Republican Presidential Candidates: Russia, China, Iran "Enemies"

*Wisconsin governor Scott Walker dares Russian President Vladimir Putin to probe him with pointy objects

*Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee informs us that the purpose of the military is to "kill people and break things”

*To defeat Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Trump must present himself as the anti-war candidate

I tuned into the Fox News Republican presidential debate expecting it to be a hot mess. Most of the subsequent coverage from the Western MSM has been tirelessly following the developing story that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is rude. I am not downplaying his uncouth comments, but Donald Trump has been Donald Trump for quite some time now, and I’ve always wondered why Megyn Kelly remains on a network whose primary output is classless buffoonery. This isn’t news.

It’s clear that as long as the mainstream media outlets continue to distract the American public with long-winded, repetitive dissertations on The Donald, there needs to be no discussion on the far more disturbing commentary from the Republican candidates.

Having sat through about an hour or so (with commercials) of Ted Cruz elucidating the public menace comprised of drug lords, pimps, and prostitutes who are so unsuccessful in their chosen professions that they have had to resort to abusing Social Security, to assurances from Trump that he will personally build a fence at the border to keep out those dang Mexicans stealing our jobs, I rejoiced as we finally got to the good stuff: the chance for the candidates to trot out their respective Russia policies.

Did I say Russia policies? Oopsie. I meant warmongering.

Bret Baier: Welcome back to Cleveland. Our next topic is foreign policy. You may not have seen the late-developing news today our Fox Pentagon Team broke earlier this evening about a top Iranian general traveling to Moscow to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin. His name is general Quasem Soleimani. He’s blamed for hundreds of U.S. troops’ deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. His trip to Russia appears to directly violate UN Security Council resolutions to confine him to Iran. So Mr. Trump, if you were president, how would you respond to this.

Donald Trump: I would be so different from what you have right now, like the polar opposite. We have a president who doesn’t have a clue. I would say he’s incompetent, but I don’t want to do that, because that’s not nice. But if you look at the deals we make, whether it’s the nuclear deal with 24-hour periods (and by the way, before you get to the 24 hours, you have to go through a system.) You look at Sgt. Bergdahl. We get Bergdahl, a traitor, and they get five of the big, great, killers leaders that they want. We have people in Washington that don’t know what they’re doing. Now.  (Cheers). I agree. Now, with Iran. We’re making a deal. You would say, "We want him. We want him. We want our prisoners. We want all these things.  We don’t get anything. We’re giving them $150 billion plus. They are going to be… I’ll tell you what. If Iran was a stock, you folks should go out and buy it right now because you’ll quadruple. This… what’s happened in Iran is a disgrace, and it’s going to lead to destruction in large portions of the world.

Bret Baier: Another new development today. Senior Defense Officials tell Fox they "strongly suspect” Russia was behind a cyberattack on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ offices emails.

Scott Walker: Jeez!

Bret Baier: This comes in the wake of the Director of National Intelligence blaming the Chinese for the largest-ever cyberattack, stealing personal data of tens of millions of Americans. Sen. Cruz, in your view, have Russia and China committed acts of cyber war, and if you were president, what would you do about it?

Sen. Ted Cruz: Well, Bret, of course they have. And over the last six and a half years, we’ve seen the consequences of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy. Leading from behind is a disaster. We have abandoned and alienated our friends and allies, and our enemies are stronger.  Radical Islam is on the rise. Iran’s on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon. China is waging cyber warfare against America. Russia…General Soleimani you just mentioned, the Iranian general, is the head of the al-Quds forces. He’s directly responsible for the murder of over 500 American servicemen in Iraq, and part of this Iranian deal was lifting the international sanctions on Gen. Soleimani. The day Gen. Soleimani flew back from Moscow to Iran was the day, we believe, Russia used cyber warfare against the Joint Chiefs. We need a new Commander in Chief that will stand up to our enemies and that will have credibility. It is worth emphasizing that Iran released our hostages in 1981 the day Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.

(Up until that date, the President of the United States was actually Jimmy Carter, but  I won’t disabuse Ted of the notion that Iran released American hostages because they were terrified of The Gipper.)

Bret Baier: Dr. Carson, in August of 2012, President Obama famously declared that if Bashar Al-Assad used chemical weapons "that’s a red line for us, and that there would be enormous consequences.” One year later, with overwhelming evidence that Assad had,in fact, used chemical weapons, and crossed that "red line,” President Obama declined to use military force against the Assad regime. As president, would you have used military force there?

Dr. Ben Carson: Well, what we have to stop and think about is the fact that we have weakened ourselves militarily to such an extent that it affects all of our military policies. Our navy is at its smallest size since 1917; our Air Force since 1940. In recent testimony, the commandant of the Marine Corps said half of the non-deployed units were not ready. And, you know, the sequester is cutting the heart out of our personnel. Our generals are retiring because they don’t want to be part of this. And, at the same time, our enemies are increasing. Our friends can’t trust us anymore. You know, Ukraine was a nuclear-armed state. They gave away their nuclear arms with the understanding that we would protect them. We won’t even give them offensive weapons. You know, we’ve turned our back on Israel, our ally. You know, in a situation like that, of course Obama’s not going to be able to do anything. I would shore up our military first because if you don’t get the military right, nothing else is going to work.

(Fox took a commercial break here to allow Lockheed Martin to wet themselves.)

Bret Baier:  Governor Walker, what would you do if, as President, Russian President Vladimir Putin started a campaign to destabilize NATO allies, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, mirroring the actions Putin took in the early days of Ukraine?

Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisc): First off, with the cyberattack of Russia the other day, it’s pretty sad to think right now that probably the Russian and Chinese government [sic] know more about Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server than do the members of the United States Congress. (Applause.) And that has put our national security at risk. If I’m president, he won’t think about that. You know, Putin believes the old Lenin adage that "You probe with bayonets. When you find mush, you push. When you find steel, you stop.  Under Obama and Clinton, we found a lot of mush over the past few years. We need a national security policy that puts steel in front of our enemies. I would send weapons to Ukraine. I would work with NATO to put forces on the eastern border of Poland and the Baltic nations. And I would reinstate, put in place, back in the missile defense system that we had in place in Poland and in the Czech Republic.  He’ll find steel.

All that build-up and then the let down. Turns out, none of them have a Russia policy. Oh, sure, there’s a lot of posturing, grandstanding, and threats, but none of the candidates on that stage, including Trump, were actually able to lay out a cogent policy of how to conduct civilized, respectful diplomatic relations with a fellow nuclear power. I can’t imagine a situation where Sergei Lavrov would take any of these clowns seriously. Lots of shout-outs to the military contractors, though. But I suppose that’s all American foreign policy really boils down to anymore.

The only way any of these bozos were able to distinguish themselves from Obama’s failed Ukraine policy is they think that tossing more weapons into a civil war we had no business a) starting and b) exacerbating will somehow magically make one iota of difference. Yes, it seems "Let’s arm Ukraine” is all their little squirrel brains have managed to cobble together. Who are we going to give these arms to, Scott? The millions of young Ukrainian men who have fled to big, mean Russia to escape conscription? Or, stop me if you’ve heard this one: How about the Ukrainian National Guard? Yes, let’s give more arms and heavy weaponry to people who openly express admiration for Adolf Hitler.

There you have it, folks. Russia is our enemy. Again. So are Iran and China. As per usual. That means we don’t negotiate with them, because we don’t negotiate with our enemies. That means our only option is perpetual war.

God bless America.

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