Economic Reality
Filed under: Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, U.S. Economics
The current dispute in Congress over the deficit and the lifting of our debt limit is really about how this nation will look 20 years from now.
Today Europe rivets our attention with Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Spain becoming the proverbial economic basket cases because their governments believed that they could maintain their democracies by paying off the electorate. The inevitable bills have now come due and they are looking for others to pay off their crushing debts. Americans wonder: Is this what is in store for us? And if so who will be paying off our debts. Barack Obama, a feckless and unimaginative president, wants to kick the can down the road and there are Republicans quite ready to help him along. And few of our leaders, if any, Democrat or Republican provide a vision which offers the American people the will to engage the future.
But there is a dynamic future awaiting us, but not across the Atlantic, made up of countries which have adopted a dying economic philosophy but rather across the grand Pacific. Admiral Mike Mullen describes it as free and dynamic nations such as India, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Philippines and yes and perhaps even China beckon us to join with them in a 1000-ship Navy standing watch over the seas of trade and commerce and standing watch over each other. It is this vision, a generation from now, which will provide the American people the will to engage the economic reality of today.
Caught Between The Ax and the Anvil
In the world of international affairs must Americans accept hypocrisy as the underlying dominant force if freedom and liberty are to be achieved?
From the very birth of our nation it has been the guiding light for freedom loving humanity throughout the world. But before freedom and liberty are achieved in any society, no matter its religion or its ethnicity, the society must first obtain infrastructure and order. More often than not this can only be achieved with brutality and injustice. Modern history is replete with such examples: Germany and Japan at the hands of the Allies before the end of World War II, South Korea, Bosnia, Bangladesh, Iraq and now Afghanistan. And there lies the hypocrisy. This is a bitter pill for any free people to take but especially for us Americans who believe that the means determine the ends but who love liberty and hate, truly hate, violations of human rights and brutality.
Do we close our eyes and raise the ax? If not do we stand by and watch millions live in darkness and despair? Whether we like or not and uncomfortable as it is our history as a nation is to choose the ax and hypocrisy be damned.
Who’s Country Is This?
Filed under: International Reflections, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, United States at War
President Obama has led us to a place where the tragedy unfolding in Libya presents for the first time the question whether America wishes to rely on international organizations and potential enemies for its national security.
Article II of the U.S. Constitution states: “The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;” This provision has provided the President with the power and authority to act with alacrity to protect the nation and its sovereignty. At the very inception of this nation we have jealously guarded our sovereignty letting no other nation interfere with it. However, God knows that throughout our history nations have tried. Especially in the early development of our nation, the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, the Mexican-American War, being examples of such attempts, America held fast against those nations that wished to direct our future to their interests and not ours.
In response to Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 Congress declared war. Congress did not seek the advice or consent of any of other nation. When North Korea attacked South Korea in 1950 President Truman saw the attack as a question of our national security stemming from considerations of America’s policy toward Japan. The United States wanted to shore up Japan to make it a viable counterweight against the Soviet Union and China, and Korea was seen as part of that strategy. The Vietnam War was another example of America’s desire to contain communism in South East Asia and though we had allies in that campaign the United States took the lead in its prosecution. The American people were highly ambivalent about America’s involvement in the Vietnam War but there was never a question that we entered it seeking the approval of any other nation.
Today the United States has a president who is highly educated but one who lacks, with respect to our foreign policy, the necessary gyroscope to identify what is truly in America’s national security interest. The events occurring in Libya is a perfect example. Because of this lack he has no strategic plan and finds himself relying on countries to provide for him a direction which promotes their national security interest, but not ours.
America Needs More Mexican-Americans
Filed under: International Reflections, Social Commentary, U.S. Economics
The future of the Republican Party and America’s future with the people of Mexico will soon converge. The next five years will give us a glimpse into that future, and it doesn’t look promising.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
It was Satchel Paige, one of the greatest black baseball players when baseball was segregated, who said, “Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.” Well something is definitely gaining on America and it’s China with its dynamic and unrelenting economic growth and developing military prowess. Is there any doubt that America’s nearly catatonic response to North Korea’s recent aggression against South Korea is directly related to China’s unambiguous support of its client state? America’s unstable armistice with North Korea which it entered into in the middle of the 20th Century exists today because of America’s unwillingness at that time to face a broken and weak China. If America was unwilling to confront China then what choices are open to it today what with China’s growing power and influence in this century.
But what does any of this have to do with the people of Mexico? Well, no country has ever maintained its power and influence without a growing population. By the next generation America will need 4 hundred million people to meets its current worldwide commitments. It is just barely replacing its current population today even while 1.5 million immigrants, legal and illegal are entering the country annually.
So instead of trying to stop the flow of Mexicans from coming across our southern border we should be welcoming them with open arms, providing them, their wives and children with a green card and a social security number. Republicans should be embracing our friends to the south for a myriad of reasons and to think otherwise will condemn the party to an early grave.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
Nukes In Exchange For A United Korea
Filed under: International Reflections, International War, Social Commentary, Terrorism, United States at War
China may be thinking seriously about throwing its dear ally, North Korea, under the bus. Yesterday thousands upon thousands of pages of classified material released by WikiLeaks contain a series of U.S. State Department communications suggesting that China may be ready to consider the unthinkable.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
As part of the larger Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union North Korean troops invaded South Korea in 1950. After a brutal war costing over 50,000 Americans lives an armistice was reached in 1953 between communist China which came to North Korea’s defense and United Nations forces. At that time China was a very different country than it is today. It was poor, frightened and isolated. It hardly had an industry to speak of and its people were starving. Its leader, Mao Zedong, was a crazed megalomaniac who in 1958 commenced an economic and political movement “The Great Leap Forward” which ultimately led to the deaths of 45 million Chinese. Up until the present time North Korea was used by China as a buffer against the American capitalist juggernaut and its ally South Korea.
Today however China is the 3rd largest economy in the world and exports billions of dollars of goods throughout the world and in particular the United States. Ironically the Republic of China today, hardly any longer communist, views South Korea as its true partner in its dynamic economic development rather than the broken and erratic country of North Korea.
But how does China throw its ally under the bus and still keep face with its South East Asian neighbors. Yesterday I suggested that the aircraft carrier USS George Washington currently floating around the Yellow Sea use its immense military hardware located on its deck to attack and destroy the recently reported North Korean Yongbyon nuclear complex. China has been demanding a 6 party meeting to discuss the recent North Korean attack on one of South Korea’s small islands. The United States has been resisting since it doesn’t believe there is much to talk about. However with the aircraft carrier USS George Washington blowing up that North Korean nuclear complex I contend the parties will have a great deal to talk about: the end of North Korea and the beginning of an economically powerful nation, the free and democratic Republic of Korea, all of Korea.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
We Are At Nuclear War
Filed under: International Reflections, International War, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism, United States at War
What the United States does in the next few days in response to the unprovoked attack by North Korea on the South Korean island of Pyongyang will have a great deal to do with how Iran responds to the upcoming talks scheduled for December 5th with the 5 permanent Security Council members and Germany.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
Right now based on America’s inability to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions there is little reason for it to change its course. However all learning is by analogy and the United States in the wake of the recent attack by North Korea has a great opportunity to provide Iran with some thoughtful cogitation.
In response to the North Korean attack President Obama has ordered an aircraft carrier of the 7th Fleet, the USS George Washington, into the Yellow Sea for the ostensible purpose of joining with ships of the South Korean navy to participate in joint naval exercises. China has officially protested this American action since for China the Yellow Sea encompasses the 300 mile economic zone which it considers inviolable. The U.S. State Department is ignoring this protest since the United States has an ally that must be assuaged. Such an action however will have no effect on the Mullahs of Iran since the United States has already sailed the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln into the Persian Gulf and I don’t have to remind you we had 160,000 troops in Iraq a country contiguous to Iran and that certainly did not change Iran’s nuclear strategy.
What the United States should do while in the Yellow Sea is to utilize the immense military hardware located on the deck of the USS George Washington to attack and destroy the recently reported North Korean Yongbyon nuclear complex. It has become obvious that only such an action as this will convince the Iranians that they may be next. And of course with the obvious bonus that North Korea will finally get the message that unprovoked attacks result in unintended consequences. As for China: to be continued.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
Foreign Government Has No Respect For Obama/USA
Filed under: International Reflections, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, U.S. Economics
Isn’t it ironic that the president who was going to restore America’s standing in the world has delivered it to a place where the major nations of the world now lecture us on our profligacy but worse, no longer respect us.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
During the campaign leading to the presidential election of 2008 Barack Obama argued that America, because of the policies of George W. Bush, of course, had lost its standing among the nations of the world and that if elected he would rebuild and re-construct the alliances and partnerships necessary to meet common challenges and confront common threats. Of course he never considered at the time that the nations of the world have their own particular challenges and threats, in effect, their own national interests.
Well, candidate Obama has become President Obama and after nearly 2 years of having the opportunity of working toward this goal, last week he received the response of a number of South East-Asian countries to his efforts in bringing the United States back into the fold of the world’s leading nations: The response? Get lost.
During his trip India warned that America’s close ties to Pakistan will ultimately draw India away and direct its trade and interests toward China.
While in Indonesia, a country that refuses to recognize Israel as a sovereign state, President Obama chastised Israel for building residences in its own capital, Jerusalem. Now that’s a message that Indonesians will take to heart when considering America’s steadfast loyalty to its allies. Then he visited South Korea which rejected the long standing proposed trade agreement between it and the United States. Finally during the G-20 Summit held in Seoul, South Korea, President Obama was treated with a good dose of lecturing from Germany and China about America’s profligate monetary policy of printing 600 billion dollars of new money the clear purpose of which is diminish the dollar’s value in order to boost America’s exports and reduce its debt to creditor countries, German and China included.
With Barack Obama becoming president of the United Stated it seems the nations of the world not only don’t care for our policies, they clearly no longer respect us.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
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