This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Surge news

    So, happily, we can put behind us the tragedy of a rich golfer crashing his Cadillac into a fire hydrant and the deep mystery of how two attention whores sneaked into the White House when no Republicans cuoould get an invitation. Can we please discuss our national security? Please?

    How about we talk about General…er..Senator Barbara Boxer who thinks that the sides are too lop sided against the Taliban according to an AP report in the Miami Herald;

    “I support the President’s mission and exit strategy for Afghanistan, but I do not support adding more troops because there are now 200,000 American, NATO and Afghan forces fighting roughly 20,000 Taliban and less than 100 al Qaida,” Boxer said.

    Yeah, she’d like to be more like a Mexican standoff, I suppose.

    Much of the President’s plan includes additional forces from our allies – however the shine seems to have worn off of Obama’s overseas image according to the Washington Times;

    Conspicuously absent from recent pledges have been Germany and France, whose governments’ domestic political challenges complicate any war decisions. Still, diplomats said, both countries could boost their military presence after an international conference on Afghanistan in London in late January.

    How about giving another speech to moon-eyed Germans – it worked once.

    Biden and the Washington Post try to make the case that the president is using the plan that Biden presented earlier in the year;

    Biden sought, and ultimately got, a narrowed mission that shifted the focus of U.S. efforts away from aims such as extending the reach of the Afghan government to more remote regions of the country and fostering representative democracy. Now the focus is on reversing the Taliban’s momentum and transferring responsibility for security to Afghan forces as quickly as possible.

    Funny, but I didn’t hear the President mention ninja robots. It’s not like no one except Biden realized that the focus had to be in areas occupied the actual enemy – that’s kinda not new strategy, Joe.

    The Washington Post took the time ask a couple of hippies in Evanston, IL what they thought of the President’s decision;

    “When the speech was over, I turned to John and said, ‘What a terrible speech.’ Nothing in it made me happy,” Scarry said. “I asked myself: ‘He is a brilliant man — what is he thinking?’ ”

    But as Scarry pondered, he spotted a method in Obama’s strategy of sending more troops while setting a date to begin a U.S. withdrawal. The president grounded his policy in a collegial and moral approach to the world, he thought, and that struck him as sensible.

    “The initial reaction was, ‘We’re right, and he’s wrong.’ But feeling right is beside the point,” said Scarry, a Harvard graduate. “He had to find a position that people can unify around. I asked myself, ‘Can I endorse this position to unify us?’ My answer is yes.”

    What else would you expect from the “I love me some Obama” crowd?

  • Biden scraps robot ninja plan

    Joe Biden took time out of his busy day to blow smoke up my ass this evening in his personal email (Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee — 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.);

    Jonn —

    Last night, President Obama laid out his plan to defend our national interest by refocusing our efforts on three clear goals: defeating al Qaeda, stabilizing Pakistan, and breaking the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan.

    To achieve these goals, the President has authorized the rapid deployment of 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan, with a firm commitment to begin bringing our troops home in 2011.

    It’s a clean break from the failed Afghanistan policy of the Bush administration, and a new, focused strategy that can succeed.

    Our new strategy ends the era of blank checks for Afghanistan’s leaders, facilitates a responsible transition to Afghan security forces, and begins bringing our troops home in 2011.

    Now, I don’t why, but when I first read the email, I thought the “defeating al Qaeda” line read “defending al Qaeda” – must be because I knew it was from Biden. But then I saw the “rapid deployment” line. First of all, it took 94 days for Obama to come to a conclusion – and the deployment won’t be complete until May. There’s nothing “rapid” in that scenario.

    It’s not a “clean break” from Bush policy – it’s an expansion of the Bush policy. Biden advocated a “clean break” from Bush policy and a clean break with reality with his plan to use ninja robots in Afghanistan. I hope Biden, or Obama, for that matter, aren’t expecting a repeat of the Iraq surge in Afghanistan and banking on the same time line for success. They may be surprised.

    I may be completely wrong, but if the intent of this surge is to protect the Afghan population, it seems to me that the units should be in place through out the winter (when the Taliban and al Qaeda are limited in their operations by the weather) and able to mingle with the population (like beat cops) with little danger of having to fight so the people can see how nonthreatening and human our troops are before the troops face the enemy in their midst.

    But I’m not as smart as Joe Biden according to Joe Biden.

  • Straddling that fence

    As it’s been pointed out across the blogosphere today, President Obama’s speech last night was generally a cut and paste job from some early GWB speeches interspersed with apologies to the Left for making the politically expedient decision. And today, Obama sent out his minions to apologize even further to the Left and try to talk tough for the Right. As reported in the Washington Times, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Senate Armed Services Committee hearing;

    “We’re not just going to throw these guys into the swimming pool and walk away,” Mr. Gates told the committee. “It will be based on conditions on the ground, but at the same time . . . we have to build a fire under them, frankly, to get them to do the kind of recruitment and retention that allows us to make this transition.”

    Gates added a proviso;

    But asked specifically by Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, who is Senate Armed Forces Committee chairman, if the July 2011 date set by Mr. Obama to begin the “transition” process could be “conditions-based,” Mr. Gates replied, “No, sir.”

    An escape hatch. Ask anyone in the South Vietnamese government how our “condition-based” guarantees work out. We abandoned the South Vietnamese in 1975, the Afghans in 1988, the Iraqi Shi’ites in 1991, Somalia in 1993, and the Haitians. What’s going to stop us from abandoning the Afghans in 2012?

    On the other hand, the last time a Democrat president announced a date-certain for withdrawing troops right before an election was Bosnia before 1996. Last I checked, we’re still there. So what reason does the Left have for believing their own guy?

    It all comes down to credibility and since staffing only 75% what the generals requested is a muddled political compromise (which took 94 days, by the way) from where will the magic credibility spring? Neither side has reason to believe anything this president and his administration says.

  • Outside of West Point last night

    Our buddy DanNY, from Gathering of Eagles; New York sent along this report from Gathering of Eagles who faced down the anti-war crowd last night as they swooned outside of the gates of West Point. He found this video which includes our two friends Elaine Brower and Matthis Chiroux (who are seen together a lot lately…I’m just sayin’…).

    Is it me, or does Chiroux sound like he’s whining to his parents that his older brother won’t let him play the video game?

    The Left estimated their numbers at 250, so it was probably closer to thirty.

    Apparently 38 groups sent a letter to the president urging him to abandon our national security so they could feel better. Our experience here at This Ain’t Hell is that 38 antiwar groups = fifteen people using moonbat math.

    Far Left Representative Barbara Lee has promised her California constituency that she’ll oppose the surge in Congress. Isn’t that racist?

  • Paying for war

    We’ve watched as government spending has increased over the last year at a rate which is the only thing that will never be described by this White House as unprecedented. The word “trillions” slides off the tongues of politicians like honey these days. Every where you turn, there are signs announcing the commencement of some new federal spending – a drive to western Maryland this weekend was punctuated with huge placards introducing me to the wonders of a federally funded guardrail replacement project.

    Now, after waiting 94 days for President Obama to make a decision on troop commitments to Afghanistan, Democrats are finally talking about tax increases – apparently because the administration has proposed something that actually falls into the responsibilities of government – defense. The main proponent of a “war tax” is David Obey;

    Obey criticized the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on economic grounds and recently proposed a war tax to pay for an escalated war in Afghanistan.

    Thought it’s impossible to know Obey’s motives, the tax seems to be less a serious policy proposal and more an effort to call out GOP deficit hawks who abandon their fiscal restraint when it comes to deficit-funded wars. (Obey has similarly called political bluffs in the past.)

    Oddly enough, Obey complains that Republicans are demanding that Congress pay for their social programs.

    The Hill reports that there is little support for a war tax;

    Most senators and representatives pointed to the recession, saying that a tax increase would be poorly timed because it could prolong the economic drought.

    “It’s not a good idea to raise taxes in the middle of an economic downturn,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “I do think it needs to be paid for over some budget period. But I don’t like the idea of raising taxes now, at a time of economic weakness. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

    But the Washington Post wrings it’s hands over the prospect of an increase in troops without an increases in taxes;

    Obama’s proposal would place more than 200,000 troops altogether in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the troop level across both nations averages 75,000 through the next decade, the operations will cost an additional $867 billion — more than the $848 billion health-care legislation the Senate is considering.

    As if the Post’s readership doesn’t know that $867 billion is more than $848 billion. Thanks, Washington Post for clearing that up. I wonder if they’ve noticed that “health care” isn’t mentioned in the Preamble of the Constitution yet.

    It took minutes for Obey to run in circles and proclaim that the sky is falling;

    Minutes after Obama finished speaking, Obey issued a statement opposing the troop buildup and warning that the cost of the military efforts “could devour our ability to pay for the actions necessary to rebuild our own economy. We simply cannot afford to shortchange the crucial investments we need in education, job training, healthcare, and energy independence. The biggest threat to our long-term national security is a stunted economy.”

    Of course, no one is mentioning that there is a tax hike scheduled for next year, the year that the Bush tax cuts expire. So any increase the Congress imposes on us is in addition to a return to the Clinton tax era – which means that millions who pay no taxes now will get the surprise of their lives when they’re suddenly in a 15% tax bracket.

  • Fence sitting as a war policy

    I read somewhere that a compromise is an arrangement whereby people who can’t get what they want make sure nobody else does either. and that’s the way this drizzle is shaking out in Afghanistan.

    According to the Associated Press, President Obama is ordering only 30,000 troops for his drizzle over the next 6 months and then he’ll announce he’s pulling them back out in 19 months. So, I’m guessing there won’t be much action for the next 19 months while the Taliban takes sabbatical.

    The Washington Times writes that both sides in the US aren’t happy about his decision;

    Two liberal Democrats and a moderate Republican lawmaker are set to announce their opposition to the president’s plan Tuesday afternoon, just hours ahead of Mr. Obama’s nationally televised address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. And Republican leaders, who support the president’s call for more troops to Afghanistan, have qualified that support by saying that any talk of an exit strategy won’t fly.

    That’s what happens when you’re supposed to be a leader you try to please everyone. Everyone expects to be made happy and no one is. Every 20-year-old buck sergeant learned that on the first day of PLDC.

    ADDED: In this link from TSO, the American Legion has it’s reservations about the policy, too.

  • John Kerry flip-flopping again

    The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board writes this morning that John Kerry, former anti-war presidential candidate who was for the war before he was against it, is about to issue a report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that *surprise* blames the Bush Administration for not injecting enough troops into the Afghanistan conflict initially to end the war. This is seen as political cover for the President’s anticipated deployment of 34,000 more troops into the conflict tonight.

    coming from Mr. Kerry, of all people, this criticism is nothing short of astonishing.

    In 2001, readers may recall, the Washington establishment that included Mr. Kerry was fretting about the danger in Afghanistan from committing too many troops. The New York Times made the “quagmire” point explicitly in a famous page-one analysis, and Seymour Hersh fed the cliche at The New Yorker.

    On CNN with Larry King on Dec. 15, 2001, a viewer called in to say the U.S. should “smoke [bin Laden] out” of the Tora Bora caves. Mr. Kerry responded: “For the moment what we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way.” The Rumsfeld-General Tommy Franks troop strategy may have missed bin Laden, but it reflected domestic political doubts about an extended Afghan campaign.

    So, just like everything else he’s done this year, Obama will be merely fixing Bush policy, according to his defenders. I guess this more of John Kerry’s 20/20 hindsight and his wonderful ability to rewrite his own history. Don’t be surprised if film footage is released of Kerry in full combat gear patrolling on his own through the mountains of Afghanistan, peeking into caves, bayoneting hay stacks in his search for bin Laden.

  • The Brilliant First Year

    Do you have any idea how much Kool Aid Jacob Weisberg had to drink before arriving at this conclusion?

    brilliant-first-year

    So what does Weisberg think justifies such a declaration?

    …he has saved his fire for his most urgent priorities—preventing a depression, remaking America’s global image, and winning universal health insurance.

    Preventing a Depression? By driving us into debt deeper than ever before? By creating or saving no jobs? Yeah, that’s pretty brilliant. Remaking our global image…yep. According to Hugo Chavez, George Bush was the devil, but Obama is an ignoramus. The European press is less impressed with him than were with Bush.

    “Winning universal health care”? Really? Has that passed already? And even when it does, do you honestly think it’ll look anything like what Obama promised in the campaign? So, by accomplishing nothing

    Ed Driscoll writes about the first year of the Roosevelt Administration.