The futile nature of foreign policy under cowards and idiots.

“Evil is an outreach program.”—P.J. O’Rourke

These are the hardest moments for neocons and sane people (but I repeat myself).  You realize that in Venezuela, in Ukraine, in Syria, in Turkey, in South Sudan, and a dozen other nations there are terrible things going on.  That any rational understanding of natural rights and that they apply to all people equally (regardless of what country you live in) and ethics (and the basic tenet that you have to help people when you know about their suffering and are in a position to help them) tells us that we need to do something…

…but reason also tells us that we can’t do anything. Not because there is nothing to do, but because with the leadership we have now any intervention would not only be pointless it would likely make things worse(as occurred with the Arab Spring).

And that’s the problem, there are things to do, things that can improve the situation everywhere, but the idiots we currently have can only muck things up and it may be best to let these atrocities work themselves out.  Which is terrible.

It was bad when you have a life long cowardly isolationist (from a family of worthless cowardly isolationists)  like Bush try to adopt the mantle of a neoconservative on foreign policy…but not bother to understand the part about long term planning to help build, rebuild and establish functioning constitutional republics that defend the rights of their people.  Nope, like all Bush’s, W. didn’t seem to understand long term thinking (like daddy didn’t understand the truth of supply-side realities, and W. also didn’t grasp that tax cuts have to be permanent to have any lasting effect).  No let’s just ignore that it was long term involvement, planning and slower turning over of control to the local governments that made Germany and Japan a success…no, let’s just assume that a functioning democratic-republic will just spring up in a couple years (to hell if it took the US over a decade and two Constitutions to get it right). It was bad when this non-neoconservative gave neoconservatives a black eye.  But at least we were trying.   And even with the complete cluster—- that Iraq and Afghanistan have become there are fewer governments and tyrants actively funding terrorism.  There are at least silver linings in these screwups.

But even though Bush was a moron, at least he left things better than they were before (not good by any means, but marginally better than when he got on the scene), he was a genius compared to Obama who makes everything worse.  Give Iran money to build nukes.  Stop actually gathering needed intelligence on terrorists (while oddly focusing really hard on American citizens…maybe if we tell him that Al-Qaeda is thinking of starting a SuperPAC he might actually go after them).  Not backing Britain in their dealing with socialist Argentina.  Back stabbing Israel at every single turn because the fact is that with the exception of Ron Paul followers there is only one party I can think of more anti-Semitic than Obama and his Democrats.

Yeah I know everyone is using the excuse that Bush let Putin have parts of Georgia in 2008…but let’s be honest when that happened Bush was entirely out of political capital to use on foreign affairs (not saying he would have done the right thing if he had any chips to play, but we should at least admit realities)…but, as a particular commentator likes to correctly point out “Bad behavior doesn’t excuse other bad behavior.”

Let’s ignore the thousand and one things we could have done over the past 6 years that would have prevented all these things (and make no mistake a strong and intelligent US foreign policy could have prevented all of it).

We could easily impose harsh sanctions against Russia and open every form of oil and natural gas production in the US. This would devastate the Russian economy, keep Europe relatively stable, and work as a shot of adrenaline to the US economy. But we really can’t do that because if we did push for sanctions Obama would probably idiotically engineer sanctions that only annoy Russia and fail to open up US production of energy that would leave Europe even in worse shape than they currently exist.

We could honor our treaty with Poland (you know the one Obama broke) and help them defend themselves.  And we could offer to extend that defense treaty to all those other nations that were once part of the Eastern Block we have no intention of doing so. But as experience tells us, Obama would rather give guns to the villains instead of  our allies.

We could send arms and support (training, advisors, infrastructure) to Ukraine as a clear sign we are drawing a line in the sand which you will not cross…but we know what happens when Obama draws foreign policy lines.

Hell…we could even be going to the UN asking for meaningless peacekeepers be sent to Crimea to observe the situation.  It would be pointless, and would likely be vetoed by Russia, but at least it would be more than rolling over for dead as Barry and Michelle  go on separate vacations while the world falls apart.

We could do a lot of things…and we could do it for a lot of nations…because we do have a moral obligation to see liberty and human rights defended and spread over the whole world.  But as long as this moron is in charge nothing will get done and pushing to have anything done will only result in even a worse situation occurring because he is too cowardly to do what needs to be done and too stupid to even know what that is or the conspirisists are correct and it is what he wants –one or the other no in-between.

There is a silver lining to this at least in the Ukraine. The fact is that while we should be leading a movement to band the nations of Eastern Europe together, they will probably do that on their own. Also, despite the fact that everyone likes to say that Obama is playing checkers while Putin is playing chess…the fact is that in reality Obama is drooling on himself while Putin is playing tic-tac-toe poorly. This may be a short-term goal for him, but it will strain his already strained economy, and it will likely make Russia not just the target of Islamic radicals in Chechnya but inflame and put Russia right in the crosshairs of al-Qaeda
.   I think we speak from experience that al-Qaeda is a bitch to deal with when you attack the nations they claim to be from…it will be a complete nightmare for Russia when they even lack the moral and ethical high ground that the US had.  Let me know how your population problem is going in ten years Vladimir when you’ve had to sacrifice every young man to holding the nations you’ve invaded to try and reestablish the evil empire.  And like Stalingrad, I will be actually quite happy with Russia and al-Qaeda wasting time, money and lives killing each other…it really doesn’t matter who wins so long as both sides lose.  Long term, we are lucky that evil may be an outreach program but it also always includes the seeds of its own destruction.