Instapundit and other con blogs (failed Kos-wannabe Redstate, for instance) have once again posted this video from Sen. Obama where he discusses wanting a review of the military to cut missile systems that don’t work 
or are wasteful, not weaponize space and to stop the production of nuclear missiles. For a few months now they have kept posting it as if its some smoking gun about something. As if in between frames Barack Obama said he’s going to surrender to Al Qaeda or something.
What the video shows you is how far off the rails conservative foreign policy is. The same crowd who doesn’t bat an eye when John Bolton argues in favor of bombing Iran for no other reason than Adhjamenidad’s ugly jackets or cheers when John McCain says the latest crazy thing about going to war with Russia or snubbing the Spaniards (a nation which he relocated to Latin America), pees in their pants at what Sen. Obama is saying.
Does anyone think we need to waste the defense budget on missile systems that don’t work? Or that we need to go to war with Russia? Or that Russian nukes shouldn’t be secured? These are pretty common sense things, and coming off of eight years of Bush swinging wildly and missing the bad guys time and again, I think the American people are ready for a little sanity.
But conservative bloggers think they’ve got something here. A real humdinger that THIS TIME will AWAKEN AMERICA to the THREAT OF BARACK OBAMA. Why? Because they want the guy who doesn’t know the difference between the Sunni and the Shia and frankly doesn’t care that he doesn’t know.
The sad thing is, even if (God-willing) Sen. Obama wins the election, they’re going to get dumber.
Related: Barack Obama Foreign Policy
The best part is that a McCain surrogate has said that Sen. McCain plans to defund the very same programs.
very ironic since mccain spent a lot of his career cutting wasteful military spending. See Robert Scheer’s latest book. He gives McCain lots of credit for killing nonsensical weapons systems. Of course, he probably isn’t for that anymore
They really are this stupid, and their candidate, John McCain, is no scholar on foreign affairs either.
This, after all, is the candidate who referred to the Iraq/Pakistan border, even though the two countries don’t share a border. Who confused Somalia for Sudan when asking, “How can we bring pressure on the government of Somalia?” Who referred to “President Putin of Germany.” Who said that troops in Iraq are “down to pre-surge levels” when there were 20,000 more troops than at the beginning of the surge. Who twice mistook Sunnis for Shiites in Iraq. Who referred several times to Czechoslovakia, a nation that no longer exists since being divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on January 1, 1993.
This is also the candidate who chose a running mate, Sarah Palin, whose chief claim to foreign policy expertise is the fact that Alaska is close to Russia.
But slightly more on point, this is all just politics. The republicans seem to think that there is a sector in this country (and there may well be) that will vote for whomever sounds more hawkish, believing that this sector equates bully behavior with ‘keeping us safe.’
Nevermind that intimate knowledge of a region’s domestic politics is worth a thousand cruise missiles, in terms of what it buys you.
This video’s been around since at least February, and I (as well as a bunch of others) pointed out TEH STUPID of Obama in it back then.
“Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending.”
This depends on what you consider “wasteful” spending. I’d start off with the entire Department of Education. It teaches not a single student, and seems to exist solely to generate paperwork. Here’s a radical thought I had a while ago: abolish the Department of Education. Take half its annual budget and plow it into paying off the national debt. Take the other half and divide it among the several states, evenly, on a per-student basis, to be used however they see fit towards education. Then stand back and watch the educational system actually IMPROVE.
The annual budget for Education is about 70 billion. There’s 35 billion for debt relief, 35 billion for the states. And a bunch of government bureaucrats freed up to do something PRODUCTIVE (probably for the first time in their lives).
“I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space.”
You know how missile defense systems get proven? They get tested. And how do they get tested? You spend money on them, then see how well they work. No spending on uproven things? Congrats, you’ll NEVER get anything new — ever. That’s real genius-level thinking.
And he won’t weaponize space? Great. The Chinese are already shooting down satellites in orbit. Why don’t we just say “you want a monopoly on satellites, China? Sure! And if any of ours get in your way, just feel free to shoot ‘em down.”
“I will institute an independent “Defense Priorities Board” to ensure the quadrennial defense review is not used to justify unnecessary spending.”
In other words, “elect me to make the decisions, and I’ll vote ‘present’ and appoint a bunch of bureaucrats to make decisions for me that I can blame when they recommend unpopular things.”
“Third, I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons.”
And every little girl in America will get a pony, and every little boy will get a Red Ryder BB gun. In other words, nice fantasy, ain’t ever gonna happen. And governing from fantasy is a good way to get people killed.
“To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons, I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material, and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.”
So, as our weapons’ shelf-life expires, they won’t be replaced. And a global ban on fissile material will DESTROY the nuclear power industry (which relies entirely on fission plants).
Damn, hit “submit” too early.
Thanks for reminding us of this video, Oliver. It is SUCH a great reminder of why Obama is not qualified to be president.
J.
Here’s a radical thought I had a while ago: abolish the Department of Education.
If 40 year old idiotic conservative ideas are radical new thoughts…
Like I said, conservatives think there’s something damning in this video when there isn’t. It just shows us how out of step con foreign policy is. It would be one thing if Sen. Obama was spouting naive ideas like Dennis Kucinich’s Dept. Of Peace, but what he’s saying here is mainstream stuff. It’s idealistic pragmatism and it makes cons burn.
JT, most of the money in the Dept. of Ed. budget is “pass through,” meaning that the Department’s chief role is financial distributor. Critical examples: construction grants to schools, special education and AP classes, Pell Grants. I suspect that the U.S. government is no more or less efficient at allocating these funds than states are. Given the nature of the department’s funding priorities, I suspect that a greater share of these funds go to Red states than Blue states, which is part of the great irony of Republican priorities.
JT, you might have a point there about the Dept of Education. However….
If you think there is NO “wasteful spending” in the Pentagon budget, you really have gone off the deep end.
The goal of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the foundation of international efforts to control this problem, is a “world without nuclear weapons.” At least the long-term goal is.
I’m pretty sure that what was meant by a “global ban on fissile material” was “weapons-grade” fissile material. No one is suggesting shutting down the nuclear power industry, despite the efforts of dishonest conservative propaganda to suggest otherwise.
Thank you for thanking Oliver. It reminds us all that you and your ilk will say anything, no matter how dishonest and patently false it may be, to win. Remember how the set-up to the video tells the recipient that in it, “Obama advocates unilateral disarmament.” Then, when you watch it, he says NO SUCH THING!
“This depends on what you consider “wasteful” spending. I’d start off with the entire Department of Education. It teaches not a single student, and seems to exist solely to generate paperwork.”
That’s further evidence of your stupidity.
You don’t know what it does, so you assume it is wasted money.
On the other hand, the missile defense system has been in development for close to 30 years now, and it still can’t hit a missile. It can’t hit a missile that has a tracking beacon on it.
Additionally, creating it creates tensions around the world that leads to more attacks against the United States. But you are far too stupid for subtle arguments like that.
This is why you are a Republican, by the way. You are too dumb to deal with the complexities of the real world, so you rely on leaders who say shit like, “You are either with us, or against us.” Sometimes people can share the same goal, and disagree on the plan to get there.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Gawd Jay Tea, could you be any more divorced from reality (huge shock).
Let’s forget Reagan negotiated missile reductions in the 80’s.
Let’s forget that we let Israel get away with having an illegal nuclear stockpile while threatening Iran for even thinking about it while going about the ENTIRELY LEGAL process of developing nuclear power.
Let’s forget that we consistently allow (even encourage) India to enlarge it’s nuclear stockpile even as Pakistan, our “ally” and nuclear power falls apart and increasingly becomes not only accommodating to al Qaeda and the Taliban, but outright hostile to us.
Just because no anti-ballistic missile system has ever proven effective except under completely artificial (read: rigged) conditions is no reason not to keep funneling billions into it. Oh, and screw international treaties and so what if the whole program has provoked Russia to renew nuclear development. I think we all agree that the Cold War ended too soon.
I could go on about North Korea (we don’t negotiate, they expand their arsenal, test missilis, etc., we do negotiate, they stop), China, the whole tactical nuke “debate”, and more, but let’s skip ahead to the capper, that dissolving the Dept. of Education and putting 35 billion toward the debt will help solve our budget crisis. Right. 10% of the amount that Bernanke wants to lavish on his Wall Street cronies while empowering the Treasury, meaning him, to act without fear of criminal prosecution or oversight is pure genius. Too bad that at that rate, assuming the debt completely stopped growing, we would need only, what, something like 285 years to pay off the whole thing. How about we cut some of that trillion dollar defense budget that doesn’t seem to be getting us anything but misery and destruction?
Really, like we need financial advice from the the blind zealots who back the party that led 90% of America to the brink of financial ruin.
I never said there was no waste in the Defense budget. I just pointed out that what Obama said was about seventeen strains of stupid.
Bill, there’s so much wrong with what you said, I dunno where to begin.
First, as you said, Reagan NEGOTIATED those missile cuts. Obama doesn’t seem overly interested in negotiating, just getting rid of our weapons and hoping others follow our example.
Second, just how is Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal illegal? They’ve never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Third, you might want to look at just who was holding the reins of power when Pakistan and India became full-fledged nuclear powers, and when North Korea did much of its work on its own nuclear program. We’ve seen what Obama-style diplomacy achieves, and I would rather not try it again any time soon.
The rest of your twaddle… well, I don’t quite see what Bernanke has to do with Obama’s naivete on defense matters, but I’m sure it makes sense to someone.
J.
Jay Tea, there’s so much wrong with what you said, I dunno where to begin.
But let’s start with this:
Obama doesn’t seem overly interested in negotiating, just getting rid of our weapons and hoping others follow our example.
Please provide a link to where Obama says he supports unilateral disarmament.
Back when Reagan was proposing the world’s most expensive and unreliable defense for the least likely form of attack, I was saying that if you hid a nuke in a bale of cocaine, Ollie North would have it smuggled to any part of the country you wanted.
Is there anything in the last 24 years that has justified Reagan’s SDI insanity?
Please provide a link to where Obama says he supports unilateral disarmament.
Well Fafaroo. It should be easy enough for you to provide us with some evidence he doesn’t support unilateral disarmament, so let’s see it.
“Well Fafaroo. It should be easy enough for you to provide us with some evidence he doesn’t support unilateral disarmament, so let’s see it.”
That’s quite a logic you’ve got going there. Be a shame if something were to happen to it.
By your reasoning, if you are arrested for murder, the prosecution need not build a case against you to prove your guilt. It should be easy enough for you to provide us with some evidence you aren’t guilty.
So let’s see it.
“Well Fafaroo. It should be easy enough for you to provide us with some evidence he doesn’t support unilateral disarmament, so let’s see it.”
It’s your claim, you provide the fucking evidence.
“Well Fafaroo. It should be easy enough for you to provide us with some evidence he doesn’t support unilateral disarmament, so let’s see it.”
Oh, Jay, you are just too classic. Jay Tea makes a statement that now I have to prove false. This is exactly the kind of thing you rail against all the time as self-appointed guardian of reason and rationality. But like a typical conservative, any attack will do regardless of stated principles.
But just because you asked, here’s a passage from Obama’s website:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/foreignpolicy/#nuclear
Obama clearly states that he will always maintain a strong deterrent as long as other countries have nuclear weapons so clearly he is not in favor of unilateral disarmament on that point. He also states that he will WORK, aka NEGOTIATE, with Russia to reduce nuclear stockpiles so on that score he is not advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Now would like to offer any evidence in support of Jay Tea’s claim are you just here to make an ass of yourself again?
Oh and Jay, I’ll be expecting you to call Jay Tea out for a gross distortion of Obama’s record:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/562/
Just one more for the record:
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/obama_camp_to_mccain_thank_you.php
Jay, please let Jay Tea know how disappointed in him you are.
So, Obama wants to expand the non-proliferation treaty into a global renunciation of nuclear weapons. Is there ANYONE who thinks this has the slightest prayer of succeeding?
We are so past the era of requiring the resources of a superpower to build nuclear weapons. The toughest part — proof of concept — was done over 60 years ago. Plans for atomic/nuclear weapons are readily found for anyone determined to go looking. The only thing that makes it challenging is the materials, and the years of shoddy controls in Russia make that a hell of a lot easier.
Further, Pakistan and North Korea are pretty damned shaky right now.
Nuclear weapons are here, and here to stay. No matter how much you Hope that will Change, it ain’t. Hope is about as much of a defense strategy as it is a birth-control method. The big difference is that in birth control, a failure creates a life; in defense, it ends lives, usually measured in very high digits.
And I’m still wondering just how we can continue to use and develop nuclear power with a ban on fissile material. (He very well may have meant “non-weapons-grade fissile material,” but that’s not what he said (remember, “words matter”) and Iran is busily showing the world how to convert non-weapons-grade material into weapons-grade material.) Or how we can develop new weapons systems if we only spend money on “proven” ones. Or why he needs another bureaucracy to review defense spending, on top of the presidency’s own resources and congressional oversight and all the commissions and whatnot already involved.
Or why we should expect China to stop blowing up things in orbit, when they’ve already shown they don’t give a rat’s ass about what any other nation says about it. The debris from their little tests is endangering a lot of other satellites — at least when we tested our systems and shot down that satellite, we made sure the debris came back to earth and didn’t stay in orbit, adding to the already horrid problem of “space junk.”
J.
As Jay Tea doubles down on the stupid, we wait breathlessly for Jay to bring his mighty judgment down and call him out for blatantly distorting Obama’s stated policy on disarmament.
Ooh, Obama talks about Russia. Good for him.
So he’s progressed from unilateral disarmament to bilateral disarmament. I can see a lot of people who would love to see the US and Russia get rid of their nuclear weapons.
People like those who control nuclear weapons in China, in Pakistan, or those who are seeking them, such as those in North Korea, Iran, etc. etc.
The only thing that might work is multilateral, universal disarmament, and that’s sheerest fantasy.
Much like Obama’s record on most anything — the talk sounds good, the reality turns out to be a vast wasteland of nothing.
J.
“So he’s progressed from unilateral disarmament to bilateral disarmament.”
Jay, you wanna take this one? I think Jay Tea could really use your brand of ethical clarity right about now.
Again Jay Tea shows us how dishonest he and his ilk really are. “So he’s progressed from unilateral disarmament to bilateral disarmament.”
This after he’s been shown that Obama NEVER PROPOSED ANYTHING LIKE unilateral disarmament! Or BI-lateral disarmament either.
And really, he didn’t have to be shown. He knew. He just forgot that, unlike the Neanderthals who visit HIS blog, Oliver’s readers are not fucking retarded.
Should read, “he has been shown, REPEATEDLY…”
Fling.
Whirr.
SPLAT!!
Once again, Jay loses his daily poo-slinging battles against the industrial-strength fan of TRUTH. Will he ever learn?
Cons were giving Bush virtual hand-jobs over the fact that Libya (apparently) gave up its nuke program. So Jay, now I’m all confused by your awesome neo-con logic yet again. Bush has said over and over that Pakistan is a solid ally in the GWOT (LOL!). The DPRK went nuclear under Bush as well, but somehow, like 9/11, that was Clinton’s fault.
Now you’re saying there’s no point in nuclear non-proliferation treaties and diplomacy because they can never work. B…b…but, you forgot Libya!
Your argument is the logical equivalent of Swiss Cheese, as usual.
O-dub is spot on — Obama is proposing sane, optimistic yet realistic actions in our national foreign policy. Pretty mild, logical stuff. And yet you and your wing-nut brethren think you can scream and piss your pants and that somehow makes Obama a fringe leftist.
It doesn’t though. It’s solidly in line with what the American people want in a foreign policy.
(And the fact that he knows where Spain is doesn’t hurt either.)
Oh, Jay, you are just too classic. Jay Tea makes a statement that now I have to prove false. This is exactly the kind of thing you rail against all the time as self-appointed guardian of reason and rationality.
No shit dummy. That’s the reason why I said it. I was pulling a ‘Fafaroo.’
Because you’ve been proven wrong repeatedly in this thread, cursing will surely strengthen your position.
Douchebag.
I didn’t mention Libya because that would have been piling on. Libya gave up its weapons shortly after 9/11, when we demonstrated what we could — and would — do to a country that assed around with WMDs.
Diplomacy, they say, is the art of saying “nice doggie” while reaching for a stick. Qaddafi (or however the hell it’s being spelled this week) knew what may be in the offing for him.
As Von Clausewitz said, “war is diplomacy continued by other means.” It is the presence of those other means that makes true diplomacy — and diplomatic feats like the dismantling of Libya’s nuclear program — possible.
And before anyone says I’m making up the Iraq-Libya causative relationship, Italian prime minister Sylvio Berlusconi is on record as saying he received a personal call from Qaddafi whre Qaddafi acknowledged that the US invasion was the main reason he decided to come clean.
Oh, and Jaim, the “cursing to strengthen your position” is called “pulling a Strowbridge.” Please give credit where it is due.
J.
Wow. You’re not even trying to be consistent now.
Did diplomacy work with Libya? To an extent, yes. And you spent most of this thread arguing that diplomacy is useless and weak.
Shorter Jay: Diplomacy never works, except when it does.
Thank god you live in your mother’s basement and don’t hold a position of any real significance.
“That’s the reason why I said it. I was pulling a ‘Fafaroo.’”
Ah, right. This would be in response to your inability to show a single instance of John McCain declaring his continued support for amnesty during this campaign?
The joke sort of backfired on you didn’t it?
It was easy to come up with a direct quote from Obama refuting Jay Tea’s bullshit assertion. You with McCain on amnesty? Not so much.
So, Jay, we’re still waiting for you to drag Jay Tea over the coals for so willfully distorting Obama’s position. You gonna get around to that sometime soon in order or is it okay when the distortion comes from a fellow conservative?
They’re not the same guy?
“They’re not the same guy?”
They seem to share a brain, so who knows …
Survey sez…Bzzzt.
Clinton got that ball rolling.
While I don’t agree entirely with Clinton’s approach to North Korea, there is absolutely no question that Bush completely f*cked things up and dangerously ratcheted up tensions in the area. It’s horrifying to think that Obama might offer such tragic results as Clinton.
I’m also sure China is simply waiting for the U.S. to dismantle its nukes. It only seems prudent to attack the single largest importer of Chinese goods in the world and initiate a global conflagration. Besides, we’re doing a bang up job of destroying ourselves, just as bin Laden predicted, from the inside out (I personally can’t wait for the long awaited pitch to privatize the government, especially Social Security, by the very people who engineered the stratospheric debts that will destroy the Treasury Bonds the system depends on. Touche, ratf*ckers).
China doesn’t need to attack us militarily. They’d just have to make a few phone calls and ask for their loans back.
I say we only spend money on “proven” Energy sources…
“I say we only spend money on “proven” Energy sources…”
This includes solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, etc.
On the other hand, it has been 25 years and the missile defense system has still not managed a single successful test in a real world situation.
Additionally, it was designed to combat a threat that collapsed in the 1980s.
Furthermore, it is a system that is easy to defeat, even if it worked as advertised.
Finally, building it only serves to provoke attacks.
It has Epic Fail written all over it. No wonder you support it.
It’s solidly in line with what the American people want in a foreign policy.
“I respectfully disagree with the majority of Americans.” John McCain, last night, 60 Minutes.