Tom Cotton: The New Warmonger …

CHANNELING NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV … 

|| By FITSNEWS || We just penned a column on the dangerous rhetoric emanating from the mouth of Al Gore … who for reasons surpassing understanding is being touted as a possible 2016 presidential contender.

Now we once again examine the dangerous rhetoric emanating from “Republican” politicians – who manifest their statism in other ways.  And no, this isn’t another post about liberal GOP Senator (and 2016 fringe candidate) Lindsey Graham‘s support for using U.S. troops on members of Congress who don’t agree with him …

No, this post is devoted to U.S. Senator Tom Cotton – America’s “new warmonger.”

Cotton made national news this month when he was the lead signatory on a letter to the government of Iran – a document which warned its leaders that any deal they reached with U.S. president Barack Obama on the status of their nuclear program was subject to the approval of Congress (and likely to be scrapped by a “Republican” president).

Progressives howled – accusing Cotton and his co-signers of treason.  Conservatives rejoiced – apparently unaware that many of the GOP warmongers baring their teeth at the Iranians have pushed for an alliance with the middle eastern nation in response to the “growing threat” posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Oh well, this is the military-industrial complex’s foreign policy … which basically consists of arming everybody under the sun with U.S. weapons, until they become sufficiently dangerous that we need to invade them (using more U.S. weapons).

Anyway …

In his first speech from the well of the U.S. Senate this week, Cotton unleashed a new military doctrine on the world – not just your typical deluded GOP Pax Americana but something broader, more Biblical.

“An alarm should be sounding in our ears,” Cotton said. “Our enemies, sensing weakness and hence opportunity, have become steadily more aggressive. Our allies, uncertain of our commitment and capability, have begun to conclude that they must look out for themselves, even where it is unhelpful to stability and order. Our military, suffering from years of neglect, has seen its relative strength decline to historic levels.”

Wait … what?  There’s an alarm sounding in our ears, alright … in fact it’s been sounding for a long time, it’s just been ignored.

Cotton of all people should know our country just spend $4-6 trillion over the last decade on a “War on Terror” that’s apparently made us more vulnerable to radical Islamic extremism than at any point in our history.  Oh, and spending on the new “War on Terror” is surging.

That’s not enough for Cotton, though.  He wants America to possess “such hegemonic strength that no sane adversary would ever imagine challenging the United States.”

“Our enemies and allies alike must know that aggressors will pay an unspeakable price for challenging the United States,” Cotton said. “The best way to impose that price is global military dominance.”

And there it is …

Our nation, lacking sufficient resources and devoid of moral authority (to say nothing of a credible justification, clearly defined objective or exit strategy), is to be Tom Cotton’s instrument of domination.

He is essentially saying to the “enemy” – which could apparently be anybody – what former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev said to a room of Western ambassadors in 1956.

“Mi vas pokhoronim!”

“We will bury you.”

Yeah … how’d that turn out for the Soviet Union?  About as well as it’s going to turn out for the new “Evil Empire.”

As we’ve said before, America should absolutely wage war against “terror” – in the event there is a credible threat to the security of our homeland or to our nation’s legitimate global interests.  Such operations are expressly provided for in our nation’s Constitution – and we believe they should be funded commensurately (starting with a more secure border).

We also have never supported the notion of a “proportional response.”  We believe America should channel what screenwriter Aaron Sorkin once referred to as “the fury of God’s own thunder” in the event military force is required.

But protecting the homeland from threats foreign and domestic should never be an excuse to engage in needless provocation.

And that’s what “Cotton Doctrine” is all about.  “Global military dominance” is an explicit embrace of more costly, failed nation-building – of an interventionist foreign policy approach that has landed America deeper in debt (and deeper in danger).  It is the explicit embrace of subsidizing defensive and/ or offensive operations on behalf of nations which are fully capable of defending themselves.  It is the explicit embrace not of global strength, but of global weakness – of binding our resources to “allies” who bark at us like junkyard dogs whenever we dare to “second guess” how they use our borrowed billions.

“The Cotton Doctrine” is the explicit embrace of a new Cold War.  It is the explicit embrace of troubling alliances – with terrorists and their benefactors.  It is the explicit embrace of demonstrably unnecessary projects like this … or this … or this … all in the name of “economic development” on the home front.

And one more thing … it is an explicit invitation to our enemies.

So Cotton can rattle his saber all he wants (and to be fair, he’s not a play pretend soldier liker Graham).  But make no mistake: “Global military dominance” is not something our nation can afford – either in blood or treasure.  And even if we could afford it, it is a delusion to think achieving it will make us any safer.

***