Lindsay Line

• After digesting columnist Ellen
Goodman’s recent syndicated piece, “Hillary in Her Next Phase,” full of
positives regarding the future performance of Hillary Clinton in
President Obama’s premier cabinet post as secretary of state, reality
began to sink in.

What about Hillary’s failure when her
husband put her in charge of developing a medical plan for all
Americans? How about her failure to deliver as New York state U.S.
senator on her promise to develop 200,000 new jobs during her term?

Hillary is guilty of flat-out lying. Of
course, her most famous lie was in defense of her husband’s dalliances
with Monica Lewinsky. Who can forget “It’s a vast right-wing
conspiracy,” exposed as a lie by the appearance of the “blue dress”?

A real concern is that not only does
President Obama need the absolute truth regarding his secretary of
state’s missions, the security of the American people depends on it.

• A Dec. 7 Associated Press article,
“World Leaders Try To Ban Nuclear Weapons,” was not only a glossy
overblown article, its publishing on the historic date of Japan’s sneak
attack on our country, seemed somehow symbolic of its meaning to the
United States.

This new group, Global Zero, appears to
be composed of retired and has-been former government officials and
politicians, hardly world leaders, with a collective misguided outlook
on nuclear weapons based on a utopian and unrealistic view of today’s
world.

It is not surprising that Global Zero
includes former President Jimmy Carter, a confirmed pacifist, as a
supporter, and thereby highlighting the unrealistic goal of the group
to eliminate nuclear weapons over the next 25 years.

With the state of the world today—two
U.S. wars; rogue nuclear states such as Iran and North Korea; and the
worldwide attacks by al-Qaida and other Islamic terrorists—it does not
seem to be the time on the world stage for the impractical, idealistic
concept of the Global Zero group.

Further, Carter’s presence in Global
Zero is an uncomfortable reminder. How can nations possibly be
convinced to disarm at all in these dangerous times, and worldwide
majority opinion be swayed to result in their countries being left
ultimately open and defenseless to nuclear blackmail.

• The weak-kneed, lukewarm
European-driven NATO support for the Afghanistan war of early October
has now evolved into a call from the leftist media of a blood-stained
stalemate with the Taliban in that country, and an inkling that future
events should include fruitful negotiations with those Afghanistan
terrorists.

There appears to be little justification
for this leftist attempt at blatant pacification of the Taliban, only
an effort to blur the lines between fact and opinion.

There is no stalemate. The top NATO
general in Afghanistan, U.S. General David McKiernan, stated recently
that “we don’t have progress as evenly or as fast as many of us would
like, but we are not losing in Afghanistan.”

Further, Gen. David Petraeus, head of
U.S. Central Command, made it clear that he felt that you have to talk
to your enemies, if only to attempt to identify those who might be
reconcilable. Buttressing Gen. Petraeus’ thoughts questions the
validity of any negotiations with the Taliban, are the terrorist
group’s gains in Afghanistan in the last few months, making Afghanistan
the single most pressing security threat in the fight against
terrorism, and making the odds against Taliban participation in peace
talks astronomical.

Insofar as “peace at any price”
advocates regarding Afghanistan, the words of Afrasiab Khattak, the
peace envoy of the administration in Pakistan’s Northwest frontier
province should have a warning against hasty Afghan retreat. He stated,
“The Western countries cannot afford to withdraw just like that,
because the war will go to them.” He added, “The choice is either fight
in Helmand or Paris, fight in Kandahar or New York.”

—Richard Lindsay

North Syracuse 

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