Comments on: Barry and the Tarbaby

By: Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:10:46 +0000

The policy I described as "Evil" was the plan to subvert Russia and force the republics into an American Empire that would not be willing or able to protect them from the consequences. I have nothing but admiration for the peoples of central and EAstern Europe who were caught between the two juggernauts of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and I entirely sympathize with their desire for help. The problem is that the USA almost never actually supports its allies. Greeks should know.

By: janoko

janoko — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:20:47 +0000

Mr. Sailer,
your intelligent comments are devalued by your reference to Czechoslovakia that no longer exists. Slovakia (a part of the former Czechoslovakia) was not a party to the now abrogated treaty, I believe. As a smart person said, "it is minute details that comprise perfection, but perfections is not a minute detail."
This, of course, is in no way an attempt to denigrate you comment, just a clarification that may be useful.
J.

By: Andrea Nyx Hemera

Andrea Nyx Hemera — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:09:17 +0000

Why was the American policy of trying to bring Eastern Europe into the NATO-American sphere 'evil'? Stupid and unrealistic maybe, but evil? Eastern Europeans horribly suffered 50 yrs of communism during the Cold War. Russian imperialism has always been a nasty reality and/or reality to many of those people, especially those of the Baltics and Ukraine. I would say Bush's policy wasn't pragmatic because Eastern Europe is too far away, and there's simply no way we can safeguard all those little and not-so-little countries. Furthermore, US policy was arrogant and unnecessarily alienated Moscow just when Putin was showing a willingness to work with the US against terrorism. Also, I'm not sure Western European nations would have come onboard with Bush's New World Order policy. Still, I can understand Eastern European nations wanting to be protected from possible Russian imperialism in the future and the American attempt to capitalize on this fear. It certainly wasn't 'evil'. Evil is when a dictator kills 6 million Jews or starves 5 million Ukrainians. Besides, Bush was too stupid to be evil.

By: John Seiler

John Seiler — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:10:05 +0000

Jeff Huber, a retired Naval officer and one of our best military strategists, writes about this controversy at at Antiwar.com in "Polish Missile Joke Revisited":

"The scheme Bush promised to Poland and Czechoslovakia was the mid-course interceptor system, one that genuine experts (as opposed to Franks and McCain and Lieberman and so on) say will never work....

"U.S. intelligence has recently reconfirmed that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, and it doesn’t have an intercontinental ballistic missile program either. But if Iran did have nuclear-tipped ICBMs, the mid-course interceptor system wouldn’t have protected anybody from them, so why should Poland and Czechoslovakia want us to dump our junk in their backyards?.

"The Obama administration has instead offered Poland and Czechoslovakia the SM-3 missile system, which is designed to kill a ballistic missile in its terminal flight phase. This is the missile system that defense contractor Raytheon is developing for sale to Israel. The SM-3 could reasonably be expected to protect much of Europe from missiles launched by Iran. The SM-3 substitute is the smartest move the Obama administration could possibly have made....

"Russia has harshly criticized Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial and announced that it will scrap plans to deploy Iskander missiles near the Polish border. Since the Iskander is only a short- to medium-range missile that would only have been a threat to Poland, Obama’s decision to reverse Bush’s misguided commitment actually makes Poland safer."

Iskander is, of course, Alexander the Great. It would be appropriate to name the mid-course U.S. interceptor system that doesn't work the Bush the Less system.

By: Allen Wilson

Allen Wilson — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:30:46 +0000

The whole idea for the missile shield, along with the expansion of NATO, was to antagonise Russia, a very stupid thing to do to a potential ally of such great value, who wanted friendship. They thought they could do this and go after Iran, too. They found out that they cant, and that must be because America is not the power it once was. In the 60's, we had that kind of power, but no more. Therefore, they had to come to some kind of terms with Russia.

Whether we like it or not, we are seeing the shrinking of American power, similar to the shrinking of Soviet power in the 80's. Thus or need for Russian support in the graveyard of the Soviet empire, soon to be the graveyard of yet another empire. Is it not nice how the Russians are helping us stay mired in their former bog? How rich this must be for them. There is no help for fools.

It appears that the powers that be in Foggy Bottom gave up their dream of a new cold war in order to go after Iran, which is actually Israel's ambition. That shows which tail wags the dog.

By: Nicholas MOSES

Nicholas MOSES — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:43 +0000

it is possible nor desirable to argue

Make that: "it is neither possible nor desirable to argue."

By: Nicholas MOSES

Nicholas MOSES — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:03:13 +0000

@18: Think of how odd, then, it sounds to say "Americans de-humanize humanity." That is such an abstract concept it is possible nor desirable to argue, but I suspect that is the point. On the other hand, I could say that "Irish people value their drink," and while not all of them do, I think there is far more concrete evidence for this latter proposition than for the former.

Still, Michael Kenny has a point: even nations unified by blood and language are extremely fractious in their outlooks for their countries. He completely misidentifies the culprits, however. It is the deranged modernists and their deformed spawns the post-modernists who have dehumanized us and who have made left and right divisions, shattering the precious unity of our kingdoms.

By: jack bailey

jack bailey — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:01:37 +0000

"At this point no one knows Obama’s short-term motives, much less his long-term strategy. It is completely foolish to predict the consequences and probably idle even to speculate".
I concur, it may be just a temporary reprieve but onw can hope. The truth is that the Russians in many ways wanna be just like us. While this is ultimately impossible and also not advisable, this trend will continue. Having a friendly Russia will mean more for the cause of freedom than any number of weapons systems.

By: Theodore M. Van Oosbree

Theodore M. Van Oosbree — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:43:25 +0000

It is never too late to stop doing the wrong thing and start doing the right thing (according to James Burnham's Suicide of the West).

By: Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:06:24 +0000

It is a wonderful story, even more wonderful if you have been to Sicily. The people of Segesta are proverbial, literally, for being trouble-makers. They were a native people, Elymian, who had Hellenized to the point of being able to make some sort of exchange-relationship (commerce, intermarriage) with Selinunte, a Greek city on the Southern coast of the island. When the marriage went sour, they appealed to Athens with no better argument than that they were rich enough to pay for the expedition. Since Syracuse was an ally of Selinunte, this made that city--one of the richest and most populous in the Greek world--a target of Athenian aggression. The one difficulty was that Segesta was not as rich as her representatives said, and when they learned Athenians were coming to check them out, they hastily threw up a magnificent Greek temple. We do not know to which god or even if they had a god in mind. It is some temple, one of the prettiest surviving ancient temples, located in a beautiful stretch of countryside west of Palermo. If you look closely at the columns, though, you will see that unlike other Greek columns they are not fluted. Segesta was in too big a hurry. There are numerous other signs that once this Potemkin temple had served its purpose, they simply abandoned work on it.

But, one may ask, who was kidding whom? Even if Alcibiades was not taken in, he would probably still have persisted in a grandiose expedition certain to bring him glory and the dictatorial power that had been enjoyed by his kinsman Pericles. Alcibiades being Alcibiades, he and his buddies got drunk and put on a blasphemous mockery of the Mysteries, which led to a prosecution and Alcibiades' quick departure from the expedition. Nicias, who had argued strenuously against it, was now one of the generals in charge. He did his duty and was executed by the vindictive Syracusans against the advice of the Spartan officer who had been sent--on the exiled Alcibiades' advice-- to help them. Most historians believe that Thucydides despised Nicias for his superstitious piety and his fear of the mob. But he had every reason to fear the mob, and Thucydides beautiful epitaph, that he died in such as way as he of all men least deserved, gives the lie to this interpretation. Nicias lived in a degenerate time. He had done his best in war and peace to serve his country. He had fought successfully against Sparta but not only had no rancour against the Spartans, he even arranged a peace treaty which, if Athens had observed, would have spared them the horrors of more war, defeat, and subjugation. But when put in charge of an expedition he disapproved of, he nonetheless did his best. We have no such men in our entire leadership class. I thank M.A.R. for introducing this parallel.