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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • What war? Where?

    This week our president has set as few minutes to talk to his National Security staff to discuss the war in Afghanistan. Ain’t that nice of him? Last week General Stanley McCrystal, the commander of our forces in Afghanistan, told a reporter that he’d only spoken directly to the President once since June. Perhaps, if they’d spoken more often, Obama might have had a plan ready when McCrystal asked for more resources.

    Since McCrystal asked for more troops, 43 more have been killed in Afghanistan while the Obama Administration diddles, according to Good Lt. at The Jawa Report.

    In the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove reminds us that George Bush faced similar circumstances in regards to Iraq;

    Mr. Obama’s predecessor faced a similar situation: a war that was grinding on, pressure to withdraw troops, and conflicting advice—including from some who saw the war as unwinnable. But George W. Bush talked to generals on the ground every week or two, which gave him a window into what was happening and insights into how his commanders thought. That helped him judge their recommendations on strategy.

    The difference of course is that Bush actually cared about the troops he sent in harm’s way. That doesn’t seem to be a factor in the Obama Administration;

    Mr. Obama’s aloofness on the war will be a problem if the recent airing of Joe Biden’s views on Afghanistan is a tipoff that Mr. Obama will rely on his vice president’s guidance. According to reports in the New York Times and other publications, Mr. Biden supports reducing troop levels in favor of surgical attacks—mostly launched from offshore—and missile strikes against al Qaeda, especially in Pakistan.

    Like I wrote yesterday, Biden and Obama prefer the Clintonian approach to warfare – make a lot of explosions so that people think they’re actually doing something and depend on under-resourced ninjas to do the close-up work – but only if they can get out of the situation without a scratch.

    Biden and Obama, like Clinton think technology can get them out of a jam. Clinton used cruise missiles while Biden puts his eggs in the drone basket. Every weapon has it’s place and none is a silver bullet solution. But you can’t tell the two smartest men on the planet.

  • Giving Obama cover for political cowardice

    The Washington Post this morning gives Obama an exit strategy for making the politically tough decision to add to our forces in Afghanistan. The headline shouts Success Against Al Qaeda Cited;

    success-against-al-qaida

    The Post quotes unnamed “officials” who think we’re winning in Afghanistan without more troops;

    A U.S. counterterrorism official said that the combined advances have led to the deaths of more than a dozen senior figures in al-Qaeda and allied groups in Pakistan and elsewhere over the past year, most of them in 2009. Officials described Osama bin Laden and his main lieutenants as isolated and unable to coordinate high-profile attacks.

    The unnamed “officials” (who could be Kenny the Copy Guy for all we know) claim that these successes stem from our successful employment of ninjas and drone aircraft – you know the same things we were doing before the Inauguration before Obama sent 20,000 new troops to Afghanistan. You remember – before the Inauguration when we were losing Afghanistan.

    Of course, this article is nothing more than cover for Obama to disregard General McCrystal’s request for more resources – mainly because it goes against the brilliant military analysis of the smartest man in the world, Joe Biden;

    Those within the administration who have suggested limiting large-scale U.S. ground combat in Afghanistan, including Vice President Biden, have pointed to an improved counterterrorism effort as evidence that Obama’s principal objective — destroying al-Qaeda — can be achieved without an expanded troop presence.

    So now we know that the White House Wing of the Washington Post will be pummeling us with more of their propaganda to give cover to Obama when he punts on the issue of increasing ground forces in Afghanistan. I’m sure we’ll see an increase in ninjas and zombie robots, though.

  • Obama on our war

    “It’s a battle — we’re going to win — take no prisoners, ” said Obama. Unfortunately, it was Michelle, not Barack and she was talking about bringing the Olympics to Chicago and not fighting terrorists .

    I guess they figure fighting for some sports games some time in the distant future would be more productive than fighting for our security. Of course, getting the Olympics is more like a campaign – the Obamas can smile their way to victory, the late Pat Moynihan would call it “boob bait for the bubbas”.

    It would be nice if Obama got as excited and involved in the war in Afghanistan instead of trying to pawn it off on our allies as reported by AFP;

    “This is not a American battle, this is a NATO mission,” Obama told reporters after the Oval Office meeting, which comes as he launches a series of intense talks on whether to send more US soldiers to the Afghan war.

    “We are working actively and diligently to consult with NATO at every step of the way,” Obama said.

    Somehow “working actively and diligently to consult” doesn’t have the same fire as “we’re going to win — take no prisoners”.

  • Stop this war before we win it!

    Don Surber links to a New York Times article titled “Rethinking our Terrorist Fears” I think the article is about how we shouldn’t fear al Qaeda anymore, but I think it’s actually about not having to rethink our strategy against terrorism;

    Audrey Kurth Cronin, a professor at the National War College in Washington, cites the arcs of previous violent extremist groups, from the Russian People’s Will to the Irish Republican Army, that she studied for her new book, “How Terrorism Ends.”

    “I think Al Qaeda is in the process of imploding,” she said. “This is not necessarily the end. But the trends are in a good direction.”

    With Democrats currently thinking about jerking our military forces out of Afghanistan and as they navel-gaze while the generals are asking for more resources to fight the taliban and al Qaeda, experts have a simple warning;

    Even counterterrorism officials who agree that Al Qaeda is on the wane, for example, say the organization might well regroup if left unmolested in a lawless region in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Somalia.

    All of the people who said that we couldn’t solve terrorism with a military solution are being proven wrong. The folks who said we were just creating more terrorists discounted al Qaeda’s innate stupidity;

    “Right after 9/11, people thought, wow, America is not invincible,” Mr. Mandaville said. “It was a strike against the U.S., and they were for it.” But when large numbers of innocent Muslims fell victim to attacks, “it became more and more difficult to romanticize Al Qaeda as fighting the global hegemons — basically, ‘sticking it to the man.’ ”

    In addition, Al Qaeda, for all its talk of global religious war, offered no practical solutions for local problems: unemployment, poverty, official corruption and poor education. “People realized bin Laden didn’t have anything to offer,” Dr. Mandaville said.

    So, apparently, Democrats are rushing at light speed towards a quick surrender just so they can’t accidentally win this war.

  • What really happened on that VA call

    Yesterday, I was on a conference call with TSO – well, actually it was just me and him – and I mentioned to him that it had been raining entirely too much in the DC area this weekend. I barely got off the phone when the rain finally stopped – and it hasn’t rained since that moment. So I’d like to thank TSO for ending the rainy spell we had this weekend.

    VoteVet’s dicksmith had the same experience that I had a few days earlier. He was on a conference call will Tammy Duckworth and Lynn Nelson from the Department of Veterans Affairs and they were talking about the new GI Bill. At VoteVets, Dicksmith writes that all he had to do was mention to Duckworth and Nelson that he wasn’t getting his benefit – and Viola! they decided to pay everyone. Dicksmith swoons;

    Honestly, I don’t think anyone on that call or in the Vet community in general expected this. I know I didn’t. The VA has shown what can be done when the agency actually cares what happens to the Veterans it serves.

    Yeah, why should we expect the DVA to suddenly begin doing what they should have been prepared to do two months ago seein’s how they’ve had a year to get ready for the deluge of paperwork and claims? Um, Dicksmith, if the VA, Tammy Duckworth and Black Beret Guy REALLY cared, you wouldn’t have had a conference call Friday. You’d have your check in your grubby little paw in the line at the bank.

    And, Army Sergeant, I’m not letting you off the hook, either – you swooned, too and forgave Shinseki all of his sins. For what? For doing his job – once?

    First of all, this remedy is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. To get your partial payment of your GI Bill benefits which you earned and filed for months ago, you have to go to one of 57 Regional Offices.

    I went to SUNY Oswego – my regional office was Buffalo. A four hour drive each way. But not to worry, the same VA who couldn’t get your benefit to you on time will send representatives to your school to arrange transportation to the regional office. How dependable will that be?

    I can schedule buses, for Pete’s sake – the veterans don’t need an eight hour bus ride (how many buses will be late, and how many veterans will ride for hours to find out their paperwork is screwed up, how many buses will break down?) they need their money that the government has been promising since before the last election!

    I guess some people are more pleased with the party to which an appointee belongs than they are the actual service they get from that appointee’s agency.

  • Kerry prepares for cut and run in Afghanistan

    Probably the last person I’d ever ask about military issues, John Kerry (lied, while better men died), has a blueprint for cut and run in Afghanistan in this morning’s Wall Street Journal entitled “Testing Afghanistan Assumptions“. Of course, as is his MO, be compares Afghanistan to Vietnam. Except Afghanistan isn’t anything like Vietnam, except in the mind of John Kerry who wants to remind us that he spent three months in Vietnam once.

    [O]ne of the lessons from Vietnam—applied in the first Gulf War and sadly forgotten for too long in Iraq—is that we should not commit troops to the battlefield without a clear understanding of what we expect them to accomplish, how long it will take, and how we maintain the consent of the American people. Otherwise, we risk bringing our troops home from a mission unachieved or poorly conceived. Gen. McChrystal offers no timetable or exit strategy, beyond warning that the next 12 months are critical. I agree that time is running out and that troops are dying without a sustainable strategy for victory. But we cannot rush to judgment.

    Timetabled withdrawals seem to be the Left’s way of saying that they don’t understand “exit strategies”. You think they would have learned their lesson when, in 1995, then-President promised the American people that we’d be out of Bosnia by October 1996. of course, we still have troops in Bosnia. The Democrats don’t understand victory – they seem to think that by just announcing an end date, all parties will comply. Kerry is no different. Kerry doesn’t bother in his missive to examine what would happen if we did withdraw. He’d rather pontificate about the judicious use of force – ignoring the indisputable fact that war and victory are necessary regardless of the cost. Navel-gazing in Congress will only result in more needless deaths among US forces while Kerry and his useless pals try to appear as if they know something about war and strategy;

    Mr. Obama promises not to send more troops to Afghanistan until he has absolute clarity on what the strategy will be. He is right to take the time he needs to define the mission. We should all follow his lead and debate all of the options. It may be that Gen. McChrystal has provided the road map to victory. Or it may be that some other strategy would work better, with fewer risks. We can’t know until we test every assumption and examine every option.

    In other words, Kerry, Congress and Obama is more than willing to let more US soldiers die while they campaign for the 2010 elections and stroke their anti-war base. This is what we get when Democrats have both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue – 535 armchair generals.

  • Back in style

    I knew I kept this for a reason;

    Bill Clinton said a vast, right-wing conspiracy that once targeted him is now focusing on President Obama.

    The ex-president made the comment in a television interview when he was asked about one of the signature moments of the Monica Lewinsky affair over a decade ago. Back then, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton used the term “vast, right-wing conspiracy” to describe how her husband’s political enemies were out to destroy his presidency.

    That was the Rush Limbaugh “Charter Member; Vast Right WIng Conspiracy” cup I got for a year’s subscription to the Limbaugh Letter back in 1998. See, if you keep stuff long enough, it comes back in style.

  • How to make me anti-war

    The Obama Administration has finally found a way to make me want to join the throngs of protesters against the war in Afghanistan (from the Washington Post);

    President Obama has not set a deadline for determining a new strategy or for committing more troops to the war in Afghanistan, despite an urgent request from his top commander, his national security adviser said Saturday.

    If the commanders on the ground, who understand the challenge before them, can’t get the support they need from the Administration and their commander-in-chief, why toss away the lives of soldiers and Marines?

    The upcoming meetings will begin with the assumption that the McChrystal strategy is correct, Jones said, adding that the president will “encourage free-wheeling discussion” and that “nothing is off the table.”

    So basically, while Americans die, the suits will diddle themselves.

    As Drew M said at Ace of Spades last night; “Remember when Afghanistan was the essential front in the War on Man Made Disasters? Back then it was bad to take your eye off the fight there and not provide enough troops.”