Ex-Pentagon officials have called for the US to pull its nuclear weapons from Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base as tensions linger between Washington and Ankara.
Joseph Cirincione, president of the nonproliferation and anti-war Ploughshares Fund nonprofit, told Stars and Stripes that the Turkish base was the "worst place possible to be keeping"roughly 50 of Washington’s nukes.
Cirincione said there are B61 gravity bombs stored at Incirlik, the maximum yield of which has 10 times the power of the bomb Washington dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Officials have also suggested relocating the 2,500 US troops currently housed at the base.
Relations between Turkey and the US have been on the decline since the failed coup in Ankara in July 2016. President Recep Erdogan has been cracking down on the government’s opposition since last summer, leading NATO and other observers to worry the country is taking a turn towards authoritarianism.
There is also suspicion in Washington that Turkey may have leaked the locations of sensitive US bases in Syria to a state-run news agency.
Former deputy commander of US European Command Charles Wald told Stars and Stripes that Washington is looking "rather weak… uncoordinated and not very strategic" in front of an ally that is behaving lately like more of an adversary.
One former senior NATO official said that regional issues make Incirlik an unsafe place for US weapons, telling Stars and Stripes, "If there are nuclear weapons stored in Turkey, they should be removed given the instability, both in the country and across the border in Syria and Iraq."
Deep in the Colorado mountains each year is the Aspen Security Forum, a Washington, D.C. establishment gab-fest for discussing "critical issues" of national security and intelligence. Trump Russian collusion and Russian hacking of the election are likely to be hot topics of discussion, either formally or over delicious lunches of Colorado lamb or fresh Rocky Mountain trout.
Who is doing the discussing and moderating at this "nonpartisan venue"? Such paragons of "nonpartisan" dialogue as Representative Adam Schiff, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, CNN's Wolf Blitzer, and plenty of others, all of whom would feel quite at home at a Washington, D.C. dinner party.
Admittance is allowed only with a membership card from "The Establishment Club," also known as the "He-Man Trump-Hater Club," initially started by the Little Rascals but now morphed into an adult club.
One of the panel discussions, moderated by nonpartisan Wolf Blitzer, featured two nonpartisan Obama administration Deep Staters, John Brennan and James Clapper. Discussing one of the Trump stories of the day, that Trump may fire special counsel Robert Mueller, Brennan bromanced Mueller by saying, "It was an inspired choice – they don't come any better." Of course it was a great choice. They are on the same team – the "destroy Trump at any cost team." This is preaching to a bunch of like-minded NeverTrumps in Aspen.
Clapper then handed the ball back to teammate Brennan, who confirmed the worldview of most of the Aspen establishment weekend warriors. Clapper toldWolf, "Republicans, Democrats are going to see that the future of this government is at stake, and something needs to be done for the good of the future." In other words, we the government.
This was a mention not of the "future of America" or "future of the people," but "future of this government." No big deal – just a minor edit of the first three words of the U.S. Constitution: "We the people." How telling.
If Obama's "fundamental transformation" gang had their way, they would have rewritten the Constitution entirely, starting with the first three words. There would have been robust debate on the wording, however. Should it be "We the entitled" or "We the anointed"? "We the ones we've been waiting for" or "We the government"?
It's interesting that the word "government" does not appear in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. It appears only five times in the entire document, two of those times in context of "Seat of the government." Clearly, the founders weren't all government, all the time, as are current D.C. bureaucrats and officials.
Yet to John Brennan, former Obama administration CIA director, who once proudly voted for a Communist, the overriding concern over Trump and the Russians is the "future of the government."
This is preservation of the elite, the ruling class, and heck with the country or the people. Maybe, in Brennan's worldview, the government is the country, the people relevant only to bankroll the government and show up to vote every four years.
Charlie Gard's parents, stonewalled by their government and the Euro-socialist high command for five months, their child effectively kidnapped by the State, have finally been forced to accept that it is now too late to hope that their baby might be saved. They have therefore withdrawn their application to take him to an American hospital for experimental treatment. He will soon die.
There are numerous important lessons to take from this case and never forget:
(1) Socialized health care means state ownership of the individual, pure and simple.
(2) Progressive paternalism is opposed on principle to parental authority – i.e., to private families as the indispensable building blocks of civil society.
(3) Under socialism, even medicine – the ancient vocation dedicated to preserving and enhancing life at all cost – becomes enmeshed in the progressive death cult, according to which individual lives are mere variables in an abstract calculus based on social utility and budgetary value. (Of course, the socialists always find pretty euphemisms to mask their hateful coldness – e.g., "death with dignity" and "quality of life.")
The final act of this tragedy – Charlie's parents giving up their fight at last – holds one more important reminder for us, one that transcends the particularities of this sad case and takes us to the very motor of the progressive machine: all that progressives need to achieve their aims is to stand firm against the cry of liberty long enough that finally, inevitably, the cry weakens, its force abates, and society gives up and accepts the next diminution of its freedom as an inescapable reality.
Charlie Gard's passive-aggressive killing at the hands of State "doctors" is a perfect allegory for progressivism's "long march through the institutions."
Insisting that they are looking out for a child's best interests, the State decides that dying is in his best interest.
When his parents assert their authority to take all possible steps to save their child's life (at their own expense, as freedom requires), the State uses this language of "the child's interests" to deny the parents their authority, thereby making a blunt stand against the family as such, in effect creating a conflict of interest between the parents and Charlie, and upholding itself (the State) as Charlie's defender against these irrational parents.
Now the hospital and the British Parliament will make suitably grave remarks about how tragic it is to lose "this beautiful baby" (whom they killed), and how much their hearts go out to "his loving parents" (whom they stripped of their rights, their dignity, and their baby).
But the public outcry will die down; Charlie's death will, given the time-distorting elasticity of memory, begin to look like a vindication (rather than condemnation) of the government's decision; and the real issues at the heart of this case – progressivism's crushing of the private family and socialized medicine's absolute rejection of the natural rights to self-ownership and self-preservation – will be lost in the fog.
The fog. We use that expression a lot in this era. The fog of misinformation. The fog of mixed motives. The fog of conflicting interpretations.
The fog is progressively swallowing all of us, throughout the world, and individual liberty is fading into the mist, step by step. This is how socialism wins.
In a stunning display of how the United Kingdom health care system has taken over decisions that normally would be made by families, a judge has ordered that 11-month-old Charlie Gard, who has been battling a terminal condition, be moved from a hospital to a hospice for his last few days.
Not his parents’ home, as they had wanted.
The case has been replete with government decisions that overruled the parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, from months ago when they were stopped from pursuing experimental treatment for little Charlie, to this week, when they were forced to admit the time during which treatment would have been effective for their son now is gone.
The Telegraph said the parents wanted Charlie moved to their flat in Bedfont, west London, but a judge refused.
Lawyers for Great Ormond Street Hospital, where doctors earlier convinced the judge that it was better to let Charlie die than to allow his parents to seek treatment, objected to what the parents wanted.
“The parents wish for a few days of tranquility outside of a hospital setting,” he said. “The parents had hoped that Great Ormond Street would work with them.”
He said the couple felt there was a “brutality” in taking Charlie to a hospice.
The couple had fought all the way to the European Court of Human Rights for permission to have their son treated, but were refused by judges at each step.
Lifenews reported Yates was crying during the hearing, and at one point shouted, “What if it was your child?”
No comments:
Post a Comment