Posted on Aug 6, 2016 in Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Eastern Europe, Foreign Policy Issues, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, President Obama, Republican Party, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and Crimea |
Trump’s post-convention 6 point bounce was wiped clean as Hillary emerged from the Democratic Convention with a 6 to 9 point lead, according to most polls. One reason was the well produced program that the Demos put on. Part of it was due to Trump’s own continued poor judgment, his foot-in-mouthitis as he chose to denigrate a gold star mother who son, Capt. Humayun Khan, heroically gave his life in Afghanistan saving others during a suicide bombing. As usual Donald was his own worst enemy. Not only did Trump, who never served in our military himself, insult Mrs Khan and her religion, but he doubled down the next day, expanding his attacks on the Khans. This quickly drew the vocal ire of most mainstream Republicans and veterans throughout the country. The Veterans of Foreign Wars joined in the condemnation of Trump, as they, too, wondered about whether such a man could be qualified to be Commander-in-Chief. As if that wasn’t enough, Trump took on fellow Republicans Sen. John McCain and Speaker Paul...
Read More
Posted on Jul 24, 2016 in Democratic Party, Donald Trump, E.U., Eastern Europe, Elections-U.S., Foreign Policy Issues, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Middle East, Putin, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine and Crimea |
Seventy years of bi-partisanship have gone into creating a credible deterrence strategy to cope with the challenges posed to our foreign policy in an era of nuclear powers and the means of delivering them. Our deterrence strategy rests upon the elimination and reduction of doubt as to whether certain actions against ourselves and our allies will produce a response by the U.S. that is unacceptable to a potential enemy. The weaving of alliances and other measures taken to implement and maintain this strategy has been supported by every President, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State, both Republican and Democratic, since the fateful dropping of those early atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War II and ushered in the dangerous nuclear age. This credibility of our response and commitments to our allies have been seriously, if not fatally, weakened by Donald Trump’s clearly ignorant insertion of doubt into the equation. He might as well have invited North Korea across the “no-man’s land” and across the 38th parallel and on into our...
Read More
Posted on Nov 25, 2015 in Foreign Policy Issues, ISIS, Middle East, Russia, Shia, Syria, Turkey, Uncategorized |
By now most of you have heard that Turkey, our NATO ally, shot down a Russian military jet on Tuesday, November 24th. Some of the details are murky at this writing. Russian President Putin claims it was a “stab in the back,” that their plane had not crossed into Turkish air space, and the pilot was not given any warnings. Turkey, for its part, insists that their air-space was encroached and that they gave the Russian pilot ten warnings before their F-16 shot him down. The Turkish military has released a recording of a Turkish speaker saying, “change your heading.” Konstantin Murakhtin, the Russian navigator who was rescued yesterday, insists that they received no warnings. Videos of the Russian plane being hit and going down has gone viral on the internet, but it focuses on the distant sky and does nothing to answer the questions of airspace location and the presence or absence of warnings. Nor does it deal with the meaningful issue of what the Russian Su-24 fighter-bomber was doing...
Read More
