Joe Biden famously predicted that the new president would be tested early in his administration.
North Korea is rattling the saber over a missile launch.
Iran is putting Israel on notice that its nuclear facilities are within Iranian reach.
And now China is harassing unarmed US naval ships:
The Defense Department said in a statement that a Chinese intelligence ship and several others surrounded the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed vessel with a civilian merchant marine crew. The U.S. vessel was conducting ocean surveys Sunday in international waters in the South China Sea.
The statement said the Navy sprayed one ship with water from fire hoses to force it away and the Chinese crew members stripped to their underwear and continued closing within 25 feet.
There’s only one party missing from the old “axis of evil.” They’re getting ready for national elections.
Change you can believe in, all the way around.
The Taiwanese must be getting nervous about US resolve to defend them from their relatives across the Taiwan straits. What better way to distract from an increasing economic crisis in the motherland than a little saber rattling, or even a great patriotic war.
Get used to it. We are in for a bumpy ride.
Did anyone that has a brain cell really think that this wouldn’t happen?
Oh, I know, let’s slash the U.S. military budget. That will make everyone play nice!
The problem with our becomming more like the Europeans is that THEY ARE UNABLE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES.
It will be interesting to see what happens as we become less able to defend ourselves.
Agreed babs, but ‘interesting’ is not the adjective I would choose.
It is absolutely frightening to realize that this administration’s incompetence is likely to be paid for in blood.
Not being in uniform, I’m not in the line of fire, but that’s no comfort. I can only imagine the growing fear that must be gripping our alert allies.
May G-d guide us and save us.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
“…stripped down to their underwear….”
Silly Chicom Frat boys!
More…. bigger… is coming. Unfortunately.
re CHICOMs: I haven’t forgotten the buffoonish EP-3 midair forcedown…yet. Glad to see a hosedown worked this time.
b2
[...] Lex lists the tests that former Obama foe and current Vice President Joe Biden predicted would happen – North Korea preparing for another ballistic missile launch, Iran threatening to spread radioactivity across the Middle East, and the Red Chinese harassing the Navy. [...]
I know it’s an inevitability but when you hear about things like this – with no response from the White House – it does make you wonder how big will it actually be.
And will the response be hearts and flowers?
You know, sportsfans, the proposed reductions in the Defense budget really demonstrates how deeply pathological is the hatred/dislike of the armed forces and the use of force in any circumstances by Obama and his like-minded minions.
Setting aside for a moment rational discussions of the objective threats out there–both present and looming–one would think at a time when the Dems are shoveling $ money out the door as fast as they can with the ostensible reason given being to goose the economy and save and/or add jobs in a rapidly failing economy, they would leap at the chance to preserve high-paying American jobs–mainly blue-collar (even if highly skilled) jobs at that–their supposed main constituency.
But no, despite wailing about loss of jobs, etc., and demanding rapid, no-questions-asked action to “preserve”
same, we are asked to shed high paying jobs so that billions can be made available for the likes of ACORN, etc. At least with defense, after the $ is spent something tangible remains that is of use–be it a tank, plane or ship–however “inefficiently” it has been procured or “sub-standard” it’s performance. Even sub-standard wpns systems, imaginatively used are of utility–as opposed to none at all. And to say that we can’t afford these systems in a day when we are spending less on defense as a % of GDP than we did prior to Pearl Harbor is asinine.
The upshot of all of this demonstrates evidence of either a deeply cynical leader all too willing to risk our nation’s security in order to further his Socialist domestic agenda; or one sincerely blind to international realities to the point of naivete by virtue of the ideological blinders with which his word-view has saddled him. Either way, an ominous, VERY ominous portent of things to come and deeply, DEEPLY disturbing.
“babs” raises an interesting point in her last observation. Carter was bad enough, but we were coming down from a much higher base. I blame Bush 41 for not having the intellectual/political spine to resist those calling for a “peace dividend” by beginning the down-ward spiral of our capabilities and giving Clinton cover for doing what he was ideologically disposed to do anyway in continuing the stripping out of assets.
I am afraid that the day which we all feared in the back of our minds but devoutly hoped against is coming–the day when some President will be forced to chose between being black-mailed or the huge loss of life of military personnel and/or civilians
(either of which would be catastrophic to our international standing) due to our inability to militarily respond to a posed threat.
It is by now an over-used cliche, but entirely appropriate: “I weep for the future.”
Concur.
Lex my man!
Why does the edit function fail to operate/appear upon what seems to be random occasions? And is moderation weasel–man or machine– (when you’re not here) unable to distinguish regulars, etc? Or is it strict automatic key on length, freq. use of All CAPS, etc?
I’ve noticed in my daily perusing of the Washington Post a ever so slight questioning of the priorities of the Administration’s actions in the last few days or so. Also, I caught a segment of the John King show on MSNBC over the weekend where the Adminstration’s Budget Director (who looks to be all of 19) was called out on there assertion that the current $410B budget bill was “last year’s business” and how could they continue to support the earmarks, etc when Obama had made such a big deal again and again in the campaign. If it’s last year’s business why is the Senate just voting on it tomorrow? Some lies just don’t hold water even to MSNBC for God’s sake.
I see these as the ever so slight fissures in the support the MSM has given the president as the gulf between his rhetoric and actions becomes plain to anyone paying attention. Not that they are not supportive but more that they are starting the report a few more facts with less than the rose glasses tint seen before.
As the international situation tenses on many fronts the President better wake up and find the energy to get engaged or his inexperience will start to become fodder for the late night comics. Once he’s made the starring role in a SNL skit the bloom will fairly be off the rose.
Of course by then it may be too late to avoid the dangerous consequences such action always invite from, you know, our enemies, even if we chose to persist in the illusion that, having such a swell fellow posing as guiding the ship of state such notions are so positively antiquated.
I mean if we can’t bother to execute such long standing courtesies as have existed between our longest standing ally or extend an olive branch without creating an embarrassment to Russia how can we expect decisive action from a man who admits to being surprised by the amount of stuff coming across his desk. But then the soaring orations that swept so many into a frenzy of adulation were never backed up by the life building experiences so much a part of any true stateman’s resume. I’m surprised not to hear more comment on the fact that, Obama traveling to Ohio to sell the benefits of how much good the stimulus is doing had to cite, as example of the good it was doing, a new class of police recruits as evidence of jobs saved. How exactly does borrowing money by one government entity to give to another government entity to hire more government workers that don’t produce taxable wealth other than their own personal income taxes going to produce a sustainable recovery? Its not like the Ohio city will realize a net tax gain from their exertions? They have no idea how they will even pay the salaries next year. Carried to the absurd you would think the plan is for everyone to have a government job – but who pays for all that then?
Like I said the cracks are hard to see but they are starting. The Dems are fighting on Capital Hill already and in six months Obama will no longer be the messiah just a Jimmy Carter wannabe with trillions of debt to show for his efforts.
Now if only the Republicans had anyone or anything to offer as a credible alternative…..
OldT6Flyer/
Have to nitpick-tho might be my interpretation error–when you say that govt workers don’t produce any taxable wealth “…other than their own personal income taxes..” Hell, those “taxes” are a sum-total function of the entire salary/benefits package they receive via the throw-off of the taxes that the wealth-creating pvt sector produces, are they not? So in a very real sense, government employees don’t “pay” any taxes at all, zero, zilch, in the same sense that the word “tax” applies to the pvt. sector, n’cest pas? Just as the pvt sector pays their salaries; it pays their taxes.
I know, picky,picky,picky…
You are correct of course. My point is not to denigrate government workers as they provide needed services (in a lot of cases – thinking police, fire, military, especially) but rather that if the only benefits of the stimulus is to fund more government positions its a less than zero-sum game.
The private sector – especially those taht creat wealth by converting raw materials (iron ore, steel, seed, etc) into finished products add more value and creates more wealth that wasn’t just transferred from one place to another. Of course this reveals an ignorance of economics but I’m a simple guy anyway.
I just thought it pretty lame that was the best they could come up. Had some manufacturer announced they would be able to keep a few thousand employees due to better trade policy or tax treatment I’d be more convinced, etc.
In an emergency, foreign and/or domestic you would think they would be more focused on that instead of ramming through every liberal agenda item left sitting around collecting dust for the last 30 years….
Virgil,
It shames me that I’ve reached as many years as I have, knowing that businesses need pay no tax, but not extending the concept to the logical conclusion re: gov’t employees.
::Raising hat and glass in salute::
I’ll have to make sure I keep that one primed in the “mental arsenal” the next time I hear another person whine about high taxes, just to twist their spring a little tighter. Particularly over those employees who still somehow manage to forget those taxes they do owe.
Slightly off topic, but I found this link on Theo’s site and found this article pretty well thought out. Expands on Lex’s premise and extrapolates that in a worst (very worst) case.
Juvat/
How have I missed this guy? Especially as I am a devotee of Atlas Shrugs. Background? You seem to know him…
OldT6Flyer’
Oh yeah, you and I are in total sync regards main thrust of your argument–couldn’t agree more…btw, click on link Juvat provided–very good.
I just did – wow.
Virg – I’d like you’re email address. Lex has mine if you would be so kind….
Remember the days when an auxilary would have a 5″/38 sft, and several 3″/50 twin mounts? Hard to harrass a ship that can harrass right back. I don’t know who thought it would be such a great idea to have the Fleet Train unarmed, and manned by mariners, rather than Sailors. Ships of the Gray Funnel Line are expected to go In Harm’s Way, that is the whole point of being in the Gray Funnel Line, rather than Matson, or Cunard. Auxiliaries went into the seas around Iwo and Okinawa loaded for bear. Even the ARMADILLO class station tanker USS GIRAFFE ( IX-118), whose job was only to sit in Wiseman’s Cove at Kerama Retto, and provide fuel for the ships coming and going had 1X 5″/38, 1X 3″/ 50, 2 40mm Bofors, and 12 20mm Oerlikons. I realize that IMPECCABLE is a deep water survey ship, but she should at least have a 25mm SeaMaster chain gun. As this incident shows, sometimes Harm comes looking for you, and your being a harmelss survey ship may not matter to the nasties.
SCOTTtheBADGER/
As I read it two unfortunate philosophies seem to be driving the trend you describe. One is the belief that guns invite trouble and the bad guys can always overwhelm an isolated ship in a pre-meditated move, and second, guns mean sailors to man them–which means salaries and benefits and it’s not even the direct salaries but the fact we can’t/won’t afford the braces for the daughter’s teeth of the supply CPO back on shore who keeps the ship running is what’s behind the denuding of such ships. At least that’s how I see it.
Sickening, isn’t it?
Beyond sickening. No sailors necessary – all it’d take would be some weapons/sensor automation (for which equipment should still exist), and a ten-cent toggle switch up on the bridge. If you want to save some money on it, skip the on-off switch. Ammo and Phalanx mounts are cheaper than the risk of having a resupply ship get hit in the middle of doing its job. Proper selection of sensors and software handles any other situation that can be imagined.
How odd that the Gray Funnel Line, and extremely vital, yet non profit business, will be allowed to wither, yet community organiser groups, that will lead to the destruction of what the allegedly worshipped A. Lincoln’s Last, Best Hope for humanity.
I will quite happily have some of my taxes pay for the CPO’s daughter’s teeth straitened, as that will be one less thing for the CPO to have distract him from Sailory things, yet the Current Light Worker & Company would rather just let the country be destroyed, just so long as they feel good about themselves. How many F/A-18s/USN versions of the Frithof Nansen intead of the LCS waste of money/SLEPed Perrys/SeaMasters/sets of braces would the billions given to ACORN buy ?
Interesting your take on Iraq, considering your other post condemning another Arab state-when in reality that are cut from the same cloth. An Arab is an Arab. Seen one-seen ‘em all.
But keeping them afloat is our national obsession. Taking care of real, live Americans at home? Not so much.
How about letting the Iraqis fail and American banks succeed? I’m in a ticked off mood today.. Can you tell?
All Arabs are precisely the same, is that it?
Just like all men are the same–they’re all like Skippy, of course.
Would that they were all like me-women would be a lot more satisfied!
Well! Walked right into that one. Nothin’ like opening the trapdoor… while standing on it, is there?
*opts for a strategic retreat*
I’ve lived and worked with them for many years. You really don’t think they are all the same? Aside from the Shia, Sunni, Druze thing they all struck me as having exactly the same foibles and characteristics and they shared them with Egyptians, Iranians and Pakistanis.
They all belong on the Group W bench.
Pretty much. Especially when there are sizeable segments within Iraq that actually agree with Saudis….and their interpretation of Islam.
Islam is a cancer on the Arab people-they will not advance until they leave that behind them………..
My hero, Winston, summed it up best:
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live…….Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
The book I am reading seems more strange in light of Skippies’ twin paeans to racism (sorry Skippy, but if some yahoo were to say “seen one Asian, seen ‘em all, you would rightly regard such a person as displaying a kind of prejudice and ignorance that disqualifies him/her from being considered capable of intelligent commentary – at least in regards “Asians” – trying to evade that by pivoting to Islam doesn’t take away from the ugliness of your original remarks) and Islamophobia. In the book I’m reading Rusmir Mahmutcehajic’s Denial of Bosnia for my seminar tomorrow the author (a former minister of industry in Bosnia who repudiated his government and resigned from it when it became too Islamist) is making the case that there are humanistic, tolerant visions of Islam that could have healed Bosnia rather than destroyed it. To say that the religious longings of a large part of mankind (or at least the Arab part of it) are simply “a cancer” is simply bigotry (do you feel this way about Indonesian and Indian Islam?). I think right now that much of Islam shows signs of a crisis (as did Christianity once upon a time), but I believe we are kidding ourselves if we think that without Islam the Middle East and southern Asia would suddenly and happily advance into a sunny secularist paradise – Persians did not need Islam to learn imperial ambition and arrogance. And once can admire Winston Churchill without aping his prejudices.
Bosnian Muslims are not Arabs. Even so-they could have moved a lot further and saved the West a lot of trouble had they not been saddled with the albatross of Islam.
Neither are most Sufi Muslims arabs either-who actually have a good time with it over in India. Nonetheless they would be better off with out Islam than with it. So too would most Indonesians.
However, Indonesia as well as Malaysia has a very diverse population set that is nothing like Arabs. Otherwise one would not be able to go to Jakarata and have a good time at Blok M.
They are moving forward-slowly. They would move faster if they would reject Islam. However its the combination-Arab and Islam that makes for problems. I submit to you, that minus Islam-and the corrupting force of cheap foreign Asian labor which is a big part of the rich Arab country’s problems-Arab countries would be further along the path. Moreso if, Churchill’s dream of the Empire had been realized.
The Muslims of Indonesia and Malaysia are not so far from what you are suggesting in the Arab world.
They move slowly, and any progress is quickly lost in sea of corruption and religious intolerance…ask any Chinese person what it is like to be born and raised in Malaysia and they quickly talk about wishing they were Singaporean.
500 years ago the West was similarly crippled by the religious fanaticism that gripped it in the form of Christianity, it was only with the Reformation that real progress began there…I wonder if we would be better to hope for a similar enlightenment in the East, or simply agree with Dawkins that all religions stop the progress of man.
Skippy,
Several problems yet remain – the Churchill quote you cited is not about Arabs alone, it refers to everyone who accepts “Mohammedinism” – in citing him (and in your argument) you accept that Islam as such is a retarding influence – yet…
to what shoudl Muslims be “moving forward”? European secular politics within the past 50 years have produced countries unable to protect or reproduce themselves, with a great deal of structural unemployment and whose key governing structure, the EU is profoundly anti-democratic. (And do you really want to go back any further into European history – don’t think the Arabs or other Muslims would do so badly in that comparison even throwing in the Armenian genocide). So, are European politics “forward,” backward or twirling in corkscrew fashion (and would that be up or down)? Is that the direction to which all humankind should aspire?
Or perhaps we in the US are the model – a country you have observed is riven with social inequalities, and worse is (almost) half full of Republicans (and their sympathizers) a very large number of whom espouse religious and cultural values you regard with open contempt (but which are remarkably similar to many Muslims’ – Arab and non-Arab – views of such things). And then there is “Blue America” represented by such leaders as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and contain luminaries who have praised Iraqi insurgents as minutemen – and their leader/our President, Barack Obama who, according to some sources can’t multi-task domestic and foreign policy, got his start in politics by proclaiming “We have an awesome God” and other efforts to “win back” religious voters for Democrats and has very kind words for Muslims and Arabs. (I presume He would regard your dissing of Islam and Arabs as a real problems given his very first interview was with the media outlet Al-Aribya http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/26/obama-al-arabiya-intervie_n_161127.html ).
Seems to me that Arabs and other Muslims engaged in the Islamicization of politics in much of the Muslim world could point to the expansion of religion in our own public life and Pres. Obama’s deep respect for Islam and consider itself vindicated in adhering to their faith.
Finally, Churchill’s dream of empire included a sustained British presence in the Middle East (and most places, east, west and south of it) – something you regard as a waste of American blood and treasure (who needs oil when we can power our jet fighters on ethanol I presume). How do you square your respect for Churchill’s imperialism with your full throated opposition to our errand in the Mesopotamian wilderness? (And Churchill, like most good British imperialists never bought into a “mission civilitrice” ideal of attacking openly the religious sensibilities of British subjects)?
I am genuinely curious about these apparent contradictions and tensions.
Sincerely,
David
Ps: Could the Bosnian Muslims have had a culture as exalted as that of the Serbs had they been good Christians?
http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Murder-video-broadcast-stuns-disbelieving-Serbs/2005/06/03/1117568372197.html
Skippy is a drive by. He wants to make his hits but never stands by to debate his opinions.
I know, and I frankly was tempted to let his racial slurs on Arabs go by – ’cause I hate dropping the “r” bomb since in academe and among the chattering classes it gets used too frequently. But in this case it seemed justified and even necessary because many of our troops want to leave Iraq with honor and having accomplished their mission. It was just wrong for him to express contempt for an entire people (esp. one for whom many of these soldiers have willingly shed their blood and with whom they’ve fought) because of their race and faith (oh – and there are also Muslim Americans – some of whom are Arab – who deserve more respect too).
I worry about Islamic radicalism, but I’ve gone on ad nauseum about how if all Muslims really hated us we wouldn’t be able to operate in the Middle East – and large parts of western and southern Asia to boot. And I’m also worried that if we pursue a simplistic anti-religious approach to Islam we will create for ourselves much bigger problems than we have now.
Finally, even though I disagree with Skippy on quite a bit, what he wrote was unworthy of him as well- if I were to natter on about inscrutable orientals he would rightly regard me as a wing nut – I don’t even want someone with whom I disagree and whose view of the world I regard as problematic (esp. given his efforts to advance that view with lots of contempt) to say something so shameful.