Quick question about arming rebels

Does the administration’s decision to arm the Libyan rebels remind you of anything?  It does me.  It reminds me of the Reagan administration’s decision to arm the rebels in Afghanistan.

Back then, the rebels were not our enemy, and they were fighting a sworn enemy against whom we’d been engaged in myriad proxy wars for decades.  This time, the rebels are our enemy, killing our civilians and soldiers all over the world, and they’re fighting a government that hasn’t does us any active harm in recent years.

Somehow, despite our pure and fairly reasonable thinking back in 1980s, I seem to recall that our decision to arm and train radical Islamists proved to have bad and lasting consequences for us.  (Hint:  the Taliban.)  This time around, we don’t even have the excuse of ignorance.  The Libyan rebels we’re arming, comprised of useful idiots, Al Qaeda operatives, and Muslim brotherhood members, were our active enemy yesterday; they’re our active enemy today; and tomorrow, pumped up with our weapons and supplies, they’ll still be our active enemy, only more dangerous.

Michael Yon takes on Rolling Stone

Years ago, in another life, I dated a man who had worked for Rolling Stone and personally knew Jann Wenner.  (My ex-boyfriend claimed that a well-known Rolling Stone photographer was the one who introduced him to and got him hooked on cocaine.  I have no idea if he was telling the truth or not, but it made for a good story.)

My old boyfriend had cleaned up his act by the time I met him, and was decently reticent about his past, but it was pretty clear from the few stories he told that (a) Rolling Stone personnel, at least at one time, had embraced the drug culture with gusto and (b) that it was a sleazy, counter-culture magazine.  Today, all you need to do to know that it is still a sleazy, counter-culture (read:  anti-American) magazine is to buy a copy at the store — or, better yet, leaf through one and then abandon it without bothering to buy it.  As for the drug issues that were once a part of the magazine’s culture, perhaps the drugs’ legacy lives on and helps explain the shoddy, vicious journalism that routinely emanates from that saggy, flabby, 1960s era hangover.

Don’t believe me about shoddy, vicious journalism?  I understand that.  My old boyfriend’s stories about the magazine’s past are pure hearsay.  But right now, today, Michael Yon has actual percipient witness journalism on his side when it comes to challenging Rolling Stone’s most recent smear piece about our troops in Afghanistan.  Read Yon and your blood will boil.

Huge kudos to Yon, not only for his own journalism, but for his willingness to take on one of the old media’s sacred cows.

Jaws of victory

Will Democrats once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Here’s a very encouraging report about the latest NATO (mostly American forces) offensive in Helmand province, one of the last redoubts of the Taliban. I don’t know how much play this will get in the Mass Media, as they generally don’t like to talk about American victories.

http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=e26ecf2ee26395baf808e9e46&id=dcfc142250&e=25d267a94d

I am still seething about the Vietnam War, which helped to define my generation. It was a war we won militarily at great sacrifice and lost politically, when we betrayed our treaty obligations to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.  I believe that the point at which the Vietnam war was lost was when CBS’s Walter Cronkite pronounced the Tet Offensive as an American defeat (it was quite the opposite).

So, here is my question: will the Democrats and MainStream Media repeat history and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or will they play this to a conclusive victory?

Just askin’

Obama’s conduct: “contemptible”

Peter Wehner describes the conduct, but I think, when you behave as Obama as, the word “contemptible” can apply, with equal aptness, to the man himself (emphasis mine):

I have praised President Obama in the past for his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. New facts have come to light since then. And, arguably, I should have better understood the true nature of the man in the Oval Office. Either way, the president, rather than distancing himself from the July 2011 draw-down date, has doubled down on it. He has said things in meetings and on the record that underscore his equivocation, his doubt, and his lack of fortitude when it comes to this war. And so it is fair, I think, to render a judgment I much rather would not: What President Obama is now doing – both escalating and undermining a war at the very same time — is not only unwise; it is contemptible. He has a constitutional duty and a moral obligation to choose one path or the other – to prosecute the war with commitment and resolve or to leave.

The president still has time, but not much.

And there’s another problem with that time table in Afghanistan

Phibian, who is one one of my oldest blog friends, explains at Big Peace how the President’s entirely artificial time line for withdrawing from Afghanistan not only emboldens the Taliban (and makes a negotiated peace impossible), but also destroys all good efforts at future planning in that theater.

If you like Phibian’s writing (and who wouldn’t?) you can check him out at CDR Salamander, his own cite.

Is it ever moral to target civilians in warfare? *UPDATED*

My (conservative) book club read Victor Davis Hanson’s A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. One of the points Hanson makes in the book is that Pericles embarked upon a new type of warfare:

Periclean strategy . . . defined the new war as battle not between hoplites or even sailors but rather soldiers against the property of everyday folks. . . .  Sherman, Lord Kitchener, and Curtis LeMay . . . all argued that battle is ultimately powered by civilians and thus only extinguished when they cannot or will not pledge their labor and capital to those on the battlefield.

Hanson goes on to comment that many Athenians thought this new civilian focused warfare was immoral.  Our group discussed whether including civilians as part of the battlefield was, or was not, immoral.

Our conclusion was that it is absolutely true that civilians finance war through their labor, direct (munitions factories) or indirect (economic infrastructure).  If you are fighting a war to win — and you’d better be sure you believe in your cause — one of the most effective ways to win assuming equality on the battlefield is to destroy the labor/economic infrastructure.  If this means pulling a Sherman by destroying the depot that not only supplies arms to the troops but also food to the civilians, you’re going to do it.  The same thing goes for bombing a munitions factory, even if you know civilian employees work there.

What we all had a problem with is targeting civilians simply to slaughter them, which is a Nazi and a Muslim tactic.  This tactic is not meant to destroy the war’s infrastructure and end the war but is, simply, meant to kill the enemy because you hate them, want to terrorize them, and don’t think they are worthy of life.  Unsurprisingly, when an army resorts to these tactics, the slaughter is usually distinguished by the utmost cruelty.  At the end of the day, a dead child is a dead child, but I still think there’s something morally different between a child killed when a bomb explodes at the IED factory next door versus a child killed when the soldiers personally toss it in the air and use it for target practice.

What do you think?

Please keep in mind as you grapple with the question that right now, today, this is not a hypothetical question.  Our troops in Afghanistan have already died in unnecessary numbers because of Rules of Engagement that value the civilian population over the lives of our own troops.

If you want to see how this can result in a massive f*ck-up for Americans, just read Marcus Luttrell’s tragic Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10. There, the fear of running afoul of political rules that elevate Afghani lives over American lives (and that have the power to destroy a SEAL’s career) led the SEALS to release an “innocent” shepherd, who promptly reported the SEALS’ position to the Taliban. As a result, more SEALS died on that day than on any other day in SEAL history.

Right now, General Petraeus is trying to change these ludicrous rules that emanated from the halls of academia, rather than the real world of battle.  Even as he goes forward with that effort, though, the administration is pushing an award (posthumous, obviously) for “Courageous Restraint.”

It seems to me that either we raised our boys right, or we didn’t.  Either they have a moral compass or they don’t.  And either we have a decent military infrastructure that, after the fact, can distinguish between legitimate battle necessity and brutal sadism — and, after the fact, can punish the behavior accordingly, thereby setting the correct example for other, future troops.

Certainly it makes sense to have baseline rules to protect prisoners of war, such as the Geneva convention.  However, to send our troops out with the instruction “Thou shalt not kill unless you’re absolutely sure you’re killing some who is from a properly identified military unit and who manifestly intents to shoot you . . . right . . . about . . . NOW” is insane and, in itself, immoral.

UPDATE:  I just want to throw into the mix the peculiar war between Israel and the Palestinians.  It is asymmetrical, because Israel has the big guns.  Israel, however, allows her morality to restrain her from using those big guns.  She is blamed continuously for anything she does, despite her herculean efforts to strike at only true military targets.

The Palestinians do not have big guns.  Both tactically and for obvious pleasure, they deliberately target civilians.  They aim their rockets and their suicide bombers at schools, hospitals and buses.  When they get their hands on individuals, they subject them to horrific torture before murdering them (and this includes people they class as “traitors” in their own midst.)  They are applauded continuously for their committed heroism.

This is asymmetrical warfare with a sick international audience that prefers the snuff film to the movie that has a moral to the story.

UPDATE II:  And apropos Israel, an essay suggesting that she get tougher, or more serious, in her pursuit of this existential war — since it is her existence that is at stake.

UPDATE III:  Caroline Glick on another facet of civilians in war, and on the will to win.  (H/t:  Sadie)

The official Bookworm statement on the whole McChrystal/Obama/Petraeus affair *UPDATED*

I feel I should say something, so I will.  Being me, of course, what I say will be discursive.

Re McChrystal:  An excellent general who didn’t hit it off with Obama from the git-go (blame lies, I believe, with Obama), and who failed utterly in the diplomatic discretion category — something that’s true whether you regard the revelations in Rolling Stone as big deals or little ones.  Was the latter a firing offense?  I don’t know.  It depends on how the Commander in Chief chooses to handle it.  Which leads me to Obama….

Re Obama:  As I noted earlier, Obama is either apathetic or agitated.  One of the things about which he’s never been sufficiently agitated is the war in Afghanistan.  Sure, he didn’t pull out immediately, but his initial decisions to announce a withdrawal time table and to refuse to meet with McChrystal until McChrystal was forced to use the media against Obama (something that probably created a bad precedent in terms of McChrystal’s ideas about using the military to achieve his goals) show that he never gave a flying whatsit about American troops trying to win against Muslim jihadists.

On the other side of the scale, the things that do agitate Obama include the Joos; attempts to stop potential new Democratic party voters from sneaky in over the border and sparking crime waves; and offenses to his dignity.  McChrystal committed the latter crime.  Obama could have glossed the whole thing over, downplaying McChrystal’s errors (as he’s done with every one of his other appointees) or he could have done what he did, which is to fire McChrystal for having hurt his feelings.  The only way to come out smelling like a rose from letting his ego lead was for Obama to have appointed someone better than McChrystal.  Which leads me to Petraeus….

Re Petraeus:  When Obama was a Senator, he denigrated Petraeus’ task and, by his behavior, Petraeus himself.  Petraeus, however, is the real deal when it comes to counterinsurgency, and I can’t think of a better person to try his hand at Afghanistan.  Peter Wehner spells out Petraeus’ virtues:

General Petraeus is the man who, more than any other single individual, turned around the war in Iraq. It was a nation on the brink of civil war when he was named commanding general there — and today it is a nation on the mend. That is the result of many hands and many hearts — but no single individual is more responsible for what happened in Iraq than Petraeus. In addition, General Petraeus literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency, having authored the Army’s manual on the subject. Petraeus, then, is both the intellectual architect of our COIN strategy and its best practitioner.

Beyond that, Petraeus — like McChrystal before him — has the confidence of President Karzai, which U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and National Security Adviser Jim Jones (among others) do not. He understands, unlike others in the Obama White House, that the way to deal with someone like Karzai is to support him in public and make demands of him in private. Nouri al-Maliki was no walk on the beach, either; but Petraeus, along with Ambassador Ryan Crocker, dealt with him extremely skillfully, holding him close while moving him along the right path.

What is also significant is that Petraeus has the confidence of our troops because of what he has achieved. He is not only a respected figure; he is very nearly legendary among them. The troops in Afghanistan will treat him as college basketball players would treat Mike Krzyzewski, if he took over another basketball program. There is instant trust, instant credibility, and instant confidence. And that matters.

I wish Petraeus every bit of luck available to him.  Combine that luck with his skills and intellect, apply all those to the best military in the world, and there might be a good outcome here (including Obama being able to back down from his withdrawal timetable while still saving face).

Conclusion:  Obama first seeded the lemons, starting with his long-ago refusal to take either General McChrystal or the Afghanistan war serious.  He harvested the lemons when he elected to let his ego lead in what could have been a down-played, and therefore negligible, situation.  And he managed to create lemonade by replace McChrystal with only the best general out there.  Let’s hope the best general chews up Afghanistan, rather than vice versa.

(Just FYI, The Anchoress has a stellar round-up of responses to the whole saga.)

UPDATE:  Bruce Kesler, who understands more about what’s going on than I ever could, is pleased okay with Petraeus’ appointment, but would have preferred General Mattis.  Blackfive thinks the timing of this whole thing is more than a little suspicious.  (The first story will make you happy sanguine; the second, angry.)

UPDATE II:  Was Obama just trying to keep Petraeus out of the 2012 race?  I doubt it.  For one thing, that’s two years ahead, and a lot can change between now and then.  For another thing, I have it on good authority that Petraeus is saying right now, with a straight face, that he’s not running.  If this is preemptive action, it’s really preemptive.  Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke.

My sense is that Petraeus genuinely doesn’t want to run.  It’s a lousy job, and Petraeus isn’t an egotist.  He is, however, a patriot.  If he feels that America truly needs his unique skills, Afghanistan will be the smallest part of the U.S.’s problems, and he’ll run regardless.

Memorial Day Post: The Warriors Among Us

[I’ll keep this at the top through Memorial Day.  Scroll down for lots of new posts.]

Several years ago, as part of a 9/11 commemoration, I wrote the following words as part of a post I did about Lt. Brian Ahearn, one of the New York fire fighters who perished on that day:

My son, who is seven, is obsessed with superheroes. His current favorite is Superman. After all, when you’re a little boy, battling your way through the world, what could be more exciting than the possibility of being “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” I’m bombarded daily with questions about Superman’s ability to withstand extreme temperatures, his flying speeds, his ballistic capabilities and, most importantly, his bravery. It’s here that my son and I run into a conceptual problem. My son thinks Superman is brave because he gets involved in situations that involve guns, and flames, and bad guys. I argue — and how can you argue this with a seven year old? — that the fictional Superman, while good, is not brave, because he takes no risks. Superman’s indestructibility means that his heart never speeds up, his gut never clenches, and he never pauses for even a moment to question whether the potential benefit from acting is worth the risk. In other words, if facing a gun is as easy as sniffing a rose, there is no bravery involved.

The truly brave person is the one who knows the real risks in a situation, but still moves forward to save people, to fight a good battle or to remedy an intolerable situation. The attacks against America on September 11, 2001, revealed the true superheroes among us — those New York firefighters who pushed themselves past those second thoughts, those all-too-human hesitations, and sacrificed themselves in the hopes of saving others. Lt. Brian G. Ahearn was one of those superheroes.

I’ve been thinking today about that moment of insight I had about courage and heroism, because I’m finally reading Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10.  I say “finally,” because the book came out in 2007, and it took me three years to gather my own courage just to read it — and I did so only because of the possibility that I may soon meet the mother of one of those “lost heroes.”  Considering what her son did for my country, forcing myself to read a book about great heroism seemed like the least I could do.

Funnily enough, the book isn’t as painful as I thought it would be.  This is partly because Luttrell, with novelist Patrick Robinson’s able assistance, has a wonderful voice.  His is not a ponderous tome but is, instead, a human story of an East Texas boy who, buoyed up by patriotism and sheer grit, made his way through the insanity of SEAL training, and then found himself in Afghanistan, working to protect American interests and freedoms.

Luttrell’s upbringing, so different from my girly, urban, intellectual childhood is a story in itself.  As for his descriptions of what men push themselves to do to become SEALS — well, I’d heard about it academically, but I’d never understood it viscerally.

To be completely honest, I still don’t understand it.  As a card-carrying wuss, as someone who has always respected her personal comfort zones, and avoided challenging herself, I really don’t “get” what would drive young men, men in their 20s and 30s, to push themselves as hard as these men do.  And the rewarded isn’t a glamorous job, a la Hollywood or Manhattan, with fame, wealth and women.  Being a SEAL is the toughest job in the world, because SEALs end up doing the most dangerous jobs in the world, under the worst, scariest circumstances imaginable.

If you lack physical and mental will, not to mention the overwhelming training SEALs receive, you’re simply a statistic waiting to happen.  But if you do have that stamina, one that resides as much in the mind as it does in the body (perhaps even more in the mind than the body), and if you have this amazing commitment to your team and your country, you can move mountains.

Or sometimes, as SEAL Team 10 so sadly demonstrated, the mountains turn on you.  I am not giving away anything about the book, of course, when I tell you that Luttrell was the sole survivor of a firefight in the Afghan mountain ranges that ended up being the single deadliest day in SEAL history.  Reading about the fight and the deaths of Luttrell’s team member, not to mention his own story of survival, is harrowing.  I don’t want to say I cried, but I’ll admit that my eyes were leaking prodigiously.  Knowing that this would be my inevitable reaction is part of why I avoided Luttrell’s book for so long.  (To excuse myself a little bit, I also wasn’t sure I wanted to get too close to understanding what my father experienced during WWII, as he fought in some of the worst battles around the Mediterranean, including Crete and el Alamein.  Sometimes, empathy can be too painful.)

But really, I shouldn’t have avoided the book.  Yes, the deaths of LT Michael P. Murphy, Matthew Axelson, and Danny Dietz, as well as 16 SEALs and Nightstalkers, whose helicopter was shot down during the rescue mission, is heart wrenching, but the overall tone of the book is still uplifting.  Luttrell’s deep patriotism, his belief in the mission (not any specific mission, but the SEALs’ overarching mission to protect and defend), his abiding love for the SEALs, and the message that there are those who are willing to protect us, often from ourselves, ranks right up there with the most cheerful “feel good” book you can find.

So many people live pointless lives and die meaningless deaths.  One of the tragedies of the 6 million is that they were herded to death like cattle in an abattoir.  I don’t blame them.  They were ordinary people, living ordinary lives, when suddenly they were ripped out of normalcy, and without warning or preparation, sent straight to Hell on earth. Had I had the misfortune to be a Jew in Poland in 1942, instead of a Jew in America at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, that would have been me.  Not just a short life that made no difference, but one that ended with a death that didn’t make a dent in the hide of my murderers.

Some people, however, seem to have bred in the bone and the heart the belief that they will not be ordinary in life or in death.  Mercifully, these are people who don’t need the tawdry fame of Hollywood.  They don’t need the quick fixes of drink and drugs.  They don’t need to become bullies who control others, whether their control is exercised over a country or an office.  Instead, they prepare themselves to serve causes greater than their own egos.  Their lives have purpose and their deaths are never pointless.

Because the genesis of my post is Luttrell’s book, I’ve written this as an homage to the SEALs.  Everything I’ve said though, can be applied equally to the men and women who have fought and, sometimes, died for America, beginning back in 1774.  The fact that they didn’t do it at the level of pain and training one sees in the SEALs does nothing to minimize their courage, their patriotism and their sacrifices.  They are the backbone of our country, the defenders of our freedom:  “The truly brave person is the one who knows the real risks in a situation, but still moves forward to save people, to fight a good battle or to remedy an intolerable situation.”

(Luttrell, the sole survivor of the SEALS pictured here, is third from the right.)

Other Memorial Day posts:

Flopping Aces

Blackfive

Blackfive (yes, again)

American Digest

Kim Priestap

Michelle Malkin

Mudville Gazette

Florence American Military Cemetery (slow-loading, so don’t worry if nothing happens right away)

Noisy Room

NewsBusters

Hot Air

JoshuaPundit

Radio Patriot

“Simplistic” and “primitive” *UPDATED*

As I’ve mentioned just a few times, I just read, and was very moved by, Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10.  A liberal I know flipped through the book’s first few pages and had a very different reaction.  The following passages bugged the liberal:

My name is Marcus.  Marcus Luttrell.  I’m a United States Navy SEAL, Team Leader, SDV Team 1, Alfa Platoon.  Like every other SEAL, I’m trained in weapons, demolition, and unarmed combat.  I’m a sniper, and I’m the platoon medic.  But most of all, I’m an American.  And when the bell sounds, I will come out fighting for my country and for my teammates.  If necessary, to the death.

And that’s not just because the SEALs trained me to do so; it’s because I’m willing to do so.  I’m a patriot, and I fight with the Lone Star of Texas on my right arm and another Texas flag over my heart.  For me, defeat is unthinkable.  (pp. 6-7)

[snip]

[As they’re taking off from Bahrain to Afghanistan:] There were no other passengers on board, just the flight crew and, in the rear, us, headed out to do God’s work on behalf of the U.S. government and our commander in chief, President George W. Bush.  (p. 12.)

[snip]

[Of the Taliban/Al Qaeda enemy in Afghanistan:]  This was where bin Laden’s fighters found a home training base.  Let’s face it, al Qaeda means “the base,” and in return for the Saudi fanatic bin Laden’s money, the Taliban made it all possible.  right now these very same guys, the remnants of the Taliban and the last few tribal warriors of al Qaeda, were preparing to start over, trying to fight their way through the mountain passes, intent on setting up new training camps and military headquarters and, eventually, their own government in place of the democratically elected one.

They may not have been the precise same guys who planned 9/11.  But they were most certainly their descendants, their heirs, their followers.  They were part of the same crowd who knocked down the North and South Towers in the Big Apple on the infamous Tuesday morning in 2001.  And our coming task was to stop them, right there in those mountains, by whatever means necessary.  (pp. 13-14)

The liberal felt that the above passages showed that the writer was simplistic and primitive in his thinking.  The whole notion of simple patriotism offended the liberal, who also thought it was just plain stupid to seek revenge against guys who weren’t actually the ones who plotted 9/11.  My less than clever riposte was, “so I guess you would only kill Nazis who actually worked in the gas chambers?”  Frankly, given the differences in our world views, I’m not sure there is a clever comeback or, which would be more helpful, a comeback that actually causes the liberal to reexamine those liberal principles.

UPDATE:  Here’s an apt quotation, written by John Stuart Mill, in 1862, as a comment upon the American Civil War:

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Congratulations to the Marines and their Afghan allies for the Marjah victory

I meant to post this yesterday, but time got away from me:  many, many, many congratulations to the Marines and their Afghan allies for the Marjah victory.  I never doubted that they would win, but I certainly understood that each Marine and Afghan soldier faced the risk that he would make the ultimate sacrifice for that victory.

Naturally, the Times, rather than celebrating a great military feat, is already trying to set up new (and in Times-land, almost certainly insurmountable) hurdles for our troops.  I have no doubt that our troops will do just fine.

For a reminder about what out-of-control, murderous troops really look like, read this story of the way in which Soviet soldiers raped the women who found themselves in the soldiers’ path during WWII.  There are no, and I mean no, stories like that about our American troops, whether one is looking at WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War, the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan.  (Indeed, I bet I could say the same for American troops going back to the Revolutionary War.)  Sure, there are always renegade men who go off and do bad things, but these same men appear periodically in our cities and towns too.  Bad guys exist, but American troops have proven definitively that they are part of a good institution, one that does not use rape as a weapon.

Drifting a little further afield, the fact that American men are not rapists even when they have the power of the military behind them, is also a useful reminder about what a misanthropic religion Islam is.  (And no, I didn’t get confused and substitute misanthropic for misogynistic.)  While it’s certainly true that one of Islam’s most glaring deficiencies is its desperate desire to subjugate women out of fear of their sexuality, it’s quite obvious that the Islamists hide from feminine sexuality because they believe men to be inherently weak.  In the Islamic world, the theory goes, any man, upon seeing a woman, will be incapable of refraining from raping her.  That is a scathing indictment of men.

In stark contrast, American men are civilized creatures.  Sure, they might leave the toilet seats up, scratch their crotches in public, and belch at inappropriate times, but when push comes to shove, they are models of self-control.

So, in thinking it through, congratulations are due to our Marines, not only for being great warriors, but also for being great human beings.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

The fighters behind the fighters

A friend sent me this powerful (non-exclusive) image from Michael Yon:

Yon describes it as follows:

A crew from the United States Air Force spent Saturday night and Sunday morning airlifting different groups of wounded soldiers from Kandahar to Camp Bastion to Bagram, back to Kandahar, then back to Bagram, and back to Kandahar. These patients were from Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Here, an Air Force nurse caresses the head of a wounded, unconscious Canadian soldier while whispering into his ear.

That wacky Pashtun culture

I don’t have a comment here.  I just think this story is interesting:

An unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns — though they seem to be in complete denial about it.

[snip]

In one instance, a group of local male interpreters had contracted gonorrhea anally but refused to believe they could have contracted it sexually — “because they were not homosexuals.”

Apparently, according to the report, Pashtun men interpret the Islamic prohibition on homosexuality to mean they cannot “love” another man — but that doesn’t mean they can’t use men for “sexual gratification.”

[snip]

The U.S. army medic also told members of the research unit that she and her colleagues had to explain to a local man how to get his wife pregnant.

The report said: “When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, ‘How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.'”

Hat tip:  Neptunus Lex

Even Obama couldn’t placate his extreme base

Despite giving the generals almost 75% fewer troops than the 80,000 they really wanted (and even significantly less than the 40,000 they sort of wanted), and despite telling the Taliban and Al Qaeda exactly when the field is theirs, and despite dwelling morbidly on death in front of the men and women at West Point who will be going to the field of battle, Obama still couldn’t placate everyone on his side of the political spectrum.  A couple of hundred gathered in S.F. to make their protests known — and Protest Shooter was there to capture them on film (or on digital images, I guess).

Excerpts of Obama’s speech indicate he will do the right thing for the wrong reasons *UPDATED*

As I write this, Obama hasn’t spoken yet, but he has released excerpts from his speech.  These are my first thoughts on his words:

“The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 – the fastest pace possible – so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They will increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.” [This is good.  This is what Obama needed to do.  It’s one thing as a candidate to demand that the sitting president lose the war.  It’s another thing entirely for the former-candidate, now-president to preside over another 1975.  Having spent ten, agonizing, demoralizing months trying to figure this one out, Obama is finally doing the right thing.]

“Because this is an international effort, I have asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies. Some have already provided additional troops, and we are confident that there will be further contributions in the days and weeks ahead. Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside us in Afghanistan. Now, we must come together to end this war successfully. For what’s at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility – what’s at stake is the security of our Allies, and the common security of the world.”  [Is it just me, or did Obama completely avoid that old-fashioned word “victory” or that nice little phrase “win the war”?  Obama is such a Leftist he really cannot contemplate the possibility of a “we win, you lose” scenario.  To him, success is manifestly a way out, victory or not (and see the next paragraph to get what I mean).  Also, unless Obama expands upon it in his speech tonight, he’s said nothing about the nature of the threat against us.  To say that “security” is “at stake” is meaningless without explaining who the enemy is, and what an enemy victory means.  Given the Islamists’ willingness to spell out in words of one syllable their plans regarding the West, Obama should be able to articulate the danger they pose.  Again, he simply can’t seem to make himself say certain words:  “The Taliban, a fundamentalist branch of Islam that sheltered and trained the terrorists who killed more than 3,000 Americans on 9/11, is resurgent and spreading.  It must be cut out, root and branch, in order to ensure that its members’ willingness to attack us directly, and indirectly (by taking over our allies, such as Pakistan), is destroyed.”  See?  It’s simple — but not for Obama.]

“Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground. We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s Security Forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government – and, more importantly, to the Afghan people – that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country.”  [Here’s the kicker to the two preceding paragraphs.  Obama is not in this for victory against a determined and violent enemy that has already attacked America and Europe and that continues to threaten to West’s security.  Instead, he’s adding troops as a predicate to an orderly retreat.  He doesn’t want to win.  He wants to escape.  Obama has also done something incredibly stupid by announcing his date of departure.  If I were the Taliban, I’d simply retreat into caves for a couple of years, wait for Americans to withdraw, and then return to the field.  Obama should announce that U.S. and allied forces will depart when the war against the Taliban has achieved certain milestones, not when a specific date hits on the calendar.]

Bottom line: Obama’s doing the right thing (thank God), but for the wrong reasons. The question is whether our strong and determined American military can achieve victory when the Commander in Chief (a) refuses to name the enemy and is afraid of the “V” word and (b) has given the enemy a specific time line, after which they are free to pursue their theocratic totalitarian goals?

UPDATE:  Well, the speech is over and done now.  I gather that Obama did spell out more clearly what the threat actually is, but for the most part that he tracked along the excerpts I discussed above.  I also gather that I, although unversed in military strategy, pretty much caught onto the myriad flaws in the approach.  Otherwise, how could I have tracked so closely with Steve Schippert’s informed analysis?

The incoherence emanating from the White House *UPDATE*

One of the best things George Bush did during his presidency was to appoint the late, great Tony Snow as his press secretary.  Snow was a dream press secretary, straight out of central casting:  handsome, intelligent, erudite, informed, charming and witty.  Even the savagely anti-Bush press appeared to enjoy his statements and, once he was up there at the podium, they had a much harder time attacking George Bush’s policy initiatives.

Barack Obama, who is making a presidential career out of being the un-Bush, has also done a 180 when it comes to his press secretary.  Robert Gibbs is the Bizarro World version of Snow.  In place of Snow’s many virtues, Gibbs is visually unappealing, which would be meaningless if it wasn’t accompanied by an uninformed boorishness that permeates his every utterance.  The White House press has been giving him a pass because he’s the front person for their idol, but any objective listener would have to conclude that the man is a fool — or, which might be even worse, he plays a fool in order to obfuscate entirely what his employer is doing.

Gibbs’ primary problem (or, if you incline to the obfuscatory theory, his primary virtue) is that he is unintelligible.  Today, he gave a perfect example of a ten cent man using three dollar words (emphasis mine):

TAPPER:  When more troops are sent into a country, inevitably it results in more casualties, when the military presence and fighting is increased. Is the president going to — is that going to be part of the president’s message tomorrow, to prepare the American people for the fact that, while an exit strategy exists, the next year or two is going to be perhaps bloodier than even the last six months?

GIBBS:  Well, I — and we’ve discussed this before. I think the amount of sacrifice that we’ve seen from the men and women that we have there already is something that I know the president is assured by each and every day. I think — you know, he signs letters of condolence.  He meets with the families of those that have been killed.  Obviously, the trip to Dover is something that I doubt you ever truly forget.  I think the president will reiterate the importance of why we’re there, but also, by all means, very early on, acknowledge the tremendous cost and sacrifice to our men and women in uniform.  I don’t think there’s any doubt that we are all in awe of — of the commitment from our military and our civilian side in order to get this right.

What in the world does the above mean?  The question is whether the president is going to prepare the American people for the fact that, with more troops, there’s more fighting; and with more fighting, we can anticipate more casualties.  It’s a good question, because we saw precisely that result with the Iraq Surge.  At the time, the press  immediately fell into a hysterical dizzy about body counts, until it became obvious to them, and to the rest of the world, that, on the battle field as on the surgery table, a quick cauterization sees some significant initial trauma, but then completely stops the flow of blood.  A smart president would help the American people understand this fact, so that they could support this mini-surge without panic.

Given the sensible question, Gibbs could easily have returned with a sensible answer. Instead, Gibbs tells us that Obama is “assured” by those troops who have already fought, been wounded and died on Afghani soil.  Hey!  He’s even written condolence letters.  This talk isn’t merely non-responsive, it’s nonsense.  What does the fact that the president finds American deaths “assuring,” and that he signs off on letters, have to do with the pragmatic issue of preparing Americans for the short-term hits and long-term benefits of a Surge?

Only after spewing the crude and painful nonsense does Gibbs make a stab at actually answering the question and, typically, he answers it wrong.  Instead, of making the point I made, which is that the military is willing to make a short term sacrifice to assure a long-term benefit, Gibbs waffled on about how troops are going to die — and how the White House really, really appreciates the fact that they’re going to make this sacrifice to “get this right.”  It’s unclear whether the “this” that the troops are supposed to die for in order to “get [it] right” is America’s national security, or Obama’s political stability.

Gibbs’ response is appalling at every level.  It’s stupid, unintelligible, insensitive, and strategically and politically wide of the mark.

Gibbs doesn’t improve when Tapper asks about long-term political goals in Afghanistan.  First, Gibbs has no idea what the issue is:

TAPPER:  And just in terms of defining our terms, where does making sure that we have a stable Afghan partner and — and nation- building begin?  What’s the line? Is it just — is it just a question of our responsibility, U.S. responsibility being training Afghan troops?  It’s just — that’s the safe and secure part, the safe and stable partner part? Because we’ve heard a lot about what the U.S. intends to do, and I know you don’t want to get ahead of the president’s speech, but just in terms — if you could define the terms a little for us.

GIBBS:  Well, I — I guess I would more ask you to — I don’t — I’m unclear as to what continuum you’re putting.  Are you asking me to — to put them on a certain…

I’ll concede that Tapper got a bit wordy there, but the question is clear: He’s asking Gibbs to explain how the Surge will assure a stable Afghanistan.  If Gibbs was at all intelligent, he’d seize the question and spout a party line:  “The president anticipates that there will be X number of months of harder fighting until the situation on the ground is stabilized.  Even as the Surge goes forward, however, we will be working with the Karzai government….”  Simple.  Anyone can do it, even someone who actually has no idea what the facts on the ground are.  Gibbs, however, struggles visibly to figure out what the heck the question means.

When Tapper clarifies, Gibbs goes from bad to worse, lapsing eventually into complete incoherency:

TAPPER:  Well, the president has said about the new strategy that it’s important that we have a secure, stable ally in the Afghan…

(CROSSTALK)

GIBBS:  Right. Well, and a partner that is — and a partner that understands, as the president directly told President Karzai in a telephone call in the Oval Office, that it is time to turn — it’s time for a new chapter in our relationship as it relates to corruption and improved governance in order to address the security situation not just through training and security force needs, but also — look, it’s hard for a civilian — it’s hard for civilians to go in and improve areas — it’s impossible — that aren’t secure.  So I would say this is all part of what has to be a partnership. And I think anybody would tell you that — that — and I’ve said this, and I think, quite frankly, you’ve seen this from Democrats and Republicans in Congress — without partners that are willing to do stuff in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, no number of American troops can solve all of those problems unless or until those steps are taken inside both of those countries where we see a change in the security situation.

Again, what in the world does Gibbs mean?  There’s not a single declarative sentence in there.  Let me translate what he said in simple English, so that you can see that he didn’t say anything:

Tapper question:  How will the Surge work to stabilize the Afghani political scene?

Gibb-erish answer:  A partner works with you.  Karzai is the man Obama talks to.  Obama talked to Karzai on the phone.  He actually called him from the Oval Office.  He said that Karzai needs to work on the corruption and governance thing, so that civilians can go places.  (Bookworm here:  It’s unclear whether Obama wants Karzai to do away with corruption or simply do it better.  If it was any president other than Obama, I’d assume the former.  Given our President’s background in Chicago politics and community organizing, though, I really am not prepared to assume what Gibb meant with this babble.)  We need a partner.  Everyone agrees we need a partner.  Even troops aren’t partners.  So, we need a partner.

Let me distill Gibbs’ puerile utterances even further.  Tapper asked how the Surge will link to the Afghani political scene, whether in the short or long term.  Gibb-erish responded by saying “we need a partner.”  Objection, your honor.  Nonresponsive.

During the campaign, Obama, holding tightly to his teleprompter and prepared speeches, seduced the audience with dreamy platitudes about the intangibles of hope and change, and with concrete lies about his actual political agenda.  Now that the campaign is over, Obama has no deal with real issues and real problems.  He’s had to fire Hopey and Changey, two dwarfs who have no place in actual governance, especially when the governance is trying hard to drag the country to a bankrupt Left.  In their place, if Obama had demonstrated any of the smarts his acolytes attribute to him, he would have delegated the job of communications to a smart guy like Doc.  Instead, he went for Dopey, with the obvious results.  As for me, this whole thing is making me Grumpy.

UPDATE:  In the first item in Monday’s Best of the Web Today, James Taranto suggests that Gibbs’ incoherence may originate with the boss.

Dastardly American troops interacting with indigenous kids in Afghanistan and Iran

Here’s our Commander in Chief speaking of the situation in Afghanistan while he was running for office:  “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”

This post is not about the cognitive dissonance of a man who, now that he used that lie to become president, is refusing to act to send more troops to Afghanistan to take off that “enormous pressure.”  It’s about his jaundiced view of the troops he hoped then to, and now does, lead.

At Flopping Aces, WordSmith has a detailed photo essay about the troops of whom Barack Obama spoke.  It’s shocking.  If I were you, I’d get out a handkerchief, because the images there may bring tears to your eyes.  Also, after you’ve checked out Flopping Aces, you may feel compelled to go here and tell the troops exactly what you think of them.  I’ve already done so, and will do so again and again.  The feelings I have now deserve to be vented.

AP assures us that Obama’s Afghanistan dithering is actually a show of strength *UPDATED*

Obama has known for more than 12 months that he was going to become CIC, with responsibility for Afghanistan.  This means 12 months of presidential advisers able to give this neophyte help in figuring out the best strategy for the war that he declared, during the campaign, was the essential, central battlefield in the war against those pesky insurgents.  He’s also had two (or is it three?) months of specific recommendations from the general in charge of the Afghanistan operations.

And yet Obama has done absolutely nothing.  He’s floated myriad and contradictory trial balloons:  No troops was his first balloon, a strategy that played out when he played hide-and-seek with General McChrystal.  This balloon got shot down by ordinary Americans horrified that their sons and daughters are in a turkey shoot.  His next attempt at gauging public opinion was to say that he’d send some troops.  This balloon also bit the dust when savvy political and military observers pointed out that, under the circumstances on the ground in Afghanistan, half a loaf would not be better than none.  He then tried a completely different approach, announcing that he’d send lots of troops, albeit on a weirdly attenuated and pointless timeline.  Even the attenuated timeline, though, wasn’t sufficient to assuage his Lefter flank, and Obama quickly drew back on that idea too.

And since we know that Obama has no fixed principles, except for the desperate desire to receive universal accolades and to socialize the American economy, there are no internal impulses moving him in any direction on Afghanistan.  With his trial balloons grounded, he’s inert.

Or at least that’s what I thought.  The AP explains to me that 12 months of inertia, interrupted only by sending up abortive trial balloons, avoiding generals, and having endless meetings, is actually a sign of Obama’s incredible foreign policy expertise:

President Barack Obama’s drawn-out decision-making on Afghanistan is sending messages. To the Afghan government: Clean up your act. To the Pentagon: I’m no rubber stamp. To the American public: More troops can’t be the sole answer.

Obama has been accused by some Republicans of “dithering” about whether to send more troops and deepen U.S. involvement in an increasingly unpopular war.

The slow process also has left him open to critics who recall his pronouncement in March, after developing what he called a “stronger, smarter and comprehensive” Afghan war strategy, that the situation there was “increasingly perilous.” He ordered more troops to battle then, with little discernible result so far.

This time, he’s making it clear he won’t be rushed. Or pushed. And the way the messages he’s sending play out could help determine whether the war effort is sustainable in the long run.

Thank God for the AP.  Without their guidance, I never would have understood how subtle our President is.  Obama’s not ineffectual.  He’s engaging in a thrilling, practically telepathic, negotiation with just about everyone, simply by sitting still.

I’m sure that the troops currently serving in Afghanistan in unprotected positions as a resurgent Taliban contemplates the wonders of an apparently dormant president, are also delighted to learn that this is really all part of a grand plan intended to send marvelously nuanced messages to all sorts of people across the globe and right into the heart of the theater of war.

I’ll leave you with this Carole Burnett spoof of Brief Encounter, because it reminds us that Obama’s gone one better than these funny one-word lovers by doing away with words entirely:

UPDATE:  Unsurprisingly, Big Lizards has a better post about the flight from reality than anything I could do, with his focus, not on the media, but on Obama himself.

UPDATE II:  At American Digest, an excellent post suggesting that the media doesn’t need to spin so madly to cover up for Obama, since Obama really wants to do what he’s doing, and the resulting anarchy is a desired goal.

http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2009/11/i_reject_your_r.html

Two must reads *UPDATED*

American Thinker is a site I check regularly, at least twice a day.  It’s not just that the editors are kind enough to publish my work occasionally.  It’s because the articles that appear there routinely range from really good to out-of-the-park stupendous.

Today, there are two that fall in the latter category.  These are the kinds of articles that shouldn’t just be read, but that should be emailed to everyone you know.  Indeed, the one regarding socialism should be required reading in every American classroom.  So, without further ado, please, please, please read and discuss and forward:

What’s Wrong with Socialism, by Joe Herring

and

It Isn’t Political Correctness, It’s Shariah, by Pamela Geller

UPDATE:  Add military analyst Steve Schippert’s All the King’s Horses (about Afghanistan) to the list of things that will widen your horizons today.

It isn’t hard to predict a narcissist’s behavior

On October 22, 2008, I wrote this:

The MSM has been remarkably cavalier about Joe Biden’s bizarre statement regarding the “fact” that America will be attacked six months into a Barack Obama presidency and that people will be shocked and disappointed by Obama’s response (meaning that he’ll either collapse in a sobbing heap, thereby horrifying most Americans, or launch a nuclear missile strike, which will alienate his base).

The sobbing heap is well hidden from public view, but the collapse is obvious:

President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

(See also Hot Air.)

Narcissists have no strong inner sense of self.  Instead, they have just a gaping hole of inadequacy.  They compensate by elevating to staggering levels of importance the way in which others view them.  Other people’s perceptions provide their mirror.  Think about this for a moment:  I bet you know who you are and what you stand for.  If you think you’re a good or smart person, the fact that your wife is 10 pounds overweight or your husband has a stutter is irrelevant to your sense of self.  For a narcissist, the spouse’s “failings” indicate to everyone that the narcissist is a loser.  Remember, he has no inner guide to his own qualities.  Despite (or because of) this internal emptiness, narcissists are obsessed with hierarchy, and with the need to remind themselves, and everyone else, that they are on the top of the heap.  It’s the low self-esteem of the exceptionally arrogant person.

Clinton was a narcissist who filled the emptiness with female adulation.  His little brain was ticking away with “I’m a charming stud.  I’m a charming stud.”

Obama’s little brain says “Everyone can see I’m a genius.  Everyone can see I’m a genius.”  The problem with that definition, of course, is that it’s unanchored to moral beliefs or values or guiding principles or anything else decent and internalized.  It’s a standard measured only by other people’s praise.  The problem with this external measurement, of course, is that if you make a mistake the praise goes away.  Narcissists cannot afford mistakes.  And the best way to avoid a mistake is not to make a decision.  And there you have it.  Obama is being tested, and he cannot afford, because of his own self-image, to make a decision that might be wrong.  So he does nothing at all, while the Taliban burnishes its strength, and our troops die.

I know I miss Bush, but I never thought I’d miss Clinton.  The one had values, and was willing to make decisions, even if they were wrong; and the other, at least, had charm.  All Obama has is a scarily impassive arrogance that may yet be the death of us.

About that word “insurgents” *UPDATED*

I saw a headline at Drudge, to the effect that there is a photo of Afghan “insurgents” with U.S. ammo.  The story, although I’m sure it’s interesting, interested me less than that word “insurgent.”  We’ve all talked about the fact that “insurgent” a word that allows a politically correct, liberal media to avoid such words as “terrorist” and to shy away from any discussion about the religion those “insurgents” practice.

But most obviously, it’s a way of avoiding that old-fashioned word “enemy.”  Try as they may, though, reporters cannot shy away from a central fact:  Those Afghani “insurgents” are engaged in a war against American troops.  They are our ENEMY.

en⋅e⋅my
–noun
1. a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent.
2. an armed foe; an opposing military force: The army attacked the enemy at dawn.
3. a hostile nation or state.
4. a citizen of such a state.
5. enemies, persons, nations, etc., that are hostile to one another: Let’s make up and stop being enemies.
6. something harmful or prejudical: His unbridled ambition is his worst enemy.
7. the Enemy, the Devil; Satan.

It is staggering and disgusting that, despite the hits our American troops are taking, our media finds itself incapable of taking sides and calling those who would kill us “the enemy.”

Feh!  And it’s no surprise, of course, that Barack Obama, who can demonize a news station and a radio personality, is incapable of uttering those words either.  What a bag of poop he is — and pardon me for being crude, but on the eve of Veteran’s Day, I’m simply disgusted by the whole damn lot of them.

UPDATE:  I finally figured out what this foolish word play reminds me of.  One of the more brilliant Simpsons episodes has as its centerpiece a musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire which, not unsurprisingly, gets all of the emotional notes absolutely wrong.  So it is that Blanche’s statement about her dependence on the kindness of strangers morphs into “A Stranger’s Just a Friend You Haven’t Met.”  That song seems to highlight our media’s idiotic attempt to make sure that America has no real enemies (except for Rush, of course).

Obama’s shopping cart — by guest blogger Sadie

It’s like standing in line at the check out counter:  You find yourself peering into the cart in front of you to see what people are eating. The obviously overweight person in front of you has filled his cart with junk food, sugary cereals, ice cream, no vegetables, lots of frozen pizza, no fruit, lots of crap — and you stand there silently shaking your head from side to side. You stifle the urge to say something, because you know that it’s none of your business.

I just got a peek at the Obama cart…..

This is from the White House visitor logs that check everyone who goes in and out. Here are a few individuals, with their number of visits:

George Soros – 4 times
Bill Ayers – 2 times [Although I think that this isn’t that Bill Ayers]
Jeremiah Wright – 1 time
Micheal Moore – 8 times
Micheal Jordan – 5 times
Gen. David Petreus – 0 times
Unions Boss Richard Trumka – 8 times
Union Boss Andy Stern – 21 times
Alan Greenspan – 8 times
Gen. Stanley McChrystal – 0 times

The war under Generals Obama, Kerry and Biden

I don’t often do this, as you know, but I’m going to quote Jennifer Rubin’s post in its entirety here.  I think it’s important that people understand precisely what is going on in Washington and how it’s affecting men and women in Afghanistan.  Rubin, unsurprisingly, does as good a job as anyone summing up the immoral behavior at home, which creates death abroad.  This is even worse than Vietnam, because Obama’s conduct here is more deliberate and, in a twisted way, more informed about the risks of his conduct:

This sobering report comes from the Washington Post:

More than 1,000 American troops have been wounded in battle over the past three months in Afghanistan, accounting for one-fourth of all those injured in combat since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. The dramatic increase has filled military hospitals with more amputees and other seriously injured service members and comes as October marks the deadliest month for American troops in Afghanistan.

How many were killed or lost a limb, I wonder, while the president dithered and delayed implementing the recommendations of his hand-picked general? It is not an inconsequential question. The president acts as though there were no downside to the lethargic pace of his decision-making. He would have us believe that there is no price to be paid as he micromanages, province-by-province, the number of troops he’ll dispense. He seems content to entertain the recommendations of Gens. Joe Biden and John Kerry – drawing on their years of experience (in assessing nearly every national-security challenge incorrectly) while discarding that of the real experts.

What’s a few more weeks? Or months? Well, we know there is indeed a price to allowing our current approach to languish. There is a very real cost to delaying implementation of the new plan that is the best available to achieve victory as quickly as possible. The enemy is emboldened. More civilians die. The political and security situation in Pakistan worsens. And more brave Americans are asked to sacrifice themselves while Obama considers and reconsiders whether there isn’t any way to shave some money off the tab and reduce the number of troops his commanders say are needed. After all, health care is going to cost an awful lot.

The horrid reality of war is that parents send their children to die or to return in a condition they could not possibly have envisioned. But to sacrifice even a single American who was engaged in a fruitless exercise or an understaffed operation so the president can conduct a seminar and postpone a confrontation with his own party (which no longer can stomach the “good war”) is reprehensible.

At a certain point, you have to fish or cut bait. Either Obama fights a war, in which case he fights both to win and to ensure that our troops are adequately supported in that fight. Or, Obama withdraws from the fight, and takes our troops out of harm’s way entirely. To do what he’s doing, which is not fighting but leaving our troops there is unconscionable.

Obama needs to figure out that he’s president, not place holder

Charles Krauthammer goes on full throttle attack against Barack Obama based on Obama’s endless, weasely whining that everything that’s gone wrong with the first nine months of his presidency is all Bush’s fault.  The central focus of this whining, of course, is Afghanistan, which candidate Obama claimed was the necessary war and which candidate Obama complained was the war Bush ignored.  Candidate Obama also promised that he would take immediately action on Afghanistan and fix it.  But now with his feet in the Oval Office, suddenly it’s not President Obama’s problem any more — because it’s all Bush’s fault:

Is there anything he hasn’t blamed George W. Bush for?

The economy, global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad — everything but swine flu.

It’s as if Obama’s presidency hasn’t really started. He’s still taking inventory of the Bush years. Just this Monday, he referred to “long years of drift” in Afghanistan in order to, I suppose, explain away his own, well, yearlong drift on Afghanistan.

This compulsion to attack his predecessor is as stale as it is unseemly. Obama was elected a year ago. He became commander in chief two months later. He then solemnly announced his own “comprehensive new strategy” for Afghanistan seven months ago. And it was not an off-the-cuff decision.

Given the non-stop whining and blaming, it’s sometimes hard to remember that Obama desperately wanted, and battled hard, to take on Bush’s job.  For a year and a half, he promised voters — left, right and center — that, with his transformative, nay, God–like* powers, he would resolve those problems instantly and definitively.  Apparently boasting about solving things is not the same as actually solving them.  Indeed, even the ability to offer legitimate criticisms is not the same as the ability to solve problems.  I’m famous for being able to take things apart, but singularly lack the ability to put them back together again.

The fact is that all candidates make abstract promises and then, if elected, have to deal with concrete realities.  All candidates discover that there may be a chasm between those promises and the realities.  Only Obama, though, is so childish and narcissistic that he is unable to accept that he’s in charge now, and that the realities are his problem. Placing blame is no longer a job for the President. It’s just one for the history books. (And if it’s any comfort to Obama, with the plethora of Leftist history professors, he’ll come out on top in there.)

________________________

*Have you ever noticed that Leftists really want a God?  The traditional ones aren’t good enough for them, so they go out and create their own.  I have to say that, if I were making up a God, I wouldn’t pick a jug-eared skinny guy who doesn’t like women and tends to engage in trash talk.  (And that’s entirely separate from my profound disagreements with his policies and values.)

More on Obama’s hostile relationship to the military

Jennifer Rubin has two posts this morning, both of which illustrate my point about the dangerous relationship between our CIC and the military he’s supposed to be leading.  In the first, she talks about the insane decision-making process in D.C., which seems to have little to do with either victory or troop safety:

The White House seminars on the Afghanistan war are continuing. The term papers assigned this quarter include a “province-by-province analysis of Afghanistan to determine which regions are being managed effectively by local leaders and which require international help, information that his advisers say will guide his decision on how many additional U.S. troops to send to the battle.” But there is a hint as to where this is headed. The military commanders are being phased out and the political appointees are taking charge:

The review group once included intelligence officials, generals and ambassadors, but it has recently narrowed to a far smaller number of senior civilian advisers, including Biden, Gates, Jones, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, among others.

But the game is obvious here. Extract information, second-guess the military, and lower the troop levels:

“There are a lot of questions about why McChrystal has identified the areas that he has identified as needing more forces,” said a senior military official familiar with the review, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations candidly. “Some see it as an attempt by the White House to do due diligence on the commander’s troop request. A less charitable view is that it is a 5,000-mile screwdriver tinkering from Washington.”

No wonder the process is taking so long. All this homework and micromanaging takes time. But in the end, will the American people believe that faux Gens. Biden and Emanuel were smarter than Gen. Stanley McChrystal? The voters in repeated polls have already said they trust the military commanders by a wide margin over the president to make the calls on Afghanistan. That isn’t how it should work in our system of civilian control. But the public has smelled a rat — and is right to conclude that the president and his team aren’t making decisions on the merits but rather are massaging the facts to get to a result they desire.

The seminar process has not inspired confidence. Moreover, the president’s failure to reiterate the importance of a successful outcome (he doesn’t like the word victory) has allowed public support for the war to erode further. It’s hard to see whether the president still believes in the effort, given that he’s decided that “the Taliban cannot be eliminated as a military and political force, regardless of how many more troops are deployed.” We are now in the business of half-measures and inconclusive outcomes.

As you can see, the president is involved in political calculations, with little concern for military outcomes.  The war he said was a necessity is now a problem, and Emanuel, Kerry and Biden are trying to turn it into Kerry’s famous “police action.”  This is how troops die — and, worse, die for nothing.

What’s even sadder is that, as Rubin also points out, the money that could have been used to win a war, save lies and create jobs has been piddled (if you count waterfalls of cash as piddling) away on pork:

This report tells us:

An early progress report on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.The government’s first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

Forget the error rate and the funny double-counting. If we created 25,000 jobs, we’re talking $31.48 million per job created. (That uses the conservative figure of $787B, which does not include interest.) This is how the taxpayers’ money is being spent. And the administration declares this a success, beyond its expectations. We’re heading for double-digit unemployment, but we’re told this was money well spent.

Meanwhile, the Obama team can’t find the money — or is it the will to ask for the money? – to give Gen. McChrystal all the funding for troops he needs. We don’t have enough to continue the F-22 — which would create directly or indirectly 95,000 high-paying jobs. We need to chisel a billion here and there on missile defense. After all, we need to watch how we spend the taxpayers’ money.

Is the administration setting up a Vietnam in Afghanistan? *UPDATED*

I’ve said it a million times and I’ll now say it for the million and first time:  You fight wars to win.  If you’re not committed to winning, leave.  If you don’t leave, and fight a half-assed war, you end with dead soldiers.  That’s what happened in Vietnam, and that’s what Obama and Biden are planning to see happen in Afghanistan.

Although a liberal assured me I shouldn’t worry.  He said that a “vast majority” (and who knew 53% was a vast majority?) of Americans voted for Obama and Biden and that those two can therefore be trusted to make the right decisions.  I suggested, more politely than this idiot deserved, that Obama’s and Biden’s profound lack of military experience meant that Americans trusted them to following the generals (whom Americans do trust to know how to wage war), rather than to go their own way.  “Oh, no,” he responded.  “We have to have faith in Obama.”  When I hit that religious wall, I knew all rational discourse was over.

Trust Jennifer Rubin, of course, to explain exactly what the problem is with the advisors to whom Obama is listening.  Having given Biden a fair hearing, Obama’s now turned to someone else:

The bad news is that Kerry is Obama’s new best adviser. What this boils down to is chiseling on the troops by dragging the process out so as to “diffuse the political problem of asking Congress to fund 40,000 more troops — at about $40 billion — all at once.” Because, with a trillion dollars needed for a health-care bill the voters don’t want, we plainly don’t have $40B to win a critical war, right? And Obama can’t be expected to persuade Congress to do what is needed to win the war, so “diffusing” — denying his general the troops he says he needs — is the way to go.

My advice, and I never thought I’d say this, is that if you are a young person contemplating a military career, wait four years and see who our next president is. The current president has no care for your welfare. And if your enlistment is up, take the skills you’ve learned and go elsewhere.

UPDATE:  Apropos my final suggestion, maybe military service is still worth the greater risks the Obami are creating.  In a National Review Online interview, Dan Senor and Saul Singer, authors of Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, explain why the military is such an essential part of Israel’s incredible economic vitality:

LOPEZ: What’s the secret of its success?

DAN SENOR: Our book dives into many interacting factors, but one of the most important is the training and battlefield experience that most Israelis receive in the military. The military is where many Israelis learn to lead and manage people, improvise, become mission-oriented, work in teams, and contribute to their country. They tend to come out of their years of service (three for men, two for women) more mature and directed than their peers in other countries. They learn “the value of five minutes,” as one general told us. They even learn something more uniquely Israeli: to speak up — regardless of ranks and hierarchy — if they think things can be done better.

Certainly that jives with what I’ve seen of people who enter and leave our military.

When I was growing up, one of the neighborhood boys was a slacker before that term was invented. He was a bright kid who lay on the couch, watched TV and drank beer. When his parents kicked him out, he ended up joining the military because he thought it was a way to avoid “real” work. The military was the making of him. It gave him the discipline he’d sorely lacked before. When he got out, a long time later, he became one of the early dot com millionaires. He was never one of the huge players, but he also had moved so far beyond the couch slacker that it was hard to believe the two were the same people.

UPDATE II:  Please see a further discussion in the comments section to this post regarding the pros and cons of staying, not in the military, but in Obama’s military.  I think my point is valid, but I’m awfully impressed by the arguments coming in from the other side.

What the president really meant to say in his talk to the troops

James Taranto nails what the President really meant to say when he spoke to troops about Afghanistan:

“I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm’s way,” FoxNews.com quotes the president as telling servicemen. As for the servicemen who are already in harm’s way: Jeez, guys, be patient! He’ll figure out what to do about Afghanistan as soon as he gets around to it.

Get ‘er done — Bush and Obama; a study in contrasts

There’ve been accusations and counter-accusations flying about Obama fiddling while Afghanistan burns.  Cheney accuses him of being a do-nothing.  Gibb claims Bush did nothing.  Jake Tapper looked into the matter and discovered that, while Iraq was a priority, Bush indeed did little with troop requests, struggling to fill them, but only getting bout 1/5 of the way there.

Of course, that truth does little to put Obama into a better position.  The entire point of Obama’s year-and-a-half long campaign rhetoric regarding Afghanistan was that Bush was fighting the wrong war, channeling his energies away unnecessarily from Afghanistan, and that it would take Obama to get it right.

And here we have Obama, ten months into his presidency, and he still can’t get it right — on the war he himself tapped as the single most important battle front.  No wonder Lucianne is getting reams of hate mail just because she put on her home page that macho picture of Bush in a flight suit.  That picture is a brutal reminder that, when it came to his primary goal (Iraq) Bush accomplished his mission; Obama, meanwhile, accomplishes nothing.

A scathing indictment of our Commander in Chief’s wartime conduct

In Best of the Web Today, James Taranto politely savages Barack Obama’s absentee leadership as American troops live and die in the line of Taliban fire:

“The United States cannot wait for problems surrounding the legitimacy of the Afghan government to be resolved before making a decision on troops, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said,” Reuters reports from aboard a U.S. military aircraft:

Gates did not say when he expected U.S. President Barack Obama to decide on whether to increase troops, a decision complicated by rising casualties and fading public support for the stalled, eight-year-old war.

But he pointed out that further high-level deliberations would need to wait for the return of cabinet members from foreign travels through part of next week.

“It’s just a matter now of getting the time with the president when we can sort through these options and then tee them up for him to make a decision,” Gates said.

But Agence France-Presse reports the president hasn’t yet chosen whether to choose not to decide:

President Barack Obama has not yet determined whether he will make a decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan before the November 7 election runoff, a US official said Tuesday.

“The UN, NATO, the US stand ready to assist the Afghans in conducting the second round,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.

“Whether or not the president makes a decision before that I don’t think has been determined.

“I have continued to say a decision will be made in the coming weeks as the president goes through an examination of our policy,” he added.

It really bolsters your confidence in the president’s ability to achieve victory in what he used to call a war of necessity, doesn’t it?

But we suppose it’s easy to sit on the sidelines and snark. Barack Obama is president of the United States, and he is juggling all kinds of urgent responsibilities. Such as this one, reported by the New York Times:

Mr. Obama will fly to New York on Tuesday for a lavish Democratic Party fund-raising dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel for about 200 big donors. Each donor is paying the legal maximum of $30,400 and is allowed to take a date.

And hey, if you don’t like it, grab a damn mop! As Obama said just last week at . . . uh, another lavish Democratic Party fund-raiser.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports from Washington that “frustrations and anxiety are on the rise within the military” as the president dithers over Afghanistan:

A retired general who served in Iraq said that the military had listened, “perhaps naïvely,” to Mr. Obama’s campaign promises that the Afghan war was critical. “What’s changed, and are we having the rug pulled out from under us?” he asked. Like many of those interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals from the military’s civilian leadership and the White House.

Shouldn’t it be the enemy that fears reprisals?

During the presidential campaign, Obama’s opponents mocked him for frequently voting “present” on difficult questions that came before the Illinois Senate. This is even worse. The commander in chief is absent without leave.

And, by the way, at least one New York Times reporter finally figured that those Taliban terrorists are not nice people.

Our President, too, is proving that he is not a nice person, but is, instead, a fairly reprehensible excuse for a human being.

US Soldiers in Afghanistan need your help

I blogged last week about Bravo Troop 361 Cavalry, the unit that was overrun by a horde of Taliban, and whose members stayed to fight despite their wounds.  As with all these stories, there’s a back story too, and the back story is that the guys in that fight didn’t lose just their friends, they also lost everything but the clothes on their backs.  They did a supply and morale infusion.  Some Soldier’s Mom has more information on what you can do to help.  Alternatively, you can just go here and send money.  Every penny counts, especially with the government pinching pennies at the troops’ expense.

Your help is enormously important.  It’s not just the material things that matter to the troops.  It’s the knowledge that people back home are paying attention, that we appreciate what our military is doing, and that we’ll do more than just sit around vapidly singing their praises.

Hat tip:  Radio Patriot

Jennifer Rubin on Obama’s approach to Afghanistan

As usual, the gal’s nailed it:

One almost gets the sense that the Obama team may have not learned anything from our recent experiences in two war theaters. It is not as if Donald Rumsfeld and a slew of generals didn’t try in Iraq to use the fewest possible troops, spend the least possible amount of taxpayer money, and get the most out of high-tech wizardry. Doesn’t the Obama team remember that this didn’t work, that a wholesale revision of strategy was needed and that only once a fully implemented counterinsurgency approach was employed did we achieve a victory? This sort of willful obtuseness is deeply troubling because there simply isn’t any viable military/strategic rationale for what the president is straining to do. It is a political approach plain and simple. He wants money for health care and he doesn’t want a revolt on the Left.

[snip]

That’s what we expect of a commander in chief: set a strategy, hire the best generals, get their advice, and implement it. But that doesn’t seem to be what we’re getting. We get equivocation, agonizing, and timidity — because the president would rather spend hundreds of billions on a health-care scheme Americans don’t support. No wonder the generals have gone to the newspapers. They must be searching in vain for some way to get the president to focus on what it takes to win the war that he declared to be critical. One can imagine they must be at their wits’ end. How does one respond to a president who, in essence, says he’d doesn’t have another strategy but another place he’d like to spend the money instead?

The word that comes up ever more frequently in connection with Obama (in articles from the Right and the moderate Left) is feckless:

feck⋅less /ˈfɛklɪs/ –adjective

1. ineffective; incompetent; futile: feckless attempts to repair the plumbing.
2. having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy.

It’s amazing how a single word can so completely sum up the president of the United States.

Our American troops show extraordinary bravery and honor *UPDATED*

It was like a battle scene in an old Hollywood movie, when Americans still knew in their arts that American soldiers are ordinary Americans — good people — only braver and more honorable:

Fighting raged at two remote U.S. outpostsnear the Pakistan border this weekend, that left eight U.S. soldiers dead and 24 wounded. The battle was fought from Friday night through Sunday as hundreds of Taliban insurgents and their allies tried to overrun the Americans.

During the fighting, the insurgents succeeded in breaching the outer defense of the base at times before being repelled with the help of attack helicopters, fighter jets and drones. It was the bloodiest battle in a year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

[snip]

Some of the injured refused to be MEDEVACED out of the combat zone and continued to fight despite their wounds, according to soldiers at the base. Soldiers told the MEDEVAC crew that troops were donating blood during the battle, so it could be transfused into wounded comrades.

Incidentally, the above story isn’t fronm the Military Times or another military paper that could be accused by jaded liberals of delivering propaganda to credulous American masses.  It’s a first hand story by an ABC correspondent.  Yes, that ABC, the one that, like the rest of the American media, really doesn’t like war and, by inevitable extension, isn’t so thrilled about the men and women who fight wars.  Sort of like our Commander in Chief, who refuses to talk to the generals under his command and who, even as he is rushing to remake 16% of the American  economy, just can’t decide about whether he really wants to support the American men and women who are fighting, bleeding and dying in Afghanistan.

UPDATE:  With stories like the one above, reports that Virginia is working to block military votes (which tend towards the Republican side of the spectrum) verge on the obscene.  (H/t:  Anchoress)

Conservative cartoonists double-down on Obama, the Olympics and Afghanistan

If only I could draw, I try to draw this type of political cartoon.

President Obama stages his own retreat from Afghanistan *UPDATED*

When Bush was in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan was the good war and Iraq was Vietnam.  Now that Bush is gone, and Iraq is holding stable (for the time being at least), the liberals can give over their pretense about the possibility of a good war and, instead, given in to their default and instinctive position, which is to recast Afghanistan at Vietnam.  Fine.  This is not the post I’m choosing to use to argue about whether or not the US should be in Afghanistan, or what its goals should be if it’s there.

Fortunately for me, I’m in the position to ignore things about goals, or troops, or any other big or small details about a War.  For me, thoughts about the war are academic, because it’s not my responsiblity.  It is, however, Barack Insane Obama’s responsibility and, to date, he’s shown that he absolutely refuses to step up to bat.  In other words, the situation with Obama is so bad that he’s not even doing a 1974 redux that sees America run away from a war.  Instead, our extraordinarily self-obsessed President is himself running away from the war.

You heard me right — Obama is staging his own retreat.  He refuses to talk to his generals about the situation.  Steve Schippert explains what’s going on, and also provides useful information about the things Obama thought were more important than even a quick phone call to those generals operating under him (because, though he’s pretending it ain’t so, he is still Commander in Chief).

UPDATE:  Flopping Aces has a good timeline — with quotes! — showing the Obama’s own personal war game, from gung-ho blood lust to strategic retreat, all without any expenditure of actual energy on his part.