Archive for the ‘U.S Foreign Policy’ Category
By Jeff Lukens
As the leader of the free world, the United States has a responsibility to lead. This has been our reality as a nation since the 1940s. As such, we need a well-funded military. Today, however, our military forces are desperately in need of recapitalization and modernization. We have been on a "procurement holiday" since the end of the Cold War, and catching up will be expensive.
During the 1980s, the active duty Army had 18 combat divisions. Since 1994, there have been only ten. In that same time, the number of tactical air wings in the Air Force has fallen from 37 to 20; and the Navy has been reduced from 600 ships to less than 300 today.
Our defense budget hit a postwar high of 14.2% of GDP in 1953 during the Korean War. At the height of Vietnam in 1968, it was 9.5%, and it was 6.8% in 1986 at the height of the Reagan buildup. In 2000, defense spending reached the lowest point on 3.0%. Today, seven years into the Global War on Terror, we are still spending a paltry 3.7% of GDP on defense.
Our procurement needs will, if anything, grow in the years ahead. For example, our primary air-supremacy jet, the F-15, is old, metal-fatigued, and coming apart. Stress cracks from age and overuse are causing them to crash. Many were built before the pilots flying them were even born. Now, one-third of all F-15s are either grounded or headed to the scrap yard.
The Air Force consists of roughly 6,000 aircraft, and is replacing approximately 60 piloted aircraft per year. You don't need to be a math wiz to figure out that it will take 100 years at that rate to modernize our air fleet.
The need for increased military funding, however, does not stop there. Long term, we may need to station 30 to 50 thousand troops in Iraq as we have done in Germany, Japan and Korea. Yes, we are going to be there a long time, and it is vitally necessary no matter what Democrats are saying. When a quarter of the world oil flows through the Persian Gulf, we need to be there to take care of business when things go haywire.
By Alan Caruba
There was a Washington Post news report in late March that the United Nations had “presented its top donors with a request for nearly $1.1 billion in additional funds over the next two years—boosting current U.N. expenses by 25 percent and marking the global body’s highest-ever administrative budget, according to internal U.N. memos.”
Since I am no fan of the United Nations, my first thought was to ask why the U.S. and other “top donors” would toss more money at this bloated and morally corrupt international bureaucracy when it is manifestly unable to prevent wars—its primary mission—and remains a platform for belligerence, bigotry, and intolerance?
According to the report, the request for more money is blamed on the Bush administration’s “demands for a more ambitious U.N. role around the world.” That seems a rather convenient explanation given the poor performance of most of the U.N.’s so-called peace-keeping missions, some of which degraded into the rape of the women it was supposed to be protecting; its 60-year support of the Palestinians, making them the oldest refugee group in history; and its deplorable environmental program, a platform for the most appalling lies about the climate.
We have the final years of the Roosevelt administration for the creation of the United Nations as World War Two wound down. The failure of the League of Nations to prevent the war should have been sufficient reason not to go down that path again, but perhaps it was seen as the very reason to create a new, international organization to prevent wars?
By Alan Caruba
Americans know that we have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I suspect they have little idea that nearly a half-million of our soldiers, marines, airmen, sailors and coast guard are in far-flung places prepared to deter and defeat the enemies of, not just our nation, but of the freedom we enjoy and want to extend worldwide.
“About 490,000 U.S. service personnel are forward-deployed around the world.”
The quote above is from Major General Richard Sherlock, director of operational planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It should be noted that they are all volunteers.
In a nation with just over three hundred million population, their bravery, their dedication, their sacrifice strikes me as extraordinary, but I also think we probably need a lot more such people as the 21st century portends an “asymmetrical war” against fanatical jihadists bent on dragging everyone back to the 7th century.
A February article in The American Legion Magazine by Alan W. Dowd, drawing on available data from public records, including the Pentagon’s “Active-Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and By Country” report, reveals just how committed the United States is to the mission of maintaining peace throughout of the entire world.
By Daniel Clark
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has decided to postpone the construction of an American missile defense base in his country, a move that news reports have attributed to his being less pro-American than his predecessor, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Tusk’s reason for this change in policy, however, does not indicate an erosion of the Poles’ loyalty to their American allies. Rather, it is based on their concerns about America’s wavering dedication to its own missile defense project.
Tusk wants to delay the deployment of the missile shield until after this year’s U.S. presidential election, and it’s hard to argue with his judgment. Everybody knows that if the Democrats win the presidency, they will mothball our missile defense plan, just as Bill Clinton did for the entire eight years of his administration. Russia, the powerful and cantankerous neighbor to Poland’s east, has protested the U.S. missile shield from the outset. If Tusk proceeds with the project, only to see it abandoned by our next president, he’ll have antagonized the Kremlin for no good reason.
It’s not as if the Poles would have a hard time believing that the Democrats would hang them out to dry. That’s because Poland has been among our most trusted allies in Iraq – you know, the ones that John Kerry slandered as "the coalition of the bribed and coerced." Those allies can’t help but be leery of Kerry’s party, members of which have threatened to cut off funding for the war, demanded a "redeployment" to Okinawa, and refused to accept the delivery of good news from General Petraeus.
With the prospect of a Democrat victory in November, Poland risks angering not only Russia, but also a newly elected, Democrat-controlled government here in the U.S.
The real story out of Poland, then, is that the Democrats have succeeded in deterring an ally from helping the United States. This is important not only insofar as their obstruction of our missile defenses are concerned, but also in serving as a parallel to their effect on another important American ally – the people of Iraq.
By Erik Rush
"There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish a Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people."
–President George W. Bush, January 10, 2008
Geopolitics is such a complicated subject, you see, far beyond the comprehension of the average American. Those whom destiny has ordained to ameliorate the world’s geopolitical woes are far more insightful and inherently capable that you or I could ever hope to be.
I’m being facetious, of course. Without going into the promotion of that belief by politicians over the years due to spineless vacillation or their quest to keep Americans ignorant and uninvolved in the political process, I’d be interested in hearing how the Founding Fathers of this nation would have viewed the above concept, those who took on the most powerful empire on the planet and declaring that they were prepared to fight, kill and die to throw off the yoke of tyranny.
President Bush has gotten a lot of bad press from the establishment media because of who and what they are. I was forwarded some factoids the other day which, though verifiable, I was reluctant to use simply because the initial contact was a group email from a business associate.
There have been 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January. In Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That’s just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.
Though some claim that President Bush "shouldn’t have started this war," consider:
FDR (a Democrat) led us into World War II. Although we were attacked, from 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost, an average of 112,500 per year.
Truman (a Democrat) finished that war and started one in Korea.
North Korea never attacked us.
From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost, an average of 18,334 per year.
John F. Kennedy (a Democrat) started the Vietnam conflict in 1962.
Vietnam never attacked us.
Johnson (a Democrat) turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost, an average of 5,800 per year.
President Clinton (a Democrat) went to war in Bosnia without United Nations or French consent.
Bosnia never attacked us.
By Alan Caruba
The end of a year, any year, is a good time to give some consideration to the reason we have arrived at a particular state of affairs and whether a new direction is required. This is particularly true at a time when the campaigns to be the party’s choice for the presidency is more drenched in debate of religious issues and assertions, than in domestic and foreign policy issues.
The religious views of President George W. Bush may have gotten us to where we are at this point and our national policies could do with far less of it and a far more dispassionate review of our history. Our greatest need is to literally protect and preserve the republic.
I think I first noticed a problem when Bush used the word “crusade” to describe what the U.S. was doing in the Middle East. A born-again Christian, Bush has worn his faith on his sleeve ever since, during the 2000 campaign, he announced that Jesus was his favorite philosopher.
Americans generally are believers. They are predominantly Christian and they have always expected their president to demonstrate some faith in God. We have historically encountered problems when a president believes he was chosen by God for the position and that his actions are sanctioned by God. It’s one thing to pray for guidance. It is quite another to believe one’s action are divinely authorized and approved.
Woodrow Wilson believed God wanted him to be President and, with considerable irony, was re-elected on the slogan, “He kept us out of the war”. When Germany began to attack American ships providing military and other provisions to England, he put American troops into battle in a strictly European war. The result was a disastrous 1919 Treaty of Versailles that became a roadmap to World War II and some present problems.
The U.S. Senate had the good sense to reject membership in Wilson’s dream of a League of Nations, but following the end of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legacy was the United Nations, an international institution that ignores genocides, embraces intolerance, and is seeking to foist a totally bogus “global warming” crisis on the world.
By Alan Caruba
Historians and others love to make lists of the best and the worst of personalities and events, so permit me to offer a candidate as the Worst Ex-President Ever. I give you Jimmy Carter, anti-Semite, intellectual and moral weakling, and all-around bad person.
I think Jimmy will edge out Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor who made a botch of the Reconstruction after the Civil War and cannot even begin to compare with the largely unknown Harry Truman who succeeded Franklin Delano Roosevelt to see through to a successful conclusion of World War II, the implementation of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, and after other wise decisions, retired to his home in Independence, Missouri. Neither Truman, nor other former Presidents, constantly sought the public spotlight to voice criticism of those who followed him into the Oval Office.
Jimmy Carter, who gained the highest office largely because of the voter’s revulsion against the Watergate scandals and the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, cannot shut up. During his time in office he blamed the American people for a “malaise” that affected the economy that was largely in the dumps. It never occurred to him that cutting taxes and taking other measures might have helped stabilize or jump-start the economy.
He was in office in 1979 when the Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took our diplomats hostage. Other than a poorly planned, failed military mission to extricate them, the voters would have to wait 444 days for Ronald Reagan to take office before their release.
By Alan Caruba
The libraries of the world are filled with books devoted to history and new ones are published on any almost daily basis, but if their lessons are ignored, it condemns nations and the peoples of the world to horrors that increase with the evolving technology of death.
A book that should be mandatory reading for all the current and aspiring leaders of the world is David A. Andelman’s “A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.”
“If there was a single moment in the twentieth century when it might have been different, this was the moment.” The gathering in Paris that followed the end of World War I and the defeat of Germany, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires did not merely fail to insure peace; it set in motion the events leading to World War II, the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and the tinderbox that is today’s Middle East.
Most Americans, if they know anything about the last century, may associate the event that brought together the United States, England, France, Japan, and representatives of colonial and emerging nations with President Woodrow Wilson’s dream of creating a League of Nations. It was his dream to create an organization that would enforce international laws. WWI was to be “the war to end all wars.” With the exception of the hapless Herbert Hoover, the U.S. has not had such a dangerously naïve, arrogant, and failed presidency until Jimmy Carter.
Following the end of World War II, another such effort was made with the establishment of the United Nations. It has proven to be every bit the failure as the League and infinitely more corrupt. Read the rest of this entry »
by Sher Zieve
On Monday, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters that he and other Democrats were not willing to wait for evaluated reports on the troop surge in Iraq. Reid advised that he and his colleagues are moving at virtual breakneck speed to formulate and pass an anti-war bill. While al-Qaeda continues to practice all manner of depravities and perversions—the latest reported corruption being the terrorist organization’s penchant for the profane via literally (not figuratively) baking the children of those it wishes to intimidate and then "serving" said cooked progeny to their parents—most of their debaucheries still go unreported by the terrorist-enabling leftist worldwide press. Most certainly Harry Reid and other Democrat and RINO leaders committed to surrender won’t mention the actual performance and true scope of the Islamists’ goals. Instead, Reid and other appeasers are unwilling to wait for any and all reports from those actually functioning in the Iraq battle theatre. As reports from the front suggest the surge (AKA Operation Arrowhead Ripper) actually is working, the leftist and overwhelmingly Democrat US mainstream media continues their attempts to bury the story.
Note: This same battle surge, being waged by our extraordinary and inordinately courageous US soldiers, must be spun and manipulated by the mainstream media and their Democrat leaders in order for them to achieve their objective of reseizing and then retaining (forever we assume) power. The illusion of power has long been their god.
by Vincent Fiore
To some, 1983 may as well have been the dark ages in the United States..
At that time, America had a conservative president in the White House, who, in addition to being responsible for the worldwide outbreak of AIDS and the nation’s homelessness problem, also thought to "intercept nuclear weapons and destroy them as they emerge from their silos."
For on March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan revealed to the American people his vision for the nation’s protection by asking this question:
"What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?"