this has has bothered me the most about Obama's foreign policy- his penchant for creating moral equivalences between every dictatorial regime on the planet (most shamefully w/ Iran) and the united states. It would be one thing if he were just apologizing for the Iraq war- i disagree, but he'd have the virtue of having run on his opposition- but he seems intent on confessing our sins in every foreign encounter, even when his preferred narrative is flat our false. [rquoter]Obama Rewrites the Cold War The President has a duty to stand up to the lies of our enemies. By LIZ CHENEY There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth. President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week. Speaking to a group of students, our president explained it this way: "The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose. And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful." The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not "competition in astrophysics and athletics." It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet "sphere of influence" was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism. It is irresponsible for an American president to go to Moscow and tell a room full of young Russians less than the truth about how the Cold War ended. One wonders whether this was just an attempt to push "reset" -- or maybe to curry favor. Perhaps, most concerning of all, Mr. Obama believes what he said. Mr. Obama's method for pushing reset around the world is becoming clearer with each foreign trip. He proclaims moral equivalence between the U.S. and our adversaries, he readily accepts a false historical narrative, and he refuses to stand up against anti-American lies. The approach was evident in his speech in Moscow and in his speech in Cairo last month. In Cairo, he asserted there was some sort of equivalence between American support for the 1953 coup in Iran and the evil that the Iranian mullahs have done in the world since 1979. On an earlier trip to Mexico City, the president listened to an extended anti-American screed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and then let the lies stand by responding only with, "I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for the things that occurred when I was 3 months old." Asked at a NATO meeting in France in April whether he believed in American exceptionalism, the president said, "I believe in American Exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, not so much. The Obama administration does seem to believe in another kind of exceptionalism -- Obama exceptionalism. "We have the best brand on Earth: the Obama brand," one Obama handler has said. What they don't seem to realize is that once you're president, your brand is America, and the American people expect you to defend us against lies, not embrace or ignore them. We also expect you to know your history. Mr. Obama has become fond of saying, as he did in Russia again last week, that American nuclear disarmament will encourage the North Koreans and the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions. Does he really believe that the North Koreans and the Iranians are simply waiting for America to cut funds for missile defense and reduce our strategic nuclear stockpile before they halt their weapons programs? The White House ought to take a lesson from President Harry Truman. In April, 1950, Truman signed National Security Council report 68 (NSC-68). One of the foundational documents of America's Cold War strategy, NSC-68 explains the danger of disarming America in the hope of appeasing our enemies. "No people in history," it reads, "have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies." Perhaps Mr. Obama thinks he is making America inoffensive to our enemies. In reality, he is emboldening them and weakening us. America can be disarmed literally -- by cutting our weapons systems and our defensive capabilities -- as Mr. Obama has agreed to do. We can also be disarmed morally by a president who spreads false narratives about our history or who accepts, even if by his silence, our enemies' lies about us. Ms. Cheney served as deputy assistant secretary of state and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs from 2002-2004 and 2005-2006.[/rquoter]
Obama just tells everyone what they want to hear -- being the two-face that he is. He's a manipulator, not a leader. Nothing but rhetorical tricks and false promises from this guy. Never has there been a more dishonest method of advancing an agenda...
he's a political novice/manipulator/liberal black christian muslim gay marraige hating foreigner/chicago style politicing machine
do you think it's ok for such a PNMLBCMGMHFCSPM to embrace a manifestly false narrative about an issue like the cold war?
You have a lot of nerve talking about manifestly false narratives. Have you gotten around to reading that post, by the way? It's weird. I keep posting it but you still haven't gotten around to apologizing for accusing me of hating special needs kids. What's wrong with you?
This always drives me nuts. The Reagan-did-it camp is so full of ****. I think Obama spreads the credit around too much. The reality is that it was mostly the Politburo and Gorbachev that ended it in their attempt to reform a flawed government. Reagan can take a little credit, just like the Russian people can take a little credit. Americans like to think we should take all the credit for that, and all the credit for winning World War II, and all the credit for just about anything positive in the 20th century. It's BS. But, I'n not surprised to see this line of reasoning come from the Cheney family. Her father seems to have governed with the same attitude.
I find it hilarious seeing the fervent anti-Obamites grapple with whether to criticize him about being politically naive/incompetent or being a manipulator. i was kinda hoping one of these days they would try combining the two for epic lolz, seeing the massive success Obama has had on the foreign front.
You mean like lying about a country have WMD's to go to war with them? I don't recall American forces ever liberating the Eastern Block. In fact, our fight against Communism has been a pretty sad one. Communism is Russia and Europe collapse because Communism is a failed economic model. It was poverty that led to it's downfall. Read up on real history instead of the propanganda you get from Rush. Neither Obama nor Cheney is right here. Freedom??? Haha - it was about standard of living. Of course, I guess that's what republicans don't get - "It's the economy, stupid" - remember that quote?
You are a liar and a troll. You don't get to ask other people for responses when you leave this dangling for days without response.
Why are you guys still humoring him? He'll ignore any evidence, continuing his trolling game and when you prove him indisputably wrong by even the craziest standard (like here), he'll pretend it never happened and start another troll thread.
To be honest, I'd be prepared to go page by page and sprout off a lien of sources as to why Obama is immeasurably better then Bush (and even I'd argue most previous presidents!) at foreign policy, but you'd have to be intentionally blind to not see the increasing amount of respect America is getting around the world, despite the fact that at the start of his administration, America was perhaps one of the more hated nations in the world. but eh, I'll save it for better times. posting original thoughts IS time-consuming, as I'm sure basso has experienced.
It gets a little bit tougher when the trolls blow off the argument and make it personal instead. The places where I "failed" were where I "failed" to ignore digs about my dead friend which were admittedly raised only to provoke me (why hasn't CaseyH been banned?), accusations that I was a leech on society and a pothead (I'm not) because I was the victim of a hit and run (why haven't fmullegun and TJ been banned?) and repeated bull**** about me hating special needs children (my brother is one) because I don't like Palin (why hasn't basso been banned?). The stuff I've "failed" to ignore hasn't been debate stuff, it hasn't been political stuff and it hasn't been normal trolling. It's been stuff that has been so far over the line that anybody would have been banned for life for posting it if anybody was actually moderating this forum. Hint: They're not.