I’ve ranted about the current administration and its shortcomings before–however in those rants it was expressing a frustration, something I felt could be fixed in a short period.
However with the current conflict in Georgia and America’s failure to respond appropriately I’ve come to realize that, in no uncertain terms, America’s golden age has died.
Now let me begin by saying I supported the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan–we were, and are, taking on a form of global fascism that cannot simply be fought at our own borders.
However the war was so badly mismanaged in its beginning stages that an operation that should have taken no more than a year has left us crippled and unable to respond to threats much greater than any terrorist group could ever hope to pose.
I’m talking about Russia.
Russia’s recent invasion of Georgia is nothing short of the Russians attempting to reclaim their status as a superpower. By controlling the major oil pipeline that runs directly through Georgia, Russia seeks to claim control of all the energy resources in the east, thus crippling every country from Britain to India.
NATO, the U.N and most importantly the U.S have utterly failed the Georgian people–one of our closest allies in the region–by doing nothing more than issuing words against a nation whose actions demand nothing less than military action equal to the efforts that the Russians themselves have put into motion.
Sadly, even if the Bush administration were competent enough to issue such an action, the Presidents mismanagement of both the Iraqi and Afghan conflicts have stretched our military so thin that we are now incapable of extending aid to the Georgians.
Quite simply, we need to be done in Iraq. I was all for “getting the job done” but that was before there were greater, and far clearer threats. Russia, in its current state, is still a manageable crisis. However if the Georgians should fail and if the BTC pipeline should fall into the hands of the Russians it will no longer be a problem that America can handle on its own.
Our only allies lack the necessary capacity to give the appropriate aid.
Canada would certainly help to check the Russians but their force alone is not enough. The British military is, at this point, mostly impotent. The fact that their Navy was trounced by an Iranian vessel should be more than enough proof to anybody.
Israel is simply too small to fight past its own borders.
Because of the mismanagement of our military and its continued overextension since FDR we now lack the power to respond to these kinds of situations–and with China now clearly a super-power in their own right we cannot afford to remain so over extended.
Sadly, neither of the front runners for the next President will do anything to help this situation.
Obama will certainly make us a slave to the Chinese–even more so than Clinton and Bush have–and McCain lacks the knowledge to properly realign our own forces–this is a man who, after all, would like us to stay overextended in places such as Iraq.
All we have left at this point is an ultimatum.
We either pull out of Iraq–today–and aid the Georgians to prevent Russia from crippling the entire east while forfeiting our gains in Iraq and handing what every terrorist will view as a victory over to them. Or we stay in Iraq to maintain the security of a country to weak to so much as walk under its own power and watch as the Russians gain control over 1/4 of the earth.
I believe our first choice would be the wisest–and here’s why.
If we left Iraq today, it would almost certainly disintegrate into a civil war over night. An immense power vacuum would open and every country in the middle east would attempt to fill thus setting off a major conflict that–if we were lucky–would last at least until the next decade. However in yielding that ground for the short term we would then have the necessary force to meet the Russians, protect a much needed and very loyal ally and save every country in the east from being crippled by Putin and his cronies.
We took Bagdhad in less than a month and could easily do so again. However if we leave Russia unchecked they will soon become a much bigger monster.
We need to kill it before it grows.
Sadly I don’t see this happening. Bush is over in China–a country that is the antithesis of *every* ideal that America stands for, laughing with China’s dictators while Putin sits 4 seats behind him signing the bombing orders of one of our closest allies.
and we do nothing
If America is supposedly Rome, than Bush is certainly Nero.
How did we ever let it get to this?
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Terrorism, US politics, europe | Leave a Comment »

