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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • SEALs speak out on anniversary

    Daniel and Old Trooper sent us a link to the UK’s Daily Mail who bothered to take a chance to interview SEALs about how they felt that there was a big celebration going on today about the killing of bin Laden a year ago;

    Ryan Zinke, a former Commander in the US Navy who spent 23 years as a SEAL and led a SEAL Team 6 assault unit, said: ‘The decision was a no brainer. I applaud him for making it but I would not overly pat myself on the back for making the right call.

    ‘I think every president would have done the same. He is justified in saying it was his decision but the preparation, the sacrifice – it was a broader team effort.’

    Mr Zinke, who is now a Republican state senator in Montana, added that MR Obama was exploiting bin Laden’s death for his re-election bid. ‘The President and his administration are positioning him as a war president using the SEALs as ammunition. It was predictable.’

    Mitt Romney said yesterday that “even Jimmy Carter” would have made the same decision. In fact Jimmy Carter did make a “gutsy call” and sent in the Desert One Raid to Tehran. It failed and he paid the price at the polls a few months later.

    I did an interview with Human Events yesterday on the same subject which hasn’t been published yet, but I made the point that we don’t normally celebrate the anniversaries of deaths of our enemies. When have we ever celebrated the anniversary of Hitler’s death on April 30, 1945? No one has ever suggested we celebrate Saddam Hussein’s death (December 30, 2006) and he was an enemy a lot longer than bin Laden was our enemy. But the difference, I suppose, is that Hussein was captured and killed during the Bush Administration.

    From the Daily Mail’s link;

    A serving SEAL Team member said: ‘Obama wasn’t in the field, at risk, carrying a gun. As president, at every turn he should be thanking the guys who put their lives on the line to do this. He does so in his official speeches because he speechwriters are smart.

    ‘But the more he tries to take the credit for it, the more the ground operators are saying, “Come on, man!” It really didn’t matter who was president. At the end of the day, they were going to go.’

    Yeah, but when it’s the only successful thing he’s done in office, what do you really expect him to do. Run on his long list of failures? I just think it’s disingenuous of Obama to stand on the shoulders of the same troops who his Defense Department is currently screwing on healthcare.

    Yeah, f*ck you very much.

  • al Qaeda & Taliban in “close contact”

    Now I’ve heard Joe “Bite Me” Biden and some members of this forum preach that the Taliban is not the enemy, and that al Qaeda’s numbers have been reduced to joke-worthy numbers thanks to the Bite Me zombie ninja robots strategy. However, the NY Daily News reports that documents discovered at the bin Laden lair show that there has always been close coordination between the two and that they’ve cooperated in planning attacks on the forces arrayed against the in Afghanistan;

    The communications show a three-way conversation between Bin Laden, his then deputy Ayman Zawahiri and Omar, who is believed to have been in Pakistan since fleeing Afghanistan after the collapse of his regime in 2001.

    They indicate a “very considerable degree of ideological convergence”, a Washington-based source familiar with the documents told the Guardian.

    The news will undermine hopes of a negotiated peace in Afghanistan, where the key debate among analysts and policymakers is whether the Taliban – seen by many as following an Afghan nationalist agenda – might once again offer a safe haven to al-Qaida or like-minded militants, or whether they can be persuaded to renounce terrorism.

    One possibility, experts say, is that although Omar built a strong relationship with Bin Laden and Zawahiri, other senior Taliban commanders see close alliance or co-operation with al-Qaida as deeply problematic.

    But, hey, the war against terror is over, right? The Taliban are rational actors and worthy of bringing to the negotiating table and given a place in the Karzai government because it wasn’t the Taliban who brought down the World Trade Center towers. Of course, we haven’t heard about these communications between al Qaeda and the Taliban from the Obama Administration, who must’ve seen these same documents sometime in the last year since they were taken from the bin Laden compound, because they have a vested interest in ending the war as soon as they can end it instead of giving the troops what they need to end it victoriously.

  • And the victory lap continues

    The Washington Post is helping the Obama Administration take their Zombie bin Laden victory lap with a slide show that reminds what happened a year ago when bin laden was finally killed, because, you know it was so long ago that we can hardly remember it.

    In fact, it’s been repeated so man times in the last year, I was surprised that it’s been a year. But, that’s probably an age thing, anyway. But, you know this being an election year and it’s the only successful episode of this administration, the death of bin Laden is going to be the centerpiece of the campaign, and what with everyone trying to make us forget about the Fast and Furious scandal, the Secret Service scandal, the suicide rate among soldiers, the green-on-blue attacks in Afghanistan, the failures of this administration ability to institute COIN in Afghanistan, the failures of the Joe Bite Me’s ninja zombie robot strategy, the reticence of the Pakistani government to assist in the war against terror, demands on control over our tactics for the Afghans.

    And as UpNorth pointed out yesterday, it was just four short years ago that the Obama campaign protested the Hillary Clinton campaign use of bin Laden in the primaries.

    So I guess this the victory lap without an end.

  • That new Obama campaign video

    So, here’s that video that you’ve all been reading about this weekend in which Bill Clinton hints that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have made the decision to pull the trigger on Osama bin Laden last year;

    I think it’s rather funny that Bill Clinton, who didn’t take advantage of his own military intelligence in the pre-2001 days to kill bin Laden, probably removing the 9-11 attack from our history, but now he’s praising Obama for doing what Clinton didn’t have the courage to do. And oh, yeah, as long as we’re looking at the leadership in the White House, don’t forget that Joe “Bite Me” Biden advised the President to not take advantage of the opportunity;

    Vice President Joe Biden jumped on the Obama leadership bandwagon Friday when he revealed that he cautioned the president against signing off on the raid on bin Laden’s hideaway. Despite his reservations, Biden said the president made the decision all alone.

    So, we know how the president’s closest adviser and potential successor would have handled the decision.

    I think it’s fairly disingenuous of the Obama campaign to use comments that Romney made five years ago against him as prof that he wouldn’t have made the decision. Especially when the comments were clearly made about the entire war and not that one aspect.

    While I commend the president for ultimately making the right decision, calling it “audacious” and making it the centerpiece of the entire 2012 campaign is a bit of hyperbole. Everyone who wouldn’t have made the same call, raise your hand. Yeah, that’s what I thought. From the video;

    Clinton added, “The downside would have been horrible for him, but he reasoned I cannot in good conscience do nothing. He took the harder and the more honorable path and the one that produced in my opinion the best result.”

    No, Obama made the same decision that most Americans would have made if they had an opportunity to make, except that we would have made the decision based on the realities of the world, and Obama made the politically expeditious decision. As we have all witnessed, if the mission had somehow failed, someone besides Obama would have been heaped with blame, as the blog formerly known as Blackfive mentions.

    But in preparation for their celebratory spike, the Stars & Stripes reports that the Obama Administration is taking NBC News on a victory lap through the “situation room” at the White House.

    I think it’s pretty funny that the Obama crowd is making a big deal about this whole thing when, if they had been in office on 9-11, we wouldn’t have gone after anyone who had attacked us. We’d probably be shoveling protection money to bin Laden instead of killing him.

  • USSS went to strip clubs in El Salvador

    While I was at Walter Reed yesterday, I was subjected to the background noise of CNN all day (in the good old Bush days, it was Fox…go figure) and they were out raged that 20-something and 30-something American men who are assigned to the US Secret Service went to a strip club. Regular readers will remember that I have little love for the Secret Service, but a strip club? Give me a break.

    All of you who have never been in a strip club in your younger years, raise your hand. Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’ll admit that I haven’t been in one since I was married without my wife (yes, we’ve been to strip clubs together, she also goes with me to Hooters). I guess there’s a strip club near our new home, but I haven’t felt the urge to go (mostly because the thought of my neighbors dancing naked is a little frightening).

    Irrespective of whether or not it’s against Secret Service regulations (I don’t know), what’s the big deal? I’m beginning to think that the media is creating these “scandals” to desensitize us to some real scandals from this administration which they know are forthcoming. Because, in my opinion, this one isn’t a scandal at all.

  • Mission Accomplished

    Old Trooper sends a link to The Weekly Standard Blog which links to to the National Journal in which Michael Hirsh quotes “one senior State Department official” as we get the rose-colored glasses slipped over our eyes;

    It is no longer the case, in other words, that every Islamist is seen as a potential accessory to terrorists. “The war on terror is over,” one senior State Department official who works on Mideast issues told me. “Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”

    The new approach is made possible by the double impact of the Arab Spring, which supplies a new means of empowerment to young Arabs other than violent jihad, and Obama’s savagely successful military drone campaign against the worst of the violent jihadists, al Qaida.

    Whew! That was close! Just this morning we had senior commanders in Afghanistan telling us that they can’t win the war unless they get more cooperation from the Pakistanis. I guess Obama stepped up his “savagely successful military drone campaign” over lunch.

    And, what exactly is that “opportunity for a legitimate Islamism”? All of that stuff I see being waged against liberty in Egypt and Libya? Maybe they’ll just be killing each other instead of us for awhile, huh? That ought to keep them occupied for a year or so.

    I hope the “senior State Department official” realizes that the whole reason that al Qaeda was so successful in the last two decades was because it was the Taliban who gave them a sanctuary in Afghanistan from which they could train and launch their murderous terrorists on the world stage, and they’re still dead set against the Karzai government being in control.

    It’s like I’ve been saying since this administration embraced the Joe Biden “robot ninja zombies strategy”, the war isn’t over until this administration can form the word “victory” in their mouths. They’re only content with forming the words they think the voting public wants to hear. Their only strategy is withdrawal and if that’s going to be their strategy, they should be doing it sooner rather than later, because the only thing that will result from prolonging this mess is more dead and maimed US troops.

    Apparently, the second part of their strategy is to look the other way and ignore all of that reality stuff right in front of their stupid faces.

  • US & AF reach “partnership agreement”

    The New York Times reports that a long term “partnership agreement” has been reached between US and Afghanistan negotiators.

    “The document finalized today provides a strong foundation for the security of Afghanistan, the region and the world, and is a document for the development of the region,” said Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the Afghan national security adviser, in a statement released by President Hamid Karzai’s office.

    The United States ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, speaking on Sunday to Afghanistan’s national security council, said the agreement meant that the United States was committed to helping Afghanistan as “a unified, democratic, stable and secure state,” the statement said.

    Funny thing, though, there were no details released on the agreement. It seems to me that if this agreement is so good, both sides would rush the details out to the rest of us so we can agree that it’s “a strong foundation” or something.

    Not releasing the details of this agreement tells me that it’s not as good for the US as everyone wants us to think. First they release the news that there’s an agreement, and then the details leak out slowly in dribs and drabs while everyone is still intoxicated that an agreement was reached, and no one is paying attention any more.

    “The Iranians don’t like it because it shows the U.S. is going to be here for a long time,” said a European diplomat here, who noted that the Taliban would not like it for the same reason. “This is important because they cannot tell their soldiers now just to sit it out and wait for 2014,” the diplomat said.

    Yeah, because the Taliban have been waiting for the US to leave for almost eleven years now and they can’t stick it out for another 18 months. If Islam is anything it’s patient.

    Of course, the Taliban issued a statement condemning the agreement. if the agreement announced that we’d pulling out tomorrow, the Taliban would complain that we didn’t leave yesterday.

    The Times also reports that we’ll be putting $2.7 billion or more every year into Karzai’s retirement fund, and we’re begging other NATO countries for contributions to that figure. Yeah, I can just sense that we can depend on our NATO allies to help Karzai weather his twilight years.

    The Associated Press reports;

    White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said President Obama expects to sign the document before a NATO summit in Chicago next month, meeting the deadline set by the two sides.

    So we probably won’t be hearing any details on the agreement until after next month so no one can try to influence him to not sign it with actual facts. But then he has to get advice and consent from the Senate.

  • Bacevich: Military leaders need to take responsibility for troops’ actions

    In today’s Washington Post, Andrew J. Bacevich writes that the problem in Afghanistan these days is that the commanders aren’t taking enough responsibility for their troops’ malfeasance;

    For too long now, command accountability for our troops’ misconduct in wartime has been more theoretical than real. The latest scandal to erupt in Afghanistan — photographs of American soldiers amusing themselves with dismembered Taliban corpses — suggests that it’s past time to confront this problem.

    On the question of accountability, the military’s ethic is clear: With authority comes responsibility. More specifically, commanders bear responsibility for everything that happens within their jurisdiction. This decree supposedly applies to high-ranking generals as much as lowly lieutenants.

    He concludes;

    Leaders shape institutions. But no leader is irreplaceable — sometimes nothing beats replacing a few near the top to focus the attention of the rest. For an American military well into a second exhausting decade of continuous war, this is one of those times.

    You might be surprised to read that I agree with Bacevich, but not in the way he’d like me to agree. Leaders do indeed shape institutions. And the military’s top leader hasn’t taken responsibility for one thing he’s done since he assumed that mantle. How else should his subordinates act?

    Yes, I know, Bacevich wants Obama to fire Gen. John Allen from his post as commander of our forces in Afghanistan, but I think it would do more good for our intentions in Afghanistan to be secured if we fired Allen’s bosses.

    We have Leon Panetta raping military retirees while he takes $32,000 trips home every weekend. And Panetta’s boss, the President, sitting on his hands while the economy falls to pieces. Neither take responsibility for their own malfeasance, more interested in blaming nebulous banks, oil speculators and the previous administration for their woes and inability to effectively act on what they are paid to do.

    Now, I don’t expect Bacevich to be intellectually honest and extrapolate his theory so that it affects directly the mission in Afghanistan and the effectiveness of our troops there. That would cost him job at the Post. But as you read his piece, you can see that there is no other solution to the problems in Afghanistan than removing the leadership in November.