America needs to step up!

America needs to have a world presence!

T. J Rockford

America is at a boiling point internally which is a factor that needs to be addressed but, At what cost?

 Most Americans feel betrayed by our Government, as I have discussed on numerous occasions throughout my own written article's! 

 I feel the same way as well, But I get it, and I know I need to look beyond! Not just at the small view, but the bigger picture as well.

  We Americans reeling from internal issue's get so consumed by our own griefs that we tend to fall into this attitude of, "screw the rest of the world what about me attitude?"

  This is what usually comes back to haunt us somehow in the long run. We really need to look at the bigger picture and try to see past our pain and grief before we make it so much more worse!

 I realize it's hard to do when we have been stuck in this high anxiety type state of never knowing what's going to blind side us next?

 We need to get our feet planted firmly, take a step back, and take a really big breath, and stop to take a really good look at what is happening in the world right now!

 We can't be looking at a candidate that has very little knowledge of foreign affairs, Especially if one were to look at what is happening within the world as we speak!

 Whatever is happening around the world is going to impact America, "and American's," in some very profound ways at times!

 This has always been a factor, And everybody that knows anything about foreign affairs would understand and accept this!

America has always played a role in world event's, And we still need to at a certain degree.

 This isn't even something that should be negotiable! We need to intervene when the bully is being a tough guy on the play ground, Especially when it's a huge nation against a small few that truly need the back up! 
   

 So many people in America feel this shouldn't be though! They feel that these other countries should fend for themselves!

 Like I always end up saying, it's usually the uneducated that look at these views as such. They just don't understand the impact it has on America, "Or can have" I should say!

 When we let things slide by and it goes way to far, To the point it's extremely hard to see any happy ending that's when everyone say's we should of done something!

  Our interference with dealing with ISIS has been sub-par to say the least! We should have used more of everything then was offered!

 Yes, even if that meant boot's on the ground! Why? Because we had them where we wanted and could of handled ISIS in some some quick decisive blows! But now it's dragged out, ISIS ended up gaining tons of ground and dug in like a tick on a dog. Russia has aided the Syrian forces and has committed to honor the Syrian forces with Russian backup!

 What that means is Syria will still be a mess in the long run with the same Government in place that we should of dealt with back when the Government used chemical weapons against the rebels several years ago that also killed over a thousand civilians! But Obama didn't follow through with a code about dealing with anyone that uses chemical weapons! The code is to PUNISH whoever uses chemical weapons!

 Of course the United States didn't get very much in the way of support from our allies, so that didn't help, which leads to another issue with me about the UK. and their unwillingness to have jumped on board with agreeing to punishing Syria and president Al-Assad.
 As far as I'm concerned I think the UK. should leave the EU  like they want and then we should make them walk the hard line! No breaks on the pricing for trading! If they break from the EU they will be losing out on what we offer with the EU and what they offer us! 
 We wouldn't need much from the UK so bon voyage! 

 We have squandered way to much time in the middle east when we should have been working into Asia affairs and in a serious way! We have neglected things, Made a mess of other things, now we look weak and are overly unprotected, and undermanned! 
 To little to late and now we need to do some serious foot work! This is a delicate situation that needs to be addressed and by someone that has a clue of foreign affairs!

  This rant could go on and on! Of course these are all points that lead to why American's feel as they do! Or at least one of the many parts to the reasoning! America needs to do some serious foot work, But who is right for the job? 

  I had read two very good article's in today's online news, I agreed very much with both and I think most sensible people would, If not should! 

 The funny thing is, in most of my own article's, I have already stated these same facts! I mean almost word for word in a few paragraphs. 

 So either this is a very widely viewed known fact. 'Which I think!" Or it was just a lucky type of mutually agreed hiccup?

 Nonetheless under this administration we here in America have suffered and unfortunately it has spilled throughout the world!

 Anyways I am adding the statements Senator John McCain made at the weekly GOP address, The story is credited to Evelyn Rupert reporting from 'The Hill'

McCain delivers his own foreign policy speech

Evelyn Rupert,

 The Hill

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) delivered his own wide-ranging foreign policy speech as he took the floor for the weekly GOP address.
McCain bashed President Obama's foreign policy, that under his administration "we've been on a holiday from American leadership."
He said Obama has "no strategy to successfully reverse the tide of slaughter and mayhem in a world that Director of National Intelligence General James Clapper says has not faced more crises and more refugees than we confront today," and criticized his approach to ISIS and the civil war in Syria.
"We know the so-call 'cease fire' in Syria does ultimately collapse, we know what happens next: more barrel bombs and slaughter of the innocent by the murderous regime of Bashar Assad ... and ultimately a stronger ISIL that will benefit from the chaos left behind."
McCain touched on Russia and said Vladimir Putin is learning that "diplomacy can be manipulated to serve his strategic ambitions."
"Indeed, two years after Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, President Obama has shamefully refused to provide Ukrainian forces with the lethal assistance they need to defend themselves."
He argued that the administration has failed to defend our interests against China's actions as a "petty bully."
"President Obama has failed to take timely action to defend our interests and our allies fearing China might be less likely to cooperate on priorities he thought were more important, like climate change and the reckless Iran nuclear deal," he said. "And as a result, China's increasingly assertive behavior continues."
McCain called Obama's reaction to ISIS "reactive, slow and insufficient."
"We have achieved some tactical and operational success against ISIL thanks to the excellence of our military leadership and our troops on the ground," he said. "But at a strategic level, we always seem to be a step behind, a day late, and a dollar short."

"If history has taught us anything, it is that while America cannot solve all the world's problems, none of its problems will be solved without American leadership. We can-and must-return to the principle of 'peace through strength' for the sake of our men and women who are serving and the security of our nation," McCain concluded!


Here is the other article in which I found to be "head on!" Story is credited to Earl Wilson from the New York Times!

IF NOT TRUMP, THEN WHO?

Earl Wilson NYT

Donald Trump now looks set to be the Republican presidential nominee. So for those of us appalled by this prospect — what are we supposed to do?
Well, not what the leaders of the Republican Party are doing. They’re going down meekly and hoping for a quiet convention. They seem blithely unaware that this is a Joe McCarthy moment. People will be judged by where they stood at this time. Those who walked with Trump will be tainted forever after for the degradation of standards and the general election slaughter.
The better course for all of us — Republican, Democrat and independent — is to step back and take the long view, and to begin building for that. This election — not only the Trump phenomenon but the rise of Bernie Sanders, also — has reminded us how much pain there is in this country. According to a Pew Research poll, 75 percent of Trump voters say that life has gotten worse for people like them over the last half century.
This declinism intertwines with other horrible social statistics. The suicide rate has surged to a 30-year high — a sure sign of rampant social isolation. A record number of Americans believe the American dream is out of reach. And for millennials, social trust is  at historic lows.
Trump’s success grew out of that pain, but he is not the right response to it. The job for the rest of us is to figure out the right response.
That means first it’s necessary to go out into the pain. I was surprised by Trump’s success because I’ve slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata — in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own. It takes an act of will to rip yourself out of that and go where you feel least comfortable. But this column is going to try to do that over the next months and years. We all have some responsibility to do one activity that leaps across the chasms of segmentation that afflict this country.
We’ll probably need a new national story. Up until now, America’s story has been some version of the rags-to-riches story, the lone individual who rises from the bottom through pluck and work. But that story isn’t working for people anymore, especially for people who think the system is rigged.

I don’t know what the new national story will be, but maybe it will be less individualistic and more redemptive. Maybe it will be a story about communities that heal those who suffer from addiction, broken homes, trauma, prison and loss, a story of those who triumph over the isolation, social instability and dislocation so common today.

 We’ll probably need a new definition of masculinity, too. There are many groups in society who have lost an empire but not yet found a role. Men are the largest of those groups. The traditional masculine ideal isn’t working anymore. It leads to high dropout rates, high incarceration rates, low labor force participation rates. This is an economy that rewards emotional connection and verbal expressiveness. Everywhere you see men imprisoned by the old reticent, stoical ideal.
We’ll also need to rebuild the sense that we’re all in this together. The author R.R. Reno has argued that what we’re really facing these days is a “crisis of solidarity.” Many people, as the writers David and Amber Lapp note, feel pervasively betrayed: by for-profit job-training outfits that left them awash in debt, by spouses and stepparents, by people who collect federal benefits but don’t work. They’ve stopped even expecting loyalty from their employers. The big flashing lights say: NO TRUST. That leads to an everyone-out-for-himself mentality and Trump’s politics of suspicion. We’ll need a communitarianism.
Maybe the task is to build a ladder of hope. People across America have been falling through the cracks. Their children are adrift. Trump, to his credit, made them visible. We can start at the personal level just by hearing them talk.
Then at the community level we can listen to those already helping. James Fallows had a story in The Atlantic recently noting that while we’re dysfunctional at the national level you see local renaissances dotted across the country. Fallows went around asking, “Who makes this town go?” and found local patriots creating radical schools, arts festivals, public-private partnerships that give, say, high school dropouts computer skills.
Then solidarity can be rekindled nationally. Over the course of American history, national projects like the railroad legislation, the W.P.A. and the NASA project have bound this diverse nation. Of course, such projects can happen again — maybe though a national service program, or something else.
Trump will have his gruesome moment. The time is best spent elsewhere, meeting the neighbors who have become strangers, and listening to what they have to say.
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