[surveyor]

Hi, dan!

Let me just point out that I never called anybody names. I’ve been critical of certain people, but I never went personal. But you had a good post, which I wish I could have gotten about 10 thread pages ago…

[quote=urbanrealtor]On this I disagree with you. I think that often the labels are good as thumbnails. They have a lot of utility. Hence, why they are used. You do have a fair point with regard to the limits of their utility. (Two of) Our biggest capitalist competitors are “socialist” India and “communist” China. These point out that while labels can be misleading, it is more a matter of limitations of language rather than intentional deception. I think that the thrust of Zakarias’ article. Examples that are considered conservative are being followed by someone labeled as liberal.[/quote]

I agree that labels can be useful in some instances, but when some posters and I were hashing out labels, it was used as a way to defuse an argument or make stretches of policy statements that were at best “slippery slopes.” That’s why I wanted to avoid the labels. Still, some people are caught up in the labels and I acknowledge that. For me, though, I just avoid those discussions. Or at least try to move beyond them.

[quote=urbanrealtor]Islamofacism. As labels go this one seems problematic. It has the difficulty of referencing some old conquering powers.[/quote]

I acknowledge there is some problems with the definition of islamofacism and the threat of islamic hegemony. For me, islamofacism is the attempt to produce a fascist government based on islamic principles. Until a better term comes along, I’ll use that.

[quote=urbanrealtor]The uninformed part is of course subjective. Some of the suggestions that would indicate ignorance on his part don’t fly. I find it less than plausible that a native Hawaiian who went to college in the US (and high school in Honolulu) does not have basic familiarity with the largest military action in Hawaiian history.[/quote]

Like I told gandalf, if it was one gaffe in one speech, I would have disregarded it (there are a lot of things Obama has done that I have disregarded because I thought they were immaterial to the discussion of his qualifications). However, he has said certain things that lead me to question how informed he really is. For example, his lack of knowledge of the islamofacism threat, his not knowing that Iraq and Afghanistan speak different languages, his screwing up of the Selma March dates in relation to his parents. I’ve said before that these details are not important to most people, but it is important to me.

Anyways, moving on.
[quote=urbanrealtor]
[quote=surveyor]
Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy’s first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War’s most dangerous crises.[/quote]

Thats a tremendous stretch. I think Robert McNamara would disagree. Or rather he does disagree. And he has met with the actors involved in the crisis. He was one.[/quote]

Well take a look at this article and see if you still agree:

Mr. Burlatsky stressed that Khrushchev, who met Kennedy in Vienna in 1961, believed that the American President was ”very young, very intelligent, but not very strong.”

Krushchev believed that the U.S. was going to invade Cuba, but he certainly wouldn’t have tried to place missiles there if he thought the U.S. had a strong president. So there is affirmation at least of Bolton’s assessment of the meeting.

[quote=urbanrealtor]While implications are subjective, I disagree with Mr. Bolton’s assessment. Negotiations are a starting point for getting what you want. We have never tried this with either Iran or Cuba. We undermined democracy in both countries and then were shocked when our puppet governments were taken down and more popular (though evil) regimes installed. Talking would not hurt our current stalemate. Mr. Bolton has to reach back to Kennedy for an (unconvincing) example of diplomacy harming our interests. Reagan’s negotiations with Gorbachev were instrumental in dealing with a much bigger country. They achieved our aims where all the “tiny” country actions failed. If negotiations fail we will have lost nothing from where we are now.[/quote]

Actually that is grossly incorrect. As Bolton has pointed out in interviews, you lose TIME. Negotiations are useful, but if they are used to gain more time for the Iranians to get their objectives or to move into a stronger negotiating position, then yes, you actually have lost something. Time gives you the flexibility to respond with something other than negotiation. Remember, the Europeans have been negotiating with Iran all this time and they got nothing and lost time. The Iranians are closer to a nuclear weapon, they are in a stronger negotiating position (because of oil prices and their proximity to a nuclear weapon), and lastly, we do not have the time to set up or pursue other options (such as regime change, sanctions, etc.). Negotiations is also a way of showing your hand, to show how strong your convictions are. The Europeans, negotiating on our behalf, showed that they were not very forceful, which allowed the Iranians to break agreements, stall, and eliminate options for the U.S.

I also brought this up before, but let’s not just go to the Kennedy administration to show how negotiations and diplomacy can be used against us. Let’s go to the start of World War II, where Neville Chamberlain essentially convinced Hitler that the Allies were more interested in not fighting than confronting him. We all should know the result of that little adventure.

[quote=urbanrealtor]Countries don’t “go” communist. Typically either they have an unstable gov’t which sees a popular revolution (eg: Iran and Cuba) or they get invaded.[/quote]

Italy was an “example.” By the way, don’t worry about Italy. It’ll turn Islamic (as well as the rest of Europe) soon enough.

[quote=urbanrealtor]In the future your posts would be stronger if you used articles or opinion pieces by respected thinkers on these topics. John Bolton is not respected by most people who work in foreign affairs. That includes the Republicans and most conservative thinkers. His public comments that the UN is an irrelevant institution mean that he is seen as an extremist in his field. That is part of the reason he could not get confirmed by a Republican congress. [/quote]

So just because they are not respected, they should be disregarded? That was the main point of contention between gandalf and me. Gandalf attempted to imply that the arguments posted by Bolton were wrong simply because he was a “neocon”. Whether he is a neocon or not respected, that does not mean his arguments or analyses are wrong. It also does not matter if he is seen as an extremist, or if he could not get confirmed by Congress.

and lastly:

[quote=urbanrealtor]
[quote=surveyor]
Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that “they always blame America first” for the world’s problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.[/quote]

As liberal democrat from San Francisco this is just a wasteful name-calling exercise. This was dull the first time I heard it at age 12.[/quote]

Well, is the assertion correct? Are the leftists/Democrats/Obama blaming America for the problems of the world or the root of the problems of the world? Is the belief out there that if only America was nicer to the world, that the world will become a better place?

In the previous threads, I used the analogy of a lawyer representing a client, but that the lawyer believed that it was the client’s fault. Given that mindset, would the lawyer be able to fight tooth and nail for the benefit of the client? If so, great. If not, I would choose another lawyer. A lawyer that believes in the client.

Anyways, good notes, good post, dan.

[surveyor]

Hi, dan!

Let me just point out that I never called anybody names. I’ve been critical of certain people, but I never went personal. But you had a good post, which I wish I could have gotten about 10 thread pages ago…

[quote=urbanrealtor]On this I disagree with you. I think that often the labels are good as thumbnails. They have a lot of utility. Hence, why they are used. You do have a fair point with regard to the limits of their utility. (Two of) Our biggest capitalist competitors are “socialist” India and “communist” China. These point out that while labels can be misleading, it is more a matter of limitations of language rather than intentional deception. I think that the thrust of Zakarias’ article. Examples that are considered conservative are being followed by someone labeled as liberal.[/quote]

I agree that labels can be useful in some instances, but when some posters and I were hashing out labels, it was used as a way to defuse an argument or make stretches of policy statements that were at best “slippery slopes.” That’s why I wanted to avoid the labels. Still, some people are caught up in the labels and I acknowledge that. For me, though, I just avoid those discussions. Or at least try to move beyond them.

[quote=urbanrealtor]Islamofacism. As labels go this one seems problematic. It has the difficulty of referencing some old conquering powers.[/quote]

I acknowledge there is some problems with the definition of islamofacism and the threat of islamic hegemony. For me, islamofacism is the attempt to produce a fascist government based on islamic principles. Until a better term comes along, I’ll use that.

[quote=urbanrealtor]The uninformed part is of course subjective. Some of the suggestions that would indicate ignorance on his part don’t fly. I find it less than plausible that a native Hawaiian who went to college in the US (and high school in Honolulu) does not have basic familiarity with the largest military action in Hawaiian history.[/quote]

Like I told gandalf, if it was one gaffe in one speech, I would have disregarded it (there are a lot of things Obama has done that I have disregarded because I thought they were immaterial to the discussion of his qualifications). However, he has said certain things that lead me to question how informed he really is. For example, his lack of knowledge of the islamofacism threat, his not knowing that Iraq and Afghanistan speak different languages, his screwing up of the Selma March dates in relation to his parents. I’ve said before that these details are not important to most people, but it is important to me.

Anyways, moving on.
[quote=urbanrealtor]
[quote=surveyor]
Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy’s first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War’s most dangerous crises.[/quote]

Thats a tremendous stretch. I think Robert McNamara would disagree. Or rather he does disagree. And he has met with the actors involved in the crisis. He was one.[/quote]

Well take a look at this article and see if you still agree:

Mr. Burlatsky stressed that Khrushchev, who met Kennedy in Vienna in 1961, believed that the American President was ”very young, very intelligent, but not very strong.”

Krushchev believed that the U.S. was going to invade Cuba, but he certainly wouldn’t have tried to place missiles there if he thought the U.S. had a strong president. So there is affirmation at least of Bolton’s assessment of the meeting.

[quote=urbanrealtor]While implications are subjective, I disagree with Mr. Bolton’s assessment. Negotiations are a starting point for getting what you want. We have never tried this with either Iran or Cuba. We undermined democracy in both countries and then were shocked when our puppet governments were taken down and more popular (though evil) regimes installed. Talking would not hurt our current stalemate. Mr. Bolton has to reach back to Kennedy for an (unconvincing) example of diplomacy harming our interests. Reagan’s negotiations with Gorbachev were instrumental in dealing with a much bigger country. They achieved our aims where all the “tiny” country actions failed. If negotiations fail we will have lost nothing from where we are now.[/quote]

Actually that is grossly incorrect. As Bolton has pointed out in interviews, you lose TIME. Negotiations are useful, but if they are used to gain more time for the Iranians to get their objectives or to move into a stronger negotiating position, then yes, you actually have lost something. Time gives you the flexibility to respond with something other than negotiation. Remember, the Europeans have been negotiating with Iran all this time and they got nothing and lost time. The Iranians are closer to a nuclear weapon, they are in a stronger negotiating position (because of oil prices and their proximity to a nuclear weapon), and lastly, we do not have the time to set up or pursue other options (such as regime change, sanctions, etc.). Negotiations is also a way of showing your hand, to show how strong your convictions are. The Europeans, negotiating on our behalf, showed that they were not very forceful, which allowed the Iranians to break agreements, stall, and eliminate options for the U.S.

I also brought this up before, but let’s not just go to the Kennedy administration to show how negotiations and diplomacy can be used against us. Let’s go to the start of World War II, where Neville Chamberlain essentially convinced Hitler that the Allies were more interested in not fighting than confronting him. We all should know the result of that little adventure.

[quote=urbanrealtor]Countries don’t “go” communist. Typically either they have an unstable gov’t which sees a popular revolution (eg: Iran and Cuba) or they get invaded.[/quote]

Italy was an “example.” By the way, don’t worry about Italy. It’ll turn Islamic (as well as the rest of Europe) soon enough.

[quote=urbanrealtor]In the future your posts would be stronger if you used articles or opinion pieces by respected thinkers on these topics. John Bolton is not respected by most people who work in foreign affairs. That includes the Republicans and most conservative thinkers. His public comments that the UN is an irrelevant institution mean that he is seen as an extremist in his field. That is part of the reason he could not get confirmed by a Republican congress. [/quote]

So just because they are not respected, they should be disregarded? That was the main point of contention between gandalf and me. Gandalf attempted to imply that the arguments posted by Bolton were wrong simply because he was a “neocon”. Whether he is a neocon or not respected, that does not mean his arguments or analyses are wrong. It also does not matter if he is seen as an extremist, or if he could not get confirmed by Congress.

and lastly:

[quote=urbanrealtor]
[quote=surveyor]
Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that “they always blame America first” for the world’s problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.[/quote]

As liberal democrat from San Francisco this is just a wasteful name-calling exercise. This was dull the first time I heard it at age 12.[/quote]

Well, is the assertion correct? Are the leftists/Democrats/Obama blaming America for the problems of the world or the root of the problems of the world? Is the belief out there that if only America was nicer to the world, that the world will become a better place?

In the previous threads, I used the analogy of a lawyer representing a client, but that the lawyer believed that it was the client’s fault. Given that mindset, would the lawyer be able to fight tooth and nail for the benefit of the client? If so, great. If not, I would choose another lawyer. A lawyer that believes in the client.

Anyways, good notes, good post, dan.

[surveyor]

Hi, dan!

Let me just point out that I never called anybody names. I’ve been critical of certain people, but I never went personal. But you had a good post, which I wish I could have gotten about 10 thread pages ago…

[quote=urbanrealtor]On this I disagree with you. I think that often the labels are good as thumbnails. They have a lot of utility. Hence, why they are used. You do have a fair point with regard to the limits of their utility. (Two of) Our biggest capitalist competitors are “socialist” India and “communist” China. These point out that while labels can be misleading, it is more a matter of limitations of language rather than intentional deception. I think that the thrust of Zakarias’ article. Examples that are considered conservative are being followed by someone labeled as liberal.[/quote]

I agree that labels can be useful in some instances, but when some posters and I were hashing out labels, it was used as a way to defuse an argument or make stretches of policy statements that were at best “slippery slopes.” That’s why I wanted to avoid the labels. Still, some people are caught up in the labels and I acknowledge that. For me, though, I just avoid those discussions. Or at least try to move beyond them.

[quote=urbanrealtor]Islamofacism. As labels go this one seems problematic. It has the difficulty of referencing some old conquering powers.[/quote]

I acknowledge there is some problems with the definition of islamofacism and the threat of islamic hegemony. For me, islamofacism is the attempt to produce a fascist government based on islamic principles. Until a better term comes along, I’ll use that.

[quote=urbanrealtor]The uninformed part is of course subjective. Some of the suggestions that would indicate ignorance on his part don’t fly. I find it less than plausible that a native Hawaiian who went to college in the US (and high school in Honolulu) does not have basic familiarity with the largest military action in Hawaiian history.[/quote]

Like I told gandalf, if it was one gaffe in one speech, I would have disregarded it (there are a lot of things Obama has done that I have disregarded because I thought they were immaterial to the discussion of his qualifications). However, he has said certain things that lead me to question how informed he really is. For example, his lack of knowledge of the islamofacism threat, his not knowing that Iraq and Afghanistan speak different languages, his screwing up of the Selma March dates in relation to his parents. I’ve said before that these details are not important to most people, but it is important to me.

Anyways, moving on.
[quote=urbanrealtor]
[quote=surveyor]
Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy’s first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War’s most dangerous crises.[/quote]

Thats a tremendous stretch. I think Robert McNamara would disagree. Or rather he does disagree. And he has met with the actors involved in the crisis. He was one.[/quote]

Well take a look at this article and see if you still agree:

Mr. Burlatsky stressed that Khrushchev, who met Kennedy in Vienna in 1961, believed that the American President was ”very young, very intelligent, but not very strong.”

Krushchev believed that the U.S. was going to invade Cuba, but he certainly wouldn’t have tried to place missiles there if he thought the U.S. had a strong president. So there is affirmation at least of Bolton’s assessment of the meeting.

[quote=urbanrealtor]While implications are subjective, I disagree with Mr. Bolton’s assessment. Negotiations are a starting point for getting what you want. We have never tried this with either Iran or Cuba. We undermined democracy in both countries and then were shocked when our puppet governments were taken down and more popular (though evil) regimes installed. Talking would not hurt our current stalemate. Mr. Bolton has to reach back to Kennedy for an (unconvincing) example of diplomacy harming our interests. Reagan’s negotiations with Gorbachev were instrumental in dealing with a much bigger country. They achieved our aims where all the “tiny” country actions failed. If negotiations fail we will have lost nothing from where we are now.[/quote]

Actually that is grossly incorrect. As Bolton has pointed out in interviews, you lose TIME. Negotiations are useful, but if they are used to gain more time for the Iranians to get their objectives or to move into a stronger negotiating position, then yes, you actually have lost something. Time gives you the flexibility to respond with something other than negotiation. Remember, the Europeans have been negotiating with Iran all this time and they got nothing and lost time. The Iranians are closer to a nuclear weapon, they are in a stronger negotiating position (because of oil prices and their proximity to a nuclear weapon), and lastly, we do not have the time to set up or pursue other options (such as regime change, sanctions, etc.). Negotiations is also a way of showing your hand, to show how strong your convictions are. The Europeans, negotiating on our behalf, showed that they were not very forceful, which allowed the Iranians to break agreements, stall, and eliminate options for the U.S.

I also brought this up before, but let’s not just go to the Kennedy administration to show how negotiations and diplomacy can be used against us. Let’s go to the start of World War II, where Neville Chamberlain essentially convinced Hitler that the Allies were more interested in not fighting than confronting him. We all should know the result of that little adventure.

[quote=urbanrealtor]Countries don’t “go” communist. Typically either they have an unstable gov’t which sees a popular revolution (eg: Iran and Cuba) or they get invaded.[/quote]

Italy was an “example.” By the way, don’t worry about Italy. It’ll turn Islamic (as well as the rest of Europe) soon enough.

[quote=urbanrealtor]In the future your posts would be stronger if you used articles or opinion pieces by respected thinkers on these topics. John Bolton is not respected by most people who work in foreign affairs. That includes the Republicans and most conservative thinkers. His public comments that the UN is an irrelevant institution mean that he is seen as an extremist in his field. That is part of the reason he could not get confirmed by a Republican congress. [/quote]

So just because they are not respected, they should be disregarded? That was the main point of contention between gandalf and me. Gandalf attempted to imply that the arguments posted by Bolton were wrong simply because he was a “neocon”. Whether he is a neocon or not respected, that does not mean his arguments or analyses are wrong. It also does not matter if he is seen as an extremist, or if he could not get confirmed by Congress.

and lastly:

[quote=urbanrealtor]
[quote=surveyor]
Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that “they always blame America first” for the world’s problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.[/quote]

As liberal democrat from San Francisco this is just a wasteful name-calling exercise. This was dull the first time I heard it at age 12.[/quote]

Well, is the assertion correct? Are the leftists/Democrats/Obama blaming America for the problems of the world or the root of the problems of the world? Is the belief out there that if only America was nicer to the world, that the world will become a better place?

In the previous threads, I used the analogy of a lawyer representing a client, but that the lawyer believed that it was the client’s fault. Given that mindset, would the lawyer be able to fight tooth and nail for the benefit of the client? If so, great. If not, I would choose another lawyer. A lawyer that believes in the client.

Anyways, good notes, good post, dan.

[surveyor]

Hi, dan!

Let me just point out that I never called anybody names. I’ve been critical of certain people, but I never went personal. But you had a good post, which I wish I could have gotten about 10 thread pages ago…

[quote=urbanrealtor]On this I disagree with you. I think that often the labels are good as thumbnails. They have a lot of utility. Hence, why they are used. You do have a fair point with regard to the limits of their utility. (Two of) Our biggest capitalist competitors are “socialist” India and “communist” China. These point out that while labels can be misleading, it is more a matter of limitations of language rather than intentional deception. I think that the thrust of Zakarias’ article. Examples that are considered conservative are being followed by someone labeled as liberal.[/quote]

I agree that labels can be useful in some instances, but when some posters and I were hashing out labels, it was used as a way to defuse an argument or make stretches of policy statements that were at best “slippery slopes.” That’s why I wanted to avoid the labels. Still, some people are caught up in the labels and I acknowledge that. For me, though, I just avoid those discussions. Or at least try to move beyond them.

[quote=urbanrealtor]Islamofacism. As labels go this one seems problematic. It has the difficulty of referencing some old conquering powers.[/quote]

I acknowledge there is some problems with the definition of islamofacism and the threat of islamic hegemony. For me, islamofacism is the attempt to produce a fascist government based on islamic principles. Until a better term comes along, I’ll use that.

[quote=urbanrealtor]The uninformed part is of course subjective. Some of the suggestions that would indicate ignorance on his part don’t fly. I find it less than plausible that a native Hawaiian who went to college in the US (and high school in Honolulu) does not have basic familiarity with the largest military action in Hawaiian history.[/quote]

Like I told gandalf, if it was one gaffe in one speech, I would have disregarded it (there are a lot of things Obama has done that I have disregarded because I thought they were immaterial to the discussion of his qualifications). However, he has said certain things that lead me to question how informed he really is. For example, his lack of knowledge of the islamofacism threat, his not knowing that Iraq and Afghanistan speak different languages, his screwing up of the Selma March dates in relation to his parents. I’ve said before that these details are not important to most people, but it is important to me.

Anyways, moving on.
[quote=urbanrealtor]
[quote=surveyor]
Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy’s first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War’s most dangerous crises.[/quote]

Thats a tremendous stretch. I think Robert McNamara would disagree. Or rather he does disagree. And he has met with the actors involved in the crisis. He was one.[/quote]

Well take a look at this article and see if you still agree:

Mr. Burlatsky stressed that Khrushchev, who met Kennedy in Vienna in 1961, believed that the American President was ”very young, very intelligent, but not very strong.”

Krushchev believed that the U.S. was going to invade Cuba, but he certainly wouldn’t have tried to place missiles there if he thought the U.S. had a strong president. So there is affirmation at least of Bolton’s assessment of the meeting.

[quote=urbanrealtor]While implications are subjective, I disagree with Mr. Bolton’s assessment. Negotiations are a starting point for getting what you want. We have never tried this with either Iran or Cuba. We undermined democracy in both countries and then were shocked when our puppet governments were taken down and more popular (though evil) regimes installed. Talking would not hurt our current stalemate. Mr. Bolton has to reach back to Kennedy for an (unconvincing) example of diplomacy harming our interests. Reagan’s negotiations with Gorbachev were instrumental in dealing with a much bigger country. They achieved our aims where all the “tiny” country actions failed. If negotiations fail we will have lost nothing from where we are now.[/quote]

Actually that is grossly incorrect. As Bolton has pointed out in interviews, you lose TIME. Negotiations are useful, but if they are used to gain more time for the Iranians to get their objectives or to move into a stronger negotiating position, then yes, you actually have lost something. Time gives you the flexibility to respond with something other than negotiation. Remember, the Europeans have been negotiating with Iran all this time and they got nothing and lost time. The Iranians are closer to a nuclear weapon, they are in a stronger negotiating position (because of oil prices and their proximity to a nuclear weapon), and lastly, we do not have the time to set up or pursue other options (such as regime change, sanctions, etc.). Negotiations is also a way of showing your hand, to show how strong your convictions are. The Europeans, negotiating on our behalf, showed that they were not very forceful, which allowed the Iranians to break agreements, stall, and eliminate options for the U.S.

I also brought this up before, but let’s not just go to the Kennedy administration to show how negotiations and diplomacy can be used against us. Let’s go to the start of World War II, where Neville Chamberlain essentially convinced Hitler that the Allies were more interested in not fighting than confronting him. We all should know the result of that little adventure.

[quote=urbanrealtor]Countries don’t “go” communist. Typically either they have an unstable gov’t which sees a popular revolution (eg: Iran and Cuba) or they get invaded.[/quote]

Italy was an “example.” By the way, don’t worry about Italy. It’ll turn Islamic (as well as the rest of Europe) soon enough.

[quote=urbanrealtor]In the future your posts would be stronger if you used articles or opinion pieces by respected thinkers on these topics. John Bolton is not respected by most people who work in foreign affairs. That includes the Republicans and most conservative thinkers. His public comments that the UN is an irrelevant institution mean that he is seen as an extremist in his field. That is part of the reason he could not get confirmed by a Republican congress. [/quote]

So just because they are not respected, they should be disregarded? That was the main point of contention between gandalf and me. Gandalf attempted to imply that the arguments posted by Bolton were wrong simply because he was a “neocon”. Whether he is a neocon or not respected, that does not mean his arguments or analyses are wrong. It also does not matter if he is seen as an extremist, or if he could not get confirmed by Congress.

and lastly:

[quote=urbanrealtor]
[quote=surveyor]
Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that “they always blame America first” for the world’s problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.[/quote]

As liberal democrat from San Francisco this is just a wasteful name-calling exercise. This was dull the first time I heard it at age 12.[/quote]

Well, is the assertion correct? Are the leftists/Democrats/Obama blaming America for the problems of the world or the root of the problems of the world? Is the belief out there that if only America was nicer to the world, that the world will become a better place?

In the previous threads, I used the analogy of a lawyer representing a client, but that the lawyer believed that it was the client’s fault. Given that mindset, would the lawyer be able to fight tooth and nail for the benefit of the client? If so, great. If not, I would choose another lawyer. A lawyer that believes in the client.

Anyways, good notes, good post, dan.

[surveyor]

urbanrealtor:

I understand if you’ve kind of come in the middle of the conversation. In the previous thread, gandalf and I went at it for quite awhile and it encompassed quite a few pages. I understand your reluctance to go into that thread and delve through the posts, but at the same time, I don’t really feel like re-hashing or repeating myself. I’m certainly open to expanding on certain issues, or clarifying certain things.

And my posts recently were addressed to gandalf, who was in on the discussion and (I assumed) read through my posts. If I do repeat myself, it’s because my posts weren’t read carefully enough and I have to spell things out.

As for why the original newsweek article questions are irrelevant, I said that in the first page of this thread: labeling Obama as conservative or liberal does little to further the intellectual debate. The use of labels is a sophistry in order to avoid true analyses and discussion. I’ve also stated that the foreign policies of both candidates is deficient when it comes to the islamofacism threat so further labeling is useless.

There is also a difference between calling him dumb (which I’ve never said) and calling him uninformed, which is a legitimate criticism.

Anyways, I thought that this article (which I am bringing back again…) was a good article showing how Obama’s lack of knowledge towards history can hurt him when creating foreign policy or even getting the right lesson from history.

Since you do not wish to go back through the thread, here it is:

Barack Obama’s willingness to meet with the leaders of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea “without preconditions” is a naive and dangerous approach to dealing with the hard men who run pariah states. It will be an important and legitimate issue for policy debate during the remainder of the presidential campaign.

Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy’s first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War’s most dangerous crises.

Such realities should cause Obama to become more circumspect, minimizing his off-the-cuff observations about history, grand strategy and diplomacy. In fact, he has done exactly the opposite, exhibiting so many gaps in his knowledge and understanding of world affairs that they have not yet received the attention they deserve. He consistently reveals failings in foreign policy that are far more serious than even his critics had previously imagined.

Consider the following statement, which was lost in the controversy over his comments about negotiations: “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. … Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Let’s dissect this comment. Obama is correct that the rogue states he names do not present the same magnitude of threat as that posed by the Soviet Union through the possibility of nuclear war. Fortunately for us all, general nuclear war never took place. Nonetheless, serious surrogate struggles between the superpowers abounded because the Soviet Union’s threat to the West was broader and more complex than simply the risk of nuclear war. Subversion, guerrilla warfare, sabotage and propaganda were several of the means by which this struggle was waged, and the stakes were high, even, or perhaps especially, in “tiny” countries.

In the Western Hemisphere, for example, the Soviets used Fidel Castro’s Cuba to assist revolutionary activities in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In Western Europe, vigorous Moscow-directed communist parties challenged the democracies on their home turfs. In Africa, numerous regimes depended on Soviet military assistance to stay in power, threaten their neighbors or resist anti-communist opposition groups.

Both sides in the Cold War were anxious to keep these surrogate struggles from going nuclear, so the stakes were never “civilizational.” But to say that these “asymmetric” threats were “tiny” would be news to those who struggled to maintain or extend freedom’s reach during the Cold War.

Had Italy, for example, gone communist during the 1950s or 1960s, it would have been an inconvenient defeat for the United States but a catastrophe for the people of Italy. An “asymmetric” threat to the U.S. often is an existential threat to its friends, which was something we never forgot during the Cold War. Obama plainly seems to have entirely missed this crucial point. Ironically, it is he who is advocating a unilateralist policy, ignoring the risks and challenges to U.S. allies when the direct threat to us is, in his view, “tiny.”

What is implicit in Obama’s reference to “tiny” threats is that they are sufficiently insignificant that negotiations alone can resolve them. Indeed, he has gone even further, arguing that the lack of negotiations with Iran caused the threats: “And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons, funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah.”

This is perhaps the most breathtakingly naive statement of all, implying as it does that it is actually U.S. policy that motivates Iran rather than Iran’s own perceived ambitions and interests. That would be news to the mullahs in Tehran, not to mention the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is an article of faith for Obama, and many others on the left in the U.S. and abroad, that it is the United States that is mostly responsible for the world’s ills. In 1984, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick labeled people with these views the “San Francisco Democrats,” after the city where Walter Mondale was nominated for president.

Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that “they always blame America first” for the world’s problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.

This is yet another piece of history that Obama has ignored or never learned. There may be one more piece of history worthy of attention: In 1984, Mondale went down to one of the worst electoral defeats in American political history. We will now see whether Obama follows that path as well.

John R. Bolton is the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

[surveyor]

urbanrealtor:

I understand if you’ve kind of come in the middle of the conversation. In the previous thread, gandalf and I went at it for quite awhile and it encompassed quite a few pages. I understand your reluctance to go into that thread and delve through the posts, but at the same time, I don’t really feel like re-hashing or repeating myself. I’m certainly open to expanding on certain issues, or clarifying certain things.

And my posts recently were addressed to gandalf, who was in on the discussion and (I assumed) read through my posts. If I do repeat myself, it’s because my posts weren’t read carefully enough and I have to spell things out.

As for why the original newsweek article questions are irrelevant, I said that in the first page of this thread: labeling Obama as conservative or liberal does little to further the intellectual debate. The use of labels is a sophistry in order to avoid true analyses and discussion. I’ve also stated that the foreign policies of both candidates is deficient when it comes to the islamofacism threat so further labeling is useless.

There is also a difference between calling him dumb (which I’ve never said) and calling him uninformed, which is a legitimate criticism.

Anyways, I thought that this article (which I am bringing back again…) was a good article showing how Obama’s lack of knowledge towards history can hurt him when creating foreign policy or even getting the right lesson from history.

Since you do not wish to go back through the thread, here it is:

Barack Obama’s willingness to meet with the leaders of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea “without preconditions” is a naive and dangerous approach to dealing with the hard men who run pariah states. It will be an important and legitimate issue for policy debate during the remainder of the presidential campaign.

Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy’s first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War’s most dangerous crises.

Such realities should cause Obama to become more circumspect, minimizing his off-the-cuff observations about history, grand strategy and diplomacy. In fact, he has done exactly the opposite, exhibiting so many gaps in his knowledge and understanding of world affairs that they have not yet received the attention they deserve. He consistently reveals failings in foreign policy that are far more serious than even his critics had previously imagined.

Consider the following statement, which was lost in the controversy over his comments about negotiations: “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. … Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Let’s dissect this comment. Obama is correct that the rogue states he names do not present the same magnitude of threat as that posed by the Soviet Union through the possibility of nuclear war. Fortunately for us all, general nuclear war never took place. Nonetheless, serious surrogate struggles between the superpowers abounded because the Soviet Union’s threat to the West was broader and more complex than simply the risk of nuclear war. Subversion, guerrilla warfare, sabotage and propaganda were several of the means by which this struggle was waged, and the stakes were high, even, or perhaps especially, in “tiny” countries.

In the Western Hemisphere, for example, the Soviets used Fidel Castro’s Cuba to assist revolutionary activities in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In Western Europe, vigorous Moscow-directed communist parties challenged the democracies on their home turfs. In Africa, numerous regimes depended on Soviet military assistance to stay in power, threaten their neighbors or resist anti-communist opposition groups.

Both sides in the Cold War were anxious to keep these surrogate struggles from going nuclear, so the stakes were never “civilizational.” But to say that these “asymmetric” threats were “tiny” would be news to those who struggled to maintain or extend freedom’s reach during the Cold War.

Had Italy, for example, gone communist during the 1950s or 1960s, it would have been an inconvenient defeat for the United States but a catastrophe for the people of Italy. An “asymmetric” threat to the U.S. often is an existential threat to its friends, which was something we never forgot during the Cold War. Obama plainly seems to have entirely missed this crucial point. Ironically, it is he who is advocating a unilateralist policy, ignoring the risks and challenges to U.S. allies when the direct threat to us is, in his view, “tiny.”

What is implicit in Obama’s reference to “tiny” threats is that they are sufficiently insignificant that negotiations alone can resolve them. Indeed, he has gone even further, arguing that the lack of negotiations with Iran caused the threats: “And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons, funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah.”

This is perhaps the most breathtakingly naive statement of all, implying as it does that it is actually U.S. policy that motivates Iran rather than Iran’s own perceived ambitions and interests. That would be news to the mullahs in Tehran, not to mention the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is an article of faith for Obama, and many others on the left in the U.S. and abroad, that it is the United States that is mostly responsible for the world’s ills. In 1984, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick labeled people with these views the “San Francisco Democrats,” after the city where Walter Mondale was nominated for president.

Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that “they always blame America first” for the world’s problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.

This is yet another piece of history that Obama has ignored or never learned. There may be one more piece of history worthy of attention: In 1984, Mondale went down to one of the worst electoral defeats in American political history. We will now see whether Obama follows that path as well.

John R. Bolton is the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

[surveyor]

urbanrealtor:

I understand if you’ve kind of come in the middle of the conversation. In the previous thread, gandalf and I went at it for quite awhile and it encompassed quite a few pages. I understand your reluctance to go into that thread and delve through the posts, but at the same time, I don’t really feel like re-hashing or repeating myself. I’m certainly open to expanding on certain issues, or clarifying certain things.

And my posts recently were addressed to gandalf, who was in on the discussion and (I assumed) read through my posts. If I do repeat myself, it’s because my posts weren’t read carefully enough and I have to spell things out.

As for why the original newsweek article questions are irrelevant, I said that in the first page of this thread: labeling Obama as conservative or liberal does little to further the intellectual debate. The use of labels is a sophistry in order to avoid true analyses and discussion. I’ve also stated that the foreign policies of both candidates is deficient when it comes to the islamofacism threat so further labeling is useless.

There is also a difference between calling him dumb (which I’ve never said) and calling him uninformed, which is a legitimate criticism.

Anyways, I thought that this article (which I am bringing back again…) was a good article showing how Obama’s lack of knowledge towards history can hurt him when creating foreign policy or even getting the right lesson from history.

Since you do not wish to go back through the thread, here it is:

Barack Obama’s willingness to meet with the leaders of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea “without preconditions” is a naive and dangerous approach to dealing with the hard men who run pariah states. It will be an important and legitimate issue for policy debate during the remainder of the presidential campaign.

Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy’s first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War’s most dangerous crises.

Such realities should cause Obama to become more circumspect, minimizing his off-the-cuff observations about history, grand strategy and diplomacy. In fact, he has done exactly the opposite, exhibiting so many gaps in his knowledge and understanding of world affairs that they have not yet received the attention they deserve. He consistently reveals failings in foreign policy that are far more serious than even his critics had previously imagined.

Consider the following statement, which was lost in the controversy over his comments about negotiations: “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. … Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Let’s dissect this comment. Obama is correct that the rogue states he names do not present the same magnitude of threat as that posed by the Soviet Union through the possibility of nuclear war. Fortunately for us all, general nuclear war never took place. Nonetheless, serious surrogate struggles between the superpowers abounded because the Soviet Union’s threat to the West was broader and more complex than simply the risk of nuclear war. Subversion, guerrilla warfare, sabotage and propaganda were several of the means by which this struggle was waged, and the stakes were high, even, or perhaps especially, in “tiny” countries.

In the Western Hemisphere, for example, the Soviets used Fidel Castro’s Cuba to assist revolutionary activities in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In Western Europe, vigorous Moscow-directed communist parties challenged the democracies on their home turfs. In Africa, numerous regimes depended on Soviet military assistance to stay in power, threaten their neighbors or resist anti-communist opposition groups.

Both sides in the Cold War were anxious to keep these surrogate struggles from going nuclear, so the stakes were never “civilizational.” But to say that these “asymmetric” threats were “tiny” would be news to those who struggled to maintain or extend freedom’s reach during the Cold War.

Had Italy, for example, gone communist during the 1950s or 1960s, it would have been an inconvenient defeat for the United States but a catastrophe for the people of Italy. An “asymmetric” threat to the U.S. often is an existential threat to its friends, which was something we never forgot during the Cold War. Obama plainly seems to have entirely missed this crucial point. Ironically, it is he who is advocating a unilateralist policy, ignoring the risks and challenges to U.S. allies when the direct threat to us is, in his view, “tiny.”

What is implicit in Obama’s reference to “tiny” threats is that they are sufficiently insignificant that negotiations alone can resolve them. Indeed, he has gone even further, arguing that the lack of negotiations with Iran caused the threats: “And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons, funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah.”

This is perhaps the most breathtakingly naive statement of all, implying as it does that it is actually U.S. policy that motivates Iran rather than Iran’s own perceived ambitions and interests. That would be news to the mullahs in Tehran, not to mention the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is an article of faith for Obama, and many others on the left in the U.S. and abroad, that it is the United States that is mostly responsible for the world’s ills. In 1984, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick labeled people with these views the “San Francisco Democrats,” after the city where Walter Mondale was nominated for president.

Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that “they always blame America first” for the world’s problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.

This is yet another piece of history that Obama has ignored or never learned. There may be one more piece of history worthy of attention: In 1984, Mondale went down to one of the worst electoral defeats in American political history. We will now see whether Obama follows that path as well.

John R. Bolton is the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

[surveyor]

urbanrealtor:

I understand if you’ve kind of come in the middle of the conversation. In the previous thread, gandalf and I went at it for quite awhile and it encompassed quite a few pages. I understand your reluctance to go into that thread and delve through the posts, but at the same time, I don’t really feel like re-hashing or repeating myself. I’m certainly open to expanding on certain issues, or clarifying certain things.

And my posts recently were addressed to gandalf, who was in on the discussion and (I assumed) read through my posts. If I do repeat myself, it’s because my posts weren’t read carefully enough and I have to spell things out.

As for why the original newsweek article questions are irrelevant, I said that in the first page of this thread: labeling Obama as conservative or liberal does little to further the intellectual debate. The use of labels is a sophistry in order to avoid true analyses and discussion. I’ve also stated that the foreign policies of both candidates is deficient when it comes to the islamofacism threat so further labeling is useless.

There is also a difference between calling him dumb (which I’ve never said) and calling him uninformed, which is a legitimate criticism.

Anyways, I thought that this article (which I am bringing back again…) was a good article showing how Obama’s lack of knowledge towards history can hurt him when creating foreign policy or even getting the right lesson from history.

Since you do not wish to go back through the thread, here it is:

Barack Obama’s willingness to meet with the leaders of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea “without preconditions” is a naive and dangerous approach to dealing with the hard men who run pariah states. It will be an important and legitimate issue for policy debate during the remainder of the presidential campaign.

Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy’s first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War’s most dangerous crises.

Such realities should cause Obama to become more circumspect, minimizing his off-the-cuff observations about history, grand strategy and diplomacy. In fact, he has done exactly the opposite, exhibiting so many gaps in his knowledge and understanding of world affairs that they have not yet received the attention they deserve. He consistently reveals failings in foreign policy that are far more serious than even his critics had previously imagined.

Consider the following statement, which was lost in the controversy over his comments about negotiations: “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. … Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Let’s dissect this comment. Obama is correct that the rogue states he names do not present the same magnitude of threat as that posed by the Soviet Union through the possibility of nuclear war. Fortunately for us all, general nuclear war never took place. Nonetheless, serious surrogate struggles between the superpowers abounded because the Soviet Union’s threat to the West was broader and more complex than simply the risk of nuclear war. Subversion, guerrilla warfare, sabotage and propaganda were several of the means by which this struggle was waged, and the stakes were high, even, or perhaps especially, in “tiny” countries.

In the Western Hemisphere, for example, the Soviets used Fidel Castro’s Cuba to assist revolutionary activities in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In Western Europe, vigorous Moscow-directed communist parties challenged the democracies on their home turfs. In Africa, numerous regimes depended on Soviet military assistance to stay in power, threaten their neighbors or resist anti-communist opposition groups.

Both sides in the Cold War were anxious to keep these surrogate struggles from going nuclear, so the stakes were never “civilizational.” But to say that these “asymmetric” threats were “tiny” would be news to those who struggled to maintain or extend freedom’s reach during the Cold War.

Had Italy, for example, gone communist during the 1950s or 1960s, it would have been an inconvenient defeat for the United States but a catastrophe for the people of Italy. An “asymmetric” threat to the U.S. often is an existential threat to its friends, which was something we never forgot during the Cold War. Obama plainly seems to have entirely missed this crucial point. Ironically, it is he who is advocating a unilateralist policy, ignoring the risks and challenges to U.S. allies when the direct threat to us is, in his view, “tiny.”

What is implicit in Obama’s reference to “tiny” threats is that they are sufficiently insignificant that negotiations alone can resolve them. Indeed, he has gone even further, arguing that the lack of negotiations with Iran caused the threats: “And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons, funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah.”

This is perhaps the most breathtakingly naive statement of all, implying as it does that it is actually U.S. policy that motivates Iran rather than Iran’s own perceived ambitions and interests. That would be news to the mullahs in Tehran, not to mention the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is an article of faith for Obama, and many others on the left in the U.S. and abroad, that it is the United States that is mostly responsible for the world’s ills. In 1984, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick labeled people with these views the “San Francisco Democrats,” after the city where Walter Mondale was nominated for president.

Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that “they always blame America first” for the world’s problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.

This is yet another piece of history that Obama has ignored or never learned. There may be one more piece of history worthy of attention: In 1984, Mondale went down to one of the worst electoral defeats in American political history. We will now see whether Obama follows that path as well.

John R. Bolton is the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

[surveyor]

urbanrealtor:

I understand if you’ve kind of come in the middle of the conversation. In the previous thread, gandalf and I went at it for quite awhile and it encompassed quite a few pages. I understand your reluctance to go into that thread and delve through the posts, but at the same time, I don’t really feel like re-hashing or repeating myself. I’m certainly open to expanding on certain issues, or clarifying certain things.

And my posts recently were addressed to gandalf, who was in on the discussion and (I assumed) read through my posts. If I do repeat myself, it’s because my posts weren’t read carefully enough and I have to spell things out.

As for why the original newsweek article questions are irrelevant, I said that in the first page of this thread: labeling Obama as conservative or liberal does little to further the intellectual debate. The use of labels is a sophistry in order to avoid true analyses and discussion. I’ve also stated that the foreign policies of both candidates is deficient when it comes to the islamofacism threat so further labeling is useless.

There is also a difference between calling him dumb (which I’ve never said) and calling him uninformed, which is a legitimate criticism.

Anyways, I thought that this article (which I am bringing back again…) was a good article showing how Obama’s lack of knowledge towards history can hurt him when creating foreign policy or even getting the right lesson from history.

Since you do not wish to go back through the thread, here it is:

Barack Obama’s willingness to meet with the leaders of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea “without preconditions” is a naive and dangerous approach to dealing with the hard men who run pariah states. It will be an important and legitimate issue for policy debate during the remainder of the presidential campaign.

Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy’s first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War’s most dangerous crises.

Such realities should cause Obama to become more circumspect, minimizing his off-the-cuff observations about history, grand strategy and diplomacy. In fact, he has done exactly the opposite, exhibiting so many gaps in his knowledge and understanding of world affairs that they have not yet received the attention they deserve. He consistently reveals failings in foreign policy that are far more serious than even his critics had previously imagined.

Consider the following statement, which was lost in the controversy over his comments about negotiations: “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. … Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Let’s dissect this comment. Obama is correct that the rogue states he names do not present the same magnitude of threat as that posed by the Soviet Union through the possibility of nuclear war. Fortunately for us all, general nuclear war never took place. Nonetheless, serious surrogate struggles between the superpowers abounded because the Soviet Union’s threat to the West was broader and more complex than simply the risk of nuclear war. Subversion, guerrilla warfare, sabotage and propaganda were several of the means by which this struggle was waged, and the stakes were high, even, or perhaps especially, in “tiny” countries.

In the Western Hemisphere, for example, the Soviets used Fidel Castro’s Cuba to assist revolutionary activities in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In Western Europe, vigorous Moscow-directed communist parties challenged the democracies on their home turfs. In Africa, numerous regimes depended on Soviet military assistance to stay in power, threaten their neighbors or resist anti-communist opposition groups.

Both sides in the Cold War were anxious to keep these surrogate struggles from going nuclear, so the stakes were never “civilizational.” But to say that these “asymmetric” threats were “tiny” would be news to those who struggled to maintain or extend freedom’s reach during the Cold War.

Had Italy, for example, gone communist during the 1950s or 1960s, it would have been an inconvenient defeat for the United States but a catastrophe for the people of Italy. An “asymmetric” threat to the U.S. often is an existential threat to its friends, which was something we never forgot during the Cold War. Obama plainly seems to have entirely missed this crucial point. Ironically, it is he who is advocating a unilateralist policy, ignoring the risks and challenges to U.S. allies when the direct threat to us is, in his view, “tiny.”

What is implicit in Obama’s reference to “tiny” threats is that they are sufficiently insignificant that negotiations alone can resolve them. Indeed, he has gone even further, arguing that the lack of negotiations with Iran caused the threats: “And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons, funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah.”

This is perhaps the most breathtakingly naive statement of all, implying as it does that it is actually U.S. policy that motivates Iran rather than Iran’s own perceived ambitions and interests. That would be news to the mullahs in Tehran, not to mention the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is an article of faith for Obama, and many others on the left in the U.S. and abroad, that it is the United States that is mostly responsible for the world’s ills. In 1984, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick labeled people with these views the “San Francisco Democrats,” after the city where Walter Mondale was nominated for president.

Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that “they always blame America first” for the world’s problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.

This is yet another piece of history that Obama has ignored or never learned. There may be one more piece of history worthy of attention: In 1984, Mondale went down to one of the worst electoral defeats in American political history. We will now see whether Obama follows that path as well.

John R. Bolton is the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

[surveyor]

gandalf, you have a documented history of attempting to put words in my mouth. You constantly assign me positions that I do not have and assume political stances that I have never advocated. So you’ll have to do better than “oh, I know how to read because I went to Columbia.” And for one thing, I’m not partisan. The fact that you keep bringing it up means that you are partisan yourself, thereby contradicting your claims to be a “moderate.”

I do find it ironic that you assert that you have reading comprehension and then admit that you have difficulty reading my posts. Doesn’t that prove my point about your reading comprehension?

By the way, when you say you “tune out”, that means YOU ARE NOT READING.

So while I’ve already answered your questions ad naueseum, it makes no difference because you’ve already admitted that you are not reading them. So you should try “not posting.” My content stands for itself.

Reading is fundamental.

By the way, (and this is a reading comprehension thing too) I am saying that the question, the labels (of conservative/liberal policies) is IRRELEVANT. That doesn’t mean that what I am posting is IRRELEVANT.

Geez, try reading.

[surveyor]

gandalf, you have a documented history of attempting to put words in my mouth. You constantly assign me positions that I do not have and assume political stances that I have never advocated. So you’ll have to do better than “oh, I know how to read because I went to Columbia.” And for one thing, I’m not partisan. The fact that you keep bringing it up means that you are partisan yourself, thereby contradicting your claims to be a “moderate.”

I do find it ironic that you assert that you have reading comprehension and then admit that you have difficulty reading my posts. Doesn’t that prove my point about your reading comprehension?

By the way, when you say you “tune out”, that means YOU ARE NOT READING.

So while I’ve already answered your questions ad naueseum, it makes no difference because you’ve already admitted that you are not reading them. So you should try “not posting.” My content stands for itself.

Reading is fundamental.

By the way, (and this is a reading comprehension thing too) I am saying that the question, the labels (of conservative/liberal policies) is IRRELEVANT. That doesn’t mean that what I am posting is IRRELEVANT.

Geez, try reading.

[surveyor]

gandalf, you have a documented history of attempting to put words in my mouth. You constantly assign me positions that I do not have and assume political stances that I have never advocated. So you’ll have to do better than “oh, I know how to read because I went to Columbia.” And for one thing, I’m not partisan. The fact that you keep bringing it up means that you are partisan yourself, thereby contradicting your claims to be a “moderate.”

I do find it ironic that you assert that you have reading comprehension and then admit that you have difficulty reading my posts. Doesn’t that prove my point about your reading comprehension?

By the way, when you say you “tune out”, that means YOU ARE NOT READING.

So while I’ve already answered your questions ad naueseum, it makes no difference because you’ve already admitted that you are not reading them. So you should try “not posting.” My content stands for itself.

Reading is fundamental.

By the way, (and this is a reading comprehension thing too) I am saying that the question, the labels (of conservative/liberal policies) is IRRELEVANT. That doesn’t mean that what I am posting is IRRELEVANT.

Geez, try reading.

[surveyor]

gandalf, you have a documented history of attempting to put words in my mouth. You constantly assign me positions that I do not have and assume political stances that I have never advocated. So you’ll have to do better than “oh, I know how to read because I went to Columbia.” And for one thing, I’m not partisan. The fact that you keep bringing it up means that you are partisan yourself, thereby contradicting your claims to be a “moderate.”

I do find it ironic that you assert that you have reading comprehension and then admit that you have difficulty reading my posts. Doesn’t that prove my point about your reading comprehension?

By the way, when you say you “tune out”, that means YOU ARE NOT READING.

So while I’ve already answered your questions ad naueseum, it makes no difference because you’ve already admitted that you are not reading them. So you should try “not posting.” My content stands for itself.

Reading is fundamental.

By the way, (and this is a reading comprehension thing too) I am saying that the question, the labels (of conservative/liberal policies) is IRRELEVANT. That doesn’t mean that what I am posting is IRRELEVANT.

Geez, try reading.

[surveyor]

gandalf, you have a documented history of attempting to put words in my mouth. You constantly assign me positions that I do not have and assume political stances that I have never advocated. So you’ll have to do better than “oh, I know how to read because I went to Columbia.” And for one thing, I’m not partisan. The fact that you keep bringing it up means that you are partisan yourself, thereby contradicting your claims to be a “moderate.”

I do find it ironic that you assert that you have reading comprehension and then admit that you have difficulty reading my posts. Doesn’t that prove my point about your reading comprehension?

By the way, when you say you “tune out”, that means YOU ARE NOT READING.

So while I’ve already answered your questions ad naueseum, it makes no difference because you’ve already admitted that you are not reading them. So you should try “not posting.” My content stands for itself.

Reading is fundamental.

By the way, (and this is a reading comprehension thing too) I am saying that the question, the labels (of conservative/liberal policies) is IRRELEVANT. That doesn’t mean that what I am posting is IRRELEVANT.

Geez, try reading.

[surveyor]

gandalf:

I don’t have “specific views” on Obama’s foreign policy? With your reading comprehension already lacking credibility, now it’s taken a turn for the worse. I’ve already stated at length my views of Obama’s foreign policies.

Do yourself a favor and learn how to read.

“Question: Newsweek article says Obama is taking a more pragmatic and conservative approach to AQ, Iraq, Iran, Afg/Pak, Isr/Pal. Would you agree?”

Already asked and answered: IRRELEVANT. (see previous posts).

“Question: Discuss the merits of a return to realism in American foreign policy.”

Already asked and answered: IRRELEVANT. (see previous posts).

There. I’ve spelled it out for you.

=sigh= I think if there’s any joke around here, it’s continuing evidence of your dotage…

[Author]

Posts