The Iron Lady Leaves Us … J. D. Longstreet

The Iron Lady Leaves Us
Margaret Thatcher Dies

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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Margaret Thatcher, Former Prime Minister of Great Britain, has passed away leaving a vast void in the ranks of conservatives the world over.

Margaret Thatcher’s political career has been one of the most remarkable of modern times. Born in October 1925 at Grantham, a small market town in eastern England, she rose to become the first (and for two decades the only) woman to lead a major Western democracy. She won three successive General Elections and served as British Prime Minister for more than eleven years (1979-90), a record unmatched in the twentieth century.

During her term of office she reshaped almost every aspect of British politics, reviving the economy, reforming outdated institutions, and reinvigorating the nation’s foreign policy. She challenged and did much to overturn the psychology of decline which had become rooted in Britain since the Second World War, pursuing national recovery with striking energy and determination.

In the process, Margaret Thatcher became one of the founders, with Ronald Reagan, of a school of conservative conviction politics, which has had a powerful and enduring impact on politics in Britain and the United States and earned her a higher international profile than any British politician since Winston Churchill.  SOURCE:  http://www.margaretthatcher.org/essential/biography.asp

Had Margaret Thatcher been born American and had she become a candidate for President of the United States, I would have supported her and voted for her.  She was a conservative.

Working closely with President Ronald Reagan,  the Iron Lady welded our two countries together as one.

Her influence spread around the world.  Her plain spoken opinions made even the mighty squirm at times.  With Thatcher at 10 Downing Street the world never had to wonder where England stood.

Her influence on US President George H. W. Bush was invaluable at times during his term in office.

Thatcher hated socialism.  She saw it for what it is and she loathed it.  Back in 1976 she said:  “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them.” Speech, Feb. 5, 1976

She once said:  “Socialists cry “Power to the people”, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.”

She didn’t much care for socialized medicine either.  She had her own private health insurance.  When asked about that in a TV interview she said: “I, along with something like 5 million other people, insure to enable me to go into hospital on the day I want; at the time I want, and with a doctor I want. “

On socialism’s effect on Great Britain, Baroness Thatcher said this:  “No theory of government was ever given a fairer test or a more prolonged experiment in a democratic country than democratic socialism received in Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every respect. Far from reversing the slow relative decline of Britain vis-à-vis its main industrial competitors, it accelerated it. We fell further behind them, until by 1979 we were widely dismissed as ‘the sick man of Europe’…To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukemia with leeches.”

Here is one of my favorite quotes from Margaret Thatcher:  “I came to office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society — from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it-yourself nation. A get-up-and-go, instead of a sit-back-and-wait-for-it Britain.” That was from a speech she made on Feb. 8, 1984.

Compare Thatcher’s philosophy against that of the current President of the US and you will quickly see why America is in such deep trouble.  Thatcher had her priorities in the proper order.

Obama wants to rid the world of Nuclear weapons.  Thatcher understood the need for nuclear arsenals.  She said this: “A world without nuclear weapons may be a dream but you cannot base a sure defense on dreams. Without far greater trust and confidence between East and West than exists at present, a world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.”   She made those remarks in a speech at a Soviet Official banquet, St George’s Halls, the Kremlin (30 March 1987).  Thatcher had the courage of her convictions.

In her book  Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-095912-6,  she laid out a list of guidelines that speak volumes about her and the way she governed.  She wrote:  “I should therefore prefer to restrict my guidelines to the following:

Don’t believe that military interventions, no matter how morally justified, can succeed without clear military goals

Don’t fall into the trap of imagining that the West can remake societies

Don’t take public opinion for granted — but don’t either underrate the degree to which good people will endure sacrifices for a worthwhile cause
Don’t allow tyrants and aggressors to get away with it

And when you fight — fight to win.“
(You will find these guidelines on page 39 of the book.)

Can you see why I would have great admiration for this great lady?

May God grant her eternal rest.

J. D. Longstreet

The Bear Is Tromping The Woods Again! … J. D. Longstreet

The Bear Is Tromping The Woods Again!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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The Russian  bear is raging around the globe again.  The “Russkies” are up to their old tricks once more.  Probing, tweaking, testing, aggravating, and in general — making a complete nuisance of themselves as they strut across the world stage in what they hope is an intimidating posture to strike fear in the hearts of well, EVERYBODY. 

Russia is STILL so far behind the remainder of the world that they are pitiable.

However, if the Russians ever decide to climb out of the Vodka bottle and sober up, they could actually become the great country they SAY they want to be.

They are a strange people.  Fearful of everything and everybody out side the borders of Russia.  As a country, they are convinced that someone is going to attack them and take their treasures.

The United States has been the preferred target of their ire since, well, since we bade them leave the North American continent in 1867 with the purchase of Alaska from Russia’s Emperor Alexander II.  They’ve seemed sour toward the US ever since.

OK. OK. So we DID invade Russia — ONCE — back during the First World War.   Oh, yes.  We did.

“Although few people know it, in 1918 President Woodrow Wilson sent 5,500 American soldiers — including some from Missouri and Kansas — to northern Russia in the last days of World War I. Thanks to harsh conditions that cut off communications, the troops were left there for eight months after the war ended.”
SOURCE:  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/27/104384/think-us-troops-never-invaded.html#storylink=cpy

“President Woodrow Wilson was pressured by the British to send American soldiers to Russia to fight a new force called the Bolsheviks, an early name for Communists . Winston Churchill (then Britain’s secretary of war) saw that the Bolsheviks were pulling the czar’s forces — our allies — out of the war as they were taking over Russia. So Churchill thought that if we could amass forces in northern Russia, we could stop communism at its birth.”  Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/27/104384/think-us-troops-never-invaded.html#storylink=cpy

The war ended about two months after the Americans got there — but THEY DIDN’T KNOW IT!  They were left for eight months in sometimes waist deep snow.  Many died of exposure. So, believe me when I tell you –we REALLY don’t want to invade Russia — AGAIN!  Now, if we could only convince the Russians of that!

Lately, though, the Russian military has been probing US defenses around the world -mostly in the Pacific region and down the west coast of the US.

From the Free Beacon we learn:  “A Russian bomber recently carried out simulated cruise missile attacks on U.S. missile defenses in Asia, raising new questions about Moscow’s goal in future U.S.-Russian defense talks.

According to U.S. officials, a Russian Tu-22M Backfire bomber on Feb. 26 simulated firing air-launched cruise missiles at an Aegis ship deployed near Japan as part of U.S. missile defenses.

A second mock attack was conducted Feb. 27 against a ground-based missile defense site in Japan that officials did not identify further.”  SOURCE:  http://freebeacon.com/russian-bomber-roulette/ 

From the same article in the Free Beacon we also learn: “The bomber targeting of U.S. missile defenses also followed stepped up Russian bomber activities targeting other U.S. missile defense sites, including ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California. A large-scale Russian military exercise in the Arctic in June included flights by two Tu-95 Bear bombers that Russian military officials said had simulated attacks on U.S. missile defenses in Alaska.

Another pair of Tu-95s flew on July 4 the closest to the California coast that a Russian bomber had flown since the days of the Soviet Union, when strategic bomber flights near U.S. coasts were a routine feature of the Cold War.”

 This is important.  While the US is cutting back it’s military and nuclear arsenal, the Russians are building up their military preparing especially for war with the US. (So is China, but that is for another day, another column.)

Winston Churchill once said that “appeasement is nothing more than feeding the alligator in hopes that he will eat you last.”

While the Obama Administration is busy feeding the Russian alligator the gator is growing bigger and meaner with every passing day.

Appeasement does not work with the Russians. They will bleed you dry then eat your bones.

It seems strange that the only US President able to handle the Russians would not appease them and he brought on the collapse of the old Soviet Union.  His name was Ronald Reagan. 

There is no Reagan to deal with the Russians today.  And THEY KNOW IT!  The Russians see Obama as a joke. They are happily running circles around Obama’s diplomatic team and going hell bent for leather to build up their military while the US has such a weak administration in power.

Yes, the “Russian Bear” is back prowling and growling in the woods.  This time the US is too weak to contain the bear.  It will be decades until the US has another conservative president to order a huge build-up in America’s military force.  Until then, the world cannot count on the US to counter the Russians as it did for the forty-year Cold War.   Besides, the US today more closely resembles the old Soviet Union — with our current socialist President and government — than we do the old America. Heck, we might even be invited to join the Russian Federation. 

© J. D. Longstreet

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