Dithering Won’t Keep the Peace
President Obama is driving a badly maintained car with defective brakes, no steering wheel and a stuck accelerator; he can’t see the cliff up ahead because it’s night and the headlights are broken too. He is in trouble. So are the rest of us, even the back seat passengers along for the ride.
Such a situation is not new. Well before the First World War began, the royal families of England, Belgium, Russia and Germany had strong familial relationships and had long exchanged intimate correspondence. Each was privy to the thoughts of each and the various ministers of state had similar information. (A highly readable account of the familial and other relationships is presented in Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August.) King Edward VII of England died in 1910 and his state funeral was attended by kings, heirs apparent, queens and lower dignitaries representing seventy nations. First among them was Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm, wearing the uniform of a British field marshal and riding to the right of Britain’s new king, George V. He was also the honorary colonel of the 1st Royal Dragoon, grandson of Queen Victoria (“the grandmother of Europe”) and sixth in succession to the British throne. With such unity, what could possibly go wrong in those simple and easily understood times?
Kaiser Wilhelm had long despised King Edward — “his mother’s brother whom he could neither bully nor impress, whose fat figure cast a shadow between Germany and the sun [...]. ‘You cannot imagine what a Satan he is!’” Above all else, Kaiser William craved great international respect and power for himself and for Germany — and their rightful place in the sun. That did not augur well for the rest of Europe or for Britain.
The Schlieffen Plan for German conquest, beginning with the invasion of fastidiously neutral Belgium, had been completed in 1906. It was continuously and meticulously updated by his successors. Germany’s intentions for the invasion of Belgium as the first move in its quest for domination had hardly been kept secret. The plans were ignored or glossed over, as would be Germany’s intentions, in the years leading up to the world war.
Germany apparently did not much credit the prevailing notion that due to the rise of international business and general prosperity, likely to be destroyed by war, there would be no war at all. The First World War began in 1914, with the long-planned German invasion of Belgium, and ended in 1918 with Germany’s defeat. Despite the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, Germany began to violate the treaty left and right by rearming. Civilian flying clubs were formed to evade the prohibitions on air force development; ships of tonnage expressly prohibited by the treaty were built by Germany while Britain reduced her tonnage in compliance with it.
In 1933, sixteen years after the end of World War I and six years before the start of World War II, the Oxford Union resolved “that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.” According to Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm, “it was easy to laugh off such an episode in England, but in Germany, in Russia, in Italy, in Japan, the idea of a decadent, degenerate Britain took deep root and swayed many calculations.”
Churchill notes that by 1934, German air power exceeded that of Britain and was growing more rapidly. In 1935, Germany announced the advent of compulsory military service. In April of 1935, the members of the League of Nations came out foursquare against treaty violations but made no threat of force should further such violations occur. They occurred frequently. The Treaty of Versailles was in tatters. That mattered little to a still largely pacifist nation, unwilling and unprepared to take the minimal risks then necessary to avoid far greater risks later.
The German plans were ignored or glossed over because they were too horrible to contemplate and did not fit with the prevailing pacifist mood. Then as now, confidence that all would somehow work out for the best was misplaced. In September of 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced to great acclaim that he had achieved “peace in our time” through concessions to Germany. He had not achieved peace; he had given Germany yet another year to continue preparing for her adventures, which were to be far more devastating and deadly than had been the First World War. Was Germany a “democracy” in 1938? If Clintonian language may be permitted, a lot depends on what is meant by “democracy.”
Churchill had been a leading proponent of stopping Hitler before massive devastation would be required. As he noted in The Gathering storm:
We must regard as deeply blameworthy before history … [all British parties] during this fatal period. Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation . . . the strong and violent pacifism which at this time dominated the Labour-Socialist Party, the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality . . . constituted a picture of British fatuity and fecklessness which, though devoid of guile, was not devoid of guilt, and, though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries which even so far as they have unfolded, are already beyond comparison in human experience (emphasis added).
If he ever bothered to read about them, President Obama must think no more highly of Churchill’s warnings than he did of the Churchill bust he returned to the English soon after he ascended to the Oval Office.
As the world explodes today in such places as the Arab lands — problems in Algeria began recently — and as the fuses are being set for explosions in Venezuela, North Korea, China and elsewhere, the United States is preparing to cut military spending while simultaneously introducing “social justice” reforms in the military and preparing to spend funds to get our troops ready to accept those reforms without excessively impairing combat effectiveness. Having already been given an anticipatory Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama evidently sees no need even to consider preserving the peace in the best way thus far found — being alert while keeping the country strong and ready to defend peace and itself.
There was probably very little that President Obama could do in the days of violence immediately leading up to the Egyptian coup/presidential resignation and there is even less now. He can and will continue only to dither; the crisis has been wasted. However, the situation in Egypt did not hatch unheralded overnight; they do so infrequently. Action or even strong words supportive of the protesters in Iran, rather than neglect, conflicting mumblings and indecision might well have made the situation in Egypt easier to deal with. Ditto had the situation in Honduras been handled in an adult manner not very long ago. North Korea? Hu is dealing with that now? With a nearly flawless record of undirected dithering, future crises will be even less possible to manage. Conflicting and later countermanded statements were noticed early on by the mainstream media — and by folks overseas as well; they pay attention. A clear path, rather than a muddy and muddled maze, for U.S. foreign policy should have emerged; it did not because under President Obama it could not.
More interested in salvaging the declining prospects of his domestic initiatives than in foreign affairs, President Obama’s minions
fret that new instability in the Middle East could distract from the jobs and innovation message that the president started pushing in his State of the Union address; dim hopes for a breakthrough in the peace process; and, most worrisome of all, stall the economy if the revolutionary tsunami spreads to other Arabian states, driving up the price of oil.
“It’s just a very tough line to straddle,” a senior administration official said. “If [Mubarak] guts this out and stays, we’re going to continue to need him and work with him, and he might not appreciate that we pushed. Bottom line, Egypt’s destiny is Egypt’s to decide, and we’ll work with whoever emerges or is left standing.”
Moreover, administration officials confess that they are uncertain who should replace him.
“There’s no horse to bet on,” said a Democrat with intimate knowledge of the conversations. “There’s no opposition leader to get behind.”
And that’s from a generally pro-Obama blog.
President Obama himself appears — and probably not only to the politically aware in the United States — to have little interest in foreign affairs beyond the opportunities they provide for trite phrases poorly concealing hypocrisy — Iran, Honduras, Israel and now Egypt. Does President Obama really want President Mubarak to go, stay, do both, do neither, or something else? Probably something like that. Does he have any conception of what would be good for Egypt or the United States? It was observed in The Daily Beast as to Egypt that
the Obama White House hasn’t helped matters by shifting policy ground almost daily, causing confusion, and thereby squandering America’s credibility and limited but precious influence. President Obama has got to learn the fundamental rule of dealing with careening crises: State your basic principles and then shut up publicly! (Meaning, just boringly repeat your mantra daily.)
That’s all well and good; however, a useful statement of “basic principles” requires that they exist and have valid bases in fact; dithering and vacillating as the winds blow are inadequate as basic principles. It did not help when Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a widely televised House Intelligence Committee hearing on February 10 that the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood is “a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.” What was the Brotherhood’s reaction to this? Iran’s? They were likely disabled briefly by fits of laughter. Perhaps they recovered quickly enough to learn of the later “clarification” of Mr. Clapper’s remarks. Throughout the crisis, the entire Obama administration was flummoxed as the situation was spinning out of control — not that they at any time had it in control.
Secretary Clinton, meanwhile,
stressed the need for stronger U.S. diplomacy in global hot spots, saying Wednesday the recent developments in Egypt and the Middle East demonstrate the critical need for America’s global leadership.
Speaking to an audience of nearly every American ambassador, Clinton referred to the unrest gripping the Arab world in emphasizing the importance of U.S. “civilian power.” She said U.S. diplomacy needed to be more nimble, innovative and accountable than ever before.
Global hot spots? How about before they get hot? American leadership? Going where? A sense of direction is needed first.
Muslim Brotherhood? Don’t worry; we have been assured that all will surely work out for the best. After all, President Obama is not President Bush; he is the opposite.
Obama was Bush’s antithesis and defined himself as resetting everything that Bush had envisioned, clueless that that meant in Pavlovian fashion opposing all the good that Bush had done as well. He canceled support for Egyptian dissidents. He all but gave a green light for the theocrats to crush the Iranian dissidents. He was harder on Israel than on Syria. He was far more interested in either apologizing for the United States, trashing the Iraq war, or offering fairy stories about the Islamic roots of Western civilization than simply expressing support for consensual government in the Middle East.
President Obama “is a devotee of multiculturalism. He subscribes to the doctrine that all cultures are equal (except of course ours, which has so much for which to apologize).” Perhaps unfortunately, multiculturalism is not a major tenet of the Religion of Peace; apostates must die. If only Congressman West and his ilk would embrace multiculturalism and stop saying disrespectful things about the Religion of Peace everything would quickly get better. Then we could reset relations, as has been done so (un)successfully with Russia, and have a new START. Egypt may have its own weapons of mass destruction and be working on plutonium and uranium processing. How much would a treaty with Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood cost and how would it work out?
So three cheers for multiculturalism, recently rejected by England’s new prime minister as well as by French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Merkel. President Obama so desperately wants the (unrequited) love of our Islamic brethren; the beauties of the Religion of Peace, the Koran and Sharia law must not be considered or questioned seriously. Many in the United States once felt that way about Communism and Nazism, despite the equally clear writings of their proponents. It’s far more comforting to believe what one wants to believe than the bitter revelations of one’s lying eyes — until unpleasant and surprising reality intrudes and it becomes too late.
President Obama is remarkable for his childish behavior and in many respects he appeared to have abdicated before President Mubarak finally got around to it; or perhaps Mrs. Obama Shanghaied him and he was out supervising school bake sales or helping her prepare for her next trip to India; or anything else to avoid blame for whatever happens on his watch. That must be only fair, because he doesn’t pay much attention and everything comes as a big surprise; he is the president; it could not be his fault in any way! Could it?
If the country had no need for a president, that might be OK. Even Ethelread the Unready, a weak king, didn’t appear to be quite that ready to abdicate. As observed in 1066 And All That (a terrific spoof of history),
Ethelread the Unready was called the Unready because he was never ready when the invading Danes were. Rather than wait for him the Danes used to fine large sums called Danegeld, for not being ready. But though they were always ready, the Danes had very bad memories and often used to forget that they had paid the Danegeld and come back for it almost before they had sailed away. By that time Ethelread was always unready again. Finally, Ethelread was taken completely unawares by his own death and was succeeded by Canute.
Militant Islam is a major threat yet we refuse to respond to it other than by paying the modern equivalent of Danegeld, giving money, talking sweetly and trying to make friends; they must understand that and respect him for it — and by extension us for electing him. Surely, President Obama’s masterful command of his mind and of language, his well received outreach programs designed to show the Islamic world that the United States is fair and desires only what they think may be best for them, coupled with the underoverwhelming respect accorded him by friends and even by those who don’t much like him or us will prevail — in a distant and very different universe. The solution is obvious: repeal reality; it’s a distraction from President Obama’s agenda, the Senate would probably go along and for our leaders to be burdened with it is a travesty.
A mild and appeasing heart effusively demonstrated by apologizing for one’s own errors in the past and continuing sins of one’s country has not gone over very well with those who seek to put the United States “in her place” at the foot of the mountain as they themselves struggle with each other to ascend to its summit. That sort of thing didn’t work very well in avoiding World Wars I and II either. As Britain eventually learned when World War II approached and then began, appeasement provides a very poor “road map” for preserving peace unless peace is defined as being stomped to submission by one’s enemies.
Can we buy peace and love? Much depends what we are trying to sell and on the salesman; peace and love are not free. Does the Salesman in Chief show disdain for the product offered in exchange for peace and love? President Obama has persistently done just that. Are our customers ready for it? Some are not. Have we let them down recently? Yes, we have. How good is the warranty? Not great. We probably can neither buy nor sell if we continuously demonstrate to our friends that we prefer the well being of our mutual enemies to their and our own well being. Reveal British nuclear secrets to Russia to get a treaty? Great idea. Which of our friends might have been missed? Throwing our friends under the nearest bus when that seems likely to appease our enemies does not promote strong ties of friendship — with our alleged friends or with our enemies; they can probably anticipate what would happen should they be so foolish as to become our friends. President Obama seems unable even to make heads or tails of who our friends might be. Has he been told of Egypt’s long and friendly relationship with North Korea, with which there is a long standing commercial relationship and from which Egypt buys missiles and other armaments? Who’s next under the bus? Probably not Hu. Stability seems now to be the key, regardless of all else and regardless of whether the United States becomes increasingly irrelevant in the process.
President Obama seems to think that he knows far more about our enemies and potential customers, friend and foe, than he actually knows. Even when friends and enemies come from similar cultures (e.g. Germany in the years leading up to World Wars I and II), knowing their perspectives and what they intend to do in light of them is often difficult or the information is rejected as inconsistent with hope. When very different cultures, ideologies, religions and moral values are involved it can be and usually is an almost impossible intellectual exercise; interests, loves, hates and desires can not be fully or even reasonably well understood on a misty, multicultural intellectual plane alone.
The country is in a pickle and the situation will continue to deteriorate as long as the president remains consistently inconsistent and persistently unpersistent — as he goes off in all directions, or none, and cares about little beyond getting another term in office to pursue his largely rejected domestic agenda.
We have a novice as president of our country.
This morning Orin Hatch said that Obama obviously did not listen to his advisers in reference to the budget he has presented.
This man will be the ruination of our country. He needs to be stopped in the next election. The new people that just got elected better have a set of balls and stop him when they can, or Republicans will be blamed for everything that Obama has managed to thrust upon this country…or perhpas there will be o republic to defend when he gets through
“He needs to be stopped in the next election.”
His failure to attend to the Constitutional duties of the office he holds, his deliberate and public refusal to protect our southern border and attack those who desire to have that done…certainly provides for those with the authority to STOP HIM now. But they’re not. Why not?
There is no question obama is far more interested in his socialist vision for the US than in foreign affairs. Foreign affairs are distracting.
Fortunately, a master organizer can spin anything. That’s what organizing is all about after all. The spin on Egypt is that little lenin’s speech spurred the brave Eqyptians to take a stand agains the evil Mubarak. At the cusp of disaster, the boy king played hardball with the evil dictator and prevailed. So he has created the environment for democracy, and much more peacefully than Bush did in Iraq. And since nobody can dispute that the United States must always everywhere be the champion for liberty, nobody can say a word if things go wrong from this point forward. Perhaps if the poor regent wasn’t so bound by the principles our country must always fight for, he might have brokered a different, more successful solution. He only acted as he was forced to by his country.
Yes — and in the sweet rushing fullness of time, when Obamunist policies have crippled the American economy and given us unemployment rates like unto Europe’s, Obama will use foreign involvements as socialists always have: as a way to distract us from our domestic troubles.
Remember: It’s Democrats who start wars. It’s Republicans who bring them to a conclusion. Reflect on why that might be.
Mr.Miller is complaining that the USA is going to cut military spending. I say that it’s about time such spending was cut. I strongly favor a strong defense of our country. I don’t support hundreds of billions in cost overruns for weapons procurement programs nor do I support continuing to buy equipment that the military neither wants nor needs; or stuff that doesn’t work, like missile defense. Readers should do some research on the web site of the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
I think it’s a significant fact that even conservative Republican members of Congress are now complaining that the Pentagon can’t be audited, from a fiscal perspective, because the military’s record keeping is so shoddy. I think that Defense Secretary Gates, who happens to be a Republican, is right on track in trying to get a better handle on military spending.
I agree,and disagree.
There needs to be an audit of the pentagon, now.
We need weapons as we cannot defend ourselves with feather dusters.
However, the things that we have heard about machinery $$$$running in Millionsandmillions of $$$ and it doesn’t work properly.
ALSO< There is No accounting for a lot of "stuff" that is missing….
Our military needs to run a tighter ship and help our military families live "above" the poverty line.
It won't happen. There is not reason it could not happen, it just won't We have become a nation to make fun of and disrespect.
Steve; your comment is totally unrelated to Dan Miller’s article. What has the history of “appeasement”, or to coin Miller’s phrase, “dithering” have to do with inefficient military procurements in the US? Your partisanship and ideological mindset have surely blinded you to reality. What a shame because Miller has penned a thoughtful and creative assessment of the Obama “foreign policy”.
I agree that waste is bad and that there is plenty of it. I wonder, however, about the extent to which the fat can be excised (consistently with customary but unfortunate ear mark preservation and that sort of thing) without cutting the muscle and bone as well. There are quite likely better places to start and possibly even to finish.
Harry Truman, while a senator, headed the Truman Commission on military waste and fraud. He found some pretty bad stuff. When he became the President, his Secretary of Defense bragged that he was cutting military spending to the bone and through the bone; he did so.
President Truman (in my opinion one of our best recent presidents) was not all that keen on the Marine Corps until the Korean Conflict began about five years later in June of 1950 or until after the Marines pulled the then ill-prepared Army’s fat from the fire in and even before the Inchon invasion in September of that year; President Truman seems soon to have changed his mind. The ability to do that and to acknowledge doing it helps to make a president great.
There is currently debate about the proper place of the Marine Corps and the extent to which spending for Marine amphibious vehicles should be reduced. It is, I suppose, possible that Marine amphibious landings are no longer needed in this modern world, that decades old equipment is adequate and that another decade of research and development would produce better stuff less expensively than currently planned; all seem unlikely.
Please show me any weapons program that has “hundreds of billions” of dollars in cost overruns. Also, I hate to tell you, missile-defense works, quite nicely. Defense is one of the Constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government, and in this day and age especially we cannot afford to build today’s weapons according to yesterday’s threat. The U.S. military isn’t preparing for Afghanistan, or even Iran. It’s preparing for taking on China, and possible – again – Russia. Or haven’t you noticed those new supersonic anti-ship missiles that China’s been showing off? Not to mention their new aircraft carrier, their new stealth fighter, and their new submarines.
The hypocrisy continues
It’s sad but to be expected that the Obama Administration, which had offered weaker platitudes as to the earlier protests against an extraordinarily oppressive Muslim theocratic regime in Iran than the constantly changing, contradictory and therefore generally weak platitudes it offered more recently as to Egypt, would charge Iran with hypocrisy. No matter, it does not directly involve President Obama’s domestic initiatives.
I wonder how much confidence the current protesters in Iran will place in administration pronouncements now.
By now everybody knows when Obama or any other Democrat says health care, it’s going to be UNHEALTHY.
When they say anything about “cuts” or “budgeting”, it means MORE SPENDING.
If they talk about “fiscally conservative” it means MORE LAVISH CASH OUTLAYS.
AND BY NOW, EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT “STIMULUS” MEANS DISCOURAGE, DISPIRIT, AND DEMORALIZE.
So; Are you now clear on what “hope and change” really means? And yes; It’s going to get worse.
I agree with all the comments that emphasize the emergency in which we find ourselves. I would also call your attention to the problems posed by the “best schools” and the media, for they are nearly all, repeat, nearly all, promoting a view of America where the legacy of the Founders leads ineluctably toward the welfare state. They have literally turned the world upside down. I write about this constantly, but here is a summary of their depredations that must affect political will and discredit “the Right.” http://clarespark.com/2009/12/12/switching-the-enlightenment-corporatist-liberalism-and-the-revision-of-american-history/. Turning this narrative around means action at the local and national levels, and must be a very high priority.
Thanks for the link; I’ll save it to read when I can give my best thought.
Obama: The Good, the Bad, and the Most Ugly
Before anyone starts thinking that there’s nothing good to say about President Barack Hussein Obama and his presidency, a major conservative website, HumanEvents.com, has come up with 10 good things about the man and his administration. Most of the good comes with qualifications but, hey, we can’t expect miracles.
Among his foreign policy/anti-terrorism positives is his fundamental adherence to the initiatives of the man he consistently derided, George W. Bush. Gitmo is still open and will remain unshuttered indefinitely since Obama hasn’t the foggiest idea of what else to do with its resident terrorists and despite his pledge to close it within a year. HumanEvents also lists as a plus Obama’s not abandoning Afghanistan and Iraq, yet, despite his commitment to cut and run.
Politically, Obama’s other plusses include his inadvertent creation of the Tea Party and his also unintentional but invaluable assistance in aiding Republicans to take control of the House of Representatives.
On the domestic front, after kicking and screaming, Obama agreed to the extension of the Bush tax cuts, albeit for only 2 years, and increased the number of deportations of illegal aliens, although the administration went after Arizona’s new, common-sense immigration law.
Finally, thanks to his repeated gaffes and other demonstrations that he is as flawed and inept as Jimmy Carter, Obama self-deflated the self-created “messiah myth,” annoyed those in his party even more leftist than he, and, in what may be the greatest good he has accomplished, his love of vacations and golf have afforded other Americans to goof off too: http://tiny.cc/86728
However, coins generally have two sides and the flip side of the Obama coin, the national damages for which he’s indirectly or directly responsible, far outweigh any good he has achieved. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3643)
As Mark Steyn puts it:
“America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.”
Has anyone read the Art of War by Sun Tzu..?
America needs to make itself strong again before embarking on wild foreign affairs. People smell blood because our banking system and infrastructure is in tatters. America is a Nation that fights wars with technological advantage, held only as long as the funds are there to pay their cost.
The standard philosophy is President Reagan bankrupted the soviet union into collapse. Al-Queda / Taliban is doing the same thing to the USA…we are spending Hundreds of Billions on Invasions, Homeland Defense networks, and a massive infrastructure that only works if coupled with feet on ground intelligence support, which we do not have.
Nobody is stopping to reflect on this and it will bring about a top heavy war administration that will topple the Nation.
The art of war lays out strategies that have withstood thousands of years testing and proven themselves over and again. These principles are taught within West Point, Naval academies, Kings College in London, strategic studies institute, every major war college in the world knows these principles of war and understands all military forces that violate them lose the war they are fighting.
America has made terrible decisions regarding the Petro Dollar system, has placed the entire economy within control of Saudi Arabia and foreign Banking institutions. Before anything else America needs to correct these errors, as any time it wants the House of Saud can pull the rug out from America’s feet.
Ever get that feeling like you’re spitting into the wind?
Read “Who Keeps You Safe? You Do.” By AWR Hawkins at PJM.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/who-keeps-you-safe-you-do/
Alex you are correct about the USA now under the thumb of the Saudi Oil Kings. This a a very bad place to be, and could be hard to climb out of given our current leaders. Or for that matter ever give the lack of spine that we as a country seem to be able to muster.
As for any of our current leaders having “read the Art of War by Sun Tzu..?”. IF they have then who are they wishing to fight or apply the teachings to, because everything our current batch of leaders do is worse for the US as a country, and better for our enemies. My bet is they know exactly what they are doing and hope none of us “pee-on’s” figure it all out. Because no one can be this full of incompetence and not mean to do it.