RUTHFULLY YOURS

Wrong again Dr. Kissinger….. “the American role in stabilizing the Middle East order that emerged from the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.” That role orchestrated by you was vicious and counterproductive. You insisted that Israel bow to the demands of the aggressor Anwar Sadat who, in company with Assad (father) of Syria led a surprise attack in the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, you betrayed our ally Israel. You warned that beleaguered nation that almost lost that war by threatening ” a reassessment of the America/Israel relationship” if Israel did not accede to your demands. These suggestions of yours now are prattle, as were your policies of “detente” and “realpolitick”and total failure to see resurgent radical Islam as the curse of the Middle East ….rsk

“With Russia in Syria, a geopolitical structure that lasted four decades is in shambles. The U.S. needs a new strategy and priorities.

The debate about whether the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran regarding its nuclear program stabilized the Middle East’s strategic framework had barely begun when the region’s geopolitical framework collapsed. Russia’s unilateral military action in Syria is the latest symptom of the disintegration of the American role in stabilizing the Middle East order that emerged from the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

In the aftermath of that conflict, Egypt abandoned its military ties with the Soviet Union and joined an American-backed negotiating process that produced peace treaties between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan, a United Nations-supervised disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria, which has been observed for over four decades (even by the parties of the Syrian civil war), and international support of Lebanon’s sovereign territorial integrity. Later, Saddam Hussein’s war to incorporate Kuwait into Iraq was defeated by an international coalition under U.S. leadership. American forces led the war against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States were our allies in all these efforts. The Russian military presence disappeared from the region.

North Korea could have as many as 100 nuclear bombs within five years and may already be able to mount warheads on missiles capable of reaching the United States. Those are the latest estimates of Pyongyang’s atomic capabilities, and they will be at the center of the discussion Barack Obama will have with Park Geun-hye when the South Korean President visits the White House Friday. So it’s good the two democracies can do something about it.

That’s thanks to Thaad, or Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense. This U.S.-built system’s powerful radar and sophisticated interceptors would allow U.S. and South Korean forces to intercept missiles across distances of up to 200 kilometers, compared with about 35 kilometers with the Patriot systems currently deployed around the Korean peninsula.

Deploying Thaad would integrate South Korean defenses into a regional network of U.S. and Japanese sensors, enabling more accurate detection and interception of missiles from multiple angles and at multiple points in their flight path. Trilateral cooperation might also soothe some of the enduring tensions between South Korea and Japan over the latter’s militarist past.