"You know giving up the canal itself might be a better deal if we could throw in the state dept." - Ronald Reagan, 1978, speaking of Jimmy Carter's Treaty with Panama giving up U.S. control of the Panama Canal. "Reagan in His Own Hand."
Iran gives the U.S. a Christmas present: Closing the Straits of Hormuz. Perhaps you missed this tidbit of news while the press muses 98% of their time about Newt-Romney.
The Obama Administration and its suicidal Foreign Policy cannot end soon enough. This kind of unanswered insult bodes us ill. We, still the greatest Nation on Earth, are only in this mess because our "heroic leader" is clueless, impotent and afraid to act.
What have we Americans allowed ourselves to become? Only a true Liberal-Progressive would take this constant, physical abuse from a punk, revolutionary, "small nation" like Iran. Every respectable Republican and Conservative I know is ready to open and use a few cans of "American Whup-arse" with respect to Iran!
I recall Candidate Ronald Reagan saying [circa 1978] that, then leader of Panama, Omar Torrijos, was a Tinhorn Dictator. Torrijos used the Panama Canal as a political bargaining chip any time he saw fit. But Carter took Torrijos' slaps to his face and to American Honor and gave Torrijos the Panama Canal. America had built the Canal, Americans bled for the Canal and Americans defended the canal for 75 years. Nevertheless, Reagan was promptly raked over the coals by Carter's Administration, his DoS and all of the Liberal Rags. The hand wringing and labeling of Reagan as a 'gunslinger' was very popular ... remember? Well Reagan was right and the Liberals were wrong; and, Torrijos was eventually followed by the gangster Manuel Noriega in a coup. Noriega was even worse. Bush the Elder finally ended that reign of terror, but amid cries that the Bush CIA was responsible in the first place for the Noriega junta that eliminated Torrijos in the first place. Naturally, ridding the world of both of these jerks was decried by the Liberal-Left at that time and for years afterward. The Liberal-Left has typically been enamored of Communists like Manuel Ortega and Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, and still are to this day
Recall the very same cabal of Liberal cry-babies also claimed that VP-Elect Bush rode an SR-71 to Paris just before Reagan's Inauguration in 1981 to secure the release of the hostages after Reagan was sworn in! Also recall our national humiliation under Carter vis-a-vis. Iran knows the Democrats well. And so to the present situation in Iran. Have we not learned that Iran is only deterred by real threats of force short of their national destruction ... I say short of destruction only because the Terrorists-in-Charge think that total destruction is tolerable if it brings to Iran and the world their "hidden Imam." Well, I think it is time that the US takes care of Iran's little "Silverado" system of Nuclear Sharia terror against Israel, the US, and the World once and for all, with or without our so-called European Allies.
The Iranian Mullahs and that "Iranian Idol" President need to leave the International stage. Think about this: Since [circa] 1975 these unshaven, unkempt, and uncivilized Islamic Radicals and Barbarians have dominated the Middle East and American Foreign Policy decisions.
I would like to think that there was some Grand American Plan underway and that the game is afoot to end the Iranian EMP threat and the Iranian nuclear threat in one fell swoop ... even better would be if we incidentally exposed the [likely] Chinese and Russian complicity and their joint efforts to bring America down.
But this, of course, is a pipe dream. This simply is too much to expect from a President and Secretary of State who have less Foreign Policy savvy about the real world and Realpolitik than my blind, 16 year old Australian Shepherd named Rowdy. At least Rowdy still lives up to his name's reputation the best he is able, being 112 years old.
No. Instead, the Iranians are closing the Hormuz Straits for their war games entitled "Great Prophet 5!" America dismisses the meaning of these exercises at her peril. I think I know what President Reagan would have done. Think about the stakes. Let us hope oil is not at $200 per barrel by Christmas because the typical Obama response would be to halt all domestic drilling.
William R. Mann, is a retired Lt. Colonel, US Army. He is a now a political observer, analyst, activist and writer for Conservative causes. He was educated at West Point [Bachelor of Science, 1971 ]and the Naval Postgraduate School [Masters, National Security Affairs, 1982].
