Obama’s Nuclear New Tone

Man is an inherently political animal, and politics may be categorized as war by other means. Take the case of Pitcairn island; the mutineers of the Bounty settled on Pitcairn, and by the time the British found them only one adult man was left alive; the others died in fights. After a brief respite on Norfolk Island, the children of the mutineers returned to Pitcairn, where their descendants live to this day. Pitcairn has been plagued by political intrigue and infighting - and crime - throughout her history.

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Now, to the Liberal mind, Pitcairn should be a paradise; an isolated community, living in harmony with Nature should have freed the settlers of the social hang-ups and vices that plague modern industrial society. Pitcairn was the laboratory for the Liberal worldview, the notion that Man is inherently good and that alienation from Nature is the root of evil. Yet it is quite the opposite, and Pitcairn is hardly alone in that. The problem, one Liberals are unwilling to face, is that the human condition is not perfectible, and Man is cursed by Original Sin. Original Sin is the sin of politics. Politics is war by other means, a way of imposing one's will on another. Political intrigue was traditionally quite violent, with the losers generally losing their heads. (Case in point.) In modern democratic republics that imposition is done with a velvet glove, and generally with the consent of the governed. The Founding Fathers understood the base instincts of Man, and labored to create a government that was limited in scope and moribund by checks and balances, leaving the maximum leeway for the individual to govern his own affairs rather than be compelled by force to obey the will of another. But they may well have underestimated the glamour of power, and the collective desire for power produced panderers of Bolgian proportions. (Bolgia was the place where panderers and flatterers were sentenced in Dante's Inferno.) Many reside in our government. But at the heart of politics is violence or the threat thereof. In America, that violence is the unspoken threat of "police action", and it was expressed to the tune of 618,000 souls in the civil War (that number represents soldiers only) in a "police action" to enforce political will. This in a nation that has a genius for political compromise and consensus. Diplomacy between nations is war by other means as well, a matter of international political jockeying. If one nation can split into warring factions, how much more so different nations; we have seen it before, far too many times. Barack Obama wants to end the threat of nuclear war. Now, where have all the great wars gone? We have had numerous skirmishes, and many smaller wars, but since the end of WWII there have not been any great wars. The answer lies in the political will of the West, and primarily of the United States. America decided to assume the role of international policeman, to offer her unparalleled strength to protect the free world against the aggressions of the Marxists in Russia and China. That strength was not based on tougher soldiers but on superior technology. We had atomic weapons and the means to deliver them. We developed satellites, radar systems, GPS technology, and have just devised a very effective anti ballistic missile system. Our overwhelming superiority was so terrifying to those who would do us (and our friends) harm that nobody bothered to try. Our enemies were always constrained by our ability to wipe them out completely. As a result, we were the winners of the Cold War, a political power struggle for dominion of a particular worldview. Our view of "limited government" triumphed over statism, despite the ever-increasing role of government in our own country. That triumph was a direct result of the weapons that our President wishes to rid us. So, what exactly has our President done to end the threat of nuclear war? According to Pravda (a Bolshevik newspaper that seems quite pleased with the deal), the treaty he has negotiated and signed calls for:

"- 700 units for intercontinental ballistic missile (IBM), submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) and heavy bombardment aircraft (HBA); - 1550 warheads for them; - 800 units for deployed and non-deployed launchers IBM, SLBM, and HBA. "This is the Russian initiative that allows creating of a good stimulus for liquidation and re-equipment of strategic weapons," an expert told Izvestia. The numeric parameters provided for in the treaty will allow an opportunity to preserve and develop the Russian group of strategic nuclear weapons. Experts believe that the required deterrence level will be guaranteed. At the moment the US has 798 ballistic missiles and strategic bombers, while Russia has 566. The US has 1188 missile launchers while Russia has 809. The US is to dismantle 4500 warheads, and Russia will eliminate 3900."

So, America is giving up much more than the Russians, and our equipment is far older; some of our nuclear equipment is still using VACUUM TUBES! Most of our hardware was built during the Reagan buildup of the 1980`s, and it seems likely that we will have problems with our "failsafe" systems when needed. The current Russian arsenal was constructed in 2005, and was largely a result of misguided American efforts to rid the world of the Soviet arsenal. Obama has also pledged not to use nukes except in response to a nuclear attack. Imagine the police promising not to use guns against criminals except when guns are used against them; knives, rocket launchers, attack dogs are fine! He has also stopped the deployment of missile defenses in Poland, and his promise to redeploy elsewhere seem dubious, to put it mildly. In short, Obama is giving America and the world a nuclear freeze, the same type of freeze that leftists demanded during the Reagan era. He can't be that stupid. Obama is surrounded by political strongmen, men like Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod, men who understand bare-knuckle power politics. One cannot understand the nature of politics without understanding the nature of warfare; the two are differing degrees of the same critter. Weakness and vacillation are the fast track to attack in both endeavors. Just ask George W. Bush and the Grand Old Party. Frankly, the only thing that kept George W. Bush from being a one term president was his principled stand on the War on Terror. Principles matter. Bush was terribly unpopular, not because he was too principled, but because he bent like the old comic book hero Plastic Man, stretching to incredible lengths whenever he encountered any resistance. He wanted his "new tone" to disarm his opponents, and it had the opposite effect; fueling their anger and resentment. (Barack Obama should learn from this.) Anger and resentment are much like fire; when properly fueled they rage. A beaten enemy may hold a cold anger, but a hopeful enemy is energized. Bush energized his opponents, and so did his Congress. Had he held to principle, had they done likewise, the political outcome would have been very different. Instead he gave us a prescription drug entitlement, No Child Left Behind, allowed Ted Kennedy to write his education bill, etc. He took the high road with his critics. He continued to extend the hand of friendship to the Democrats. And the GOP fell into lockstep with Bush, giving the Democrats half a loaf at every turn. The result? The tigers took over in the Democratic Party, and they launched a blistering assault on Bush and the Republican Congress, leeched away power (and seats) year after year, until the name of Bush became the political kiss of death. Even John McCain had to campaign as the candidate for "change" and disavow a president he strongly resembled. The Republicans met a political Waterloo when the unknown Obama was swept into power with solid majorities in Congress. Obama's own political career should have taught him the folly of employing the "new tone", and that is precisely what his foreign policy has been. He has wandered the Earth, apologizing for American "arrogance". He has systematically dismantled America's post-war alliances. He has extended every olive branch to every dictator and thug. He has removed "inflammatory" language from our lexicon, words like "Islamic Jihad" and "War on Terror". He has fiddled while Iran has developed atomic weapons. Now he has taken steps to disarm the U.S. of her own. In short, he has made every mistake that George W. Bush made, only Bush brought down merely his political party. War is politics by other means, and there is no reason to play nice with a foreign enemy if one can defeat that enemy without consequence. Obama is inviting attack, as surely as any nerdy middle schooler invites attack by publicly announcing he will not fight the school bully. What is he getting for his troubles? Help with Iran? Russia is the benefactor of Iran; they have sold them the equipment to enrich uranium, sold them missiles and other dual-use technology, have provided advisors. Iran is their strategic partner in the energy monopoly business, and they do not want a repeat of what happened to Iraq. We can expect nothing real from the Russians here. No, Obama did this because he believes in doing this. He is a liberal dreamer, a man who thinks that war and poverty are the result of a bad system, and that by breaking the system we will have peace, land, and bread. Obama is, like Pasha (aka Strelnikov) in Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, a dreamer and idealist and terribly dangerous as a result. He believes in the perfectibility of Man. He believes that by merely changing the system he can change the human heart. Rid the world of weapons and we will have peace, because, after all, who doesn't want peace? A great many, rest assured, do not. Jihadists seek our peace, but it is the peace of the grave or the slave, and this holds true (perhaps to a lesser degree) of our fascist friends in Russia and our Communist chums of China. Obama either does not understand this, or perhaps he believes that ours should be a system more in tune with theirs. He clearly admired communists in his personal life, being friendly with the likes of Frank Marshall Davis and William Ayers, and fellow travelers like John Holdren. He says in his book Dreams of my Father: "I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists." Doubtless he believes the Soviet Empire was a good idea that foundered because of bad leadership, and doubtless he believes that had he been at the helm it would have worked. It just requires tweaking... Perhaps he longs for a renaissance, not of the American spirit but of that shining dream that Western hostility strangled in-utero? Maybe he is just horribly innocent. Whatever the case, his oath was to the Constitution of the United States, and his job is to protect THIS nation, not other nations, and not to reinvent what OUR fathers dreamed of and bequeathed to us. Any way one looks at it, he is derelict in his duties and must be stopped. And this provides a real opportunity for leadership on the part of the Republicans, and a real model to show the way. Unfortunately, the GOP is full of cowardly lions, frightened by the menacing straw man and the showy display of a false wizard. They are even now backing away from their pledge to repeal Obamacare. In politics as in warfare, one need be firm; not vicious or Machiavellian, but firm. One does not fight half a war or wage half a campaign. We have a name for those who do - losers. The Republicans, eager to be liked by the media and their Democratic friends, clearly do not grasp that fact, and have paid the political price. Why doesn't Obama understand that he is making the same mistake, only with our national security?