Obomba !

The Bush Doctrine is still alive and well. The belief that every security threat to our nation and our national interest must be met with force has grown tiresome. Newt Gingrich is now the current purveyor of this Doctrine, apparently a willing disciple of the previous president.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told “Fox News Sunday” that he would have disabled the long-range missile before North Korea launched it, saying too many people “do not appreciate the scale of the threat that is evolving on the planet.”

“One morning, just like 9/11, there’s going to be a disaster,” Gingrich said. “I have yet to see the United Nations do anything effective with either Iran or North Korea.”

Reacting to President Barack Obama’s speech in Prague, Gingrich called the plan for a Global Summit on Nuclear Security a “wonderful fantasy idea,” saying Russia and other nations can’t be trusted.

“What are they going to promise, and why would we believe them?” Gingrich said. “It’s very dangerous to have a fantasy foreign policy, and it can get you in enormous trouble.”

Host Chris Wallace asked Gingrich: “So you’re saying that President Gingrich would have taken out that” missile?

Gingrich replied: “There are three or four techniques that could have been used, from unconventional forces to standoff capabilities, to say: ‘We’re not going to tolerate a North Korean missile launch, period.’ I mean, the world’s either got to decide that North Korea is utterly dangerous … I’d recommend, look at electromagnetic pulse, which changes every … equation about how risky these weapons are.”

It appears that Gingrich is doing his insane best to fill the Republican Party's leadership vacuum by spouting one outlandish statement after the other. But at least you'd think that a man of his supposed intellect wouldn't try to bamboozle the American people by offering a counterproductive response to North Korea's threat of launching a missile.

All of Newt's responses are madly inappropriate. Russia is a greater threat. But he's not calling for an attack against a Russian missile launch. China is a bigger threat. But he's not calling for an attack against a Chinese missile launch. There's been several in recent months.

But little North Korea, who we all know is like a spoil, brattish child seeking attention from an indifferent parent, he wants to bomb.

"We got to show them who's boss. We got to show them that we mean business. We got to show them that we're sick and tired of them attempting to develop missiles that could reach Hawaii, Alaska, or our nation's mainland."

Gingrich leaves out that Kim Jong-il launched missiles, seven into the Sea of Japan, when the Bush Administration held office, and Bush, then president, did nothing.

If we're to accept Gingrich's solution, Obama must respond more violently than Bush, notwithstanding that Defense Secretary Gates has stated that such an attack against North Korea is ill-advised and impossible to carry out.

His party not able to win the White House and establish a majority in the two houses of Congress, Gingrich is resorting to a Bush and Republican tactic of inducing change, not with hope, but with fear: “One morning, just like 9/11, there’s going to be a disaster,” Gingrich said.

If fear becomes the only weapon Republicans have to fight back, then fear will rule this country, fear will determine our foreign policy, and fear will dictate how we relate generally to the rest of the world.

According to Gingrich, “It’s very dangerous to have a fantasy foreign policy [the total elimination of nuclear weapons], and it can get you in enormous trouble.”

How about, then, having a foreign policy that's not a weaponized one, Newt?

Yet, Ronald Reagan, the Republican that all republicans worship, also proffered a nuclear-free world as a goal worth seeking.

When Obama proffers the idea, it's "fantasy," if Regan supported the same idea it coruscates with brilliance. The hypocrisy is so blatant that you'd have to have the lowest of opinions of the American people's intellect to attempt it.

But attempt it, he did.

If Iraq has taught us anything, it's that our military can't solve all the problems that this country faces abroad, that we don't have the fiscal means to wage wars around the world, that the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes supposedly to disarm an enemy before it has the means or the opportunity to strike us, is blatantly naive, and that if we're going to create a secure America, we can't, with every opportunity, create enemies where none need be.

And did I say, we can't bomb everybody we disagree with?