Foreign Policy is not for Amateurs
Senator Barack Obama is still seething over the “Appeasement” issue.
Today in a stump speech from Montana he defended his position of holding direct “talks” with the terror supporting regime in Iran by citing other events where, in his view, direct talks saved the day.
To illustrate his point, he cited the successful “diplomacy” that averted a nuclear showdown with Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Time for another history lesson for the junior senator.
President Kennedy’s first public statement on the crisis occurred on October 22, 1962. This was a statement to the world, nationally broadcast. There was no direct communication between he and Russia.
“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
That’s not negotiation Senator, that’s called “Cross this line and I’ll kick your ass!”
In the same statement Kennedy said:
“To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation and port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers.”
A “quarantine” is a blockade senator. A blockade is not a negotiation, it is a military operation. And don’t go “lawyer” on me; a “quarantine” IS a “blockade” and a blockade IS a military action and an overt act of war.
This is not new doctrine either. It traces back further than the Spartan blockade of Athens following the Battle of Aegospotami in 404 BC or more recently during the Egyptian blockades of the Straits of Tiran prior to the 1956 Suez War and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. All of these resulted in wars.
Kennedy then immediately increased air surveillance and established complete air superiority over the sovereign nation of Cuba. That too, senator was a military operation and an act of war.
In that same statement, Kennedy also “directed the Armed Forces to prepare for any eventualities”.
This was Kennedy’s flavor of “negotiating” in a situation where, as threatening as it was, not one American had been killed.
Iran has directly caused the deaths of hundreds of Americans and is without a doubt the most threatening regime in the Middle East and like Cuba has raised the stakes internationally on the nuclear issue.
So senator, when are you going to issue a Kennedy-esque “Cross this line and I’ll kick your ass!” message?
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Foreign Policy
A wonderful article references Kennedy’s meeting with Krushchev, the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missle Crisis as follows:
http://www.newmediajournal.us/guest/l_dowell/2008/05172008.htm
(The meeting with Khrushchev was about a year and a half BEFORE the Crisis and many feel that Khrushchev pushing the issue was a direct result of the poor opinion that he had of the young kennedy at that meeting.)
“In one instance, Kelly acknowledges, Sen. Obama’s knowledge of history was correct. Yes, John F. Kennedy “held a summit meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in June, 1961.” Author Elie Abel (The Missiles of October), said of that meeting:
“There is reason to believe that Khrushchev took Kennedy’s measure in June 1961 and decided this was a young man who would shrink from hard decisions…[Khrushchev] came to believe that Americans are ‘too liberal to fight’.”
And James Reston of the liberal New York Times said:
“When Kennedy was rash enough to strike at Cuba but not bold enough to finish the job, Khrushchev decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed.”
Kelly goes on to note that, “Kennedy then was vastly more experienced than Sen. Obama is now.” Unlike Kennedy, “Sen. Obama has no military and little work experience, and has been in Congress for less than four years.”
From the article referenced above ( I be quiet now ):
“Finally, Kelly compares “Obama’s expressed desire to meet without preconditions with anti-American dictators such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who met Hitler in Munich in 1938 to negotiate “peace in our time” – an act of appeasement that had dire, unspeakable consequences.
One more thing: Kelly says that “in the year Mr. Obama was born, 1961, a R&B singer, Sam Cooke, came out with a hit song you still hear on Golden Oldies radio stations. The song started, “Don’t know much about history….” – and then he suggests that this should be Obama’s campaign theme song.
I agree. And I thank God I was born when it was possible to appreciate the difference that age makes, contrary to today’s standard that allows five-year-olds to think they can teach 95-year-olds how to see the present in context with the past.
In my younger years, I was privileged to have worked as a ticket cashier at the famous Royal Theater in Baltimore, MD, when the Rock and Roll era was ushering in new artists on the “chittlin’ circuit.” I saw, heard, and met many black and white personalities who came through that theater’s front door. Sam Cooke was one of them and I saw him perform “Don’t know much about history.”
This indeed should be Obama’s theme song! His ineligibility for the presidency has nothing to do with his race. It has to do not only with how little he knows about himself, but how little he knows about America and Americans. If voters want to retain their pride in America and all it stands for, then Obama should not be their man. “
I try to see the bright side, but I am starting to wonder. You see the 75,000 Obama-zombies and you listen to Obama invoke the names of Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan and you can really lose hope. All these history lessons for Obama are of no use. I actually don’t think he needs them. I think he knows them and chooses to ignore them. Further I think he knows that he is free to ignore them because he knows that the majority of Americans don’t know them. And won’t bother to learn them. We are a nation of “the easy way out”. We are a nation of take-out food and nuking dinner and instant answers. The people at that Oregon rally heard the words of the Obamasiah and need nothing more. They are not going to listen to us. We are tired, old, bitter racists who cling to old ways. We work hard and pay taxes. We strive to improve our minds, find our own answers and form our own opinions. In short we are fools. Obama is well spoken and smooth. Bush can’t say the word “nuclear”. When McCain laughs, even I wince and only Cindi and Roberta McCain love him more than I. How many people at that rally even understand the sequence of events in the Kennedy administration’s dealings with Russia and Cuba were Bay of Pigs, Summit in Vienna, Cuban Missile Crisis? How many people at that rally understand what Israel went through to become a nation and survive to this day? How many people at that rally even knew who freaking Neville Chamberlain was? Or what the Sudetenland was? And as far as I can see McCain and Bush aren’t out there explaining it in any way that will help them. Just like McCain is talking about flipping gas tax holidays instead of explaining the laws of supply and demand and China and India’s expanding middle class. We are losing the center left to a smooth talking snake oil salesman and the right to some crackhead philosophy of “I’ll stay home and teach the Republican… Read more »
It’s testimony to the crap that’s passed for an education in this country that more than 10 people follow the Boob from Illinois. Jesus H., have we ever seen a more ridiculous candidate? The other day, he throws a global temper tantrum revealing the pussy he is by reacting personally to Bush’s Knessit speech, which was a general knock on appeasement. Any confident person would have either said nothing or applauded what Bush had to say. Now he says stupid stuff about the missile crisis (though, I believe behind the scenes JFK agreed to remove missiles from Turkey and that was kept secret–but still he did not have to publicly concede that because he told Russia where to shove it). The other day he says Iran and the other lunatic nations are not as big a threat as the Soviet Union. Yet this stupid piece of **** forgets that the largest foreign attack on our soil was carried out by 19 f’ing Arabs with box cutters and plane tickets. So, Senator Sh*thead, Iran might be a problem. How in the world is this guy so popular? Oh yeah, I think I answered that at the start of this rant.
Israeli “Appeasement”
Apparently, Bush’s comments regarding “appeasement”, inappropriate as they were, were directed at Israel, not Obama. Note: Israeli/Syrian talks were underway as Bush was speaking. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Some Syrian officials have said that a new U.S. administration that comes to power next January could be more supportive of such a peace tract. The two leading candidates to replace President Bush, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, both released statements saying they supported Israel’s position.”
Brad Our current President has set the intelligence bar at an all time low.McCain will look very bad debating Obama.Marine Vet
“To illustrate his point, he cited the successful “diplomacy” that averted a nuclear showdown with Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
When my Dad was a teeny-bopper in Florida, he didn’t pay much mind to the Cuban Missile crisis until one day he took a walk through a field and stumbled across a bunch of Paratroopers from the 101st Airborne rigging equipment for heavy drop.
The ‘Bammer needs some help with his research, the hammer almost got dropped on the commies, that’s why they relented. Yanking the obsolescent Jupiter nukes out of Turkey allowed the Reds to save face.