Robert Gates tells Republicans to cut back on criticizing Obama’s Ukraine policy
As the Ukraine crisis deepened, Sen. John McCain responded by criticizing President Obamas feckless foreign policy, while Sen. Lindsey Graham called Obama a weak and indecisive president [who] invites aggression.
These sharp comments brought to mind a different time and crisis and a different tone in foreign policy debates. This prompted me to call another prominent Republican who takes a quite different view. Ill get to that in a moment, but first, a brief historical digression.
The year was 1980. The Iranian revolution had toppled the shahs regime, the Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan and the United States president, Jimmy Carter, was widely perceived as a weak leader. Looking for a sharp-edged evaluation of the situation, I decided to interview Sen. Henry M. Jackson, a leading hawk.
What Jackson (D-Wash.) said was surprising, even at a distance of nearly 35 years. Rather than demanding tougher statements or more saber-rattling, he said he worried about overreaction to events: We appear to be going from one crisis to another, with Washington dispensing red-hot rhetoric at least once a week about the dire consequences of this or that or something else.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-the-cool-it-response-to-foreign-policy-rhetoric/2014/03/04/38cefa34-a3e6-11e3-a5fa-55f0c77bf39c_print.html