This story could correctly be entitled, “Cycles.” For most of the 20th Century and the first decade and a half of the 21st, we’ve watched this cycle occur in our foreign and defense policies. It began with Wilson, continued with FDR, Carter, Clinton and now Obama. Each iteration of liberal polices led to disaster. It always seem to require a conservative administration to put our house back in order…until the next liberal administration betrays us once again.
Disavowing the appeal of the appeaser
The next president will be forced to face down tyrants whom Obama ignored
– – Wednesday, May 27, 2015
For a time, reset, concessions and appeasement work to delay wars. But finally, nations wake up, grasp their blunders, rearm and face down enemies.
That gets dangerous. The shocked aggressors cannot quite believe that their targets are suddenly serious and willing to punch back. Usually, the bullies foolishly press aggression, and war breaks out.
It was insane of Nazi Germany and its Axis partners to even imagine that they could defeat the Allied trio of Imperial Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States.
But why not try?
Hitler figured that for a decade America had been unarmed and isolationist. Britain repeatedly had appeased the Third Reich. The Soviets initially collaborated with Hitler.
Hitler met no opposition after militarizing the Rhineland. He annexed Austria with impunity. He gobbled up Czechoslovakia without opposition.
Why shouldn’t Hitler have been stunned in 1939 when exasperated Britain and France finally declared war over his invasion of distant Poland?
Six years of war and some 60 million dead followed, re-establishing what should have been the obvious fact that democracies would not quite commit suicide.
By 1979, the Jimmy Carter administration had drastically cut the defense budget. President Carter promised that he would make human rights govern American foreign policy. It sounded great to Americans after Vietnam — and even greater to America’s enemies.
Then Iran imploded. The American embassy in Tehran was stormed. Diplomats were taken hostage. Radical Islamic terrorism spread throughout the Middle East. Communist insurrection followed throughout Central America. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. China went into Vietnam.
Dictators such as the Soviet Union’s Leonid Brezhnev and Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini assumed that Mr. Carter no longer was willing to protect the U.S. postwar order. Or perhaps they figured that the inexperienced American president was too weak to respond even had he wished to do so.
Then, Ronald Reagan defeated Mr. Carter in 1980 on the promise of restoring U.S. power. At first, both America’s friends and enemies were aghast at Reagan’s simplistic worldview that free markets were better than communism, that democracy was superior to dictatorship, and that in the ensuing struggle, the West would win and the rest would lose.
Foreign media damned Reagan as a warmonger for beefing up the U.S. defense budget, reassuring America’s allies and going after terrorists with military force.
The column continues onto a second page with Hanson’s analysis of Obama. The pattern is well established. Liberal, i.e., democrat administrations, weaken the nation, creates choas within our military with massive cuts and misappropriation of funds, thus allowing our enemies to become emboldened. The problems resist until a conservative administration is elected to fix the problems the liberals have created.
The column ends with this final statement:
The Obama foreign policy cannot continue much longer without provoking even more chaos or a large war. Yet correcting it will be nearly as dangerous.
Jumping off the global tiger is dangerous, but climbing back on will seem riskier.
Now you know why I said this section could rightfully be titled, “Cycles.”
***
Here is an item where the ACLU and Missouri conservatives agree. The use of ‘StingRay’ technology should be banned within the state. The St Louis Post Dispatch published this editorial on Wednesday.
Editorial: Secret use of StingRay technology could backfire on St. Louis police
May 27, 2015 4:07 pm •
Last summer, as the American Civil Liberties Union was standing side-by-side with Missouri Republicans supporting the passage of a constitutional amendment that sought to protect “electronic communication and data” from unreasonable search and seizure, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department was sitting on a secret.
In cooperation with the FBI, the St. Louis police had been using a cellphone tracking device known generically by the brand name of one such device: StingRay. The high-tech gadgets allow police to mimic a cell tower. They screen and track nearby digital data, determining the specific location in a building, for instance, of the cell phone they are tracking.
Last month, as first reported by the Post-Dispatch’s Robert Patrick, prosecutors dropped more than a dozen charges against three defendants in a case where the technology was employed. Defense attorneys believe the charges were dropped because police don’t want to reveal details about their new high-tech toy.
But in Missouri, there may be a bigger problem. It has to do with that constitutional amendment that the strange bedfellows of the ACLU and Missouri Republicans were promoting.
A plain reading of the language of Amendment 9, passed by 75 percent of the voters who turned out on Aug. 5, suggests that it is now unconstitutional in Missouri to use a StingRay device — at least without a warrant that offers significantly more detail about the data being sought.
The column continues at the website. As the editorial admits, the Post-Dispatch opposed the passage of Amendment 9 last year. They are reconsidering that opposition now that it appears the St Louis Police Department is actually using StingRay technology in defiance to Federal, and now, Missouri law.
