THE SUMTER ITEM N.G. Osteen 1843-1936 The Watchman and Southron
FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2014 H.G. Osteen 1870-1955 Founder, The Item
H.D. Osteen 1904-1987 The Item
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Margaret W. Osteen 1908-1996 The Item Hubert D. Osteen Jr. Chairman & Editor-in-Chief Graham Osteen Co-President Kyle Osteen Co-President Jack Osteen Editor and Publisher Larry Miller CEO Braden Bunch Senior News Editor
20 N. Magnolia St., Sumter, South Carolina 29150 • Founded October 15, 1894
COMMENTARY
Obama vs. Putin: The mismatch The United States does not view Europe as a battleground between East and West, nor do we see the situation in Ukraine as a zero-sum game. That’s the kind of thinking that should have ended with the Cold War. — Barack Obama, March 24
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ASHINGTON — Should. Lovely sentiment. As lovely as what Obama said five years ago to the United Nations: “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation.” That’s the kind of sentiment you expect from a Miss America contestant asked to name her fondest wish, not from the leader of the free world explaining his foreign policy. The East Europeans know they inhabit the battleground between the West and a Russia that wants to return them to its sphere of influence. Ukrainians see tens of thousands of Russian troops across their border and know they are looking down the barrel of quite a zero-sum game. Obama thinks otherwise. He says that Vladimir Putin’s kind of neoimperialist thinking is a relic of the past — and advises Putin to transcend the Cold War. Good God. Putin hasn’t tranCharles scended the Russian revolution. KRAUTHAMMER Did no one give Obama a copy of Putin’s speech last week upon the annexation of Crimea? Putin railed not only at Russia’s loss of empire in the 1990s. He went back to the 1920s: “After the revolution, the Bolsheviks ... may God judge them, added large sections of the historical South of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine.” Putin was referring not to Crimea (which came two sentences later) but to his next potential target: Kharkiv and Donetsk and the rest of southeastern Ukraine. Putin’s irredentist grievances go very deep. Obama seems unable to fathom them. Asked whether he’d misjudged Russia, whether it really is our greatest geopolitical foe, he disdainfully replied that Russia is nothing but “a regional power” acting “out of weakness.” Where does one begin? Hitler’s Germany and Tojo’s Japan were also regional powers, yet managed to leave behind at least 50 million dead. And yes, Russia should be no match for the American superpower. Yet under this president, Russia has run rings around America, from the attempted ingratiation of the “reset” to America’s empty threats of “consequences” were Russia to annex Crimea. Annex Crimea it did. For which the “consequences” have been risible. Numberless 19th- and 20th-century European soldiers died for Crimea. Putin conquered it in a swift and stealthy campaign that took three weeks and cost his forces not a sprained ankle. That’s “weakness”? Indeed, Obama’s dismissal of Russia as a regional power makes his own leadership of the one superpower all the more embarrassing. For seven decades since the Japanese surrender, our role under 11 presidents had been as offshore balancer protecting smaller allies from potential regional hegemons. What are the allies thinking now? Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and other Pacific Rim friends are wondering where this America will be as China expands its reach and claims. The Gulf states are near panic as they see America playacting nuclear negotiations with Iran that, at best, will leave their mortal Shiite enemy just weeks away from the bomb. America never sought the role that history gave it after World War II to bear unbidden burdens “to assure the survival and the success of liberty,” as movingly described by John Kennedy. We have an appropriate aversion to the stark fact that the alternative to U.S. leadership is either global chaos or dominance by the likes of China, Russia and Iran. But Obama doesn’t even seem to recognize this truth. In his major Brussels address Wednesday, the very day Russia seized the last Ukrainian naval vessel in Crimea, Obama made vague references to further measures should Russia march deeper into Ukraine, while still emphasizing the centrality of international law, international norms and international institutions like the United Nations. Such fanciful thinking will leave our allies with two choices: bend a knee — or arm to the teeth. Either acquiesce to the regional bully or gird your loins, i.e., go nuclear. As surely will the Gulf states. As will, in time, Japan and South Korea. Even Ukrainians are expressing regret at having given up their nukes in return for paper guarantees of territorial integrity. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum was ahead of its time — the perfect example of the kind of advanced 21st-century thinking so cherished by our president. Perhaps the captain of that last Ukrainian vessel should have waved the document at the Russian fleet that took his ship. Charles Krauthammer’s email address is letters@ charleskrauthammer.com. © 2014, The Washington Post Writers Group
COMMENTARY Don’t jump to conclusions about me, Mr. Vickers In response to Dennis E. Vickers letter: I will attempt to explain to you, if that is possible, the reason I wrote that letter concerning Mr. Bradley calling the duly elected president names. In case you missed the last election, President Obama was chosen by the people of the United States to serve as president and commander in chief. He should be afforded the respect of that office. If Mr. Bradley, or you, do not like his agenda, in two years go out and vote for someone you think can do a better job, or maybe have a different skin color. For your information, nowhere in that letter did I say I was a Democrat, or supported President Obama during his election/re-election. You decided to put me in the group, according to you, that is always wrong simply because they have the nerve to disagree with you. Also, I never accused former President Bush of anything that has not been proven a fact. I will ask you the same question: if you consider the present president a two-faced liar, and the worst president in history. Where do you rate the president who preceded him that gave us those stories about WMDs in Iraq, mushroom clouds if we did not invade that country? Where do you rate the former president that came into office with a budget surplus, and left eight years later with the worst economy since the 1930s? Mr. Vickers, yes, I read the letter that was located above mine. I found it to contain a lot of half-truths and repeats of things that haven’t been proven. However, I served in the U.S. military for more than 20 years, and in combat during that period. And one reason I served is for you and Mr. Bradley to have the freedom of speech. But neither you, Mr. Bradley or the person that wrote the letter above mine have the right to invent your own facts. Maybe, someday you can tell me “what is really going on in the White House”, since “we Democrats” can not get our heads of the ground long enough to find out. Next time, try getting more votes than that person you hate. Have a wonderful day. CLAUDE GARRETT Dalzell
Repealing stand your ground laws would be foolish In the March 7 Item, members of the legislative black caucus said that South Carolina’s “stand your ground law” is wrong and should be repealed.
Why should it? Working families spend hundreds upon thousands of dollars to purchase a home, and they can’t have the right to defend their home? That’s wrong. Why can’t we have the castle doctrine bill here in South Carolina? Sen. Joe Manchin signed that bill in West Virginia in 2008, proving that a man’s home is his castle. If we can’t have that kind of law, tell me what am I supposed to do when someone is breaking into my home? When one opens their door after dark, who knows what’s on the other side waiting for them? It takes law enforcement at least 10 to 15 minutes to get where they are needed. If I get blown away, what happens to the perpetrator? He may be found and I’m dead. He goes to trial and is found guilty and my family’s tax dollars pay for his upkeep. That’s justice? I don’t think so. Whatever happened to the young girl that was shot in Columbia last year by a black fellow? White folks didn’t riot and cause a ruckus. Why not? We believe living in a calm society. There are enough troubles in our country. Imagine an 80-year-old man living in his neighborhood for many years helping everyone around him. When his doorbell rings at night, he thinks it’s a neighbor who needs help. He opens up his door and is blown away by someone who wants what he has worked all his life to have and now he’s dead. I believe if the folks that were held as slaves could come back to see and hear what is going on in today’s society, they would take a switch to all the behinds of those who are showing their behinds in this racism bickering. We have a wonderful country in which we are free. Why not be satisfied with our lot in life? I am. LILLI KALIE Sumter
Help veterans’ children get to Camp Corral for a week I am writing to the people of Sumter to let them know why the Golden Corral tries to collect money once a year for Camp Corral. It’s for children of veterans. These children have suffered the loss of a parent or having one disabled or disfigured in some way. Camp Corral uses the money for the children, for food and shelter for one week, so they
can be kids. All of the Golden Corrals that participate try to come in first in the amount of money they raise for the children. The winner is up north of us and has been for three years in a row; Sumter has been second. Now I, for one, want Sumter to be first, so come on all of you Sumterites, let’s donate and come in first, and then that many more children can go to Camp Corral and be kids for a week. They really deserve it. Our veterans have given for us, so let us give a little back for their children. JEANETTE STONER Sumter
Clinton, Obama have caused more havoc than anyone Once in a while, a letter to the editor appears in The Sumter Item that blows my mind. The one in today’s newspaper from Claude Garrett is such a letter. There is no doubt in the world that Barack Obama is a liar and is the worst president in history. Mr. Garrett refers to the president that immediately preceded Obama; how about the president that preceded George W. Bush, namely Bill Clinton? George W. Bush inherited a situation that started the day that Bill Clinton was sworn into the office and continued throughout his eightyear term. Bill Clinton didn’t want to be president, he was having too much fun lording it over the folks in Arkansas, with help from Hillary. The first two years of Bill Clinton’s presidency was a joke, and it was only when he had a Republican Congress that things started to improve. Even then, with he and Hillary recoiling from charges of impropriety in Arkansas, he continued to engage in questionable practices, including lying under oath and being impeached, as Mr. Garrick has reminded us of in his letter of today. To sum up, a lot that has happened since Bill Clinton left office can be traced back to policies of the Clinton Administration, namely the attack on Sept. 11, 2001, and the collapse of the banking system. It is amazing that Democrats can continue to tout Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as being “great” when they “jointly” have wreaked more havoc on the United States than anyone in history. And now we are faced with the possibility of another Clinton administration. Only in America. WARREN C. FORDHAM Manning
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