Marco Rubio: Get ready for a return to the Cold War

In 1946, after World War II had ended, the US was faced with a choice: It could disarm and join other nations in seeking to maintain peace through negotiations and treaties and international organizations like the United Nations. Or, it could continue adding more weapons to its arsenal, make ever larger bombs, fight more wars in far-flung places, and scare the bejezus out of everyone in the world.

As we now know, the US chose the second course of action and took a series of aggressive postures all over the world that led to animosity, fear, and war. That period of world history is known as the Cold War, an era in which the major military powers stared each other down while trying to seize territory and influence from each other. The Cold War was characterized by intense regional warfare in Korea, Vietnam, Israel, and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, and at the same time, the rest of the world was taking the first course, building the United Nations, developing international treaties to avoid war and, especially, to avoid committing crimes against humanity. The US was in the forefront of this movement in the aftermath of WWII, when Eleanor Roosevelt lent her considerable influence to the UN and the Geneva Accords on human rights. But later presidents--Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower--decided to treat Russia and China as enemies and developed a policy of "containment".

This policy of containment and use of force to deter enemies is exactly what Marco Rubio prescribes as a foreign policy--not surprisingly, since his advisors were also advisors to George W. Bush. So Rubio tells us that

physical strength and an active foreign policy to back it up are a means of preserving peace, not promoting conflict.

Rubio thus makes clear that he did not learn anything from the disastrous wars of G. W. Bush. If physical strength and an active foreign policy are a means of preserving peace, why did Bush's presidency take over a generally peaceful world from his predecessor and turn it into two major wars that continued during his entire administration? The answer is, of course, that Marco Rubio and the neoconservatives who advise him are completely wrong, that his policy will lead to war, not peace, and trying to intimidate nations is a good way to consolidate the power of despots who rule them.

Worse than simply advocating a foreign policy of belligerence against one country, Rubio proposes to attack (either physically or diplomatically) three powerful nations at the same time: Iran, Russia, and China. This policy, if carried out, would undoubtedly complete the destruction of the American economy begun so calamitously under G. W. Bush.

Rubio seems in love with the idea of a powerful US dominating the world's nations and dictating the terms of peace. The world has become too large for that, however. The techniques of asymmetric warfare are too well-known. The rebels in Afghanistan successfully fended off the Russian army. The Communist forces in Vietnam threw off the yoke of colonial oppression and sent the better-equipped and better-trained American forces back home.

Rubio and his neo-con advisors criticize Obama for being too risk-averse. They do not explain, however, how the US could prevent Russia from prevailing in the Ukraine, or prevent China from dominating the South China Sea. Rubio seems to believe the simple posting of military force in opposition would convince the Russians to abandon Ukraine or the Chinese to give up their designs on Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The problem that Rubio faces is not that his plan would fail, but that it would lead inevitably to hostilities between the US and countries whose assistance we will need to meet the challenges of global climate change and growing shortages of water and agricultural land. In an era when nature has provided mankind with a challenge we may not survive, we need to abandon our territorial ambitions and lust for wealth in the name of a greater good, the survival of the planet. Rubio and his pals ignore this fact. Their election to power would bring disaster, not just to the US, but to the whole world and all its inhabitants.

Donald Trump Continues to Bloviate

Trump appears to have only a minimal understanding of politics. He doesn't understand, for instance, that John Bolton was one of the architects of the Iraq War. George W. Bush (another clueless wonder) made Bolton ambassador to the UN. Bolton didn't recognize the authority of the UN and tried to sabotage it every way he could. But Trump didn't understand that. You see, Trump thinks talking tough impresses other countries.

Trump says the Iraq War was pointless, and he is right about that, but his administration would start other pointless wars that would end up killing American soldiers for no purpose. Trump's promise to have a "tough" foreign policy, and his praise for Bolton's toughness, seem to indicate that he would let the neoconservative cabal convince him to invade Iraq and Syria.

Chuck Todd interviewed Donald Trump on MSNBC last Sunday. Todd, whom most pundits criticize as a lightweight, made Trump look like a schoolboy. Trump seemed unable to complete a sentence.

Trump and most of his supporters believe foreign policy as a kind of football game. In a football game, you pretend you are tough. You wear fierce animal emblems on your helmets. You talk tough to the opposing players, calling them sissies or worse. During the action of the game, you use all the underhanded tactics you know to harm or permanently injure the opposition.

And you cheat. You take the air out of the footballs to give yourself an advantage. You steal their plays. You punch opposing players when the referees turn their backs. You use your helmet as a battering ram and later whine that it was an accident, that the refs are unfairly picking on you. Naturally, if a ball hits the ground before you pick it up, you claim loudly that it didn't and dance around the field inciting the crowd to roar their disapproval. If you are successful with these sorts of tactics, the referees will be afraid to call close fouls against you. So you win by cheating.

The big difference between football tactics and foreign policy in the real world is that football is a game. You schedule a game every Sunday. It's great fun. Everyone goes home alive. In the real world, the same tactics used in football games result in real wars. People get killed. People flee their homes and become refugees. Bombs explode in cities and kill innocent civilians. 

That's why most real diplomats don't threaten to go to war every time there's a border dispute. It's also why a Trump presidency would be a disaster for the world. The Neocons see Trump as the second coming of G.W. Bush. Their hearts are filled with bloodlust.

Foreign affairs is a dangerous game. Let's hope Trump never gets a turn at bat.

Obama's decision not to intervene in Syria was a wise one

ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) crossed from Syria into Iraq last week. In short order they seized Mosul, Tikrit, and some other, smaller towns near the Syrian Border. Videos showed Iraqi government soldiers removing their uniforms and fleeing their posts before ISIS arrived. American commentators dismissed their actions as cowardice in the face of the enemy. But it was not cowardice. It was merely an attempt at self-preservation.

Videos released later by ISIS showed in gruesome detail what happened to soldiers who were captured by the invaders. The Iraqi soldiers were rounded up and shot. We need to recognize that the Iraqi soldiers, mostly Shi'ite, who were posted in Mosul and Tikrit were not defending their homeland. They were deep inside enemy territory. Those who could not escape to Baghdad could not be certain of survival, for the people of the region oppose the Iraqi government installed by the American army. The Shi'ite soldiers had no place to hide and no one to aid them.

ISIS had been fighting against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator. These were the same fighters that neocons and John McCain had been urging Obama to support. ISIS is aligned with former supporters of Saddam Hussein. They are Sunni Muslims who have a much stronger allegiance to their religious faith than to any government. They are also one of the main forces that have been opposing the Americans in Iraq. Supporting these people would have been a major blunder, akin to the mistake made by the CIA in Operation Cyclone, which led to the empowerment of Osama bin Laden.

We should understand the alignment of forces in the Middle East.

Iran is the leading Shi'ite state. Other Shi'ite leaders are Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki.

Saudi Arabia is the leading Sunni State. Saddam Hussein was Sunni. So was Osama bin Laden. There are powerful Sunni forces in Iraq and Syria, where they oppose the current governments.

The wars in the Middle East between Muslim states since WWII can be viewed as proxy wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia for control of the region. The United States has sided with Saudi Arabia consistently during this entire period, despite the fact that the two countries have little in common aside from an interest in oil.

Sanity seems at last to have reached into the American government. Our intelligence agencies have failed to provide accurate information to our decision makers. Even Jimmy Carter was not immune to the belief that Afghanistan's war against the Soviet Union was somehow a danger to the US.

We don't know what intelligence reports led Obama to decide against intervention in Syria. Perhaps he knew more about the makeup of the rebel force opposing Assad than the rest of us. Or perhaps he was wary about any intelligence he received from the CIA, since they had failed so utterly in this region in the past. Whatever his reasons, Obama made the right choice. The US now enjoys the enviable position of watching chaos from the outside rather than having it falling on our heads.

McCain redefines defeat to equal victory

Senator John McCain recently criticized Obama for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. He asserted that the US won the war in Iraq but now, because of the withdrawal, we have lost. This is a strange opinion. The stated goal of staying in Iraq as long as we did was to give the Iraqis time to train their army to defend the country against threats to their security.

The surge worked, says McCain. But the surge was an offensive by 100,000 American troops that quelled an uprising in the Sunni part of the country. The injection of 100,000 well-armed troops certainly pacified that region for as long as the troops were there. McCain argues that we should have left sufficient forces in Iraq to pacify the whole country.

No doubt McCain believes, as did Bush 43, that armies can be held in the field indefinitely without accounting for them in the budget. The neocon instigators of the Iraq war assured the American people that the war would not cost $100 million--as others maintained--because the Iraqis had enough oil revenue to repay us when the war was over.

The same people who refused to levy taxes on the American people to pay for the Iraq war were proposing to levy taxes on the Iraqi people to pay for it. These people should understand that taxation without representation is tyranny, as colonial patriot James Otis declared back in the years prior to the American Revolution. They should understand it because they continually refuse to raise taxes on any Americans for any reason as a badge of honor.

The stated goal of remaining in Iraq after the defeat of Saddam Hussein was to give the Iraqis the ability to defend their own country. Since it is now clear that the hyper-partisan, Shi'ite regime that the Americans set up in Baghdad cannot defend itself from Sunni attacks, it must also be clear that the US won the war but Iraq is losing the peace.

The US vision of a united Iraq ignored the history of the region, where Iraq was never united as a country until Britain and France drew its borders after WWI. So there never was and never will be an Iraq in the same way there is a France, Britain, or US. A much more reasonable policy would have been to partition the country along partisan lines, with three smaller countries, Kurdistan in the north, a Sunni state in the west and a Shi'ite state in the east. Such a division could have stabilized the region with less bloodshed and less loss of treasure than the current failed solution.

It is astonishing how quickly the news services have labeled the Sunni partisans as al-Qaida or al-Qaida inspired, just as they once labeled Saddam as a supporter of al-Qaida and the instigator of the 9-11 attacks. The Sunni insurrection may be inspired by al-Qaida, but it may also be supplied by Saudi Arabians, who have the oil wealth to finance such a rebellion. A Sunni caliphate, such as the one envisioned by insurgents, would have a natural ally in Riyadh. Neocons are not going to admit that their pals, the Saudi royal family, may be behind the latest violence in Iraq.

US soldiers are naturally disheartened by the present turn of events. They have a right to be. But the neocons who started the war and lied about its possibility of success have no business blaming President Obama for the failure of their grand design, launched by President Bush in 2003. The neocons must accept the blame themselves for what they persuaded the rest of us to do. They should begin by apologizing to the Americans who fought in Iraq and the families of those who died there, because the Republicans are responsible for the idiotic plan that sent American armed forces to Iraq in the first place.

Senator McCain, against all the evidence, urges us to continue the plan we started. It worked, he says.

No, it didn't work. The plan will cost the American taxpayers more than $2 trillion, making it one of the most expensive failures in history.