The Congress of the United States must be alarmed when Russia starts to speak in Cold War tones, openly defies the United States and is becoming increasingly distant from the Bush Administration while cozying up to America’s enemies. The Congress must be concerned when Russia and China do joint military exercises in the Ural Mountains. Both regimes have a vital need to secure access to critical raw materials, particularly the rich oil and gas resources of the region.
Of course, Russia’s new belligerence towards the United States is based in part on the Bush administration’s provocative policy of seeking to install a US-controlled anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The United States says that the missile defense system is directed against Iran to intercept and destroy any missiles fired from the country against its European allies. Russia believes that the missile system is a threat to its military power given the fact that the United States has backed anti-Russian regimes in Georgia, the Ukraine and other former Soviet Bloc states much to the chagrin of the Russians.
All these strained relationships and the fact that Afghanistan is literally a military stalemate, Iraq is a quagmire with a “few good days,” Pakistan is, despite the US-sponsored Bhutto-Musharaf accord to stabilize a nation that is at the forefront of its war on terror, a hotbed of racial and civil unrest must be taken into consideration. The consequences of any military action while fundamentally unpredictable (except if you just decide to nuke the place) must be discussed and weighted against diplomacy, restraint and dialogue. Wrong-headed preemption without any thought for the aftermath will turn out far, far worst then Iraq.
I wish that I could believe that Dubya “misspoke.” But the man’s history, his near messianic behavior coupled with his predisposition to justify his actions by lies, half-truths and outright deceptions; his belief in his own infallibility and warped sense of history gives me a real valid reason to be afraid – very afraid.
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