Barack Obama inherited a ‘war on terror’ (along with an aspiring ‘nuclear’ Iran) that he told us during the campaign was high on his list of priorities and concerns. He assured us he would spend a lot of energy focusing on these things were he elected President. He hasn’t, other than to throw a few thousand more troops into harms way with no real strategy to back it up hoping that would shut up us security hawks and buy a little time to figure a way to get himself OUT of this mess.
Senator Obama’s voting record doesn’t square with President Obama’s rhetoric on terror, or Afghanistan…it doesn’t even square with his alleged new tough talk on Iran. Remember, the Senator offered face to face talks with Iran and the President wants to impose new sanctions…all the while STILL planning that face time with Iran’s Chief Executive Tyrant and resident lunatic he’s prattled on about for so long now.
Where I come from, the man is either a bald-faced liar or a two-faced hypocrite. Whichever it is, Barack Obama is not the least bit concerned with saving any of his faces:
“Until I’m satisfied that we’ve got the right strategy, I’m not going to be sending some young man or woman over there — beyond what we already have,” Obama said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” If an expanded counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan contributes to the goal of defeating al-Qaeda, “then we’ll move forward,” he said. “But, if it doesn’t, then I’m not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face or . . . sending a message that America is here for the duration.”
Well, we DON’T have the right strategy, he HAS sent in more troops, he’s being told that wasn’t enough, and we stand ready to have defeat snatched from the jaws of victory…AGAIN…because of the whims and fancies of a man and his minions who were never qualified to make National Security and life and death decisions for us…
Aaron Gardner
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Dan McLaughlin
but if the rules of engagement are such...
larryp Monday, September 21st at 4:06PM EST (link)that air cover can’t be provided for out troops, and they are killed, then maybe we should forget it,.
I don't want to be cavalier about this
streiff (Diary) Monday, September 21st at 4:14PM EST (link)but airstrikes are really a suboptimal tool for clearing out insurgents in crowded areas, and the relatives of innocent people who get killed in the process are easily radicalized.
“What keeps me here is the reek of beer, the ladies and the craic”
But airstrikes, artillery and other types of fire support...
nessa (Diary) Monday, September 21st at 5:41PM EST (link)…are absolutely critical to winning a ground engagement. To deny our troops available fire support is criminal. Now it is possible that they were out of artillery range, there are details we don’t know yet, if we ever will. if you’re going outside the range of artillery you normally plan for another source, bring mortars along, get fixed wing support overhead, move your artillery, have rotary wing nearby and on call, not sitting shut down hundreds of miles away, etc.
Airstrikes alone are not effective, as you say Streiff, in this instance they would have provided the supporting fires necessary to achieve fire superiority, allowing the unit in contact the freedom of maneuver necessary to close with and destroy the enemy. They would not have been “pinned down as the article states. If they were receiving fire from an urban or populated area its a touchy situation, fire support is going to cause collateral damage. Of course, receiving fire from a populated area, or any area protected by the Geneva Convention, cancels that area’s protected status. Effectively, the insurgents who fired from the populated area (or protected school, mosque, etc) just took away its protected status and they are valid targets. Its hard to explain that to parents and relatives of those who become collateral damage but, a battlefield is a sh!tty place to be. Maybe the villagers should have thought about that when they first noticed insurgents in their midst.
“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
Contributor to Unified Patriots
teh twitter
yep...forget it...and
Dave Poff (haystack) (Diary) Monday, September 21st at 4:15PM EST (link)every other tedious and complicated commitment we’ve made around the world. Say, like the Pols and the Czechs…the Israelis, the South Koreans…heck, why not just forget all of them and bring the troops (and all that money we could be spending on Domestic entitlements and expanded Government) home?
“It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
~Sam Adams
Haystack, I Agree on the Broad Principles...
IJB Monday, September 21st at 10:08PM EST (link)…But if we aren’t ‘In It To Win It’, and with this Administration there is no doubt that there is *no* will to win *anything*, then we need to get out.
The fact is, with the Admin in charge, we’re going to have to get used to the idea of flushing a bunch of former allies down the toilet – Afghanistan, South Korea, Taiwan, Georgia, likely most of Eastern Europe (luckily the Israelis can defend themselves; and hopefully the Iraqis will muddle through on their own now) – those could all be gone.
Obama will do nothing to help these guys in any meaningful way, so I’d rather have our troops home and out of harms way when that happens.
We’re just going to have to accept the fact that we’re going to have to come back and clean these messes up later, after the Dem party is smashed upon the rocks.
But the next 4 years will be “The Lost Years”, and I’d rather that none of our military gets lost along with them.
you know, IJB
Dave Poff (haystack) (Diary) Monday, September 21st at 10:48PM EST (link)I can’t really argue any of your logic here. It angers me that these truths are put upon us, and while I could work up some sweat debating a point here or there, you had me with your last sentence.
Sadly, we WILL lose good men and women while we wait for the Dems to get removed from power…I still share your general sentiment however
“It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
~Sam Adams
what are we going to give away to Iran, for nothing in return?
JLenardDetroit (Diary) Monday, September 21st at 4:11PM EST (link)I mean, beyond our going to do nothing to stop them form obtaining a full compliment of Nuclear Warheads to use against Israel and keeping them from doing anything about it for their own protection. There must be something else Chamberlain-In-Chief can sacrifice on our behalf!?!?
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I want “O” to FAIL (here, here, & whole Diary (Ofail) here, is why)
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0's using the Monty Python military strategy...
DONTREADONME (Diary) Monday, September 21st at 4:24PM EST (link)Run away, Run away. For that matter, it would seem that is the extent of the Democrat parties military approach. 1993 “Clinton” and the death from 52,000 feet.
so now we have "Kanye West foreign policy" and the Run Away military-nt
DONTREADONME (Diary) Monday, September 21st at 4:25PM EST (link)Obama's Monty Python military doctrine theme song...
DONTREADONME (Diary) Tuesday, September 22nd at 10:45PM EST (link)All things to everyone, Run Run Away!
It's called a "meat grinder"
ss396 Monday, September 21st at 8:06PM EST (link)That’s what you get when you have no forward strategy, yet continue to feed troops into the maw. You bleed to death slowly. This is where it’s headed and is apparently the height of Obama’s thinking. By doing this, he will effectively cause the execution of US soldiers, as he tries to develop enough ‘war-weariness’ among the populace that will allow him to abandon Afghanistan without a political cost.
It’s all about Obama; it always is.
If you pay someone to sit on his butt, you can’t be surprised when he does.
Just saw something on Robert Spencer's site about Afghanistan........
Kenny Solomon (Diary) Monday, September 21st at 8:17PM EST (link)Cute…. Real Cute.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/09/us-distributes-fertilizer-to-afghanis-afghanis-use-fertilizer-make-bombs-to-blow-up-americans.html
About 1,050 metric tons of fertilizer will also be distributed in conjunction with the seed, giving the farmers a better opportunity for success, said Purves, who works closely with the Marines of 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. The Marines established security in the area and will continue to have a presence while the local government solidifies, but this distribution effort is spear-headed by the Afghan government.
…and we all know how trustworthy the Afghan government can be.
Errr, Mr. President, the ''right strategy" is sending more troops.
Old_Crow (Diary) Monday, September 21st at 9:56PM EST (link)according to your Commanding General. If you don’t agree, you need to replace him.
The strict ROE changes are also taking their toll on American lives. You can’t win wars by building schools and drilling water wells, not when the civilian population thinks you will cut and run when the going gets tough.
Successful COIN operations require commitment, and frankly, no nation today trusts Obama to hang tough.
“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” — James Madison
Use drones to bomb poppy fields
voxoreason Tuesday, September 22nd at 3:27PM EST (link)I’ve been telling my wife this is what we should do: remove our troops (including my son, who did an earlier tour in Iraq), then bring Afghanistan to its knees by using drones to destroy their poppy fields. (This might motivate poppy farmers to turn on the Taliban which brought this about.)
I later heard that we have done a bit of this, but the opposition “explained,” “If we bombed their poppy fields, the farmers would starve.”
The retort to this was, “Hey, they’re farmers! Why don’t they grow FOOD?”
Ya know, that’s a really good question.
Afghanistan As A Police Action
Ausonius (Diary) Tuesday, September 22nd at 3:40PM EST (link)Remember that term?
As I wrote elsewhere today, there is a rumor going around D.C. that the War On Terror will soon become the Police Action on Terror, with Al-Qaeda being reinterpreted as Mafiosi on the run.
FBI agents might be sent in to fight the crime of growing poppies and to hunt down Al-Qaeda/Taliban: the military will be withdrawn, except for Special Forces and the USAF.
NObama knows best!
Ausonius: 310-395 A.D. Teacher, Poet, Consul, General, Farmer.
Personal Tutor to the future St. Paulinus of Nola and to young Gratian, heir to the throne during the turbulent final years of the Western Roman Empire. When his former student Gratian was assassinated, Ausonius threw up his hands and retired to his farm in Gaul. Rome was captured by barbarians 14 years after his death.
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I can't be the only parent of a soldier who has encouraged
Achance (Diary) Tuesday, September 22nd at 3:45PM EST (link)that soldier to get out rather than serve under this man! American soldiers won’t mutiny, but I suspect the only thing holding a lot of them in right now is the Godawful economy here. And I’m learning the hard way just how interested the VA is in returning veterans.
They probably do OK with NG units that are from the local area and have a lot of contact. But the big Army units have soldiers from all over the Country in them; they don’t come home to brass bands or come in in groups to applause at the airports. They come home all alone and the nearest VA office is often many miles away, their recruiter has rotated out, there’s no continuity in officers. They’re pretty much on their own.
In Vino Veritas