferred freedom. There is a cost to freedom and sometimes that cost is death.
Did our problems originate 5,000 mile or an ocean away? Don’t laugh it off, if you love your country.
Give me a freakin break.. even Eisenhower, a five star general and president saw the sham that was/is the military industrial complex. And yet, his assertion today would be considered unpatriotic. But no, we were safe then with no enemies, right? Again, whatever!!
Ok – I am research weary at this point, so I’ll grab first source. I’ll caveat this with, I am going to continue to research, but this alone counters your Military Industrial Complex (a play right out of RP or AJ’s handbook):
“Dwight D. Eisenhower brought a “New Look” to U.S. national security policy in 1953. The main elements of the New Look were: (1) maintaining the vitality of the U.S. economy while still building sufficient strength to prosecute the Cold War; (2) relying on nuclear weapons to deter Communist aggression or, if necessary, to fight a war; (3) using the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to carry out secret or covert actions against governments or leaders “directly or indirectly responsive to Soviet control”; and (4) strengthening allies and winning the friendship of nonaligned governments. Eisenhower’s defense policies, which aimed at providing “more bang for the buck,” cut spending on conventional forces while increasing the budget for the Air Force and for nuclear weapons. Even though national security spending remained high—it never fell below 50 percent of the budget during Eisenhower’s presidency—Eisenhower did balance three of the eight federal budgets while he was in the White House.”
http://millercenter.org/president/eisenhower/essays/biography/5
“… Iran also announced that they were moving warships to the coast of the country of Yemen …”
Maybe now those pesky Somali pirates will get their comeuppances.
I have said much on many threads about Foreign Policy. So let’s look at it from personal experience. Look at families and ask yourself what they might be without a country.
My Great Grandmother on the female side, her last name was Assad. I never knew this until long after my Grandmother died. Probably 10 ago or so, I was able to confirm it. I am one of those people who require proof. I found it. It was on the Census registers, death certificates, Obituaries and so on. Not to mention, family mementoes.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how my ancestors from the feminine side were name Assad? Where did they come from? On Rosters they called themselves Old Assyrians. I didn’t even know what that meant. I did a ton of research, initially, very little answers. An entire family moved, and all but one, to my knowledge, changed their names. It was a secret even within the family. Why? I wondered.
Anyone familiar with OLD history, can see the Assyrian empire. Then you wonder, what happened during the late 1800’s that family were fleeing?
You can find history from there, but this area, has been a source of prejudice and one big fucking battle over religion for centuries. Look at all the empires. You don’t need to be a history major to figure out what the heck has been going on.
When some have very dogmatic views, unwilling to compromise (yeah that dirty word), but uses brute force, as is repeated throughout history in this region. It is not because America.
We did not even exist at the time this started. America was not even a country. Look at Assyrian Empire, Ottoman Empire, just keep going. You’ll see, it is not America who want NWO.
adult?
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You are bigger than that. What you are posting is child play, or….spam.
So… you’re saying I have a huge range…
Bigger, better than spam?
Not sure why I like you euwe, you are f*cking nuts sometimes. Guess it takes one to know one ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeibzLZn2hU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0slK45CNIE
All right, Ricky, it’s past your bedtime. Go upstairs so the adults can talk.
is this guy the muppet eagle?