Notes of Concern....
...Jack Blair
Do NotTest Us!
You do not want to anger the USA.
We are a tough group, and we can make life very unhappy for those nations or leaders who anger us.
Why, not so long ago Iran actually said they would annihilate our ally Israel, wiping it off the face of the earth, just as soon as it could get a nuclear weapon. Well, that really set us off. We told them to cut it out and to stop their experiments and not to dare make a bomb. They promised they would cut back and slow down.
We got their attention for sure. But our friends in Israel don’t feel very secure. We will have to talk to them and ask them to stop being such nervous nellies. Iran wouldn’t dare ignore our warnings.
And how about Syria?
We told that despot Assad that he needed to step down and turn his government over to the rebels in his country. We even got a couple of our tougher European allies to join us in sending pretty serious messages. We predicted the rebels would win years ago, and Assad would be gone. While it is true he is still there and the rebels are in retreat, and that he has announced he will run for re-election, we still believe that down deep we have struck fear in his heart and that he will never win the next election.
Right!
And now, just when we thought the Russian Bear was tamed, the KGB throw-back Vlad Putin is taunting us.
We warned him. We gave him every chance.
Now we had to get really tough.
His friends, Oleg Belavantsev, Sergei Chemezov, Dmitry Kozak, Yevgeny Murov, Alexei Pushkov, Igor Sechin and Vyacheslav Volodin are not permitted to get visas to come visit the USA. They cannot invest here. If they have any money here, we are not going to give it back.
Now that is pressure!
Imagine, if any of these guys like to vacation in Miami Beach, throw the dice in Los Vegas, take in a Broadway Show, well, all that is gone now. They will just have to sit around in their multimillion dollar Dachas on the seas over there in Russia and stew in their juices. When they finally get fed up, they will go to their pal Vlad and convince him to give back Crimea and any other lands that he might have scooped up by then.
Right!
Now, we are tough, but fair. Our President made it very clear that none of these penalties actually apply to Vlad. He can still come on over if he wants, any time he wants. No hard feelings.
Further, so the Russians don’t misunderstand, we gave them a heads up that we would not send in any troops. We just will keep stepping up these really uncomfortable visa cancellations and money freezing. If they keep all this up, there won’t be anyone in Vlad’s close circle of advisors or their extended families that will be able to buy a Christmas gift at Tiffany’s, place a bet on a horse in the Kentucky Derby, or enjoy some Hagen Daz ice cream in Atlantic City.
I hope my older readers realize that if Harry Truman had taken this approach to world affairs, he would have told the Emperor of Japan that Tojo and his generals and admirals would no longer be welcome in our fair cities and would simply have to put up with all those cherry blossoms in Japan and drink nothing but sake.
And in the interest of fairness, we would have told them that we would not bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki and that they could expect sanctions in the form of our not importing any Toyotas or Hondas.
That would surely have brought hostilities to a rapid halt.
I tell you, my readers, you couldn’t make this stuff up!
