‘We Can Be Generally Proud’: For Obama, The Act Of ONE Soldier Mandates A Qualifier For the Other 2.5 MILLION

Commander-in-chief Obama describing the warm fuzzies the military gives him:

“Obviously what happened this weekend was absolutely tragic and heartbreaking, but when you look at what hundreds of thousands of our military personnel have, have achieved under enormous strain, you can’t help but be proud generally and I think it’s important for us to make sure we are not in Afghanistan longer than we need to be,” President Obama said to Karen Leigh from KCNC-TV, a local CBS affiliate in Denver.

Tell that to your wife – “I love you generally, dear” – and I’ll bet you’re sleeping on the couch for a while.

The other thing about this weird remark that is fascinating is that Obama has been fighting this war – and committing hundreds of thousands of troops after the surge that HE demanded – and all the while he’s driving along looking for the first exit.

Bush sustained 532 American troops KIA during his eight years in Afghanistan; Obama has given us another 1281 body bags in just over three years.  Which is to say that Obama has given us nearly 2/3rds of the casualties in Afghanistan in well under half the time.  And that is all you need to know to understand whose war this is.

Obama is LBJ, the guy who massively expanded a bad war.  And the only difference is that LBJ had the basic decency to take personal responsibility for Vietnam.  Obama has given ONE speech on Afghanistan and – like I said – has been trying to cut and run since he ordered all those troops to commit their lives to a mission he has never yet bothered to commit anything to.

You wait and see: when Obama cuts and runs from Afghanistan, he’s going to frame it as his courageously getting us out of the last of “Bush’s wars.”  When Obama massively expanded America’s involvement in Afghanistan and very obviously used Afghanistan as a political device to give Obama a cover from charges that he was a cut and run coward:

As I pointed out before, Charles Krauthammer pointed out the sheer cynical depravity of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party as regards Iraq and Afghanistan by pointing to what the Democrats themselves said:

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.

There’s more about how the Democrats – including Democrat voters – did a “cut and run” on their “good war” here.

And now Obama doesn’t have the first clue about what to do with his “good war” that he surged us so massively into.  His only strategy is to continue to be the irresponsible “the buck stops anywhere but me” failed leader who will try to say it’s all Bush’s fault.

On February 11, 2010 Vice President Biden tried to claim credit for the success that Bush had won in Iraq:

“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.”

After years of demonizing everything Bush did in Iraq, Obama-Biden had the naked hypocrisy to take credit for its success.

So now just you watch the same slimeball weasels try to make the same Bush guilty for their failure.

There’s another point I’ve made before about the difference between Bush as honorable and courageous and Obama as a cynical leftist political weasel via a blogger who commented on why the media never holds Obama responsible for any bad news that might come out of the American military:

Bush supported the troops. If the troops did something bad, it reflected on Bush and made him look bad. They were all in this together.

Obama despises the troops and keeps them at arm’s length. If the troops do something bad, it justifies Obama’s disdain and proves him to be correct in his policies.

Doesn’t that work out swell for the Left?

Barack Obama is an abject disgrace.  And the sooner the American people realize that and vote accordingly, the less our troops will suffer under this despicable commander-in-chief.

There was damn good reason our Marines showed us how they felt about Obama after they showed us how they felt about Bush:

I’ll close with a gem: in the aftermath of the troubled soldier who may well have acted at least partially due to a previous serious head injury, the Obama administration showed its “trust” of more than 200 Marines by demanding that they disarm before being able to meet with Defense Secretary Panetta.

Obama REPEATEDLY IGNORED GENERALS As He Pursued His Political Policy Of First Surge Then Cut-And-Run In Afghanistan

Is Obama succeeding in Afghanistan?  Consider this little factoid: There are 280 provinces in Afghanistan; AND ONLY 29 OF THEM ARE UNDER U.S. OR AFGHAN CONTROL!!!

That’s what I call “failure.”  Obama is a failed president on every single front, both domestically and internationally.  More on that below.

What we have immediately below is documented proof that not only did Barack Hussein ignore his generals’ (and even both the senior Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers!!!) regarding military policy and strategy, but he that HE LIED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE about it.

At what point do we demand the impeachment of this lying, corrupt dishonest fraud???

General Reveals that Obama Ignored Military’s Advice on Afghanistan
5:21 PM, Jun 28, 2011 • By STEPHEN F. HAYES

Lieutenant General John Allen told the Senate Armed Services Committee today that the Afghanistan decision President Obama announced last week was not among the range of options the military provided to the commander in chief. Allen’s testimony directly contradicts claims from senior Obama administration officials from a background briefing before the president’s announcement.

In response to questioning from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Allen testified that Obama’s decision on the pace and size of Afghanistan withdrawals was “a more aggressive option than that which was presented.”

Graham pressed him. “My question is: Was that a option?”

Allen: “It was not.”

Allen’s claim, which came under oath, contradicts the line the White House had been providing reporters over the past week—that Obama simply chose one option among several presented by General David Petraeus. In a conference call last Wednesday, June 22, a reporter asked senior Obama administration officials about those options. “Did General Petraeus specifically endorse this plan, or was it one of the options that General Petraeus gave to the president?”

The senior administration official twice claimed that the Obama decision was within the range of options the military presented to Obama. “In terms of General Petraeus, I think that, consistent with our approach to this, General Petraeus presented the president with a range of options for pursuing this drawdown. There were certainly options that went beyond what the president settled on in terms of the length of time that it would take to recover the surge and the pace that troops would come out – so there were options that would have kept troops in Afghanistan longer at a higher number. That said, the president’s decision was fully within the range of options that were presented to him and he has the full support of his national security team.”

The official later came back to the question and reiterated his claim. “So to your first question I would certainly – I would certainly characterize it that way. There were a range. Some of those options would not have removed troops as fast as the president chose to do, but the president’s decision was fully in the range of options the president considered.”

(The full transcript of the exchange is below; the full transcript of the call is at the link.)

So the new top commander in Afghanistan says Obama went outside the military’s range of options to devise his policy, and the White House says the president’s policy was within that range of options. Who is right?

We know that Petraeus and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have both testified that the administration’s decision was “more aggressive” than their preferred option. And there has been considerable grumbling privately from senior military leaders about the policy. Among their greatest concerns: the White House’s insistence that the 2012 drawdown of the remaining 23,000 surge troops be completed by September. That means that drawdown will have to begin in late spring or early summer—a timeline for which there exists no serious military rationale. Afghanistan’s “fighting season” typically lasts from April through November. (Last year, it continued into December because of warmer than usual temperatures.) So if the White House were to go forward with its policy as presented, the largest contingent of surge troops would be withdrawn during the heart of next year’s fighting season.

Would Petraeus have made such a recommendation? No. He wants to win the war. When he was pressed last week to explain the peculiar timeframe, Petraeus said that it wasn’t military considerations that produced such a timeline but “risks having to do with other considerations.”

Which ones? Petraeus declined to say. But in a happy coincidence for the White house, the troops will be home in time for the presidential debates of 2012 and the November election.

Q    Hi, everyone.  Thanks for doing the call.  I’ve got a couple, but I’ll be quick.  Did General Petraeus specifically endorse this plan, or was it one of the options that General Petraeus gave to the president?  And as a follow-up, did Gates, Panetta and Clinton all endorse it?  Finally, will the president say about how many troops will remain past 2014?  And of the 33,000 coming home by next summer, how many are coming home and how many are going to be reassigned somewhere else?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Okay, I’ll take part of that.  In terms of General Petraeus, I think that, consistent with our approach to this, General Petraeus presented the president with a range of options for pursuing this drawdown.  There were certainly options that went beyond what the President settled on in terms of the length of time that it would take to recover the surge and the pace that troops would come out — so there were options that would have kept troops in Afghanistan longer at a higher number.

That said, the president’s decision was fully within the range of options that were presented to him and has the full support of his national security team. I think there’s a broad understanding among the national security team that there’s an imperative to both consolidate the gains that have been made and continue our efforts to train Afghan security forces and partner with them in going after the Taliban, while also being very serious about the process of transition and the drawdown of our forces.

So, to your first question, I would certainly — I would characterize it that way. There were a range.  Some of those options would not have removed troops as fast as the President chose to do, but the president’s decision was fully in the range of options the president considered.

There is no question which side is lying and which side is telling the truth.  BARACK OBAMA IS A LIAR AND A FOOL.

Let’s go back and contemplate how cynical and dishonest the Obama administration has been all along in its political game plan played with the lives of American servicemen:

Charles Krauthammer pointed out the sheer cynical depravity of Barack Obama and the  Democrat Party as regards Iraq and Afghanistan by pointing to what  the Democrats themselves said:

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.

More on this utterly hypocritical and cynical chutzpah here.  Which is even more maddening given the fact that the liberals who screamed about the two wars Bush got us in are almnost completely mum about the FIVE WARS Obama has us in.

And these same total pieces of cockroach scum who cynically pitched Afghanistan as “the good war” and Iraq as “the bad war” as a political ploy for Obama Democrats to demonize Bush and our American troops while pretending to remain pro-American security are now both taking credit for what they called “the bad war” in Iraq –

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.”

– while cutting and running in defeat from what they claimed was “the good war.”

By the way, Obama has NEVER bothered to listen to his generals in Afghanistan.  Which is why he is the clearest and most present threat to our national security.

Let’s consider what Obama did: after demonizing Bush – who was successful in Iraq where he chose to fight – Obama dragged us into the quagmire of Afghanistan.  He wanted a “political” surge.  Germany’s leftist Der Speigel rightly said Obama’s “new strategy for Afghanistan” “seemed like a campaign speech.”  And then they said:

An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into  Afghanistan — and then they will march right back out again.

Which reminds us that conservatives SAID the policy of “timetables” would never work and would fail.  And here we are now proving that assessment was 100% correct as we begin to cut-and-run having accomplished NOTHING but a “surge” of dead Americans and a “surge” in American bankruptcy.

What did I say back in December of 2009?  My title: “Obama’s Message To Taliban Re: Afghanistan: ‘Just Keep Fighting And Wait Us Out And It’ll Be All Yours’” should say it all.

Obama refused to listen to his generals when he refused to give them enough troops to begin with.  He compounded that stupid error by ignoring his generals and mandating a timetable for pullout that FURTHER guaranteed failure.  And now he’s AGAIN refusing to listen to his generals as he cuts-and-runs far faster than they can accommodate.

And the only thing more stupid that Obama can do is to export this policy of stupidly refusing to listen to his military experts.  Which is exactly what he did in Libya when he got us in there under utterly false pretenses:

“It was reported in March that Gates, along with Counterterrorism Chief John  Brennan and National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, privately advised the  president to avoid military involvement in Libya — but they were overruled…”

Now we face an unmitigated debacle in Afghanistan as Obama cuts-and-runs.  We will be pulling troops out exactly when we most need them in the height of the fighting season.  And why?  Because Obama cynically wants to bring the troops home in time to bolster his pathetic campaign for a second term.

As a final comment about the Democrats’ fundamental hypocrisy, here’s a piece from 2004 Democrat presidential nominee John Kerry demanding that Bush “listen to his generals.”  Bush DID listen to his generals – which was why HE TURNED IRAQ AROUND INTO WHAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION NOW SAYS IS “ONE OF THE GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS OF THIS ADMINISTRATION.”

Here’s my question: where are you NOW, Kerry, you hypocrite coward???

Obama and Democrats have owed George Bush and Dick Cheney abject apologies for their lies and demagoguery of these two men for years.

Democrats are VERMIN.  They have been vermin for most of the last 50 years.  They have been documented vermin on American foreign policy all over the world.  And we need to keep reminding Americans as to what verminous rat bastards they have been and continue to be.

Obama will be an abject disaster for American foreign policy for decades to come.  And fighting under Obama’s foreign policy is exactly like Vietnam (or shall we call it “echoes of Vietnam”?).

Just like conservatives warned all along.

The moment I saw the “Jeremiah Wright” videos I realized that Barack Obama was a truly evil human being who would lead America to ruin.  It was like an apocalyptic vision of warning.  And it has turned out to be even worse than I feared…

‘How Do You Create A Job?’ Don’t Ask Democrats Unless You Enjoy Gibberish

The transcript may not do the embarrassment to Richard Blumenthal (and by extension the entire Democrat Party) justice, but it’s still worth reading:

LINDA McMAHON: A follow-up, Mr. Blumenthal. You’ve talked about you want to incentivize small businesses. Tell me something, how do you create a job?

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: A job is created, and it can be in a variety of ways, by… a variety of people, but principally by people and businesses in response to demand for products and services. And the main point about jobs in Connecticut is we can and we should create more of them by creative policies. And that’s the kind of approach that I want to bring to Washington.

I have stood up for jobs when they’ve been at stake. I stood up for jobs at Alderman Motors when GM wanted to shut down that automobile dealership. I stood up for jobs at Pratt & Whitney when that company wanted to ship them out of state and overseas. I stood up for jobs at Stanley Works when it was threatened with a hostile takeover.

I know about how government can help preserve jobs. And I want programs that provide more capital for small businesses, better tax policies that will promote creation of jobs, stronger intervention by government to make sure that we use the ‘Made in America’ policies and ‘Buy America’ policies to keep jobs here rather than buying products that are manufactured overseas, as WWE has done.

McMAHON: Government, government government.

Government does not create jobs. It’s very simple how you create jobs. An entrepreneur takes a risk. He or she believes that he creates goods or service that is sold for more than it costs to make it. If an entrepreneur believes he can do that, he creates a job.

The video is even better yet, because you can almost see the scarecrow actually twisting in the wind:

It was almost as though Richard Blumenthal was having a flashback to his Vietnam days, you know, when he wasn’t there, and could see only empty, deceitful vacuity.

Linda McMahon has made millions of dollars doing something that Richard Blumenthal has never done and will never understand.  She has created jobs.

Blumenthal sees only government, because he is a pompous bureaucrat.  He doesn’t see risk; he can’t possibly see risk.  Because his government is the kind of entity that can piss away nearly a trillion dollars, and continue on as though nothing had happened.  And if the government gets in a real bind, as it already is now, it can engage in abstract games such as “quantitative easing” – which is government euphemism for basically printing more money and reducing the value of every American’s savings so that it can pay its obligations and keep humming merrily along.

Linda McMahon sees risk.  And she sees government as something that gets in the way, and then gets even more in the way the more “helpful” it tries to be.

Linda McMahon understands that the essence of job creation is someone taking a risk.  If a potential business owner or investor believes that he or she can make a reasonable profit by creating a product or funding its creation, that person has to take a risk.  They could be wrong, and lose everything.

Will the government come to the rescue and print money for the business owner or investor if he or she turns out to be wrong, or fails to deliver on his or her vision?  Only in a Democrat like Blumenthal’s world.

For the rest of us, the prospect of huge tax hikes, extreme regulations, huge health care cost increases due to ObamaCare, energy-depleting radical environmentalist policies, politically correct garbage, and the like, can and do make the difference between deciding to take the risk inherent in job creation, and deciding to put your money somewhere else instead.

Conservatives understand the bottom-line behind job creation; liberals understand governmental gibberish.

Why Fighting For Our Country Under Obama Is Different Than Any Other Time – Except Maybe Vietnam

Fighting a war under the command of Barack Obama is very different than fighting under the command of any president who has ever come before.  Up until president #44, commanders-in-chief actually had some degree of trust in the soldiers under their command.  They put them into battle for one reason, summed up by President Ronald Reagan’s statement: “We win, they lose.”  They sent them with commonsensical rules for civilized warfare, and then they gave them the mandate to go out and win.  Today we have a commander-in-chief who would prefer not to talk about actually winning:

“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.”

In order to avoid the potential for some kind of awkward “victory,” our soldiers and Marines are literally unable to shoot when every element of common sense and the entire history of warfare tell them to shoot:

Troops: Strict war rules slow Marjah offensive
By Alfred de Montesquiou and Deb Riechmann – The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Feb 15, 2010 15:08:51 EST

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.

Although details of the new guidelines are classified to keep insurgents from reading them, U.S. troops say the Taliban are keenly aware of the restrictions.

“I understand the reason behind it, but it’s so hard to fight a war like this,” said Marine Lance Cpl. Travis Anderson, 20, of Altoona, Iowa. “They’re using our rules of engagement against us,” he said, adding that his platoon had repeatedly seen men drop their guns into ditches and walk away to blend in with civilians.

If a man emerges from a Taliban hideout after shooting erupts, U.S. troops say they cannot fire at him if he is not seen carrying a weapon — or if they did not personally watch him drop one.

What this means, some contend, is that a militant can fire at them, then set aside his weapon and walk freely out of a compound, possibly toward a weapons cache in another location. It was unclear how often this has happened. In another example, Marines pinned down by a barrage of insurgent bullets say they can’t count on quick air support because it takes time to positively identify shooters.

“This is difficult,” Lance Cpl. Michael Andrejczuk, 20, of Knoxville, Tenn., said Monday. “We are trained like when we see something, we obliterate it. But here, we have to see them and when we do, they don’t have guns.”

That mindset doesn’t just apply to our fighting men on the ground, who are put in a position in which they can’t defend themselves if their enemy flouts Obama’s miserable rules of engagement.  The pilots flying overhead and the artillerymen on surrounding positions are prevented from supporting our soldiers if they get pinned down, too:

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.”

And then we wonder why Obama doubled the American body count from Bush in 2009, and is now on pace to double his own total (which means four times the Bush 2008 Americans KIA).

We just suffered the highest number of American causalities for a single month in the history of the war.  Mind you, EVERY month becomes the new “deadliest month” under Obama.

From icasualties.org:

For those who are historically ignorant, America firebombed Tokyo and Dresden in World War II.  We didn’t make sure that every single person who could possibly get killed during an attack was a 100%-confirmed “militant” before we sent a wave of death at our enemies.  If we’d resorted to that form of liberal moral stupidity, we would have lost – and the only question would have been how many of us would have ended up speaking German, and how many of us would have ended up speaking Japanese.

Thank God we didn’t have Obama leading us back then.

But our rules of engagement still weren’t getting enough American soldiers killed, so Team Obama came up with a better idea: how about ordering soldiers to go into battle with unloaded weapons? That’s right. Soldiers are now told to wait until they actually start falling down on the ground dead before they can actually be allowed to fumble a round into the chamber.

Fighting a War without Bullets?
by  Chris Carter
05/25/2010

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.

When a weapon has a loaded magazine, but the safety is on and no round is chambered, the military refers to this condition as “amber status.” Weapons on “red status” are ready to fire—they have a round in the chamber and the safety is off.

The source stated that he had been stationed at the base for only a month, but the amber weapons order was in place since before he arrived. A NATO spokesman could not confirm the information, stating that levels of force are classified.

In other words, our guys can’t prepare their weapons to actually fire until they are already under attack.

Imagine sending our police into a building filled with armed gang members like that.

And you want to know how to win a medal in Obama’s army? Don’t do anything. Certainly don’t actually shoot at the enemy.

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.

The proposal is now circulating in the Kabul headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force, a command spokesman confirmed Tuesday.

“The idea is consistent with our approach,” explained Air Force Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis. “Our young men and women display remarkable courage every day, including situations where they refrain from using lethal force, even at risk to themselves, in order to prevent possible harm to civilians. In some situations our forces face in Afghanistan, that restraint is an act of discipline and courage not much different than those seen in combat actions.”

Soldiers are often recognized for non-combat achievement with decorations such as their service’s commendation medal. But most of the highest U.S. military decorations are for valor in combat. A medal to recognize a conscious effort to avoid a combat action would be unique.

It used to be that the hero was the guy who took on the enemy. Now it’s the guy who crawls into the fetal position and walks away from a battle with an unfired weapon.

We can only wonder what Obama’s version of Audie Murphy will look like.

And Iran sure doesn’t have to worry about Obama shooting at them as they develop their nuclear arsenal so they can cause Armageddon.

About the only thing regarding the military Obama is actually determined to fight for is gay rights. You can bet that the same political weasels who won’t let our soldiers actually shoot at the enemy will fight tooth and nail for the right of homosexual soldiers to be able to buttrape their buddies. Because we don’t have nearly enough gay rape in the military. That’s going to be the new meaning to “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Don’t tell, because that homosexual is the new protected class.

And if all of the above doesn’t beat all, you probably don’t want to hear about the fact that Obama’s timetable for a cut-and-run had nothing whatsoever about satisfying military issues and everything about satisfying political ones within Obama’s radical leftwing base.  The military wasn’t even consulted, according to General David Petraeus:

McCain: “General, at any time during the deliberations that the military shared with the President when he went through the decision-making process, was there a recommendation from you or anyone in the military that we set a date of July 2011?”

Petraeus: “Uh, there was not.”

McCain: “There was not – by any military person that you know of?”

Petraeus: “Not that I’m aware of.”

Nobody knows what the hell is going on over there.  Are we going to stay and fight?  Or cut and run?  Most of the Obama administration is saying that we are most definitely going to cut and run in July 2011.  Take Vice President Biden, who says, “In July of 2011 you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it.”  All Obama will say is that “We didn’t say we’d be switching off the lights and closing the door behind us.” which isn’t really saying anything.

All the money is on a pullout, as Obama cuts and runs.  The Afghan people know that, know that the Taliban will soon be their landlords, and aren’t about to risk any kind of meaningful alliance with America that would be necessary to actually winning over there.

Do you remember FDR telling Churchill, “I’ll give you a year, and then we’re running with our tail between our legs where it belongs”???

If it’s a war worth fighting, it is a war worth sticking around to fight.

We will win when we allow our fighting men to fight.  And not until then.

If you wonder whether Afghanistan is going to become like Vietnam, stop wondering: it already has.  Because we’re fighting Afghanistan the same way we fought Vietnam – with the mindset of putting our troops in danger while simultaneously preventing them from securing victory.

Obama Reducing Afghanistan Into ‘Echoes Of Vietnam’

History has an unsavory way of repeating itself.  And that is especially dangerous when Democrats are running things.

From the Wall Street Journal:

APRIL 7, 2010
The Karzai Fiasco
Echoes of Vietnam in a spat that only helps the Taliban.

President Obama isn’t faring too well at converting enemies to friends, but he does seem to have a talent for turning friends into enemies. The latest spectacle is the all-too-public and counterproductive war of words between the White House and our putative ally, Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The only winner so far in this spat is the Taliban.

The Obama Administration seems to have had it out for Mr. Karzai from the day it took office, amid multiple reports based on obvious U.S. leaks that Vice President Joe Biden or some other official had told the Afghan leader to shape up. The tension escalated after Mr. Karzai’s tainted but ultimately recognized re-election victory last year, and it reached the name-calling stage late last month when President Obama met Mr. Karzai on a trip to Kabul and the White House let the world know that the American had lectured the Afghan about his governing obligations.

The public rebuke was a major loss of face for Mr. Karzai, who later returned fire at the U.S., reportedly even saying at a private meeting that if the Americans kept it up, he might join the Taliban. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs kept up the schoolyard taunts yesterday by suggesting that Mr. Obama might not meet with Mr. Karzai as scheduled in Washington on May 12.

“We certainly would evaluate whatever continued or further remarks President Karzai makes, as to whether it is constructive to have that meeting,” said Mr. Gibbs, in a show of disdain he typically reserves for House Republicans.

The kindest word for all of this is fiasco. American troops are risking their lives to implement a counterinsurgency strategy that requires winning popular support in Afghanistan, and the main message from America’s Commander in Chief to the Afghan people is that their government can’t be trusted. That ought to make it easier to win hearts and minds.

Mr. Karzai has been disappointing as a nation-builder, has tolerated corrupt officials and family members, and can be arrogant and crudely nationalistic. Presumably, however, Mr. Obama was well aware of these defects last year when he recognized the Afghan election results and then committed 20,000 more U.S. troops to the theater.

You go to war with the allies you have, and it’s contrary to any diplomatic principle to believe that continuing public humiliation will make Mr. Karzai more likely to cooperate. On the evidence of the last week, such treatment has only given the Afghan leader more incentive to make a show of his political independence from the Americans.

All the more so given that Mr. Karzai has already heard Mr. Obama promise that U.S. troops will begin leaving Afghanistan as early as July 2011. This shouting spectacle will also embolden the Taliban, who after being run out of Marjah have every reason to tell the citizens of Kandahar that even the Americans don’t like the Afghan government and are short-timers in any case.

This treatment of an ally eerily echoes the way the Kennedy Administration treated Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of South Vietnam in the early 1960s. On JFK’s orders, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge refused to meet with Diem, and when U.S. officials got word of a coup against Diem they let it be known they would not interfere. Diem was executed, and South Vietnam never again had a stable government.

By contrast, President George W. Bush decided to support and work closely with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during the 2007 U.S. military surge in Iraq. The Maliki government was sectarian and sometimes incompetent, and some of its officials were no doubt corrupt, but Mr. Bush understood that the larger goal was to defeat al Qaeda and to stabilize the country. From FDR to Reagan, Presidents of both parties have had to tolerate allied leaders of varying talents and unsavory qualities in the wartime pursuit of more important foreign-policy goals.

Coming on the heels of the U.S. public chastisement of Israel’s government, the larger concern over the Karzai episode is what it reveals about Mr. Obama’s diplomatic frame of mind. With adversaries, he is willing to show inordinate patience, to the point of muffling his objections when opposition blood ran in the streets of Tehran. With allies, on the other hand, the President is unforgiving and insists they follow his lead or face his public wrath. The result will be that our foes fear us less, and that we have fewer friends.

I wrote an article yesterday which came out today that recognized this same (quite obvious) point: Obama commits tens of thousands of troops and spends hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan, and then refuses to call the Afghani government an ally?  How is that not insane?

We won’t lose the war in Afghanistan because of our troops.  Our troops are the greatest warriors in the history of the world, and they truly deserve the word “heroes.”  If we lose, we will lose because of our failure-in-chief.

Turning Afghanistan into the next Vietnam by poisoning the national government is inherently stupid.  It is tantamount to refusing to recognize that we are fighting a war against Islamic jihadism.   The Bush Doctrine of preventative war stated, “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.”  Obama is now fundamentally altering that strategy into one that incredibly refuses to recognize that Islamic jihadism has anything whatsoever to do with terrorism.  Obama first refused to use the phrase “war on terror” favoring the neutered (as in “having no testicles”) phrase, “Overseas contingency operation,” and now he is leaving that “overseas contingency operation” with its feet dangling in midair.

Just who or what in the hell are we supposed to be fighting???  Every single attack we have faced – be it on foreign battlefields or right here at home – was the result of a radical Islamic worldview.  And we’re supposed to pretend that we’re too morally stupid to realize that???

The recent past is a canvass full of examples.  Following a long list of Muslim terrorists attempts to create “man-caused disasters” in the US under Obama’s watch, we had a Muslim Army psychologist with “Soldier of Allah” business cards murder a dozen soldiers at a military base while screaming “Allahu Akbar!”.  Then we had a Muslim terrorist try to explode a passenger jet on Christmas day.

So, yesterday, we had another “incident” on a passenger jet plane.  A man from the Qatari embassy named Mohammed Al-Madadi was on his way to visit a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist minion named Ali Al-Marri imprisoned in Denver when he created an international incident by mocking American security authorities by “joking” that he was attempting to light his shoe bomb.

But we’re responding by increasingly assuming that Islam has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.  Your grandma is a bigger security risk than Osama bin Laden as far as Obama is concerned.

Obama once said he didn’t like to think in terms of “victory,” in very direct opposition to every president before him (including Ronald Reagan, who summed up his Cold War goals in four words: “We win, they lose.”).  I suppose it’s good that Obama doesn’t want victory, because he will never secure one given his America-despising policies.

Obama wanted to relabel terrorism as a “man-caused disaster“; but the only “man-caused disaster” is the Obama administration.

How’s Obama Doing In Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq? Not So Good

Let’s take them in alphabetical order.  First, How’s Obama doing in Afghanistan?

Not so good.  Our foreign policy is so deteriorated there that Obama is refusing to even acknowledge whether or not the leader of the country we are fighting in is an ally:

White House won’t say if Karzai is still an ally
By Jordan Fabian & Sam Youngman – 04/06/10 02:00 PM ET

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs would not say Tuesday if the Obama administration considers Afghan President Hamid Karzai an ally.

Gibbs criticized the Afghan president after Karzai took a shot at Western leaders and the United Nations for election fraud in his country during last year’s presidential contest.

Administration officials said Tuesday that they will continue to “evaluate” remarks made by  Karzai, and that the evaluation could result in Karzai’s May invitation to the White House being revoked.

President Barack Obama extended an invitation for Karzai to visit the White House on May 12, but that could be in jeopardy if Karzai continues to make “troubling and untruthful” comments.

Asked at the daily press briefing if the U.S. considers Karzai an ally, Gibbs said “Karzai is the democratically elected leader of Afghanistan.”

Pressed on the issue, Gibbs said that “the remarks he’s made I can’t imagine that anyone in this country found them anything other than troubling…when the Afghan leaders take steps to improve governance and root out corruption, then the president will say kind words.”

Gibbs added that the administration will continue to use “stern language” with Karzai if it doesn’t take steps to root out corruption and questioned the rationale behind Karzai’s controversial statements.

“Whether there’s some domestic political benefit that he’s trying to gain, I can’t say,” Gibbs said.

So Karzai defends his country’s elections, and his own political credibility, from foreign attacks and demagoguery, and as a result Obama snubs him in what seems like a rather petty emotional response.

Maybe Karzai should start meddling in Obama’s election-status by pointing out that Obama’s own wife strongly suggested Obama was not born in the United States when she remarked that she and Obama visited “his home country in Kenya.”  Which of course is what the birthers who say Obama was not an American-born U.S. citizen have been saying all along.  Even the Associated Press at one point described Obama as “Kenyan-born” before it became inconvenient to so-describe him.

Given that Obama is becoming unglued over Karzai defending himself over attacks regarding the legitimacy of his election, it would be interesting if we could see how Obama would handle attacks over the legitimacy of his election.

In any event, things aren’t going so well when we have hundreds of thousands of troops fighting in a country while our president openly doubts whether the leader of said country is an ally.

That was the first thing that went truly, truly wrong in Vietnam, you know.

How’s Obama doing in Iran?  Really, really bad.  It has become abundantly obvious that Iran WILL have nuclear weapons under Obama’s watch.

How does this Washington Times headline grab you?

CIA: Iran capable of producing nukes

And what is Obama’s reaction to this intolerable and incredibly dangerous development?  Try acceptance.

I know, I know.  Iran was supposed to reflect upon the sheer, transcendent wonderfulness of Obama, and agree that Obama’s empty words really were more important than reality, and abandon it’s nuclear weapons program.  But somehow something went wrong in Obama’s calculation that Iran and the ayatollahs would decide to embrace Obama’s narcissism.

Who would have ever thunk it?

Oh, wait.  I would have.  I wrote an article in August, 2008 patiently explaining why a vote for Obama was tantamount to a vote for a nuclear-armed Iran.

In another August 2008 article predicting that “President Obama” equaled “nuclear Iran,” I wrote:

This is the question that will effect – and possibly haunt – American foreign policy for generations to come.

If we elect Barack Obama, we are tacitly choosing to allow Iran to develop the bomb. Any of his tough-sounding rhetoric aside, you need to realize that Barack Obama has already repeatedly philosophically condemned the very same sort of preemptive attack that would be necessary to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Heck, I can go back to April 2008, when I was already explaining why electing either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton over John McCain guaranteed a nuclear-armed Iran.

When Iran obtains nuclear weapons, the world will dramatically change.  We will not be able to control this rogue terrorist nation – a nation with a radically apocalyptic view of the world – which has repeatedly threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.”  When Iran develops the bomb, they will be able to block the Strait of Hormuz and shut off the oil supply, skyrocketing gasoline prices to over $14 a gallon.  When Iran gets nukes, it will be able to launch a global terrorist jihad without fear of being attacked.  When Iran has the bomb, it will result in a nuclear-arms race in the craziest region in the history of the world.

Ultimate Armageddon will be guaranteed when Iran gets the bomb.  And it will get the bomb because of Barack Hussein Obama.

How about Iraq?  Well, things are hardly looking up there under Obama, either.

A few weeks ago, Joe Biden was ridiculously asserting that Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”  What was asinine about that statement was that it utterly ignored the Bush administration, that deserves all the credit, and instead assign credit to two men who foolishly tried to undercut everything that Bush did which led to the success we attained in Iraq.

But things were clearly going well in Iraq, such that Joe Biden tried to steal credit for it.

Not so much now.

From the New York Times:

Baghdad Bombing Streak Stokes Fear of New Round of Sectarian Violence
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and YASMINE MOUSA
Published: April 6, 2010

BAGHDAD — Deadly blasts shook Baghdad for the second time in three days on Tuesday, deepening fears of a new outbreak of insurgent and sectarian violence.

At least seven bombings of residential areas of the Iraqi capital, both Shiite and Sunni, killed 35 people and wounded more than 140. The violence came against a backdrop of continuing political instability after March 7 parliamentary elections left no single group able to form a government, forcing a scramble to form coalitions.

A similar political void after the 2005 parliamentary vote preceded Iraq’s bloody sectarian warfare of 2006 and 2007, from which the country has only begun to emerge.

There are also new concerns that Iraq’s army and police may drift back into sectarianism.

It’s logically impossible for the Obama administration to one day say Iraq will be one of their “greatest achievements,” and the next day blame Bush for the failure of Iraq.  That said, I guarantee you that that is precisely what Obama will try to do if Iraq turns sour on him.

Ayad Allawi, the likely next prime minister of Iraq, had this to say only yesterday:

ALLAWI: The process of democracy where you would have a stable Iraq is being hijacked.  And because it’s being hijacked, it’s going to throw this country into violence. And once this country is thrown again into violence as before, then this will spill over to the region and vice versa. Problems around the region will be transferred here also.

I bold and red-font the statements that it is “being” hijacked.  It is something that is beginning to happen just now.  And Iraq is being “thrown again into violence as before.”  Obama can’t blame Bush for this increasing violence.  He can only blame himself (not that he ever actually WILL blame himself).

We are beginning to escalate our withdrawal out of Iraq, and lo and behold, the Islamic jihadists are determined to make it appear as though we are withdrawing with our tails between our legs.  They are also making it rather obvious that when we leave, they will be present to fill the newly created vacuum with their poisonous presence.

Allawi is pleading with the United States to discontinue the timetable for withdrawal and remain through this difficult period.  But the report by correspondent Dominic Di-Natale concludes by saying, “Ayad Allawi’s call for a troop withdrawal suspension will fall on deaf ears for the time being even if it is a serious plea for help. ”

One of the fears is that Obama is tunnel-vision focused on getting the hell out of Iraq, and is ignoring the delicate state-of-affairs there.

So how’s Obama doing in Afghanistan, in Iran, and in Iraq?  Pretty darn horrendously.

An article that encapsulates the Obama disaster of a foreign policy is “The Karzai Fiasco” by the Wall Street Journal.

Iraq, Vietnam, and the Consequences of Abandonment

Liberals credit themselves with ending the Vietnam War (a war, I must remind you, that was started by Democrats in the first place under John Kennedy, massively expanded by Lyndon Johnson, and ultimately ended by a Richard Nixon – whose “peace with honor” agreement would be subsequently betrayed by the Democratic Congress). Please let me assure you that – when Democrats talk about Vietnam – they do NOT want you to know their historic role in the war or its horific aftermath. A little bit of history is fascinating given the current political war over the war in Iraq.

First of all, it is important to understand why the United States decided to fight in Vietnam in the first place. And the straightforward answer is that we went in with the strategic goal of containing Communist expansion. In 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev struck the tone with his “We Will Bury You” speech. While Khrushchev most likely did not intend a declaration of war between the superpowers, he was clearly stating the U.S.S.R.’s intention to overwhelm Western democracies in a campaign of attrition. Communism was aggressively expanding throughout the world. And the world had changed dramatically in a very short time, as Soviet tanks rolled across Eastern Europe to erect the Iron Curtain, and communist revolutions began to spring up in one third world nation after another. The United States was forced to choose between fighting aggressive communist expansion overseas, or fighting with fewer allies when it arrived upon our doorstep.

Under the Eisenhower administration, military advisors and U.S. assistance were deemed sufficient to check communist expansion. But by 1960, Democratic President John F. Kennedy realized that more assistance would be needed. As the French colonialists began their withdraw from Indochina beginning in 1956, Eisenhower’s and then Kennedy’s administrations realized that more and more assistance would be needed to prevent one Southeast Asian nation after another from toppling. The United States stepped up its commitment to anti-communists governments in the region througout the term of the Kennedy administration.

The Vietnam War can rightly be seen as one battle in the Cold War. Certainly, it was the largest and costliest of those battles, but it was the nexxus in which the United States attempted to check aggressive communist expansion by violent revolution. Seen in isolation, it was a failure (i.e. we pulled out and left); seen in relation to the overall proxy wars against communism, it was a qualified success. The United States’ efforts enabled Burma and Thailand time to build up resistance to communist revloutions. After the fall of Vietnam to communism, Laos and Cambodia toppled as well.

Proof of the truth – and the consequences – of the so-called “Domino Theory” can be seen in the bloody aftermath of the U.S. withdrawel from Southeast Asia beginning in 1973. But as bad as the Indochinese campaign went for the United States, the overall campaign did successfully limit communist expansionism. Ultimately, the United States would win the Cold War, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and of the Soviet Empire it represented, in 1989.

By all strategic and tactical standards, The 1968 Tet Offensive launched by the Vietnamese communists was a complete disaster for North Vietnam. The dreaded Viet Cong – the local fighters who could attack Americans and then vanish in the jungle to their villages until they decided to strike again – were anhiliated and ceased to exist after Tet. From that point on, the war became conventional – with North Vietnamese Army regulars increasingly having to infiltrate into South Vietnam in order to carry on the war. The war increasingly became “winnable” as it increasingly became more and more conventional in its nature.

However, American liberals – arguing that the American military was lying about the war – pressed hard for a complete withdrawal from Vietnam and from Southeast Asia. Just as today, the Democratic Party increasingly began to support resolutions to end the war. Just as today, The American media played a major role in spreading the idea that America was not only losing the war, but was also routinely committing the most barbaric war atrocities.

Ultimately, the increasingly stridant liberal outcries against the war, combined with the weakening of a scandal-plagued President Nixon, undermined all American efforts to continue to support the war effort. As part of the deal with both North and South Vietnam that provided the pretext of an “honorable withdrawal” of U.S. forces from Vietnam in 1973, the Nixon administration promised the South Vietnamese a continuation of supplies, logistical support, and even air strikes as needed to stop Communist incursions into South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese naïvely believed the pledge of support. But the North Vietnamese, realizing that America had grown weary with the war in Vietnam, quickly broke every one of the few promises they had made. When hostilities resumed, the Democrat controlled Congress refused to fund America’s national promise.

The Army of the Republic of Vietnam continued fighting the North for two more years as President Ford pleaded with the Democratic Congress to fund the relief effort. The Democrats sent a denial: in so doing, they were sentencing millions of Vietnamese allied with America to death, prison, or life on the run as refugees.

The footage of the last American helicopter taking off from the embassy compound as thousands of terrorized Vietnamese watched and begged for help epitomized America’s abandoment of its commitment and will literally live in infamy.

To better describe the cowardly American betrayal and the holocuast that followed, I cite the final paragraph of DiscoverTheNetworks (at http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=100&type=issue).

“The first act of the newly elected Democrat Congress was a vote to cut off funding for South Vietnam and Cambodia’s Lon Nol government in January 1975. After U.S. funding was cut, the regimes of South Vietnam and Cambodia were quickly overrun by the communists, who would go on to slaughter some 2.5 million Indochinese peasants.”

That number – shocking as it is – is undoubtedly quite low. Nearly two million human beings in this murderous tally would come from Cambodia and the Killing Fields of Pol Pot in 1975 alone. As for the holocaust that was to befall South Vietnam, John E. Carey – beseeching America not to make the same mistake yet again – writes, “When America left Vietnam in 1975, the communists came south, sweeping away the former South Vietnam, and imprisoning or killing untold numbers of freedom-loving Vietnamese. More than 900,000 South Vietnamese were sent to concentration camps. Millions lost everything: homes, family, jobs and all possessions. A vast migration called the Vietnam Diaspora ensued. Something like three million people left Vietnam, many in small, undependable boats. Many of these “boat people“ succumbed to starvation, the ravages of the sea, or murdering pirates.”

The wikipedia article on the Army of the Republic of Vietnam takes up the theme of the historic lesson of precipitous withdrawel and abandonment. “Without the necessary funds and a collapse in South Vietnamese troop and civilian morale, South Vietnam found it impossible to defeat the North Vietnamese army. Moreover, the withdrawal of U.S. aid encouraged North Vietnam to begin an intense military offensive against South Vietnam. This was strengthened by the fact that while Nixon had promised Thieu a “severe retaliation” if the Communists broke the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the new American administration [i.e. the new Democrat-controlled Congress] did not think itself bound to this promise.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_the_Republic_of_Vietnam

Numerous American and international experts have repeatedly pointed out that any precipitous withdrawel from Iraq will undoubtedly result in a brand new bloodbath as violent jihadism takes root and the fragile Shiite-Sunni relationship ruptures into violence. Furthermore, they point out that this abandonment will damage U.S. credibility for years to come – and far more than it did after we abandoned Vietnam in 1975.

William Shawcross – who saw the hell Vietnam descended into after America left – warns against inflicting the same disaster on Iraq.  In the same way that Vietnam was one major battle in an overall war against violent communist totalitarian expansion by armed revolution, Iraq is one major battle in the war against a growing fascistic form of Islam.

Make no mistake: violent Islamic jihadism has been exponentially building for over sixty years, beginning with the rise of the Islamic Brotherhood in Egyptan prisons. The United States was brutally introduced to the building threat of Islamic militarism beginning with the in 1979 Iranian Revolution and subsequent seizing of American hostages taken from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and again with the 1983 Bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon. Throughout the Clinton Administration, the United States suffered repeated attacks on its sovereign territory, from the 1st World Trade Center bombing on 26 February 1993, to the simultaneous 8 July 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa, to the 12 October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. In addition to these attacks, the 3 October 1993 “Blackhawk Down” ambush by Muslim warlord Mohammed Adid’s forces – and the humiliating withdrawel – must also be noted.

The 9/11 attacks – as terrible as they were – would have been far more terrible had they been carried out with weapons of mass destruction. Rather than sustaining 3,000 deaths, 30,000, 300,000, or even 3,000,000 Americans could become casualties. Therefore the United States policy became 1) the pursuit of the terrorists who attacked us; and 2) the pursuit of anti-U.S. governments that had the willingness and ability to arm terrorists with WMD.

Iraq, which was known to have had WMD (they used them repeatedly on their own people) also had ties to terror (for example, Saddam Hussein paid $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers; U.S. intelligence found evidence of senior-level links between Iraq and terrorists including al Qaeda; terrorist camps inside Iraq trained thousands of terrorists – including al Qaeda terrorists – under Saddam’s rule; and former Clinton administration CIA director James Woolsey believes that Ramsay Yousef – who participated in the first World Trade Center bombing and who entered the United States on a forged Iraqi passport, was an agent of Iraqi intelligence).

Under the Bush doctrine, it was simply unacceptable to allow the possibility of terrorists obtaining WMD. “You are either with us or against us” was a statement that the vague, nebulous policy of indecision would be replaced by an active defense of the United States. And the most likely scenario of terrorists obtaining such weapons was that an anti-American, pro-Islamic nation-state would provide weapons of mass destruction.

President Bush therefore – under the valid authorities of both the ceasefire agreement won by President George H.W. Bush and by the U.N. resolutions – demanded that Iraq totally destroy its WMD program and open itself to inspection that it had done so. Saddam Hussein refused (some have speculated that he did not want to reveal that his country was essentially declawed in the hostile Arab landscape). In any event, without that confirmation, President Bush followed through with his “… or else” and invaded.

There was another motivation to the invasion of Iraq, however. Many believed that if Saddam could be deposed, and a pro-democratic government could be implemented in the heart of the Islamic world, that a powerful alternative to the militant Islamicism that was increasingly dominating the Islamic world could be created. Iraq was as good of a candidate for such an experiment as any: it was officially secular; it had a higher level of education than most other Arab states; and it offered more rights to women than most Arab states.

Thus there was a negative reason to invade as well as a legitimate hope for a positive outcome following an invasion.

Five years and counting after the invasion, it is now widely acknowledged that we went in with too small of a force for the subsequent occupation/counter-insurgency, and that we allowed the social and political structure of Iraq to deteriorate far more than we should have as a result.

Previous failures acknoweledged, it remains the case that the relatively new strategy of the surge has demonstrated that American forces can remain in Iraq with few casualties. We therefore need to ignore Democrats’ demands to cut and run – whether on a timetable for “organized” withdrawel or otherwise – and remain a powerful presence in Iraq, or we will be doomed to repeat some very bad history.

It has taken time, blood, and determination, but American forces in Iraq have gradually but steadily won the loyalty and support of increasing numbers of Iraqis, most significantly the sheiks. We won their cooperation by promising that we would not abandon them, that we would stick by them, that we would offer our aid. If we go back on our promises now – and abandom these brave men and women to their deaths – we will lose credibility with potential Arab allies throughout the Islamic world. And it is unlikely that we will ever be able to regain it.

Allow me to end with two historic withdrawels, and the mindset of our enemies who determined to use our lack of resolve against us.

Bui Tin, a member of the North Vietnamese General Staff, was interviewed in Wall Street Journal on Thursday, 3 August 1995. Part of the interview reads as follows:

“Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi

Minh said, “We don’t need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out.”

Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi’s victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.

Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.

Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.”
http://www.grunt.com/scuttlebutt/corps-stories/vietnam/north.asp

In his 1996 “Declaration of War Against the Americans,” Osama bin Laden cited the U.S. retreat from Somalia in 1993 and went on to say: “You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew. The extent of your impotence and weaknesses has become very clear,” he said. “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”

“We have seen in the last decade the decline of American power and the weakness of the American soldier who is ready to wage Cold Wars, but unprepared to fight long wars. This was proven in Beirut in 1983 when the Marines fled after two explosions. It also proves they can run in less than 24 hours, and this was also repeated in Somalia (in 1993).”
http://www.jfednepa.org/mark%20silverberg/papertiger.html

Osama bin Laden went on television to say, “This proves the U.S. is a paper tiger.”

Leaving Iraq without establishing a free and stable Iraq will prove Osama bin Laden right, which means terrorists and rogue nations will know they can defeat us simply by piling up enough bodies – if necessary the bodies of their own people. It remains up to the collective will of the American people to prove him wrong. Abandoning Iraq simply must not be an option.