Arthur Herman (Oh! He got game Bay Bee!) puts steel on target with a hot! piece about the diplopolititary doofussness on Mullahopolis' nuclear witchcraft.
The girl fearing, Facebook frightened, Preacher's Paradise "...revolutionary regime in Tehran is poised to hand the United States its worst foreign-policy setback since the fall of South Vietnam."
Uh, say what?
"The usual excuse for Western foreign-policy failures — that the democratic electoral process and changes of government mean policies are constantly being revised and reversed, while dictatorships are able to maintain a steady course until they reach their goal — won’t wash here.
"The Bush and Obama policies toward Iran, at least since 2005, have been remarkably consistent — and largely an extension of the Clinton policy of carrot and stick. Play ball with us and the international community, successive secretaries of state have told the Iranians, and don’t build any nukes, and we’ll extend the carrots of diplomatic recognition and expanded trade. Don’t play ball, and expect the stick of sanctions — or even possibly military action.
"The terms of this approach have been the problem all along.
"Military action — whether it was bombing Iran’s nuclear sites or blockading the Hormuz Straits at one extreme, or providing arms and cover aid to the country’s many anti-regime groups at the other — has been treated as the last option, or the ultimate stick, instead of the U.S.’s first and most important diplomatic asset. Both Bush and Obama saw military action as an alternative to diplomacy, and vice versa. This is a severe miscalculation, one that has consistently hobbled American foreign policy from Vietnam to North Korea, and now Iraq.
"The alternative is to see force and diplomacy as mutually supportive aspects of the same exercise of power in defense of our national interest.
Pic - "Force can be an awesome motivator - even if you can't make them do something - you can make them wish they had" with Tabret
1 comments:
It has been said that peace can be obtained thru superior firepower. If this is truly the case, then our government is grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory.
For years, I have prescribed to the following principal: I may not always believe we (The U.S.) pick the correct fights; but once we commit to the fight - then throw everything at it, then bring the troops home. One wasted American life due to political waffling is too many. On this account I hold both the Jr. Bush and Obama in contempt for the value of American life.
Until we re-learn this lesson, which we seem to have forgotten after WWII, our military might and tactical superiority remains wasted by political indecision and diplomatic indifference.
Of course, these things have buried more mothers sons and daughters through history than most anything except religion.
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