Peace through strength no more – Obama to slash nuclear inventory

To ensure everyone likes the USA, President Obama’s approach is to set an example – for Russia, Iran, North Korea and other nuclear states – by cutting our own nuke arsenal and denying missile defense systems for Poland and the Czech Republic. There will be no peace without strength.

What the heck is happening to our country? The nuclear weapon genie is totally out of the bottle and the Commander and Chief is acting unilaterally to cut funding for our own defense – and the defense of our allies – with the hope that other nuclear powers will  see the error of their ways and cut their own nuclear weapons programs as well.

Trust but verify no more; we’re just going to trust them to “do the right thing.” Someone call Spike Lee.

Look, your opinion may be different, but I think good fences make good neighbors, boundaries must exist and yes, an armed society is a polite society. Nobody – except madmen – create nuclear weapons to actually use them, and you must admit the psychological stability of dictators – including Kim Jong Il – have been in question on a daily basis.

Maybe if cops stopped carrying firearms – and for that matter citizens stopped carrying concealed – criminals would see the error of their ways and be impressed with the example being set. Maybe those of you in the cities of Memphis, St. Louis, Detroit and Cleavland – each with more than 2,000 burglaries in 2007 – should unlock your doors and open the windows wide on summer evenings.

You see, having defense mechanisms in place to protect yourself and your family could cause your neighbors to feel threatened. They might not like you. Are we now seeing how absurd this approach is?

Last week we had the Obama administration announce they were scrapping missile defense plans for Poland and the Czech Republic, but back in September on O’Reilly, he thought missile defense in the area was appropriate. My emphasis in bold.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The Russians are playing a game when they pretend that this missile shield is directed against all their ICBMs.

O’REILLY: Yeah, it’s ridiculous. It’s a defensive thing.

OBAMA: It’s a defensive thing, and we…

O’REILLY: So you’re going to keep it there then?

OBAMA: And given what has happened in Georgia, I think that we have to send a clear signal that Poland and other countries in that region are not going to be subject to intimidation and aggression.

O’REILLY: OK, so I just want to get this on the record. You’re elected president, you’re keeping the missile shield in Poland?

OBAMA: I believe that the missile shield is appropriate. I want to make sure it works though.

I can’t even tell from this excerpt if there is already a system in place or Obama wants to ensure it works before it is put in place. The Bush administration noted the system was originally designed to protect the area from Iran’s missiles, but the Pols and Czechs were under the implied impression the system was there to hold back Russia’s advances, as did Obama during the O’Reilly interview.

We certainly know Polish President Lech Kaczynski was under the impression – after a phone conversation with the president-elect in November – the United States would be moving forward with a missile shield program in the area. But Kaczynski was wrong said an Obama aide, no such committment was made.

Could this just be a really bad communication strategy by the White House?

Now, times may certainly have changed and priorities re-shuffled. The Christian Science Monitor has the well-crafted response by Secretary of Defense Bill Gates. His argument is they are not bailing out on Poland or the Czechs, but simply changing the strategy in the area, and the “added bonus” of the change is Russia approving of the plan.

That may seem fine, but when your plans change, your allies freak out and aggressors like Russia applaud the move, there is something wrong with the plan or your communication strategy sucks.

Next, we have Obama planning to slash our own nuclear weapon count and stop all testing to see if they would work properly.

Obama has rejected the Pentagon’s first draft of the “nuclear posture review” as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.

Never has any technology been put away for ever. In a perfect utopia there would be no evil, no weapons, no crime, no slavery, no domestic violence and no war.

Not that a perfect utopia can actually exist, but in my opinion we are closest to peace and the perfect utopia by showing strength, and the United States under Obama’s leadership is not currently displaying strength.

Others writing on the subject include Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, Jim Geraghty at the Campaign Spot, AJ at Strata-Sphere, Mirengoff at Power Line, and Ilan Berman over at the Wall Street Journal who has this very interesting tid-bit I don’t have time to look into right now.(My emphasis in bold.)

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Obama administration’s decision last Thursday to scrap missile-defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic is that it was so long in coming.

The handwriting has been on the wall since February, when President Barack Obama sent Russian President Dmitry Medvedev a secret letter proffering a quid pro quo of sorts to the Kremlin. The deal was simple: Washington would walk away from its plans to deploy antimissile capabilities in Eastern Europe in exchange for greater Russian cooperation on Iran.

The missive, promptly leaked by the Kremlin, became something of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Without signs of commitment from Washington, the governments in Warsaw and Prague found it impossible to promote the controversial effort to their own citizens. And so the idea of a European missile-defense shield faltered, progressively mothballed as a political agenda item in both countries. The administration’s announcement last week put the final nail in the coffin.

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

6 Comments

  1. sammy22 on September 21, 2009 at 2:39 pm

    After reading: "Nobody – except madmen – create nuclear weapons to actually use them,", I found it difficult to follow the remainder of the post. Somehow the names Hiroshima and Nagasaki hung in the air. Though I accept the reasoning behind Pres. Truman's decision, I find the quote above somewhat over the top.



  2. Dimsdale on September 21, 2009 at 2:50 pm

    Obama should consider the thought that it is better to be thought a naive, inexperienced, misguided socialist schmuck than to speak from the bully pulpit and remove all doubt (my apologies to either Twain or Lincoln).

     

    How long does it take a man who has been robbed, stripped and had his house burned to the ground to realize that someone, through stupidity or malice, is intent on destroying him?  America is that man and the house is our country.  The someone is Obama.

     

    It is time for Americans to take our country back.



  3. Dimsdale on September 21, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    Re: the atomic bomb.  Remember that recent revelations show that both Japan and Germany were further along in their atomic programs than the allies thought.  Bottom line: the good guys won, and we rebuilt their countries afterward.

     

    I don't hesitate to think that any society where death is seen as a reward in defense of their leader or religion is filled with madmen.



  4. Anne-EH on September 21, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    Sadly we are going back to a 9/10 mentality BIGTIME!



  5. Anne-EH on September 21, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    Article posted at Free Republic:
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2345117/



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