Filed under: Middle East, Military, National Security, Politics, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: "Peace Dividends", Never Prepared, War and Peace
These videos from the Heritage Foundation explain some of the problems with America’s current defense posture. Whenever a war in ended and troops returned home, politicians are sure that was the last war, and they can quit spending money on a lot of military stuff, and spend it instead on things that will buy more votes at home. “The Peace Dividend” they always call it. Liberals are sure that we wouldn’t have any wars if it weren’t for the warmongering Republicans always in favor of throwing our weight around — around the globe.
It is partly a matter of basic philosophy. Liberals are usually opposed to guns, sure that if there were fewer guns, there would be less crime. That attitude spills over into national defense. What we need, they are sure, is simply more dialogue, more peacekeeping, more U.N. Obviously, I’m generalizing here.Liberals believe that the natural state of the world is Peace. Conservatives are more apt to recognize that War is pretty much the natural state of the world, and that the periods of Peace are to be celebrated, but to have Peace, you must prepare for War. Nicely encompassed in the statement “Speak softly, but carry a big stick.”
In 1933, the Army of the United States was 137,000 men. The U.S. Army was 16th in size in the world. The French Army, on the other hand numbered 5 million men. The military had built up somewhat by Pearl Harbor, after all, the war had been going on in Europe and China for a couple of years. Germany had invaded France in May of 1940. ,We were desperately unprepared, with obsolete planes, battleships for a carrier war. We couldn’t even strike back until Midway in June of 1942, and that was mostly luck. It was a long desperate slog until the American arsenal began to catch up with military needs. When the troops came home, we had a “Peace Dividend.”
By 1948 the army had declined to 554,000, and we were totally unprepared for the North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950. And so it goes. The Taliban is stronger than ever, and the government is discussing how to ‘dialogue’ with them. We can talk about how it is impolite to throw acid in little girl’s faces, because they want to go to school.
Filed under: Law, National Security, News of the Weird, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: Common Sense, Sexual Harassing 6-year Old, Terrorist Babies
— Aurora, Colorado. A six-year-old boy was suspended from school for sexual harassment. First-grader D’Avonte Meadows apparently said the line “I’m sexy and I know it” to a female while he was standing in the lunch line. He didn’t even sing it —”I only said the song,” he told the reporter.
His mother was not pleased. She said she sees things like “fondling, looking up her skirt” as sexual harassment, not quoting an MTV line. “They’re going to look at him like he’s a pervert. And it’s like, that’s not fair to him.” Sable Elementary issued a statement saying it couldn’t discuss the case; but they pointed out a school board policy that defines sexual harassment as any unwelcome sexual advance. There is no age limit.
— Newark, N.J. TSA failed to properly screen a baby for weapons when it was handed from one parent to another during a metal detector walk through. Both parents were screened before leaving for their gate. A TSA official said that police were told that the slip up was a “low-risk factor” given the circumstances of the incident. A short the e later, the TSA personnel realized that the baby had no been checked and began searching for the family.
Port Authority police unilaterally made the decision to evacuate the terminal, sweep the terminal for explosives and re-screen all of the passengers. This, of course, inconvenienced hundreds of passengers and delayed many flights, said the official who was not authorized to discuss the issue by name because of its delicacy.
Is the country being run by a committee? This seems like the work of a committee, they always mess everything up. Terrorist babies indeed.
Filed under: Election 2012, Military, National Security, Politics, Terrorism | Tags: Killing Bin Laden, The Afghanistan Speech!, The United States Military
It’s not that hard. You just think of who it is that’s doing the really hard stuff. You don’t have to expose them to publicity, which they don’t want. Just offer thanks and gratitude.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Foreign Policy, Islam, Israel, Terrorism | Tags: Ignoring Congress, Separation of Powers, The Imperial Presidency
The White House seems to have an odd relationship with the separation of powers. The 2010 mid-term election when Republicans took over control of the House of Representatives was a sharp rebuke to the administration and congressional Democrats. Rather than understand that as a call for more cooperation and bipartisanship, Obama saw it as a sign that he should just go around Congress, accomplishing his goals by executive orders and agency regulation.
The Friday night news dump showed that Obama had exceeded his own guidelines. He decided that he would ignore the restrictions of Congress’s Palestinian Accountability Act with a “waiver.” He made the decision to pour American taxpayer dollars —$192 million — into the coffers of the Palestinian Authority despite its being illegal. This was first printed in the foreign press (AFP), where many of the more interesting things about this administration first appear.
Congress mandated that no funds may be made available to the Palestinian Authority until it ends its terrorist activities and an independent audit is conducted of its finances. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said it would ensure “the continued viability of the moderate PA government.” This is the same moderate government which has tried to form a pact with Hamas. He added that “the PA had fulfilled all its major obligations, such as recognizing Israel’s right to exist, renouncing violence and accepting the Road Map for Peace.”
In the real world, the PA is not only not moderate, but has reneged on all its commitments. The whole thing is a blatant lie.
Obama’s thinks of himself as an imperial president, above mere laws. His rant against the Supreme Court in the wake of the ObamaCare hearing was a disgrace. The Supreme Court is a fully equal branch of the government to the executive branch, and they decide what is Constitutional — not the president, who was a part-time lecturer on the 15th Amendment at the University of Chicago —not a professor of Constitutional Law.
Obama instructed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to inform Congress of the move, on the grounds that “waiving such prohibition is important to the national security interests of the United States.” Embarrassing.
Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy suggests that Congress should slash the executive branch’s budget— perhaps with a treble damages rule. Will they do it? remains to be seen, but unless they respond definitively, the imperial presidency will continue. Obama doesn’t think anyone will dare to do so.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Foreign Policy, Freedom, National Security, Terrorism | Tags: A Strong Defense, Global War on Terror, State Department
The State Department has declared that the global war on terror is over and won. Figures. Obama takes full credit for winning the Iraq war and bringing the troops home, and for ending the Afghanistan war. Obama always believed that the whole thing was about al Qaeda and Osama’s involvement in 9/11. Once Osama was dead, we had our revenge and it was all over.
The anonymous “senior State Department official who works on Mideast issues” told the National Journal recently “Now that we have killed most of al-Qaeda, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al-Qaeda see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”
Those legitimate means of expression are going well. The illusion that those who are looking for the triumph of Islamic fundamentalism now see “legitimate means of expression,” now that Moammar Gadhafi in Libya and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt are gone, simply do not grasp the difficulty of cultivating anything even approaching Western style values of liberty in traditional Islamic lands. The Taliban is regaining control in Afghanistan, Iran is still industriously building a nuclear weapon for its ruling ayatollah which it promises to use to destroy Israel and the U.S. And Bashar Assad, much celebrated by Liberals for his modernity and western outlook, ‘unexpectedly’ turned into a butcher.
The Arab Spring was so promising, and Mohamed Morsi is leading in Egypt’s presidential race led supporters in a chant “The Koran is our constitution, and Sharia is our guide!”
Michael Rubin of AEI, in his introduction to a paper presented to the Counter Terror Expo 1012 says:
The fight against terrorism is no closer to success today than it was a decade ago when, in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, President George W. Bush declared a Global War on Terrorism, The problem is not simply that Western agencies are outfoxed by state sponsors of terror and trans-national groups, but rather that Western governments and international organizations continue to suffer self-inflicted wounds. These include a failure to reach consensus on what terrorism is, political correctness that leads Western officials to downplay or ignore the religious component to terrorism; the legitimization of terrorist’s grievances; and a failure to recognize that diplomacy often does more harm than good.
Ambassador John Bolton remarked that:
Obama sees American strength as provocative. He believes its nuclear arsenal is excessive, and hence worthy of reduction, without fearing in any way that shredding the nuclear deterrent might actually have profoundly deleterious consequences not only on US national security, but on security and stability in the world as a whole. He sees his presidency causing “the tide of war” to recede in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, just as his tenure will mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow”. Dramatic reductions in military budgets, and the consequent devastating reductions in force levels, capabilities and weapons systems, apparently do not trouble him even slightly.
The Left has a hard time with ideas about war and peace. They regard peace as the natural state of the world, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. They see wars as largely the result of American warmongering and intransigence— and due to a lack of proper diplomacy and friendliness.There are always those on the left who are sure that unilateral disarmament will promote world peace.
The Right, in general, understands that flawed human nature means that some will always seek power, demand that their ideology be imposed on all, and that a strong defense can be the best way to prevent war and sustain peace.
Americans hate war, and are always sure that as soon as the most recent war is ended that there will be no more trouble in the world. The military is downsized, the “Military-Industrial Complex” declines, the spent-up equipment from the last war is not replaced, and though we mean to keep a strong deterrent —there are always other nice things to do with the money. And when the next war comes along, because we are perceived as weak, we are never, never ready.
John Bolton points out that Obama’s timidity risks the world’s Security. His excellent essay is worth your time, for clear thinking and analysis.
In 2009 Obama said: “I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.” Of course, it wasn’t Hirohito who surrendered on the Missouri‘s stout deck, but the revelation of Obama’s mindset is telling. Conceptually, a world of no victories may warm the hearts of social democrats, but it is insufficient for the defense of America. Nonetheless, November may well tell us, in more ways than one, whether America will remain America, or whether it has become better suited to being a junior member of the European Union.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Law, Liberalism, National Security, Terrorism | Tags: Department of Homeland Security, End Run Around Congress, Obama Administration
In its quest to implement stealth amnesty, the Obama administration is working behind the scenes to stop the deportation of certain illegal immigrants by granting them “unlawful presence waivers.” Don’t you love the names liberals dream up to hide, confuse, and disguise what they are actually doing.
Their aim is always more Democrat voters at the polls. But they want to disguise that by something that demonstrates how nice Democrats are. Here is how it would work., according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announcement posted in the Federal Register, the daily journal of the U.S. government. The agency will grant “unlawful presence waivers” to illegal aliens who can prove they have a relative who is a U.S. citizen.
According to the law, such aliens must return to their native country, and request a waiver of inadmissibility in an existing overseas immigrant visa process. In other words, they have to enter the U.S. legally as thousands of foreigners do on a yearly basis. Aside from the obvious security issues, changing the rules in this case is rewarding bad behavior. It makes no sense.
According to DHS, the system often causes U.S. citizens to be separated for extended periods from their immediate relations. They didn’t quite say “ripped from the arms of their loved ones.” The proposed changes, first announced in January, will significantly reduce the length of time U.S. Citizens are separated from their loved ones while required to remain outside the United States during the current visa processing system.
DHS also claims that relaxing this rule will “create efficiencies for both the government and most applicants.” What makes this more “efficient” is unknown.
This is obviously a part of the Obama Administration’s plan to go around Congress and accomplish what Congress would not pass, by regulation and rule changes. Obama has things he wants to accomplish and he does not see why he should be constrained by annoyances like the separation of powers, or an understanding that the three branches of government are equal branches.
The Department of Homeland Security only takes action against a “small portion” of foreigners who overstay their visa —like the 9/11 terrorists—em and allows hundreds of thousands to enter the U.S. without proper authorization from them under a provision that already relaxes scrutiny for 36 countries with whom we have special visa waiver agreements.
It’s as if nothing was learned from the 9/11 attacks nor from terrorist attacks in other countries. Most visitors comply with the rules, but an estimated 2% don’t, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). But that 2% translates into 364,000 travelers. Only half the countries that have visa waiver agreements with the U.S. are fully compliant. Last year a federal audit reveals that nearly half of the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants actually entered the U.S. legally but never left after their visa expired.
It is my impression that many liberals, secure in comfortable lives, do not take terrorism seriously. And once we got Osama bin Laden, wasn’t that the end of it? It is on the left that you find disarmament, gun control, peace studies, and efforts to slash military spending. In their Utopia, after redistribution of income when everybody is more equal, there won’t be any more wars and we don’t need all those armaments. If we just get rid of all our weapons, won’t everyone else follow our lead?
The Homeland Department has a lot to answer for, since they’re not doing Security any more.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Israel, Middle East, National Security, Politics, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: Fair Weather Friends, Israel and America, Strange Politics
The Israelis produced this film exposing their understanding of the relationship between the Obama administration and the state of Israel, over the past three years. They call it “Daylight.”
I would describe the video as straightforward and fair. I believe our relationship with Israel is important and the administration’s treatment of this great friend has been deplorable. Constant demands that Israel give up more land, more lives so that the Palestinians will want to make peace is a pipedream. The Palestinians have no interest in peace. They want to eliminate Israel. That’s what they teach their little kids in school— grow up to be a shahid. They don’t even show the state of Israel on their maps.
Once again, Obama’s public words have no relationship to his actions. If you care to read his speech at the AIPAC Conference yesterday, it is here.
ADDENDUM: An article from the Times of Israel expresses Netanyahu’s dilemma: Does he dare rely on Obama? It’s an interesting piece and shows just how far the administration’s intemperate words and acts have decayed the relationship.
Filed under: Islam, Military, National Security, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: Militant Islam, The Long War, Understanding the Stakes
The following is an excerpt from an essay in the Claremont Review of Books about wars and how they end. This excerpt refers to Lessons for a Long War by Thomas Donnelly and Fredrick Kagan of AEI.
Today the United States is engaged in a worldwide struggle with militant Islamist terrorists and insurgents—a true war and one that has already lasted decades. Many Westerners would like to think that the stakes of this war are not vital; that it is all the result of some terrible misunderstanding; that the United States itself may be primarily to blame; and that in any case we can and should disengage ourselves at little cost. … But the jihadists understand the nature of this struggle better than we do. All we have to do is listen to them, since they are happy to state their claim. They say very clearly and with obvious conviction that they aim at the restoration of a trans-national Islamic caliphate; the overthrow of secular governments within the Arab world and beyond; the complete ejection of Western influence from the non-Western world; the restoration of Islamic rule in historically Muslim territories; the destruction of Israel; and the death of millions of Americans. They declare not only that they are at war with the United States, but that this war can have no ending short of utter defeat for one side or the other. And they pursue this war primarily through the deliberate killing of innocent civilians — a barbaric policy not adopted even by Nazi Germany. One would think that the moral and geopolitical stakes could hardly be clearer. Yet somehow respectable mainstream thinking in Western intellectual circles has come to the conclusion that this is a morally troubled and overhyped struggle. Indeed, Barack Obama said as much when running for president.
I thought that was a strikingly true and correct statement by Colin Dueck who is an associate professor of public and international affairs at George Mason University. He is the author, most recently of Hard Line: The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War II.
Filed under: Economy, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Military, National Security, Politics, Terrorism | Tags: national security, New Defense Strategy, Obama Slashes Militaqry
Oh Gawd, it’s “peace dividend” time again! Obama made a rare trip to the Pentagon, flanked by his four service chiefs and his Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and saying that:
The United States of America is the greatest force for freedom and security that the world has ever known. And in no small measure, that’s because we’ve built the best-trained, best-led, best-equipped military in history — and as Commander-in-Chief, I’m going to keep it that way.
Uh huh, and then he proceeded with a lot of how wonderful our military is, and all the historic investments we’ve made in the military, the usual lovely baritone meaningless words, at which point he bragged on his administration:
And thanks to their extraordinary service, we’ve ended our war in Iraq. We’ve decimated al Qaeda’s leadership. We’ve delivered justice to Osama bin Laden, and we’ve put that terrorist network on the path to defeat. We’ve made important progress in Afghanistan, and we’ve begun to transition so Afghans can assume more responsibility for their own security. We joined allies and partners to protect the Libyan people as they ended the regime of Muammar Qaddafi.
And having congratulated himself, he said “Now we’re turning the page on a decade of war:” His words paint a pretty picture of how our splendid military has done a wonderful job and now we need to slash defense, gut the military, eliminate weapons. The White House settled on $450 billion in cuts in the military budget last year with Congress through 2021, on top of $350 billion in weapons programs killed earlier. Defense spending will fall by 1% next year, and another $500 billion in possible cuts starting next January unless Congress steps in first.
It was left to Defense Secretary Leon Pannetta to deal with “the savings we have been mandated to achieve.” Panetta said in an earlier statement that the ordered cuts would lead to a “hollow” military. The Navy will shrink from today’s 300 vessels to 238 and would lose two carrier battle groups. Strategic bombers will fall from 153 to 101. Air Force fighters would drop by more than half from 3,602 aircraft to 1,512 planes. And apparently our nuclear arsenal will be cut as well.
The military is a huge bureaucracy and of course there are savings that can be made. This is not about that, but about politics. The budget is out of control, and the president refuses to rein in entitlements, the really big problem. He won’t rein in either the energy department or the EPA, not cut back on his subsidies for his clean energy fantasy. He still wants to do infrastructure. Every effort to cut back on spending is met with fierce resistance from the White House, but the Left does not like the military, and does not really grasp the need for one.
Obama has apologized to the world for American power and success, and succeeded only in convincing the world that America is a hollow giant with a weak indecisive leader. The entire Mediterranean is a tinder keg, taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood. Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon, yet with an increasingly restive population. Syria is aflame and Assad continues slaughtering his people. China is developing a carrier force, and growing its military apace. Obama is surrendering to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and his pullout of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq may well destroy all our accomplishments there. Iran is threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz, and working hard in South America and Mexico to create trouble.
We have a long history of “Peace Dividends,” always disastrous and leaving more young lives destroyed. A weak country invites aggression.
Filed under: Election 2012, Iran, National Security, Politics, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: Economic Sanctions, Nuclear Terrorism, Terroriosm's Sponsor
In the current Washington climate, there was a rare bipartisan compromise last week, led by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) to impose economic sanctions on anyone who does business with the Central Bank of Iran. The Bank pays terrorists and funds the nuclear program. The sanctions passed the Senate 100–0. The Obama Administration claims that the economic sanctions will bring Iran’s nuclear program under control short of war.
The White House supported the sanctions in October after the FBI uncovered an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in a Washington , D.C. restaurant. Then it changed its mind.
Administration officials now say that if the U.S. closes its financial system to foreign banks that do deals with Iran, then U.S. trading partners might stick with Iran and deprive Americans of their business. Senator Menendez responded: “So we say to financial institutions, do you want to deal with the $300 billion (Iranian)economy, or do you want to deal with a $14 trillion economy. I think that choice is pretty easy for them.” The Wall Street Journal adds:
The Treasury also claims that central-bank sanctions could destabilize Iran’s economy and thus disrupt world oil markets, making prices go up and creating a windfall for Iran, which exports oil. Anything’s possible, but if you fear an oil-price spike, wait until Israel bombs Tehran after it concludes the U.S. isn’t serious about stopping its nuclear plans.
The Senate passed the sanctions anyway, yet now the Administration is trying to water them down in a House-Senate conference on a defense bill. Treasury is asking the conferees to strike the Menendez-Kirk bill’s most important provision, which applies the sanctions to any foreign central bank trading in oil via the Central Bank of Iran. The Administration wants the leeway to choose whether to block such banks from the U.S. financial system, or merely to “impose strict conditions” on them.
The Senate gave the president waiver options in a failed attempt to earn his support. The Senate bill sanctions take effect after 60 days, so the President would have to issue three waivers before the 2012 election — having to answer to the public each time. Treasury would have the sanctions take effect after 180 days, so Mr. Obama would only have to issue one waiver before Election Day.
Goodness, if the sanctions disrupted Iran’s oil exports, it might increase oil prices which in turn might raise the cost of gas at the pump. And that might hurt Mr. Obama’s re-election chances. Americans are very sensitive to the cost of gasoline. Although not as sensitive as they are to a nuclear attack. A nuclear Iran just might hurt his chances of re-election as well.
Quite a demonstration of just what the President’s priorities are.
