This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Chavez’ Bolibanana Revolution marches on

    The Bolivarian Revolution in South America continues to drive the region further into Banana Republic status as the Associated Press reports (by way of the Wall Street Journal) that Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez’ own personal Mini-Me, moves to nationalize the Bolivian railroads;

    President Evo Morales announced plans to nationalize Bolivia’s railroads, continuing his administration’s campaign to extend greater state control over key sectors of the Andean nation’s economy.

    Speaking at the inauguration of a restored steam train for tourists outside La Paz, Mr. Morales said Sunday he intends to recover control of former state rail company Empresa Nacional de Ferrocarriles, or ENFE, privatized in 1996.

    “We must begin the rehabilitation of our railways,” Mr. Morales said, after traveling from the Tiwanaku ruins to Lake Titicaca on the new line. “This inspires us, this obligates us, this is the start of the nationalization of ENFE.”

    Yeah, cuz the nationalised industries in the region have been doing so well – take a look at the chart from The Devil’s Excrement in regards to Venezuela’s oil production over the past 17 years. Keep in mind that Chavez has been intervening in oil production since he rose to the Presidency in 1999.

    The Houston Chronicle sees no new money for Venezuela’s production development;

    But many independent experts caution that the pullout of the two U.S. oil giants could further harm the investment climate in Venezuela. They also question whether its state-run energy company, Petróleos de Venezuela, also known as PDVSA, and its new suitors have the expertise, money and technology to exploit the tarlike heavy oil in the Orinoco basin, which may hold upward of 300 billion barrels of petroleum.

    “They’ve got a problem, because new money isn’t coming in,” said David Mares, an expert on Latin American energy issues at the University of California at San Diego. “PDVSA is confident, but I would say it’s based on blind hope.”

    Venezuela, like some other countries, is raising taxes and royalties in a time when the oil producers are looking for different ways to maximize revenues.

    Taiwan’s CPC oil company is seeking to protect it’s rights in Venezuela;

    The state-owned oil company CPC Corporation, Taiwan is going all out to defend its oil exploration rights in Venezuela, CPC Vice General Manager and Spokesman Tsao Ming said Monday.

    Daniel at Venezuela News and Views continues to report food shortages of staples like pasta, beef, chicken, milk and sugar. The good news of course, is that there’s plenty of Corn Flakes – is Jerry Seinfeld in charge of food distribution there?

    From Venezuela Llora, Venezuela Sangra, we learn that one of the games of the Copa Americana in Caracas was cancelled to prevent a reoccurance of the protests in the first tournament game – on international television. can’t let the world see that the Revolution is failing, can we? 

    Chavez’ power grabs continue with his new plan for “community councils” which bypass local governments (which are more than likely opposed to Chavez’ vision of a strong central government);

    The discussion was part of a meeting of one of the country’s several hundred new community councils, President Hugo Chávez’s latest, and one of his more controversial, initiatives on the road to what he calls 21st-century socialism.

    The councils are small citizen-run groups that theoretically will eventually take the place of mayors, governors, and other municipal and regional representatives and promote grass-roots democracy. Their money comes from various government institutions that fund their small projects; their power is supposed to come from their local roots.

    ”All power to the community councils,” Chávez said recently. “Power to the people.”

    Not all local officials like that idea, and critics say the Chávez government is trying to use the councils to gain even more power in a country of 27 million people where he already controls the courts, congress, and the military.

    Similar councils are being launched by Chávez leftist ally in Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega. Saying they are nothing but a Sandinista Party power-grab, several opposition parties have announced plans to strike down the law that created them.

    “Grassroots democracy”? How did the governors, mayors and other municipal representatives get into their offices? They were elected by the people they serve. Who are these new “Community Councils” beholden to? Chavez. Chavez appointed them and Chavez can fire them. So what’s “grassroots democracy” about the community councils?

    As I predicted months ago, Reuters is now reporting that Venezuelans are seeking exile in the US from Chavez in record numbers (h/t Steve Shickles);

    “I have no doubt that the middle class and those with some stake in the old Venezuela have legitimate concerns regarding their future livelihood and in some cases safety as the regime hardens and the state moves into every sphere of economic and social activity,” said Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University.

    “If you have young children, you want out. If you have assets that have been seized, or may be seized, you want out as quickly as possible,” Roett added. “If you have land that will be expropriated, leave sooner than later. As the alta (upper) bourgeoisie becomes more and more of a target, you want to leave before Hugo Chavez shuts the door.”

    The number of U.S. asylum grants put Venezuela in 11th place, well behind nations such as its neighbor, Colombia, and deeply impoverished Haiti. But more Venezuelans were granted asylum last year than were natives of trouble spots like Iraq, a country reeling from nightmarish levels of violence.

    All the while, the rest of the world turns a blind eye. I guess it’s just easier to complain about George Bush than it is to try and stop the dismantling of Latin American Republics and headoff the impending enslavement of the Venezuelan people.

  • “History will judge us, my friend”

    Apparently, Senator from Virginia and turncoat Reaganite, opportunist extraordinaire Jim Webb, possibly the largest cranium in the US Senate, faced off with Momma’s boy Lindsey Graham on Meet the Press yesterday. I dunno, I haven’t watched Russert’s Democrat-lovefest since he had useless-ass John Kerry on the show to talk about different the world would be if we’d only had foresight to elect Kerry two years earlier instead of someone who could do the job without advice from Jabba the Kennedy.

    Anyway, according to the Associated Press writer Calvin Woodward, Webb found it particularly easy to be the cool one for a change when his opponent is linguine-spined Lindsey Graham;

    “Just wash your hands of Iraq,” an animated Graham said to the war critics, including the Democrat seated to his immediate right. “History will judge us, my friend.”

    “It’s been a hard month, Lindsey,” Webb commiserated, wearing a tight smile. “You need to calm down, my friend.”

    “Lindsey’s had a hard month,” Webb repeated.

    “It ain’t about Lindsey having a hard month,” Graham snapped.

    “History will judge us, my friend”. Just like History has judged the anti-Vietnam crowd of being wrong in the thirty-plus years since the end of that war. The dominos did fall in Southeast Asia, just like it was predicted – but it only cost a couple of million asian lives. As long as it’s only brown people, it doesn’t matter that much to the Democrats like Webb, I suppose.

    Of course Associated Press couldn’t help but throw in a reference to Webb’s Vietnam service (while at the same time ignoring the fact that Graham is currently in the Army Reserves). And Graham, to his credit, confronted Webb on his observations and decision-making from his Ivory Tower;

    “Have you been to Iraq?” Graham demanded.

    “I’ve covered two wars as a correspondent,” Webb said. “I have been to Afghanistan as a journalist.”

    Graham: “Have you been to Iraq and talked to the soldiers?”

    Webb: “You know, you’ve never been to Iraq, Lindsey.”

    The Republican pointed out he’s been there seven times.

    “You know,” Webb said dismissively, “you can see the dog and pony shows. That’s what congressman do.

    Dismissively. As if there was nothing to see in Iraq, that relying on the AP is probably a better idea than going to see for Webb’s self. Especially since Webb can’t seem to believe his lyin’ eyes anyway.

    Graham tried to ease the tension. It didn’t work.

    “Let’s—something we can agree on,” he said, placing his hand on Webb’s arm. “We both admire the men and the women in uniform. ”

    “Don’t put political words in their mouth,” Webb interrupted.

    The exchange ended with Graham praising the troops: “God bless them and let’s make sure they can win because they can.”

    And Webb getting the final, combative word:

    “I’ll let them judge what you said.”

    The implication, of course, is that Webb speaks for the troops better than Graham. Webb references polls and history as if he reads either. History has always judged anti-war activists hashly. From the Civil War-era draft riots, through today’s misguided misfits of the anti-war, History has proven time-and-again that war is a necessary evil, and that avoiding war only leads to greater, more destructive wars.

    The anti-war movement, and apparently the naive and unread James Webb, is simply an opportunistic movement to elect otherwise unelectable candidates to office. Someone as ignorant of history, and unwilling to seek his own answers to complex problems as Webb appears, never would have been elected to his office by a responsible constituency.

  • Fear-mongers in the Associated Press

    Everywhere I turn this morning, some media outlet is telling me that some secret report was leaked and intelligence places al Qaeda back to it’s 2001 strength. At least from the Washington Post there’s no speculation about it’s pre-2001 strength;

    Six years after the Bush administration declared war on al-Qaeda, the terrorist network is gaining strength and has established a safe haven in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan for training and planning attacks, according to a new Bush administration intelligence report to be discussed today at a White House meeting.

    The report, a five-page threat assessment compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center, is titled “Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West,” intelligence officials said. It concludes that the group has significantly rebuilt itself despite concerted U.S. attempts to smash the network.

    But the Associated Press isn’t that shy;

    A new threat assessment from U.S. counterterrorism analysts says that Al Qaeda has used its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border to restore its operating capabilities to a level unseen since the months before Sept. 11, 2001.

    In fact the Washington Post story,  goes so far that it points out that intelligence officials said that al Qaeda is “considerably weaker” than they were in 2001;

    While asserting that al-Qaeda is still considerably weaker than it was before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the new report concludes that the group is stronger than it has been in years. “There is heightened concern given al-Qaeda’s operational activity [and] . . . operational levels” along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the U.S. official said.

    WaPo is certainly no supporter of the war against terror. Despite the Washington Post’s contrary story, every radio and television news broadcast has repeated the silly AP headline as news.

    Need I remind the Associated Press and their assorted minions in broadcast news that in 2001 al Qaeda had their own country and at least the tacit support of three other countries. Not only have they lost Afghanistan, they don’t have the support of Pakistani government forces any longer. They’ve lost operational bases throughout the region where they enjoyed a virtual open range for training and operations.

    They may be stronger than they were in late 2001 – but that’s only because their willing accomplices in the media (that’s you, AP) make recruiting so easy.

    Elsewhere in the Associated Press story on MyWay;

    The official and others spoke to The Associated Press on condition they not be identified because the report remains classified.

    I hope the Bush Adminstration sends “the official and others” out hunting with Dick Cheney – or hunting with me, for that matter.

  • It’s all about Vietnam, except when it’s about Vietnam

    Democrats can’t let go of the 60s. They think they actually won something when the US began pulling combat troops out of Vietnam in 1972. They forget the bloodbath that happened when Saigon fell in 1975, they forget the Vietnamese incursions into Laos during the Carter Administration (that were halted by the Chinese), they forget Pol Pot’s killing fields. All they care about is regaining their former bloodstained glory on the front pages of “their” media”. 

    In light of the reports coming out of Iraq by alternate means, like Michael Yon Online, since we can’t trust the media to tell us what’s happening over there, Jon Ward of the Washington Times reports that the President pleaded with Americans from Cleveland yesterday;

    “I believe that its in this nations interests to give the commander a chance to fully implement his operations,” Mr. Bush said, speaking at a downtown hotel to a local business group.

    Mr. Bush did not reveal any changes to his strategy or thinking on Iraq and did not talk about his hopes for withdrawing troops, despite reports that conversations on the topic are intensifying inside his administration.

    Instead, Mr. Bush said, “Congress ought to wait for General Petraeus to come back and give us assessment of the strategy that he’s putting in place before they make any decisions.”

    It sounds reasonable, but fairly unrealistic given the political backbiting that’s happening eve in the President’s own party. But, the Democrats, the party of Insanity (doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results each time), plan on running through the same bill they ran through a scant few weeks ago, hoping for different results. From Sean Lengell, Washington Times;

    Senate Democrats yesterday called for withdrawing most U.S. troops from Iraq by April 30 — less than two months after a similar measure was soundly defeated — as the White House dispatched its top war advisers to Capitol Hill to embolden Republican allies.

    Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said setting a troop withdrawal timetable will force Iraqi political leaders to take responsibility for their own country.

    “The legislation that we are proposing … would give commanders the flexibility to the pace of reductions and the units to be reduced, and I think it’s the appropriate way to go,” said Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat, who co-sponsored the measure with Mr. Levin.

    Republicans leaders called the maneuver premature, saying that President Bush’s surge strategy is starting to pay dividends and that any major changes shouldn’t occur before Gen. David H. Petraeus provides his September report on the state of the war.

    Well, we just can’t let the troops win too many battles, can we? So it’s time for the Democrats to do the sabateur work that al Qaeda can’t seem to do these days. With Cindy Sheehan breathing down her botoxed and stretched neckflaps, Nancy Pelosi is planning an entire month of intellectually bankrupt votes to undermine the troops’ victories in Iraq;

    House Democrats are planning a series of votes this month on Iraq that they hope will ratchet up pressure on the White House and congressional Republicans to change course on the unpopular war or suffer political consequences.

    Sensing that additional GOP members might follow the more skeptical path taken recently by Sens. Richard Lugar (Ind.) and Pete Domenici (N.M.) and Rep. John Doolittle (Calif.), Democratic leaders have decided to ignore White House requests that lawmakers wait until September to see how President Bush’s surge works.

    “I think you’re seeing signs that the dam’s about to bust,” said Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), tapped as leadership’s coordinator for Iraq strategy. “Someone on the Republican side has to be like Fulbright during the Vietnam War.”

    Just like Vietnam, huh Larson – the anti-US Left wants to relive their golden days. It doesn’t matter that history has proven them wrong then, or that history will prove them wrong on this one, too. just so long as they get to see their name in the paper.

    The Washington Post still claims there’s a large defection of Republicans from the President’s war plans – but they can only name a few, oddly;

    Facing crumbling support for the war among their own members, Senate Republican leaders yesterday sought to block bipartisan efforts to force a change in the American military mission in Iraq.

    But the GOP leadership’s use of a parliamentary tactic requiring at least 60 votes to pass any war legislation only encouraged the growing number of Republican dissenters to rally and seek new ways to force President Bush’s hand. They are weighing a series of proposals that would change the troops’ mission from combat to counterterrorism, border protection and the training of Iraqi security forces.
     
    “I think we should continue to ratchet up the pressure — in addition to our words — to let the White House know we are very sincere,” said Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), who broke with the president last month.

    Voinovich and Snowe are the only two defectors in the article. Add in Domenici and Spector, that’s four. It’s hardly a defection, it’s barely newsworthy – cetainly not enough to write a whole column. But there’s the Post spending bandwidth on a stupid subject while they could write stories about the troops’ several victories this week, or the horror that al Qaeda has inflicted on Iraqis.  The Post could actually report on the war rather than those idiot conversations they have with useless politicians.

    In the meantime, Cindy Sheehan is zeroing in on the old SanFran Hag;

     Cindy Sheehan bid farewell to her former “peace camp” near President Bush’s ranch and began a nearly two-week trek Tuesday toward Washington, D.C., with her sights set on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
    Sheehan, a Californian, officially announced that she intends to run as an independent against Pelosi in 2008 if the San Francisco congresswoman doesn’t move to impeach Bush by July 23, the day she expects to reach Washington.

    “I know what Californians care about,” Sheehan said. “They don’t care about the ruling power elite.”

    Yeah, Cindy, you probably know about as much about what Americans care about as Nancy – but I wouldn’t embarrass myself by saying it aloud in public if I were you. I guess we can’t count on you to keep your promises, either. Promises like leaving the stage and letting the adults run the country. If ever there was someone less worthy of my attention, I don’t know who that would be.

    So I guess we peg our foreign policy to the whims of gutless coward and crazed dingbats.

    From yesterday’s Day By Day;

     

     

  • So what do we believe?

    On the one hand, we have Rowan Scarbourgh in the Washington Examiner telling us that the general concensus is that al Qaeda is losing ground in Iraq;

    U.S. intelligence officers in Iraq believe 2007 will be looked on someday as “the beginning of the defeat of al Qaeda,” an adviser to the command in Baghdad said Monday.

    Retired Army Gen. John Keane offered the assessment after being briefed by a senior intelligence official who is an expert on the insurgency. The upbeat view marked a shift from 2006 intelligence reports that al Qaeda in Iraq was growing stronger.

    […]

    First, Sunni sheiks are breaking alliances with al Qaeda and joining the coalition. “They are fed up with this barbarism and four years of war,” Keane said during a talk at the American Enterprise Institute.

    Second, the U.S. counteroffensive of more than 155,000 troops is simultaneously attacking al Qaeda safe havens around the country — a tactic not used before.

    But then you turn to the Associated Press’ Anne Flaherty (whose name turns up on nearly every anti-Bush story byline) and you get crap like this – a whole story pegged to an anonymous source, no back-up research, just quoting some guy like there’s no tomorrow (or no Google); 

     A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reforms, speeding up the Bush administration’s reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said Monday.

    The “pivot point” for addressing the matter will no longer be Sept. 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush’s so-called “surge” plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the draft is still under discussion.

    So the military is winning (barely a month into the “surge”) and AP calls it a failure. Sound like Vietnam even a little bit? And for some reason, the Washington Post thinks that a couple of spineless GOP RINOs has the administration running scared;

    President Bush, facing a growing Republican revolt against his Iraq policy, has rejected calls to change course but will launch a campaign emphasizing his intent to draw down U.S. forces next year and move toward a more limited mission if security conditions improve, senior officials said yesterday.

    Top administration officials have begun talking with key Senate Republicans to walk them through his view of the next phase in the war, beyond the troop increase he announced six months ago today. Bush plans to lay out what an aide called “his vision for the post-surge” starting in Cleveland today to assure the nation that he, too, wants to begin bringing troops home eventually.

    The President isn’t explaining it to regular people because he’s afraid of a few pussies in the Senate – he’s explaining it to regular people because he has to talk above the caucaphony of idiots and morons in the press like Anne Flaherty.

    Yeah, I know, she probably thinks she’s being patriotic by publishing every bit of contrary information she can dredge up. Apparently dissent is back in vogue – no matter what kind of damage they do to our worldwide reputation or to our national security. But, you’d think every once in a while she’d try to publish the absolute truth just to balance out her prejudices.

  • Treason

    Apparently, US Congressmen standing on Saddam Hussein’s terrace declaring that Hussein is a more rational actor and more trustworthy than President Bush on the eve of our invasion of Hussein’s Iraq is not treason.

    The US Speaker of the House meeting with terrorist governments and transmitting false messages from other governments against the advice of the Executive Branch is not treason. Facilitating the sales of space and missile technology to our economic and military rival, China, in return for political campaign donations is not treason. Turning a blind eye to North Korea’s nuclear program is not treason.

    Calling our soldiers murderers and SS concentration camp guards is not treason. Demanding the release from Guantanamo of dangerous terrorists bent on our destruction is not treason. Facilitating the immigration invasion from our South is not treason.

    So what is treason these days? Ask Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.;

    “Get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmentalist author, president of Waterkeeper Alliance and Robert F. Kennedy’s son, who grew hoarse from shouting. “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.”

    Yep, global warming deniers are treasonous. People who question the Flat Earth Society of Global Warming Nuts are treasonous. If you don’t run around behind Chicken Little Manbearpig and screech that the sky is falling, you’re a traitor.

    Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down.

  • al Qaeda threatens Iran

    So, according to the Associated Press (by way of Fox News), al Qaeda in Iraq is threatening Iran to stop supporting Shi’ites;

    Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who leads the group Islamic State in Iraq , said his Sunni fighters have been preparing for four years to wage a battle against Shiite-dominated Iran.

    “We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a two-month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi Shiite government and to stop direct and indirect intervention … otherwise a severe war is waiting for you,” he said in the 50-minute audiotape released Sunday. The tape, which could not be independently verified, was posted on a Web site commonly used by insurgent groups.

    So, I guess even our biggest enemy admitting that Iran is supplying anti-US militias in Iraq isn’t enough proof that we need to transform Iran into a vacant mudhole, huh?

  • Latin America and the Democrats

    The Gateway Pundit has a great piece today about Democrats playing Russian Roulette with our foreign policy in regards to Latin America entitled FARC You! where he catalogues Democrat hypocrisy towards our allies in that region.

    The reason it caught my eye is some of the rhetoric I’ve been hearing from the Left in regards to the Bush Administration in Latin America that’s not exactly the truth. For example, Barack Obama has a statement on his senate.gov website that claims the Bush Administration isn’t engaged in Latin America;

    I am, however, disappointed that the President has fallen so short in his promise to transform U.S. relations with the Americas. Our regional relationships cannot be properly attended to with one six-day trip, a series of photo opportunities, and some lofty rhetoric on collaboration.

    Neglect? Why, just this week, the Bush Administration has finalized trade agreements with Peru, Columbia and Panama – to absolutely no fanfare in the press. because these trade pacts are all opposed by Big Labor. Oh, and they’re good for the US – can’t see the President getting good press over anything can we? These trade agreements give these country the ecomonic power to keep their residents at home instead sending them here as illegal immigrants. (Not to mention, it might drive the price of sugar down far enough that Coca Cola might put sugar in that drink again and make it tasty again)

    In Miami this week, Obama said, “It’s not sufficient for us to have Latin American policy based on not liking Hugo Chavez and not liking Fidel Castro.” That’s pretty simplistic rhetoric, actually. The Bush administration has pretty much ignored Chavez and Castro – I don’t see any statements coming out of the White House everytime Banana-brains starts yammering paranoid rants about someone wanting to kill his useless ass. I don’t think anyone in the Administration has even acknowledged that Chavez exists. His own people can deal with him – and Castro – phht – he’ll be dead soon enough, so who cares.

    President Bush even travelled around Central and South America in the Fall of 2005 – I left Panama the day before he arrived and it was the talk of the entire country. He’s a very popular figure there, despite the bad press.

    Think maybe our stature in Latin America has suffered because Democrats won’t meet with our greatest ally in the region President Alvaro Uribe has been snubbed by the Congressional Democrats as well as Al Gore. This from a Mary Anatasia O’Grady piece in the Wall Street Journal from April entitled “One Righteous Gringo“;

    Al Gore may not have known that he was taking the side of a former terrorist and ally of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez when he waded into Colombian politics 10 days ago. But that’s not much consolation to 45 million Colombians who watched their country’s already fragile international image suffer another unjust blow, this time at the hands of a former U.S. vice president.

    The event was a climate-change conference in Miami, where Mr. Gore and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe were set to share the stage. At the last minute, Mr. Gore notified the conference organizers that he refused to appear with Mr. Uribe because of “deeply troubling” allegations of human- rights violations swirling around the Colombian government.

    It is not clear whether the ex-veep knows that making unsubstantiated claims of human-rights violations has been a key guerrilla weapon for more than a decade, along with the more traditional practices of murdering, maiming and kidnapping civilians. Nor is it clear whether Mr. Gore knew that the recycled charges that caught his attention are being hyped by Colombian Sen. Gustavo Petro, a close friend of Mr. Chávez and former member of the pro-Cuban M-19 terrorist group. What we do know is that Mr. Gore’s line of reasoning — that Colombia is not good enough to rub shoulders with the righteous gringos — is also being peddled by some Democrats in Congress, the AFL-CIO and other forces of anti-globalization. The endgame is all about killing the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

    When Mr. Uribe got wind of Mr. Gore’s decision to stand him up, he rightly interpreted its significance: Colombia is the victim of an international smear campaign that, if left unchecked, could undermine congressional support for the pending trade deal. Rather than let the whispering go on, Mr. Uribe elevated the matter, calling two press conferences over two days to refute the charges, which he says are damaging the country’s interests. He also asked Mr. Gore to look “at Colombia closely” so he could see the progress that has been made.

    By the way, President Uribe’s father was killed by terrorists – tough for them if he’s a little harsh in dealing with them. Since when is Al Gore willing to trade our friends down the river because he heard an unsubstantiated rumor somewhere?  

    So how exactly is Bush damaging our relations in Latin America? He’s got Democrats undermining his efforts with their petty politics, Democrats winging their way to Venezuela to gladhand with blood-soaked tyrants while they turn their backs on the people who are helping fight our enemies.

    Just like in the Middle East where Democrats have tea with our enemies and snub our allies. Maybe we have all of these problems because we present a fickle foreign policy – towards all of our allies and our enemies. Our foreign policy is ambiguous because we have 525 ambassadors in Congress – not to mention the ancillary ambassadors who are former presidents and vice-presidents. 

    I’m pretty certain that the founding fathers intended that the president be the sole voice of our nation to other nations. Maybe we need to impeach all of these extraneous diplomats floating around the world operating under a false flag.