Home » The 80s called, and they want their foreign policy back

Comments

The 80s called, and they want their foreign policy back — 15 Comments

  1. That’s such an Obama move, patting people on the back (including people who are much much much better than he is) like he’s bestowing a big favor.

  2. Events overseas are important to liberals only as counters on the board game they are playing here to acquire power. Syria is not real. China is not real. They are places to visit like Disneyland. The people there are likewise just photo-ops from National Geographic. The only real places are DC, NYC, LA, SF. The only Real People come from or move there.

    I exaggerate only slightly.

  3. Oh, I don’t know about Obama not being involved.

    First, I have a hard time believing that he won’t try and insert himself into the campaign as often as possible. Running ads making him look like an idiot might make him rethink that idea. Second, the Dems are *still* getting mileage out of blaming Bush.

  4. The only real places are DC, NYC, LA, SF. The only Real People come from or move there.
    —————–

    Even Los Angeles is arguable, unless you live there. A couple of decades ago, I read an article that pointed out that if a movie is set in New York, then chances are that Big Important Things are happening. If a movie is set in Los Angeles, then Bad Things(tm) are probably happening.

  5. Been telling you all about this since it started years ago… old news basically with a recent update based on outcomes..

    but the trick is to notice things way before you get to the point that this kind of thing is reported.

    let me translate that paragraph:
    regardless what happens we do not have enough forces to protect any country, let alone several

    NATO is dead… obama has implemented another point in suskind list of items as goals of the soviet union.

    now… here is the kicker
    if we dont have enough troops to oppose anything, then how do we have enough to defend ourselves in a crisis which would require troops to fight and troops to organize the people in a bad situation?

    good thing the women are to be drafted to fill the gaps (and body bags), or else what?

  6. Neo: “It might also be tied into Hillary Clinton or Biden’s role as supporting Obama’s disastrous policies, whichever one of them ends up as the nominee.”

    About that, I suggest interrogating them on their respective roles in what happened with Iraq.

    See:

    OIF senior advisor Rick Brennan on the “bungling of the Iraq exit”:
    http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142204/rick-brennan/withdrawal-symptoms

    OIF official and senior advisor Emma Sky:
    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/obama-iraq-116708.html#.VSP3pbt0x0t

    US Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill (who succeeded Ryan Crocker but fell woefully short of his predecessor):
    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/how-the-obama-administration-disowned-iraq-111565_full.html

    Hill:

    After she arrived, Secretary Clinton put herself through a grueling day: meetings with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and senior Iraqi officials, and women who had lost their husbands to war and violence (alas, sometimes at the hands of our forces). Also, a kind of holdover from her days on the campaign trail: the proverbial town meeting with all sorts of people–young, old, women, men, muftis, seculars in gray suits, sheiks in flowing robes and keffiyehs, women in black chadors and checkered shemaghs, just about everybody.

    Finally, at the end of the long day there was a meeting with the U.S. Embassy staff in the large atrium of the half-billion-dollar embassy. Secretary Clinton, seeming to make eye contact with every person in the room, spoke eloquently and passionately, and with a sincerity that brought tears to some eyes. She said how important Iraq was to her, a top-tier issue, and how much she valued the staff at this embassy. She kindly introduced me as the ambassador she would leave behind, and said she would look forward to working with this embassy in the years ahead.

    … I said goodbye in the car on the edge of the helicopter landing pad, and she made clear that I should call her whenever I needed her help–and I would really need help, she said in mock seriousness.

    Exhilarated and grateful, I stood on the edge of the landing zone in a line with a few other embassy personnel, all of us waving farewell to our secretary with the expectation she would be back soon.

    Three months later, Vice President Joe Biden took the lead on Iraq policy and she never returned.

    ***

    Soon after I arrived in Iraq, I was asked to produce a weekly memo for the president to update him on what was going on. This request turned into a month-long tug of war between the National Security Council staff and the State Department, because if I was to write a regular memo, surely it should be addressed to my direct boss, Secretary Clinton, first. Finally, in a decision worthy of King Solomon, it was decided that the memo would go to both the president and the secretary, but it would first make its way to the State Department, addressed “Madam Secretary,” so that the secretary could read and reflect on it, then forward it on to the president with her own cover note.

    Yet despite the ferocious fight the State Department had put up to make sure these memos did not go directly to the White House, in 15 months of writing them, I never received a single comment on them from anyone in the State Department. President Obama was the only person I ever heard from.

  7. junior: “Second, the Dems are *still* getting mileage out of blaming Bush.”

    For several years, I’ve commented here that it’s critical for Republicans to rehabilitate President Bush’s record in the popular zeitgeist.

    Because the demonization of Bush, especially regarding Iraq, is the cornerstone of the Democrats’ political advantage. It was not contained to Bush’s reputation when he left office. Even when the particular details are not at hand, the themes cultivated in the anti-Bush narrative are underlying premises that typecast Republicans generally.

    As Neo has done well to show over the years, the anti-Bush narrative is usually false. With a better activist capability, Republicans could have employed the facts to counter the Democrats’ narrative and, better yet, flip it with issues like Iraq where the actual truth clearly favored Bush and discredited his Democratic critics, including the current president.

    Yet, instead of engaging the narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game, Republicans ran away from the anti-Bush narrative, thus conceding it and multiplying the damage to the GOP and the nation by extension. At times, Republicans have even stipulated it in misguided attempts to ‘get past the issue’, eg, the GOP presidential candidates’ response to the Megyn Kelly “knowing what we know now” hypothetical.

    The Republicans’ error in conceding the anti-Bush narrative rather than counter it vigorously in the activist manner has compounded. Among Trump supporters today, it’s not uncommon to find parts of the anti-Bush narrative in their opposition to “establishment” GOP.

  8. “in his wrongness he excoriates Romney for his supposed wrongness when Romney is, in fact, completely right. It’s that Obama accuses Romney of errors that are actually Obama’s own (if in fact they are errors at all, versus intentional acts), and describes himself as doing the opposite of what’s he’s doing. It is an almost perfect bizarro world, where everything is backwards.”

    A tried and true tactic of evil.

    “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Isiah 5:20

    Such people are not interested in any ideal, only in the acquisition of power. Nothing is beyond such men. To utterly dominate is all.

  9. I exaggerate only slightly.

    Which is why in Fourth Generational Warfare, guerilla insurgencies, hitting the Center of Gravity is all important.

  10. Frog,

    The short list is Mecca, Medina, Qom, Riyadh, and Tehran. The list of secondary centers of gravity are too long to list in a short post. Sleep well, stay cocked and locked.

  11. I thought the complete reference concluded with BO being the number one best seller at the Jerk Store.

  12. Where are we in your war ? Pre-war? !st generation? 4th generation?
    Where is the center of gravity?

    The center of gravity is where an enemy is weak or cannot defend themselves as well. It is one where if you hit them, it hurts, far beyond what a normal hit would do.

    In human bodies, the center of gravity is somewhere along the spine, between the hips and the back. This often changes slightly due to movement in the gravity well.

    When a target is immobilized on 5 points, hitting them in the center of gravity will shatter them, because they have no where to funnel the energy or do damage control.

    For a Leftist, their center of gravity generally revolves around their feelings of inadequacy, hostility, weakness, and guilt. That is why defending against the Left never works. Defending yourself against Jihad doesn’t work in the long term. They will never stop until you punch back and do 1000 times the damage they did to you.

    The Leftist alliance has mobilized at least 15% of their total strategic assets for the war on humanity they have been fighting for some decades now. What is the current mobilization strength of the Western non Leftists?

  13. “Obama’s…proven himself to be such a fine, fine prognosticator.”

    I’m really shocked by this, Neo. You’re such a fine writer. How could you have so badly misspelled prevaricator?

    :~)

  14. Neo’s sarcasm is light and not very cutting, in a sense. Some people take advantage of that.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>