… thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them, and slay them.” Don Quixote.
When it comes to our national defense, we are apparently helpless without our European allies. We’re counting on them to rush to our assistance if we’re ever attacked. We’ve got 27 such allies in NATO right now, and we can all sleep well knowing that all those Slovakians and Bulgarians and Luxembourgians and Albanians and Estonians are poised to assist us if they are needed. How would we get along without them?
The walking, talking case for term limits — octogenarian crusader John McCain — apparently thinks we’d be more secure if we also could count on the help of the 620,000 Montenegrins. If we come under attack, their help could prove decisive. So he wants them in NATO, and if they are attacked we will be obligated to come to their defense.
Montenegro is bordered by Croatia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania in the Balkans. Bismarck didn’t think the Balkans were worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier. A quarter century before World War One, he said, “If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damn silly thing in the Balkans.” But what did Bismarck know, compared to the master of weltpolitik John McCain?
So when Rand Paul objects to bringing Montenegro into NATO, and obligating us to defend them, he’s labeled the agent of Vladimir Putin, and thus a traitor.
But McCain’s lunacy is not the scary part. What’s frightening is that apparently Rand . Paul was the only Senator who was willing to make this objection, and put an end to McCain’s madness. Where the hell was everybody else? Are they all afraid of being labeled isolationist America Firsters? Pathetic.
The Washington establishment seems so indoctrinated with globalism that they can’t think straight. It’s like they’re on a power trip, and feel free to stick their noses into every nook and cranny of the globe.
McCain’s daddy and grand daddy were Admirals, and he was brought up to fight the Russians. He got to fight their proxies, the North Vietnamese, but he never got to fight actual Russians, and it seems he regrets it. It was a relief, in one sense, when he lost to Obama in 2008. If he’d won, there was a fair chance he would have involved us in a war with the Russians over the Ukraine. He seemed like he was just itching to get it on with the Russkies. At least Obama wasn’t that much of a fool.
I was 16 when I enrolled at Cal in 1962, too young for the NROTC. But they made some sort of temporary exception, and a couple weeks later, on my 17th birthday, I became the only kid from St. Mary’s High to be a midshipman in anyone’s memory. In my junior year I intended to take the Marine option, and graduate into Officer’s Training School of the USMC. I would have been just in time to get my ass shot off in Vietnam. But I dropped out of Cal after one semester, and never did wind up in uniform (busted up an ankle, 4-F).
So even though he’s an old fool, I respect McCain for his honorable service. I didn’t do it. But that has no bearing on American foreign policy, and this guy, and his belligerence, are a menace.
There’s a time and a place for warriors, and, after Washington, Andrew Jackson was the best this country ever had. Watching Trump salute his grave site on his 250th birthday was a pleasure. I’m just not sure Trump really understands the crucial role Jackson played in early American history. No matter. He went.
God bless Andrew Jackson and God bless the United States.
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