Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Fred Thompson has a great article over at Townhall.com today. He talks about his own travels to Tbilisi in 2002 when then President Eduard Shevardnadze “…presented a friendlier face to the United States, but was beset by economic problems and corruption charges…”

Then he gets into what’s going on over there with NATO and Ukraine and Russia and Iran and blah blah blah, go over there and read the whole thing. But this part really struck me:

So let’s recap: international terrorism; powerful nation states on a quest for hegemony, whether close to home or further afield and with a willingness to squelch freedom anytime the opportunity arises; less stable and no less dangerous countries with nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities; an alliance of democratic nations of questionable resolve and a debate at home over our future role in the world with a political party happy to create the impression of diminished resolve with little concern for the long term damage such an impression may cause.

Under these circumstances the old title “leader of the free world” takes on renewed meaning. He will have to guide the body politic at home toward resolution and in all likelihood engender resolve in a new alliance of democratic nations to deal with this broad array of challenges. In short it will require someone with experience and the courage to put his nation’s long term interest above his own.

This is no time to elect a president whose international experience is limited to speaking to adoring European crowds who want to see the United States retreat from the world … until they require our help in the next crisis that threatens them.

It has been instructive for the country to see the candidates’ reaction to the equivalent of Hillary Clinton’s 3 a.m. phone call. While he was vacationing in Hawaii, Barack Obama’s advisors scrambled into action and initially came up with the expected liberal bromides which equated the actions of Russia and Georgia and only ratcheted up the rhetoric when they began to actually understand what was happening.

It wasn’t that difficult for John McCain. For him Georgia was another little-known part of the world, whose leaders and history he is familiar with. And long before this Georgian crisis, he’s had the correct read on Russia, just as he’s had the right read on what we needed to do in Iraq. .

This crisis half a world away confirms what I’ve been saying for a while: This election cycle, the traffic in the world is very heavy …and dangerous; it’s no time to give a kid with barely a learner’s permit the keys to the car.

Fred is so dog-gone right here, it’s not even funny. Kudos to that man for putting it out there. We need more of our Conservative statesmen speaking up and out about how important experience, domestically and in foreign affairs, is so crucial to the next Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces.

(Townhall)

Nods to The Patriot Room and LGF.