Comments on: Al-Qaeda’s Strategy of “A Thousand Cuts”

By: Lon Mead

Lon Mead — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 10:21:06 +0000

I haven’t had a chance to read Rush to Judgement yet, but it’s on my list… everything I’ve read of his I’ve liked.
And on your other point, Obama, like Clinton before him, believes popularity and being “liked” by everyone is the greatest measure of success. Problem is, Obama thinks that to be liked he has to give people in other countries whatever they want (unless they were nations that were friendly to us during the Bush administration). Obama (rather ridiculously in a chief executive) still holds the idea that anything favored by Republicans is wrong (simply because a Republican favors it) and that anything a Democrat favors is right (simply because a Democrat favors it), which is responsible for the seeming incoherence and some of the outright contradictions that come up.
If Obama is using being “liked” by other nations as his yardstick, he may want look quite a bit closer at his strategy… the popularity of the U.S. has declined steadily since he took office, and he has lost the respect of traditional allies. In the long run, I believe Obama is going to be judged a failure as president by every measure, including the standards he has set for himself (whatever they are).

By: The Elephant's Child

The Elephant's Child — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:40:20 +0000

I think Obama took all of the wild claims that Democrats made about Bush, Iraq, Afghanistan, al Qaeda — as gospel truth, and his actions have been to show how different and superior he is. Mark Bowden has a new book out on the bin Laden raid, and a review said today that Obama intended to put bin Laden on trial, because that would demonstrate to the world how superior our trial by jury system was. Prove our excellence, and that we weren’t torturers like the hated Bush. Obama’s never gotten over his desire to close Guantanamo.

His idiotic announcements of our withdrawal plans in Iraq and Afghanistan were prompted by the same thing. In Afghanistan the rules of engagement got all politically correct and ended up getting way too many of our troops killed by insisting that those who were training Afghan police and troops have unloaded weapons to prove how trusting we were. It’s like a member of Code Pink is Commander in Chief. He’s trying to do a responsible job, but his understanding of war and foreign relations is simply unrelated to reality, and off in some ideological one-world never-never land.

I just read Rush to Judgment by Stephen F. Knott, which takes all the incoherent and hysterical claims by the Libs seriously, and methodically dismantles them by showing how Bush’s actions were directly in line with his predecessors and perfectly in line with law and the Constitution. Good Read. Also just read Lone Survivor Marcus Luttrell’s account of a SEAL action that turned into a nightmare when the four of them were surrounded by a force of 80 Taliban fighters. He talks briefly about problems with the rules of engagement which put them at a severe disadvantage. Also a good read. Obama’s nominees for Defense, CIA, Treasury and State are yes-men who will help him to dismantle our defenses so we can be a nicer nation and more popular.Very scary.

By: Lon Mead

Lon Mead — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 06:50:05 +0000

History not being a strong suit of this administration (and of government types in general-what’s going on now is entirely different to anything that has ever happened before, according to some), they will fail to understand that al-Qaeda is simply startig to use some of the same tactics as the Partisans of eastern Europe and the Free French during WWII. Disruption, distraction, confusion… the need to use resources fighting a problem that could be used elsewhere.

Congratulations, Obama, you’ve managed to bring an element of history back to life.