Putie approves, and complements:
...President Obama’s decision to cancel an antimissile defense system in Eastern Europe earned a strong welcome from Russian leaders on Friday...
...Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who had repeatedly assailed the antimissile system as a grave danger to Russia’s security, called Mr. Obama’s decision “correct and brave.” President Dmitri A. Medvedev hinted that Russia would respond favorably to the decision to replace former President George W. Bush’s plan with a missile shield seen as less threatening to Moscow...
What is this braveness Putin speaks of? The Company thinktanks came out swiftly today:
...“I hope our administration really thought this through and this was not about appeasing Russia, because I don’t think that justifies the decision,” said Riki Ellison, chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a nonpartisan group that receives financing from defense contractors as well as private individuals who support missile defense...
Nice to know those missilemakers are bankrolling such nonpartisan opinion. Of course, they don't mind hearing the more partisan kind too:
...Soon after President Obama announced that he would abandon President Bush’s plan to construct a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic (and replace it with a smarter, more effective one), the right wing predictably went into hysterics.
The typical cast of characters trotted out their predictable neoconservative lines. The Weekly Standard and the National Review led the cries of “appeasement,” “surrender,” and “weakness,” with the likes of super-hawk John Bolton calling Obama’s move “pre-emptive capitulation.”
Last night on Fox News, Charles Krauthammer joined in, complaining that Russia can now take over all of eastern Europe (despite the fact that didn’t happen the last time he predicted such an event). But later in the program, the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes took demagoguery’s top prize:
BARNES: And it’s reminiscent of that famous meeting in 1961 of John F. Kennedy, a rookie president like Barack Obama, then with Nikita Khrushchev. And what did Khrushchev conclude from that meeting? That it was a weak president. And what happened? You had the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Berlin Wall built in Berlin, obviously. Worse could happen here.
Yup, it was that rookie weakness that precipitated that Cuban Missile Crisis.
Robert Kennedy told the story a little differently for the record about his meeting with Ambassador Dobrynin during the crisis:
...The Soviet Union had secretly established missile bases in Cuba while at the same time proclaiming privately and publicly that this would never be done. We had to have a commitment by tomorrow that those bases would be removed. I was not giving them an ultimatum but a statement of fact. He should understand that if they did not remove those bases, we would remove them. President Kennedy had great respect for the Ambassador's country and the courage of its people. Perhaps his country might feel it necessary to take retaliatory action; but before that was over, there would be not only dead Americans but dead Russians as well.
He asked me what offer the United States was making, and I told him of the letter that President Kennedy had just transmitted to Khrushchev. He raised the question of our removing the missiles from Turkey. I said that there could be no quid pro quo or any arrangement made under this kind of threat or pressure and that in the last analysis this was a decision that would have to be made by NATO. However, I said, President Kennedy had been anxious to remove those missiles from Italy and Turkey for a long period of time. He had ordered their removal some time ago, and it was our judgment that, within a short time after this crisis was over, those missiles would be gone.
I said President Kennedy wished to have peaceful relations between our two countries. He wished to resolve the problems that confronted us in Europe and Southeast Asia. He wished to move forward on the control of nuclear weapons...
Like the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy inherited a Company plan in Turkey: nuclear missiles aimed at Moscow. Like the Bay of Pigs, when Kennedy aborted the Company plan, he made a few enemies. That he avoided World War III won him the gratitude of both the Soviet and American people and the scorn of the Praetorians.
Those missiles, and their removal, was a Top Secret at the time.
One hears from Russian friends that Khrushchev felt admiration for Kennedy after this affair.
One suspects he felt Kennedy's decision was “correct and brave.”
Regarding another current Company venture, McClatchy reports:
...A majority of Americans think the country isn't winning the war in Afghanistan, and an even larger majority opposes sending more troops in an effort to turn things around, according to a new McClatchy/Ipsos poll...
I wonder where they got that idea, despite the best efforts to control the data flow?
As with Kennedy, the Generals and their sponsors grow increasingly angry that the current administration lacks the proper Imperial attitude. Unlike the Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton administration, there seems to be no special relationship or understanding of Company policy in these matters. One suspects if one described that special relationship to the One, he would suspect you of being a conspiracy theorist.
One hopes he does not learn of this relationship the hard way the Kennedys did.
No comments:
Post a Comment