 | | Aw, how cute. A li'l chinchilla just curled up on his head and went to sleep... |
America needs a "new realism" in its foreign policy and a concerted push for energy independence to safeguard national security, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador, said Saturday. "What the Bush administration has failed to understand is that while diplomacy without power is weak, power without diplomacy is blind," Richardson said in the Democrats' weekly radio address.
| "New realism" usually translates into selling your friends down the river and letting your enemies screw you. It's also known as "taking the path of least resistance," or "going with the flow." |
Richardson pointed to fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants, escalating violence in Iraq, the stalemate with North Korea over its missile and nuclear programs and rising oil prices as evidence that "the world around us in on the verge of spiraling out of control."
| Much of the world around us is controlled by men who would qualify for jackets with very long sleeves in a rational world. Bill's making the assumption that because they're spiraling out of control we have an obligation to accomodate them. |
"If we would have had a permanent Middle East envoy in the region, we would have been in a better position to disarm Hezbollah and protect Israel, and implement a concurrent cease-fire along with a legitimate, international peacekeeping force on the ground," Richardson said.
| If Hezbollah was disarmed then we'd be a lot closer to Muddle East peace. Which is the cause and which is the effect? |
He called for direct U.S. talks with North Korea and Iran, objecting that the Bush approach has been to "outsource our diplomacy."
| "Outsourcing" is a Democrat bad word. If we were doing it ourselves we'd be guilty of "unilateralism." |
"We are Democrats and we stand for diplomacy, not threats; bridges, not walls; alliances, not isolation," he said.
| Who'd you have in mind to ally with, Bill? La Belle France? China? |
"Bill Richardson - much like Howard Dean - can focus on playing small-ball politics, but President Bush and Republicans will continue to focus on the threats facing our nation and delivering long term solutions that increase our safety," responded Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. |