International Rudeness

Video: AP Interview With President Obama On Foreign Relations And The Economy

President Obama will be traveling to Russia over the weekend with a primary goal of getting talks started on a new START Treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty).

AP: Why are you meeting with Putin? Answer: 'Prime Minster Putin still has a lot of sway in Russia...'

Questions are also posed to the President with respect to Iran and North Korea.

AP asks the President to address the concerns of Americans who are concerned that this will be a 'jobless recovery'. One thing the President rightly mentions is that for many Americans, jobs have 'well-paying jobs' have been moving out of the country for quite some time, and he wants to that change looking to new energy jobs as the answer.

Video: President Obama speaks out against North Korea's nuclear test

The President called North Korea's most recent nuclear test "a grave threat to the peace and stability of the world."

Afghanistan makes me nervous...

Actually, it's not Afghanistan that makes me nervous. It is the United States presence in Afghanistan, Seven (7) years and counting. The Russians fought with and in it for ten years and that's a decade. In my world a decade is a lot.

Less time than having an occupying force in South Korea, but more than the course of U.S. involvement in World War II.

Plus, we have some pretty weighty and extremely challenging economic issues and domestic prioritization issues at home.

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Carter, discusses the U.S., Afghanistan and the future.

I watched it. I still feel nervous. It is most definitely 'don't screw this thing up time'.

The last eight years have really wreaked havoc on the margin of error. President Obama barely has any margin to work with.

Here's a bit of that article that Rachel talks about with the last Russian General back across the border at the end of the Russian-Afghan ten year, no win situation war that it really feels like the United States is putting a great deal of effort into reliving.

In retired Gen. Boris Gromov's view, the valor was shown in an unwinnable battle.

"Afghanistan taught us an invaluable lesson ... It has been and always will be impossible to solve political problems using force," said Gromov, the last soldier to leave Afghanistan two days after the Kabul pullout.

He told reporters that U.S. plans to send thousands of new troops to Afghanistan would make no difference against a resurgent Taliban, who came to power in 1996 in the chaos after the Soviet withdrawal.

"One can increase the forces or not — it won't lead to anything but a negative result," Gromov said. source: Yahoo News/AP

I have been thinking about Afghanistan a lot lately. The thing that really keeps me from wanting my country to bail on it completely is the women and children, especially girls.

In Afghanistan, particularly in poor rural communities, child slavery and debt bondage practices are growing, but are often disguised as marriage, labour or family affairs not requiring state intervention.
...
“These practices - the selling of children and servitude - have the very characteristics of modern slavery which have been overlooked by the government and other actors,” said Ajmal Samadi, an analyst of the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM), a local rights watchdog. source: RAWA - The Reality of Life in Afghanistan

For things to change, we must change.

Videos: Tanking global economy inspires angry protests around the world --'The stuff of nightmares for world leaders'

Russia

Russia, France, Spain, Greece, Latvia, Iceland, Bulgaria, Lithuania

Iceland

Randy Scheunemann, McCain's Foreign Policy Advisor and the Project for the New American Century, that helped shape the Iraq war policy

ABC NEWS
McCain OK with aide's lobbying past

McCain Says He Has No Problem with Foreign Policy Adviser's Past Lobbying Work

The fighting between Russia and Georgia has brought renewed attention to Scheunemann and the lobbying firm he founded, Orion Strategies, which received more than $730,000 from Georgia since 2001, records show.

Scheunemann's role as lobbyist and campaign adviser came to light in May, when USA TODAY reported he had contacted McCain's Senate office on Georgia's behalf last year while he was working for the campaign.

Scheunemann in March ended his lobbying work for Orion, which continues to represent Georgia, and formally separated from the firm in May, said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.

"I'm proud to have supported them," McCain said of Georgia in an interview on the campaign plane. "And I'm so proud that so many of my friends have done so, who also believe in freedom and democracy."

McCain said he found it interesting that Barack Obama's campaign called him "confrontational" with Russia.

Yet "rather than worry about the people of Georgia," McCain said, his Democratic rival "worried about whether someone on my staff had supported Georgia or not."

Democratic groups have criticized Scheunemann's past lobbying work as a conflict of interest.

At Orion Strategies, Scheunemann's foreign clients have included Romania, Latvia, Macedonia and Taiwan.

"The fact that John McCain is proud of the lobbyists running his campaign and doesn't understand the conflict of interest his lobbyist-advisers represent shows that he simply cannot be trusted to bring change to Washington," Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said Sunday.

Campaigning in Nevada, Obama also criticized McCain's advisers as "the same old folks that brought you George W. Bush. The same team."

Scheunemann has been a prominent foreign policy conservative for years. He was an adviser to former senator Bob Dole, both in the Senate and during Dole's 1996 presidential campaign. Scheunemann also advised then-Senate majority leader Trent Lott before leaving to join a lobbying firm, the Mercury Group, in 1998.

McCain's 2000 presidential campaign brought in Scheunemann as a foreign policy adviser. After the 2000 election, Scheunemann returned to lobbying and also joined the board of directors of the Project for the New American Century, a conservative foreign policy think tank.

Scheunemann and others at the think tank wrote to President Bush nine days after the 9/11 attacks, urging "a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." Scheunemann founded a group called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq during the run-up to the March 2003 invasion.

Scheunemann's partner, Michael Mitchell, signed a $200,000 contract for Orion Strategies to represent Georgia on April 17, the firm's Justice Department filings show.

That same day, McCain issued a statement saying he had spoken by phone with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili "about Russian moves to undermine Georgian sovereignty."

McCain, an advocate for Georgia democracy for more than a decade, has advocated Georgia's "territorial integrity" since the invasion.

Georgia's internationally recognized borders include the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, now occupied by Russia.

On Sunday, McCain said there are a number of steps the international community can take short of military force to produce "pressures that will change the Russians' behavior."

They include rejecting Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization, canceling Russia-NATO military exercises, and possibly speeding up the admission of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO.

for source - click here

Answering the 3 A.M. call: At 3 A.M. do you know where your President is?

THE HUFFINGTON POST

The Politics of War: Treating Russia Like China, and McCain's Petulance

by James Ruben | August 13, 2008

Over the weekend, Georgia rather than Iraq seemed set to become the dominant foreign policy issue of the 2008 election. The McCain camp sounded as if they were hoping so. On the surface, they had a point. McCain's proposal to eject Russia from the Group of 8 (G-8) looked wild and reckless six months ago. Today, it looks a lot more sensible. But a closer analysis of recent events yields a very different conclusion.

If Russia had continued its military assault all the way to Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, and overthrown the democratically elected government, as many feared a couple of days ago, this crisis would indeed have overshadowed almost everything else on the foreign policy agenda. A great power invading and occupying a neighbor over the objections of the rest of the civilized world would have been both an outrage and a world-historical event.

Instead, despite the protestations of right-wing commentators here at home, this crisis is likely to simmer down and before too long it will be just another item on the international agenda. All of this assumes that the French-led effort to establish a cease-fire holds and diplomacy starts to focus on the location of Russian and Georgian forces and possibly a new peacekeeping force established on the disputed territory of South Ossetia.

But there are still important questions that remain to be debated. Did the Bush administration mislead the Georgian government into thinking support for membership in NATO meant military support in a crisis? What should U.S. policy be toward Russia? And will John McCain be able to score political points out of this tragedy?

Complete answers to these questions may take months. But some conclusions can already be drawn. First and foremost, Georgia has become yet another example of stunning incompetence by the Bush administration. Let's remember it was Chancellor Merkel of Germany who became the power broker when leaders at the NATO summit debated the subject of Georgia this spring. The United States, which has traditionally led NATO on such subjects, failed to push through a so-called Membership Action Plan for Georgia. That failure, as much as anything, gave Moscow a crucial signal that the West could not muster a serious response should it crack down on its troublesome neighbor. And while we don't know exactly what was said by Washington to Georgia's President Saakashvilli, clearly he was not deterred from acting.

Whoever was responsible for the initial provocation, we can also conclude that Russia should pay a heavy price for its actions. The Russian government desperately wants the West to treat it as an important and respected great power. We can and should withhold that treatment. No diplomatic business as usual. And above all, we should reject as not worthy of consideration Russia's proposal last month for a new European security architecture.

In general, treat Russia like China, an important power whose policies and practices merit regular criticism. That doesn't mean cutting off relations. It just means realpolitick. Certainly, there should no more cozy Bush-Putin-soulmate treatment handed out by the next President. Some worry that a tougher policy would jeopardize cooperation from Russia on key issues like Iran's nuclear aspirations. But the truth is Russia is joining the international community in putting sanctions on Iran not as a favor to the United States. It doesn't want to see an Iranian nuclear bomb any more than we do.

As for the politics here at home, McCain may say his policy shows prescience. But what it really shows is petulance. John McCain, despite all his claims of unique experience, is just the wrong man to lead American foreign policy in the twenty-first century. Kicking Russia out of the G-8 a year ago wouldn't have made things better. It would have just caused a bigger split with our European allies. The same goes for his argument that we should have demanded that NATO give greater support for Georgia. We learned in recent weeks that when Europe and America are united, Russian opposition is neutered. On missile defense, NATO has come together and Russia's complaints have quieted. It was the split in NATO over Georgia, a split that a McCain approach would have widened, that gave Russia reason to believe the West would acquiesce in its military aggression.

Which brings us back to the politics of war. In the run-up to the Iraq debacle, John McCain was as outrageous as Donald Rumsfeld in denouncing our European allies for not supporting an early invasion. He has not been a consensus-builder in NATO. He has been a fiery defender of the neo-conservative line.

The next President must be someone who can remain calm in a crisis, not jump to conclusions, and build a consensus with our friends and allies. That is how America's interests will be best defended and promoted in the twenty-first century. McCain's record of discord with our European allies and his shoot from the hip approach on Russia demonstrate that if the phone rings at three a.m. he'll be giving the wrong answers.

James P. Rubin is now an adjunct Professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He was Assistant Secretary of State and Chief Spokesman of the State Department during the Clinton Administration.

for source - click here

Let's get off oil shall we? Little leverage, a 'feckless' President, and Georgia on my Mind

Lonely Night in Georgia: The Bush administration's feckless response to the Russian invasion.

By Fred Kaplan Posted Monday, Aug. 11, 2008, at 5:47 PM ET

Georgian soldiers run from the scene of a destroyed armored vehicle

war stories: Military analysis.

It is impossible to think about the Russian assault on Georgia without feeling like a heartless bastard or a romantic fool. Should we just let Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev roll their tanks into Tbilisi in recognition of Moscow's sphere of influence—and let a fledgling democracy die? Or should we rally sanctions, send arms, and mobilize troops—none of which is likely to have any effect? Is there some third way, involving a level of diplomatic shrewdness that the Bush administration has rarely mustered and, in this case, might not have the legitimacy to pursue?

Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's young, Western-educated president, to apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit by and see another border state (and former province of the Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke an outburst?

It's heartbreaking, but even more infuriating, to read so many Georgians quoted in the New York Times—officials, soldiers, and citizens—wondering when the United States is coming to their rescue. It's infuriating because it's clear that Bush did everything to encourage them to believe that he would. When Bush (properly) pushed for Kosovo's independence from Serbia, Putin warned that he would do the same for pro-Russian secessionists elsewhere, by which he could only have meant Georgia's separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin had taken drastic steps in earlier disputes over those regions—for instance, embargoing all trade with Georgia—with an implicit threat that he could inflict far greater punishment. Yet Bush continued to entice Saakashvili with weapons, training, and talk of entry into NATO. Of course the Georgians believed that if they got into a firefight with Russia, the Americans would bail them out.

Bush pressed the other NATO powers to place Georgia's application for membership on the fast track. The Europeans rejected the idea, understanding the geo-strategic implications of pushing NATO's boundaries right up to Russia's border. If the Europeans had let Bush have his way, we would now be obligated by treaty to send troops in Georgia's defense. That is to say, we would now be in a shooting war with the Russians. Those who might oppose entering such a war would be accused of "weakening our credibility" and "destroying the unity of the Western alliance."

This is where the heartless bastard part of the argument comes in: Is Georgia's continued control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia really worth war with Russia? Is its continued independence from Moscow's domination, if it comes to that, worth our going to war?

At this point, the neocons would enter the debate—in fact some, like Robert Kagan, already have—by invoking the West's appeasement of Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. ("A quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing," is how Neville Chamberlain famously, and catastrophically, brushed away the aggression.)

A few counterquestions for those who rise to compare every nasty leader to Hitler and every act of aggression to the onset of World War III: Do you really believe that Russia's move against Georgia is not an assertion of control over "the near abroad" (as the Russians call their border regions), but rather the first step of a campaign to restore the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe and, from there, bring back the Cold War's Continental standoff? If so—if this really is the start of a new war of civilizations—why aren't you devoting every waking hour to pressing for the revival of military conscription, for a war surtax to triple the military budget, and—here's a twist—for getting out of Iraq in order to send a few divisions right away to fight in the larger battle? If not, what exactly are you proposing?

The same question can be asked of the Bush administration. Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly called Saakashvili on Sunday to assure him that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered." We should all be interested to know what answer he is preparing or whether he was just dangling the Georgians on another few inches of string. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the Security Council, "This is completely unacceptable and crosses a line." Talk like that demands action. What's the plan, and how does he hope to get the Security Council—on which Russia has veto power—to approve it? read more here

Obama Watch: Hawaii - The balancing act of Family and Political Campaigning with Peon Comment

Some politics, then some fun

Obama urges truce in Georgian conflict

STORY SUMMARY »

Sen. Barack Obama condemned yesterday Russia's escalating warfare against Georgia, a former fellow Soviet state.

At the Kailua beachfront home where he was vacationing, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president called on Russia to stop its bombing and withdraw its ground forces.

Obama traveled with his wife, Michelle, to Honolulu to spend more time with his grandmother, watch the film "The Dark Knight" at Ward 16 Theatres and have dinner.

for source - click here

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Peon Opinion

I suspect that some people on the 'Right' are going to slam Barack Obama for being in Hawaii during the current foreign policy crisis with Russia and Georgia. They may even stoop so low on their own ideological spectrum to compare him to their own fearless leader, George W. Bush whose month-long August vacations have garnered considerable criticism from those on the Left, especially the monthly vacation Bush took prior to 9/11.

It has occurred to me that there are a couple of things to keep in mind here. First of all, neither man (Obama or McCain) is the President of the United States yet. Words matter. Obama is a candidate and the balancing act of an American candidate for President in the case of significant world events occurring during the election cycle should always be first and foremost to 'do no harm'. Speak out boldly and forcefully, but we already have a President (however 'lame' and/or 'duckish' he may be on so many fronts).

The other factor to be considered is that this has been the longest election cycle in history. It is not unreasonable to expect that the candidate and his family are entitled to some time together, and no matter what anyone says, Hawaii is part of the Union. Hawaii is not some foreign place. I have family in Hawaii. Many Americans long for the opportunity to just 'visit' Hawaii before their time on this earth ends because it is such a unique and beautiful state in our Union. I wish John McCain would take a vacation, but that it just my opinion.

Nap time.

Peace and Love,

PD

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