From: News with Views
Every time violence erupts somewhere in the world, our national leaders and news media make it sound like that particular outbreak is America’s greatest threat. The conflict between Russia and Georgia is no exception. Almost as soon as news of the conflict broke, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, John McCain, was suggesting that the United States (or the United Nations) should send troops to the scene. I guess two wars are not enough for McCain; he now wants to start a third. (And with all his talk about bombing Iran, make that four.) And talk all over Washington, D.C., was mostly about what kind of military response the United States should take.
Have people lost their minds? Or do people really believe that the United States is the world’s–or should we say the United Nations’–policeman? Apparently, that is what our national leaders from both major parties believe.
Let’s face it: most of America’s foreign policy over the last several decades has been more about fulfilling the U.N.’s global desires than protecting the people and property of the United States. And, yes, that includes America’s invasion of Iraq.
Do readers not remember that soon after launching the invasion of Iraq, President Bush appeared before the United Nations and plainly told that sinister organization that the reason he had ordered the invasion of Iraq was to “defend . . . the credibility of the United Nations”? Frankly, I did not know the United Nations had any credibility worth defending. Nevertheless, G.W. Bush was willing to sacrifice over 4,000 American lives for the express purpose of defending the U.N.’s “credibility.” Now, John McCain appears willing to send troops to Georgia.
I will not use this column to analyze the specific events leading up to Russia’s attack against Georgia, except to say that one can count on the fact that there is much more to the story than what NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN are telling us.
In addition, one of the major fallacies being perpetrated by most in Washington, D.C., is the notion that America is somehow strengthened and protected by aggressive meddling in the affairs of foreign countries. Such a philosophy was considered anathema to America’s Founding Fathers. They rightly understood that such reasoning created more problems than it solved and that it made America more vulnerable, not more secure.
Regardless of what the underlying and overriding reasons for Russia’s attack might have been, I will say here and now that the Russian-Georgian conflict is not America’s greatest threat. I will also be so bold as to say that Iran or North Korea is not America’s greatest threat, either. In fact, I will categorically state that no foreign nation (although, of all foreign nations, Red China should undoubtedly be our biggest concern–and none of our national leaders seem the least bit concerned about it) is America’s greatest threat. America’s greatest threat comes from within. And I am not alone in that opinion.