Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta

9/18/13

Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta:

Former Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta were on the air today criticizing President Obama’s handling of events regarding Syria.  There was somewhat of a variable in how they were handling their criticism.  Both felt that President Obama made a mistake when he made his red line warning in August 2012 that Bashar Al-Assad would incur consequences if he was to use chemical weapons against his people.  Secretary Gates felt that while sending the warning was a mistake he felt that the President has to be very careful of unintended consequences if he follows through with any kind of punitive action as he threatened.  Gates cited the lessons to be learned about getting involved in Libya.    Unlike Panetta, he was not in favor of any kind of an attack on Syria.  Secretary Panetta seemed to be more concerned that the President, once warning the way he did, has to maintain his credibility and do what he said he would do.  To him, maintaining credibility was more important than any other consideration without considering the consequences.  I guess we can be thankful that Secretary Panetta is “former” Secretary of Defense.  In an earlier broadcast they were both critical of the President going to Congress to get its support for a strike.  But is the criticism for the right thing?  It’s understandable that the President is in a state of confusion about what he should do right now.  Little did he know the box he was going to put himself in when he didn’t think before speaking in August 2012.  It was then, while campaigning for reelection, that he made the bold statement that Assad would be “crossing the line” if he used chemical weapons against his people.  To pose a threat means it must be acted on if the adversary does cross in order to provide no doubt about the person’s credibility that makes the threat.  Secretary Panetta would have been better served by settling for just criticizing the President for having not put more thought in before speaking when he made the threat rather than to be pressuring him to take action simply to be showing that he meant what he said.  The lesson President Obama is learning the hard way is that he could not have been able to see the dilemma he was going to be in with the state of circumstances that are present at this time.  While Bashar Al-Assad’s atrocities against his people might be equal to to the worst monsters that have held power in the Middle East, the forces that are arrayed against him are showing signs of being worse than him.  Only a week or so ago Assad’s forces rescued the Christian town of Maaloula, where “Christians and Muslims have lived peaceably together for centuries and the people still speak Western Aramaic.” (Internet)  Rebel forces had taken temporary control of the town and were threatening to do public beheadings of any Christians that did not convert to Islam. 

I believe the most sensible decision President Obama can come to now is to simply “eat crow” and forget about his need to establish credibility for making the bold statement he made when he couldn’t possibly foresee what the circumstances would be if and when Assad would use sarin gas against his people.  I don’t agree with the political pundits that say that a do nothing approach will embolden Iran and Russia to act as they please and that it will accelerate Iran’s program to develop the nuclear bomb.  There are certain lines that need no bold talk to know they must not be crossed and which would compel the United States to take action no matter what would lie ahead.  It goes without saying and every nation must know, starting with Russia, that we cannot allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons in view of the way they continuously threaten to wipe Israel off the map.  Once emboldened enough to strike Israel we would surely be drawn into the fight whether we’d like it or not.           

Personality and Foreign Policy

9/14/13

Personality and Foreign Policy

I “love” (or do I?) the way liberals resort to the boo-hoo “You just don’t like Obama” routine when they are losing an argument with a conservative.  Juan Williams did it when he and Michelle Malkin were on Sean Hannity’s program the other night.  I could cite others.  No, Mr. and Ms. Liberal, conservatives do not dislike President Obama as a person.  They dislike his agenda to transform the greatest nation in the world into the very thing the Founding Fathers wanted us to get away from.  Conservatives don’t want the United States to be transformed into a Euro-Socialist State that will wind up like Greece and other European nations.  I, for one, like President Obama for a number of reasons but I don’t like his politics.  I could imagine that President Obama had a lot of friends as he was growing up because of his glowing personality.  He also shows himself to be a devoted family man.  But I shudder to think of what this country will be like if he succeeds in bringing about the transformation of it that he envisions.

That glowing personality can achieve only so much.  I notice the hearty handshake he greets President Putin with as he shakes Putin’s hand like he’s trying to separate Putin’s arm from his shoulder while he presents the heartiest smile he can muster.  I’d love to know what Putin is thinking at that time.

The foreign policy of every nation is guided by its own unique set of interests.  In Russia’s case one of the most important reasons for its coziness with Syria is that Syria provides Russia with a Western seaport.  Another thing important to Russia is oil.  The only commodity Russia has for export to feed its economy is oil.  The more turmoil there is in the Middle East the better the chance is that oil prices will be high.  It’s hardly likely that Russia will do much to keep the peace there and will most likely be very measured in how unstable it wants the region to be without seeing the start of another World War.  One thing that would be particularly devastating to the economies of Russia and the Middle East countries is for the United States to be independent of any need to be supplementing our oil needs from hostile countries in the Middle East.  If I heard right, and I’ll have to do some research to check, is that we supplement 40% of our oil needs with imports from the Middle East.  When K. T. McFarland was on a Fox News program recently she said that the United States has more oil than Russia and the Middle East combined.  Although oil is found in almost every state in the union, she most likely was talking about Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota and vicinity.  It’s shale oil that would require massive amounts of water to mine.  We have an ocean of water just a few hundred miles away.  If we can build an oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast and leave the area environmentally sound as we go, we surely ought to be able to run a water pipeline the same way.  “What would Poor Robin do then?”  Western nations would be buying their oil from the United States instead of the tumultuous Middle East.  The price of gasoline for the American consumer would be what it is in Saudi Arabia.  The current price there is 61 cents a gallon.      

   

With the robust economy energy independence would bring about through the development of our natural resources, revenue would flow into the Government coffers that would provide the funds for the research and development of solar and other renewable sources.  This is the completely opposite way of striving toward being able to have our energy needs satisfied by solar and other renewables than deliberately driving the cost of fossil fuel sources up so renewables can be competitive with them.  The choice is to get there ruining the economy in the process or bringing about a thriving economy that would give us the means to fund development of solar, wind-power and other renewable sources.      

                     

The Five

This is a copy of the letter I sent to the Fox News program The Five following their special 11:00 PM program on 9/10.  They were mentioning once again that the terrorists that carried out the attack on our embassy in Benghazi on 9/11/12 were still not brought to justice.  I believe that whatever independent media we have, and not shills for the administration, should put the stress on making Secretary Clinton and President Obama explain why they put Ambassador Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith and Navy Seals Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods in such a precarious position and refused to send help when Stevens called Secretary Clinton the night of the attack to plead for assistance.

   

To:  The Five

The real disgrace of what happened in Benghazi was not that the terrorists that carried out the attack were not apprehended.  It was that the one who was most responsible for putting Ambassador Stevens and his aides in such an untenable position was not called to account.  When someone is thrown into a shark infested sea and left to fend for himself we don’t look for the sharks that killed him.  We go after whoever it was that put him there.

One of the early reports sounded by Fox News after the attack was that Ambassador Stevens’ last desperate plea for assistance was when he spoke directly to Secretary of State Clinton shortly after the attack began.  Remember during the Democrat Campaign when they posed the question, “Who would you want to have answer the phone if you called in the wee hours of the morning asking for help?”  Based on what happened in Benghazi you surely wouldn’t want it to be Secretary Clinton.  Tripoli is 49 minutes flying time to Benghazi.  If preparations are what they should be there it shouldn’t have taken much time to get a force put together that could be of assistance.  The embassy never should have been allowed to deteriorate into the insecure state that it was in to begin with.   One of the reports by Fox News’ Investigative Reporter, Catherine Herridge, indicated that a dispatch was sent to the State Department in mid-August 2012 that ten hostile militia groups and an Al-Qaeda training camp were active in Benghazi and that the embassy could not withstand an organized attack. 
 

We know, of course, that Secretary Clinton will not be called to account by this administration for the travesty that occurred in Benghazi because it would shed light that her boss was complicit in what happened.  The one thing I would like to see is that whatever media are not in the camp of the Democrats harp more on keeping the fire lit under Secretary Clinton and her boss for what happened.   More than all the chatter that the terrorists have not been taken into custody, I would like to see the heat kept on (or even started) the “What difference does it Make?” Madam Secretary.    

A way out

A way out

President Obama surely must be regretting making the threat he made in August 2012 that he would take action against Syrian President Bashar Assad if Assad used chemical weapons against his people. 

The situation is getting more and more sticky for President Obama all the time.  President Assad is threatening to take counter action against the United States if Obama attacks.  That would mean that if President Obama backed off now it would appear to the world that he did it because he succumbed to  Assad’s intimidation.  It would have the effect of making Obama look weak and could cause him to take action for no other reason but to show that he’s not being intimidated. 

There is a face-saving way for President Obama to get out of this.  It was reported on Fox News today that Russian Premier Vladimir Putin is talking about urging Assad to put his chemical weapons under United Nations’ Control.  President Obama could say that he’s holding back now till he sees what becomes of Putin’s efforts for Assad to do that.