Amid the takeaways from the most recent Republican presidential debate, nothing was more disturbing than what New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had to say. And, yes, that’s saying something for any forum that featured chaos candidate Donald Trump and carpet bomber Ted Cruz.
Christie, whose media savvy, prosecutor-governor experience and New Hampshire poll numbers keep him in the mix should the clown car crash, was scary on Syria.
By way of asserting himself as a national security tough guy, he called for a no-fly zone over Syria. He then vowed to shoot down any Russian plane that violated said zone. Given a chance to clarify–or rhetorically back off–with a follow-up question, he simply doubled down.
“Yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots,” underscored Christie, “if they were stupid enough to think that this president is the same feckless weakling that we have in the White House.”
There’s scoring cheap, political points on foreign policy–and then there’s this kind of rhetorical brinksmanship.
This is beyond sobering. We all know we didn’t learn the lesson of Vietnam from our heavy-handed Middle East policy. Now we’re finding that a viable presidential candidate doesn’t recognize the lesson from the Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s unconscionable.
Ultimately, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev got it. Each had a nuclear button. It was an existential moment for humanity a half century ago.
But Chris Christie-Vladimir Putin? That’s flat-out frightening.