McCain’s “League of Democracies”
McCain really knows how to turn a phrase: League of Democracies! My God, next think you know, he’ll be championing “peace with honor” or “bimetallism.” McCain is not only going out of his way lately to insult Medvedev’s Russia, but he’s insulting vast swaths of the world by attempting to create a competitor to the UN. Assuming anyone would join the League of Democracies, what would happen in the case of a marginal applicant? Could anyone say Russia’s regard for human rights is any less developed than Israel’s or South Africa’s? Would a President McCain have the courage to tell Nigeria to get its civilizational act together? Would McCain coutenance diplomacy with any country that dared to disagree with the United States?
Further, what would this group do? We can’t even get long-established NATO to pitch in more than a pro forma amount of troops in Afghanistan, and this is an organization made up of wealthy and civilized European countries. Would such militarily capable democracies as Honduras and Uganda do anything to help us if we have to go “toe to toe” with Russia on account of McCain’s saber-rattling and unwise expansion of NATO into disputed caucasian mini-states like Georgia?
This probably doesn’t matter to McCain, who bases important and complicated foreign policy decisions on his gut. One wonders if he’s considered the cost of fobbing off improvident commitments to defend weak and vulnerable allies, such as the great dishonor suffered by Britain and France as they half-heartedly honored their defense treaty with Poland in 1939. Well, I can’t really say I wonder, as evidenced by the auspicious name for McCain’s latest project.


Comments
Apparently, Jonah Goldberg was one of the great thinkers behind this idea. My guess is he was inspired by the “League of Justice” from the “Super Friends.”
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I can’t determine who would be a worse nightmare for America, Barak Husein Obama or Juan ben McCain. We need Russia as an ally as the west grows weaker and weaker. What could possibly be the end game in his anti-Russian obsession?
I keep trying to convince my relatives not to vote for him, without any success so far. He’s a war hero after all.
Christians and conservatives will get nothing from this man. He promises conservative judges on the supreme court, but it’s a promise he can’t deliver on when both houses of congress are controlled by the democrats. He will cook up some false report about the Mexican border being secured during his first term, and then sign into law a pathway to citizenship for all the illegals. He still supports embryonic stem cell research, and has no problem staying in Iraq (Afghanistan, Iran, Syria?) for one hundred years.
Could Hillary or Obama be any worse?
The Jewish dominated neo-cons are the worst plague in memory. I’ve listened to Michael Medved and Bill Bennett recently argue that McCain should pick Bobby Jindal(sp?) as a running mate so that the Republican ticket wouldn’t be so white. And Medved thinks it’s just great that the Republicans are moving further to the left. It makes them more marketable. Well, there is a great spokesman for “conservatism.”
I need to figure out what country gives my daughters a better shot at a normal future.
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Conservatives, and perhaps the country at large, jolly well deserve the man!
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Actually the Community of Democracies already exits - it was created during the Clinton years but not given much to do or any real purpose. Francis Fukuyama and I believe Joseph Nye have been emphasizing this idea for a couple of years to no avail. Even W did not want to build it up.
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Mr. Roach,
The current Russian junta is in no way a democracy. The government, made up of people who refuse to denounce Stalin, ran the media.
It is one thing to mock neoconservatives. It is another to use ignorant relativism when doing so.
Ps. Mr. John Rutowicz:
Bennett is a C-a-t-h-o-l-i-c. (I’m trying to simulate speaking slowly in a mocking manner)
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To Ron L.,
Thank you for speaking so slowly. I am a mid-western hick after all; you know, the kind clinging to guns and religiion.
I did actually know that Bennett was a Catholic, but thanks for pointing it out. I now see how his being Catholic discredits my observation that Jews are a dominating influence in neo-con circles, and that fact might have some impact on neo-con social positions and perhaps foriegn policy.
(Sorry, did any of that sound sarcastic?)
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@Ron L.,
Much more troubling than the Russian’s refusal to denounce is the current U.S. and three candidates in the race for president refusal to denounce Stalin,Trotsky, Wilson, Marx, Roosevelt, and various other collectivist nut jobs.
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that should read U.S. Government’s refusal.... But then what is the point of denouncing them? Actions speak louder than word’s and the neo-cons love their Uncle Joe.
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At the end of the day, neocons may not believe their own rhetoric about democracy, or may find it prudent to tone it down. Doug Feith used to defend global democracy-building with great passion: http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/HLonline_feith.cfm
But in his recently published apologia for Iraq, he now attests that the war had little to do with democracy crusades (and chastises GWB for playing up this theme too much).
If neocons want democracy, it’s on their terms, and nobody else’s.
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Mr.Roach,
“...the great dishonor suffered by Britain and France as they half-heartedly honored their defense treaty with Poland in 1939.” Surely you jest. Five and a half years of war later they are dishonored because they acted half-heartedly? Neither was prepared in September 1939 to mount a frontal assault against Germany.
As Pat Buchanan has pointed out in several writings, the war declaration “guarantee” given to Poland by France and Britain was as WWI Prime Minister David Lloyd George described it “demonic.” It left their foreign policy, and the decision to go to war determined by what happened to a third party, Poland, irrespective of the national interest.
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Mr. Nucci,
Germany condemned Hitler. Russian leaders, all “former” communists still love the authoritarian communist empire.
This in no way compares to what we have in America.
John Rutowicz ,
Jewish neocons dominate certain circles, Catholic Neocons others. the issue is neoconservatism, and perhaps the failure to fully Americanize by certain white ethnic groups, not their real or putative religion.
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