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Posts Tagged ‘terrorism’

Defense and Foreign Affairs: Unlikely Allies Project

Posted in politics, tagged , , , , on May 2, 2011| 2 Comments »

As a superpower, what is America’s role in the complicated world?

Ted Sadler: President Obama announced his Bin Laden news during the Celebrity Apprentice Sunday night to get back at Donald Trump and because he didn’t want the nation seeing NeNe Leakes and Star Jones having a Black women catfight; Obama must be cheering “Hope” Dworaczyk because he is all about hope and her kid with basketball player Jason Kidd is like baby Obama.  There are those who would believe that nonsense but U.S. Defense actions and Foreign Affairs are serious business.  In another joking moment, Seth Myers said in front of the president at the Correspondents’ Dinner that he knew who could beat Obama in 2012…the answer was 2008 Obama. 

2008 Obama was no joke and he promise foreign policy based on respect for others around the world and soft power (when bread and butter win goodwill rather than bullets.)  In South Georgia, we make peanut butter and I can smell the roasters 24 hours a day.  The cost of one missile could buy a lot of peanut butter and goodwill between the developing world and U.S. rural ag community.  

Why does our military sometimes seem like nation builders rather than warriors?  We must allow warriors to be warriors and leave nation building to H.U.D. or U.S.D.A’s Rural Development.  From Vietnam, we learned that the Pentagon should have freedom to kick –ss and take names.  But, Republican President Eisenhower warned about the growth of the Defense Industrial Complex, those who want to make war to make money.   Our troops should have the best equipment and the mission to handle their business and get home ASAP.

Thanks to President Obama for using the CIA or a real version of “The Unit” to do what needed to be done.  Come on now…let’s be honest…we know that Black Ops can handle some business that the politically liberal think is wrong and unfair.  We don’t need to talk about unfair.  Unfair is spending billions to build communities around the world while America’s infrastructure crumbles.  Unfair is having thousands of troops in harm’s way for extended tours when a Seal Team could have….you know. 

President George H.W. Bush told the truth about the first Gulf War: we were there because limiting our access to that region’s oil would cripple America.  The average American does care about those people in the sand but they love cheaper fuel.  I am about to contradict myself: as the only superpower we must be involved in everyone’s business or they will form alliances that we can’t control and it could be checkmate for us.  The plantation nor the cowboy mentality works when part of the world has the oil and part holds our debt. They have the drop on us and they insist on being treated like adults rather than kids.  Funny, that’s similar to our founding fathers’ attitude about the British crown. 

While I appreciate my fiscally conservative friends concerned with the mounting debt of their unborn grandchildren’s financial burden, I know that a more pressing concern was Bin Laden and his ilk’s effort to acquire on the Black market a weapon that would erase an American city off the map.  Our foreign policy needs military might, respectable right and broad sight because I am weary of our involvement and assistance to people who dislike us.

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Obama at West Point: Afghanistan and Agriculture

Posted in politics, tagged , , , , on December 2, 2009| Leave a Comment »

When President Obama was selecting his cabinet, Georgia had a golden opportunity to have my southwest Georgia congressman as Secretary Agriculture. We are talking ag, the most important industry in our state, and everyone slept on the chance. Everyone except me because I was jumping up and down with my fingers crossed. Oh, I forgot. I have no juice and no one listens to me (juice, an important southern ag product.)

Last night, the leader of the free world gave his blueprint for our efforts in Afghanistan and our attempts to stabilizing that dangerous region and he mentioned agriculture.  I told you so; I told you so.  Ag is vital to our new soft power approach around the world—we still can blow some things up with fire power from the peach state.  We are talking giving a man a fish and teaching him to fish, or better, giving him a seed and bring his family into the legal farming global economy.  Poppy, heroin and cocaine are cash crops in that region and the money funds terrorist operations.  So the U.S. Agriculture Secretary helps sow the seeds of love, beat swords into plows or whatever.  Ag research universities in Athens, Fort Valley, Tuskegee, Tifton and Greensboro could design crop varieties and farm equipment that could indirectly help bring our troops home and create new markets for our agri-business interests.

My father left the farm in Gordon, Georgia, to study ag in Greensboro at North Carolina A&T.  His beloved A&T was the school where 911 terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed studied mechanical engineering.  KSM is the same age as Sarah Palin and me so if I went to my father’s alma mater we would have been in the class of 1986 together.  I could have vibed that something was up with dude and we could have avoided the trouble he later masterminded with one good behind-kicking behind the dorm.  Before people trip on A&T because KSM went there, they should know that Jesse Jackson, Sr. and Jesse Jackson, Jr. are graduates as well as Astronaut Ronald McNair, who died the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.

Before you trip on who went to college where, you should watch the movie Santa Fe Trail.  The film reminds us that Robert E. Lee commanded the troops who captured John Brown and that Lee was superintendent at West Point when cadets included JEB Stuart, George Pickett, James Longstreet, Philip Sheridan and George Armstrong Custer.  So, Ronald Reagan played Custer in the movie and I don’t think any of the West Point men portrayed in the film could have imagined a Black Commander in Chief speaking at the Point.

How many member of Obama’s cabinet were governors?  Being governor is bigger than being a U.S. House member if you are not in leadership or a committee chair.  If our state has the opportunity to have a Georgian as ag secretary in the future, Democrats and Republicans must jump quickly.  I should also mention the renewable energy provisions and initiatives in the Farm Bill; efforts that reduce our involvement in the Middle East by developing fuel and power in America.  Ag Sec is one important job because the way to global peace might start with a piece of bread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WNrvCKQVW0

Santa Fe Trail

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