A few months ago, with his usual hyperbole Donald Trump boasted that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and his supporters would still vote for him. Sadly, I think he’s probably right. What’s becoming more apparent every day however is that Hillary Clinton could probably make the same boast with equal accuracy.
Why do I say that? Well, the first point is that Clinton is the nominee at all. Given the disaster Libya has become, given the events of Benghazi in 2012 and her proven lies about it, given the fact that ISIS is a direct result of the Obama Administration’s exit from Iraq – during her tenure – one has to wonder how she even made it past the first set of primaries. How is it that there was no other candidate who could come even close to beating her? While the cards were in fact stacked in her favor, while Bernie Sanders appealed to a small segment of the Democrat party, elsewhere there was never any real clamor for another candidate. Ask yourself, if Benghazi had been a GOP operation, would the Secretary of State overseeing it have been the GOP nominee four years later? Can you imagine the withering attacks he or she would have endured from the press? No chance they would have survived past March. Can you imagine the grilling a GOP Sec of State would take if he told the parents of one of the dead a lie just moments before telling her family the truth, then turned around and lied to the nation? Of course… but Clinton had to face none of that.
Next, her email problems have been in the air for years. It’s obvious to anyone other than the willingly blind that she set up that server for the specific purpose of hiding her correspondence from the prying eyes of Congress and pesky reporters with the FOI requests. And as has now been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, she lied to Congress and the American people and maybe even the FBI about her handling of Top Secret information. How is it possible that supporters feel that someone who has such little regard for American secrets should be in charge of the entire American intelligence apparatus? The security apparatus? The justice apparatus? Can you imagine the press coverage if a Republican was responsible for a breach that may have caused the death of an Iranian scientist helping the United States? With Clinton, little more than crickets.
How about the Russian Reset? Clinton famously kicked off the Russian Reset which was supposed to begin a new cooperative friendship between the US and Russia. Since then Russia has been anything but friendly. They’ve hacked American government computers, used gas as a weapon to intimidate Europe, they’ve threatened the Baltics and they’ve been harassing American diplomats across Europe. And don’t forget, a year after she left office our new Russian friends invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, That certainly seems like she built a strong foundation of friendship.
And finally then there’s the Clinton Foundation, that billion dollar vehicle largely funded by groups – read Wall Street banks and Middle Eastern governments – who are ostensibly anathema to her basic “principles” of support for the middle class and poor against the rich and support for gay rights. The fact that the foundation seems to be little more than a vehicle for enriching the Clintons, and is now under investigation by the FBI, New York, Washington and Little Rock seems to bother no one on the left.
Getting back to the shooting of someone on 5th Avenue. Hillary Clinton is not Donald Trump. While they both may be lying, manipulative Democrats, that’s not the point. He sits at the head of a cult of personality that animates thousands of people to show up for his rallies. She is at the head of a borg where the hundreds of people who attend her rallies look as if they are punching the clock and can’t wait for the end of day whistle. If he were to die the air in the Trump movement would dissipate quickly and the GOP would find itself struggling to find a replacement who could carry the party to victory. If, on the other hand, Hillary Clinton were to die the Democrats would simply push her corpse to the side, take down the generic Clinton logo and put in her place the next functionary and things would move forward as if nothing had happened.
And that’s the point. Hillary Clinton is not inspiring anyone. She is taking her turn. She is the opposition of anything that is proffered by the GOP, regardless of who they trot out. (You may think their demonizing is Trump specific… It’s not. Remember what they did to Mitt Romney.) Like the mind numbed audience in Apple’s debut commercial in 1984… or the zombies in book itself, Democrats step in and vote for whoever is on the ticket, regardless of who that person is. And in this case of it’s Hillary Clinton. It’ doesn’t really matter what she’s done, what she’s “accomplished’ or what she stands for – if anything – the only thing that matters is that she’s not the Republican. If there was video of Clinton shooting the guy on 5th Avenue could she really still get elected and would the robot Democrats vote for her anyway? If the guy was wearing a Trump shirt I’m pretty sure they would. One has to wonder what the playing field would look like if the GOP had nominated a real conservative to oppose the borg...
Showing posts with label ISIS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ISIS. Show all posts
Monday, August 15, 2016
Sunday, November 22, 2015
King Leonidas, ISIS and the Culture War Barack Obama Refuses to See… Nevermind Fight
A week and a half ago fascist thugs of ISIS attacked Paris. Three days later President Obama addressed the world from Istanbul and said the attack was “an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share.”
That is a wonderful sentiment, but like most things that come out of Barack Obama’s mouth, it’s wrong. There are not universal values.
Take freedom of speech. Across the planet, from China to Saudi Arabia to Russia to Venezuela, (and most places in between) nothing resembling freedom of speech such freedom exists. In the West, from Australia to England to Italy to Canada, freedom of speech ostensibly exists, but the restrictions continue to grow. Even here in the United States where freedom of speech is enshrined in our Constitution, it is under siege everywhere. On universities, the very places where ideas are supposed to be studied and debated, speech codes are suffocating liberty and mini fascists seek to limit your ability to say anything they disagree with. In everyday life criticizing anyone for anything opens one up for accusations of being racist or sexist or homophobic or some other form of intolerance.
Freedom of religion? One wonders how Coptic Christians in Egypt feel about freedom of Religion. Try wearing a crucifix in Saudi Arabia. How free do the followers of Falun Gong feel in China? Jews in Europe… Here in the United States Christians are under assault for refusing to participate in gay weddings while atheists seek to eliminate even the shadows of Christianity from the public square.
Freedom in general is not something found on most parts of the planet… Across the Muslim world women are slaves and getting raped is a crime for which one can be ostracized, jailed or even killed. South America and Africa are rife with failed states where graft is the natural order of things and the populations are mired in poverty (real poverty… not what passes for poverty in the United States) while government officials and their connected cronies live in luxury. In China the government or government aligned corporations control virtually everything, even down to reproduction.
All in all, the values that Obama is suggesting are universal are nothing of the sort. Widespread notions of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and individual liberty simply don’t exist. The vast majority of people living on the planet today do not share or experience any of those values. There has never been a time in human history where a majority of people shared such values. Indeed it’s never even been close.
It is only with the rise of the West, where such freedoms and values were developed and flourished and codified, that the notion of “universal freedoms” could even be imagined. Such freedoms hit their apex with the writing of the United States Constitution. For the first time in human history there was a document that not only explicitly spelled out the rights of citizens that could not be impeded, but more importantly, explicitly limited the power of government to only those things it was specifically empowered to do by the citizens.
The reality is, the “universal freedoms” Barack Obama talks about simply don’t exist. They never have. But somehow he, along with the rest of the left pretend that they do, which is exactly why they seek to shift power away from the constitutionally constrained government of the United States to the unconstrained United Nations. They live in a fantasy world where if everyone would just put down their weapons and embrace one another that the world will suddenly be all right. They feel like if everyone simply kept the “fair share” of their income then magically the world become a nirvana in which every family enjoys a lifetime of Norman Rockwell dinners.
And that tells you exactly why ISIS is a problem and the West is in decline. Europeans, along with the left in America, willfully ignored what made the West a success in the first place… culture inspired by Christianity – although at times hindered by it as well, built on intellectual curiosity and empowered by individual liberty and freedom. The notions of freedom of religion and speech and private property as we know them today evolved in the West over a period of 800 years. They were not codified by an edict by a Pope or Martin Luther or Napoleon or Queen Victoria or even James Madison. These decidedly non-universal values came about as the result of a struggle between church and state and citizenry as well as between churches, states and citizens. Much bloodshed was spilled in the process of developing those values. They were hard fought for and won, and to the degree that they exist in other places around the world, for the most part they were brought there by westerners.
It is not so much that the West is collapsing because it’s being invaded (which it surely is) but rather rotting from within because it has spend the last half century protected in a cocoon of security provided by the American military. After rescuing much of the world from the Nazis and the Japanese in WWII, for more than half a century the United States has provided a bulwark against the Soviets and the Chinese and later the Russians. Under the protection of American power, the West - including the United States – deluded itself with the notion that peace was now the norm and that civilization had finally come to humanity. As such, it was possible to create vast social programs to nurture citizens from cradle to grave with little concern about fiscal or social responsibility. In addition, they opened their doors to allow millions of immigrants to enter their countries and enjoy those programs without ever being required to assimilate. Indeed, in many European countries assimilation could be almost impossible even if it were desired, which it rarely was.
Today we have the logical conclusion of the argument that no culture is superior to any other. Because Western culture is no better than any other, there is no basis to demand assimilation. Migrants by the millions move to the West and then seek to establish mini-me versions of the failed states and dysfunctional cultures they left behind… Indeed, across Europe there are movements under foot to implement Sharia law above national law while France, Britain and other nations are peppered with “No-Go” zones.
Given that it’s seen as racist or xenophobic to suggest that one’s culture is superior to another, it’s verboten to ask who put men on the moon, mapped the human genome or invented mobile phones. Such questions do not matter because all cultures are equal. And so it goes. As the self loathing West derides the very things that made it successful in the first place it finds itself under siege by those who are not only proud of their culture and values but are willing to both kill and die for them.
To see how this juxtaposition of passion and cultural apathy might play itself out, read or watch something about the Battle of Thermopylae. Observe how a small force of highly motivated and passionate fighters can have an impact exponentially larger than their numbers might suggest. King Leonidas and his men lose their lives and the battle… but the Greeks win the war. Unfortunately for America and the West, our impotent and incompetent leader is Barack Obama, who refuses to even see that we’re in the midst of a culture war, nevermind recognize that for the other side it’s literally a fight to the death. Let’s hope the next occupant of the Oval Office understands that America and the values she holds are not only, not universal, but they are exceptional, and indeed worthy of both praise and protection.
That is a wonderful sentiment, but like most things that come out of Barack Obama’s mouth, it’s wrong. There are not universal values.
Take freedom of speech. Across the planet, from China to Saudi Arabia to Russia to Venezuela, (and most places in between) nothing resembling freedom of speech such freedom exists. In the West, from Australia to England to Italy to Canada, freedom of speech ostensibly exists, but the restrictions continue to grow. Even here in the United States where freedom of speech is enshrined in our Constitution, it is under siege everywhere. On universities, the very places where ideas are supposed to be studied and debated, speech codes are suffocating liberty and mini fascists seek to limit your ability to say anything they disagree with. In everyday life criticizing anyone for anything opens one up for accusations of being racist or sexist or homophobic or some other form of intolerance.
Freedom of religion? One wonders how Coptic Christians in Egypt feel about freedom of Religion. Try wearing a crucifix in Saudi Arabia. How free do the followers of Falun Gong feel in China? Jews in Europe… Here in the United States Christians are under assault for refusing to participate in gay weddings while atheists seek to eliminate even the shadows of Christianity from the public square.
Freedom in general is not something found on most parts of the planet… Across the Muslim world women are slaves and getting raped is a crime for which one can be ostracized, jailed or even killed. South America and Africa are rife with failed states where graft is the natural order of things and the populations are mired in poverty (real poverty… not what passes for poverty in the United States) while government officials and their connected cronies live in luxury. In China the government or government aligned corporations control virtually everything, even down to reproduction.
It is only with the rise of the West, where such freedoms and values were developed and flourished and codified, that the notion of “universal freedoms” could even be imagined. Such freedoms hit their apex with the writing of the United States Constitution. For the first time in human history there was a document that not only explicitly spelled out the rights of citizens that could not be impeded, but more importantly, explicitly limited the power of government to only those things it was specifically empowered to do by the citizens.
The reality is, the “universal freedoms” Barack Obama talks about simply don’t exist. They never have. But somehow he, along with the rest of the left pretend that they do, which is exactly why they seek to shift power away from the constitutionally constrained government of the United States to the unconstrained United Nations. They live in a fantasy world where if everyone would just put down their weapons and embrace one another that the world will suddenly be all right. They feel like if everyone simply kept the “fair share” of their income then magically the world become a nirvana in which every family enjoys a lifetime of Norman Rockwell dinners.
And that tells you exactly why ISIS is a problem and the West is in decline. Europeans, along with the left in America, willfully ignored what made the West a success in the first place… culture inspired by Christianity – although at times hindered by it as well, built on intellectual curiosity and empowered by individual liberty and freedom. The notions of freedom of religion and speech and private property as we know them today evolved in the West over a period of 800 years. They were not codified by an edict by a Pope or Martin Luther or Napoleon or Queen Victoria or even James Madison. These decidedly non-universal values came about as the result of a struggle between church and state and citizenry as well as between churches, states and citizens. Much bloodshed was spilled in the process of developing those values. They were hard fought for and won, and to the degree that they exist in other places around the world, for the most part they were brought there by westerners.
It is not so much that the West is collapsing because it’s being invaded (which it surely is) but rather rotting from within because it has spend the last half century protected in a cocoon of security provided by the American military. After rescuing much of the world from the Nazis and the Japanese in WWII, for more than half a century the United States has provided a bulwark against the Soviets and the Chinese and later the Russians. Under the protection of American power, the West - including the United States – deluded itself with the notion that peace was now the norm and that civilization had finally come to humanity. As such, it was possible to create vast social programs to nurture citizens from cradle to grave with little concern about fiscal or social responsibility. In addition, they opened their doors to allow millions of immigrants to enter their countries and enjoy those programs without ever being required to assimilate. Indeed, in many European countries assimilation could be almost impossible even if it were desired, which it rarely was.
Today we have the logical conclusion of the argument that no culture is superior to any other. Because Western culture is no better than any other, there is no basis to demand assimilation. Migrants by the millions move to the West and then seek to establish mini-me versions of the failed states and dysfunctional cultures they left behind… Indeed, across Europe there are movements under foot to implement Sharia law above national law while France, Britain and other nations are peppered with “No-Go” zones.
Given that it’s seen as racist or xenophobic to suggest that one’s culture is superior to another, it’s verboten to ask who put men on the moon, mapped the human genome or invented mobile phones. Such questions do not matter because all cultures are equal. And so it goes. As the self loathing West derides the very things that made it successful in the first place it finds itself under siege by those who are not only proud of their culture and values but are willing to both kill and die for them.
To see how this juxtaposition of passion and cultural apathy might play itself out, read or watch something about the Battle of Thermopylae. Observe how a small force of highly motivated and passionate fighters can have an impact exponentially larger than their numbers might suggest. King Leonidas and his men lose their lives and the battle… but the Greeks win the war. Unfortunately for America and the West, our impotent and incompetent leader is Barack Obama, who refuses to even see that we’re in the midst of a culture war, nevermind recognize that for the other side it’s literally a fight to the death. Let’s hope the next occupant of the Oval Office understands that America and the values she holds are not only, not universal, but they are exceptional, and indeed worthy of both praise and protection.
Monday, November 16, 2015
The Paris attacks and the Mizzou protests are two sides of the same coin…
The ISIS attacks on civilians in Paris and the attacks on common sense across the country are two sides of the same coin.
Both were carried out by those who hate freedom…. Not their freedom of course, but yours. With ISIS (as well as fanatical Muslims around the planet) you are expected to live the way they want you to, to act the way they want you to, but most of all you must believe the way they want you to… or they will simply kill you.
At Mizzou, Yale and Amherst, protesters, (as well as liberals everywhere across the country, including the BLM movement) you are expected to understand their feelings of offense, recognize their “plight” and appreciate how difficult their lives are. Essentially you must believe them when they tell you the world is unfair for everyone other than straight white males. If you don’t agree they probably won’t try and kill you, but they will seek to kill your livelihood.
Both groups have their rules about what you can and can’t do and say. For the former it’s be Christian, be gay, drive a car if you’re a woman, be a girl in school, punish your rapist if you’re a woman or express a view that doesn’t comport with their interpretation of the Koran.
For the latter it’s pointing out that exponentially more black men die at the hands of other black men than white cops every year, support colorblind college admission standards, try police misconduct trials in a courtroom rather than the media, suggest women and men are indeed different with different abilities or that college students might be slightly over sensitive when it comes to being offended.
Neither group believes in the notion of free speech. Across the Muslim world one sees journalists and bloggers killed for the crime of speaking out against terrorism while in the west you have the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the murder of Theo Van Gogh and the fatwa on Ayaan Hirsi Ali among others.
At the same time, here in the US on the rare occasions conservative speakers make it to the podium on a college campus, they are usually shouted down; counter intuitive “free speech zones” greatly limit a speaker’s ability to be heard; and memorializing the victims of 9-11 is somehow racist. And when there aren’t enough actual incidents of racism or sexism or this or that ism, they must be contrived…
At the end of the day, Paris, Mizzou, and bakers being bankrupted for not participating in a gay wedding are all about one thing… intolerance. Your ideas don’t matter. Your freedom doesn’t matter. Your life or livelihood doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you understand our “pain” and agree with our ideas and bend to our will. If not, we will strike.
One might bristle at the notion of equating the terror in Paris with the “crybullies” on the left, but the parallel is appropriate. Terror is not an ideology, but a tactic, just as hunger strikes and temper tantrums by football players and other “aggrieved” groups are. In both cases the goal is the same: silence dissent, quash freedom, and coerce obedience. Whether it’s a threat to life and limb or a threat to the order of civilized society, both the demands and the actors should be rejected. The actors of the former should be hunted down and killed while the actors in the latter should be ignored, ostracized and in the case of students who think they have a right to interfere with the education of others, they should simply be expelled.
The poorly named “War on Terror” is a war we have no choice but to engage in and win. We didn't start it, but we must win it in order for our civilization to survive.
The protest war of aggrieved crybullies on the other hand is one that we win by not engaging in. Like a child that bumps his knee, the attention is what propagates the wailing. Ignore him and his attention goes elsewhere. So too with the crybullies. Ignore them and their insipid demands and eventually they will have to start focusing on things of consequence such as getting a real education and learning to be productive members of society.
Both were carried out by those who hate freedom…. Not their freedom of course, but yours. With ISIS (as well as fanatical Muslims around the planet) you are expected to live the way they want you to, to act the way they want you to, but most of all you must believe the way they want you to… or they will simply kill you.
At Mizzou, Yale and Amherst, protesters, (as well as liberals everywhere across the country, including the BLM movement) you are expected to understand their feelings of offense, recognize their “plight” and appreciate how difficult their lives are. Essentially you must believe them when they tell you the world is unfair for everyone other than straight white males. If you don’t agree they probably won’t try and kill you, but they will seek to kill your livelihood.
Both groups have their rules about what you can and can’t do and say. For the former it’s be Christian, be gay, drive a car if you’re a woman, be a girl in school, punish your rapist if you’re a woman or express a view that doesn’t comport with their interpretation of the Koran.
For the latter it’s pointing out that exponentially more black men die at the hands of other black men than white cops every year, support colorblind college admission standards, try police misconduct trials in a courtroom rather than the media, suggest women and men are indeed different with different abilities or that college students might be slightly over sensitive when it comes to being offended.
At the same time, here in the US on the rare occasions conservative speakers make it to the podium on a college campus, they are usually shouted down; counter intuitive “free speech zones” greatly limit a speaker’s ability to be heard; and memorializing the victims of 9-11 is somehow racist. And when there aren’t enough actual incidents of racism or sexism or this or that ism, they must be contrived…
At the end of the day, Paris, Mizzou, and bakers being bankrupted for not participating in a gay wedding are all about one thing… intolerance. Your ideas don’t matter. Your freedom doesn’t matter. Your life or livelihood doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you understand our “pain” and agree with our ideas and bend to our will. If not, we will strike.
One might bristle at the notion of equating the terror in Paris with the “crybullies” on the left, but the parallel is appropriate. Terror is not an ideology, but a tactic, just as hunger strikes and temper tantrums by football players and other “aggrieved” groups are. In both cases the goal is the same: silence dissent, quash freedom, and coerce obedience. Whether it’s a threat to life and limb or a threat to the order of civilized society, both the demands and the actors should be rejected. The actors of the former should be hunted down and killed while the actors in the latter should be ignored, ostracized and in the case of students who think they have a right to interfere with the education of others, they should simply be expelled.
The poorly named “War on Terror” is a war we have no choice but to engage in and win. We didn't start it, but we must win it in order for our civilization to survive.
The protest war of aggrieved crybullies on the other hand is one that we win by not engaging in. Like a child that bumps his knee, the attention is what propagates the wailing. Ignore him and his attention goes elsewhere. So too with the crybullies. Ignore them and their insipid demands and eventually they will have to start focusing on things of consequence such as getting a real education and learning to be productive members of society.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
The Invasions of the United States and Europe - Why Start A War When You Can Sign Up For Welfare?
Last Monday I wrote a piece about immigration here at home and a changing face of Europe abroad. It was inspired by a trip to Europe and Ann Coulter’s Adios America. With all of this on my mind I tuned into Rush’s show on Friday for my normal dose of Excellence in Broadcasting. And in a moment he crystallized exactly what was going on… both in Europe and here, although he was specifically talking about the refugee crisis / chaos in Europe. In a moment he completely changed my perception of the issue – or at least made sense out of what I am, and many others are, seeing.
He was talking about the immigrants who were in Hungary and were trying to get to Austria and Germany. The papers are full of heart wrenching pieces of Syrians escaping persecution. Of dozens of Libyans drowning as their overcrowded boats seek out the Greek or Italian coasts. Of families not wanting to be sent to refugee camps. Of Iraqis seeking to escape the ruthless ISIS killers of men, women and children. All of those are true, and it is heartbreaking. The underlying current of all of this coverage is that if Europe doesn’t take in these people, they are heartless and probably racists.
Many of the people who are making up this refugee crisis are indeed escaping terror of one sort of another. But Rush points out something interesting. If it was just terror or repression these people are escaping… why don’t we see them stopping in Turkey, where, the leader may be an Islamist, they're not shooting people in the street. Or why aren’t they stopping in Greece where they would expected to be beyond the reach of most of the hated repressors they are escaping from? He points out that no, they are heading to Germany and Sweden where they can expect to receive generous benefits from the government. He puts it quite well: It’s not immigration, it’s an invasion.
If this was about helping refugees, Turkey and Greece could set up camps to provide food and shelter and the rest of Europe could fund them. It would cost much less than new welfare recipients spread across the Continent. But the refugees have no intention of staying in either of those countries or in camps in Hungary. It's Germany or Bust! I'm not familiar with many situations where refugees enter a place illegally and then demand where they want to stay and what kinds of accommodations they will accept.
Basically the Europeans are inviting Muslims to finish what Umayyads couldn’t accomplish in the 8th Century and the Ottomans couldn’t do in the 15th and 16th. Already Muslims make up between 5% and 10% of most major European countries – and upwards of 20% in many of the largest cities… and the numbers were expected to grow rapidly, even before this refugee problem.
This poses an interesting juxtaposition… and a bit of irony. For 50 years American leadership kept much of Western Europe free in the face of a Soviet menace that was constantly seeking to enlarge its empire. Because of the security provided by the United States those same European nations were able to spend billions of dollars a year on welfare programs. Now, today, after six years of American failure of leadership AKA “leading from behind” it is those welfare programs themselves that are acting as a magnet to those who more often than not have no use for the freedoms that the United States spent half a century defending… Why fight a hot war against the Crusaders when you can simply sign up for their welfare programs and help them collapse from within?
The same holds true for the United States and the influx of illegals from Latin America. Just as the welfare programs of Europe have been drawing and supporting Muslims for a quarter century, American welfare programs have been doing the same for immigrants – both legal and illegal – from south of the border for even longer. Just as Europe’s crisis is coming to a head, so too one is here in America, where La Raza seeks to create its own empire called Aztlan... but thankfully Donald Trump has put that crisis front and center.
If only the Soviets had been smarter, they could have conquered both the United States and Europe without firing a missile. Just as ISIS has promised to put sleepers in amongst the refugees flooding into Europe, Gorbachev could have recruited Manchurian candidates from the Middle East and Latin America to invade Europe and the US respectively. Unlike the character Frank Sinatra investigates in the movie however, these Manchurian candidates wouldn’t have had to actually assassinate anyone. They could have just gone forth and multiplied and continued to receive their welfare checks. Eventually the Russian Bear would have been able to walk right into both after their economies and the cultures were obliterated. Perhaps it’s only fitting that all of this is occurring just as a leader formed in the kiln of the Soviet Union’s KGB is reasserting Russian military might at the very time the West is so vulnerable. Russian vodka, Mexican tequila and the Koran… that might make for some interesting interactions.
Many of the people who are making up this refugee crisis are indeed escaping terror of one sort of another. But Rush points out something interesting. If it was just terror or repression these people are escaping… why don’t we see them stopping in Turkey, where, the leader may be an Islamist, they're not shooting people in the street. Or why aren’t they stopping in Greece where they would expected to be beyond the reach of most of the hated repressors they are escaping from? He points out that no, they are heading to Germany and Sweden where they can expect to receive generous benefits from the government. He puts it quite well: It’s not immigration, it’s an invasion.
If this was about helping refugees, Turkey and Greece could set up camps to provide food and shelter and the rest of Europe could fund them. It would cost much less than new welfare recipients spread across the Continent. But the refugees have no intention of staying in either of those countries or in camps in Hungary. It's Germany or Bust! I'm not familiar with many situations where refugees enter a place illegally and then demand where they want to stay and what kinds of accommodations they will accept.
Basically the Europeans are inviting Muslims to finish what Umayyads couldn’t accomplish in the 8th Century and the Ottomans couldn’t do in the 15th and 16th. Already Muslims make up between 5% and 10% of most major European countries – and upwards of 20% in many of the largest cities… and the numbers were expected to grow rapidly, even before this refugee problem.
This poses an interesting juxtaposition… and a bit of irony. For 50 years American leadership kept much of Western Europe free in the face of a Soviet menace that was constantly seeking to enlarge its empire. Because of the security provided by the United States those same European nations were able to spend billions of dollars a year on welfare programs. Now, today, after six years of American failure of leadership AKA “leading from behind” it is those welfare programs themselves that are acting as a magnet to those who more often than not have no use for the freedoms that the United States spent half a century defending… Why fight a hot war against the Crusaders when you can simply sign up for their welfare programs and help them collapse from within?
The same holds true for the United States and the influx of illegals from Latin America. Just as the welfare programs of Europe have been drawing and supporting Muslims for a quarter century, American welfare programs have been doing the same for immigrants – both legal and illegal – from south of the border for even longer. Just as Europe’s crisis is coming to a head, so too one is here in America, where La Raza seeks to create its own empire called Aztlan... but thankfully Donald Trump has put that crisis front and center.
If only the Soviets had been smarter, they could have conquered both the United States and Europe without firing a missile. Just as ISIS has promised to put sleepers in amongst the refugees flooding into Europe, Gorbachev could have recruited Manchurian candidates from the Middle East and Latin America to invade Europe and the US respectively. Unlike the character Frank Sinatra investigates in the movie however, these Manchurian candidates wouldn’t have had to actually assassinate anyone. They could have just gone forth and multiplied and continued to receive their welfare checks. Eventually the Russian Bear would have been able to walk right into both after their economies and the cultures were obliterated. Perhaps it’s only fitting that all of this is occurring just as a leader formed in the kiln of the Soviet Union’s KGB is reasserting Russian military might at the very time the West is so vulnerable. Russian vodka, Mexican tequila and the Koran… that might make for some interesting interactions.
Monday, July 20, 2015
Fool or a Villain? Obama and America's Standing in the World...
I find myself vacillating between thinking Barack Obama is utterly incompetent, or he’s an evil genius who has a nefarious anti American plan in mind. While my heart wants to tell me that the person who’s been twice elected President of the United States is a good man with good intentions who’s simply in over his head, my head tells me something else.
When it comes to the domestic economy, Barack Obama is nothing short of a complete disaster. In virtually every situation he has chosen the path that is bad for freedom, bad for entrepreneurs, and bad for businesses… basically bad for pretty much the entire country except for maybe union members and government redistribution recipients. The disaster he has wrought in the economy is obvious to anyone who’s not living off the government.
What’s a little less clear to anyone but the most engaged political observer is the fact that as bad as he’s been on the economy, it’s possible he’s been even worse on foreign policy. In 2008 candidate Obama promised to “Restore America's standing in the world.” Like with the economy, his steps here too seem more like calculated steps in a plan rather than simple missteps. If they were simply missteps one would expect him to get things right 50% of the time. He’s not even close. Indeed, his failed plan to “Restore America’s standing” can be seen in the willingness of enemies and adversaries to attack the US or take provocative actions, all with little concern for consequences from a United States led by Barack Obama.
Our “Reset” partner Russia feels no qualms in threatening NATO allies for policies it dislikes, invaded Ukraine then annexed Crimea and continues to be provocative on and across our borders, all while helping Iran pursue its nuclear ambitions.
Today China has not only hacked into our government computers and stolen personal information on every government employee of the last twenty years, but they are actively building bases on disputed territory in order to expand their area of sovereignty at the expense of its neighbors.
In 2012, thriving on the chaos enabled by Barack Obama’s feckless leadership, Islamists captured and killed four Americans in Benghazi, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Early on in his administration Barack Obama gave a sop to Vladimir Putin and blindsided much of Western Europe when he abandoned plans for the installation of a missile defense system in Poland.
He has decimated the US military, shrinking the Army by almost a quarter, dropping the Navy to a size not seen since Carter, and leaving the United States militarily incapable of fighting two wars at once, a basic element of American defense policy for half a century.
In Egypt Obama embraced the Muslim Brotherhood as it came to power and then proceeded to give the cold shoulder to General Sisi, the leader who ousted the Islamists and who is now Egypt’s president.
In Iraq, after the United States spent hundreds of billions of dollars and shed the blood of thousands of American soldiers and marines, the country is on the verge of collapse. The virtual collapse of Iraqi state, which led to the rise of ISIS, is a consequence of Barack Obama’s unwillingness to bring about a Status of Forces Agreement that would maintain an American presence capable of reassuring the Iraqis that the hard fought gains would be sustainable. Today ISIS not only controls much of Iraq and Syria, but they have affiliates and adherents who are carrying out terrorist acts around the world, including here in the United States.
In what might be the most disturbing foreign policy error of Obama’s parade of errors, he has worked out a deal with Iran which does virtually nothing to stop the Iranians from getting both nuclear weapons and delivery systems. The Iranians think so little of Barack Obama and the nation he leads that they don’t even bother to make promises that they intend to break as the Soviets used to do. Not only that, Iranian leaders go on domestic television regularly and threaten the United States amid cries of “Death to America” all while knowing that Barack Obama will give them whatever it is they want.
And there’s much more of course, from his support of the leftist thugs in Honduras in 2009, to his embrace of the Communist Castro brothers, to his exchanging five Islamist terrorists for an American deserter, to his paper tiger threats in relation to red lines in Syria… and the list goes on.
One can only wonder, if an American president wanted to do everything possible to diminish the United States on the world stage without explicitly looking like that was what he was doing, what more might he do make things worse than Barack Obama has? Today not only are the two other superpowers in the world far more belligerent than they were when Barack Obama took office, a new terrorist organization is wreaking havoc in the heart of the middle east and a nation that constantly cries “Death to America”, threatens to annihilate Israel and funded many of the weapons that killed American soldiers in Iraq is now billions of dollars richer and on its way to obtaining a nuclear weapon. While it is theoretically possible to have taken more actions that would harm American interests and diminish the United States on the world stage, such as fighting harder to keep the Muslim Brotherhood running Egypt or quitting NATO, it’s hard to imagine any president doing more to intentionally undermine American interests than what Barack Obama has done.
Sadly, at the end of the day I don’t think Barack Obama is just a dolt who makes consistently bad choices. I think he has a plan and he’s executing it… and that plan is to leave in his wake a greatly diminished America that has far less influence in the world than it did when he took office. For those of us who feel like the United States is the greatest force for good in the history of the world – albeit an imperfect one – to know that its enervation came at the hands of the man elected to lead it makes the shrinking that much more tragic.
When it comes to the domestic economy, Barack Obama is nothing short of a complete disaster. In virtually every situation he has chosen the path that is bad for freedom, bad for entrepreneurs, and bad for businesses… basically bad for pretty much the entire country except for maybe union members and government redistribution recipients. The disaster he has wrought in the economy is obvious to anyone who’s not living off the government.
What’s a little less clear to anyone but the most engaged political observer is the fact that as bad as he’s been on the economy, it’s possible he’s been even worse on foreign policy. In 2008 candidate Obama promised to “Restore America's standing in the world.” Like with the economy, his steps here too seem more like calculated steps in a plan rather than simple missteps. If they were simply missteps one would expect him to get things right 50% of the time. He’s not even close. Indeed, his failed plan to “Restore America’s standing” can be seen in the willingness of enemies and adversaries to attack the US or take provocative actions, all with little concern for consequences from a United States led by Barack Obama.
Our “Reset” partner Russia feels no qualms in threatening NATO allies for policies it dislikes, invaded Ukraine then annexed Crimea and continues to be provocative on and across our borders, all while helping Iran pursue its nuclear ambitions.
Today China has not only hacked into our government computers and stolen personal information on every government employee of the last twenty years, but they are actively building bases on disputed territory in order to expand their area of sovereignty at the expense of its neighbors.
In 2012, thriving on the chaos enabled by Barack Obama’s feckless leadership, Islamists captured and killed four Americans in Benghazi, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Early on in his administration Barack Obama gave a sop to Vladimir Putin and blindsided much of Western Europe when he abandoned plans for the installation of a missile defense system in Poland.
He has decimated the US military, shrinking the Army by almost a quarter, dropping the Navy to a size not seen since Carter, and leaving the United States militarily incapable of fighting two wars at once, a basic element of American defense policy for half a century.
In Egypt Obama embraced the Muslim Brotherhood as it came to power and then proceeded to give the cold shoulder to General Sisi, the leader who ousted the Islamists and who is now Egypt’s president.
In what might be the most disturbing foreign policy error of Obama’s parade of errors, he has worked out a deal with Iran which does virtually nothing to stop the Iranians from getting both nuclear weapons and delivery systems. The Iranians think so little of Barack Obama and the nation he leads that they don’t even bother to make promises that they intend to break as the Soviets used to do. Not only that, Iranian leaders go on domestic television regularly and threaten the United States amid cries of “Death to America” all while knowing that Barack Obama will give them whatever it is they want.
And there’s much more of course, from his support of the leftist thugs in Honduras in 2009, to his embrace of the Communist Castro brothers, to his exchanging five Islamist terrorists for an American deserter, to his paper tiger threats in relation to red lines in Syria… and the list goes on.
One can only wonder, if an American president wanted to do everything possible to diminish the United States on the world stage without explicitly looking like that was what he was doing, what more might he do make things worse than Barack Obama has? Today not only are the two other superpowers in the world far more belligerent than they were when Barack Obama took office, a new terrorist organization is wreaking havoc in the heart of the middle east and a nation that constantly cries “Death to America”, threatens to annihilate Israel and funded many of the weapons that killed American soldiers in Iraq is now billions of dollars richer and on its way to obtaining a nuclear weapon. While it is theoretically possible to have taken more actions that would harm American interests and diminish the United States on the world stage, such as fighting harder to keep the Muslim Brotherhood running Egypt or quitting NATO, it’s hard to imagine any president doing more to intentionally undermine American interests than what Barack Obama has done.
Sadly, at the end of the day I don’t think Barack Obama is just a dolt who makes consistently bad choices. I think he has a plan and he’s executing it… and that plan is to leave in his wake a greatly diminished America that has far less influence in the world than it did when he took office. For those of us who feel like the United States is the greatest force for good in the history of the world – albeit an imperfect one – to know that its enervation came at the hands of the man elected to lead it makes the shrinking that much more tragic.
Monday, September 15, 2014
The Strong Horse, Barack Obama and the Collapse of American Influence
Robert Kagan had an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago. Titled “Power Failure” it discussed the parallels between the aftermath of WW I and today. In it he talks about the feeling in the US and the UK after WWI that war itself had seemingly become impossible.
Then as now, Americans and Britons solipsistically believed that everyone shared their disillusionment with war. They imagined that because war was horrible and irrational, as the Great War had surely demonstrated, no sane people would choose it.
That the US and Europe would pare back their military spending after a cataclysmic war is understandable. That the peace of the Roaring Twenties led them to believe that war was sufficiently passé it need no longer be prepared for is not. War has been a hallmark of human history since recorded time. Those few times when War seemed to be absent from large swaths of land it was often because peace was imposed at the tip of a sword, not because everyone just wanted to get along. While the Roman citizens who lived during Pax Romana enjoyed a relative peace, that peace was guaranteed by tens of thousands of soldiers dispersed throughout the Empire and along its borders.
The logical outcome of the winnowing of the American and British military muscle and resolve post WW I was of course WW II. From ignoring the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to allowing Hitler to rearm in 1935 to abandoning the Czechs in 1938, it became increasingly clear to the Axis powers that they could act with impunity. It was only a matter of time before such appeasements led to a second world at war. As Kagan points out, we see a similar pattern today. Weakness begets belligerency. And that is the key takeaway from his piece, and from history in general.
The post WW II period has been one of the most peaceful in human history, primarily because of American – and to a lesser extent NATO – military strength. While hotspots cropped up from time to time in places like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba and various other Latin American nations, there was a distinct absence of the world wide conflicts that highlighted the first half of the 20th century, and a dearth of wars between European states such as those that characterized much of the 18th and 19th centuries. A more recent example is the fact that after George Bush decided to go after the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, suddenly Muammar Gaddafi decided that he wanted to give up his terrorist ways. Conversely, as the west has appeased both Iran and North Korea, both nations have continued to develop nuclear weapons.
Osama Bin Laden may have been wrong on many things, but one thing he was right about was this: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse”. Today the strong horse is Vladimir Putin as he seeks to reassemble the Soviet empire. Today the strong horse is Communist China as it bullies its neighbors from Japan to Vietnam to the Philippines and thumbs its nose at Britain as it ignores the democracy agreement it signed on Hong Kong. Today the strong horse is ISIS as it shows its enthusiasm for raining down terror across Mesopotamia and showcasing the murder of innocents of children, civilians and foreign journalists.
Sadly, with Barack Obama holding the reins, America is no longer seen as the Strong Horse. Domestically as his major military initiatives involve eliminating the ban on homosexuality, shifting military spending to social programs and saddling American troops with dangerous Rules of Engagement, Americans are left wondering if the military is supposed to be a fighting force or a social experiment masquerading as a traveling vaudeville act. Internationally, with Obama’s not so red red lines, his abandoning of various allies, his feckless leadership in the face of uprisings in Iran, Libya and Syria, his tepid response to Russian and Chinese aggression and his explicitly taking “boots on the ground” off of the table in his response to ISIS, America looks like a papier-mâché tiger.
Whether it’s the “Peace Dividend” that came after the collapse of the Soviet Union or the relative peace in post Surge Iraq, liberals are like the man who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. They seek to bask in the glory of peace but denigrate how it was achieved in the first place. The Soviet Union did not collapse because Gorbachev was a nice guy who wanted to attend the then nascent Burning Man festival. It collapsed because it couldn’t compete with American military and economic might. Post Surge Iraq was not relatively peaceful because the insurgents suddenly decided to become BFFs with the Americans. It was because American troops went in and killed significant numbers of their fighters and leaders.
Today, after six years of Barack Obama’s leadership Americans may finally be waking up to the folly of the liberal notion that the world could be a peaceful place if America just stopped trying to impose its will on everyone else. The folly of that notion is twofold. The first is that while the United States – like most nations – does seek to influence events in various places around the world, the nation has rarely used its might to impose its will on other nations. Second, and more importantly, it misses the lesson to be had from Bin Laden’s quote. The world is not made up of leaders and people who seek to sit around holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Nations that believe in freedom, individual liberty and democratic government are greatly outnumbered by those where citizens enjoy none of those things. If the United States does not provide leadership in the world, make the case for freedom and individual liberty and make it clear that it will not only defend itself and its allies, but will stand up for others who share its values, who will?
Like a bully on the playground, if no one stands up to him he will continue to wreak havoc until recess becomes little more than a veritable “Lord of the Flies”. The United States cannot and should not try to be the policeman of the world. But if we do not make it perfectly clear that we will do whatever is necessary to defend our national interests and work to advance our values, then it won’t be a policeman the world has to worry about, but rather dictators who have little love for freedom of any kind and even less for individual life and liberty.
Then as now, Americans and Britons solipsistically believed that everyone shared their disillusionment with war. They imagined that because war was horrible and irrational, as the Great War had surely demonstrated, no sane people would choose it.
That the US and Europe would pare back their military spending after a cataclysmic war is understandable. That the peace of the Roaring Twenties led them to believe that war was sufficiently passé it need no longer be prepared for is not. War has been a hallmark of human history since recorded time. Those few times when War seemed to be absent from large swaths of land it was often because peace was imposed at the tip of a sword, not because everyone just wanted to get along. While the Roman citizens who lived during Pax Romana enjoyed a relative peace, that peace was guaranteed by tens of thousands of soldiers dispersed throughout the Empire and along its borders.
The logical outcome of the winnowing of the American and British military muscle and resolve post WW I was of course WW II. From ignoring the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to allowing Hitler to rearm in 1935 to abandoning the Czechs in 1938, it became increasingly clear to the Axis powers that they could act with impunity. It was only a matter of time before such appeasements led to a second world at war. As Kagan points out, we see a similar pattern today. Weakness begets belligerency. And that is the key takeaway from his piece, and from history in general.
The post WW II period has been one of the most peaceful in human history, primarily because of American – and to a lesser extent NATO – military strength. While hotspots cropped up from time to time in places like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba and various other Latin American nations, there was a distinct absence of the world wide conflicts that highlighted the first half of the 20th century, and a dearth of wars between European states such as those that characterized much of the 18th and 19th centuries. A more recent example is the fact that after George Bush decided to go after the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, suddenly Muammar Gaddafi decided that he wanted to give up his terrorist ways. Conversely, as the west has appeased both Iran and North Korea, both nations have continued to develop nuclear weapons.
Sadly, with Barack Obama holding the reins, America is no longer seen as the Strong Horse. Domestically as his major military initiatives involve eliminating the ban on homosexuality, shifting military spending to social programs and saddling American troops with dangerous Rules of Engagement, Americans are left wondering if the military is supposed to be a fighting force or a social experiment masquerading as a traveling vaudeville act. Internationally, with Obama’s not so red red lines, his abandoning of various allies, his feckless leadership in the face of uprisings in Iran, Libya and Syria, his tepid response to Russian and Chinese aggression and his explicitly taking “boots on the ground” off of the table in his response to ISIS, America looks like a papier-mâché tiger.
Whether it’s the “Peace Dividend” that came after the collapse of the Soviet Union or the relative peace in post Surge Iraq, liberals are like the man who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. They seek to bask in the glory of peace but denigrate how it was achieved in the first place. The Soviet Union did not collapse because Gorbachev was a nice guy who wanted to attend the then nascent Burning Man festival. It collapsed because it couldn’t compete with American military and economic might. Post Surge Iraq was not relatively peaceful because the insurgents suddenly decided to become BFFs with the Americans. It was because American troops went in and killed significant numbers of their fighters and leaders.
Today, after six years of Barack Obama’s leadership Americans may finally be waking up to the folly of the liberal notion that the world could be a peaceful place if America just stopped trying to impose its will on everyone else. The folly of that notion is twofold. The first is that while the United States – like most nations – does seek to influence events in various places around the world, the nation has rarely used its might to impose its will on other nations. Second, and more importantly, it misses the lesson to be had from Bin Laden’s quote. The world is not made up of leaders and people who seek to sit around holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Nations that believe in freedom, individual liberty and democratic government are greatly outnumbered by those where citizens enjoy none of those things. If the United States does not provide leadership in the world, make the case for freedom and individual liberty and make it clear that it will not only defend itself and its allies, but will stand up for others who share its values, who will?
Like a bully on the playground, if no one stands up to him he will continue to wreak havoc until recess becomes little more than a veritable “Lord of the Flies”. The United States cannot and should not try to be the policeman of the world. But if we do not make it perfectly clear that we will do whatever is necessary to defend our national interests and work to advance our values, then it won’t be a policeman the world has to worry about, but rather dictators who have little love for freedom of any kind and even less for individual life and liberty.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
The Vietnamization of Iraq - The Narcissistic Legacy of Barack Obama
A president’s job is tough. And that goes for any president. Aside from being in charge of an organization that employs millions of people and is responsible for the expenditure of trillions of dollars, he is the Commander in Chief. And it is in that area that no doubt weighs most heavily on presidential shoulders. The decision to send young men into battle where you know for an absolute certainty that some will not return must be an extraordinarily difficult decision to make, even when, as in say the D-day landings or Afghanistan, the clarity of the line between good and evil is as stark as between black and white.
For better or worse, that is one of the roles that a president signs up for when he takes the oath of office. Thankfully, other than for a remarkably small number of years in American history, the need for presidents to regularly make those kinds of decisions have been rare. Abraham Lincoln didn’t have that luxury. Neither Wilson nor FDR had it. Nor did Truman, LBJ, Nixon or George W. Bush. And Barack Obama hasn’t had that luxury either.
Adding to the complication of being a war president is the fact that for those not on the battlefields, life often goes on as normal. Aside from the Civil War and WWII, America has rarely been involved in a war where virtually everything in the country was on a war footing where everything is managed for the specific purpose of supporting the war effort. And as life goes on for most of the population, so too does politics, although any war effort is part of that equation.
One of the assets a president has at his disposal is a professional military. As such, presidents usually leave tactical decisions to the military while they can focus on the strategic decisions. In other words, a president decides which wars need to be fought, and the military generally figures out how to accomplish the given task. The lines are never stark between tactics and strategy however as LBJ often wanted to pick the targets to be bombed in North Vietnam and George W. Bush decided to launch “The Surge” in Iraq.
Governing and politics are theoretically different things, but in practice they too blur significantly. From political appointees to which cases to prosecute to deciding what’s a granted Constitutional power and what’s not, there is no clear line of demarcation between politics and governing. When the decision impacts how high farm subsidies will be or what the tax rate will be or how much cable companies can charge, those blurred lines are often tawdry and reprehensible, but they rarely result in the loss of human life.
The president’s responsibility as Commander in Chief is another story altogether. By its very nature that responsibility demands a higher level of attention by a president, and while politics will never be far from his mind, as Commander in Chief his duty is to think strategically in situations where the lives of civilians – both American and foreign – are at risk and the tactics necessary to enforce his strategic decisions may cost the lives American soldiers.
Which brings us to Barack Obama and Iraq. He was against the Iraq war from the beginning, as a state senator at the time saying: “I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.” Later as a senator Obama opposed the surge in 2007 and in 2008 voted to pull out American troops within 120 days. Ending the war in Iraq and bringing American troops home was cornerstone of candidate Obama’s platform in 2008. And as president he was adamant in his intention to keep that promise.
In reality however, the ground had been laid for the end of the war before Obama took office. George Bush signed the Status of Forces Agreement in November of 2008 that called for pulling all American combat forces out of Iraq by the end of 2011. What the SOFA did not cover however was the support that the United States would provide Iraq beyond 2011. Robert Gates, (George Bush’s Secretary of Defense in 2008 and Obama’s until July, 2011) told Charlie Rose that although their mission would change, he expected “perhaps several tens of thousands of American troops” to be left in Iraq after 2011.
And what were those troops supposed to be doing? Providing the Iraqi military with support and training and emboldening the Iraqi people to continue their march towards democracy with the knowledge that they were not going to be left hanging out to dry by the United States. (Democracy rarely come quickly or easily. The United States spent seven years under the disastrous Articles of Confederation before we got it right with the Constitution, and that's without being surrounded by neighbors who provided tens of thousands of terrorist agitators with weapons, training and safe harbor.)
But Barack Obama would have none of it. With an eye on the 2012 election he was determined to fulfill his campaign promise of ending the war. But what’s more, President Obama went farther than even candidate Obama did. Candidate Obama promised: "After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces." President Obama didn’t even do that. Indeed, he actually left the Iraqi people hanging out to dry, with dry being the operative word in a country that can only be described as a tinderbox surrounded by firebugs.
Rather than leave the 30,000-40,000 troops that Bob Gates and the rest of the military establishment suggested was necessary to give peace a chance, Barack Obama decided to leave only what was necessary to secure the American embassy. Had Barack Obama heeded the advice of the military professionals the Iraqi people very well may have been able to keep the sparks of sectarian violence and the duplicitousness, incompetence and partisanship of the Maliki government from becoming a raging inferno of death. But alas, unfortunately for the people of Iraq – and those in Syria and Lebanon and perhaps many more places – Barack Obama had better things to do than ensure that the blood and treasure America spent in Iraq over 7 years was not in vain. No, he had a election to win.
And the Vietnamization of Iraq was very much predictable. Today Iraq is a bloody mess, literally, and Barack Obama is finding himself forced to use the American military to try and keep what can only be described as a raging inferno from transforming into a cataclysm that engulfs every nation within a thousand miles and eventually reaches American shores.
Such is the character of a liberal, when reality clashes with grandiose theory, go with the theory as it’s usually someone else who’s left to pick up the pieces. Unfortunately for Barack Obama, his pursuit of political expediency vs. real leadership just might be the thing that torpedoes his cherished legacy of greatness. However unlikely it is to diminish him in the eyes of his worshipers, the rest of the country will see this episode for what it is, Barack Obama unleashed, in all of his unvarnished, narcissistic glory, bloodshed and consequences be damned, there’s an election to be won.
For better or worse, that is one of the roles that a president signs up for when he takes the oath of office. Thankfully, other than for a remarkably small number of years in American history, the need for presidents to regularly make those kinds of decisions have been rare. Abraham Lincoln didn’t have that luxury. Neither Wilson nor FDR had it. Nor did Truman, LBJ, Nixon or George W. Bush. And Barack Obama hasn’t had that luxury either.
Adding to the complication of being a war president is the fact that for those not on the battlefields, life often goes on as normal. Aside from the Civil War and WWII, America has rarely been involved in a war where virtually everything in the country was on a war footing where everything is managed for the specific purpose of supporting the war effort. And as life goes on for most of the population, so too does politics, although any war effort is part of that equation.
One of the assets a president has at his disposal is a professional military. As such, presidents usually leave tactical decisions to the military while they can focus on the strategic decisions. In other words, a president decides which wars need to be fought, and the military generally figures out how to accomplish the given task. The lines are never stark between tactics and strategy however as LBJ often wanted to pick the targets to be bombed in North Vietnam and George W. Bush decided to launch “The Surge” in Iraq.
The president’s responsibility as Commander in Chief is another story altogether. By its very nature that responsibility demands a higher level of attention by a president, and while politics will never be far from his mind, as Commander in Chief his duty is to think strategically in situations where the lives of civilians – both American and foreign – are at risk and the tactics necessary to enforce his strategic decisions may cost the lives American soldiers.
Which brings us to Barack Obama and Iraq. He was against the Iraq war from the beginning, as a state senator at the time saying: “I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.” Later as a senator Obama opposed the surge in 2007 and in 2008 voted to pull out American troops within 120 days. Ending the war in Iraq and bringing American troops home was cornerstone of candidate Obama’s platform in 2008. And as president he was adamant in his intention to keep that promise.
In reality however, the ground had been laid for the end of the war before Obama took office. George Bush signed the Status of Forces Agreement in November of 2008 that called for pulling all American combat forces out of Iraq by the end of 2011. What the SOFA did not cover however was the support that the United States would provide Iraq beyond 2011. Robert Gates, (George Bush’s Secretary of Defense in 2008 and Obama’s until July, 2011) told Charlie Rose that although their mission would change, he expected “perhaps several tens of thousands of American troops” to be left in Iraq after 2011.
And what were those troops supposed to be doing? Providing the Iraqi military with support and training and emboldening the Iraqi people to continue their march towards democracy with the knowledge that they were not going to be left hanging out to dry by the United States. (Democracy rarely come quickly or easily. The United States spent seven years under the disastrous Articles of Confederation before we got it right with the Constitution, and that's without being surrounded by neighbors who provided tens of thousands of terrorist agitators with weapons, training and safe harbor.)
But Barack Obama would have none of it. With an eye on the 2012 election he was determined to fulfill his campaign promise of ending the war. But what’s more, President Obama went farther than even candidate Obama did. Candidate Obama promised: "After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces." President Obama didn’t even do that. Indeed, he actually left the Iraqi people hanging out to dry, with dry being the operative word in a country that can only be described as a tinderbox surrounded by firebugs.
Rather than leave the 30,000-40,000 troops that Bob Gates and the rest of the military establishment suggested was necessary to give peace a chance, Barack Obama decided to leave only what was necessary to secure the American embassy. Had Barack Obama heeded the advice of the military professionals the Iraqi people very well may have been able to keep the sparks of sectarian violence and the duplicitousness, incompetence and partisanship of the Maliki government from becoming a raging inferno of death. But alas, unfortunately for the people of Iraq – and those in Syria and Lebanon and perhaps many more places – Barack Obama had better things to do than ensure that the blood and treasure America spent in Iraq over 7 years was not in vain. No, he had a election to win.
Such is the character of a liberal, when reality clashes with grandiose theory, go with the theory as it’s usually someone else who’s left to pick up the pieces. Unfortunately for Barack Obama, his pursuit of political expediency vs. real leadership just might be the thing that torpedoes his cherished legacy of greatness. However unlikely it is to diminish him in the eyes of his worshipers, the rest of the country will see this episode for what it is, Barack Obama unleashed, in all of his unvarnished, narcissistic glory, bloodshed and consequences be damned, there’s an election to be won.
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