Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Re: Grand Old Peaceniks

You might want to put away your hood and swastika for a moment and
smell the coffee

On Sep 6, 12:01 am, plainolamerican <plainolameri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> that you won't accept that the US interventionist policy is a complete
> failure and supports israel is evidence that you just might be a
> zionist
> how's that working for ya?
> ever had a zionist minister preside over a dead relative who served in
> the middle east?
>
> On Sep 5, 9:30 am, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:> On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 9:09 AM, plainolamerican
> > <plainolameri...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > > neoconservatives remain a large part of the foreign-policy
> > > establishment that will wind up staffing any future Republican
> > > administration
> > > ---
> > > Neoconservatism is better described in general as a complex
> > > interlocking professional and family network centered around Jewish
> > > publicists and organizers flexibly deployed to recruit the sympathies
> > > of both Jews and non-Jews in harnessing the wealth and power of the
> > > United States in the service of Israel. As such, neoconservatism
> > > should be considered a semicovert branch of the massive and highly
> > > effective pro-Israel lobby, which includes organizations like the
> > > America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—the most powerful
> > > lobbying group in Washington—and the Zionist Organization of America
> > > (ZOA). Indeed, as discussed below, prominent neoconservatives have
> > > been associated with such overtly pro-Israel organizations as the
> > > Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Washington
> > > Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), and ZOA.
>
> > > On Sep 4, 6:37 pm, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> > > > Grand Old PeaceniksWill austerity turn Republicans away from war?By W.
> > > James Antle III | August 31, 2011
> > > > Fairly or not, Mitt Romney's approach to national security during the
> > > 2008 presidential race can be captured by a single phrase: "Double
> > > Guantanamo." When asked about the U.S. prison camp for terror suspects, the
> > > eager-to-please former Massachusetts governor's first instinct was to
> > > propose super-sizing it like a McDonald's value meal for hungry Republican
> > > primary voters.
> > > > That was when Romney was trying to compete with John McCain and Rudy
> > > Giuliani, both more natural national-security hawks than he. But even as he
> > > launched his second campaign in 2010 with the release of his bookNo Apology:
> > > The Case for American Greatness, Romney endorsed in its pages what William
> > > Kristol and Robert Kagan described in a 1996Foreign Affairsessay as
> > > "benevolent global hegemony"the idea that if the United States is not the
> > > world's dominant military and ideological power, the void will be filled by
> > > countries advancing values that are much worse for peace and human freedom.
> > > > So it was surprising when at a June GOP candidates' debate in New
> > > Hampshire, Romney said of the war in Afghanistan, "It's time for to us bring
> > > our troops home as soon as we possibly can." With this pale imitation of
> > > "Come home, America," Romney found himself drawn into a critique by his
> > > former rival McCain and other hawks that the Republican Party was becoming
> > > too "isolationist."
> > > > "There's always been an isolation strain in the Republican Party, that
> > > Pat Buchanan wing of our party," McCain lamented, irritated by Republican
> > > diffidence over Afghanistan and Libya. "But now it seems to have moved more
> > > center stage, so to speak."
> > > > McCain's ally, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, concurred.
> > > He worried to theHillthat it "doesn't take long before the [GOP] finds a
> > > war-weary nation and exploits it." He fretted about an alliance between Ron
> > > Paul on the "far right" and Dennis Kucinich on the "far left," though he was
> > > apparently unbothered by a left-right interventionist coalition consisting
> > > of himself, McCain, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton.
> > > > Some of this was overblown, even by McCain and Graham's
> > > characteristically elastic definition of isolationism. TheWeekly Standard's
> > > Stephen Hayes admitted on Fox News that Romney's mild Afghanistan comment
> > > "had Republican hawks, policy analysts emailing one another, what does he
> > > mean? Is he calling for immediate withdrawal?" But Hayes reassured viewers
> > > at home, "I talked to people who are familiar with his thinking. And they
> > > said no, look, he misspoke. That's not what he intended to say."
> > > > TheWashington Post's Jennifer Rubin, quick to spy "unseriousness" in the
> > > form of incipient dovishness upon the part of Republican aspirantslike such
> > > notorious McGovernites as Mitch Daniels and Haley Barbourabsolved Romney of
> > > any foreign-policy heterodoxy. While Rubin was initially concerned that "the
> > > entire GOP field was now hopping on the isolationist bandwagon in some odd
> > > attempt to scrounge votes from the Ron Paul contingent," Romney and Tim
> > > Pawlenty ultimately passed her "strong foreign policy" test. (As later did
> > > Michele Bachmann, who "firmly planted herself at the grown-ups' table" by
> > > telling theWeekly Standardwe must "stay the course" in Afghanistan.)
> > > > Pawlenty had taken to lecturing the rest of the Republican field about
> > > their disturbing "move more towards isolationism," as he toldPolitico.
> > > Meanwhile, Romney foreign-policy adviser Mitchell Reiss was quick to tell
> > > Rubin that Romney felt the United States was "under-investing" in national
> > > defense.
> > > > It is nevertheless significant that Romney, his finger ever in search of
> > > the primary voter's pulse, has had to defend himself against the charge of
> > > isolationism. Much of his double-Gitmo chest-beating last time around was
> > > overcompensating for the perception that he wasn't as gung-ho as the other
> > > candidates for George W. Bush's foreign policy. At the time, conservative
> > > journalist David Freddoso pointed out that Romney "is unique among the
> > > serious Republican presidential contenders because he has never said he
> > > would do [the Iraq War] all over again, and they all have."
> > > > In one debate, Romney twice refused to answer when asked if the Iraq
> > > invasion was a mistake. He called the question "an unreasonable
> > > hypothetical," a "non-sequitur," and even a "null set," as if it simply did
> > > not compute. At another debate he drew McCain's harsh rebuke for saying the
> > > surge was "apparently" working. "Governor, the surge is working," McCain
> > > snarled. When Romney protested that was what he had just said, McCain shot
> > > back, "Not apparently. It's working."
> > > > In theNew Republic, Eli Lake has reported that Romney's foreign-policy
> > > advisers are divided. Lake described Reisswho ironically was the man
> > > dispatched to convince Jennifer Rubin of Romney's hawkishnessas a surge
> > > skeptic, while Dan Senor, a former spokesman for the Coalition Provisional
> > > Authority in Iraq who later sent a distress signal to Republican hawks about
> > > the dovishness of senate candidate Rand Paul, was pro-surge. Reiss and Senor
> > > still advise Romney today and are similarly at odds over Afghanistan.
> > > > Yet Reiss's doubts about Hamid Karzai's Afghan government are a far cry
> > > from mythical isolationism, or even real-world non-interventionism. Other
> > > than Ron Paul and fellow libertarian Gary Johnson, Jon Huntsman is the only
> > > Republican presidential candidate who has come close to calling for a
> > > fundamental reevaluation of American foreign policy. But as Lake notes, "the
> > > penny-pinching mood among Republicans" has made GOP leaders "less inclined
> > > to sound the kinds of grandiose and expensive notes about foreign policy
> > > that were considered par for the course in 2008."
> > > > Nowhere was that clearer than in this summer's debt-ceiling battle. In
> > > their eagerness to identify spending reductions that would offset an
> > > increase in the federal debt limit, congressional Republican leaders were
> > > willing to put the Pentagon on the chopping block. House Budget Committee
> > > Chairman Paul Ryan had long been a skeptic of trimming the defense budget,
> > > preferring to reinvest any savings from eliminating waste or from
> > > procurement reform in other military expenditures. But Ryan included former
> > > Defense Secretary Robert Gates's requested defense cuts in the official
> > > Republican budget for fiscal 2012, reinvesting some of the savings and
> > > applying the rest to deficit reduction.
> > > > The eventual debt ceiling compromisewhich passed the House with more
> > > Republican than Democratic votescaps security spending at $684 billion,
> > > about $4.5 billion below the enacted 2011 amount. The law also sets up a
> > > joint "super committee" tasked with finding another $1.5 trillion in deficit
> > > reduction for the next decade. If the committee flunks its assignment or
> > > Congress fails to pass its recommendations, another $600 billion in cuts to
> > > defense and other security spending kick in. Romney, Pawlenty, and Bachmann
> > > all cited the defense cuts in their opposition to the legislation, with
> > > Bachmann saying the armed forces "will be the ones who take the biggest,
> > > most severe haircut."
> > > > McCain, ever on the watch for isolationism, swallowed hard and supported
> > > the deal. So did House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon,
> > > despite warning, "Our senior military commanders have been unanimous in
> > > their concerns that deeper cuts could break the force." Yet fiscal
> > > conservatives like Sen. Tom Coburn were willing to contemplate $1 trillion
> > > in defense cuts. Coburn argued that knocking defense spending back to levels
> > > seen before the surge in Iraq was hardly isolationism.
> > > > Penny-pinching is one thing. Rethinking the projection of American
> > > military power is another. Republicans didn't want to pay for the wars
> > > launched under President Bush either, but barely a handful voted against
> > > waging them. Yet a large number of Republicans opposed President Obama's war
> > > in Libya, going so far as to vote for defunding it and invoking the War
> > > Powers Resolution to question its legalitythe latter move putting 87 House
> > > Republicans on the same page as left-wing Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich.
> > > > This would have been unthinkable under Bush. TheWall Street
> > > Journaleditorialized that it should still be unthinkable now, predictably
> > > decrying an "isolationist turn" in the GOP and designating those 87 "the
> > > Kucinich Republicans"which included Bachmann and other Tea Party favorites.
>
> > ...
>
> > read more »
>
> >  crackpot.jpg
> > 9KViewDownload

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