Obama “removes a lingering vestige of the Cold War”
Thomas sends us a link to MSN which reports that President Obama announced that he’s lifting a weapons sales ban against Vietnam while he’s visiting that country;
Obama announced the full removal of the embargo at a news conference where he signaled a desire to leave behind the troubled history between the former war enemies and reward what he described as modest progress on human rights in the one-party state.
“At this stage, both sides have established a level of trust and cooperation, including between our militaries, that is reflective of common interests and mutual respect,” Obama said, adding that every U.S. arms sale would be reviewed case by case. “This change will ensure that Vietnam has access to the equipment it needs to defend itself and removes a lingering vestige of the Cold War.”
It’s ironic that he would make that claim about the Cold War, because Richard Nixon hugged it up with China in order to negate the military power of Vietnam in the 70s and now it’s Obama’s turn to hug it up with Vietnam to lessen the military influence of China in the Pacific Rim. He’s also concerned with blunting the Russian advance in the Crimea. So, yeah, that lingering vestige of the Cold War is gone.
Human Rights Watch condemns Obama’s lifting of trade sanctions as trading away leverage against Vietnam to force them to improve the treatment of political dissidents there. Just like he traded away leverage against the Castro regime in Cuba. It’s about Obama’s legacy, not about doing anything that benefits mankind.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden
Shit, the PAVN has dozens of our 175s and 8 inchers, hundreds of our M41s and M48s, thousands of our M-113s, and millions of our M16s. What the hell else do they want from us ?
Ummmm. . . maybe they want replacement parts and maintenance? I’m sure that after all this time, most, if not all the weapons we left behind 40 years ago are rendered unusable by rust, if they haven’t dissolved and crumbled into rust.
BTW, that was a mild sarcasm. Too early, and too much blood in the caffeine to render a full blown sarc at this time o’ morning.
Anyone who thinks this’ll turn out well, raise your hand.
Yeah, me neither.
So this is what Nobel Peace prize winners do? (I used “winners” intentionally btw.) Where’s all the pink pussy hand wringing over the international arms trade, fostered by our Nobel prize winner in chief? Maybe he’ll send them some BLM Cadre to train the oppressed.
Funny how a lot of liberals never mention that Nobel Peace Prize anymore….
About that “lingering vestige of the Cold War is gone.” That’s total bullshit. The fact that something occurred during the Cold War does not mean that US Cold War strategy was the impetus for that something. The attribution is ridiculous. The embargo was effected after we withdrew, Saigon fell, and Cambodia was invaded. (What domino effect?) Ford tied normalization to our POW/MIA concern. Carter sent reps to VN in 1977 to explore normalization, the rat. Ultimately, BJ Clinton lifted the embargo, pissing off a great many of us, but leaving arms off the market. Now this. Another commie regime added by oBaMa. Cripes.
Now if he would just hurry up and remove himself from office.
November is close!
The choices are not great, but anyone is better than what we have now.
I feel like I was kicked in the guts.
Hmmm…. how odd that these things bodaprez is doing now didn’t happen during his first term in office. Is this to give the bird to shrillary? Or is there more to it than the last minute scramble to show everyone that he ‘did something’?
Stay tuned. Next on the news….
HRW isn’t thinking straight. Economic sanctions, even sanctions more thorough than a weapons sale ban, aren’t very useful for “pressuring” dictatorial regimes. Especially not in matters touching their own power. (Which the treatment of political dissidents certainly is.)
The reason is that the people who suffer from the sanctions — i.e., the people — have no voice in the government, and corrupt elites can live well even in third-world hellholes. (As many readers here know well, having seen Saddam’s palaces firsthand.) And their incentives are to keep themselves in control no matter how much the people suffer.
A semi-democracy like apartheid South Africa is a different story, because the people who suffer can change the government. But that is the rare exception, as democracies are mostly friendly to us, and we almost never see the need to “reform” their internal policies with sanctions.
They should get not a f’in thing until every one of our MIA are accounted for. What’s next? Jane Fonda standing next to him for the announcement. November can’t arrive soon enough.
Neither can 20JAN, noon. I hope …
I’m thinking Trump may get the popular vote but Wide Load will get the electoral vote. Could be turmoil. If Bernpit mounts a third parts run, that might tip both factors in Trump’s favor.
“A lingering vestige of the Cold War.” What a maroon.
What’s a “maroon” other than a color?
Think “moron”.
You may be the only person in America who never watched Buggs, BigJohn.
Here, BigJohn – let me help ya understand:
King Barry continues to chase his legacy. Obamacare’s bullshit isn’t what he wants to be remembered for.
If historians are paying attention (and if we’re lucky), his legacy will be all the utter failures of his from the last 8 years.
Except to 0bamites like Lars. To them it will ALWAYS be Bush’s fault.
Odd, I wouldn’t call nearly 20 years of armed conflict and nearly 60,000 American lives lost ‘cold’. Maybe someone can update me on that change to its definition. I must have missed that MFR.
“Lingering vestige,” eh? So I take it Vietnam today is a paradise of sunshine and bunnies and everybody sings “Kumbaya?” No more political prisoners, torture, disappearances, or any of that good stuff? They have a popular government chosen by the people in free elections? Free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press?
Oh, right. Vietnam.
http://youtu.be/eGsK8Wkhbp8
Checking the Red Chinese is all well and good, but let’s call a spade a spade. This has nothing to do with peace or friendship or any of that. It’s that Cold War staple known as Brinksmanship (Obama sucks at it, by the way). It’s basically letting one snake into the yard to keep another snake out.
The touchy-feely treatment they’re trying to apply to the story is disgusting.
What a tool! He wants to sell guns to the Commies, but ban gun sales here in the US. So, guns ARE the answer in Vietnam, but are evilbad for Americans.
To be fair, all of the weapons systems will be limited to five rounds. Nobody needs more than five rounds. So I have been told.
There might be a t-shirt in this…
BO And The Band: Bend Over And Grease Up World Tour 2016
😎
It’s government may still call itself communist but the economy has been transformed and they are one of the more pro-capitalist countries in the world right now. Maybe the world most pro capitalist nations.
They have an authoritarian technocratic capitalism much like China is transforming into which is a trend we may be heading toward aw well.
It appears to be something Hillary supports.
I know most of you will lose their minds over this post and nothing I say to convince you will matter, so I will just link a google search for “Vietnam capitalism” and let you read the sources you choose….
https://www.google.com/search?q=vietnam+capitalism
Funny how communist regimes all end up as totalitarian oligarchies run by a rich elite. It only happens every single time. You’d almost think that was the real intent of commies, and that apologists like Lars were completely full of shit.
Just because their tourism board loves your money doesn’t mean they’re not still murdering assholes.
By the way, Lars, I’m guessing your hand said “NO” again. That’s just sad.
All regimes end that way.
All leftist regimes, at least. And they don’t take long to get there. Nice try, attention whore. You may go cry now.
HEY LARS Taylor, just take the contents of this video as a token of how I feel about you and i’m sure that the vast majority of TAH Regulars feel the same about you.
“All regimes end that way.”
Why, it’s almost as though the Founders understood that and tried to limit the scope and power of government in order to prevent such an outcome. Too bad guys like you always think you know better than the old, dead, white men.
We are on path to be a authoritarian finance capitalist regime as well.
Fortunately we have a social democrat changing the narrative which may be enough to save our democracy from the fascists and the oligopolists.
You may have noticed how hard your “social democrats” try to push us in the very direction you cry out against. And you may also notice that communist/socialist regimes always fail on every level. The “they weren’t real communists” excuse doesn’t fly.
Congratulations. You’re still an idiot with delusions of genius.
How’s that hand treating you? Still rejecting your advances?
Lars wants Denmark, he’ll settle for France, but he’ll get Venezuela.
And then he’ll blame Bush and TAH because he didn’t get JUST what he wanted!
In fact. We essentially have effectively lost our democracy already…
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
Yeah, thanks to morons like you!
Perhaps or perhaps not. But if we have, you asswipe poodledick, it’s because of people like YOU, Commissar.
Denial of that truth by you proves that you are a moron.
I blame YOU for it.
In the old USSR, the preferred phrase describing people like Taylor was “useful idiots”. They helped the cause without understanding the ramifications of doing so – essentially, they were Communism’s equivalent of a Fifth Column.
IMO, the phrase is quite apropos.
Comrade Poodle Dik…yeh, YOU the one who wrote on this very web site, “People who are afraid of Communists are foolish”. You’re losing it a__hole! Do yourself and us a favor….go check into a mental institution where you belong and can find an admiring interested audience. Nobody gives a damn what you think or post. Your ramblings are worth less than fly excrement. Why don’t you try to post a link that has something to say, rather than someone to blame? Pseudo intellectual liberals such as yourself belong in National Inquirer, or on a roll of toilet tissue. You and Al Capone both shared the same syphilitic brain thanks to a self-earned pox. Go away you LOSER!
Hey Jarhead, I see goobs like Lars “Poodle Dick/Goose Turd” Taylor as living, breathing proof that LIBERALISM IS A MENTAL DISORDER.
HEY Commissar, do you try your damnedest to sound like a brainless idiot or does it come to you naturally? YOU had the better part of the past weekend to sound off with your goose shit-headed claptrap and spout off your potheaded ponytailed prefessers’ talking points, BUT NO, YOU WUSSED until yesterday evening and dropped a couple of your composted goose turd spouts and thought you were brilliant. I wonder if you don’t get your Profs’ approval before you post one of their talking points and I bet you eat your boogers while drooling every time one of your freeze-dried hippie Profs spouts their commie crap! Just take ONE look at Venezuela and tell us JUST how great socialism is, you goose-shit-headed GOOB!
Hey Lars, I know you’re busy tearfully begging your hand for a pity jerk, but this’ll just take a second:
I challenge you to repeat that shit to my father-in-law. I’ll have the camera rolling as you get your ass stomped flat by a quiet 61-year-old 5’5″ slim-statured southeast Asian gentleman with diabetes.
He fought the Cong, NVA, and Khmer Rouge. He got better at fighting after he received training from Americans. He killed communists to defend his hearth, home, and kin. In the end, it wasn’t enough, as the superpower helping him, his countrymen, and their neighbors to the north and east to resist the communists decided to abandon them.
The communists who took over sent him and his family to a “reeducation facility” (known internationally as the Killing Fields) as “enemies of the people,” not because he had fought against them, but because he’s half-Chinese and could read and write in two languages (Khmer and French). The communists made him watch while they gang-raped his wife. They made him watch when they shot his 4-year-old son in the back of the head. He eventually escaped with the help of a communist who got a little too careless and wound up a little too dead to need his AK anymore, broke his wife out, and made it across the Thai border, where my wife was born. A few months later, they got off a plane in San Diego, and stayed here ever since, becoming naturalized US citizens along the way.
Come on, asshole. Tell that man that he’s “foolish” to fear communists. You’ll survive, but only because he considers you not worth killing.
Any time now, Lars…
Come on, Lars. Let’s hear it, you nutless chickenshit cockfuck. Quit hiding.
TOW, if Lars had the balls to show up I’d bet at least six months’ overtime pay on your Father-in-Law!
Laaaaars! Heeeere pussypussypussypussy!
And it appears that Lars is afraid to put his chickenshit rhetoric up against somebody who’s actually seen the inside of his commie utopia. Is anybody surprised?
‘authoritarian finance capitalist regime’ – Oh, that’s right out of that idiotic movie ‘Rollerball’.
Oh, my laughing coyote, what a complete NINNYHAMMER is he!!!!
What the poodle is saying is that he hasn’t been able to find a REAL job since the Army left him, and he isn’t willing to bus tables and wash dishes in the local roadside diner for minimum wage plus tips, if the waitresses share them.
In an interview, he probably has all the presence of a pair of socks in the laundry bag, and doesn’t know when to shut up and let the interviewer run the show.
Oh, while I’m at it, those re-education camps in Vietnam are still at work today. Anyone who makes anti-government statements gets a special place at them and doesn’t get to leave until s/he has changed his/her mind and attitude. No one other than the Vietnam government and the people who run those places is allowed to go there. And the VC Vietnam government still hates and is still trying to destroy the indigenous Montagnard and HMong tribes.
Don’t you just love how commies never want to talk about all the racism and genocide they have going on?
Well, but it would make them look bad!
I wish there was a foreign exchange thing we could do for Obama, so we could exchange him with a foreigner that doesn’t hate America.
We could exchange him for Putin, but the rest of Russia would consider that an act of war!
The sensationalized study cited by he who I do not engage lest I lose my shit again, makes some rather astounding claims. The essence of it is purported to be that when it comes to policy, American democracy is not very democratic. No shit. Despite the fact that I agree with that statement, the authors were taken to task on a number of technical matters that reportedly hurts that conclusion. When it comes to statistics and math generally, just hearing those words makes my eyes gloss over. For those of you, like Hondo, salivate when stats are mentioned and can’t wait to have a go at numbers, here’s a link to one who critiqued the authors’ methods. http://rap.sagepub.com/content/2/4/2053168015608896
As for my agreement with the statement, I look at the very undemocratic institution that is the Supreme Court to conclude that, in many instances, the People’s voice isn’t a consideration. And, sometimes, to that august body, neither is the Constitution.
For me, a word guy, what the authors’ wrote in prose got my attention. Try this, as an example: “Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.” Really? Just toss away the essential rights and freedoms as not really and truly significant to a democracy? I beg to differ.
I have issues with any assumption that people who have extreme wealth somehow do not deserve to have it. The assumption is that it was simply handed to them. That is wrong, unless it is specifically obtained through inheritance.
That assumption repeatedly fails to account for the dedication, drive and farsightedness of people like Henry Ford (the assembly line), Bill Gates (MS-DOS and Microsoft), Steve Jobs (personal computers, iThingies), Alexander Bell (telephone and cylinder recording machine, forerunner of record players) and Thomas Edison (incandescent lightbulb). These are only a few people who, through hard work, achieved monumental innovations that we, as a species, take for granted today.
I don’t think they were thinking about how much cash they’d pile up in the cash drawer if they succeeded with what they were doing, nor did they stop doing any of that work once they had succeeded.
Jo Rowling (JK Rowling), for instance, has gone on writing books under another pen name, despite the fact that she became quite wealthy solely from the Harry Potter series. She continues to write because that is what she loves to do.
Success at doing something is never achieved by sitting and waiting, because it will not come to you. You have to work for it, and if you make your ‘fortune’ (whatever that is) while you’re doing it, why is that so wrong?
In view of what I’ve said, these authors failed badly in their assumption that anyone who has more than two coins to rub together is somehow a petty tyrant. If their entire conclusion is based on someone’s net worth, that makes it valueless because their net worth is a big fat zero.
So let me get this straight.
Obama is okay in lifting a ban on selling weapons to a communist country with a terrible human rights record but has no problem with limiting our own citizens ability to purchase guns?
Proof positive that liberalism is a mental disorder.
Commissar provides plenty of proof of that as well.
You might even say he’s their poster boy. Most of the time he’s more ate up than a chocolate dildo at a gay bar.
More like “more ate up than a chocolate dildo in a crowded gay bar on Valentine’s Day”.
Correct swormy. He is proving once again that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee knew what they were doing when it named him. He will foment violent revolution. He will arm various but select people to kill one another. He will extend the hand of friendship and accommodation to tyrants and tyrannical regimes. He will even ensure that those who want to see Israel erased from the planet and who joke openly about the Holocaust have our nodding approval to build a nuke. This all explains that, truly, oBaMa is a man of peace and was the right choice for the prize.
So what are the odds posted for the current administrtion turning Souteast Asia into another shooting war before Obama leaves office?
Not supporting it but we have had Seabee DETS going in and out of there going back to 2010. We have been doing MIl to MIl training helping improve bases and Humanitarian shit. You can read into that however you whish but every time we go in and start building shit we usually (US military) start operating out of those locations.
You’re right Chief. We also have had Naval Medical personnel and a clinic there for years. When Obama left for Vietnam I told my wife that Cam Rahn Bay is a big goal of this visit. It will once again be a huge U.S.Navy port of call. The Vietnamese once said after the war, The Russians are no better then the Americans and have a lot less money. Let’s see how long before we have that base back.
The odds? Unknown, but on the news tonight there was a brief reference to Vietnam’s interest in getting help and protection against China from the USA.
I swear, it’s like being in some sort of weird time travel show. I don’t like any of this at all.
YEP, I think I was ok to write that up there, It wasn’t a secret we all new we were working out of there and usually if we do something that has to be on down low like black sites we have the crews on the DETS red in and know one else. Every one helped plan for these DETS and PAO covered the civil Humanitarian side.
So when do the recalls start, Chief?
I don’t know but I’m still IRR for another 4 years. The way we have downsized they would have to do that and make us rear support or trainers.
Not so much, but it may be that the commie regime takes fewer political prisoners, once the guns arrive.
The enemy of your enemy is your friend.
Agreed.
I don’t have to like Vietnam’s treatment of it’s citizens. But given China’s recent muscle-flexing, the loss of Philippine bases, and the fact that China still likely hasn’t reached it’s economic peak, having other friendly regimes in the area is definitely in our national interest – regardless of their politics.
It’s a shame, really. We had our chances to help create a unified Vietnam friendly to the US between 1945 and 1950. And we p!ssed it away because no one bothered listen to those who’d looked into Vietnam’s 2000+ year history of fighting any and all they perceived as foreign invaders.
I completely understand the feelings of betrayal we are hearing for the Vietnam vets on this, but I agree that right now there are bigger fish to fry. Containing China helps us from Korea to Australia to Hawaii. Let Beijing see that there are serious forces aligned against them and they will likely be more restrained.
I don’t view this as a betrayal, but why were so many US bases overseas closed in the first place? Anyone with any sense knew that the contraction of US military presence would lead to Putin’s chest-thumping and China’s creeping acquisition of territory.
Hondo’s right: if we had done what we agreed to do for Vietnam in 1973, this wouldn’t be an issue. I just don’t want to see any of this turned into another useless shooting war.
The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend, often it’s just another enemy. There’s nothing wrong with working with an enemy to wipe out a common enemy, but too many times people make that mistake in thinking because they could work together to defeat a common foe that somehow that translates into a more cooperative friendly environment when the common foe is defeated.
That’s been wrong since history was first recorded.
Nothing wrong with using one enemy to aid in wiping out or checking the advance of a common threat, just make sure to remember to keep the currently allied enemy in a war of attrition with the common enemy thus weakening both enemies for future exploitation or domination.
Joseph Stalin.
We have treated the house of Saud as an ally and friend for years but they are neither. They have an abismal human rights record but we have always looked the other way because they were our bulkwart against Iran and Shiite extremism. Of course they also managed, through their export of salafist Wahhabism, to launch al Qaeda and IS, as well as a bunch of nitwits in Pakistan, the Caucasus and now the former Yugoslavia. I don’t have any problem with the Vietnamese communists being on our side in the fight against Chinese communists. What I do mind is the eventual mismanagement of the relationship. I am not trying to say Vietnam will turn into a bunch of lunatic assholes like the Saudis, but they could eventually turn into something worse than they are right now if we just give them weapons and turn them loose. Older societies, that have lived close to each other for thousand of years, often have grudges and axes to grind. When one gets stronger vis-a-vis their neighbor maybe they grind that axe and plant it in their neighbor’s skull. The US does a very poor job managing these kinds of things. I’m pretty sure, in the end, we’ll probably fuck this one up as well.
What HAVEN’T B. Hussein 0bama & Company turned to shit during their time at the helm?
Why aren’t more people calling obama a traitor?
Why has congress allowed this POS to support and arm jihadists and communists?
Why has congress enabled and fund obamacare, obamaphones, fraudulent green projects, funding community organizers, planned parenthood, allowing federal agencies step beyond their legal limits, allow islamic refugees in the US while not allowing those Christians who are being exterminated.
Both obama and congress are equally guilty and should be prosecuted.
Pointing out the obvious? But cato, he’s a slacker. His job is looking good in a suit. There was a photo last night of him having dinner in some Vietnamese restaurant with Anthony Bourdain, and I swear the slacker couldn’t even hold a longneck bottle of beer without bending his limp wrist. Seriously!
He’s on his way out. All of this Traveling Pants stuff is the last minute thing to add to his ‘legacy’, whatever that is. Most of us will remember him as a whole lot worse than anyone who preceded him, including Van Buren.
And I left out screwing the military and veterans !!!!
Report: Obama About To Release Two Dozen Gitmo Detainees…
Now that we admit to having “boots on the ground”, obama is sending terrorists reinforcements.
POS
Obama is a cocksucker too.
I’m beginning to think that B. Hussein 0bama will be as welcome among Veterans PERIOD as Jane Fonda at a Vietnam Vets’ reunion.
But Obama was a Captain Colonel CSM in the Community Organizing Ranger Seal Squad! It is on his DD 214.
How long before recalls start?
Here’s something from Reuters News this morning about the recent elections in Austria.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-austria-election-idUSKCN0YF1FP
It seems that the Euro-population has had just about enough and those on the far right are getting more of an audience. The problem is that the underlying issue – the migrants and the way they don’t/won’t acclimate – is not being addressed directly. Greece is now sending them to migrant camps. I don’t think they’re getting the welcome mat any more.
Odd how this administration wants to curb gun violence domestically but is hell bent on arming almost every country in the world with genuine US of A made weaponry (it’s alright, those guns ain’t gonna be used against ‘Muricans). Give that man another Nobel, it’ll add the the legacy and look good at the Library.