OBAMA’S YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN WORLD: BRET STEPHENS….SEE NOTE PLEASE
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323485704578255593489895424.html
THIS POLICY IS BI-PARTISAN…..EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION ENCOURAGED THE HUNGARIANS TO REVOLT AGAINST COMMUNISM AND RUSSIA….PROMISING SUPPORT. THE HUNGARIANS DID SO AND FOUGHT BRAVELY UNTIL THE RUSSIAN TANKS ENTERED THE STREETS OF BUDAPEST AND SLAUGHTERED THE PARTISANS….THE US DID NOT LIFT A FINGER TO HELP.PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S ADMINISTRATION ENCOURAGED AND HELPED TRAIN CUBAN EXPATS FOR AN INVASION OF CUBA AND PROMISED AIR SUPPORT. WHEN CASTRO’S THUGS BUTCHERED THE FIGHTERS IN THE BAY OF PIGS, THERE WAS NO AIR SUPPORT WHATEVER FROM THE UNITED STATES.BOTH OF THESE BETRAYALS ENCOURAGED THE SOVIET UNION AND CONVINCED THE HOSTAGE NATIONS OF EASTERN EUROPE THAT THEY COULD NEVER COUNT ON US SUPPORT…..RSK
Isn’t it fitting that, as a final order of business in President Obama’s first term, the United States would haggle with France over the federal equivalent of a $2.15 check?
Last week, the Journal reported that the administration was asking the French to pay for the limited logistical support—mainly cargo flights and aerial refueling—that the U.S. had agreed to provide the French mission to Mali.
“French officials said they were particularly ‘perplexed’ last week when the U.S. . . . insisted on getting reimbursed for the costs,” the Journal’s Adam Entous and David Gauthier-Villars reported Sunday. “Other countries including Canada have offered to transport French military equipment and troops to Mali free of charge, according to French, European and Canadian officials. As a result, France is considering not using the U.S.”
By week’s end, however, the administration had agreed to cover the costs, estimated at around $600,000 a flight for 30 flights. Considering that the federal government spends just over $10 billion a day, or $115,000 a second, we’re talking about less than three minutes’ worth of the government’s time.
Is the effort worth it? “France expects the U.S. to do more to fight militants who have vowed to hit at Western interests and conducted an attack in Algeria that left at least 23 hostages dead, including at least one American citizen,” French officials told the Journal. Considering that, before France’s intervention, the local branch of al Qaeda was on the verge of overrunning a country larger than Texas and California combined, one might think the French had a point.
Associated PressGeorge McGovern, who called in 1972 for America to “Come Home.”
In fact, the latest death toll from Algeria is 37 hostages killed, including three Americans. But don’t expect the administration to do more than what it did in reaction to the attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, which was nothing. The current administration excuse for its nonfeasance is that any assistance might help the government of Mali, which (horrors) seized power in March in a military coup. From scruples such as these did Jimmy Carter allow the shah of Iran to fall.
Then again, at least Mr. Carter’s scruples were sincere. Not so for Mr. Obama, for whom “engagement” has become a code word for avoidance. Thus we “engage” Iran diplomatically to avoid harder choices about its nuclear ambitions, just as we engage the U.N. to avoid doing anything about Syria. Meanwhile, the message to U.S. allies that gets louder by the year is that it’s a you’re-on-your-own world as far as this administration is concerned. Good night, good luck, buena suerte, viel Glück, hazz sa’eed and bonne chance.
That is the meaning behind the administration’s refusal to lift a finger against the Assad regime. Or its perfect indifference to Iraq detaching itself from America’s orbit and entering Iran’s. Or its endless indulgence of Iran’s nuclear bids. Or its haste to make a full exit from Afghanistan. Or, now, its reluctance to acknowledge, much less respond to, al Qaeda’s new reach in Africa.
It is also the meaning of Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be secretary of defense. His veteran’s credentials and nominal GOP affiliation provide cover for a president who, as somebody once said, wants America to Come Home “from military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation.” That wasn’t Dwight Eisenhower speaking, by the way.
Given how often U.S. forces have come to grief in faraway and forlorn countries like Mali, Americans will probably shrug off the thought that we aren’t doing enough to help our French friends. Aren’t we sick of always jumping to their aid when they don’t always exactly jump to ours? And why have they so neglected their defenses that they can’t even deploy a few thousand troops to a country that, to them, isn’t all that far away? If life were a debate society, the argument would be a good one. As a matter of politics, the administration’s resistance to any kind of military action is probably smart, at least for the short term.
But Americans need to think carefully about what the retreat from Pax Americana will mean in the long term.
The last time Americans made that choice, in the 1920s and ’30s, U.S. foreign policy consisted of promoting feckless disarmament treaties, slashing defense spending, dishing out high-toned disdain for the wicked ways of the world and trying to fix what ailed us at home. What followed was a long season of global disorder, when bandit states understood that the major democratic powers had neither the will nor the means to check their ambitions, and the smaller states feared that, in the event of crisis, they were on their own. As it turned out, they were.
We’re not yet there today. But when an American president thinks he can declare that “a decade of war is now ending,” as he said in the inaugural address, and as if the choice were his to make, it means we’re getting closer. France has now discovered that the United States doesn’t have its back. It is a realization that will dawn soon, if it hasn’t already, on other free nations who have relied—perhaps for too long—on their faith that, in the face of terror, they would always have America by their side.
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