Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
It’s been reported that a car bomb exploded when Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta landed in Afghanistan earlier today, but no one was injured except the man who was driving the car when it burst into flames. In other news, an even bigger bomb was dropped on our Marines when they were ordered to disarm before entering a building in Afghanistan to hear Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta give a speech.
That’s right: our Marines, who are in a combat zone, were ordered to stack their M-4 rifles over here and their 9mm handguns over there before listening to Panetta ramble on about this and that (I don’t remember Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordering our Marines to be disarmed in his presence, even once).
Although the Obama administration has tried to spin this and make it look like an admittedly unusual yet valid request, the man who carried out the order to disarm the Marines, Maj. Gen. Mark Gurganus, gave some insight into the reason behind this order which even MSNBC commentators labeled “unprecedented.” We didn’t want unarmed Afghans who attended the speech to feel out of place.
However, US troops often remain armed even when their Afghan colleagues have been asked to lay down their weapons and the incident is believed to be the first time they were stripped of guns during an address by their own secretary of defence.
You know when you see stacks of rifles like this? At surrenders as the surrendering enemy troops turn in their weapons. Only in this case we’re the side that is supposed to be winning.
This should be no surprise given how this administration has handled the soldiers under its misrule:
MARJAH, Afghanistan — Some American and Afghan troops say they’re fighting the latest offensive in Afghanistan with a handicap — strict rules that routinely force them to hold their fire.
Example:
Family calls U.S. military goals ‘fuzzy’ Parents of soldier killed last week criticize firepower restrictions
By DENNIS YUSKO, Staff writer
First published in print: Thursday, June 24, 2010
QUEENSBURY — The parents of a Lake George soldier killed in Afghanistan attacked the Obama administration Wednesday for “flower children leadership,” and said they would work to change U.S. rules of military engagement in the nine-year conflict.
Hours before holding a wake for their 27-year-old son in Glens Falls, Bill and Beverly Osborn heavily criticized a military policy implemented last year that places some restrictions on when American troops can use firepower in Afghanistan. The new rules were set when Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal assumed command of the Afghanistan effort, and have reportedly made it harder for troops to call in for or initiate air power, artillery and mortars against the Taliban.
The counterinsurgency policy is intended to reduce civilian casualties and win the allegiance of Afghans, McChrystal had said. But echoing criticisms from the Vietnam era, Bill Osborn said Wednesday that it’s tied the hands of service members on the ground.
“We send our young men and women to spill their blood and we won’t let them do their job,” he said from his Queensbury home. “Winning hearts and minds is wonderful, but first we have to defeat the enemy.”
Commanders have ordered a U.S. military unit in Afghanistan to patrol with unloaded weapons, according to a source in Afghanistan.
American soldiers in at least one unit have been ordered to conduct patrols without a round chambered in their weapons, an anonymous source stationed at a forward operating base in Afghanistan said in an interview. The source was unsure where the order originated or how many other units were affected.
Example:
Hold fire, earn a medal
By William H. McMichael – Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday May 12, 2010 15:51:31 EDT
U.S. troops in Afghanistan could soon be awarded a medal for not doing something, a precedent-setting award that would be given for “courageous restraint” for holding fire to save civilian lives.
And you wonder why things are going so godawful over there.
If you read over my articles on Obama’s massive social engineering on the military – such as imposing homosexuality on our troops – you ought to see that this is frankly no surprise. These days, if a gay soldier in your unit fancies you, you’d better just bend over and let him sodomize you; because if you don’t he’ll file a sexual harassment suit against you – and under this administration you will be found guilty and punished to the fullest extent of the law.
It’s also no surprise that our first “emperor” president would begin to implement the first “Praetorian guard” approach to our soldiers.
I find it despicable; but of course everything this president has done has pretty much been despicable.
As we face an impending government shutdown, it becomes an interesting question to ask, “How did we get here?” And why are the Democrats literally scheming to shut down the government over the Republicans’ demand to cut just 2% of our massive deficit? Why do Democrats want to hurt our troops and their families by denying the pay of soldiers who barely make it month to month? Especially when Republicans have passed a stopgap measure that would fund the troops for the year and keep them out of any budget squabbles?
First, let’s get one fact on the table: this entire “shutdown” mess is the result of Democrats’ pathetic failure to pass a budget when they controlled the White House, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives last year.
What is being fought over is the FY-2011 budget. We are now SIX MONTHS into that fiscal year thanks to Democrat incompetence. And the reason Democrats didn’t bother to pass a budget when they were in total control of the government was because it was an election year, and Democrats didn’t want the American people to see how morally and fiscally insane they truly were. Bottom line: if Democrats had passed the kind of reckless budget that Democrats invariably pass, the election would have gone even worse for them than it did.
Furthermore, as soon as the new Republican House took over, they immediately went to work on the budget for this year that Democrats had refused to bother with last year when they were supposed to do so as the most basic part of their duties. They sent that budget to the Democrat-controlled Senate. And Harry Reid sat on it and did nothing.
And, for the record, Senate Democrats STILL don’t have any kind of a budget whatsoever. The only thing they’ve got is a big can of deceitful demagoguery.
Those are the documented facts.
The mainstream media – as they sharpen their knives to carve up Republicans and make them the culprits – are simply lying to you.
For the record, the last budget from a Republican President AND a Republican Congress – FY-2007 (passed in 2006) – resulted in a$161 billion deficit at a time when unemployment was 4.6%. That’s what happened the last time the GOP was in control.
What happened when the Democrats took control in January 2007? Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi passed a FY-2008 budget that had a $459 billion deficit – nearly three times the deficit in the immediately previous Republican-passed budget. Three times. And this before the financial crisis that somehow “necessitated” all this massive spending.
Now, that’s a pretty crazy increase under Democrat control. But you aint seen nothin’ yet.
The Democrats passed a FY-2009 budget with a staggering, mind-boggling, totally reckless $1.42 TRILLION deficit.
The FY-2010 budget approved by Reid and Pelosi and signed by Obama had an estimated $1.6 TRILLION deficit.
The deficit has increased from $161 billion in the last budget before Democrats took control of the Congress (FY 2007) to $1.42 trillion in the most recent fiscal year (FY 2009)—an increase of $1.26 trillion or 782%.
We also suffered a budget shortfall of $94 billion in the month of June, which marks the first June in more than ten years (read, “encompassing the entire Bush presidency”). Bush’s success in raising revenues is bookended by two Democrat presidents who failed.
That’s your history lesson. Anyone who wants to blame the reckless spending on Bush or Republicans is either lying, or ignorant, or an ignorant liar.
Three, we need to chop TRILLIONS of dollars in spending if we don’t want our entire nation to collapse and our children to starve in front of our eyes in a depression that will make the 1930s look like a nice day at the beach.
Democrats are literally fighting to the death over a few billion dollars in this FY-2011 budget that they did nothing about when they had the chance. At the same time, they are loudly demonizing Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget (notice how, unlike the Democrats, the Republicans are actually being responsible and passing a budget?) that will save $6.2 trillion compared to Obama’s budget over the next ten years – even as it spends more than $40 trillion (as compared to Obama’s $46 trillion). Ryan’s budget is called “The Path to Prosperity.” Obama’s out-of-control budget is now the status quo. Which looks better to you?
There is absolutely NO WAY the nation will do anything but collapse if Democrats are allowed to play any role whatsoever in its governance at this point.
If you vote Democrat, this is your basic posture: “I don’t care about the next generation. I do not give one DAMN about America. I want everything that I and my union special interests can get, and screw everybody else.”
And my response is that Democrats are a greater threat to America than al Qaeda or China. They are a fifth column destroying America from within so our worst enemies don’t have to bother. We must crush Democrats before they can crush America.
Four, it is an absolute LIE that Republicans are shutting down the government. The fact is, Republicans just passed another stopgap that would fund the government for a week and fund military operations (as in Obama’s military operations that he’s now placed into three wars) for the remainder of the year.
Consider reality for a change. From the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Defying a White House veto threat, the Republican-led US House of Representatives on Thursday passed a stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown as a deadline looms.
US President Barack Obama’s budget office had vowed to reject the measure, dubbing it “a distraction” from difficult, ongoing negotiations on funding the US government for the rest of the fiscal year that ends September 30.
And Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had vowed to block the measure, calling it a “fantasy” and “a non-starter.”
The bill, which cleared the House by a mostly party-line 247-181 vote, would also have funded US military operations for the rest of the year.
Republicans, relying on the measure to gain leverage in the spending cut battle, used that to argue that Democrats and the White House opposed funding for US troops in harm’s way.
And, with all due respect, that is precisely what the rat bastard Democrats are doing; opposing funding for US troops in harm’s way.
Democrats don’t want to allow the troops to be funded. Like the terrorists whose side they routinely take, they want to hold America’s ability to defend itself hostage; they want “leverage” over Republicans. Cave in to our demands or else we’re destroy the military. Allah Akbar!
Obama and Democrats do not WANT to prevent a government shutdown. Obama and Democrats are enraged that Republicans give a damn about our troops and their ability to sustain operations.
What Obama and the Democrats want is to force a government shutdown over Republican attempts to prevent one and then use the power of the most propagandist media since Goebbels ran Hitler’s “mainstream media” to blame the GOP.
Because that is the kind of vermin the Democrats have become.
Harry Reid is refusing to allow the Republicans’ stopgap to even come up for debate in the Senate – even though there is no sane alternative. In fact, the ONLY alternative Reid proposes is a Senate measure that would require a unanimous vote of all 100 Senators. Which is to say that Harry Reid is forcing a government shutdown. Period.
Go back and look at the past. Consider that, under Democrats’ leadership, the federal budget has gone from $161 billion to $1.6 trillion a year with no end in sight until we get these bloated Democrat leeches off our backs. Understand that a “trillion” is a thousand billion. That makes the Democrats’ $1.6 trillion deficit a hundred times worse than what the Republicans left us with the last time they controlled Congress.
And consider that Democrats are doing everything they can to shut down the government and cause as much suffering for ordinary Americans as they can with the cynical belief that their liberal mainstream media allies will report the lie every single day that the Republicans are to blame until an ingorant population believes their Big Lie.
I believe we are in the last days before the Tribulation that God forewarned us about nearly 2,000 years ago. I believe the beast is coming – and that beast will be a big government totalitarian fascist who will be the fulfillment of everything the Democrats have been trying to push America toward for most of the last century.
God didn’t decree the coming Antichrist and the terrible hell on earth that would result from his “government as God” rule; God merely knew that in the last days of the human race we would make the kind of terrible mistakes that would cause the coming of the beast and his seven coming years of hell. And that is precisely what we have been doing.
We COULD do the right thing and avoid the hell that awaits us. But we won’t. And, amazingly, America will be the nation that starts the “beast” ball rolling; when America catches a cold, they say, the rest of the world catches the flu. And because of the morally and fiscally insane policies of Democrats, America now has flesh eating disease. You can already see the clear “last days” signs that have resulted from Obama’s wicked and foolish policies.
A quick refresher course for the last couple of months.
First of all there is the fact that Obama – basically in his own words – has been doing nothing more than following Bush’s pro-democracy policy in the Middle East. He’s just been doing so in an incredibly incompetent and contradictory manner.
We actually heard the same sort of mind-boggling chutzpah from the Obama administration that led them to conclude that George Bush’s victory in Iraq – which Obama did everything possible to undermine every step of the way as both Senator and presidential candidate – was “one of the great achievements of this administration.” Because these moral idiots in the White House actually took credit for the massive unrest in the Middle East, claiming that the yearning for freedom all somehow came from Obama’s Cairo speech.
FEBRUARY 23, 2011 The Federal Reserve Is Causing Turmoil Abroad Few protesters in the Middle East connect rising food prices to U.S. monetary policy. But central bankers do.
By GEORGE MELLOAN
In accounts of the political unrest sweeping through the Middle East, one factor, inflation, deserves more attention. Nothing can be more demoralizing to people at the low end of the income scale—where great masses in that region reside—than increases in the cost of basic necessities like food and fuel. It brings them out into the streets to protest government policies, especially in places where mass protests are the only means available to shake the existing power structure.
[…]
Probably few of the protesters in the streets connect their economic travail to Washington. But central bankers do. They complain, most recently at last week’s G-20 meeting in Paris, that the U.S. is exporting inflation.
China and India blame the U.S. Federal Reserve for their difficulties in maintaining stable prices. The International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, always responsive to the complaints of developing nations, are suggesting alternatives to the dollar as the pre-eminent international currency.
And, mind you, the destabilization created by Obama is hitting us right here in “God Damn America,” too. Just as I told you so.
Obama’s reckless and immoral spending policies DID create the conditions for unrest, as hungry people whose economies have been destabilized by Obama begin to riot and protest all over the place. Obama-appointed Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke has been doing nothing more than trying to finance Obama’s never-seen-in-the-history-of-the-human-race-spending by printing money and undermining the US dollar. And our once mighty dollar is now like a cancer for all the countries whose currencies depend on it.
Obama’s Cairo speech was a laugher of empty liberal rhetoric. And another little factoid to contemplate is how Obama and vile, despicable liberals blamed the hostility of the Islamic world on Bush, when the world had never SEEN the Middle East go up in flames until Weakling-in-Chief Obama had been in office for two miserable years. And, given that Iran will have its nukes thanks very much to Democrat weakness and demagoguery, you aint seen nothing yet. Do you remember your liberal friends assuring you that Bush had made the world violent, and that Obama would magically make the problems go away, because empty talk was what was really important, rather than the strength and courage to actually stand for something?
“It seems to me that it is a dangerous proposition to urge people to seek democracy and revolt and then basically not to help them.”
Which is exactly – and I mean EXACTLY – what this weak, appeasing, cowardly empty-suit has done.
You want proof? Just click here and see how the leaders of the Egyptian revolution told Obama Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to go to hell because Obama hadn’t done a damn thing to help them.
Or click here to see how that same Hillary Clinton so disgusted with Obama as “a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can’t make his mind up.” And then you tell me how Obama is anything other than a pathetic, weak, appeasing little weasel. Hillary Clinton is sick and tired of trying to explain away a failed president to foreign leaders who say things like, “Frankly we are just completely puzzled. We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States.” And just what the hell is the woman supposed to say to them, given that her boss is an incompetent fool on his best days?
So Obama finally decides – basically two weeks after it was probably too late – to erect a no-fly zone over Libya. Fine. But the fool has to show us what a fool he is by stating categorically that he will absolutely not put any American troops on the ground. That guarantees that Gaddafi will remain in power; and worse yet, it guarantees that Gaddafi knows that Obama is too weak to do anything serious.
We bombed Iraq far more than we will ever end up bombing Libya under Obama. But remember that in Iraq we still had to go in and dig that cockroach Saddam Hussein out of his hole in the ground with TROOPS. Gaddafi aint going anywhere now other than his temporary rat hole, thanks to Obama’s stupid announcement. Thanks to Obama, Gaddafi knows he can play possum and pretend to follow the rules until we’re gone, and then it’s right back to the murdering.
Obama is like an imbecile who can’t help but show everyone at the table his hand every time he plays poker. And then can’t understand why he keeps losing. I can understand why Obama wouldn’t want to put troops on the ground (the man is a weakling; of course he wouldn’t want to do something strong!); but I can’t understand why he had to let everybody know that all Gaddafi has to do is hunker down and he can stay in power without getting scared into making some kind of deal to save his snake skin.
Another way to put it is this: Remember when Obama was running for president by demonizing and demagoguing Bush? Obama said:
“We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”
But I guess it was just Afghani civilians that Obama was queasy about air-rading and killing; he’s FINE doing nothing more than air-raiding villages and killing civilians when they’re LIBYAN. That by his own despicable and frankly treasonous rhetoric. If Bush was wrong not to have troops, Obama is wrong not to have troops. Liberals are going to say, “That was totally different!” because they ALWAYS say that when they do the same damn thing that they had just got through demonizing. It’s their nature as the quintessential hypocrites they truly are.
Bush was rightly resistant to putting too many troops into Afghanistan because he knew enough about history to understand that Afghanistan is a hell-hole. Bush understood that while Iraq – with its flat, mostly open terrain – was perfect for American equipment and tactics, and that mountainous and cave-ridden Afghanistan was most certainly NOT well-suited for American equipment and tactics. Bush knew that the fairly well-educated Iraqi people were capable of some semblance of democracy; and Bush knew that the ignorant, basically stone-age Afghani people were NOT capable of anything resembling self-governance.
Because Bush – however stupid the left wants to say he is – wasn’t 1/20th as massively moronic as Barack Obama is.
But I’m still not done dumping on our Moron-in-Chief. Because we’ve got to consider something else: Obama insists that what he’s doing in Libya is right because it’s purpose is “the protection of Libyan civilians.”
Let me ask you a question: is Obama truly so personally ignorant that he didn’t know about the hundreds of thousands of civilians that Saddam Hussein murdered in Iraq while he was opposing our doing anything to help them?
Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. By mid-January, 2004, the number of confirmed sites climbed to fifty-three. Some graves hold a few dozen bodies—their arms lashed together and the bullet holes in the backs of skulls testimony to their execution. Other graves go on for hundreds of meters, densely packed with thousands of bodies.”We’ve already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves,” said British Prime Minister Tony Blair on November 20 in London. The United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all estimate that Saddam Hussein’s regime murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
On Saturday, President Obama while visiting Brazil launched a United Nations war without obtaining Congressional approval. We all must remember how the left crucified President George W. Bush over a 9 month debate concerning war with Iraq. This debate included multiple UN Resolutions and a Multi-National Force composed of dozens of nations. Many refer to this time of debate as a “rush to war.” Yesterday however, President Obama approved the launch of Tomahawk missiles effectively engaging us in a Libyan civil war. This decision came with no debate in Congress and one UN Resolution that was only voted on 48 hours before.
Obama is quite right to care about the atrocities being committed by Muammar Gaddafi now. But it also just goes to prove what a vile little weasel he has been his entire life prior to lying his way to the presidency.
But Wright’s relationship with the controversial Farrakhan extended far beyond an award. In 1984, Wright personally accompanied Farrakhan to Libya to meet with Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli. In 2008, Wright even predicted his association with Farrakhan and Gaddafi may cause political headaches for Obama’s presidential aspirations: “When [Obama’s] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli to visit [Gadhafi] with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell,” he said.
It should have. It should have destroyed the Obama candidacy and spared us from the most despicable president in our nation’s history. But amazingly, and thanks primarily to the worst media propaganda campaign since Goebbels, it didn’t.
We were both foolish and wicked to vote for this evil man. Barack Obama was a cheerful congregant in Jeremiah Wright’s wicked and racist church when Wright pronounced that the United States was “God damn America.” And now – under Obama – it truly IS God damn America.
Barack Obama is now our Chicken-in-Chief. And, yes, in Jeremiah Wright’s words, our chickens truly have now come home to roost.
National Review has a record of Obama’s pretzel twisting flat-out LIES. We should review them as Obama gives his speech celebrating the troops coming home.
I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.
Now first see how Obama massively contradicted himself, all while assuring us that he’d been predicting the surge would control violence all along:
OBAMA: We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality, uh, we can send 15,000 more troops; 20,000 more troops; 30,000 more troops. Uh, I don’t know any, uh, expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to, uh, privately that believes that that is gonna make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.
On November 11, 2007, two months after General David Petraeus told Congress that the surge was working, Obama doubled down, saying that the administration’s new strategy was making the situation in Iraq worse:
“Finally, in 2006-2007, we started to see that, even after an election, George Bush continued to want to pursue a course that didn’t withdraw troops from Iraq but actually doubled them and initiated a surge and at that stage I said very clearly, not only have we not seen improvements, but we’re actually worsening, potentially, a situation there.”
Contrasted with this statement after the surge worked:
I had no doubt, and I said when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence.
No you didn’t, you LIAR, Obama.
The mainstream media – the official propaganda arm of the Democrat Party – have repeatedly refused to hold Obama accountable for his lies and his contradictions.
Now let’s go back, remembering that Joe Biden said Iraq would literally be “one of the great achievements of this administration,” and see how Obama did everything he could as candidate to make it a failure, to cause the United States to lose in Iraq so that we would be forced to withdraw in humiliation and defeat.
“Here’s what we know. The surge has not worked. And they said today, ‘Well, even in September, we’re going to need more time.’ So we’re going to kick this can all the way down to the next president, under the president’s plan.”
A Democratic debate in September 13, 2007:
After putting an additional 30,000 troops in, far longer & more troops than the president had initially said, we have gone from a horrendous situation of violence in Iraq to the same intolerable levels of violence that we had back in June of 2006. So, essentially, after all this we’re back where we were 15 months ago. And what has not happened is any movement with respect to the sort of political accommodations among the various factions, the Shia, the Sunni, and Kurds that were the rationale for surge and that ultimately is going to be what stabilizes Iraq. So, I think it is fair to say that the president has simply tried to gain another six months to continue on the same course that he’s been on for several years now. It is a course that will not succeed. It is a course that is exacting an enormous toll on the American people & our troops.
“It is a course that will not succeed.”
Versus:
“I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”
And, of course, there is the all-time statement of treason from Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, quoted in an MSNBC article titled, “Reid: Iraq War lost, U.S. can’t win”:
“I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and – you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows – (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” said Reid, D-Nev.
What we’re going to see tonight in Obama’s speech is “an enormous demonstration of lack of class and grace,” predicts Sean Hannity. That because Obama has a despicable tendency to blame everything that goes wrong on his predecessor, rather than taking personal responsibility for his presidency. We already know that Obama will not give Bush or the surge credit for the success in Iraq. A success which is documented in the Obama’s claiming credit for “one of the great achievements of this administration” and a success which is documented in our soldiers coming home in victory rather than in defeat.
Barack Obama is a liar, a demagogue, and a truly classless human being.
Barack Obama: “What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”
“You soldiers were so wonderful and so heroic in your dumb, rash victory that I did everything I could to undermine. I want to personally thank you for your useless sacrifice.”
When the only ideologue who is ramming an ideological agenda down our throats – judging from the enormous American disapproval of first his stimulus boondoggle and then his ObamaCare boondoggle – is YOU, Hussein.
Which is to say, it’s a shame that we got rid of one lying despot Hussein in Iraq, but now must suffer an even worse one here.
“It’s frustrating to see both the president and vice president jumping up and down saying, ‘Look what we did, look what we did,’ when if we actually followed the policies they were calling for … we would have left early and we would have left in shame,” Mr. Hegseth said, noting their opposition to the surge of forces in Iraq.
This is nothing more than an effort to hold Obama accountable to the very same standards he used to demonize George Bush in Iraq:
Afghanistan violence is soaring, U.N. says Afghanistan is increasingly dangerous for troops and civilians alike, a report says, citing an ‘alarming’ 94% increase in bomb attacks in the first four months of 2010, compared with last year.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times
June 20, 2010
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan
Afghanistan has become a far more dangerous place for Western troops and Afghan civilians alike, with an increase in suicide attacks, roadside bombings and political assassinations in the first four months of 2010, the United Nations said in a report released Saturday.
The gloomy assessment comes on the heels of congressional testimony last week by senior U.S. military officials who acknowledged that efforts to stabilize Afghanistan’s volatile south are proving more complex and time-consuming than anticipated.
With the U.S. troop numbers in the country approaching the 100,000 mark, the Western military toll has been rising sharply as the summer “fighting season” unfolds. More than 1,000 U.S. service members have died in the nearly 9-year-old conflict.
“There has been a great deal of ‘kinetic activity'” as Western and Afghan forces confront insurgents in the south, German army Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz, a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s International Security Assistance Force, told reporters Saturday in Kabul, the capital. That is the term the military uses to describe battlefield clashes.
The U.N. report, submitted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the Security Council and released by the world body’s mission in Afghanistan, notes a near-doubling in the number of attacks involving roadside bombs.
It describes an “alarming” 94% increase in bomb attacks from the same January-April period a year earlier. Roadside bombs planted by the Taliban and other insurgents are generally aimed at foreign troops, but because they are planted on routes used by everyone, they kill and maim many civilians as well.
The report also cites an average of three suicide bombings a week across Afghanistan, a growing number of them attacks involving more than one assailant, sometimes in combination with use of rockets, mortars and gunfire.
Targeted killings of Afghan officials had increased by 45%, the report says, with most taking place in the south, where the insurgency is strongest. The killings tend to target locally influential figures, such as tribal elders and other dignitaries who might be able to rally villagers and townspeople to resist the Taliban.
In one recent example, the district governor in Arghandab, a strategic gateway to the city of Kandahar, was killed in an insurgent bombing. NATO had touted the district as an area in which headway was being made in winning over the populace and improving security
Western officials have been describing their own campaign in the south as a combined political and military effort, and systematic assassinations appear aimed at sapping the will of local officials and others seen as cooperating with foreign forces or the Afghan government.
The U.N. report takes a more hopeful tone about some recent political developments, including nascent efforts by the government of President Hamid Karzai to woo Taliban foot soldiers away from the fight.
It notes, though, that “in general, the Taliban have reacted negatively to peace and reconciliation.”
Let’s reflect on this disastrous report, in light of Obama’s demonization and demagoguery of George Bush’s successful attempt to prevail in Iraq.
“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he told MSNBC. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”
On Larry King Live last night, Vice President Joe Biden said Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”
Obama is the consummate demagogue who demonized Bush in Afghanistan by claiming:
“We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”
Condemn him as a failure and a disgrace according to his own demagogic standard. He demonized Bush, when Bush succeeded. How much more should we demonize Obama, as he’s utterly failing???
But this is worse than merely a failure of leadership. Far worse.
Bob Shrum, who was a high political operative who worked on the Kerry campaign in ’04, wrote a very interesting article in December of last year in which he talked about that campaign, and he said, at the time, the Democrats raised the issue of Afghanistan — and they made it into “the right war” and “the good war” as a way to attack Bush on Iraq. In retrospect, he writes, that it was, perhaps, he said, misleading. Certainly it was not very wise.
What he really meant to say — or at least I would interpret it — it was utterly cynical. In other words, he’s confessing, in a way, that the Democrats never really supported the Afghan war. It was simply a club with which to bash the [Bush] administration on the Iraq war and pretend that Democrats aren’t anti-war in general, just against the wrong war.
Well, now they are in power, and they are trapped in a box as a result of that, pretending [when] in opposition that Afghanistan is the good war, the war you have to win, the central war in the war on terror. And obviously [they are] now not terribly interested in it, but stuck.
And that’s why Obama has this dilemma. He said explicitly on ABC a few weeks ago that he wouldn’t even use the word “victory” in conjunction with Afghanistan.
And Democrats in Congress have said: If you don’t win this in one year, we’re out of here. He can’t win the war in a year. Everybody knows that, which means he [Obama] has no way out.
Afghanistan was just a way to demagogue Bush in Iraq by describing Afghanistan – where Obama is failing so badly – as “the good war” and Iraq – where Bush won so triumphantly – as “the bad war.” It was beyond cynical; it was flat-out treasonous.
George Bush selected Iraq as his central front for sound strategic reason. Iraq had a despotic tyrant who supported terrorism. Saddam Hussein needed to be removed to mount any kind of successful peace effort in the Middle East. Iraq is located in the heart of the Arab/Islamic world. It has an educated population relative to the rest of the region. It also offered precisely the type of terrain that would allow American forces to implement their massive military superiority in a way that mountainous, cave-ridden Afghanistan would not.
Bush was determined to fight a war where he could win. Obama foolishly trapped us in a war that would bleed us. Why? For no other reason than pure political demagoguery. And he needs to be held accountable.
And where are we now under Obama’s failed leadership???
“I think they (the Obama administration) thought this would be more popular and easier. We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war.”
See my piece from last year predicting this failure. Read that article and explain to me where I was wrong, liberals. I dare you.
American casualties under Obama in 2009 more than doubled compared to the total in 2008 when Bush was commander-in-chief. And they are set to more than double this year compared to 2009.
We’re paying attention to Obama’s massive, massive failure of leadership in the Gulf Coast. That’s all well and good. But don’t forget Obama’s massive failure of leadership in Afghanistan.
And just as we should rightly condemn Barack Obama for his demonization and demagoguery of Bush in Katrina, we should likewise condemn him for his demonization and demagoguery of Bush in Afghanistan. We should hold Barack Hussein accountable to his own hypocritical, two-faced standards, and demand his resignation as a failure and a fraud.
Update, June 22: Heck, I wrote this yesterday, and hadn’t even published it yet when I discovered I needed to update. Because now we now that Stanley McChrystal, commanding general in Afghanistan, thinks that Obama – and virtually every single man Obama has appointed in Afghanistan – are a bunch of clueless clowns.
McChrystal has seized control of the war “by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”
One aide called White House National Security Adviser Jim Jones, a retired four star general, a “clown” who was “stuck in 1985.”
Obama agreed to dispatch an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan only after months of study that many in the military found frustrating. And the White House’s troop commitment was coupled with a pledge to begin bringing them home in July 2011, in what counterinsurgency strategists advising McChrystal regarded as an arbitrary deadline.
The article portrayed McChrystal’s team as disapproving of the Obama administration, with the exception of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who backed McCrystal’s request for additional troops in Afghanistan.
It quotes a member of McChrystal’s team making jokes about Biden, who was seen as critical of the general’s efforts to escalate the conflict and who had favored a more limited counter-terrorism approach. “Biden?” the aide was quoted as saying. “Did you say: Bite me?” Biden initially opposed McChrystal’s proposal for additional forces last year. He favored a narrower focus on hunting terrorists.
This, too, is another example of liberal hypocrisy. What happened when Bush was depicted as not listening to his generals? From the Washington Post, after Bush decided to pursue the (in hindsight) magnificently successful surge strategy:
This impulse may well expose Bush to more criticism from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who have sharply condemned him for not listening to Shinseki’s counsel in the beginning.
What’s it like to have your own fingers of demonization now pointing back at you?
Like I said, Obama is massively failing in Afghanistan. Just like he’s massively failing everywhere else.
I took a nap in front of a television, and dreamed I was being lectured to by this incredibly annoying, pontificating nerd. When I woke up, Barack Obama was speaking.
In a nationally televised speech, Barack Obama assured the Taliban fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan that they will have an exit strategy out of a bitter conflict.
“Don’t worry, brave and noble Taliban fighters, your long fight will not be in vain. We will be here today, but gone tomorrow. I promise you as a Democrat and a liberal that in 18 months, the ultimate victory will be yours, and then you can invite those al-Qaeda friends of yours to come back.”
Don’t worry, Obama didn’t actually say that, at least not in so many words. But that is nevertheless the clear outcome of his policy.
I feel sorry for our troops. They have just been told that they are being committed not to a war that they will be allowed to fight and win, but an abandonment to a lost cause that will end with cutting and running.
As President Barack Obama outlined his plan to send 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan — while pledging to start bringing them home in 2011 — soldiers, Marines and their families interviewed by The Associated Press felt a tangle of fresh concerns and renewed hopes. Some took in the televised announcement as they played darts in a barroom near their base, while others watched from their living rooms.
“All I ask that man to do, if he is going to send them over there, is not send them over in vain,” said 57-year-old Bill Thomas of Jacksonville, N.C., who watched Obama’s televised speech in his living room, where photos of his three sons in uniform hang over the TV.
One of his sons, 23-year-old Cpl. Michael Thomas, is a Marine based at neighboring Camp Lejeune. He’ll deploy next year to Afghanistan.
An ex-Marine himself, Thomas said he supports Obama’s surge strategy. But he shook his head when the president announced a 2011 transition date to begin pulling out troops.
“If I were the enemy, I would hang back until 2011,” Thomas said. “We have to make sure that we are going go stay until the job is done. It ain’t going to be as easy as he thinks it is.”
Some troops chose to ignore Obama’s promise of a timetable of victory for the Taliban:
The president also began outlining an endgame to the war, saying troops would begin pulling out of Afghanistan in July 2011 — though he did not say when a withdrawal could be completed.
Army 1st Lt. Emily Stahl, who is preparing to deploy from Fort Campbell next spring, said she’s not going to focus on the timetable.
“We have to get the job done,” Stahl, 24, said after watching the speech from her home outside the Army post, where she serves in the 101st Airborne Division. “If we do what we’re supposed to do, the end of the war will come when it comes.”
But whether they ignore it or not, the decision has already been made: another Democrat president has promised to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory by assuring the enemy of a future American retreat.
Of course, in addition to the decision to commit not to commit, Obama has blessed our soldiers fighting in Afghanistan with the spirit of indecisive dithering:
At the John Hoover Inn, a bar in Evans Mills, N.Y., near Fort Drum, a dozen soldiers watched the speech on a large-screen TV, drinking beer out of red cups. When Obama announced the troop increase, only one cheered, and the rest remained silent. They continued to play darts while the president was speaking.
“I’m just relieved to know where we’re going,” said Spc. Adam Candee, 29, of Chicago.
Theresa McCleod said she worries what Obama’s plans might mean for her husband, a soldier in the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum. She said he’s already done a long combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving her to care for their three children.
“First he was supposed to be pulling everyone out, and now all the sudden he’s throwing everybody back into Afghanistan and it’s like nobody can really make up their minds,” McCleod said of Obama.
Don’t worry, Theresa. You’re not the only one who’s confused about what the president is doing. I mean, Barack Obama is the president, and he doesn’t have a clue what the president is doing.
The Obama administration says it was surprised at the corruption in Afghanistan. Because, after all, who would ever have thunk that the world’s largest producer of opium and heroin would be corrupt?
In similar news that caught the Obama administration completely off guard, it was revealed that there is something called “sand” on the beach.
McChrystal wanted 80,000 troops, and said that he’d probably be able to make do with 40,000. Obama not only gave McChrystal the lowball commitment, but then proceeded to actually lowball the lowball commitment. As it is, General Stanley McChrystal will only receive 3/4 of the minimum number of troops he told his president he would absolutely need.
McChrystal has been sitting on his hands since he had the report ready in August. You should be able to see why he’s been impatient:
The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next yearand bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict “will likely result in failure,” according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”
So Obama spends basically four months dithering, only to announce that he will lowball the lowball troop commitment. It’s going to take several months to get the troops to Afghanistan and get them ready to fight.
There won’t be a whole lot of time left in McChrystal’s “next 12 months” to avoid the “outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”
But Obama – the president who thinks of everything – has resolved this otherwise unresolvable dilemma by ensuring that we ultimately abandon the country we’ve been fighting to rid of the Taliban to the very Taliban we’ve been fighting.
For the official record, it was not Dick Cheney who first accused Barack Obama of dithering over Afghanistan while our troops languished and died. It was the Pentagon. From September 22, 2009:
In interviews with McClatchy last week, military officials and other advocates of escalation expressed their frustration at what they consider “dithering” from the White House.
Those officials said that taking time could be costly because the U.S. risked losing the Afghans’ support. “Dithering is just as destructive as 10 car bombs,” the senior official in Kabul said. “They have seen us leave before. They are really good at picking the right side to ally with.”
Obama has turned “dithering” into a weapon of mass destruction against American foreign policy. Our allies are being forced to make increasingly tough decisions as to whether we really are the horse they should bet their lives on. And our enemies are resurgent, believing that the president who has demonstrated a lack of resolve will withdraw if they can pile up a high enough body count.
On November 7 there will be another election in Afghanistan. And there will not be anywhere near enough troops to provide adequate security.
There would have been, had Obama accepted his own handpicked general’s assessment. But there won’t be. It seems increasingly likely that the resurgent Taliban will be able to thwart the elections, creating an ongoing political instability which will cascade into a major failures against stability in Afghanistan.
But Obama is not just dithering in Afghanistan. Rather, his entire foreign policy is based on dithering.
A nuclear-armed Iran capable of destroying Israel, capable of blockading the Strait of Hormuz and causing oil prices to quintuple, capable of launching a wave of global jihad such as the world has never seen, looms.
Iran agreed a deal “in principle” at talks in Geneva to ship the majority of its low-enriched uranium overseas for reprocessing into nuclear fuel that could be used for a medical research reactor.
A deal outlining this was finalised in Vienna this week and a deadline of midnight tonight was set for the agreement to be sealed with Tehran.
The framework deal, along with an offer to allow international inspectors into its newly-revealed enrichment plant at Qom, was hailed as evidence that Iran was responding positively to the diplomatic track.
Today, however, with just hours until the deadline, Iran has turned the table on its foreign interlocutors with a rival proposal, demanding that it be allowed to buy higher enriched uranium directly from abroad. […]
The counter-proposal was outlined on Iranian state television today as the clock ticked down to the midnight deadline. “The Islamic Republic of Iran is waiting for a constructive and confidence-building response to the clear proposal of buying fuel for the Tehran research reactor,” state television quoted an unnamed source close to Iran’s negotiating team as saying. […]
Russia and China’s reluctance to consider new sanctions is forcing Washington to seek a coalition of willing allies to impose their own economic blockade on Iran if efforts to get UN sanctions fail.
Tehran’s latest move comes straight from a well-thumbed Iranian playbook and looks like yet another stalling tactic to test the West’s resolve and buy time to avert new sanctions. But Western patience is growing thinner by the day, with diplomats warning that the apparent breakthrough in Geneva on October 1 may be less positive than it first seemed.
Anxiety is now growing about what will happen on Sunday when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrive in Iran to inspect the long-hidden nuclear plant at Qom.
“It’s like Groundhog Day,” a senior Western diplomat involved in the Iran negotiations said. “Except in Groundhog Day you wake up every day and everything’s the same. With this, you wake up every day and everything’s just a little bit worse.” […]
Britain, France and Israel believe that Iran has all the know-how it needs to build a bomb and that weaponisation studies have continued despite Tehran’s insistence that it halted them years ago.
The IAEA has called Western intelligence on weaponisation “compelling” and chided Iran for refusing to answer questions on the subject. Iran remains in breach of five UN resolutions calling on it to halt enrichment until outstanding questions about a military dimension to the programme are resolved.
One major sticking point has been President Obama’s softer stance on Iran, while President Sarkozy prefers a more hawkish approach. Sarkozy said last month: “I support America’s outstretched hand. But what has the international community gained from these offers of dialogue? Nothing but more enriched uranium and centrifuges.”
We are looking at exactly the same scenario regarding Iran as George Bush faced regarding Iraq; namely, veto-wielding permanent member UN nations that will thwart any meaningful or legitimate sanction that could truly stop the rogue nation’s quest for weapons of mass destruction. This has been the case for years. We cannot rely on international consensus as the basis for our security; it will let us down every single time.
Nor can we rely upon dialogue with evil tyrants to achieve our foreign policy objectives. What I said a year ago last August in that regard is even more true now. You simply cannot negotiate with an untrustworthy partner who does not want peace.
Allow me to guarantee you that a Democratic administration will see a nuclear Iran. Given their policy on Iraq, it becomes an implicit campaign promise. And it will see a nuclearized Middle East. Democrats have spent forty years proving that they are cowards who will not stand by their allies, and their actions will come home to roost.
A Republican president can say to the Iranians, “We went in to Iran when we thought they might attack us, Iran. And I promise that will do the same to you if you continue your weapons program.” And no one can question that. A Republican president can say to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt, “We stayed with Iraq and defended them even when it was difficult, and we’ll do the same for you.” and no one can question that.
Barack Obama will not go to war with Iran to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons. And Iran knows that. Iran also knows that their Russian and Chinese allies will prevent any sanction that could truly hurt them from passing the useless United Nations.
As a result of Obama’s dithering, the world’s worst terrorist state will soon have the bomb, and the ballistic missile capability to deliver that bomb. And when they get it, the world will change in very scary ways.
Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.
Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.
While earmarks are hardly new in Washington, “in 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year,” said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who worked on defense funding and oversight for both Republicans and Democrats. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information, an independent research organization.
Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, called the transfer of funds from Pentagon operations and maintenance “a disgrace.”
Taking operational funds from our soldiers in time of war is vastly more than a “disgrace.”
Fuel? Ammunition? Bah! Let the soldiers – who are warmongers by definition – die at the hands of terrorists while trapped weaponless in their foxholes. Pork for Democrat re-election campaigns, that’s what’s really needed.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he’s talked to President Obama only once since taking command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan over the summer, a revelation that drew swift criticism from some who are concerned that the president is putting off McChrystal’s request for more troops.
“It’s startling,” Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., told FOX News.
McChrystal talked about his interaction with the president in an interview with CBS News.
“I’ve talked to the president since I’ve been here once on a (video teleconference),” he said.
“You talked to him once in 70 days?”CBS’ David Martin asked.
“That’s correct,” McChrystal said.
McChrystal, who warned in a recent assessment of the war in Afghanistan that the United States risks failure without more troops, submitted a request for more resources on Friday.
But the White House says it will review the overall strategy in Afghanistan before addressing troop levels.
The disclosure that the president and his top Afghanistan commander have spoken just once added to concerns that the administration is waiting too long to deal with the troop level issue.
Gregg said that former President George W. Bush spoke with his then-top Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus, on a regular basis. He said that while Obama may be speaking regularly with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Petraeus, who is now head of Central Command, the president should still keep in regular contact with McChrystal.
“I would think you’d want to hear one-on-one from your field commander more than once in six months,” he said.
Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, said he found it “extraordinarily surprising” that McChrystal, once in regular contact with former Vice President Dick Cheney, has talked to Obama only once since taking command.
“It’s not really a good sign,” he said.
To put it bluntly, Talk to the hand, Gen. McChrystal.
“Mr. Obama, send those troops. Mr. Obama, pay attention to Afghanistan!”
Of course, when President Ronald Reagan spoke to the Soviets, he stood for the greatest and most powerful ideals of American freedom and liberty and confronted the Soviets with their evil and their crushing of the human spirit. When President Barack Obama addressed America’s enemies, he offered his humblest apologies for everything we’ve done wrong to offend them.
Of course, President Reagan – who famously shared his vision regarding the Cold War as “We win, they lose” – was very different indeed from a President who recently said:
OBAMA: 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.
That Barack Obama will make his decision regarding commitment to Afghanistan without even bothering to speak to the general he himself selected to lead the war there is an insult not only to General Stanley McChrystal and to our troops under his command, but to basic common sense itself.
Mr. Obama, SEND THE TROOPS. Mr. Obama, PAY ATTENTION TO AFGHANISTAN!!!
Start Thinking Right 