Thank God for John Kerry. Our snobby, elitist secretary of State offered this bit of wisdom to an audience of German students a few days ago:
“As a country, as a society, we live and breathe the idea of religious freedom and religious tolerance, whatever the religion, and political freedom and political tolerance, whatever the point of view,” Kerry told the students in Berlin, the second stop on his inaugural trip as secretary of state.
“People have sometimes wondered about why our Supreme Court allows one group or another to march in a parade even though it’s the most provocative thing in the world and they carry signs that are an insult to one group or another,” he added.
“The reason is, that’s freedom, freedom of speech. In America you have a right to be stupid – if you want to be,” he said, prompting laughter. “And you have a right to be disconnected to somebody else if you want to be.
A ringing defense of liberty, tolerance, and free speech, don’t you think?
That “right to be stupid” extends to the secretary of State, the president, and any actions they take that make America’s position weaker in the region:
Case in point: Food and medical aid to the Syrian rebels. Not surprisingly, the reaction from the rebels was less than overwhelming gratitude:
Rebels took little solace from Washington’s latest promises, or from reports that, according to U.S. and European officials, the U.K. is expected to agree to provide combat gear, including body armor, night-vision equipment and military-transport vehicles.
“The way I see it is that this is all nonsense and lies to people who are dying. Anyway, the final word will go to the revolutionaries on the ground,” said an activist inside Syria.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the U.A.E. already provide light weapons, delivered mostly across the Turkish and Jordanian borders. France and the U.K. fund local civilian activist and aid councils directly, and, like the U.S., provide communications and satellite equipment, and train Syrian activists on them.
“Nothing has changed, the U.S. position of no arming is crystal clear,” said Mohammad Sarmini, a spokesman for the Syrian National Council, the opposition coalition’s largest faction, which boycotted the Rome conference at what it said was insufficient Western support for the rebels.
“This has become embarrassing and degrading,” Mr. Sarmini said. “The regime’s escalation has rendered even our unmet pleas foolish. We used to beg for antiaircraft missiles. What do you ask for to counter Scuds?”
It would, of course, have been better to give nothing, to maintain the status quo. This way, we actually look weaker while generating zero gratitude on the part of the rebels.
It shall be their legacy.
One of its earliest involvment was with Iran for which the U.S. had diplomatic relations with since 1883 and evenutally seen a limited constitutional monarchy in 1906 followed by nothing but a down hill progression in 1953.
Since 1947, we've been alll over the Middle East and third world nations around the globe involved in nation building at a horrendous monetary and lives lost and maimed cost over the many decades. Thus far, over all these decades and costs, not a single instance can be claimed as a sustained victory! Nation building, in its simplest definitive language, is nothing short of democratic imperialism and globalization of economics, a monetary system, ja udicial system, Christianity and yes to a very large extent, a global governance while isolating and containing the predominate communist nations. While many will be fast to say Communist Russia has been defeated without a shot fired, the last chapter in the hisotry book is far from being written. Likewise, for the emerging Communist or Socialist China and their slow adaptation to capitalism.
So, yes, in America, we have the constitutional right and freedom to be collectively stupid not for just a generation but rather, for many generations and especially when its citizens believe that any presidential administration sets foreign policy. EVERY president comes to office following the foreign relations policies of communist containment and nation building controlled by external organizations of political IDEOLOGUEs such as the CFR and several think tanks. EVERY president comes to office having to deal day-by-day with the failures consequences of the nation building strategies around the globe.
How we now get out of the mess nation building has created is, far to complex at this point in time but somebody had better be figuring it out or we're doomed economically!
As for Kerry, it really makes no difference how he relates Americanism to some foreign nation. He is but a minnow in the ocean compared to the real problems we're facing down the pike.
Why, oh, why are we Americans expected to continually reap what others have sown so cavalierly during colonialism's heyday in West/Central Asia?
We Americans have spent enough before, during and after the Saddam era with Kuwait et al thrown into the mix.
Any medicines or "aid" of any sort contributed by Americans (....other nations of course are free to contribute instead of America....)will merely end up on the Black Market.
Arms of any sort of course to the "rebels" win in turn only be used against us Americans......it's only a matter of time.
How much more time is needed for it to be universally understood that the best course is to permit these butchering Muslims to continue butchering each other with their accustomed wild abandon.
Why should we Americans interfere with this intramural Muslim cleansing?
If you are advocating US intervention on the side of the Sunnis you have learned nothing from Libyan intervention.
No way this comes together is some kind of representative by vote parliamentary rule. At best you'll have a form of Confessional gov't like Lebanon, which amounts to a permanent uneasy truce by factions that don't trust one another.
At worst, if Assad falls, the civil war will continue on as groups fight for scraps of power-financial franchises, to hold Syria together, or regional sovereignty.