DID YOU EVER WONDER WHAT OTHER COUNTRIES THINK ABOUT THE U.S.?

DID YOU EVER WONDER WHAT OTHER COUNTRIES THINK ABOUT THE U.S.?

(Joseph Logan, Huffington Post, Russian Times, Peace House)

(Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter, Washington Post, Asia & Pacific News)

(CNN U.S. Jack A. Smith, Joe Sutton, Tim Craig, Haq Newas Kahn, Frazer Chronicle)

Russia seems to have a case of the red-ass, or at least that’s what the Officers of Russia and Soldiers Mothers think about President Obama’s book quote: that he was “very good at killing people,” this coming from a NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE!

What kind of hokey statement is this…..coming from our President, the guy who was supposed to close Guantanamo detention center in Cuba, said that he’d stop the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, in fact….for me, it was one the strongest part of his platform for the presidency. Like some others, I was hoping against hope that he could pull off a withdrawal after his 2008 victory.

However that didn’t come to pass until the latter part of 2011, and although I strongly supported the troop withdrawal, nobody can deny that Iraq is in far worse shape than when Saddam Hussein was in power. The war that was launched in March of 2003 with missile strikes in Baghdad aimed at ousting Hussein closed in December of 2011 with a fragile democracy in place…..facing insurgents, sectarian tensions and the challenge of defining its place in an Arab region in turmoil.

I have never understood the attitudes that seems to be like the flu in the White House (whenever there’s one case, it mushrooms to everybody in power and worse…..there’s absolutely no known cure). And now the nation has to put up with an Anton Tsvetkov, spokesman for the Officers of Russia, and a Flora Salikhovskaya, chairwomen of the Soldiers Mothers Committee condemning a passage from Obama’s book, Double Down, written by Mark Helperin and John Heilemann.

“While discussing the use of drones in counter-terrorist operations in a closed conference with his aids, Barack Obama cynically noted he was “very good at killing people” with regards to the use of drones. Tsvetkov told reporters at a press conference in Moscow said that “Russian military professions were strongly against the use of drone aircraft in combat because attacks often causes casualties among civilians.”

Flora Salikhovskaya said there her group supports Tsvetkov’s statement, adding that solving all problems through military force has become an Obama trademark in foreign affairs. “One should never brag or boast about their proficiency in killing,” according to Aleksandr Mikhalilov, another high ranking military official.

CENTER RIGHTIST

It is obvious that Barack Obama either was or has moved to the center right of many of his opinions regarding his foreign policies and the use of the United States military might. He has virtually fallen into the same foot-steps as George W. Bush did during his time in the White House, the only difference is that Obama calls his war, the Global War on Terror.

With one exception, Iraq, President Obama has extending former President George W. Bush’s wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and elsewhere and has hiked military spending as well as troop support in Afghanistan. He has, in addition, encouraged the growth of militarism in U.S. society by repeatedly heaping excessive praise on the armed forces and has tightened the military encirclement of China.

The Middle East is in turmoil, Israel still threatens to attack Iran, the Syrian regime refuses to fall, there are problems in Egypt, The plight of Palestinians has worsened during Obama’s presidency and relations with both Russia and China are shaky and only lukewarm at best.

Some Liberals, centrist, and almost all conservatives continue to site September, 11, 2001 and use it as a rallying point as the country continues its policies of peace through military might. For once and for all, anything gained through a military action is, in the long run…..doomed to failure.

According to Obama “we have strengthened our defenses, hardening targets, lightening transportation security, and given law enforcement new tools to prevent terror. Most of these changes were sound. Some caused inconveniences. But some, like expanded surveillance, raised difficult questions about the balance we strike between our interests in security and our value of privacy. In some cases, there was a compromise in our basic values…..by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that might have ran counter to the rule of law.”

Now if the above doesn’t sound almost verbatim to what the Bush administration would have said…..if they were still in power? Again according to the president, “today, Osama bin Laden is dead, and so are most of his top lieutenants. There are no large scale-attacks on the United States, and our homeland is more secure.”

HERE A DRONE, THERE A DRONE…..EVERYWHERE A DRONE

Now before we go any further, I want to make one thing crystal clear…..I don’t give a damn what other countries say, or think about the United States…..however I do care what methods we use, and the results of our practices or efforts.

Since January of 2007, up through the Lake Ontario crash, there has been 143 crashes of drones…..reported, out of which 27 were for some sort of failure, or one in five. I say “one in five” because the vast majority of crash investigations aren’t reported.

There are also incidents of drones crashing into U.S. ships and injuring Navy personnel or into the Great Lakes. I wonder how valuable these stealth apparatuses really are. The cost a little over $3 million, we’ve lost at least 147…..at $3 mill each, that would be $441 million, close to half a billion…..ouch!

I wonder, since we have Fox news, CNN, MSNBC, and all the other news outlets in the U.S. clambering to fill their 24 hour wall to wall news, what must the rest of the world be thinking…..no wonder whenever there’s a natural disaster…..or otherwise…..people come calling with dirty faces and hands extended looking for a freebie.

Maybe, just maybe, the rest of the world has us figured out and see us as overbearing, frivolous, self indulging power mongers. How long is it going to take us to figure things out?

HAVE A NICE DAY!