"If you think the UN can do it instead of us, you might need to be drug tested. And if we are to be the world's cop, we need to do it right. In other words, be more like Frank Bullitt or Harry Callahan, and a whole lot less like Barney Fife."
What is it with our world? Ever since the 1930's (I know - it also happened before then), the world seems to have to deal with at least one bad guy all the time. In the 1930's, it was Adolph Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo. After the Axis Powers were defeated, it was Stalin and Mao in the late 1940's and 1950's. Then in the 1960's, it was Castro and Khrushchev (and still Mao). In the 1970's, we started the three generation rule of nut balls in North Korea. And in the same neighborhood, we also had Pol Pot in Cambodia. The list just goes on and on and on, so don't yell at me if I forgot a few.
What is it with bad guys? Why can't we just have a never ending parade of good guys instead? The rights we have in this country are not unique - they are natural and God given. In other words, every person in this world should have the same rights. Why in the heck do some nations allow despots to rise up and crush freedoms? Then to allow these despots to become expansionist, to go abroad to crush other nations freedoms?
Just once, I would like to have agreement from all corners of our political discourse that evil does in fact walk this world. That every year, we have bad people doing bad things in this world. And not just this year - every year some bad actor steps forward and does bad things to good people.
When the United States takes a pass on helping freedom loving people in this world, the bad guys have a field day. For example, in September of 1939, when German forces invaded Poland, the United States should have immediately put Hitler on notice. Withdraw your troops, or we will expel them by force. But we did not. In fact, we did nothing. It was not until March of 1941, when the Lend Lease Act was signed into law, that we did something. Even with that, some in this country were reticent. Why? Lend Lease effectively ended our neutrality. Meanwhile, while we debated things for a year and a half until March 1941, the Germans went on a huge land grab in Europe.
Under the self-imposed "lead from behind" philosophy of the Barrack Obama, China went from a world power to a super power. They have developed a Blue Water Navy. They have developed "islands" in the South China Sea. Purpose? Military, of course. Now that President Xi decided to be President for life, stand by. China might soon eclipse Russia as the world's number one threat.
President Trump, with the help of his closest military advisers, has committed to fix what is broken with our military. To get our readiness back. But a vital question remains. If push came to shove right now with a major power in the world, could we offer the proper and appropriate military solution? Many experts think not. The damage that Obama did to our military, by trying to convert it into a "meals on wheels" program instead of a fighting force, will take years to fix. Meanwhile, China and Russia are doing just fine, thank you.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Bad guys keep popping up just like in a giant game of Whack-a-Mole. Like it or not, the United States has been for years, and needs to be in the future, the world's policeman. If you think the UN can do it instead of us, you might need to be drug tested. And if we are to be the world's cop, we need to do it right. In other words, be more like Frank Bullitt or Harry Callahan, and a whole lot less like Barney Fife.
Rather than being the world’s policeman and primary balancer of power, in a multi-polar world, the United States can and should allow countries in each region to establish their own balance-of-power arrangements.
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. would still be committed to security in those regions, but as a balancer of last resort—intervening if, and only if, the nations in the region cannot contain the situation.
A balancer-of-last-resort strategy is a more realistic approach in a multi-polar world because it would allow the United States to distinguish between crises and conflicts vital to its interests and those that do not threaten U.S. national security—rather than assuming that every crisis requires U.S. military intervention.
The real bad guys are the leaders of the religious right!
ReplyDeleteWe’re ignoring the corruption inside the church — the moral corruption, the theological corruption, because we’re trying to protect the church against what we see as these outside threats, whether it be the gay rights lobby or abortion rights or Muslim refugees or illegal immigrants.
Meanwhile the compromises being made on the inside have the possibility of truly destroying the credibility of American Christian witness.”