The Victorious Opposition

Interesting study from RAND about what the future of NATO should be.  RAND suggests five basic alternatives:

1. Refocus on Europe
2. New focus on the greater Middle East
3. A focus on fragile states
4. A focus on nonstate threats
5. A global alliance of liberal democracies

They ruled out my favorite alternative: “Fuck Europe and Leave” but that’s to be expected.  RAND did a great job of examining the strengths and weaknesses of each alternative.  So good at identifying the weaknesses, in fact, that I’m more convinced than ever that NATO is no longer relevant.  Consider each one.

Refocusing on Europe makes sense as the whole point of NATO was to protect Western Europe from the Soviets.  Unfortunately, we’ve gone nuts and started pushing NATO further and further East so that we’re now threatening the Russians more than we’re protecting Europe, in my opinion.  RAND noted that the big weakness of this “pro-Europe” direction is that there’s not much in it for the US.  I couldn’t agree more.

Focusing on the Middle East sounds good in principle, given all the “common interests” there.  However, who do we let in?  Will any Arab nation join if Israel is allowed to?  Does anybody seriously think that any Western European nation wants to give Israel an absolute guarantee of security?  And isn’t it bad enough that we already have Turkey and Greece in there, who hate each other?  Do we really need Turkey and Israel being NATO partners in light of recent events.  At any rate, I can’t see how we don’t let democratic Israel join while bringing in dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.  There’s simply no way this Mideast direction works for NATO.

Forget the “Fragile States” direction.  The shit just isn’t working in Afghanistan and our NATO allies are busy trying to figure out how to get away from there as fast as they can.

Allying against “Nonstate Threats” is probably my second favorite (after the unlisted “Fuck Europe” option).  It covers cyberwar, al Qaeda, and other types of crime.  The real problem with it is that NATO is a military alliance and there are other treaties and organizations that can deal with these more law enforcement-specific threats.

Finally, the “Global Alliance of Liberal Democracies” direction.  This may be the worst of the five, given that it forces us to to commit to total war on behalf of any country that joins regardless of whatever one of its neighbors might choose to attack it for.  Hands up everyone who would like to help defend India from Pakistan (using weapons we provided them) over Kashmir.  I can’t think of a worse system of alliances than one that obligates its members to commit to war when they can identify no particular, common threat.

If you don’t want to read the report, you should at least take a look at the table on page 29 that shows how much weight the US, UK, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe place on different strategic concerns.  It’s noteworthy that Eastern Europe really doesn’t care about Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the Middle East given their proximity to Russia (which was what originally justified NATO in the first place).  The US is obsessed with those plus deterring China, which the rest of NATO couldn’t really care less about.

The takeaway from this that I have is that NATO is completely meaningless and has been since 1992.  It’s greatest threat is its own inability to define its purpose.

We love the Brits, mostly for giving us something to laugh about.  And in that vein, more British liberties are being eroded as we speak:

They were told to wear underwear of an “appropriate colour” on duty which was “inconspicuous” under uniforms.

Some staff have described the advice, which appeared on the police “message of the day” section on the force intranet, as “nannying”.

The force said there was no new policy on underwear but officers had to take a “commonsense approach”.

Interestingly, going “commando” is not discouraged.

I’m trying to think of a scenario where an officer’s under garments would ever be “conspicuous”, and I’m coming up blank, so I’m wondering what kind of uniforms those West Midland cops are sporting, and what kind of cops they are hiring. This falls into that “Not well thought out and wish we could take it back” category, but it provides a perfect seqway to share one of my all time favorite youtube video’s:

Hey lady, your steering wheel is on the wrong side. You notice those sissy cops don’t stop anyone like Mickey or Gorgeous George?

Pretty ugly, if true:

The victims are scarcely even recognizable as human beings. Turkish-Kurdish human rights activists believe the people in the photos are eight members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) underground movement, who are thought to have been killed in September 2009.

In March, the activists gave the photos to a German human rights delegation comprised of Turkey experts, journalists and politicians from the far-left Left Party, as SPIEGEL reported at the end of July. Now Hans Baumann, a German expert on photo forgeries has confirmed the authenticity of the photos, and a forensics report released by the Hamburg University Hospital has backed the initial suspicion, saying that it is highly probable that the eight Kurds died “due to the use of chemical substances.”

Did the Turkish army in fact use chemical weapons and, by doing so, violate the Chemical Weapons Convention it had ratified?

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The Turkish Foreign Ministry has rejected the accusations, according to the Berlin daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung, which reported on the case Thursday. Turkey is a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and its armed forces do not possess any biological or chemical weapons, the ministry reportedly said.

This is being pushed by a lot of left-wing activists and Kurdish sympathizers, so you can take it as you will.  The international media can certainly be fooled by the claims of militant groups and have been plenty of times before.  Hell, the US Military is routinely hit with false accusations.  So did the Turks use chemical weapons against the Kurds a la Saddam Hussein?

Hard to say.  It’s true that the Turks have made border incursions into Iraq to get at the PKK in the past few years and will probably do so even more after we have left that country.  Clearly, they’re not shy about little niceties such as international borders when it comes to fighting their own terrorist problem.  There were also accusations back in 1988 that they used chemical weapons on the Kurds. 

On the other hand, there’s zero evidence that Turkey currently stores any chemical weapons at all.  Who to believe?  If a NATO ally actually did use chemical weapons against the Kurds, I’d say it’s high time we reconsidered that relationship.  The Turkish stunt with the “peace flotilla” was quite bad enough.  It may be getting to the point that the US and Turkey no longer have enough common interests to justify staying friends.

All that said, I don’t think that the Turks did use chemical weapons against the Kurds this time, based on the lack of proof that they had any gas to use.  Still, the Turkey vs PKK issue is not going to go away and not going to get any nicer.  It bears watching.

The attempted breaking of the blockade by the Gaza convey and the Israeli response has gotten much hay in the press. So far we have scene only sporadic video, which, in my mind, left more questions than answers. But I found this over at lucianne.

That filled in a few holes. I did not know the extent at which the Israeli government was supplying Gaza with aid or the clear path afforded to all relief organizations by way of the port of Ashdod to delivering legitimate humanitarian aid.

But clearly, the main reason this incident got any coverage at all was the fact that 9 terrorists aid deliverers were killed, so this is what I wish to talk about for a bit. First, a disclaimer, it is common knowledge (which I also subscribe to) that the Israeli military is more than competent, they know how to kick ass and take hyphenated names. OK, that is out of the way, but what bothers me a bit (just a bit, these 9 no doubt had it coming and I lose no sleep over their demise) is the manner in which this ship was boarded.

Two helicopters full of armed men repelled down onto a ship full of unknown hostiles with unknown weapons. The simple fact that the choppers did not receive ensuing gunfire prior to the repelling would indicate that none of the guys on deck were armed (totally discounting the fact that nobody knew who was below deck and how they were armed). The video discusses the fact that the repellers were armed with rubber bullets and paint guns (along with live ammo, of course) consistent with gear used for standard crowd control, but once the hostile and violent intent of the guys on deck was revealed, like two seconds after the Israeli soldiers started their descent, plan B should of been put into action immediately. Did they have a plan B? I’m sure they did, these guys are some of the best trained in the world. But why did they continue dropping soldiers into a metal pipe swinging mob? Why did they not disperse the crowd with some tear gas first? Why not start shooting all those pipe swingers with rubber bullets before the soldiers were put in harms way? Why not give them a few rounds of warning live fire?This might of dispersed the crowd. Why not just hold your position and radio in for more choppers, more personnel that could adequately deal with this size of a hostile mob?

The fatalities were a result of the few inadequate amount of soldiers being dropped into the middle of the mob, the mob over powering them, arresting their small arms fire away from them, and turning that fire back onto the soldiers. At this point the Israeli military had no choice but to open fire, and 9 deaths ensued. I guess my question is, could they have been prevented? Without the soldiers dropping in and them getting their guns taken from them, the bad guys had no firearms (that we know) so in essence they introduced the means by which the deaths occurred.

Without these deaths, this would of been a standard maritime interdiction, something that happens on a regular basis, but with it, we have yet on one more international incident where Israel is left on the outside looking in.

So what do you guys think? Was this handled properly or could it of been handled better?

I’ve made it pretty clear from my comments in a couple of the most recent threads that I’m opposed to the Afghanistan War.

Now, I haven’t bought into any Michael Moore-style arguments about it being a war for corporate interests nor am I weeping for the Afghan children.  I’ll leave all that to the stinking hippies.  It doesn’t have anything to do with the current occupant of the White House either.  I haven’t considered Afghanistan to be the important theatre since we invaded Iraq so I wasn’t too concerned about what we were doing there.  In 2008, while Bush was still president, I started to have doubts about the Afghan mission as it became clear that we finally won in Iraq.

I’m also not being so stupid as to claim that the enemy can beat us militarily; not like how people in 2006 gravely announced the US Military absolutely could not overcome that insidious superweapon: the roadside bomb.

No, the problem is that we accomplished everything we set out to do in Afghanistan once every living, active member of al-Qaeda’s leadership headed for Pakistan in 2002 and pretty much stayed there while the Taliban ran for the hills.  We pulled it off with massive airpower and a few thousand ground troops.  Fast forward to today and look at some of the political objectives we have, according to the State Department:

Reconstruction and Development

Improving Governance

Rule of Law

Advancing the Rights of Afghan Women

These are not strategic reasons to commit any nation to war.  Especially ours. What does any of that shit really have to do with why we’re in Afghanistan?  Does anyone really believe that we can improve governance and establish the rule of law in a country that applies the death penalty for converting from Islam to another religion?  And then there’s the bullshit about the rights of women.  Do we need to also start invading and occupying other countries if they don’t have domestic violence laws as strong as ours?  Is this a war on terror or a war on misogyny?  Are we going to drop a bunker buster on some Third World shithole just because the head of the secret police forgot to put the toilet seat down?

Turning Afghanistan into whatever-the-hell we’re trying to turn it into isn’t our business.  The only reason we should be there is to kill terrorists.  That’s what we’re doing in Pakistan and last time I checked, we’re using a few CIA Predator drones to handle it.  We don’t need 80,000 troops for that and such a large number of troops is counterproductive anyway. 

In most conservative circles, being anti-war on Afghanistan is heretical.  I don’t mind catching hell for it since it’s generally considered to be the War That Pretty Much Everybody Agrees On (Out Of Habit).  It’s not that I’m being defeatist—I’m not that.  It’s that our political objectives are fucking ridiculous at this point and any gains we make are going to be temporary since Obama already put an expiration date on this surge before it began.  If we reorient our strategy to focus more on the killing of the jihadis and less on the improvement of the rights of the ladies and the plowing of the opium, I’ll come back on board.

This is hard for the Democrats in charge right now.  I think they would really like to break free of this war but don’t feel like they can handle the political fallout from the Republicans.  That’s too bad.  They’re letting themselves get pushed into disaster by investing more money, men, and effort into a struggle without realistic objectives or even worthwhile goals.  The courageous thing to do would be to reduce our troops to the minimum we need to control some bases for executing rapid attacks wherever we find al-Qaeda and its affiliates.  Instead, Obama talks tough and sends more troops in for a cause he clearly doesn’t believe in.

Every time a serviceman dies for the sake of propping up a corrupt ingrate like Karzai and trying to turn that medieval backwards hellhole into a virtual Switzerland, it further affirms my conviction that we’ve turned the right war—a just war of necessity—into the wrong one.  A wasteful joke.

I don’t know about you, but I find this pretty astonishing:

Troops from the United States, Britain and France marched in the annual Victory Day parade through Red Square for the first time Sunday, a step Russia’s president called a nod toward their “common victory” in World War II.

The annual parade celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany by the former Soviet Union and its Western allies and serves as a demonstration of Russian military might. More than 120 aircraft flew overhead and more than 10,500 troops paraded through the capital this year.

“The victory won in 1945 was our common victory, a victory of good over evil, of justice over lawlessness,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said at a reception honoring veterans after the parade.

Including military representatives from other countries in Sunday’s parade, Medvedev said, “is indicative of our solidarity, and of the understanding that universal humanistic values are becoming increasingly important for the development of the modern world.”

Certainly we shouldn’t make too much of this. Still, given that this annual parade has historically been a sabre-rattling event, I think this is a non-trivial statement about modern world dynamics.

UFC meets Congress, what’s not to like?

Sometimes I wish our law makers would mix it up a bit, like Barney Frank swinging his purse at an opponent, or Chris Dodd head butting someone with that gigantic melon of his. I guarantee you they would all feel better afterwords.

But back to the Collision At The Caucuses, The Black Sea Beat Down, the Kan of Whoop Ass in Kiev (that’s all I got) fortunately there were no Ivan Drago’s present, just a bunch of bantam weights debating whether to allow Russia berthing rights in Sevastopol.

In a raucous session marked by fist fights, smoke bombs and a volley of thrown eggs, Ukraine’s parliament Tuesday ratified an agreement to extend the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s lease in a Ukrainian port until 2042.

I don’t really blame the Ukrainians for going this route. Russia is still the big dog on the block and with cheap oil flowing for years to come, it’s a good deal for them.

Lawmakers covered their faces with handkerchiefs as they voted.

That’s interesting, here Congress just holds it’s nose when they vote.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been reading up on the legal issues surrounding “targeted killing”, primarily by use of Predator drones. Today my brother forwarded me this NYTimes Op-Ed on the subject, perhaps under the impression that I’d be as outraged over this as I have been over the Bush administration’s torture policies:

I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me 20 years ago that America would someday be routinely firing missiles into countries it’s not at war with. For that matter, I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me a few months ago that America would soon be plotting the assassination of an American citizen who lives abroad.

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Students of the law might raise a couple of questions: 1) Doesn’t it violate international law to fire missiles into Pakistan (especially on a roughly weekly basis) when the Pakistani government has given no formal authorization? 2) Wouldn’t firing a missile at al-Awlaki in Yemen compound the international-law question with a constitutional question — namely whether giving the death penalty to an American without judicially establishing his guilt deprives him of due process?

Speaking of “students of the law”, one of the authors at The Volokh Conspiracy, Prof. Kenneth Anderson, has been writing about this subject for a while. I started reading with an op-ed he wrote, intriguingly titled Predators over Pakistan, which discusses the international law issues surrounding the targeted killing issue in more-or-less layman’s terms. There is a plethora of articles at The Volokh Conspiracy in their Targeted Killing topic archive, including pointers to more legalese papers by Prof. Anderson and discussions of current events.

My brother wasn’t familiar with Harold Koh, who’s mentioned in the NYTimes op-ed as “the state department lawyer assigned the job of justifying Obama’s strategy”, which isn’t strictly wrong. However, the issues around Harold Koh run much deeper. You only need to look back a year to Harold Koh’s confirmation process for that position at the State Department to see the right wing decrying him as a horrible candidate. Harold Koh is well known for, shall we say, “pushing the envelope” on the topic of International Law and its application in US jurisprudence. I doubt highly that either side expected the position Harold Koh took in a speech at the end of March, defending the use of targeted killing:

Good thing that pillow case has a picture of a woman on it, that would really be weird.  And I wish this video had English subtitles, although the reactions he got at that theme park were pretty obvious.

Being a good old fashioned boy, he wanted to make it legal (just out of camera range, the mattress was holding the shotgun)

Not only has this particularly dedicated fan married his favorite pillowcase, he also takes her out on dates to restaurants and to amusement parts, as chronicled on media sites.

So who is this girl and why is he so infatuated:

OK, this guy has issues.

But maybe he is on to something. First of all, talk about low maintenance, she will never sleep with his best friend, no dealing with those PMS screeds, no pressure to make small talk after sex, and she will always sleep on the wet spot. When going out to dinner, she won’t order the most expensive item on the menu, some styro peanuts or a bag of sawdust will suffice, and no taking away her credit cards.

This reminds me of this dopey movie, about this loser that goes out with a blow up sex doll and passes her off as real to all his friends. Coming up with something nonsensical always gives the avant garde crowd a woody so they get all wobbly in the knees over crap like this.

Some aspects of this was not well thought out. Why not a smaller pillow, one that you don’t have to buy a separate seat for like on an airplane, or on one of those theme park rides, something he could put on his lap…........ (oh quit it, they are married after all).

Thousands of protesters formed a human chain in Dresden on Saturday, determined to stop neo-Nazis from exploiting the German city’s painful history on the 65th anniversary of its deadly Allied bombing in World War II.

I say “ironically” because the anti-Nazi protestors don’t seem to be strangers to Brownshirt tactics themselves:

There were some minor skirmishes, with some barricades set ablaze but quickly extinguished, and a car flipped over. A busload of far-right supporters was turned back after its headlights and windows were smashed.

Police reported some minor injuries, including people hit by rocks, but said the opposing sides were largely kept separated.

Several uniformed Nazi Party members were forced to jump off a bridge and into a river after two Caucasian men dressed like “Hasidic diamond merchants” driving in a 1974 Dodge Monaco plowed their vehicle toward them.

I probably added that last sentence.

Another ironic aspect of this is that the Nazis were the ones responsible for Dresden being destroyed in the first place thanks to their hero’s reckless aggression.  Not being content with having started the war and waged terror bombing of London with relish, they now want to wear the victim mantle?  Fuck ‘em. 

OK, the images were not of Naomi Watts ( that’s the only Aussie babe I could think of), more like Asian porn? I can’t tell.

But this is just too good for words and it begs the question ,“What was this guy thinking?”. There is clearly at least two women working on the floor in close proximity (that I counted) which would be fast tracking their butts right to H.R. if they saw any of this. Aside from goofing off at work, fostering a hostile work environment ( I believe that is the correct parlance ) is something management every where goes ballistic over.

And how about that ,“Oh, shit” look we get at the end?

I see ‘roo poaching in this guy’s future.

I can understand if he was ogling naked pics of Chris Bath…...............crikey!!!!!

If this is the rule and not the exception, we got big problems. You would think that with our far superior training and a nationalistic bent to fight for the betterment of their country, that the Afghan Army should be putting the fear of Allah into A.Q., and not the other way around.

But today, they are far from ready. Even the best Afghan units lack training, discipline and adequate reinforcements. In one new unit in Baghlan Province, soldiers have been found cowering ditches rather than fight. Others routinely steal U.S.-supplied fuel, equipment and weapons. And a few are suspected of collaborating with the Taliban against the Americans.

“I do not feel I am a mentor here,” said Capt. Jason Douthwaite, a logistics officer with the 73rd Troop Command of the Ohio National Guard who has tried to stop rampant pilfering by the Afghan soldiers his unit is training. “I feel like I am an investigating officer. It’s not, ‘Let me teach you your job.’ It’s more like, ‘How much did you steal from the American government today?’ ”

If any of this is even remotely accurate, than a preconditioned time line for withdrawal of troops is the least of our problems.

Afghanistan has proven to be rotten from the head, all the way done. Sometimes I think organizing a viable and effective government in Somalia would be easier.

Rondeaux predicted that properly training and equipping an Afghan security force of 400,000 will take at least another five years.

Well that just ain’t going to happen. Given the eight years that America has spent trying to get the Afghan Army up to speed, not only in continuing to smack the Taliban around, but in providing a combat ready security force for it’s own people, a 5 year target down the road seems inconceivable, not only to the president but to the American people.

McCrystal has got to know what caliber of soldiers he has to work with. It’s great that roads are being built, and women now have the right to vote and attend university, but even the South Vietnamese showed some nationalistic fervor in fighting for their own country.

Our trainers find themselves in a situation worse than teaching summer school. With loyalties all over the map, giving some of these guys live ammo, even behind friendly lines, is certainly worthy of combat pay.

As surges go, this one really is pretty much the last hoorah.

Last spring we discussed the case of Geert Wilders, the Dutch Member of Parliament who was invited to give a speech at the UK House of Lords by a UK MP and was denied entrance by the UK Home Office. He appealed that decision, and earlier this week that order was overturned:

Far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders has won an appeal against a Home Office decision barring his entry to the UK.

The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal ruling overturns a government decision that led to Mr Wilders being turned back at Heathrow in February.

The Freedom Party leader, who has been accused of Islamophobia, planned a UK visit next week, his solicitor said.

The Home Office said it was disappointed, and would decide in “due course” whether to fight the ruling.

A spokesman said: “We are disappointed by the court’s decision. The government opposes extremism in all its forms.”

“The decision to refuse Wilders admission was taken on the basis that his presence could have inflamed tensions between our communities and have led to inter-faith violence. We still maintain this view.”

I continue to be baffled by the concept that “freedom of speech” is interpreted as “freedom from being offended” in so many parts of the world. Honestly, I think I have more respect for governments that are unapologetic about their censorship than this “politically correct” model of “freedom of speech”. There’s a huge difference between debating controversial topics and incitement/“fighting words” (which most people, and courts, agree are valid exceptions to the 1st Amendment).

N.B. Some people may see a conflict between what I’m expressing here and my comments about the “hate crimes” bill. I see a fundamental, categorical difference between criminalizing speech and taking speech into account as part of motive-based enhancement for an underlying crime, and hence, for me, there is zero conflict.

H/T: Religion Clause

Is it just me, or do other people think that maybe, just maybe, you should actually do something before you’re awarded a Nobel Prize?

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

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Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

Now, unlike most people here, I think Obama is striking the right tone in international politics, and rejection of the “with us or against us” mentality of the previous administration is praise-worthy.

But he hasn’t actually accomplished anything yet. There are a few positive signs, a few negative signs, a ton of ambiguity, and actually nothing done yet.

Which is OK. Anyone who expects (non-crisis) concrete things in international diplomacy in 8 months is delusional. It’s going to take a couple of years for any of this to come to fruition (or failure). I’m certainly willing to give him a couple of years.

But what the hell is the Nobel committee thinking?

Update: Oh, this is rich. The deadline for nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize is February 1. So Obama was nominated for this prize about 10 days into the job. You have got to be kidding me.

Later this month, a rare event in international politics occurs: heads of state will gather for a summit-level meeting of the United Nations Security Council.  Set to begin on September 24th, it will be only the fifth such meeting in the history of the Council.  And, it will be the first-ever time the Council is chaired by the President of the United States.  In a press release, Ambassador Rice stated the purpose of the meeting:

The session will focus on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament broadly, and not on any particular countries. Key areas to be highlighted will include arms control and nuclear disarmament, strengthening the NPT regime, and denying and disrupting trafficking in and the securing of nuclear materials. We are consulting with colleagues on a potential product for that session, and will keep you posted as that evolves.

Is this a cause for concern?  It damn well could be.  Consider that the President will be leading a summit of global heads of state in the part of the UN whose actions are binding (well, sort-of), and with the tide of the Senate in his favor, the two-thirds majority requirement to approve the treaty to make it “the supreme law of the land” would only take a handful of weak Republicans.  Considering the President’s own stated views on nuclear disarmament, we need to keep an eye on this.  Let me remind you of his views in his own words:

Note that he would ban production of fissile materials, which will, over time, mean that our nuclear capability either degrades or down-sizes.  He advocates dramatic decreases in our nuclear arsenal because he thinks it will “avoid giving countries like Iran and North Korea an excuse.”  He blatantly ignores the fact that the world works on cold calculation, not the kind of fuzzy moral leadership he advocates.  Emerging nuclear powers won’t be swayed to give up their programs out of some moral obligation based on America’s supposed “leadership” in nuclear disarmament, in fact, they’re more likely to pursue such programs knowing the US is less of a factor. 

So here the President is, chairing a council of heads of state, talking about nuclear disarmament.  What will the President do?  His own stated views of what should be done, notably US disarmament, have massive implications, and threaten the very structure of the defense of the free world.  Think of the nations whose security is guaranteed by our nuclear forces, thus not needing to employ their own weapons programs—free, prosperous nations like Japan, South Korea, and many of the nations of NATO.  The global economy and our very way of life depend on the security of free nations, which is why we have historically maintained such an arsenal.

It’s a sad trend that is often attributed to the left, but the right sure has its isolationist elements that could give a damn about employing American resources to defend free people abroad.  The President apparently doesn’t realize that American strategic dominance has been the global protector of free people.  Our massive stockpile ensures we will always have the advantage over any foe of our way of life that challenges it.  President Obama’s naive vision of a nuclear-free world won’t “make the world safe for democracy,” it will make it far more dangerous and unpredictable.