I’m from Jersey and we like to talk bluntly, but Rand Paul is correct when he says that Chris Christie could easily start World War Three if he actually governed as advertised in the White House:
Christie said that as president, he would shoot down a Russian plane if it breached a no-fly zone in Syria, and claimed Obama wasn’t strong enough to do the same.
“Maybe because I’m from New Jersey I have this plain-language hang-up,” Christie said. “I would talk to Vladmir Putin a lot, and I’d say listen, Mr. President, there’s a no-fly zone and it applies to you and yes we’d shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now.”
Meanwhile, in the real world:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday accepted Russia’s long-standing demand that President Bashar Assad’s future be determined by his own people, as Washington and Moscow edged toward putting aside years of disagreement over how to end Syria’s civil war.
“The United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change,” Kerry told reporters in the Russian capital after meeting President Vladimir Putin. A major international conference on Syria would take place later this week in New York, Kerry announced.
Kerry reiterated the U.S. position that Assad, accused by the West of massive human rights violations and chemical weapons attacks, won’t be able to steer Syria out of more than four years of conflict.
But after a day of discussions with Assad’s key international backer, Kerry said the focus now is “not on our differences about what can or cannot be done immediately about Assad.” Rather, it is on facilitating a peace process in which “Syrians will be making decisions for the future of Syria.”
Kerry’s declarations crystallized the evolution in U.S. policy on Assad over the last several months, as the Islamic State group’s growing influence in the Middle East has taken priority.
How relevant does Christie’s bluster look in light of the factual situation on the ground in Syria?
The Republican candidates debated each other last night in Vegas, but they might as well have been debating a dining room table. They neither know what they are talking about, nor care. It would be sad or maybe just funny if there weren’t a remote possibility that one of them might win and get the chance to start World War Three.
I wonder what percentage of their base would welcome that.
Or at least fantasize about it.
meeting is later this week! wow! not wasting any time! that’s good, must solve lest some warmonger win in 2016
Let’s also be honest here, a No Fly Zone is a stupid idea precisely because of this problem. If you’re NOT shooting down Russian airplanes violating the no fly zone, then what good is it in the first place? It’s meaningless.
Yet Clinton supports a No Fly Zone while Sanders and Obama oppose one.
I don’t care who the Republican nominee is, I can never in good conscience vote for HRC, and this is another example of why. It’s not that I hold her Iraq vote against her. It’s that for her entire public career she’s always opted for more war over less, at every turn. She used this to shake her “liberal” reputation when she was first elected to the Senate; her nickname on the Senate Armed Service Committee, which she worked hard to get assigned to, was “Madame Yes.”
Her Iraq vote has never been the problem. It’s that she learned nothing from it except political lessons. She did well at her SoS posting precisely because she wasn’t enacting her own policies on such issues. In 2008, the basic problem with her (aside from people like Lanny Davis and a staggeringly inept campaign) was precisely her “3 AM phone call” – because she’d answer it with “Bomb them!,” hang up, and go back to sleep, soundly.
I would no more vote for Hillary Clinton than I would vote for, say, Paul Wolfowitz. They share too many of the same sensibilities.
So, if Hillary wins the nomination, are you voting for the Republican or sitting out the election? Of course, it’s your choice, but as a committed Democrat and one who believes that Democratic Presidents are always preferable to anyone at all from the GOP for many reasons aside from filling SC vacancies, I’m disappointed with your decision.
Yes, any Democratic candidate would be better than any Republican. There are black kids being shot in the street every day. People brought to the US as children who worry if they will be deported to a country they don’t know. Poor folk who think $12/hr is a lot better than what they have now. Women being forced to carry babies they can’t feed. But some people still think that their need to “stick to their principles” or “make a statement” is more important than these innocent lives. You are very kind to only refer to that decision as “disappointing”.
You do realize that Clinton will always back Rahmbo, right? That Obama has deported more people already than W ever did. Flame away but those are facts.
And they are still infinitely better than the GOP. It’s not our job to pick an impossible perfect candidate. It’s our job to pick the best of the options we have. This “Both sides do it” nonsense will get innocent people killed.
I think Geov Parrish lives in Washington state, though I am not sure. I don’t think his one vote will matter, if he does indeed live in WA. I wrote in Springsteen/Clarence Clemons in ’00 and Gore still won my state handily.
opting for war, well yes. and it supports the financial industry hence a twofer. must have maximal peace before some warmonger gets into office,
Watching Paul’s smackdown of Christie, I thought that was curtains for the “fat man.” Appears that I couldn’t have been more wrong as Christie’s poll numbers went up. Republicans now fear Syrian child refugees but smack their lips in eager anticipation of WWIII? Can’t get much more insane than that.
Christie harshly insulted the president, which reassured voters who still hold against him his thanking of Obama for Sandy aid.
That’s way more important than starting World War III, at least to the average Republican lizard brain. Apologies to lizards.
You’re right that Christie’s gratuitous attacks on the president are all about trying to erase memories of the Sandy hug. Probably also that it outranks WWIII in GOP voters’ minds.
But do you also have priorities that would preclude you from supporting the candidate least likely to ignite the next world war? I ask this, because I see that you equate Clinton to Wolfowitz, and I want to know if you are earnestly making the argument that on this issue she is no better than the Republicans.
I offer a couple of parallels. Gore was no dove, and was towing the crypto-Republican Lieberman. Would we still have gone to war with Iraq had the Supreme Court decided the election differently? Or to flip the counterfactual: Given Johnson’s disastrous escalation in Vietnam, would peace have been better served by Goldwater? It seems a neater parallel since Johnson is the worst modern case for hawkish Dems, and Goldwater openly courted nuclear war.
This is good news about Kerry finally agreeing not to insist on Assad’s ouster, a position stubbornly asserted for years by the Obama admin and all its neocons. Now let’s hope Kerry’s agreement can be made to stick back home with Obama’s War faction on Syria led by Biden and Nuland and probably most of the national security team of hawks.
I hesitate to be too hopeful because Obama tends to ultimately give the hawks and the Deep State bureaucracy substantially what they want. But if Obama can be strong for once and not back down, there’s the further hope that this could lead to a further agreement on accepting Putin’s standing offer to join in a true alliance to destroy ISIS.
I hesitate to be too hopeful because Obama tends to ultimately give the hawks and the Deep State bureaucracy substantially what they want.
Where is the evidence this is true? Obama (or anyone in elected office for that matter) will never be sufficiently anti-war. That’s a false comparison, even if we criticize them for their hawkish tendencies. But the president is doing about the best we can expect in resisting their calls, and imo aside from Libya has resisted to a greater degree than I would have expected, especially wrt Syria.
Plenty of evidence when we look back at all the neocon/hawkish policies he’s pursued — at the very least giving the War faction a very long leash if there’s even a leash at all.
A few examples: the Libya regime change now a country infested with ISIS, bombing/droning which creates more terrorists than it kills and which also pleases the weapons manufacturers and which in Syria seems to have been aimed more at the pro-Assad and anti-ISIS forces than ISIS, the stupid Obama neocon policy for 4 years of trying to oust Assad, the refusal to prosecute US torturers, the aggressive prosecution of govt whistleblowers, massive Pentagon spending (equal to the next 17 countries combined spending on same), the failure to fire Victoria Nuland and other neocon instigators and dirty tricksters wrt Ukraine, CIA/MIC/Deep State unchecked and stronger than ever, etc.
IOW, a continuation in many FP/national security areas of the Bush regime.
Off the mark as to me as I’m not calling for O to pull out of Syria. I’m calling for him to accept Putin’s offer of a grand military alliance in destroying ISIS. If this isn’t done, there are two very real possible outcomes: 1) ISIS will continue to grow and spread, like a cancer, in the Syria/Iraq region and Libya, then quite possibly in the years to come into Europe, and 2) we will greatly risk with our current military policy a confrontation/accidental event/planned neocon provocation against Russian forces that could trigger WW3.
I think you’re wrong, confusing appearance with reality and the actions of freelancers within the gov with Obama’s policy.
Not sure which item you are referring to, but in the end Obama is the responsible officer in charge for what happens on his watch. Or, in the words of Harold Truman, The Buck Stops Here.
but you of all people understand what risks he’s facing with free lancers trying to derail his policies, – some have argued that Ukraine is an instance of that, [Tarheel dem pointed it out some months back] for example. As far as Syria goes, Booman has written much about Obama’s success in not giving in to pressure for taking sides and militarizing a sectarian conflict – something that would be great for the warmongers and war profiteers but derail prospects for diplomatic solutions. Ukraine, for example, his response for requests for military aid are “yes, good idea, let’s study the problem” and no aid is forthcoming [see, catfood commission]. as far as firing people, look at the Sibelius situation, she got fired after it was resolved. anyway, fjallstrom’s comment is interesting, especially the last paragraph which I think should be borne in mind.
I write “you of all people” based on some of your previous comments, but I may be misreading them, so ignore if you like
The downfall of the American Empire started under George Bush, who fought wars as a Texan in the lawless Wild-West.
More …
Read my new diary – Republicans Worse Than Bush – Glowing Sands of Raqqa.
Yes, anything less than vigorous bombing is now the equivalent of being weak. Nuance and diplomacy are for sissies.
This general attitude by the Russians is also encouraging going forward
This also jumped out, my first chuckle du jour:
Btw, when was the last time Obama or any recent US president held a 3-hour live televised press conference?
These comments too are interesting, Putin on Trump:
As I recall, the Donald has sounded reasonable in a few areas, Russia/Putin in the sense of not acting to provoke them and maybe trying to negotiate with them, unusual for a Republican candidate, and in his comments the other night about Junior’s Iraq War and how those trillions spent there could have been used to good effect over here.
So, not a complete idiot and reckless warmonger. That would be most of the other candidates with the possible exception of RAND Paul.
Trump doesn’t have the first clue how to deal with a true strongman. Trump thinks he’s getting a new BFF. Putin thinks he’s getting a new pet.