President Change-your-mind Wishy-wash

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Feb 23, 2015 at 00:27

Hello again, Tovey

As you have pointed out, Israel's stake in this cannot be minimalized either and the caution that might have come from America is obscenely missing.

One thing Prof. Pipes and other Jews with a love for their homeland probably appreciate, is the fact that Bible-believing Christians have a healthy interest in the Middle East that has not been fashioned by the anti-Semites in the press, Western governments and academia. I also appreciate seeing this in you.

The US allowed the Russians to supplant it in the Eastern Mediterranean in December, 2013. Putin's showdown with Bush in Georgia in 2008, put under the spotlight because it happened while the two were literally sitting next to one another at the Beijing Olympics, highlighted US naval weakness vs. the resurgent Russians. We sent the USS Mount Whitney to Georgia for show then, but were unable to stop they Ruusskies from occupying their neighbor's country.

Over the next few years, the US presence in the Mediterranean declined. I was suprized, for example, when the supercarrier we usually stationed in the area actually high-tailed it through Suez, AWAY from the area, when we and our European allies began our aggression against Libya in 2011. In November, 2011, the Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov left its home base in Severomorsk, to become the flagship of a new naval presence off Syria. Our response was to withdraw the bulk of our naval strength there into the Western Mediterranean. The Russians ruled those seas ever since. When I saw a picture of US aircraft carriers idled at Norfolk a few months later, because we could not afford to pay the men to crew them, I understood why this had happened.

President Obama had his last chance to assert US naval power in the region later in 2012, with his egg-on-the face attempt to get the Democrat-controlled US Congress to rally behind him to attack Syria's Iranian-sponsored Bashir al-Assad. He was forced to back down by his own party and government, after being deserted a few weeks earlier by our supposed ally Britain. I suppose that was all just as well, because today we are Assad and Iran's de facto allies in a struggle against ISIL, whom we had largely supported in the fight against Assad in 2012. It should come as a small wonder why I and so many other Americans are less than enthusiastic today about following President Change-your-mind Wishy-wash. I sense that the Israelis have about the same amount of (non-) enthusiasm.

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