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

Category: Terror War

  • Learning the wrong lessons

    While perusing the usual newspapers this morning, I read about the war in Somalia with Ethiopia in the Washington Post. There’s so little in the news about this, it’s difficult to find anything sometimes.

    But the war is directly related to our own war against terror, since Islamofacists learned about our weak spot from Clinton’s hasty withdrawal from Somalia in 1993. Saddam Hussein made it mandatory for his military leaders to watch the film “Black Hawk Down” in the days preceding the US war against Hussein in 2003 to demonstrate how easy it is to destroy our public will to fight our enemies despite our battlefield victories.

    About half way down the WaPo story is a quote from some imbecile named John Prendergast, “a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group in Washington”. He’s quoted as saying;

    “Hasn’t anyone heard of Iraq? A military strategy of ‘countering terrorism’ never works and will likely blow up in their faces.”

    I wonder what this “senior analyst” would have us do? Apparently, well-illustrated by the situation in Somalia, leaving the terrorists alone doesn’t work. As illustrated by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton with Yassir Arafat, negotiations don’t work, either. So what’s the solution Junior Space Cadet John Prendergast?

    According to the latest Pentagon reports, specifically the DoD report to Congress last month, the Iraqis are moving towards stability, perhaps not as quickly as we’d like, but they’re going in the right direction. If we had removed Hussein and then left Iraq to it’s own devices (like we did in Panama in 1989 which already had a democraticly-elected government and a law-enforcement entity which were more loyal to the people than to Noriega), it would have become the new Somalia.

    In the Washington Times this morning, there’s an Associated Press story that claims that Iran is on the precipice of economic ruin, and if we only wait long enough, internal unrest will bring down the current regime. Unless, of course, the Iranian population believes the the US and Israel are the source of all of the evil in the world and commit themselves to destroying us in the interim. Which they already believe, by the way, Roger Stern, of Johns Hopkins. Bombing them before they get the nuclear bomb is a lot safer than a hungry, angry population with a nuclear bomb.

    So the “Peace At Any Cost” crowd have finally found their voices and the mainstream press is more than willing to broadcast their ill-conceived message. There are thousands of comparisions to Neville Chamberlain on the internet, so I’ll spare my readers the same lame paraphrases.

    The truth is; these aren’t pro-Peace voices. They’re anti-Bush, anti-Republican and anti-American voices. They’re the voices of the corrupt and morally bankrupt who put cheap politics above our welfare and safety. It would be more accurate to call them the “Democrat Majority at-any-cost” voices.

    In attempting to research this piece, I found thousands of articles that count the American and Coalition dead and wounded, but not a single chart depicting the other side’s losses One CBC article even made a point of mentioning that because the Pentagon doesn’t release enemy casualties, they don’t know what the number is – as if they’d believe the Pentagon number anyway. The Pentagon has provided them an excuse for being intellectually bankrupt.

  • Thanks, Troops

    I just want to thank all of my readers who are still in uniform for giving the citizens of this great country another peaceful and hopeful holiday.

  • Who’s afraid of Peace-loving nations?

    The Washington Times is running a story today about North Korean Dear Leader Kim Jong Il’s list of demands that must precede any negotiations aimed at his nuclear program. So who’s surprised? Il has seen how far anti-social behavior has taken the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, who also announced today that the world can’t stop him from developing nuclear weapons. This is what exchanging words with maniacal despots gets you. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lost ground yesterday in elections so he’s back to making his failures everybody else’s fault and flexing his muscles on the world stage.

    I still suspect that Il’s nuclear tests in October were more of the dirty bomb variety than an actual nuclear detonation in order to fool the world into thinking they’ve got the technology for nuclear weapons to accompany their missiles.

    All of these tinpot dictators are quite certain that they can pretty much get away with anything these days. They saw that by paying off Old Europe, Hussein escaped their ire, until the US and Britain, et al. decided to go it without the greedy corrupt Leftist governments of Russia, France and Germany.

    Last summer’s war between the Israelis and Hezzbollah in Lebanon only reinforced Iran, Korea, and Venezuela’s view that the peace-loving nations of the world will do nothing, no matter what they do. Check Chavez’ speech at the UN, the riots in France, the cartoon riots, Jimmy Carter’s ransom payments to North Korea in 1994. What do fear-mongers fear?

    Opposing strength. When the US removed Hussein from Kuwait, all of the Arab nations, even Arafat, fell into line. When the US removed Hussein from power, even Qaddafi trembled at the thought of US troops at his palace gate.

    North Korea and Iran need to be dealt fierce and violent blows immediately – either by our proxies in those regions, or failing that, ourselves. Direct strikes against their nuclear programs.

    Maybe with a South Korean as Secretary general of the UN that’s more possible now than it was last week.

    UPDATE: The US is talking separately with North Korea over financial matters relating to their Macau banking endeavors to launder their WMD sales and to pass counterfeit $100 bills according to the Wall Street Journal today. Leveraging that seizure of assets might cause North Korea to backpedal temporarily from their demands, but it certainly won’t be a permanent fix to dealing with a nation whose government is engaged in petty crimes as foreign policy.

  • Saudi intel report on Iran

    The Saudis have intelligence that Iran has been directly funding a “Shi’ite state” inside Iraq according to a report in the Washington Times this morning.

    According to the report, Iran also is infiltrating Iraq through its al Quds forces — the special command division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — which specialize in intelligence operations in unconventional warfare.

    So, as I predicted last week, Iraq will turn into a proxy war between the Saudis (Sunnis) and Iranians if the US pulls out.

    But more importantly, the Saudis appear to have hard intelligence that the Iranians are supporting the anti-government forces in Iraq which should give us reason enough to deal a mighty blow to Iran’s nuclear program.

  • How to disengage in the Middle East

    Russia is tapping into it’s vast reserves of oil buried under the Arctic tundra in Siberia. Cuba has hired an Indian oil company to begin supplying it’s meager petrol needs from reserves in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile we’re still enforcing the decades old Carter Doctrine demanding the free-flow of oil from the Persian Gulf states while we own some vast reserves of our own buried beneath our own Arctic tundra and off our own shores in the Gulf of Mexico.

    While the third world is winning the race to energy self-sufficiency, we’re mired in empty platitudes from the Democrat Party about “saving the earth” and “alternate fuels”, despite the fact that in 1979, Jimmy Carter, in his now famous “Malaise Speech“ promised that

    I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the red tape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects. 

    We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

    But the Luddite environmentalists stand in the way of our self sufficience, with the Democrats in tow. That’s not all that surprising, really. What is surprising is that the Democrats are turning their backs on the poor and the unions. The less wealthy Americans are stuck paying higher energy costs like some kind of tax hike. The unions want the added jobs created by exploration and development of energy reserves and the increased manufacturing production that would result in cheaper domestic energy.

    The Democrats are happiest when we’re miserable – that would mean the perception that government (ie. the Democrats) would save us (most of Jimmy Carter’s Malaise Speech was the announcement of new government programs and agencies). They don’t particularly care that we would be able to ignore the petty bickering and power struggles in the Middle East (like we ignore the same from non-oil countries in Africa), nor would Chavez’ words have much weight if we developed our own oil and gas sources and we weren’t so dependent on the whims of country who aren’t afraid to exploit their oil and gas reserves.

    So even though we hold the key to our own energy dependence, we are also our own worse enemy.

     

  • The Curse of the ISG report

    Now, every knucklehead with a plane ticket is going to the Mideast. John Kerry even feels safe enough to stick his head out of the sand to tell us to talk to Syria and Iran – as if it would actually accomplish something besides ridding us of those pesky taxpayer dollars laying around Washington.

    From Flopping Aces we get to see Bill Nelson talking with perennial Iranian bootlicker Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, with a photo of Nelson that Allah dug up.

    And now it seems fashionable for Democrats to talk to the irrational maniacs that want us all dead – after they strip us of our cash and i-Pods. Just like it was fashionable for Kerry to chat with the North Vietnamese in Paris in the 70s, and Kerry and fellow faux-Vietnam vet Tom Harkin to visit Commie Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.

    Both of those events took place during Republican Administrations – so that’s how Democrats see their oversight responsibilities. Going over the head of our country’s official foreign policy and undermining our executive branch. I don’t remember any Republicans talking with Aidid in Somalia or any Serbs during the 90s. But I remember the McDermott mission to Iraq in 2002 when he (McDerrmott) announced that Hussein was a more trustworthy person than our own President.

    Is there anything in the Constitution that tells us that Congress should conduct it’s own foreign policy? Or was our government designed to operate as a single unit?

    The only time the Constitution refers to Congress and foreign policy is in Article II, Section 2 when it says “[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur….” In Article I, Section 8, the Constitution enummerates Congress powers, and no where does it mention conducting foreign policy. 

    Of course, these idiots are received warmly by our enemies. I wonder why that is?

  • Thank you, Captain Obvious

    Robert Tracinski had a really spot-on piece in the WSJ’s Opinion Journal called Captain Obvious to the Rescue yesterday and since no one has picked up on it yet, I thought I’d just add a link and a teaser;

    In my student days back at the University of Chicago, there was a campus comedy troupe modeled on Second City, their more well-known uptown uncle. The U of C group was pretty funny, if in a somewhat bookish way. (Who else does a comedy routine based on “Oedipus Rex”?) One of their funniest bits was a recurring skit about a superhero named Captain Obvious. In each scene, a character would face a mundane problem, only to be “saved” by the banal and utterly unhelpful advice offered by Captain Obvious. “I’ve locked my keys in my car. What am I going to do?” “Well then,” replies Captain Obvious, “all you have to do is open the door to your car, and then you can get your keys.” Each scene ended the same way, with Captain Obvious proclaiming, “No, don’t thank me. It’s all in a day’s work for Captain Obvious.

    I’ve been reminded of this skit many times since, because I frequently hear the same kind of advice being given in Washington. Take, for example, the recommendations offered, to much fanfare, by the Iraq Study Group.

     

  • McCaffery gets it wrong, too

    1 First let me say, I have immense respect for retired general Barry McCaffery having served under him a few times. What he did with the 24th Division at Rumailia after Desert Storm was amazing – since I was riding to their rescue while they were wiping out a rogue division of Republican Guards. Turns out they didn’t me.

    However, his piece in the Washington Post this morning illustrates why he should remain retired and he was a better commander than a politician.

    Within the first 12 months we should draw down the U.S. military presence from 15 Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), of 5,000 troops each, to 10. Within the next 12 months, Centcom forces should further draw down to seven BCTs and withdraw from urban areas to isolated U.S. operating bases — where we could continue to provide oversight and intervention when required to rescue our embedded U.S. training teams, protect the population from violence or save the legal government.

    Finally, we have to design and empower a regional diplomatic peace dialogue in which the Iraqis can take the lead, engaging their regional neighbors as well as their own alienated and fractured internal population.

    Again, like the Baker Commission, McCaffery is calling for a force stationed outside of Iraq to protect military trainers inside Iraq – once again recalling the Mobile Training Team strategy of Viet Nam days. And he calls for a diplomatic solution involving Iran – who doesn’t want diplomacy. If that’s not clear after this week’s Halocaust denial fest in Tehran, I don’t what clear means.

    In fact, as Captain’s Quarters reports this morning, quoting from a New York Times article, even Saudi Arabia warned Dick Cheney that the US pullout in Iraq might trigger a bloodbath there. They also warned against talks with Iran. It looks like the Saudis are afraid of a proxy war between Iran (Shi’ite) and the Saudis (Sunni) in Iraq. The Saudis state that the only reason they haven’t supported Sunnis in Iraq yet is because al Qaeda is mainly Sunni and opposed to the House of Saud. (Congressman Reyes; are you taking notes?)

    There is only one solution, as distasteful and extreme as it seems, and that is to remove the terror support system that resides in Iran. A system that has operated out of Iran for two-and-a-half decades in full view of the rest of the world. There’s no pussy-footing around any more. Iran has shown that it doesn’t want to be in the community of nations by ignoring calls to stop their nuclear program. The government isn’t acting in the interest of their people any longer – they are acting in the interest of a few extremists.

    Yeah, Syria’s a problem, too, but they’d collapse once they lost the support of Iran.

    There’s only one way to defeat an irrational player who has praised Hitler and his extermination of Jews (while denying it ever happened) and that’s with extreme measures. Not playing paddy-cake.