A bracing perspective on her reaction to Jay Lefkowitz’s remarks to the American Enterprise Institute about the six-way talks.
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January 28th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Lee Hamilton has other ideas, and not exactly wussy ones. Written less than three months ago, it hasn’t aged that much now, has it, in the long view of things. Be certain that China to whom we are increasingly economically beholden, takes the long long longer view of matters. We are but babes to them. Gonna take a lot to checkmate them. And they are indeed so in this picture here. I’d be calling on Il Papa and the Dalai too.
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=230972&fuseaction=topics.item&news_id=309566
Does damning your country’s State Department while regaling in its military might, when it goes or stays in a fight equate with freedom? This NorKor thing goes way way back, as we know. It is understandable that we will have our hawks and our doves, but it is not that cut and dry. We must walk a delicate balancing act here, as always, with China. Hey, we’re playing by our rules from way way back. The tao of take what you can, and damn those who get in the way. Perhaps it fits, but at what human cost? I do understand how we can get impatient. When enough of us do, then that is war. I think we jumped the gun on Iraq, though, and will have to take that as a lesson. It would behoove us to prepare to fight on all the fronts proposed here in this blogspace. Bombs and lopsided casualty stats alone are generally not going to get it done. That has been proven over and over again since the last Big One was over. Interesting stat on that last big one is that Allied casualties outnumbered Axis’ over 3 to 1. Of course count is multiplied by millions.
January 28th, 2008 at 11:28 am
“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”–WA Mozart
January 28th, 2008 at 11:35 am
A huge reason to trumpet statecraft is that we still got a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on in the Middle East. One would think we’d be aware enough to recognize where we take care of first things first, and finish what we started. This is a quite delicate balancing act here. Feeling squeezed? I certainly am. The way we did Iraq is a lesson not to be repeated.
January 28th, 2008 at 11:38 am
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080128/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_war_turns_16
2 hours, 3 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - In a shift with profound implications, the Bush administration is attempting to re-energize its terrorism-fighting war efforts in Afghanistan, the original target of a post-Sept. 11 offensive. The U.S. also is refocusing on Pakistan, where a regenerating al-Qaida is posing fresh threats.
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There is growing recognition that the United States risks further setbacks, if not deepening conflict or even defeat, in Afghanistan, and that success in that country hinges on stopping Pakistan from descending into disorder.
January 28th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I appreciate Hamilton’s thoughtfulness, but it seems to me we’ve been about as flexible as one could ask for. North Korea still hasn’t disclosed or dismantled anything of true significance yet. As Claudia Rosett said, timetables do indeed matter, and NorKor has shown that disregarding them and stringing the other five parties to the talks along is about all it’s interested in. Well, that and keeping its nukes.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
OK, what’s your solution now? Timetables, budgets, international forum, let’s lock and load? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxrWz9XVvls
January 28th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
This stuff has been over a half a century in the making. They need a good squeeze job. Of course deadlines matter. We know that. Treaties are supposed to matter, but they don’t. We know that and have broken them frequently ourselves. Just check your history books.
January 28th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I’m not aware of any treaties in which the United States just outright breached the good faith of another signatory - certainly not in a situation in which the other party was concerned that we posed some kind of existential threat, the reason being of course, that we never have posed such a threat to any civilized nation-state.
But going back over our history - which, as we know, Freedom-Haters consider shameful - is beside the point here.
I think I agree with your assertion that “they need a good squeeze job,” but I’d really want some specifics on what you mean by that. Aren’t you arguing for more sticks and fewer carrots? (If so, this blogmeister’s on board.)
January 28th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I gues you were asking me to be more specific, too. Okay: an absolutely impenetrable blockade. No money, no food, no fuel oil, no more negotiations. Now, that would be a squeeze job.
Intense lobbying at the United Nations to have them removed from the General Assembly and any other UN bodies they currently belong to.
Let them know there will be no letup in this until they are willing to talk about human rights at the same meetings where we discuss them dismantling their nuke program.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Your squeeze job description sounds like a winner to me. But how is removing them from the main international forum we have going to accomplish anything? That’s international assholianism. Why is it our business what they do with their own people? Let’s do that in our own country only. Still name calling, I see. I will hitherto ignore that.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1833795,00.html
Here’s one. I see you used the term “civilized” nation-state. Shameful periods exist, yes, in our country. That does not mean it is not OUR country which we dearly love and will protect to the death. Preemptive striking should be out. In OUR country. It did our relations with other countries absolutely no good. It just proved we cannot be trusted. It will take a long long time to undo that, if ever. Much of the world still views us as speaking with forked tongue. The beauty of the Constitution we serve is that it allows for a change of direction every 2 years or so, especially every 4. Sadly, though, here, folks largely don’t trust their own leadership and why the hell should they? Nothing new there, either, really.
January 28th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
And I close with another snippet from Soros. Just who are the freedomhaters here? Why, it’s those who know they are in possession of the ultimate truth. There is considerable disagreement from others, though. Glad you and your ilk know, though, so you can call all the rest of us names. Hateful names.
The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognize that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. The supremacist ideology postulates that just because we are stronger than others, we know better and have right on our side.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:06 am
Man, I just don’t know how to respond to such an unwavering belief in moral equivalency. You really think Saudi Arabia, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria are just our fellow neighbor neations on this globe, no better and no worse than the nations that do the best job of upholding the Western values? Wow, that’s some dangerous stuff right there.
And just in case you’ve lost sight of what is meant by Western values, we’re talking:
- freedom of speech
- freedom of assembly
- free-market economics
- equality for women
- equality of all races and ethnicities
- inventiveness, creativity, and robust exchange of ideas
- decency and dignity
- the primacy of family (headed by one mand and one woman)
- an accurate understanding of the nature of God
These are the things for which the United States has fought in every conflict in which it has ever found itself.
“Supremacy,” my ass . . . I think the saddest thing about the Freedom-Haters is their utter inability to see what W, much less real conservatives, are truly about.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Think about the supposedly egregious treaty violation discussed in the Guardian article to which you link. Think about how much the world has changed since that treay was put into effect (1974). Are we to go to the relevant international bodies at this point in time and jump through all the bureaucratic hoops that member countries would require of us to revise it or supercede it? You know full well that our enemies would try to thwart us at every turn, obfuscating and delaying, if nothing else. Meanwhile, those same enemies - and many more - are working on germ-type WMDs even as we speak.
If you respond with some type of how-is-that-different-from-how-North-Korea-is-treating-the-six-way-talks garbage, I think I’ll puke.
For decades, going back at least to Jeane Kirkpatrick’s 1979 Commentary article, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” the moral-equivalency poison put forth by the left in the Western world has been on full display.
January 29th, 2008 at 3:53 am
Regarding our freedoms, I love them for me and everyone. We are not citizens of any other sovereign nation though. If they want what we have, they can overthrow their government and perhaps even ask us for help and we might grant it, through established channels. It is not so much about moral equivalency as it is about each country’s sovereign right to govern their own countries. If our system is best, then it should be obvious to the rest of the world which will adopt ours by example, not by force.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
So, you believe you are in possession of ultimate truth? Is that not hubris? Even if you are, what then? Dost thou kill other human beings to spread your truth?
January 29th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I have a daughter who does not like eggs. What do I do about that?
January 29th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Oh, come on. The choices you have when it comes to the world’s bad guys are thwart their designs and, if necessary, kill ‘em, or lay down, expose your underbelly and let ‘em claw your entrails out. It’s a binary set of options. Inviting them to tea like they are normal players in the human race isn’t feasible.
This question of whether I’m in possession of the ultimate truth is predicated on the premise that most everything is relative. It’s not. American interests and principles - see the list five comments above - are not up for negotiation. It’s not about me; it’s about the survival of our civilization.
Real bad actors are working feverishly on our destruction. Very few people in the West in a postion to do something about it fully understand that. That’s the first task at hand: getting more and more folks to recognize the threat.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Sure, they are not up for negotiation here. Under our constitution. Spreading those ideas/ideals at the butt of a gun or through the bay doors of a bombadier calls the lie to some of them is what I am saying. Kill ‘em or lay down? Our only two options?
January 30th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Enlightenment offers amazing benefits to the world. Enlightened beings don’t incite war, or commit terrorism. You have the power to make sweeping changes in your life and in so doing bring about change in the world. In the long term, your small actions will have huge implications. Reclaim your natural birthright. Become again “as a little child,” and retrieve your untroubled state of mind. You will find oppression and victimization by feelings of powerlessness unnecessary. You can transcend your chief critic—the terrorist in your own mind.
January 30th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
It’s the birthday of historian and author Barbara Tuchman, (books by this author) born in New York City (1912). She wrote The Guns of August (1962), a study of the events that led to the outbreak of World War I. She said, “War is the unfolding of miscalculations.”