McChrystal Told the Truth

 AFGHANISTAN WAR, ENEMIES OF AMERICA, IRAQ WAR, PRESIDENT  No Responses »
Jun 242010
 

by Rowan Scarborough
Human Events, June 24, 2010

The military is finally telling the unvarnished truth about President Obama’s dysfunctional national security team.

Oddly, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his inner circle chose to dish dirt to a reporter for Rolling Stone, a decidedly left-wing publication that portrays the U.S. military negatively and knows as much about counter-insurgency as a 4th grader. The article that brought down the career special-operations soldier throws in the “F-word” several times, not as a quote, but to describe the author’s own views.

Not included in the story is an ongoing dispute between the White House and its generals that shows why McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, had grown so frustrated. Continue reading »

The Tea Party, Timothy McVeigh, and Tainted History

 ENEMIES OF AMERICA, IRAQ WAR, TERRORISM  No Responses »
Apr 232010
 

By Jayna Davis
American Thinker, April 23, 2010

Anyone waving a placard or voicing dissent against the Obama administration dare not protest too loudly. President Bill Clinton has reignited the incendiary rhetoric of April 19, 1995. He effectively sealed his second White House bid in 1996 by blaming conservative talk radio for inciting the heartland bomber Timothy McVeigh. Now, fifteen years later, the Democratic playbook promises to claim far more victims. Only this time, hardworking Americans stand in the crosshairs.

In a recent CNN interview, the former commander-in-chief sounded a battle cry to the political left, press and pundits alike: Vilify the Tea Party, deeming its membership capable of the violent rampage of the Oklahoma City bomber. This stigma imperils the most influential grassroots movement in modern history. Nothing threatens to muzzle free speech more than being stereotyped a “Tim McVeigh wanna-be.” Continue reading »

So What Happened to Iraq?

 IRAQ WAR  No Responses »
Apr 162010
 

Looking back, almost all of what once passed for conventional wisdom has been proven wrong.

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, April 15, 2010

Six years ago, the conventional wisdom was that Ayad Allawi, then prime minister of the appointed Iraqi interim government, was a puppet of the United States.

Last month, though, the Allawi-led Iraqiya alliance won, by a narrow margin, more parliamentary seats than any other coalition in national elections — and he may become the country’s next prime minister.

The secular Allawi successfully campaigned on the message of curbing religious interference in government — countering the often-argued charge that the U.S. has created a radical Islamic republic in Iraq.

Indeed, as we look back at our years in Iraq, almost all of what once passed for conventional wisdom has been proven wrong.

Yes, there is still terrorist violence in Iraq — especially recently, as the leadership of the country’s next government remains in doubt. And, yes, there are still around 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq. But in the first three months of 2010, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq was about equal to those murdered in Fresno, Calif. Continue reading »

In Praise of the Rotation of Power

 AFGHANISTAN WAR, IRAQ WAR, NEW AMERICA, PRESIDENT  No Responses »
Mar 122010
 

Sometimes the responsibility of actually governing forces a party to embrace the policies of its opponents.

Charles Krauthammer
National Review Online, March 11, 2010

As the Afghanistan War intensifies — Marja, soon Kandahar, and the steady arrival of 30,000 new American troops — it has come to be seen as Obama’s war.

Not so. It’s become America’s war. When the former opposition party — habitually antiwar for the last four decades — adopted, reaffirmed, and escalated a war begun by the habitually hawkish other party, partisanship fell away, and the war became nationalized.

And legitimized. Do you think if John McCain, let alone George W. Bush, were president, we would not see growing demonstrations protesting our continued presence in Iraq and the escalation of Afghanistan? That we wouldn’t see a serious push in Congress to cut off funds?

Why aren’t we seeing those things? Because Barack Obama is now commander-in-chief. The lack of opposition is not a matter of hypocrisy. It is a natural result of the rotation of power. When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That’s its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over; the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born. Continue reading »

The Death of the ‘Iran Won’ Myth

 IRAN TENSIONS, IRAQ WAR  No Responses »
Mar 122010
 

In the Left’s eyes, Iran was the greatest beneficiary of the Iraq War. Let’s look at the reality.

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, March 12, 2010

Did the fall of Saddam Hussein and the violent birth of Iraqi democracy really empower Iran?

That conventional wisdom might have been true in the shorter term during the chaotic Iraqi insurrection, but it was never an accurate assessment over the longer haul — as we are beginning to see, nearly seven years after the Iraq War began.

In the last twelve months, mass civil disobedience has spread throughout Iran, most notably when nearly a million people hit the streets to protest last summer’s rigged elections. There is unrest in Iraq as well, and a myriad of conflicting interests, but note that the tension is of a completely opposite sort. Whereas in Iran an unpopular government uses violence to squelch a majority that seeks free elections, in Iraq a legitimately elected government enjoys public support against occasional attacks from small cadres of terrorist extremists. So in an Iran supposedly at peace, more died voting than in an Iraq purportedly at war. Continue reading »

Politically Correct Killing?

 AFGHANISTAN WAR, IRAQ WAR, PRESIDENT  No Responses »
Mar 032010
 

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, March 3, 2010

By all accounts, President Obama has vastly increased the number of Predator drone strikes during his 13 months in office and expanded the theater of missile operations by thousands of square miles. Indeed, since inauguration day, 2009, Predator and Reaper drone attacks may have killed over 500 suspected terrorists in Waziristan and Pakistan.

In January of this year alone, the United States conducted ten strikes, and may have killed some 70 suspected al-Qaeda or Taliban terrorists — along with additional unknown others in their vicinity. When we killed Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, last summer, eleven others were blown up with him, among them his wife and father-in-law — and, earlier, dozens of others were killed in strikes that failed to target him. In the first two months of 2010, the Obama administration conducted almost half the number of strikes that were conducted in all of 2008, the last full year of the Bush administration. Continue reading »

The Tragic Truth of War

 AFGHANISTAN WAR, ENEMIES OF AMERICA, IRAQ WAR, OUR MILITARY  No Responses »
Feb 172010
 

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, February 17, 2010

Victory has usually been defined throughout the ages as forcing the enemy to accept certain political objectives. “Forcing” usually meant killing, capturing, or wounding men at arms. In today’s polite and politically correct society we seem to have forgotten that nasty but eternal truth in the confusing struggle to defeat radical Islamic terrorism.

What stopped the imperial German army from absorbing France in World War I and eventually made the Kaiser abdicate was the destruction of a once magnificent army on the Western front — superb soldiers and expertise that could not easily be replaced. Saddam Hussein left Kuwait in 1991 when he realized that the U.S. military was destroying his very army. Even the North Vietnamese agreed to a peace settlement in 1973, given their past horrific losses on the ground and the promise that American air power could continue indefinitely inflicting its damage on the North.
Continue reading »

Military Outsources Rescue Ops, Secret Tagging Tech

 AFGHANISTAN WAR, IRAQ WAR, OUR MILITARY, SECURITY  No Responses »
Jan 202010
 

By Noah Shachtman
Danger Room, January 20, 2010

Rescue opsIn the American military, few missions are considered more important than rescuing missing or kidnapped troops. So it’s more than a little odd that U.S. forces in Iraq have decided to outsource that operation to a private company. The military’s Joint Contracting Command-Iraq/Afghanistan on Sunday handed out a one year, $11.3 million, no-bid contract to Blackbird Technologies Inc., declaring that the firm was “the only contractor that can currently provide the subject matter expertise needed” for personnel rescue operations. Continue reading »

 Older Entries