It is absolutely amazing how easily liberals get away with using the old tactic of saying something often enough and it therefore becomes truth.
EDITORIAL: Sarah Palin, Right on Russia
September 22, 2008 · 6 Comments
EDITORIAL
Sarah Palin, Right on Russia
Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has come under attack recently from certain crazed leftists who accuse her of being a war monger because she stated that, if Russia attached Georgia after the latter’s admission to NATO, the U.S. would “perhaps” go to war with Russia to defend her ally. Then she explained:
I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help. What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against … We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to. It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.
There is nothing the least bit unusual or unreasonable about this view, but the moonbats have never let that stop them before and so it must have come as a rather disturbing shock to them to hear both former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright say exactly the same thing recently.
Powell stated bluntly: “We cannot say to the Russians ‘we are not going to allow the Georgians or Ukrainians or anyone else to start down the path toward NATO membership.’ It’s not for the Russians to decide that.” He then added that “under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which is the NATO Treaty, when one member of the alliance is attacked from abroad — meaning outside the NATO geographic limits — then all members of NATO treat that as an attack.”
Albright was asked: “Now you’ve got Russia invading Georgia. Is the advice to the next president of the United States therefore, you have to go to war against Russia in order to protect your NATO allies?” She answered: “While I fully agree that we can’t go back to the Cold War and have a really very bad adversarial relationship with Russia, Russia cannot think that independent countries on its border are a threat to them. So I think — I personally believe that we need to go forward with the Membership Action Plan for Georgia and for Ukraine, and keep explaining that it is not a threat.”
All three of them are precisely correct. NATO should avoid war by all means, but it should also reach out to protect the potential victims of Russian aggression by all means. If it fails to do so, it only makes Russian aggression towards Europe more likely, not less. Experts across the board agree that the the time has come to stand up to Russian aggression, and if we must fight Russia it is better to do so sooner rather than later when Russia is weaker rather than stronger. But there is no reason to think it will be necessary. Russia is nothing more than a thug, a crude witless bully pushing around small weak victims. If faced with concerted action by NATO, it will back down — just as it did when it was forced to withdraw from Georgia before entering Tbilisi, leaving the hated Georgian regime in place.
It’s unforunate to see even bloggers who have a vested interest in a tough line, like Robert Amsterdam, allow their pathological hatred of Republicans to induce them to lie brazenly about Palin, who has mightily energized the party and made it an overnight contender. Amsterdam stated, for instance: “I’ve kept mostly mum about Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s ongoing claims of being an expert on Russia affairs.” Quite simply, that’s a lie. Palin has never claimed to be an “expert” on Russia, but only to have a certain perspective on the country based on her life experience, which includes living far closer to Russia’s menacing border than most American will ever do, and Amsterdam shamefully did not even quote or link to her actual words, choosing instead to characterize them in a ridiculously dishonest, haughty and patronizing manner. When we attempted to raise the point in a comment, he refused to publish it.
What experience, we might ask, does Barack Obama have dealing with Russia? None whatsoever. Before this campaign season began, he didn’t even know Russia existed, and had no record on the Putin atrocities. In fact, he has no foreign policy experience of any kind, and named Joe Biden as his running mate to cover that fact. But Obama is not trying to become merely the vice president, as Palin is, but the leader of the free world.
Unlike Palin, he has no elected executive experience. Christopher Hitchens calls him “vapid, hesitant and gutless” and that’s exactly what he is. We’d so much rather have Palin running America’s Russia policy than Obama it’s the mother of all no-brainers.
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