Obama and Foreign Policy

This man wants to be our next president. He also wants to provide a new and unprecedented direction for our foreign policy, a policy that would allow him to engage in talks with our enemies with no pre-conditions. To be kind let me say that this is very naive on the part of the Senator.

I am a critic of our foreign policy because I believe that we are not very good at it. Part of the problem lies within the State Department itself. Civil Service people, that can't be fired unless hell freezes over and that's in their contract, have their own agenda. Richard Nixon, love him or hate him, knew the State Department and upon becoming president let it be known that he was going to be his own Secretary of Defense. This department is full of people who believe they know best and have been know to overrule the president's wishes.

The other problem is who we are. We have been the big kid on the block for a very long time. We were aware of that and as such we have backed off of issues involving foreign policy because we were concerned with not offending our friends or having others call us an imperialistic nation. The fix is not to go belly up and pander to others. Someone has to be strong in a crisis.

In a previous blog I noted the failed diplomatic efforts of Woodrow Wilson in his handling of the peace. Wilson is interesting in that he skillfully kept us out of the war albeit he did make some errors notably favoring England and not acting on the Lusitania incident. His actions after the war, particularly showing up at Versailles with the intent of running the show was a tragedy. The English and French officials took him to the woodshed and showed him the way of the world. Moral of that story, send the Secretary of State or someone else to prepare the way.

If Wilson were the only president who erred in foreign policy we could end right here but he wasn't. FDR's record is bad on the peace as is Truman's. JFK got beat up by Khrushcev in Berlin and over Cuba. LBJ did not do a good job in handling Viet Nam and Jimmy Carter messed up in Iran. I believe that judgement is still out on Reagan and the mess in Lebanon and George H.W. Bush's actions in the first Gulf War. However, from FDR to Bush, all of them had one thing in common, they did not jauntily walk into the lion's den and say let's talk because they all knew what had happened to Wilson. His actions caused him not only the loss of his dream, the League of Nations, but we ended up signing a separate peace with Germany.

Now comes the Senator from Illinois who wants to sit down with the likes of Chavez, Castro, and Ahmadinijad. He wants to do so without any pre-conditions on the meetings. This isn't even close to a win, win scenario. This is what we will get if we put a man with unrealistic expectations into the White House in 2009. Senator Obama will have his head handed to him just as Hitler did to Chamberlain.

FDR--A Four Term Progressive Part 3

In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt won the presidential election defeating Herbert Hoover handily with 57 percent of the vote and carrying all but 6 states. He was a charming man with a considerable base given his roots and popularity in New York state. He had the assistance of Al Smith and William Randolph Hearst as well as the support of Joseph Kennedy from Massachusetts and William McAdoo, Democratic leader in California. John Nance Garner came over to Roosevelt's side and brought Texas into FDR's column while picking up the Vice Presidential spot for himself.

In addition to his above mentioned supporters, Roosevelt was able to put together what came to be know as the New Deal coalition. The unions, the poor, Southern whites, ethnic minorities, and folks living in the cities of the nation were brought together by FDR .This coalition stayed together for over half a century.

It was during the campaign that FDR made his famous speech where he pledged a "new deal for the American people." Denouncing Hoover's failures and inability to stop the economic slide into the abyss of the depression, FDR campaigned on an immediate need to cut public expenditures, getting rid of useless offices and government commissions, and the consolidation of bureaus while supporting a strong currency that needed to be kept despite any hazards. Doesn't even sound like FDR does it? This was a very conservative platform given the fact that many believed that government needed to ride in and spend big bucks while redistributing the wealth.

This optimism on FDR's part disappeared almost overnight. On September 23, 1932, just a few weeks before the election, Roosevelt spoke from his Progressive heart. "Our industrial plant is built; the problem just now is whether under existing conditions it is not overbuilt. Our last frontier has since been reached."(Great Speeches by FDR) Golly shades of what was to come in the Carter and Clinton administrations. Now we know where they got it. Hoover, meanwhile, was furious with this admonishment. He called it a denial "'of the promise of American life'" (The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America).

Despite Hoover's response, there was no chance that the Republicans were going to win in 1932. When Hoover asked FDR after the election about forming a joint commission to end the downward spiral of the nation's economy, FDR turned him down. Probably a bad idea on FDR's part. With the election won, Roosevelt set about formatting and implementing his New Deal. He consolidated more power into the central government then had ever been amassed prior to his administration. It was not and is not a good thing.

FDR--A Four Term Progressive Part 2

In 1920, FDR had his first run at a national office. The Democrats selected him as the running mate for Ohio Governor, James Cox. It was not a good year for the Democrats. Wilson had botched his opportunity at Versailles. Congress had shot down our joining the League of Nations and Wilson himself had declared in 1919 that within a decade the world would find itself again at war.

The Republicans ran Republican Warren Harding also from the Buckeye State. His running mate was Calvin Coolidge. They handily defeated Cox and Roosevelt. Harding ended up having one of the most scandalous administrations in the history of the nation and died three years into his term. His womanizing and the famous Teapot Dome scandal brought a huge uproar in the nation. His Secretary of Interior, Albert Fall, leased the oil at Teapot Dome, oil that was part of the naval reserve, to oil operator Harry Sinclair. Coolidge,with no blemishes from the scandal, took over as president with Harding's death.

FDR let no grass grow under his feet. Having contracted what many thought was poliomyelitis, it now appears it was more likely Gullian-Barre syndrome, FDR underwent a wide variety of therapies for his illness. He was able, even during his presidency, to keep his illness secret from the public.

His handicap did not keep him from running for the Governor's office in New York in 1928. He had stayed close to the leaders of the Democratic party despite the fact that he had been an outspoken opponent of Tammany Hall, the Democratic machine in New York City.

One of his early steps was to assist Al Smith in his victory for the Governor's office in 1922. Then at the 1924 and 1928 Democratic National Conventions, Roosevelt gave speeches nominating Smith for the presidency. This endeared him to Smith who asked FDR to run for the Governor's position he was vacating.

FDR's run for the Governor came at the ideal time. The nation was prospering and Roosevelt moved to help it along with tax relief for the farmers of New York State and cheap electricity. Then in 1929, the stock market collapsed and the country fell into the Great Depression. Roosevelt moved immediately calling for government involvement. He put into place a model of what would later become the Civilian Conservation Corps. Over 100,000 men and boys were put to work in New York planting trees, putting erosion plans into place, and building park buildings in New York's state forests. Once again big government was on the move and Roosevelt, the new Progressive governor, was going to light up the sky with government programs and government spending that would take him from the seat of power in Albany to the seat of power in Washington, DC

The Five Progressives

I know, the title says the five Progressives but the picture has four. If you go back a couple of posts you will see the fifth one, Woodrow Wilson. I do not know why Wilson was omitted from this picture.

The reason these five Progressives are here is due to statements by Senator Obama concerning meeting and negotiating with our enemies when he becomes president. To date he has not qualified this so I am presuming that he is really going to do a face to face with the bad guys. That is not good and there are four presidents who failed in that arena who come under the Progressive label.

Woodrow Wilson, author of the Fourteen Points, went down in flames when he ventured to Versailles to deal with those who had been our allies in World War I. Can our allies also be our enemy? Yes they can and Wilson discovered that early in the game. Telling the people in America that there were not going to be secret meetings and closed doors, point one of fourteen, Wilson quickly discovered that Clemenceau and Lloyd George had they had their own plan. Their first point was to go behind close doors. The Treaty of Versailles, often looked upon as a major cause of the rise of Hitler and World War II, was signed by all but the United States. Moral of the story: Wilson should have stayed home and sent his diplomatic team instead.

Franklin Roosevelt was president during World War II. It is oft said of FDR that he set up our Navy at Pearl Harbor knowing that Japan was going to attack. He did this because he wanted to get us into the war in Europe. I have never seen proof of that and do not believe it. FDR did as good a job as can be expected running that chaos known as war. However, when it came to the peace, Roosevelt has to be looked upon as a failure. His meeting with Stalin at Yalta was a disaster. Roosevelt wanted Stalin to assist in the invasion of Japan so he sold out Poland and Eastern Europe. This gave rise to Churchill's famous Iron Curtain speech here in America.

Harry Truman was FDR's vice president and took over the presidency when Roosevelt died. Truman attended the Potsdam conference where he told Stalin, he already knew it, that the United States would soon have an atomic bomb. It was at Potsdam that Europe was divided and the stage was set for the Cold War. Truman said he didn't think that Uncle Joe, Stalin, was really that bad of a guy.

Truman would change is mind on that when the North Koreans invaded South Korea. This police action, as it was called, would prove to be a disaster. Unwilling to let MacArthur fight, Truman and the Joint Chiefs meddled in this war to the point where over fifty-four thousand troops were killed and over one hundred and three thousands were wounded. No treaty ending this war has been signed.

John F. Kennedy, a young senator from Massachusetts with little foreign policy experience, had Nikita Khrushchev as his opponent. Kennedy offered hope and change. He was attractive to the young. At the age of sixteen, I was a big supporter of JFK. Kennedy was a good looking, young guy who reached out to a lot of people in this great land. But he did not know what he was doing when it came to Khrushchev. Khrushchev took Kennedy to task on Berlin and as Kennedy would state, "He just beat the hell out of me." Kennedy knew he had been tested and that Khrushchev thought him weak.

The real test between these two men came over Cuba and the missiles put there by the Soviets. Looked at as a victory for Kennedy, it is not for Kennedy, who had been warned about the missiles in Cuba as early as August 1962, paid little attention to those warnings. By October 1962, the crisis was serious and the world watched at John Kennedy took the world to the brink of nuclear war. Normally this is taught as a great victory for JFK but it wasn't. Kennedy's lack of interest and lack of experience in foreign affairs almost caused a catastrophe.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was not JFK's only mess. Looking for revenge for the beating he took from Khrushchev, Kennedy would send Special Forces Green Beret troops into a little place called Viet Nam.

What's the moral behind all of this? As president select strong, educated and experienced people to be in the diplomatic service. Let them do the leg work and handle the details. Once the agreement has been reached, read it, edit it, come up with the final version and show up to sign it. Do not meet with foreign leaders save for a friendly get together and chit chat.

FDR--A Four Term Progressive Part 1

Handsome fellow isn't he? This is the young Franklin Delano Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the two terms of President Woodrow Wilson, our first aggressive Progressive.

His long and distinguished political career started in 1910 when he was elected to the New York Senate. Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913. In 1920 he ran with James Cox on the Democrat ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate. In 1921 he was diagnosed with polio, a disease that would see him tied to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Despite his illness he ran for Governor of NY in 1928 and entered the governor's mansion on January 1, 1929 with a full blown depression starting that year. FDR's next stop was the White House with his victory over Herbert Hoover in November of 1932. He went on to win the presidency three additional times to become the only four term president in the history of the country.

FDR is a man whose name causes emotions to be put into churn mode. As a young lad growing up in rural Pennsylvania farm country I was surrounded by Roosevelt Democrats. Indeed, like my entire family, I to looked upon myself as a Roosevelt Democrat and did so into the late 1960s when, in 1968, I voted for Richard Nixon and did so again in 1972. Obviously my views of FDR changed. I came to believe, and still do, that FDR is the man who placed us on the road to fascism the road we are currently traveling. This series will look at his life, his record and legislation during the depression and war time periods.

FDR came into the world on January 10, 1882. He was an only child born to James Roosevelt and Sara Delano, both from wealthy families with long pedigrees. His father was of Dutch heritage with lines that ran to Elizabeth Monroe, the President Monroe's wife, Benedict Arnold, and Joseph Smith, Jr the founder of the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter Day Saints. On his mother's side he was related to Laura Ingalls Wilder, and to four travelers on the Mayflower, Richard Warren, Isaac Allerton, Degory Priest, and Francis Cooke. One thing to keep in mind; he was, during her lifetime, completely devoted to his very possessive mother.

A graduate of Groton School, an Episcopalian prep and boarding school, FDR studied under the tutelage of Endicott Peabody, the headmaster at Groton. It was Peabody who taught young Roosevelt that public service should be his great calling, a fine idea as long as one leads with one's brain instead of one's heart. In assisting the unfortunates teach them to fish instead of giving them fish because the former will insure the continued dignity of man.

After his graduation from Groton, FDR entered Harvard. Harvard was the school attended by cousin Teddy and he became president while FDR was at Harvard. Teddy's use of the bully pulpit would serve as the model for FDR. Keep in mind that cousin Teddy was the Republican who took that party into the Progressive era and began the centralization of the federal government.

The next few years were busy for Roosevelt. He met his future wife in 1902, Anna Eleanore Roosevelt, the niece of Theodore Roosevelt. Franklin married his fifth cousin in March of 1905. Franklin married Eleanore despite the protestations and resistance of his mother who opposed the marriage. Even after moving to their home in Springwood, part of his family's holding, Sara made a point of frequent visits to the young couple much to the chagrin of Eleanore.

In 1905, FDR also entered Columbia Law school but dropped out in 1907 wen he took and passed the New York Bar. Roosevelt never did graduate from Columbia. He practiced law as a member of a Wall Street firm, Carter Ledyrd and Milburn concentrating on corporate law from 1908-1910.

It was in 1910 that Roosevelt entered the political arena. Young, handsome, and articulate, he ran for a seat in the state assembly representing the wealthy area around Hyde Park, home to many wealthy people. Roosevelt won that election and was now launched into his political career, a career he would continue for a life time.

Environmentalism The New Theocracy

In her novel, "The Fountainhead" Ayn Rand introduces us to her atheist/socialist character, Mr. Ellsworth Toohey.Toohey, a writer of sorts, is also a user of other men and their wealth.

Our environmentalists are cut from the same cloth. Environmentalism has become a religion. Indeed, they have their own high priest, Al Gore, with others who head up organizations such as Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Federation and PETA

Within the environmental community are well meaning individuals who are truly interested in helping our planet. They do not want to see the land littered, the water poisoned, or the air fouled. These folks are more likely conservationists. They believe in the Biblical directive to be good stewards of the earth while they are upon it. These are not the people with the loud voices and alliances with the Progressive politicians. They are not associated with the group of environmentalist that follow a radical political agenda.

Like Toohey, the radical environmentalists slip away from their faith and their morals. In the process they become anti-capitalists and are looking to replace capitalism with a centralized government where the leaders of that government direct the lives of the others in society. We could call them the drones. With the assistance of their allies, the environmentalists will end up bring down the greatest nation in the world and all the other nations who depend on it for assistance and inspiration.

In addition to being anti-capitalists, the environmentalists welcome death. Prince Charles of England, an environmentalist and believer in reincarnation, opined that when he came back he would like to come back as a deadly virus. His reason: to save the earth from man. The Prince is not the only environmentalist to say that the earth would be better off without man on the planet.

These people are a danger in many ways. They are willing to destroy our economy leaving us unable to earn a living. They are more interested in saving a flea or toad or other non-human life. Not that these creatures are any less worthy then man, but they are not before man. When you run into the burning house do you save the pet newt or the pregnant mother?

Within the environmental movement there are several dangerous organizations. There is the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement that believes all breeding among humans should stop. Then there is Earth First where anything must be done to save the Earth. We have the Earth Liberation Movement and its sister group, Animal Liberation Front both considered terrorists groups. ALF has a subgroup called Revolutionary Cells Animal Liberation Brigade the terrorist branch of ALF. These are the folks who want to destroy your way of life. They believe America is a bad place and the earth would be better off if all mankind were dead and the earth was returned to its original state, what they believe to be a blessed paradise. Should they succeed they will put their own theocracy in place.

Oil And The Environmentalists

Contrary to propaganda from the environmentalist community, we are not running out of oil. We are suffering from the lack of drilling and exploring because we are under a moratorium until 2012 that prohibits drilling in places like ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of America. While we are sitting on our hands and seeing oil prices rocket through the atmosphere, China and now Nigeria, are acquiring leases to drill for that oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

It as been estimated that between ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico and off shore sites, we have approximately 112 billion barrels of oil. This could sustain 60 million automobiles for 60 years. The untold story is the fact that in North Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado we have somewhere between 800 billion to 2 trillion barrels of oil in the oil shale fields. In addition to all of this we have coal and the ability to turn that into gas. So why are we not using our wonderful minds and technological abilities to do something with all these possibilities? Why do we fail to realize that our path to energy independence involves short, medium and long term solutions that will be costly to both the producers and the consumers?

The reason for this lack of planning and development is the alliance between the environmentalist and their Progressive partners in government. Take a look at an observation made by Glenn Johnson of the AP Online, "McCain has long expressed a belief in global warming, arguing that even if he is wrong, acting as if the planet's temperature were increasing would only benefit the environment if scientists subsequently proved he was mistaken." How many gazillion dollars will he have spent on this asinine project? A host of scientists are already proving that not only is it possible that global warming/climate change is a hoax, but we might very well be at the beginning of a cooling period because in January of 2008, the sun went quiet and there was no sunspot activity. This is a regular occurrence on the part of the sun.

The environmentalists, supported by their terrorist friends ALF and ELF, are directly responsible for the energy problems we have. They have no proof to sustain their claims whether it be global warming, climate change or the disappearance of spotted owls. Most importantly these folks are not really concerned with the environment they are anti-capitalist and are supporters of big government. Thus they are willing to work with those politicians, including the three presidential candidates, to create a fascists nation here in America and expand said programs to globalism with the UN in charge. At least temporarily.

Now you might ask why do the Progressives ally with these folks. Your first guess might be that the Progressives are concerned with protecting the rights of the minority and based on current political polls these folks are truly a minority voice. But that is not the case. By sidling up to the environmentalists, the Progressives look to be thoughtful and concerned but more importantly it allows them to play identity politics and once again split the American people so that we fight one another and the Progressives sit back and laugh while taking the power to govern unto themselves. Oil just becomes another item of another war that America must wage and therefore we must huddle around our government and give it more power to fight yet another disaster.