Republican Party Goes to the Dogs

My Republican party sympathy began to diminish with Gerald Ford. Not because Richard Nixon was evil or that Ford was a lost soul, but on my working level at the Department of Defense it was obvious that Hopeless Henry Kissinger was cynically driving the US into the arms of Israel at a major cost to US national interests. To my vexation, Kissinger is back now holding GW Bush's hand with disastrous consequences; Kissinger has got to be a Republican curse. The Democrats have enough sense to ignore him.

Jimmy Carter, bless his soul, defused and reversed the Middle East situation with his Camp David accords; he jerked the US back to the role as an honest broker. Since then, with the help of Clinton, Reagan, and the Bushes, the US again is an Israeli lap dog. And for this, it pays a high price.

Carter with his recent book, PALESTINE PEACE NOT APARTHEID, still carries his torch for even handedness by the US in the Middle East negotiations. As a result, the pro-Likud Israeli and American Jews fly into a rage even over the mention of his name. Carter's cohorts in the accord, Rabin and Sadat, were killed by their own people. Arafat mysteriously died with toothache in his heel – one day we hope the French will release their autopsy findings.

Reagan's recruitment by the Israelis was particularly egregious. His first big mistake was to acquiesce in Begin's incorporation of the Golan Heights into the Greater Israel – that was a big difference from just occupation. As a result, Sunni Syria became an implacable Israeli enemy and was driven into cooperation with Shiite Iran. Since then, Iranian Hetzbollah has become a security threat to Israel from their Lebanese bases. To support Israel, the Gipper stationed Marines in Beirut to protect Lebanese Christian militias allied with Israel – even Bomb Bomb McCain at his more lucid time argued against it. Marines were slaughtered by a terrorist bomb and the US withdrew. Reagan squandered his good will with Iran after the American hostage release and the Iran Contra affair. But it was the Bush father and son team who were the midwives to the modern terrorists.

Papa Bush politically was on the ropes with raising taxes after he promised solemnly he would not. He invaded Kuwait that boosted his poll numbers to over 80% approval. This was short lived. Whether the world bought oil from the tyrant Kuwait Sheiks or Saddam made no sense ideologically. Daddy wanted to control the price of oil. To be saved, Kuwait Sheiks promised him oil priced under OPEC prices – it worked for a while as the US came to rescue. At no time did Saddam threaten the Saudis until after the war began.

As a result of the Gulf War, the US stationed troops in Saudi Arabia and the times of troubles for the US begins with terrorists. Two US embassies were attacked in Africa and USS Cole and Khobar towers were struck. Bin Laden's 9/11 attack like his others were based on his fury over infidels stationed on Saudi soil. All these attacks were bloody, inflicting death and destruction.

Clinton inherited the Iraq no-fly-zone and the Bush's guilt for not supporting the Iraqi Shiites after calling them to insurrection after the Gulf War. Clinton responded to terror attacks with cruise missile strikes in the Sudan that hit the wrong targets and on Bin Laden camps in Afghanistan that hit the target, but caused minor damage. In the case of Afghanistan, unexploded cruise missiles were sold to the Chinese by the terrorists to further fund their operations.

GW Bush's term has fed terrorism with his invasion of Iraq that is still intrain at over 12 billion a month. He used 9/11 as pretext to invade Iraq that had no culpability in the attack on US soil. This tragic destructive war will continue until Bush is out of office. His latest ploy was to extend it by advertising the success of the Surge – a surge that failed to bring political settlement and freezes US troops; traps them in country at around 140,000.

Saveus Petraeus cautiously will admit to only a fragile military success. He has been promoted to command CENTCOM. Perhaps in this new billet he can catch Bin Laden and stop the growth of the Taliban, missions that GW Bush so badly bungled. US still has not achieved anything near an endstate in Iraq as Iraq and US goals fail to mesh.

US invasion and continued occupation of Iraq, the focus on Iraq at the cost of resounding failures in Afghanistan, and the stationing of US forces in Saudi Arabia are all linked to an effort to provide security to Israel by keeping US troops in the middle east – my issue is not with Israel, but with foolish US policy makers who willingly sacrifice US interests for little in return. And Bush, with his pro-Israeli neocons, has taken the US into the abyss. Even bin Laden has now morphed into the defender of Arabs against Israel – that has happened since 9/11. This complicates the battle against terrorism even more. There are more terrorists who hate Israel than the US. But give this proposition more time to intensify, and if it happens under Bomb Bomb McCain's neocon rule, the US will enjoy the same hatred.

If you think the Republicans botched foreign affairs, take a look at their economics.

There is no question that the deficit caused by the Iraqi war is a part of the current US economic woes. The same people who brought you the pointless, disastrous Iraq war are bringing you the bail out. There is a déjà vu, bums rush involved here as there was in the march to war in Iraq.

This last weekend I watched every talking head on TV possible. Not one appeared fully to understand the problem, let alone a solution. It is ironic that the US government ownership of private enterprise, one means of production, a Socialist move, comes riding in on the back of the free enterprise Republican Party. What a bunch of hypocrites. Call them dogs; its okay with me. Their wall street buddies will put the lipstick on them and call them heros.

About the only talking head who seemed to have any integrity was Ron Paul and he was about to cut his own wrists over the problem. I agreed; I would sooner risk riding out the situation, take the hits, than believe these Administration and congressional incompetents will help the average American. Expect just a variation of the tax cut for the rich that never trickles down.

By the time the bail out gets finished by spiking more inflation of the dollar, you will not be able to buy a bus ticket with your social security check. Colonel Robert E Bartos USA ret.