Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Friday, February 28, 2014

Mitt Romney was Right about Russia: The Cold War Redux

Still not feeling 100% so I will keep this short.

Given recent events in Ukraine and the growing number of reports of a stealthy Russian invasion of Crimea, one has to recall how the smug progressives and their leader Obama ridiculed Mitt Romney for his stating that Russia was our number one international opponent. They made snarky oh-so-clever little smirks along the lines of, "Hey, Mitt. The 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back!" This was meant to cast Romney as a hopeless retrograde unable to keep up with the times, and to make themselves seem to have supported our foreign policy in the 1980s--something patently not true if you recall how they depicted Reagan and Bush--but ready to move on.  

Well, how about that? Mitt Romney was right about the disastrous impact of Obamacare, including the lie "if you like your insurance plan and your doctor you can keep your insurance plan and your doctor," and about foreign affairs. He bemoaned the Obamista gutting of our military and pointed out that Russia was doing the opposite with its own military and was preparing to go on the offense. Russia is our number one geopolitical foe.

In this vein, let me report something I wrote January 7. It might be more valid now than when written.

Proud Owner of a Cold War Mentality


Twice, yes, twice in one day I was "accused" of having a "cold war mentality." Once in a Twitter duel, and the other time in some weird Craig's List site which excerpted a couple of my posts, and let the lefties have at them. I also got called a "blithering idiot," which seems overkill since if you are blithering, then presumably you already are an idiot and vice versa; anyhow, it must have been a blithering idiot who made the accusation. It reminded me of my closing days at State when a senior guru in HR, informing me that my second ambassadorial nomination would follow my first one down the sewer, told me the same--not the "blithering idiot" thing, the "cold war mentality" thing. "Lew," she said, "you won't make it to the top because you won't let go of your cold war mentality."

Well! What an insult! How is it bad to have a "cold war" mentality (CWM)? Would it be an insult to tell somebody, "Sorry, you can't make it here because you can't let go of your anti-fascist mentality." This CWM accusation seems to be a meme (may we still use that word?) of the left. During one of the Obama-Romney debates, Obama snidely told Romney, "The 1980s are calling. They want their foreign policy back." The lefties thought that was so very clever. It is of a piece with other lefty "zingers," to wit, "I guess you watch FOX News," the oldie, "Cowboy," and, of course, "Racist!"

Let's look at these "insults," starting with the one about FOX News. I watch FOX off and on, as I do the other TV news outlets, and have not found FOX wrong about the major events of the past few years. FOX called it right, for example, on Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the IRS scandals, and, of course, the horrendous disaster known as Obamacare. The FOX pundits, in other words, people who come on expressly to opine, seem to range all over the place, with, admittedly the largest bunch gathering somewhere in the range from establishment GOP to Tea Party. I, however, see lots of "progressives" on FOX who state leftist opinions and keep coming back on. I have not heard the slime-ball language, gutter-level insults, and race-baiting on FOX that I have from MSNBC "progressives" such as Bashir, Baldwin, Sharpton, Maddow, and Harris-Perry. We owe a debt of gratitude to Rupert Murdoch, who similar to another Australian, General Sir John Monash, nearly 100 years ago saved the day for the West.

Cowboy. What a weird insult. I thought the lefties were for the common working man? I guess once you get an expensive degree from an expensive university that specializes in content-free education, you can ridicule people who work for a living. I always thought of a cowboy as an honorable, hard-working, independent-minded sort who would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. On second thought, I now realize that I know why lefties would find a cowboy frightening; just compare a cowboy to pajama boy . . . best to demonize the cowboy before that happens.

The racist tag is so overused it is losing its impact. When all else fails, however, the left still drags it out. It is the flare gun you fire in the air as the global warming-formed ice floe rips your ship to shreds; the one-shot derringer as a pack of giant corporation-created zombie werewolves rushes your campsite; the soundless scream in the void of space as the multi-headed GMO monster prepares to eat you; the, well . . . you get the idea. It's what's used when there's nothing else in your kit. Anybody who expresses doubts about the liberal policies that have made generations of African-Americans wards of the state is a racist. Anybody who questions the wisdom of essentially open immigration as long as an entitlement bonanza awaits those immigrants is a racist. Anybody who works hard for his or her money, and wants to keep most of it for his or her family is a racist. Anybody who thinks voting should be for citizens is a racist. Anybody who watches FOX News or is a cowboy is a racist, and on and on.

Cold war mentality. My favorite. To be called a cold warrior--brrrrrr--how horrible, not. I do not understand what is meant by that "insult." It seems a cousin of the old label "Red Scare," or "Witch Hunt," or "McCarthyism." The implication is that somehow you are deluded, delusional, wacky, insane, laughable if you have a CWM. Excuse me, my low-information lefty friends, there was a real and frightening threat from the Reds, the "Witches" were quite real. McCarthy might have had a face made for radio; maybe he was crude and rude; maybe he was not elegant and refined. As the historical record shows, however, he was right: pro-Soviet Communists had infiltrated State, the White House, and other branches of government; the Soviets were conducting an aggressive campaign of espionage inside the US, Canada, and the UK.

To have a CWM, means, therefore, to root and work for the victory of Western ideals of liberty and freedom. It means to oppose totalitarian ideologies and regimes. It means finding, for example, the Soviet Gulag, and the horrid North Korean and Cuban regimes repellent in the extreme and worthy of being opposed and, if possible, destroyed. It means celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire, and opposing efforts to undermine our system of liberty and checks-and-balances at home. It means being appalled by the resurgence of the "dead" Al Qaeda; being furious over this Obama misadministration's giving away our hard-fought victories in Iraq and Afghanistan; its sabotaging of our long-standing network of international alliances; its sell-out of our friends; its misuse and destruction of our intelligence agencies; and its deliberate sabotage of economic liberty at home.

We can safely conclude, therefore, that this misadministration certainly does not have a Cold War Mentality.

As for me, guilty as charged. I am proud to have a Cold War Mentality.

33 comments:

  1. Putin's CWM is the one that really counts.

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    1. It's like we are playing two completely different children's games. 0bama is having a cutesy tea party, trying to play the pacifist. Putin is full on tackle football with no pads and in the street (like we used to play in the city).

      This makes for a very scary next couple of years. This can really be traced back to the Syria red line. Once our fearless leader stuck his foot in his mouth, Putin was all too happy to step in and broker the chemical weapon's deal. We emboldened him to step up as the true leader in the middle east (and arguably the world).

      So now he is working on reforming the Soviet Union, sans the official title. We need to be the counter-balance to that rapid expansion/aggression, but with the recent proposed cuts to the Pentagon budget it does not appear possible. Just like with 0bamacare and all his other policies, the worst effects they are to bring on the country will not happen until the "next guy" is President. If this Pentagon cut is approved, it will take years to undo the damage it will cause. The problem I see is that with tensions in so many places around the world simply on fire, we may be powerless to defend ourselves, should a multi-front attack come our way. Not to get off on a gun rights kick, but we may have to use those same guns the progs are falling all over themselves to take away from us to defend ourselves and our neighbors.

      Wow, that was extremely doom and gloom for a Friday, not good. Oh well, this is just the way I see it.

      Nick from the penal colony formerly known as New York

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    2. NIck, I think you made a very valid exposition, gloomy or not.

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    3. Obama's CWM counts, too.

      He isn't, or isn't obviously, a pacifist. I think that in the right circumstances he would be willing to use force.

      Bill Clinton was willing to "defend democracy" by restoring the awful Dr. Aristide to Haiti, but thank God Obama didn't use force to restore Morsi to Egypt. And Clinton was willing to use force under the UN banner to observe--not prevent, just observe--war atrocities in the Balkans.

      The trouble is, for Obama the enemy would have to be white guys, and yet we'd have to be able to beat them without politically-unsustainable loss using a military already cut to ribbons by budgets. So maybe he is, in effect, a pacifist.

      What I was going to say about his CWM is this. He is, or appears to be, a neutralist. He doesn't appear to mind a new cold war as such: he does nothing to avoid it. But he wants America to be non-aligned--perhaps in the Wikipedia sense that Cuba was the leader of the non-aligned bloc, a position I believe he covets.

      I don't think he has entirely thought out the answer to this question: non-aligned between who and whom?

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    4. Putin's paying Risk; Obama's playing Candyland.

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    5. No, Obama is playing Candyass.

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  2. Your CWM was right then because the warning is timeless. Obama and his progressive types were part of the reason the Cold War was allowed to drag on so long before the inevitable. Funny thing, it is Obama and his like that have reached back to the Russian past....say about 1918 to about 1925... to impose this alien and hostile political economy on a people that will reject it. After all, it has never Really been tried before has it? And if it has, well, they were the wrong people. Mad Vlad will get by with his antics for a while I think, but budgets and demographics and western social media will undermine him in time. Let's all keep our CWM. Obama has his....just from the wrong side.

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    1. Great reference to 1918-25 period in USSR.

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    2. Greetings, fellow holders of the CWM--

      Have you ever noticed that the Lefties, who are so quick to charge the rest of us with racism, always say that the real reason why the Communists never delivered on Old Karl's promise of unrpecedented productive forces being unleashed by the Proletarian Revolution is because Russia and Mainland China were "backwards"? Apparently, it's all the fault of the Slavic Uentermenschen and Primitive Asiatics.

      The O's real father, Frank Davis, probably instilled in his head that the great pipe-dream of the innaleckchools needed an advanced country in order to work. Hence, we've got the O's shenanigans.

      I've also heard Lefties explain that the exodus of Cuba's white middle class (so where did all those dark practitioners of Santeria come from?) left poor Fleabag Castro and Cheesey Guevara with nothing but the Mulatto and Afro-Cuban masses. tsk. tsk.

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  3. Sarah Palin - 2008 Election

    Speaking Tuesday at a rally in a Reno, Nevada, Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin had a little fun with her counterpart on the Democratic ticket, thanking Joe Biden for warning Barack Obama’s supporters to “gird your loins” for an international crisis if the Illinois senator wins.

    Palin helpfully offered four scenarios for such a crisis, one of which was this strange one:

    “After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.”

    As we’ve said before, this is an extremely far-fetched scenario. And given how Russia has been able to unsettle Ukraine’s pro-Western government without firing a shot, I don’t see why violence would be necessary to bring Kiev to heel. Watch the upcoming parliamentary elections in December to see if Moscow gets the pliable new government it wants.

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    1. Mr. B.

      The likelihood of Russia invading Ukraine, all other maneuvers failing for her, depends in part on the demonstrated resolve of the US and EU. So far, demonstrated not to exist.

      And upon that in turn depends the quality of the Russian threat and therefore the likelihood of other maneuvers failing for her.

      // proud owner of a CWM
      "Ask the man who owns one."

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    2. I confess that I did not expect to have it proved that "The likelihood of Russia invading Ukraine ... depends in part on the demonstrated resolve of the US and EU. So far, demonstrated not to exist" so soon.

      Check the news, if you haven't.

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  4. The Times banned Winston Churchill from publishing anything in 1938. " Churchill’s bitter column “Gathering Storm,” dated October 30, 1936:

    If we look back only across the year that has nearly passed since the General Election, the most thoughtless person will be shocked at the ceaseless degeneration abroad, and also of our own interests on the Continent. The League of Nations and all that it stands for is grievously stricken. The old friendship between Great Britain and Italy is sundered. In its place there has arisen a dangerous association between the martial dictators. France is passing through a phase of apparent weakness and acute anxiety. Upon all this there has been superimposed the hideous Spanish Civil War, now raging towards its climax."

    His column was banned by, among others, Max Aitkin.

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    1. Luckily, nothing like that could happen now.

      For once, I say that without irony (not really a big fan of irony anyway), not because the 2014 New York Times braver and more clear-sighted than the 1938 Times of London--it is to laugh--but because of the World Wide Web.

      God bless you, Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA, DFBCS, a.k.a. TimBL.

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  5. Against a far-less-impressive array of enemies, freedom, America, and Western Civilization--whose enemies are inevitably the same--stand even less favorable odds in this second cold war; because from its beginning we want to be neutral.

    I am using "we" in the standard liberal sense: one's domestic political opponents.

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  6. diplomad, I cannot believe Poland will tolerate sharing a common border with Russia again, should Russia take Ukraine. I think Poland has to go to war.

    -Blake

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    1. Poland essentially has a common border with Russia where it bumps against Belarus (the main part of what was once the Grand Duchy of Lithuania).

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    2. Is Belarus dominated by Russia? Are Russian troops stationed within Belarus borders? (not being a jerk, I truly don't know)

      What is border like between Belarus and Poland? What are the roads like between Poland and Belarus? Poland and Ukraine?

      Seems to me, militarily, a longer common border is much worse for Poland and much less easily defended.

      I would also point out that this appears to be a very serious military effort in Ukraine. That alone should make Poland very nervous.

      -Blake

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    3. Poland tolerate? Tolerate? Between the russkies and huns, poor Poland has tolerated a shitload these past 2 centuries (longer). Honestly, I weep (or would if I were capable) for these pitiable peoples, who, it seems, just can’t catch a break.

      Well then, just add Ukraine and Poland to the list, along with the youth of Iran and Syria, for those screwed by the gross incompetence of the halfrican (I like that BTW). Hard to believe we bestrode the globe like a giant colossus 10 short years ago. Good chance Obama will go down in history as more reviled than Chamberlain. Hell, at least Ol’ Nevelle had that excuse that Britain was at weak ebb.

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    4. SidVic-halfrican princess was the term devised by Swamp Woman, who deserves the praise. Like you I think it describes the poser who would be the first "black" president very well. Halfrican princess describes him to a tee.

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    5. Poland, a member of NATO has already been tossed under the bus (re missile defense). There is nothing Poland can actively do to affect this outcome. The EU much like the US will not lift one finger as Russia begins to resemble its Soviet past. As the US withdraws behind multilaterism, reduces its military strength, focuses on domestic policies and programs to the detriment of an engaged and coherent foreign policy....the US is leaving in its wake a huge vacuum. We invite the kind of behavior by more than just Putin. I see a huge upheaval- war- and a new world order (one with a greatly reduced US impact on the world).

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  7. Georgia told Putin everything he needed to know about Obama. Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria just confirmed his view. Obama is weak, perhaps the weakest president ever, not only is he weak he tends to get carried away with his oratory, saying things he will not back up.
    Shackling the military with ridiculous terms of engagement and overlaying it with an LGBT-friendly command renders it neutered. This is a potential war the USA (and NATO) needs to stay out of.
    This is in any event a European problem-related to control of gas pipelines from Russia to Europe- Europe have signalled a willingness for super-expensive energy with its futile efforts to utilize wind and solar while shutting down nuclear generation. By controlling the source and transport means Putin can effectively charge whatever he wants for exported natural gas. Let the much vaunted European Rapid Reaction Force take care of the problem, lets see how rapid and how forceful they can be?
    As others have pointed out, almost any selection except Obama was the right choice for the USA in the past two elections, I have to say I am enjoying the constant humiliation that Putin dishes out to the halfrican princess.

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    1. Georgia told Putin everything he needed to know about Obama.

      Not taking up for the O Cascadian - for damn sure - but it was August 2008 Russian tanks rolled into Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia. Three weeks before (19 JUL 08) there was a massive DDoS attack on Georgia itself.
      ___________________

      There's not a whole lot "of stuff in the US kit" to do much of anything as "we" need [absolutely] the rail route linking Afghanistan out through Kazachstan and on through ... and, lest we forget, "we" needed the same route to go from _______ to Afghanistan in 2008.
      ___________________

      What's gonna (likely) happen is Crimea - indeed the whole of everything abutting the Black Sea will go the way of 2008 Georgia & the bankrupt western half of Ukraine will be left to the EU.

      Just my personal opinion but, I thought something was fishy when no stuff exploded during the first few days of Sochi while all the Western Media was so handily focused. Confirmation seemed to come to me when somebody asked, " ... passport up to date?"

      However/whatever Diplomad makes the essential point. Romney was right!

      Arkie

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    2. Oops.

      The whole of everything abutting the Black Sea ... except for Turkey.

      Ark

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  8. Dear Dip, I've been watching "The Hour"--pretty good--thank you for the tip--and of course it features the Suez Crisis. Possible parallel with Crimea? Sudden world realization that the US no longer has the will and the way to project power?

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  9. Looks like Hillary's "reset button" might need a new battery.

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  10. Well the Administration had a well deserved reputation of throwing people under the bus for political expediency. Until now you could say they've only dabbled in throwing nations (Honduras, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Iranian people,.....), but with the Ukraine they've gone major league. I know that if I was a Ukrainian and heard Obama say all this was "deeply disturbing" and Kerry warning Russia not to do anything provocative that it was time to kiss my ass food bye. And all the huffing and puffing about the uniforms worn by the surprise Russian vacation group is a lot of CYA over the "Budapest Memorandum". To paraphrase Thatcher; They're going to eventually run out of other peoples countries.

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  11. I know it is heresy to say any other blogs exist, but over at "Your Freedom and Ours" which is the last one on the list at the right of this page, the author lays out some good thinking points re Russia, Crimea, and Ukraine as of last night.

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  12. If you watch the video of Obama's speech at the press conference yesterday, you will notice that he started to use the name of the Ukraine Prime Minister, then skipped it. He either forgot it or couldn't pronounce it. Another Obama moment.

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  13. I wonder if Il Presidente will draw another "red line" in the Crimea? It has been done before - 1854 by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who saw off a Russian Cavalry charge with rifle and bayonet and hence the saying "the thin red line tipped with steel". It is amazing how the "pollies" like to use the saying when most of them have never been anywhere near anything sharper than a cocktail skewer.

    The idea worked in 1854 but somehow I don't think Mr Obama has the courage of that line of Scots and Vlad the Impaler has his measure.

    He'd be better off staying out of it just as the Brits and French would have been then. The more Obama says the more he makes a mockery of a fine country with once [and hopefully again] high ideals.

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    1. David, I could not have said it better. For a while we are going to have to hurt which may hasten the eventual healing.

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