{"id":10509,"date":"2018-02-23T11:43:42","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T19:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/?p=10509"},"modified":"2018-08-10T02:29:15","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T09:29:15","slug":"remembering-a-great-american-president-and-statesman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/remembering-a-great-american-president-and-statesman\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering a Great American President and Statesman"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Remembering a Great American President and Statesman<\/strong><\/h1>\n

By Scott Michael Rohter, February 2018<\/p>\n

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A wise man once remarked that a great nation and\u00a0small minds don\u2019t go\u00a0well together. That man was Edmund Burke. He was a member of\u00a0British Parliament during the 18th Century when England was at the height of its\u00a0global influence and power.\u00a0He lived at a time when it\u00a0could truly be\u00a0said that the sun never set on the British Empire. Burke’s observation is just as relevant today in\u00a0the United States of America as it was back\u00a0in\u00a018th Century\u00a0England. It’s true. Our nation\u2019s leaders\u00a0are showing some of the same\u00a0small mindedness\u00a0that Burke encountered during his time in Parliament. I’d be willing to bet that there has never been such a glaring example of\u00a0narrow mindedness on a national level than what is going on in\u00a0Washington D.C. today.<\/p>\n

There is simply no other way to say it. Washington is suffering from the excruciating consequences of some of the most narrow minded political decisions in\u00a0our brief 240 year history. For the last thirty years it has been both our shame and our peculiar dilemma to watch our country slide into disfavor and\u00a0\u00a0contempt around the world while we pursue the ill-advised and often self defeating foreign policies which have culminated in a political witch hunt against the Trump Administration which is\u00a0consuming all of the political oxygen in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n

What I am talking about\u00a0is\u00a0euphemistically referred to as “Russiagate”. All of the time\u00a0looking for any evidence of Russian interference in our last election is just a big waste of time and money. Politicians in both political Parties want to blame Russia for\u00a0everything that is wrong\u00a0in the world\u00a0instead of accepting\u00a0responsibility for what they have done themselves. \u00a0The bureaucracy is so solidly in control of American foreign policy that even the President can\u2019t seem to do anything about it. So compromised and powerless is he to change the course of history that all he can do is sit by and helplessly watch\u00a0our country return to an era of cold war hostility towards Russia.\u00a0\u00a0Congress and the media are demonizing an entire\u00a0nation without regard to the facts\u2026\u00a0 120 million people with whom we\u00a0have no quarrel, but instead of trying to understand them and figuring out a way to co-operate with Russians\u00a0our leaders in Washington are hell bent on returning to the Cold War mentality of the 1950\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The latest\u00a0blow to Russian – American relations\u00a0just arrived in the form of a far reaching 37 page FBI indictment issued by Robert Mueller, the Independent counsel whose job is to investigate these bogus claims of Russian collusion with any members of the Trump campaign staff in order to sway the election in his favor.. This indictment however is levelled only against thirteen Russian<\/strong> nationals for trying to influence the outcome of\u00a0our election.\u00a0After two years of investigating no one has offered any proof of any collusion between the Trump campaign staff and Russia. Just whom did the Russians supposidly influence? They didn’t change my mind. Did they change your mind about who you were going to vote for? I didn’t need a Russian to tell me that Hillary Clinton was a crook.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s assume that maybe somewhere there were some Russians\u00a0that did have a preference about who they wanted to\u00a0 get elected which is by no means for certain\u2026 Let\u2019s further assume for the moment that they preferred Donald Trump to crooked Hillary Clinton as millions of Americans\u00a0obviously did\u2026 Our State Department \u00a0interferes in Russian politics.\u00a0It interfered in Russian domestic politics when it tried to influence Russians to vote for Boris Yeltsin. We interfered in Ukraine\u2019s internal politics when we supported an internal coup\u00a0that led to the ouster of Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich.\u00a0America interfered in Eqypt\u2019s domestic politics when President Obama supported a takeover of the country\u00a0by the Muslim Brotherhood? Then there was Libya..\u00a0We interfered in Libyan domestic politics when we provided the guns on the ground and the aerial support for the rebels who overthrew their government and murdered Colonel Gadhafi?<\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t President Obama interfere in Israeli domestic politics when he openly and officially endorsed the opposition candidate for Prime Minister and tried to influence Israelis not to re-elect Benjamin Netanyahu?<\/p>\n

Washington has wanted to overthrow one other government\u2026 the government of Syria\u2026 That has been its stated foreign policy objective for many years\u2026 \u00a0through multiple administrations\u2026 the removal of Bashar al Assad from power. \u00a0So just where does the FBI get off indicting thirteen Russians for expressing their opinions about who would make a better American President when we directly interfere in other country\u2019s elections and overthrow governments that we don\u2019t like all of the time? \u00a0Maybe what is good for the goose is good for the gander too\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0I have been thinking a lot about Ronald Reagan lately and remembering one of his greatest achievements during the eight years that Washington was not blinded by Russiaphobia\u2026 by little people with small minds. The achievement I am referring to was the ending of the Cold War in spite of all the Russiaphobes in Washington. That led to a new era of d\u00e9tente and cooperation that benefitted the entire world\u2026<\/p>\n

Probably the single most important result of our cooperation with Russia was the re-unification of Germany and its membership in NATO. Under the watchful eye of President Ronald Reagan, American diplomats worked out an agreement with Russian diplomats over the future of Germany. We promised our Russian counterparts that if they agreed to German reunification and allowed it to become a member of \u00a0NATO that we would not seek to expand NATO\u2019s influence any further eastward toward Russia\u2019s border. \u00a0With that assurance Russia agreed to German reunification as a member of NATO and that is how Germany became the economic superpower that it is today, but since then we have broken our promise to the Russians on several occasions.<\/p>\n

Since then America has recruited other former Warsaw Pact countries to become NATO members too so that NATO is currently positioned hard up against Russia\u2019s western border. The Russians are just as upset about that as we were when Nikita Khrushchev put Soviet missiles in Cuba.\u00a0 Keeping this in mind why should any Russian leader today believe anything else that Washington says\u2026 Our promises are only as good as the next American Administration. That is eight years at most the way that they see it. \u00a0If you want to know why Russians don\u2019t trust America anymore, try remembering that the next time you want to blame them for meddling in our elections.<\/p>\n

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<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

A wise man once remarked that a great nation and small minds don\u2019t go well together. That man was Edmund Burke. He was a famous statesman and Member of Parliament during the 18th Century when England was at the height of its worldwide influence and power. Burke lived at a time when it could truly be said that the sun never set on the British Empire, and this observation he made is just as relevant today in our own country as it was back in England during the 18th Century…mal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,20],"tags":[861,736,859,862,860],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10509"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10632,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10509\/revisions\/10632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}