Breakfast Gravy

Breakfast Gravy is community blog, we have some wild opinions and they need to be let loose. The juice is loose.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Long-range politics

I am going to post my first political piece, on what I hope will be a regular occurrence. I hope that on days that I won’t be able to do both that everyone will check our my other blog intelligentconfusion22.blogspot.com. I will also post the blogs on both sights when it is pertinent to the world of politics.

The debate in Washington about Iran and North Korea continues. President Bush met with European leaders at a summit this week in Austria, foreign policy (more specifically American foreign policy was top on the list of discussion). The E.U. has stated that it will support the U.S. in measures against North Korea if they don’t comply with recent sanctions against their nuclear program. The E.U. is also on the same page with the U.S. on the recent Iranian proposal that seeks the use of diplomacy. Talks about North Korea heated up, because of recent testing of long-range missiles. North Korea has long been believed to have a nuclear program in place, and the possibility of a warhead to attach to that long-range missile has many around the world a little uneasy. Now I am of the belief that it is all show (as usual) with North Korea, but never the less whenever anyone is testing long-range missiles when the world is seeking diplomatic resolutions it certainly gets your attention.

A story coming out of the U.S./E.U. summit that seems to be just as big is that of the protestors outside of the summit where it is being held in Vienna. Many of the protestors are calling President Bush the real terrorist, and saying that the United States is the world’s real enemy. Much of this is in response to the malcontent with the war in Iraq, but once again many Europeans (along with some radical Americans) are making themselves look really foolish. There are many within the protestors that are making adamant comparisons of President Bush to former German dictator Adolph Hitler. That is absolutely absurd, and Bush said so himself. Look for an upcoming blog on this very subject in the next few weeks. But the question I would like to pose to Europe is this, what if the U.S. decided tomorrow that we were going to become an isolationist nation again, and our foreign policy would be domestic first, and then if we have time…? There are many in America that would like to see that happen. I don’t happen to be one of them, but it would certainly leave Europe in a big hole for the future. Anyway I won’t get into that now.

Finally the debate goes on in the U.S. Senate about the war in Iraq. With many Democrats saying that there needs to be a time table for withdrawal, and some going so far to say that troops need to be withdrawn immediately. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) spoke out in adamant opposition to President Bush yesterday, and Senator John Kerry (D-MA) called Bush’s strategy the “lie and die.” Strategy. Republicans responded with a stupid little saying of their own. Close line to Senator Kerry and the senate: We are tired of your dumb little catch phrases; they just make us look ridiculous. I think that both parties should refrain from the name-calling and start to have a legitimate discourse about the proper action in Iraq… However that just wouldn’t be politics, would it?

1 Comments:

Blogger Mythical Beast said...

It's quite unfortunate that we live in a world where we are our own worst enemy as a nation. Even worse, the only thing that seems to truely bring us together is national crisis (9/11, etc.) Neither political party is willing to be the "bigger man" in these situations and therefore we lose much respect in the world as we don't seem to have our own act together.

As for foreign policy, I view the way it plays out much like a game of RISK. As everybody is placing their territories, someone is bound to load up in Australia in an effort to capture it early. Now if I (representing the US) place a few armies in Australia to keep you from taking over, most likely everyone else will just let it be and allow me to spread myself thin, while they look after their own interests, like taking South America. The best, most fair common strategy would be for others to devote a few armies down under, but we know how it always plays out.

Bottom line is that if one "world power" is willing to play world police, it's pretty easy to just let them do it and criticize their efforts without truely being involved. Sadly, the US is stuck in this unfortunate role. Come-on other countries, let's make this a fair game of risk.

11:37 AM  

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