Is this a first volley in a comeback fight? We’ll see, but this is a kind of foreign policy red meat we haven’t seen in a while.
It is said that the first rule of wing-walking is to not let go with one hand until the other hand has a firm grip. So, too, before we jettison our reliance on U.S. strength, there must be something effective in its place — if such a thing is even possible. …
Some argue that the United States should simply withdraw its military strength from the world — get out of the Middle East, accept nuclear weapons in Iran and elsewhere, let China and Russia have their way with their neighbors and watch from the sidelines as jihadists storm on two or three continents. Do this, they contend, and the United States would be left alone.
No, we would not. The history of the 20th century teaches that power-hungry tyrants ultimately feast on the appeasers — to use former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour’s phrase, we would be paying the cannibals to eat us last.
Read it all here: Mitt Romney: The need for a mighty U.S. military
1 comment
Lets be frank, the vast majority of Congress and the Executive branch today no longer attracts the intellectual lift required for carrying on let alone debating issues of strategic national defense or the global rebuilding of such a capability and the selling of it to the American people. The major service arms General Staff Officers have largely devolved into glorified presidential political appointees with more in common with the cost accountants of OMG then field Corp or Army Group level combat commanders. The “all voluntary” services spend as much effort on maintaining a “politically correct” environment as they do focused on training and logistics. Our special operations groups stand out as the sole exception and as anyone who has served in such a group well understands they are of a limited use in any major prolonged ground conflict. We are in a very sorry state indeed, so bad we can’t even seem to generate the political will to defend our own borders. Mitt Romney quoting Haley Barbour is not exactly a Reagan moment for me personally.