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

Category: Terror War

  • THE Man

    Bill Gertz has a great interview in the Washington Times this morning with Air Force Brig. Gen. Mark O. Schissler, the deputy director for the war on terrorism within the strategic plans office of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.

    It’s nice to see that there are REAL generals left in the military that don’t mind saying what we’ve all been saying out here in the REAL WORLD. Here’s a teaser;

     “But that’s not enough to stop it. We’ve got to break the chain, and that’s … the ideology. We really need to show the errors in Islamist extremist thinking.”
        Gen. Schissler said he is concerned that Washington politics is weakening the will of the nation.
        “I don’t care about the politics. I care about people understanding the facts of what’s our enemy is thinking about, what’s our strategy to defeat them, and for [Americans] to understand that it will take a long fight, mostly because our enemy is committed to the long fight,” he said. “They’re absolutely committed to the 50-, 100-year plan.”

    The American people get so wrapped up in the numbers like some kind of high-scoring basketball game instead of realizing that we have to crush an ideology and grind it into the ground until it’s not cost-effective for these Islamofacists to kill innocent people anywhere in the world. THEY’RE the ones who need to call for talks with the civilized societies, because they’re the ones who have to stop the wholesale slaughter.

    Like I said, it’s good to see that there are planners in the Pentagon that get it – and not just budgets and buying whiz-bang gadgets and talking nice to the press and Congress. I suspect there are more generals like Schissler.

  • Iran’s Holocaust forum

    I really tried to ignore this, since it’s just plain ignorant for ayone to believe that the only reason Israel exists is because of the deprivations of the 30s and 40s. Jews have been persecuted throughout their history but the narrowminded anti-Zionists have given the world something to get behind together.

    I’ve read the other blogs, like Little Green Footballs, where everyone has said everything about these tiny-brained bigots much better than I could have ever done. I’m simply amazed that the media is treating this like it’s a normal event – like it’s good for us to hear a different opinion on every subject – including the opinion that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist because there was no Halocaust.

    Now I’m not Jewish, but I have to reason to doubt that the Halocaust happened. I’ve been to Dachau and Bergen-Belsen and I could smell the death in the air decades after the Halocaust. I’ve been to the mass grave containing the bodies of over 700 displaced Eastern Europeans behind the barracks at Wildflecken.

    Since the premise of this whole exercise is the expression of free speech, and the free exchange of differing ideas, let’s all go to Iran and discuss whether Mohammed really existed or not. Let’s see how long that discussion would last.

    It sort of reminds of the Democrats hiding behind their “loyal opposition” facade, claiming to not be anti-American, just exchanging ideas. All it really is, in both cases, is undermining order and peace in the world with hate. REAL hate speech not that imagined sort that makes the newspapers in this country.

    I wonder how the Left feels standing shoulder-to-shoulder with human punchline David Dukes.

  • Arabs states contemplate MAD

    An AP story assures us that the Arab states who are contemplating their own joint nuclear program to oppose Iran’s program are just to insure peace in the region.

    We get quotes like this one;

    Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, told reporters after the closing session that the group did not want to be “misunderstood,” saying its aim “is to obtain the technology for peaceful purposes, no more no less.”
        “Gulf states are not known for seeking hegemony or threatening power, they seek stability and peace,” he said.

    Stability and peace, huh? Then why are they allowing Iran to get out of control now? Why haven’t the peaceful Arab states brought the hammer down on Hezbollah? These peaceful Arab states don’t even curb their own populations from entering into the fray in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet we’re to believe that they want nukes for peace?

    Imagine the oil-rich sheiks holding the world hostage to their oil prices under a nuclear umbrella. Or a nuclear exchange between Saudi Arabia and Iran with missiles crossing the Persian Gulf tanker traffic.

    Maybe it might be easier and safer for the Arab states to get on board with the rest of the world and stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons instead of trying to enter into a mutually-assured destruction scenario. We’ve already seen what price these regal savages put on the lives of their subjects – as long as the leadership of these kingdoms are safe, none of their “common folk” will never be safe.

    ADDED: Maybe if the Arabs stop some of this from happening, I’ll believe they want peace;

    Mohammad Abd al-Hamid Srour moved missiles across southern Lebanon under cover of a white flag. Hussein Ali Mahmoud Suleiman used the porch of a private home to fire rockets. Maher Hassan Mahmoud Kourani dressed in civilian clothes, hid his Kalashnikov in a tote bag and stored anti-aircraft missiles in the back of a green unmarked Volvo. The three men, all members of Hezbollah, were captured by Israel during last summer’s war.

    Now their videotaped interviews form part of a remarkable report by retired Lieutenant Colonel Reuven Erlich of Israel’s Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. Relying heavily on captured Hezbollah documents, onsite and aerial photography and other first-hand evidence, the report shows how the Shiite group put innocent civilians at risk by deliberately deploying its forces in cities, towns and often private homes.

    Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, has accused Israel’s military of “indiscriminate warfare” and “a disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians.” Mr. Erlich demolishes that claim, and in the process shows the asymmetric strategy of Islamist radicals.

     

  • The growing threat

    Taking his cue from the Democrats and the islamofacists, Kim Jong Il has decided to start making demands on the US, too. Since the paranoid North Korean strong man thinks the US may have nukes in the South, he’s decided he won’t participate in negotiations to reduce his threat to the region with his missiles thought to be assembled with baling twine.

    It’s been said that the American people always get the government they deserve. In this case, the American voter has been hornswaggled into electing a government that has broadcast a defeatist message. In response, every tinpot dictator in the world is taking the opportunity to take swats at us.

    It is reminiscent of the post-Reagan years when every blowhard with a forum was calling George Bush a wimp. Even nickel-plated Manuel Noriega thought he could get away with ignoring a local popular election of a President that wasn’t his choice for the job and killing a US Marine and his wife. Forced into a corner, GHW Bush launched an invasion of Panama and eight months later had to send troops to Saudi Arabia to push Hussein out of Kuwait.

    All because the media and the Democrats in Congress tried to defeat a Republican in the court of world opinion. This President is getting backed into a corner, too. Not only by impudent third world maniacs, but also at home with stupid and ill-conceived study groups that can’t shoot straight, Congressional Democrats who talk out of both sides of their mouths, and second-guessing Congressional Republicans rushing to the Left and calling themselves moderate.

    The media is calling for bipartisanship which is really a call for moving the whole country Hard Left and moving our troops out of the Middle East just to vindicate their morally bankrupt 60s anti-war policy.

    So what’re all of these rocket surgeons going to do when George W. Bush explodes into action, when he’s forced to neutralize the Korean threat, the Syrian threat, the Iranian and the Venezuelan threat with the force of arms? Worse yet, what’ll they do when he doesn’t do anything?

  • Whistling past the graveyard

    An AP story records how bad the Iraq Study Group’s report really is;

    “This report is a recognition of the limitation of American power,” said Abdel Moneim Said, head of Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic studies in Cairo. “In the short term, America will highly suffer the loss of its reputation and credibility in the region.”

    The only limitation to American power is the extent to which we’ll endanger non-combatants. If we had the same disregard for human life as the jihadists, they’d all be smolder piles of ashes by now. And as far as suffering the loss of our reputation and credibility; there’s something worse than being the “Great Satan”? We lost our reputation and credibility in the region back when Jefferson started battling the Barbary pirates.

    Mustafa Bakri, an outspoken critic of the U.S. and editor of the Egyptian tabloid Al-Osboa, told a state-run television show that the report indicated “the end of America.”

    Now that’s really whistling past the graveyard. It’ll take more than a bunch of Iron Age savages to bring this country and this culture to it’s end. We’ve withstood much worse than anything this odd collection of goat ropers can dish out. That statement alone ought to make the Administration pull out all of the stops for about a month over there. The insertion of about two more combat brigades complete with aerial support ought to teach the Arab Street a thing or two about our limitations.

    The Iraq Study Group’s report was the top headline in many Arab newspapers on Thursday, including the Egyptian opposition daily Al- Wafd, which declared: “Bush confesses defeat in Iraq.”

    AP must be writing news stories in Egypt, too.

    “Al-Qaida must smell victory, but its a negative victory that comes from the defeat of America in Iraq,” Said of the Al-Ahram center said.

    In Jordan, Al Arab Al Yawm editor-in-chief Taher al-Adwan suggested that Iran could “fill the vacuum” in neighboring Iraq if Arab countries don’t step up and counter U.S. failures.

    “Will the noise of this bullet (the report) reach the Arab capitals, especially the neighboring countries … to push them to formalize a unified Arab position toward Iraq and fill the vacuum by Iraqi national forces who are against the occupation and the Iranian influence,” he wrote.

    So I guess there are some Arabs who see the danger in our premature departure. Let’s hope other Arabs hear them through the caucaphonous prehistorical chants of their “leaders”.

     

  • Troops rate ISG report

    I hope Rowan Scarborough doesn’t mind me using quotes from his article in the Washington Times today to illustrate what I said yesterday;

    “What we’re not winning is the nation building,” said retired Marine Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong, the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command when the U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein. “The troops know exactly what they’re doing and they know basically that in 14 out of 18 provinces, that they are winning the war on the ground.”

    That’s exactly right. Since the jihadists have been largely unsuccesful in killing American troops in large numbers, they’ve switched to killing civilians since it’s too expensive manpower- and ordinance-wise to directly engage US warriors.

    “If you are in a small unit in Iraq, you are so tied to your buddies right next to you and the next mission and getting it right and trying to survive that you don’t have time to think of grand strategy,” the retired lieutenant colonel [Charles Krohn] said. 

    Troops have little time to think about what politicians say. Politicians are in the business of talking, warriors are in the business of doing.

    “From what I have seen, they are a lot of white-haired politicos with zero military knowledge and experience,” said the soldier, who asked not to be named. “I hope that it will be politely shelved and Bush will rely on those that have some idea what they are talking about. The only effect this will have on the troops, assuming that it’s ignored, is a slight dip in morale.” 

    That’s the whole problem with Democrats from the git-go. Since Truman, Democrats have tried to politicize combat and dictate to warriors how to fight their wars. Since Tzun Tsu, every military philosopher and historian has warned against politicians getting in the way of warriors who are at the bayonet point of foreign policy. It lost the ’52 the ’68 and the 80 election for Democrats and they’ll lose their chances in ’08, too, as long as they think they fight our wars for us.

        

  • Two from column A and one from column B

    The Iraq Study Group gave their report to the President this morning, and since they leaked their report last week, there are no new surprises. It demonstrates how useless these “bipartisan” commissions have become;

    As expected, the panel’s recommendations attempt to cut a middle path between demands by many Democrats for a firm timetable for a U.S. withdrawal and President Bush’s insistence that U.S. troops remain in Iraq until the job is done.

    How do you compromise on the right answer? I know it’s popular to subscribe to the platitude that there are no more right answers, but obviously, that’s just wrong. You can’t compromise on the answer to the math problem 1+1=?, just like you can’t compromise on the answer on how to be successful against the dark forces arrayed against us. Either we are or we aren’t.

    Democrats can’t even agree on a strategy. In Newsweek this week, Silvestre Reyes, the incoming Intelligence Committee chair said;

    “We’re not going to have stability in Iraq until we eliminate those militias, those private armies,” Reyes said. “We have to consider the need for additional troops to be in Iraq, to take out the militias and stabilize Iraq … We certainly can’t leave Iraq and run the risk that it becomes [like] Afghanistan” was before the 2001 invasion by the United States.

    So which is it, guys? More troops like Reyes says or a withdrawal like the Baker Commission suggests?

    And as I said in earlier post, this “quick reaction force” to support the mobile training teams left behind in Iraq just won’t work. It didn’t work in Viet Nam and it won’t work in Iraq. It’s be like supporting the San Francisco police department from Oregon – it’s too far to be a deterrent. And what is the QRF going to do when it’s not needed?

    This reminds me of the 9/11 Commission report that never really decided anything except that they all agreed that someone brought down the World trade center on September 11th, 2001. They had no real recommendations, they never pointed a finger at the real culprits, and no real workable solutions to prevent the inevitable future attack. Because the whole report was a compromise between competing political factions, rather than a report from experts on the subject.

    The report is no different. Attempting to reach a political compromise on what action we should take to win in the Middle East, this “study group” has only muddied further the waters. I’d like to take the study group, put them in body armor, give them a rifle and send them out to patrol in Baghdad – maybe then they’d have a better idea as to what our troops need, because the answer isn’t in some regurgitated campaign commercial.

  • Proof the “Baker Commission” are amateurs

    After a coupla days working instead of blogging, I picked up the Wall Street Journal this morning and read about how the “Baker” commission report was mysteriously “leaked” yesterday – a week before its presentation to the people who actually commissioned the study. So while I was reading through the WSJ article (requires subscription), I nearly choked on my cup of Cafe Duran Puro;

    Currently, the U.S. has about 3,500 advisers posted there, divided into 10-man teams and embedded with Iraqi Army and police units. As late as Nov. 24, the panel was soliciting advice from military experts on how to ensure that the Army and Marine Corps select their best and brightest officers for advisory duty. In recent months, that task has fallen to less-experienced National Guard and reserve officers. The final report will likely recommend that the advisory program be increased by “several thousand officers,” said one person involved in the debate.

    So what does the Commission think? That all we have to do is snap our fingers and “several thousand officers” will suddenly appear with the proper training and qualifications? That’s just absurd. And as far as calling National Guard and Army Reserve Officers “less-experienced” well, that’s just plain ignorant. I used to train prospective officers at ROTC Advanced Camp every summer at Fort Bragg as a platoon TAC NCO. Officers are all trained the same; we don’t discriminate between reserve, Guard or Regular Army cadets.

    When they become commissioned officers, they all attend the same officer basic courses, irrespective of their commissioning source – they’re all held to the same standard. Many who are part-time Guard or Reserve Component are police officers in their own communities and so they bring MORE expertise to the job than some active duty officers might.

    Many active duty officers who the commission are calling more experienced spend much of their career in staff jobs. Their time with line soldiers is minimal – which is why NCOs are called the “Backbone of the Army”. Most NCOs spend their whole careers with line troops while officers spend a year on the line, then become the Battalion Motor Officer or Mess Officer for a year. Some lieutenants who excel might get two line platoons in a row if the get a “special platoon” (Recon or mortar) after their initial platoon leader job.  

    That’s not much more experience than a Reserve or Guard Officer might get.

    Next I encountered this nugget in the story;

    The study group’s hope is that the larger U.S. military presence within Iraqi units would help them to improve more quickly and allow U.S. forces to pull back to larger, more secure bases away from Iraqi cities. The U.S. advisers would have the ability to quickly call on American forces if their units were being challenged or overrun.

    Now, where’d they get that idea? Right out of the Mobile Training Teams of Vietnam. Remember the John Wayne movie “Green Berets” when the camp was getting over run with Viet Cong and the Americans in the base had to call for a “Mike Force” to rescue them and turn back the Communists? That’s where the commission got the idea. From the same old failed policies of the Vietnam era.

    The politicians and media are trying to direct activity on the ground reminiscent of those photos of LBJ pouring over maps of North Vietnam picking bombing targets for the Navy and Air Force. Is this what we get when we get Democrats? More of the same fouled stuff?

    Just like the Clinton Administration and mission creep in Somalia while second-guessing commanders and refusing to give them the armor they needed and our troops died waiting for Pakistani armor to rescue them. Just like in Kosovo and Serbia, politicians determining flight altitude and limited action so that more civilians died than if direct action had been applied instead.

    I guess with Democrats we get deja vu all over again. No new ideas, just repackaged failures. To quote Jon Podhoretz in his article in the NY Post; Please stop laughing at the doddering old fools now. It’s disrespectful.