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

Category: Foreign Policy

  • 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?

  • Zelaya fans flames of discontent in Honduras

    Honduras is holding their national elections today, which has the potential of settling the dispute between the Honduran Constitution and deposed president Manuel Zelaya. Since Zelaya isn’t allowed to run again, why does he feel that a boycott would settle anything? Well, of course, it wouldn’t.

    Latin American countries including Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela have said they won’t recognize the results because the former leader hasn’t been restored to power. The International Monetary Fund froze Honduras’s access to $163 million in special drawing rights after Zelaya’s ouster.

    Zelaya, who isn’t a candidate, has said the vote is illegitimate and urged Hondurans to stay home. In September, he had said that the vote should take place.

    Bloomberg fails to mention that the reason Zelaya isn’t a candidate is because Honduran presidents are term-limited to a single stint in office. That’s why he booted from office in June – because he tried to undermine the Constitution.

    In RealClearWorld, Fausta Wertz of Fausta’s Blog reports that the current candidate from Zelaya’s party is not calling for a boycott;

    While Zelaya’s been asking his followers to boycott the election, zelayista candidate César Ham is still running and is not promoting a boycott. Candidate Pepe Lobo is ahead in the opinion polls.

    So, when Zelaya’s supporters are left out of the election by their boycott, they’ll revolt, and there will be no peace in Honduras – and it’ll ultimately be the result of Zelaya’s massive ego.

  • The veil slips

    So all of this talk about how Obama was going to get us the respect that the world lost for us during those eight dark Bush years seems to have waned and reality is gob-smacking the media. Newsbuster’s Noel Sheppard marvels at Chris Matthews comparisons of Obama to Jimmy Carter (where ya been Chris – we were making the comparison in 2007).

    Laura W. at Ace of Spades takes a look at the awakening in Maureen Dowd who seems less enthusiastic about Obama these days. Also at Ace of Spades, Uncle Jimbo brings up the Saturday Night Live video from last weekend. Suddenly Obama can be the butt of jokes.

    Der Speigel Online’s Gabor Stiengart writes that “Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage” – so much for impressing Europe. I guess Obama now realizes that those Germans weren’t cheering for him in Berlin, they were panhandling.

    Claymore wrote to remind us that it’s been 86 days since General McCrystal asked the President for more troops – not to worry, Mr. Decisive is planning to meet more advisors on the subject later today;

    The White House said Obama would meet with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other officials at an 8 p.m. EST/0100 GMT Tuesday meeting in the Situation Room.

    It will be the ninth such meeting as Obama nears a decision on whether to add as many as 40,000 troops to an eight-year-old war that was started after the September 11 attacks and that has begun to try the patience of the American people.

    Wow! Nine whole meeting! That’s almost one meeting every ten days – focused like a laser on our national security. Like a laser.

    Can you imagine what would happen if something requiring immediate attention would happen? Well, by immediate attention, I mean that dithering would cost the lives of Am…, oh.

    Well, we can always investigate those milbloggers for something to distract everybody.

  • Bloom is off the rose

    USAToday reports that Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, decided to get tough with Pakistan one of our strongest allies in the near east;

    “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” Clinton said in an interview with Pakistani journalists in Lahore. “Maybe that’s the case. Maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know.”

    I wonder how tough she’ll be when she talks to Iran – you know someone with whom we should be tough. She defended her comments on television this morning;

    “I wanted to get that out on the table, because the Pakistanis have talked about a trust deficit and it’s a two-way street,” Clinton said in an interview shown on NBC’s “Today Show.” “We have questions, they have questions.”

    Yeah, because at this point neither side knows how much they can trust each other. The Pakistanis don’t want to hang their collective neck out when they know that the US Left will pull the rug out from under them at any minute for no good reason other than their feelings.

    Over the last few days, I’ve watched Clinton get tough with the Afghans and the Pakistanis, but they tread lightly around Iran and Korea…you know, the folks that want to wipe us out.

    Clinton was asked about American commitment to the war against terror;

    “What guarantee,” the woman asked, “can Americans give Pakistan that we can now trust you — not you but, like, the Americans this time — of your sincerity and that you guys are not going to betray us like the Americans did in the past when they wanted to destabilize the Russians?”

    Clinton responded that the question was a “fair criticism” and that the U.S. did not follow through in the way it should have. “It’s difficult to go forward if we’re always looking in the rearview mirror,” said Clinton, on the second day of a three-day visit, her first to Pakistan as secretary of State.

    Well, that’s not an answer. That’s not reassuring. It tells me that this administration will reevaluate their commitment on a daily basis – probably using polls. Like Clinton’s husband did with Haiti, Somalia…and Afghanistan. Oh, sorry…I looked through that rearview mirror again.

  • Ahmadinjad touts western cooperation

    Contrary to what the west has been telling us they’re doing, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged to a crowd today that the west is now helping Iran develop their nuclear program according to the Associated Press/Fox News Channel;

    “Today we reached a very important point,” Ahmadinejad said, speaking at a rally in the northeastern city of Mashhad. “Ground has been paved for nuclear cooperation” and Tehran is ready to now work on nuclear fuel supplies and technical know-how with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Ahmadinejad added.

    But he insisted his government “will not retreat even an iota” over the nation’s right to pursue a nuclear program — which the West fears masks a nuclear arms ambition.

    Well, I can see how he might get the idea since everything the West tries to do, Ahmadinejad simply rejects. Even the Washington Post has noticed a dangerous trend in the Obama Administration’s negotiating style;

    Many of us worry that, for Obama, engagement is an end in itself, not a means to an end. We worry that every time Iran rejects one proposal, the president will simply resume negotiations on another proposal and that this will continue right up until the day Iran finally tests its first nuclear weapon, at which point the president will simply begin negotiations again to try to persuade Iran to put its nuclear genie back in the bottle.

    Russia, meanwhile, will continue to be accommodated as a partner in this effort, on the perpetually untested theory that if Obama ever did decide to get tough with Iran, Moscow would join in. Russia thus reaps all the rewards of engagement without ever having to make a difficult decision.

    I guess all we can do is sit around and wait for that first nuclear test in the Iranian desert while the Obama Administration twiddles it’s stupid thumbs.

  • The cost of indecision

    Donald Douglas at American Power tells us about the bomb that went off in Pakistan this morning while Hillary Clinton visited the country .

    Stars & Stripes/Associated Press tells the story of gunmen attacking a guest house in Kabul killing at least 12 UN workers. The Telegraph reports that al Qaeda accepted blame for the worst bomb attack in Iraq in years that claimed over 150 casualties (including scores of children) this weekend.

    The same type of attacks preceded our 2006 mid-term election to present the appearance of the futility of the war in Iraq in order to influence the American people’s decisions. Bush surprised the entire country as well as Iraqis by increasing combat power in Iraq instead of capitulating to the enemy.

    Apparently, our enemies think they have an opportunity to scare this administration into abandoning the Middle East. It’s probably not a coincidence that all of this is happening while the US is trying to solidify support in the Security Council against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

  • The bad karma of VoteVets

    Dicksmith wrote in VetsVoicea bit about the new Obama foreign policy of openness and willingness to deal with Iran and how we’re reaping the rewards of having unicorns, fairies and other magical beasts in the White House, linking to this NYT article. He also used the opportunity to swipe at the Bush Administration.

    After nine months of an Obama Presidency, Iran has agreed to put their nuclear problem on hold for at least a year to engage in the diplomatic process. Previously, Iran spent eight years thumbing its nose at the international community while the Bush Administration engaged them with a strategy of “ignore it now, and decide whether or not to bomb it later”. This is how the world can work when you have American leadership that doesn’t engage in first-grade playground diplomacy (“You’re not my friend so I’m not talking to you anymore!”).

    That was yesterday. This is today (from Fox News Channel);

    State TV says Iran wants to buy nuclear fuel it needs for a research reactor rather than accept a U.N.-drafted plan to ship much of its uranium to Russia for further enrichment.

    “Iran is interested in buying fuel for the Tehran research reactor within the framework of a clear proposal … we are waiting for the other party’s constructive and trust-building response,” Iranian TV quoted a member of Iran’s negotiating team as saying, Reuters reports.

    Iran’s response will come as a disappointment to the U.S., Russia and France, which all endorsed the U.N. plan Friday that called for Iran to ship its uranium stockpile to Russia rather than continue what is believed to be an weapons-grade enrichment program. The three countries formulated the draft plan in three days of talks with Iran in Vienna that ended Wednesday.

    Dicksmith, karma is a stone-cold bitch. Next time don’t gloat and she won’t be so tough on you.

  • Losing political will

    Our troops are fighting their asses off in Afghanistan, but the politicians are emptying their bladders in their diapers. So much so, that the NATO chief had to remind the members of that organization that victory in the war in Afghanistan is imperative;

    Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said some critics are starting to say that the cost of engagement in the eight-year war is too high, but he countered that “the cost of inaction would be far higher.”

    “Leaving Afghanistan behind would once again turn the country into a training ground for al-Qaida. The pressure on nuclear-armed Pakistan would be tremendous. Instability would spread throughout central Asia and it would only be a matter of time until we here in Europe would feel the consequences of all of this,” Fogh Rasmussen said at a security conference in Bratislava ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers.

    Of course, the weak-kneed know that, but it doesn’t keep them from going wobbly at the sound of the word “commitment”. Meanwhile, the former top Canadian general warned that Afghanistan will end NATO;

    Retired general and former Canadian chief of defense staff Rick Hillier wrote in his autobiography to be published next week: “Afghanistan has revealed that NATO has reached the stage where it is a corpse, decomposing” and in need of “lifesaving” or “the alliance will be done.”

    Meanwhile, Dick Cheney told a conservative crowd that President Obama is scared to make a decision about our involvement in Afghanistan;

    “The White House must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger,” Cheney said at the Center for Security Policy. “Make no mistake, signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries.”

    Even the USAToday editorial board warns that the Obama Administration’s flirtations with the Taliban are ridiculous;

    Trying to treat al-Qaeda and the Taliban as separate threats is unrealistic and unworkable. It would certainly be easier, and more convenient, if al-Qaeda and the Taliban could be regarded as distinct entities. That would allow the U.S. to pursue a simpler “counterterrorism” strategy against the remnants of al-Qaeda instead of a far more complex “counterinsurgency” strategy against the Taliban. Unfortunately, however, the weight of the evidence is that al-Qaeda and significant elements of the Taliban have become so closely aligned as to be inseparable.

    If nothing else, the Obama Administration should take VoteVets’ endorsement of that strategy as a warning.

    Dick Cheney’s warning to the President should resonate a bit more than the words of dicksmith and Jon Soltz;

    “Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced,” Cheney said in reference to Emanuel’s comments. “It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.”

    There is no substitute for American warriors and the more, the better.