Monday Open Thread [3.24.14]

Even though right now it is cold and we are expecting some amount of snow tomorrow night, a requiem for the Long Brutal Winter of 2014:

Like I suspected, we are never going to find the plane. The next 25 years or more will be spent on conspiracy theories. In case you missed it, here is the text of the Malaysian Prime Minister’s statement this morning:

The New York Times on how our last three Presidents have dealt with the

“For 15 years, Vladimir V. Putin has confounded American presidents as they tried to figure him out, only to misjudge him time and again. He has defied their assumptions and rebuffed their efforts at friendship. He has argued with them, lectured them, misled them, accused them, kept them waiting, kept them guessing, betrayed them and felt betrayed by them.”

“Each of the three presidents tried in his own way to forge a historic if elusive new relationship with Russia, only to find their efforts torpedoed by the wiry martial arts master and former K.G.B. colonel. They imagined him to be something he was not or assumed they could manage a man who refuses to be managed. They saw him through their own lens, believing he viewed Russia’s interests as they thought he should. And they underestimated his deep sense of grievance.

To be fair, it has really only been two Presidents. Bill Clinton and Putin overlapped for a year, from January 1, 2000 to January 20, 2001, and during that year, Putin was concerned mostly with winning election in his own right. So I am not sure how much time Bill Clinton had to underestimate or misestimate Putin. Regarding the current Ukrainian Crisis, here is what President Obama has done so far in response to Putin’s actions: applied two rounds of economic sanctions and asked Congress to approve $1 billion in loan guarantees for Kiev. But the President has wisely stated we will not be getting involved in a military excursion in the Ukraine. Of course, this has brought criticism from Republicans.

But, Republicans would criticize the President if Obama said the sun rose today in the East. So what would the Republicans do on the Ukraine and against Putin and Russia? Depends on who you ask. The GOP remains composed of three mutually exclusive factions on foreign policy: 1) Neocon War Hawks (think John McCain, Bush, Cheney, Rumseld); 2) Realists (think Brent Sowcroft, Bush the Elder, Dole, Bob Corker); and Libertarians (the Pauls).

The Realists, as evidenced by Senator Bob Corker, top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, mostly agree with the President at this point.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a realist when it comes to foreign policy. Corker had the courage to praise Obama’s economic sanctions as “a step in the right direction,” although he said he thought the president should add tougher measures. “We should send some shock waves through the Russian economy,” he told me.

If the Neocons were in charge right now, World War III would already be over, 6 billion humans would be dead, and the Earth would be uninhabitable for the next 25,000 years.

But what would the Libertarians do? True Libertarians, like Ron Paul, would do nothing. Fake Libertarians, or Libertarians who are also Neocons, like Rand Paul… well, they are a little schizo. Doyle McManus of the LA Times:

[S]en. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) [is] at the top of early polls of potential Republican presidential nominees. Paul has been working hard in recent months to make his positions sound closer to the party’s mainstream, which means criticizing the president and trying to sound hawkish. But as a libertarian, he still wants to wage a minimalist foreign policy. The current situation has left him sounding a bit incoherent.

“If I were president, I wouldn’t let Vladimir Putin get away with it,” Paul announced in a column in Time magazine. What would he do? Among other steps, he’d suspend all U.S. economic aid to Ukraine, because some of the money might end up in Russia. In short, he’d destroy the Ukrainian economy in order to save it.

But the senator didn’t go as far as his far more isolationist libertarian father, who wrote in USA Today that even that much activism in Ukraine would be too much. “Why does the U.S. care which flag will be hoisted on a small piece of land thousands of miles away?” Ron Paul wrote. “So what?”

And that attitude may have the most resonance with the American people. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in early March, before Crimea was annexed, found that most Americans believed the United States should “not get too involved” in the conflict. That included 50% of Republicans, against only 37% who favored taking a firm stance against Russia.

If Rand Paul really really wanted to be President, he could pretty much guarantee his election right now by sticking to a Libertarian foreign policy of non-interference and continue railing against the NSA. If he did that, he would probably defeat Hillary Clinton.

But he has already tarnished his Libertarian credentials in this crisis. Being a true libertarian in the modern GOP takes courage when it comes to foreign policy. The bully Neocons will call you unAmerican, a Hitler lover, and a coward. So it takes real courage to stand up to that. His father had that courage. Rand Paul does not.

Saw this on Facebook and simply “liking” it didn’t seem to be enough.   – Jason330