- "A soft answer turneth away wrath," teaches
Proverbs 1:15.
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- Our new secretary of defense, Roberts Gates, seems familiar
with the verse. For his handling of Saturday's
wintry blast from Vladimir Putin at the Munich security conference
was masterful.
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- "As an old Cold Warrior, one of yesterday's speeches
almost filled me with nostalgia for a less complex time," said Gates,
adding, "Almost."
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- A former director of the CIA, Gates went on to identify
with Putin: "I have, like your second speaker yesterday ... a career
in the spy business. And I guess old spies have a habit of blunt speaking.
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- "However, I have been to re-education camp, spending
the last four-and-a-half years as a university president and dealing with
faculty. And as more than a few university
presidents have learned in recent years, when it comes to faculty it
is either 'be nice' or 'be gone.'" (Gates
calls for partnership with Russia in security matters, CNN.com, February
11, 2007)
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- Gates added he would be going to Moscow to talk with
the old KGB hand, who will be retiring as Russia's president around the
time President Bush goes home to Crawford.
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- Excellent.
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- For one of the historic blunders of this administration
has been to antagonize and alienate Russia, the winning of whose friendship
was a signal achievement of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. And one
of the foreign policy imperatives of this nation is for statesmanship to
repair the damage.
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- What did we do to antagonize Russia?
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- When the Cold War ended, we seized upon our "unipolar
moment" as the lone superpower to seek geopolitical advantage
at Russia's expense.
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- Though the Red Army had picked up and gone home from
Eastern Europe voluntarily, and Moscow felt it had an understanding we
would not move NATO eastward, we exploited our moment. Not only did we
bring Poland into NATO, we brought in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and
virtually the whole Warsaw Pact, planting NATO right on Mother Russia's
front porch.
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- Now, there is a scheme afoot to bring in Ukraine
and Georgia in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin.
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- Second, America backed a pipeline to deliver Caspian
Sea oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, to bypass Russia.
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- Third, though Putin gave us a green light to use bases
in the old Soviet republics for the liberation of Afghanistan, we now seem
hell-bent on making those bases in Central Asia permanent.
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- Fourth, though Bush sold missile defense as directed
at rogue states like North Korea, we now learn we are going to put anti-missile
systems into Eastern Europe. And against whom are they directed?
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- Fifth, through the National Endowment for Democracy,
its GOP and Democratic auxiliaries, and tax-exempt think tanks, foundations
and "human rights" institutes such as <http://www.theamericancause.org/a-pjb-051130-puntnam.htm>Freedom
House, headed by ex-CIA director James Woolsey, we have been fomenting
regime change in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics and Russia
herself.
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- U.S.-backed revolutions have succeeded in Serbia, Ukraine
and Georgia, but failed in Belarus. Moscow has now legislated restrictions
on the foreign agencies that it sees, not without justification, as subversive
of pro-Moscow regimes.
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- Sixth, America conducted 78 days of bombing
of Serbia for the crime of fighting to hold on to her rebellious province,
Kosovo, and for refusing to grant NATO marching rights through her territory
to take over that province. Mother Russia has always had a maternal interest
in the Orthodox states of the Balkans.
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- These are Putin's grievances. Does he not have a small
point?
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- Joe Lieberman denounced
Putin's "Cold War rhetoric." But have we not been taking what
cannot unfairly be labeled Cold War actions?
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- How would we react if China today brought Cuba, Nicaragua
and Venezuela into a military alliance, convinced Mexico to sell oil to
Beijing and bypass the United States, and began meddling in the affairs
of Central America and Caribbean countries to effect the electoral defeat
of regimes friendly to the United States?
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- How would we react to a Russian move to put anti-missile
missiles on Greenland?
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- Gates says we have been through one Cold War and do not
want another. But it is not Moscow moving a military alliance right up
to our borders or building bases and planting anti-missile systems in our
front and back yards.
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- Why are we doing this? This country is not going to go
to war with Russia over Estonia. With our Army "breaking"
from two insurgencies, how would we fight? By bombing Moscow and St. Petersburg?
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- Just as we deluded ourselves into believing the Iraq
war would be a "cakewalk,"
that democracy would break out across the Middle East, that we would be
beloved in Baghdad, so America today has undertaken commitments, dating
to the Cold War and since, we do not remotely have the resources or will
to fulfill.
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- We are living in a world of self-delusion.
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- Somewhere in this presidential campaign, someone has
to bring us back to earth. The halcyon days of American Empire are over.
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