Somebody at Fort Hood Should Be Walking the Plank [Andy McCarthy]
Prepare to be infuriated.
It's been brought to my attention by several reliable sources that the Defense Department has brought Louay Safi to Fort Hood as an instructor, and that he has been lecturing on Islam to our troops in Fort Hood who are about to deploy to Afghanistan. Safi is a top official of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and served as research director at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT).
Worse, last evening, Safi was apparently permitted to present a check (evidently on behalf of ISNA) to the families of the victims of last month's Fort Hood massacre. A military source told the blogger Barbarossa at the Jawa Report: "This is nothing short of blood money. This is criminal and the Ft. Hood base commander should be fired right now."
ISNA was identified by the Justice Department at the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing conspiracy trial as an unindicted co-conspirator. The defendants at that trial were convicted of funding Hamas to the tune of millions of dollars. This should have come as no surprise. ISNA is the Muslim Brotherhood's umbrella entity for Islamist organizations in the United States. It was established in 1981 to enable Muslims in North America "to adopt Islam as a complete way of life" — i.e., to further the Brotherhood's strategy of establishing enclaves in the West that are governed by sharia. As I detailed in an essay for the April 20 edition of NR, the Brotherhood's rally-cry remains, to this day, "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” The Brotherhood's spiritual guide, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who issued a fatwa in 2004 calling for attacks on American forces in Afghanistan, openly declares that Islam will "conquer America" and "conquer Europe."
Also established in 1981, the IIIT is a Saudi funded think-tank dedicated, it says, to the "Islamicization of knowledge" — which, Zeyno Baran (in Volume 6 of the Hudson Institute's excellent series, "Current Trends in Islamist Ideology") has aptly observed, "could be a euphemism for the rewriting of history to support Islamist narratives." Years ago, the Saudis convinced the United States that the IIIT should be the military's go-to authority on Islam. One result was the placement of Abdurrahman Alamoudi to select Muslim chaplains for the armed forces. Alamoudi has since been convicted of terrorism and sentenced to 23 years in federal prison.
As noted in this 2003 Frontpage report, 2002 search warrant links Safi to an entity called the "Safa Group." The Safa Group has never been charged with a crime, but the affidavit allegest its involvement in moving large sums of money to terrorist fronts. Safi was also caught on an FBI wiretap of Sami al-Arian, a former leader in the murderous Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The year was 1995, and the topic of the discussion between Safi and al-Arian was Safi's concern that President Clinton's executive order prohibiting financial transactions with terrorist organizations would negatively affect al-Arian. More recently, al-Arian has been convicted of conspiring to provide material support to terrorism.
At Human Events a couple of months back, Rowan Scarborough had a disturbing report about the FBI's "partnering" efforts with Islamist groups — including the very same ISNA that the Justice Department had cited as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism financing conspiracy. A prominent figure in the report was Louay Jafi:
Safi is a Syrian-born author who advocates Muslim American rights through his directorship of ISNA's Leadership Development Center. He advocates direct talks between Washington and Iran's leaders. He has spoken out against various law enforcement raids on Islamic centers.In a 2003 publication, "Peace and the Limits of War," Safi wrote, "The war against the apostates [non-believers of Islam] is carried out not to force them to accept Islam, but to enforce the Islamic law and maintain order."He also wrote, "It is up to the Muslim leadership to assess the situation and weigh the circumstances as well as the capacity of the Muslim community before deciding the appropriate type of jihad. At one stage, Muslims may find that jihad, through persuasion or peaceful resistance, is the best and most effective method to achieve just peace." [ACM: Implicitly, this concedes there is a time for violent jihad, too.]
At ISNA's annual convention in Washington in July, one speaker, Imam Warith Deen Umar, criticized Obama for having two Jewish people — Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod — in the White House. "Why do this small number of people have control of the world?" he said, according to a IPT transcript. He said the Holocast was punishment for Jews "because they were serially disobedient to Allah."
[Steven] Emerson's group [the Investigative Project on Terrorism] collected literature at the convention approved for distribution by ISNA. It said the pamphlets and books featured "numerous attempts to portray U.S. prosecution of terrorists and terror supporters as anti-Muslim bigotry; dramatic revisionist history that denied attacks by Arab nations and Palestinian terrorists against Israel; anti-Semitic tracts and hyperbolic rants about a genocide and holocaust of Palestinians."
Asked if the FBI should sever ties with ISNA, Emerson said, "ISNA is an unindicted co-conspirator. It's a Muslim Brotherhood group. I think in terms of legitimacy there should be certain expectations of what the group says publicly. If it continues to espouse jihad and anti-Semitism, I think it nullifies it right to have the FBI recognize it."
If you want to get a sense of the garbage our troops are being forced to endure in Fort Hood's classrooms, check out Jihad Watch, where my friend Bob Spencer has more on this episode and on his prior jousts with Safi, here, here, and here.
What on earth is this government doing, and will Congress please do something about it?
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Rumsfeld calls out the ever ungracious Obama - and more commentary
In other words ... is Obama lying ? again ? (well, his lips WERE moving)
Rumsfeld on Last Night [NRO Staff]
Washington, D.C. – Responding to President Obama’s address on Afghanistan yesterday, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued the following statement:
“In his speech to the nation last night, President Obama claimed that ‘Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.’ Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense, deserves a response.”
“I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006. If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly make them public. The President's assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan.”
“In the interest of better understanding the President's announcement last night, I suggest that the Congress review the President’s assertion in the forthcoming debate and determine exactly what requests were made, who made them, and where and why in the chain of command they were denied.”
James Fallows’s Double Standard [Peter Wehner]
James Fallows of The Atlantic, terribly concerned about appropriate public discourse from former high-ranking public officials, writes this:
I am not aware of a case of a former president or vice president behaving as despicably as Cheney has done in the ten months since leaving power, most recently but not exclusively with his comments to Politico about Obama's decisions on Afghanistan. . . . Cheney has acted as if utterly unconcerned with the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people now trying to make difficult decisions. He has put narrow score-settling interest far, far above national interest.
Let’s see if we can help Mr. Fallows by going way, way, way back in history — to, say, the George W. Bush presidency, when former vice president Al Gore charged that Bush had “brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon,” and that Bush had “betrayed this country” and was a “moral coward.”Funny, but I’m not aware that Fallows had anything critical to say about Gore at the time, even though what Gore said about Bush is far more personal and ad hominem than anything Cheney has said about Obama. You would think that Fallows, if he were concerned about the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people then trying to make difficult decisions, would have spoken up at the time. But shockingly he did not. Perhaps he was putting ideological politics far, far above national interest. But who can tell?
Innocent Abroad [Charlotte Hays]
What jumped out at me last night in the president’s address is that even when sending our young men and women to war, Obama can’t resist a dig at the country he leads. He just had to say that America is “less innocent” than in Franklin Roosevelt’s day. In a way, though, he got that backwards: We are now led by an innocent . . . an innocent abroad.
Obama-Family Graciousness [Jay Nordlinger]
There are many points being made about Obama’s Afghanistan speech, large and small, and one of the smaller points is this: the president’s continued snarkiness toward his predecessor. In fact, if he could refrain from some of his snarkiness, he would show himself a bigger man. Remember how Obama was praised for his temperament, above all? Part of temperament, I would think, is graciousness — or at least non-snarkiness.Not everyone in the president’s family is a snark toward Bush. As I relate in Impromptus today, there was a very interesting piece from the Associated Press about Zeituni Onyango. Remember her? She is Obama’s aunt, and finds herself in an immigration pickle. A native Kenyan living in Boston, she is applying for asylum.Anyway, at the end of the AP report, we get this:
Onyango reserved special words of kindness for former President George W. Bush for a directive he put in place days before the election requiring federal agents get high-level approval to arrest fugitive immigrants, which directly affected Onyango. The directive made clear that U.S. officials worried about possible election implications of arresting Onyango.She said she wants to thank Bush in person for the order, which gave her a measure of peace but was lifted weeks later.
“I loved President Bush,” Onyango said while moving toward a framed photo of Bush and his wife standing with Barack and Michelle Obama at the White House on inauguration day. “He is my No. 1 man in my life because he helped me when I really needed that help.”
“No. 1 man in my life”? If ever the Bush family gets too down on their successors in the White House, they might look to Aunt Zeituni.
The Speech [Andy McCarthy]
If you accept, as I do, the premise that President Obama is an Alinskyite, last night’s speech was totally predictable. From 2003 forward, he and his party cynically raised the Afghanistan mission into a noble calling — not because they thought it really was one, but because it made their political attack on the war in Iraq more effective. Now, Obama is cratering in the polls and his party is in even worse shape. Politically, they can’t afford to abandon the noble calling at this point: Even the legacy media couldn’t protect them from the fallout, which would intensify when the Taliban overran Karzai right as we headed into our midterm elections next year.
So we can’t leave, but we can’t wage war either. The Obama Left can tolerate, barely, the appearance of waging war if that’s what it takes to prevent rank-and-file Democrats from revolting. But they have no interest in defeating anti-American Muslims (who, after all, have a point, right?) or in pursuing American interests for their own sake.
What to do? Well, the Right has given Obama his escape hatch. Conservatives keep talking about “victory” but they never define it. We keep saying, “Give General McChrystal the troops he needs to win,” but because we’re as vague as Obama when it comes to what “winning” means, no one will really care what the additional troops actually do in Afghanistan. Thus, as long as Obama agreed to send a contingent — low-balled, but reasonably close to the 40,000 in McChrystal’s last request — he knew he’d be fine. Now, Obama can continue purporting to define the mission “narrowly . . . as disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qaeda and its extremist allies,” and conservatives will dutifully tell themselves that we are over there to demolish bin Laden’s network and the Taliban — so let's rally behind our president! In reality, however, we’ll be nation-building: the thankless, impossible dream of turning Kabul into Kansas. Our unwavering resolve for this task will last 18 months — during which we will continue solidifying the new narrative that the war is not ours but Afghanistan’s, and that the hapless Karzai isn’t producing results fast enough. That will get Democrats through the midterms.
By that point, it will be the middle of 2011 — and that’s when the “taking into account conditions on the ground” kicks in. If the Left has succeeded in souring the country on the whole enterprise such that Obama’s reelection chances won’t be impaired by a withdrawal, we’ll pull-out. On the other hand, if the noble calling is still perceived as noble, Obama will satisfy the Right by bravely staying the course and giving General McChrystal the time he needs "to complete the mission successfully," and satisfy the Left by re-promising a phased withdrawal in about 18 months, so that those resources can be invested here at home in rebuilding our economy and putting Americans back to work (since unemployment should be hovering around 12 percent by then).
Rumsfeld on Last Night [NRO Staff]
Washington, D.C. – Responding to President Obama’s address on Afghanistan yesterday, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued the following statement:
“In his speech to the nation last night, President Obama claimed that ‘Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.’ Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense, deserves a response.”
“I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006. If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly make them public. The President's assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan.”
“In the interest of better understanding the President's announcement last night, I suggest that the Congress review the President’s assertion in the forthcoming debate and determine exactly what requests were made, who made them, and where and why in the chain of command they were denied.”
James Fallows’s Double Standard [Peter Wehner]
James Fallows of The Atlantic, terribly concerned about appropriate public discourse from former high-ranking public officials, writes this:
I am not aware of a case of a former president or vice president behaving as despicably as Cheney has done in the ten months since leaving power, most recently but not exclusively with his comments to Politico about Obama's decisions on Afghanistan. . . . Cheney has acted as if utterly unconcerned with the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people now trying to make difficult decisions. He has put narrow score-settling interest far, far above national interest.
Let’s see if we can help Mr. Fallows by going way, way, way back in history — to, say, the George W. Bush presidency, when former vice president Al Gore charged that Bush had “brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon,” and that Bush had “betrayed this country” and was a “moral coward.”Funny, but I’m not aware that Fallows had anything critical to say about Gore at the time, even though what Gore said about Bush is far more personal and ad hominem than anything Cheney has said about Obama. You would think that Fallows, if he were concerned about the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people then trying to make difficult decisions, would have spoken up at the time. But shockingly he did not. Perhaps he was putting ideological politics far, far above national interest. But who can tell?
Innocent Abroad [Charlotte Hays]
What jumped out at me last night in the president’s address is that even when sending our young men and women to war, Obama can’t resist a dig at the country he leads. He just had to say that America is “less innocent” than in Franklin Roosevelt’s day. In a way, though, he got that backwards: We are now led by an innocent . . . an innocent abroad.
Obama-Family Graciousness [Jay Nordlinger]
There are many points being made about Obama’s Afghanistan speech, large and small, and one of the smaller points is this: the president’s continued snarkiness toward his predecessor. In fact, if he could refrain from some of his snarkiness, he would show himself a bigger man. Remember how Obama was praised for his temperament, above all? Part of temperament, I would think, is graciousness — or at least non-snarkiness.Not everyone in the president’s family is a snark toward Bush. As I relate in Impromptus today, there was a very interesting piece from the Associated Press about Zeituni Onyango. Remember her? She is Obama’s aunt, and finds herself in an immigration pickle. A native Kenyan living in Boston, she is applying for asylum.Anyway, at the end of the AP report, we get this:
Onyango reserved special words of kindness for former President George W. Bush for a directive he put in place days before the election requiring federal agents get high-level approval to arrest fugitive immigrants, which directly affected Onyango. The directive made clear that U.S. officials worried about possible election implications of arresting Onyango.She said she wants to thank Bush in person for the order, which gave her a measure of peace but was lifted weeks later.
“I loved President Bush,” Onyango said while moving toward a framed photo of Bush and his wife standing with Barack and Michelle Obama at the White House on inauguration day. “He is my No. 1 man in my life because he helped me when I really needed that help.”
“No. 1 man in my life”? If ever the Bush family gets too down on their successors in the White House, they might look to Aunt Zeituni.
The Speech [Andy McCarthy]
If you accept, as I do, the premise that President Obama is an Alinskyite, last night’s speech was totally predictable. From 2003 forward, he and his party cynically raised the Afghanistan mission into a noble calling — not because they thought it really was one, but because it made their political attack on the war in Iraq more effective. Now, Obama is cratering in the polls and his party is in even worse shape. Politically, they can’t afford to abandon the noble calling at this point: Even the legacy media couldn’t protect them from the fallout, which would intensify when the Taliban overran Karzai right as we headed into our midterm elections next year.
So we can’t leave, but we can’t wage war either. The Obama Left can tolerate, barely, the appearance of waging war if that’s what it takes to prevent rank-and-file Democrats from revolting. But they have no interest in defeating anti-American Muslims (who, after all, have a point, right?) or in pursuing American interests for their own sake.
What to do? Well, the Right has given Obama his escape hatch. Conservatives keep talking about “victory” but they never define it. We keep saying, “Give General McChrystal the troops he needs to win,” but because we’re as vague as Obama when it comes to what “winning” means, no one will really care what the additional troops actually do in Afghanistan. Thus, as long as Obama agreed to send a contingent — low-balled, but reasonably close to the 40,000 in McChrystal’s last request — he knew he’d be fine. Now, Obama can continue purporting to define the mission “narrowly . . . as disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qaeda and its extremist allies,” and conservatives will dutifully tell themselves that we are over there to demolish bin Laden’s network and the Taliban — so let's rally behind our president! In reality, however, we’ll be nation-building: the thankless, impossible dream of turning Kabul into Kansas. Our unwavering resolve for this task will last 18 months — during which we will continue solidifying the new narrative that the war is not ours but Afghanistan’s, and that the hapless Karzai isn’t producing results fast enough. That will get Democrats through the midterms.
By that point, it will be the middle of 2011 — and that’s when the “taking into account conditions on the ground” kicks in. If the Left has succeeded in souring the country on the whole enterprise such that Obama’s reelection chances won’t be impaired by a withdrawal, we’ll pull-out. On the other hand, if the noble calling is still perceived as noble, Obama will satisfy the Right by bravely staying the course and giving General McChrystal the time he needs "to complete the mission successfully," and satisfy the Left by re-promising a phased withdrawal in about 18 months, so that those resources can be invested here at home in rebuilding our economy and putting Americans back to work (since unemployment should be hovering around 12 percent by then).
Obama's West Point Afghan Speech -- Very Disappointing
So bad was his speech, that I turned on the Knick game instead -- the Knicks !!
A few quick comments from the VRWC all sharing the disappointment in Obama's me myself and I oratory.
Conflicting Message [Bill Roggio]
President Obama has released his long-awaited and long-deliberated path forward on Afghanistan. There were few if any surprises, as the bulk of the strategy points were leaked to the media over the past several days. Obama approved 30,000 troops to deploy vice General McChrystal's request of 40,000, but it wasn’t expected that the full 40,000 would be sent. The two major concerns from Obama’s path forward are the proposed timeline for withdrawal and the replacements for the U.S. surge troops, while the message to the Afghan people is muddled at best.
The surge in U.S. forces will be completed by the summer of 2010, and President Obama said that the military will begin to withdraw beginning in July 2011, just one year after the increase in forces, security conditions permitting. First, the setting of a timeline gives the Taliban and allied Islamist groups all of the evidence they need that the U.S. and the West seeks to leave the country sooner rather than later. Expect Obama timeline to be used in al-Qaeda and Taliban propaganda. Second, the timeline reaffirms Pakistan’s belief that the U.S. stay in Afghanistan is short lived. The incentive for Pakistan to take on the “good Taliban” groups in their tribal areas that attack U.S. and NATO forces has eroded. And third, Obama has not explained from where the Afghan troops to take over from withdrawing U.S. forces will come. Afghanistan has an 80,000 man army and its police forces are in disarray. Unlike Iraq, there is no glut of troops to turn over security to.
Finally, Obama’s message to the Afghan people was poorly crafted and delivered. First he told them their security and development is important. Later he said the overriding U.S. objective is to defeat al-Qaeda and nation building is not a requirement. He can’t have it both ways, and the fence-sitters in Afghanistan won’t be encouraged by the conflicting message. — Bill Roggio is the managing editor of The Long War Journal.
Obama Hard and Soft, Right and Left [Fred Thompson]
I was wondering how he was going to pull off the famous Obama split tonight.
He did it chronologically, and in two ways.
First, in the speech itself:
In the first part of his speech he sounded like Winston Churchill.
In the second part of his speech, he sounded like Lady Churchill.
Secondly, with regard to his course of action:
Commit troops for the Right, and then
Announce their withdrawal prematurely, in time for the 2012 election — for the Left.
It was clear for the world to see that we are without the most important ingredient for a chance of success: a determined president whose heart is in the effort.
A Commander-in-Chief & His Lieutenant [Kori Schake]
The president was underwhelming at West Point. On one of the gravest strategic issues of our time, the golden orator of our political scene labored through his compulsories to make the case for why we should win a war that if we lose will invigorate the jihadist cause, put untenable pressure on the governments of Pakistan and India (to say nothing of the tragedy for Afghanistan), potentially put al-Qaeda in possession of nuclear weapons, and increase the risk of future attacks on our homeland. It was not a performance that will give heart to Afghans, countries in the region whose security depends on our success, or allies with forces committed to this fight. Or, I suspect, persuade many Americans who do not already support his policy.
Most striking was the dramatic mismatch between the dire consequences of failure and the very limited means the president intends to bring to bear. The goals he has established for Afghanistan cannot be achieved in the time frame he committed to begin withdrawing troops in. Afghanistan fell 2,000 recruits short last month alone in meeting its current goal of 134,000 soldiers and 83,000 police. The president’s new approach envisions producing additional Afghan forces superior in quantity and quality to the present. That is wildly unrealistic.
To emphasize in the same breath the importance of increased forces and the necessity of removing them in eighteen months will badly diminish the positive effect those troops are intended to have. The point of counterinsurgency approach is to protect the population so that they participate in security efforts and change the political dynamic of the war. The president was silent on what he will do if his objectives are not achieved.
As in Iraq, the president doesn’t have an exit strategy, he has an exit timeline. He did not outline the positive conditions that must be met for our withdrawal to proceed. He did not provide a vision of an Afghanistan that is capable of achieving what we need for our country to be secure. He provided an absolute withdrawal date that will encourage our enemies to game the timeline, and discourage our friends from helping.
He brushed lightly over election fraud in Afghanistan, saying that despite it, a government was formed “consistent with the country’s laws and constitution.” I’m not sure what that even means, but I am sure it will give encouragement to despots that the president of the United States is legitimating fraudulent elections by such contorted logic.
Toward the end of his speech, the president spoke of “might and moral suasion,” which turn out to be the only tools of American power three months of additional review. We still don’t have a strategy for Afghanistan. We only have a military strategy for Afghanistan. Where was the “dramatic increase in our civilian effort” the president promised in March? There were literally no political, economic, agricultural, judicial, drug enforcement, or educational programs included in the president’s speech. When he spoke briefly of non-military matters, it was only to press for reforms of the Karzai government.
And the president asked for no effort from the 99 percent of Americans who are not in our military. We are still not a country at war, we are a military at war.
On a personal note, it made ring hollow the president’s claims to virtue in the extended duration of his second Afghanistan review in ten months to see a former student of mine at West Point, Lt. Dan Berschinski in the audience. He is now a double amputee, having suffered his wounds on patrol in Afghanistan during the months the president was methodically considering his options.
The president kept 68,000 soldiers and Marines in harm’s way while he pondered whether it merited his political capital to pay the ticket price of his grand rhetoric about this good war, this war of necessity, that had been scandalously under-resourced. Afghanistan remains all of those things, even after the president’s “new” new Afghan strategy
. — Kori Schake is a fellow at the Hoover Institution and an Associate Professor at West Point. She was director for defense strategy on the NSC and deputy director of policy Planning at State.
What Could Have Been [Jamie M. Fly]
There are many on the Right who will criticize the president's speech tonight — particularly his statement of a specific date for a U.S. drawdown to begin. However, it is worth reflecting on what could have been in the speech that was not — off ramps, assessments of progress before the bulk of the additional troops were deployed — all opportunities for a hesitant president of a war-weary party to reverse course and rethink his Afghanistan strategy once again.There is none of that in tonight's speech. President Obama has clearly rejected the advice of Vice President Biden and many of his political advisers who wanted to hedge our bets in Afghanistan. By sending 21,000 troops earlier this year and announcing plans to send 30,000 more this evening, this president has made it clear that he intends to give his commanders a chance to win in Afghanistan and those of us on the right should support him in that endeavor.There will be time to criticize various inflection points and question details, but the fact of the matter is that Barack Obama has accepted the mantle of wartime president and even overcome his aversion to American exceptionalism to employ some rhetoric that is worthy of George W. Bush. General McChrystal will get most of the troops he requested and the time required to implement a counterinsurgency strategy that offers the best chance of success. Now the president must speak regularly and frankly to the American people about the difficult road ahead, something he has been unwilling to do thus far. If he does that, fewer conservatives will question his commitment to a war that we all agree needs to be won.
— Jamie M. Fly is executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative.
12/01 11:04 PM
The Test [Rich Lowry]
I didn’t like the speech for many of the reasons that have been outlined already in this space. Here's the real test, though: Is Gen. McChrystal in Kabul regretting that Obama didn't strike a more Churchillian tone, or is he very glad to have the troops and the time—at least 18 months before the start of any draw down—to try to turn around the war? Surely, it's the latter. I went back and looked at Bush's speech announcing the surge. It holds up very well. It's prescient even. But at the time, as a piece of rhetoric, it didn't matter too much because basically no one was listening to Bush any more. It wasn't the words that saved the war, it was the incredibly courageous troops who went—finally, in sufficient numbers and with the proper strategic goal—into Baghdad neighborhoods and cleared out al Qaeda and the Shia militias. Those troops changed the dynamic of the war on the ground, and nothing else was as important. Yes, the Petraeus testimony made a difference, but it was only persuasive to the extent he had the actual progress to talk about and he was perhaps even more restrained than Obama tonight when he made the case for the war. Likewise, the Afghan war will be won or lost on the ground and Obama has given McChrystal the basic tools he needs. About that we should be very glad.
Hardware vs. Software [John Hannah]
A frustrating speech. There's much to applaud in the nuts and bolts. Assuming the president's confidence is borne out and U.S. allies actually dispatch several thousand more troops, he will have gone most of the way in meeting his on-the-ground commander's request for additional forces. That's an enormous leap in capability and firepower that Generals McChrystal and Petraeus will no doubt put to good use in reversing the war's tide — especially if the president can also deliver on his promise to have the bulk of the surge in place in time for the 2010 fighting season. In making this historic commitment of additional blood and treasure in defense of America's vital interests, the president has openly rejected the defeatist counsel of his own party's powerful left wing — no easy task and one for which he deserves real credit and support.
But if the president largely got the policy hardware right, the software left something to be desired. The speech in places was uncomfortably defensive. The continued trashing of his predecessor unfortunate. But most distressing was the unmistakable subtext of withdrawal, rather than victory, that ran through the heart of the president's remarks. The security of America and the world is at stake in Afghanistan — yet we need to begin drawing down our forces within a year after their arrival and leave the job in the hands of the (allegedly corrupt and incompetent) locals because the effort has already taken too long and cost too much. Hardly Churchillian. Not the sort of stuff likely to rally a war-weary public at home, get fearful Afghans off the fence, or begin breaking the fighting spirit of the Taliban. Of course, at the end of the day, all those things can most convincingly be accomplished by the progress that our newly reinforced troops achieve on the field of battle in 2010 and 2011. But their effort will be immeasurably enhanced by President Obama's rapid emergence as a wartime leader who exudes the conviction that there simply is no substitute for victory, and that nothing could be more harmful to our country than defeat in a conflict deemed vital to our national interests.
The president could best advance that critical task by adding an Afghan stop to next week's trip to Copenhagen for the climate conference and Oslo to pick up his Nobel Prize. He badly needs to go see the troops, tell them in person that help is on the way, and make clear his certitude in the justness of their cause and the unequivocal nature of his commitment to defeating our enemies. He should also make sure to reiterate to them what in many ways was the most bracing part of tonight's speech: His inspiring recitation of America's unparalleled contributions and sacrifices on behalf of the security and wellbeing of the human race over the last century. And while he's at it, he'd do well to remind his audiences in Copenhagen and Oslo of the very same thing.
— John P. Hannah, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served as national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2005 to 2009.
Where's the Beef? [James S. Robbins]
President Obama spent a long time in the kitchen to serve up a plate of leftovers. The president stated that there were “three core elements” to his strategy: “a military effort to create the conditions for a transition, a civilian surge that reinforces positive action and an effective partnership with Pakistan.” These core elements were part of the Obama strategy announced in March 2009, and were also pillars of the successive Bush administration policies. They would be no-brainer aspects of any Afghan strategy. How they are implemented will prove whether the president can successfully be a war leader, but Mr.Obama could have begun this process last March when he announced basically the same thing, though in much greater detail.
The only new element in the strategy is the 18-month timeline for beginning the process of withdrawal. The timeline is arbitrary, and at least implicitly conditional on making progress in Afghanistan, but the president did not offer much in the way of details as to how progress will be made, and has dropped his previous insistence on well-defined metrics. He briefly noted the challenges facing the Afghan government, but simply said they would be held accountable, whatever that means. And did not offer any details about how the Taliban who threaten the regime will be defeated. He said the 30,000 troops are the “resources that we need to seize the initiative,” but did not explain how the initiative will be seized, how the troops will be used, or what constitutes victory.
The speech was twice as long as it needed to be and contained a lot of extraneous material. Perhaps it was meant to inspire, but the delivery was flat. Judging by the footage of sleeping Cadets and weak applause I don’t think he reached his audience. It is hard to understand why this speech took weeks, even months to be written. And one is left wondering how long it will be until he decides to revise his war strategy yet again.
Napping Cadets [Jonah Goldberg]
Some readers think I was criticizing the West Point cadets for nodding off last night. Sure, I think it'd be better for everyone if they toothpicked-open their eyes like in the Loony Tunes, but criticism really wasn't my intent. Lord knows that after the kind of day they put up with, I'd be out like a light in a big warm auditorium.
Here's my Airpower guy:
Jonah,I wouldn't make too much of the dozing off. You probably did see one or two (or three) nodding. That's because they're in their natural state: exhaustion. Add to that preparing for mid-term finals, all that extra-curricular sports and military stuff, and listening to The One talk about something other than, you know, hammering the enemy and it's a deadly mix.Your Airpower Guy (Class of '76, similar school, higher elevation, further West)
I will say that if this had happened under Bush, Dana Milbank, Jacob Weisberg and Maureen Dowd would go into full-blown snark mode about it.
A few quick comments from the VRWC all sharing the disappointment in Obama's me myself and I oratory.
Conflicting Message [Bill Roggio]
President Obama has released his long-awaited and long-deliberated path forward on Afghanistan. There were few if any surprises, as the bulk of the strategy points were leaked to the media over the past several days. Obama approved 30,000 troops to deploy vice General McChrystal's request of 40,000, but it wasn’t expected that the full 40,000 would be sent. The two major concerns from Obama’s path forward are the proposed timeline for withdrawal and the replacements for the U.S. surge troops, while the message to the Afghan people is muddled at best.
The surge in U.S. forces will be completed by the summer of 2010, and President Obama said that the military will begin to withdraw beginning in July 2011, just one year after the increase in forces, security conditions permitting. First, the setting of a timeline gives the Taliban and allied Islamist groups all of the evidence they need that the U.S. and the West seeks to leave the country sooner rather than later. Expect Obama timeline to be used in al-Qaeda and Taliban propaganda. Second, the timeline reaffirms Pakistan’s belief that the U.S. stay in Afghanistan is short lived. The incentive for Pakistan to take on the “good Taliban” groups in their tribal areas that attack U.S. and NATO forces has eroded. And third, Obama has not explained from where the Afghan troops to take over from withdrawing U.S. forces will come. Afghanistan has an 80,000 man army and its police forces are in disarray. Unlike Iraq, there is no glut of troops to turn over security to.
Finally, Obama’s message to the Afghan people was poorly crafted and delivered. First he told them their security and development is important. Later he said the overriding U.S. objective is to defeat al-Qaeda and nation building is not a requirement. He can’t have it both ways, and the fence-sitters in Afghanistan won’t be encouraged by the conflicting message. — Bill Roggio is the managing editor of The Long War Journal.
Obama Hard and Soft, Right and Left [Fred Thompson]
I was wondering how he was going to pull off the famous Obama split tonight.
He did it chronologically, and in two ways.
First, in the speech itself:
In the first part of his speech he sounded like Winston Churchill.
In the second part of his speech, he sounded like Lady Churchill.
Secondly, with regard to his course of action:
Commit troops for the Right, and then
Announce their withdrawal prematurely, in time for the 2012 election — for the Left.
It was clear for the world to see that we are without the most important ingredient for a chance of success: a determined president whose heart is in the effort.
A Commander-in-Chief & His Lieutenant [Kori Schake]
The president was underwhelming at West Point. On one of the gravest strategic issues of our time, the golden orator of our political scene labored through his compulsories to make the case for why we should win a war that if we lose will invigorate the jihadist cause, put untenable pressure on the governments of Pakistan and India (to say nothing of the tragedy for Afghanistan), potentially put al-Qaeda in possession of nuclear weapons, and increase the risk of future attacks on our homeland. It was not a performance that will give heart to Afghans, countries in the region whose security depends on our success, or allies with forces committed to this fight. Or, I suspect, persuade many Americans who do not already support his policy.
Most striking was the dramatic mismatch between the dire consequences of failure and the very limited means the president intends to bring to bear. The goals he has established for Afghanistan cannot be achieved in the time frame he committed to begin withdrawing troops in. Afghanistan fell 2,000 recruits short last month alone in meeting its current goal of 134,000 soldiers and 83,000 police. The president’s new approach envisions producing additional Afghan forces superior in quantity and quality to the present. That is wildly unrealistic.
To emphasize in the same breath the importance of increased forces and the necessity of removing them in eighteen months will badly diminish the positive effect those troops are intended to have. The point of counterinsurgency approach is to protect the population so that they participate in security efforts and change the political dynamic of the war. The president was silent on what he will do if his objectives are not achieved.
As in Iraq, the president doesn’t have an exit strategy, he has an exit timeline. He did not outline the positive conditions that must be met for our withdrawal to proceed. He did not provide a vision of an Afghanistan that is capable of achieving what we need for our country to be secure. He provided an absolute withdrawal date that will encourage our enemies to game the timeline, and discourage our friends from helping.
He brushed lightly over election fraud in Afghanistan, saying that despite it, a government was formed “consistent with the country’s laws and constitution.” I’m not sure what that even means, but I am sure it will give encouragement to despots that the president of the United States is legitimating fraudulent elections by such contorted logic.
Toward the end of his speech, the president spoke of “might and moral suasion,” which turn out to be the only tools of American power three months of additional review. We still don’t have a strategy for Afghanistan. We only have a military strategy for Afghanistan. Where was the “dramatic increase in our civilian effort” the president promised in March? There were literally no political, economic, agricultural, judicial, drug enforcement, or educational programs included in the president’s speech. When he spoke briefly of non-military matters, it was only to press for reforms of the Karzai government.
And the president asked for no effort from the 99 percent of Americans who are not in our military. We are still not a country at war, we are a military at war.
On a personal note, it made ring hollow the president’s claims to virtue in the extended duration of his second Afghanistan review in ten months to see a former student of mine at West Point, Lt. Dan Berschinski in the audience. He is now a double amputee, having suffered his wounds on patrol in Afghanistan during the months the president was methodically considering his options.
The president kept 68,000 soldiers and Marines in harm’s way while he pondered whether it merited his political capital to pay the ticket price of his grand rhetoric about this good war, this war of necessity, that had been scandalously under-resourced. Afghanistan remains all of those things, even after the president’s “new” new Afghan strategy
. — Kori Schake is a fellow at the Hoover Institution and an Associate Professor at West Point. She was director for defense strategy on the NSC and deputy director of policy Planning at State.
What Could Have Been [Jamie M. Fly]
There are many on the Right who will criticize the president's speech tonight — particularly his statement of a specific date for a U.S. drawdown to begin. However, it is worth reflecting on what could have been in the speech that was not — off ramps, assessments of progress before the bulk of the additional troops were deployed — all opportunities for a hesitant president of a war-weary party to reverse course and rethink his Afghanistan strategy once again.There is none of that in tonight's speech. President Obama has clearly rejected the advice of Vice President Biden and many of his political advisers who wanted to hedge our bets in Afghanistan. By sending 21,000 troops earlier this year and announcing plans to send 30,000 more this evening, this president has made it clear that he intends to give his commanders a chance to win in Afghanistan and those of us on the right should support him in that endeavor.There will be time to criticize various inflection points and question details, but the fact of the matter is that Barack Obama has accepted the mantle of wartime president and even overcome his aversion to American exceptionalism to employ some rhetoric that is worthy of George W. Bush. General McChrystal will get most of the troops he requested and the time required to implement a counterinsurgency strategy that offers the best chance of success. Now the president must speak regularly and frankly to the American people about the difficult road ahead, something he has been unwilling to do thus far. If he does that, fewer conservatives will question his commitment to a war that we all agree needs to be won.
— Jamie M. Fly is executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative.
12/01 11:04 PM
The Test [Rich Lowry]
I didn’t like the speech for many of the reasons that have been outlined already in this space. Here's the real test, though: Is Gen. McChrystal in Kabul regretting that Obama didn't strike a more Churchillian tone, or is he very glad to have the troops and the time—at least 18 months before the start of any draw down—to try to turn around the war? Surely, it's the latter. I went back and looked at Bush's speech announcing the surge. It holds up very well. It's prescient even. But at the time, as a piece of rhetoric, it didn't matter too much because basically no one was listening to Bush any more. It wasn't the words that saved the war, it was the incredibly courageous troops who went—finally, in sufficient numbers and with the proper strategic goal—into Baghdad neighborhoods and cleared out al Qaeda and the Shia militias. Those troops changed the dynamic of the war on the ground, and nothing else was as important. Yes, the Petraeus testimony made a difference, but it was only persuasive to the extent he had the actual progress to talk about and he was perhaps even more restrained than Obama tonight when he made the case for the war. Likewise, the Afghan war will be won or lost on the ground and Obama has given McChrystal the basic tools he needs. About that we should be very glad.
Hardware vs. Software [John Hannah]
A frustrating speech. There's much to applaud in the nuts and bolts. Assuming the president's confidence is borne out and U.S. allies actually dispatch several thousand more troops, he will have gone most of the way in meeting his on-the-ground commander's request for additional forces. That's an enormous leap in capability and firepower that Generals McChrystal and Petraeus will no doubt put to good use in reversing the war's tide — especially if the president can also deliver on his promise to have the bulk of the surge in place in time for the 2010 fighting season. In making this historic commitment of additional blood and treasure in defense of America's vital interests, the president has openly rejected the defeatist counsel of his own party's powerful left wing — no easy task and one for which he deserves real credit and support.
But if the president largely got the policy hardware right, the software left something to be desired. The speech in places was uncomfortably defensive. The continued trashing of his predecessor unfortunate. But most distressing was the unmistakable subtext of withdrawal, rather than victory, that ran through the heart of the president's remarks. The security of America and the world is at stake in Afghanistan — yet we need to begin drawing down our forces within a year after their arrival and leave the job in the hands of the (allegedly corrupt and incompetent) locals because the effort has already taken too long and cost too much. Hardly Churchillian. Not the sort of stuff likely to rally a war-weary public at home, get fearful Afghans off the fence, or begin breaking the fighting spirit of the Taliban. Of course, at the end of the day, all those things can most convincingly be accomplished by the progress that our newly reinforced troops achieve on the field of battle in 2010 and 2011. But their effort will be immeasurably enhanced by President Obama's rapid emergence as a wartime leader who exudes the conviction that there simply is no substitute for victory, and that nothing could be more harmful to our country than defeat in a conflict deemed vital to our national interests.
The president could best advance that critical task by adding an Afghan stop to next week's trip to Copenhagen for the climate conference and Oslo to pick up his Nobel Prize. He badly needs to go see the troops, tell them in person that help is on the way, and make clear his certitude in the justness of their cause and the unequivocal nature of his commitment to defeating our enemies. He should also make sure to reiterate to them what in many ways was the most bracing part of tonight's speech: His inspiring recitation of America's unparalleled contributions and sacrifices on behalf of the security and wellbeing of the human race over the last century. And while he's at it, he'd do well to remind his audiences in Copenhagen and Oslo of the very same thing.
— John P. Hannah, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served as national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2005 to 2009.
Where's the Beef? [James S. Robbins]
President Obama spent a long time in the kitchen to serve up a plate of leftovers. The president stated that there were “three core elements” to his strategy: “a military effort to create the conditions for a transition, a civilian surge that reinforces positive action and an effective partnership with Pakistan.” These core elements were part of the Obama strategy announced in March 2009, and were also pillars of the successive Bush administration policies. They would be no-brainer aspects of any Afghan strategy. How they are implemented will prove whether the president can successfully be a war leader, but Mr.Obama could have begun this process last March when he announced basically the same thing, though in much greater detail.
The only new element in the strategy is the 18-month timeline for beginning the process of withdrawal. The timeline is arbitrary, and at least implicitly conditional on making progress in Afghanistan, but the president did not offer much in the way of details as to how progress will be made, and has dropped his previous insistence on well-defined metrics. He briefly noted the challenges facing the Afghan government, but simply said they would be held accountable, whatever that means. And did not offer any details about how the Taliban who threaten the regime will be defeated. He said the 30,000 troops are the “resources that we need to seize the initiative,” but did not explain how the initiative will be seized, how the troops will be used, or what constitutes victory.
The speech was twice as long as it needed to be and contained a lot of extraneous material. Perhaps it was meant to inspire, but the delivery was flat. Judging by the footage of sleeping Cadets and weak applause I don’t think he reached his audience. It is hard to understand why this speech took weeks, even months to be written. And one is left wondering how long it will be until he decides to revise his war strategy yet again.
Napping Cadets [Jonah Goldberg]
Some readers think I was criticizing the West Point cadets for nodding off last night. Sure, I think it'd be better for everyone if they toothpicked-open their eyes like in the Loony Tunes, but criticism really wasn't my intent. Lord knows that after the kind of day they put up with, I'd be out like a light in a big warm auditorium.
Here's my Airpower guy:
Jonah,I wouldn't make too much of the dozing off. You probably did see one or two (or three) nodding. That's because they're in their natural state: exhaustion. Add to that preparing for mid-term finals, all that extra-curricular sports and military stuff, and listening to The One talk about something other than, you know, hammering the enemy and it's a deadly mix.Your Airpower Guy (Class of '76, similar school, higher elevation, further West)
I will say that if this had happened under Bush, Dana Milbank, Jacob Weisberg and Maureen Dowd would go into full-blown snark mode about it.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Honduras -- Free Elections prevail over Obama, dictator wannabee Zelaya, Chavez & State Dept.
The Honduran Elections: True Lies and Home Truths [Ray Walser]
A sprawling piece of graffiti at a school in a poor Tegucigalpa neighborhood warned: “Your Life is Not Worth a Vote!” The intent of the message was to scare voters away from the November 29 national elections in Honduras.
As I rode around town in my capacity as an electoral observer, I turned on a pro-Zelaya radio station, Radio Globo. It was broadcasting endless reports about repression, massive absenteeism, and government intimidation. At first I thought I should flee to the safety of my hotel, but instead I turned off the radio when I realized it had nothing to do with the reality around me.
Across Honduras, people did what they normally do on election Sunday. Voters voted, officials officiated, and the police and military kept away hooligans and drunks. A soccer-hungry nation watched Barcelona battle Real Madrid, while Sunday strollers laughed at the antics of clowns before the cathedral in central Tegucigalpa.
In general, the media-induced sense of crisis contrasted starkly with the reality of a pro-American nation anxious to put Manuel Zelaya and his Hugo Chavez–like antics behind it.
The Honduran electoral process, with its carefully controlled paper ballots, tamper-proof national identity/voter cards, and bevy of domestic and foreign observers, was filled with checks and safeguards to prevent electoral tampering. The electoral process had begun well before the June 28 removal of Manuel Zelaya, and it moved forward largely independent of the political turmoil that was churning the country.
Even the U.S. State Department, as Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela said before the Organization of American States (OAS) on November 23, recognized that
this was not an election invented by a de facto government in search of an exit strategy or as a means to whitewash a coup d’état. To the contrary, it is an election consonant with the constitutionally mandated renewal of congressional and presidential mandates permitting the Honduran people to exercise their sovereign will.
When the dust settled, the voter turnout appeared to have exceeded the turnout of 2005 — despite the campaign of the so-called resistance aimed at scaring people away. Unlike in 2005, there is a clear winner, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo of the National party. Lobo won with a huge mandate, one that makes Latin American populists like Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua extremely jealous.
The bottom line for Honduras is that radical, pro-Chávez populism represents a faction of its population, but not a majority. This populist radicalism can prosper only when government officials subvert the checks and balances and protections built into the Honduran constitution of 1982. Zelaya tried it and failed. That should be a lesson to his successors.
For the time being, Mad Mel Zelaya will live on in the diplomatic space of the increasingly leftist-dominated OAS; in the double-standardism of a Brazil that warmly welcomes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but refuses to send observers to, and repudiates a free and fair election in, Honduras; and in the propaganda machinery of the “Bolivarian” ALBA alliance, with its media arms like Radio Globo and the Telesur network.
On November 29, the Honduran people voted for sanity, normality, and a chance to make their own future. It is time that Washington and the inter-American community woke up to this fact.
— Ray Walser is a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
A sprawling piece of graffiti at a school in a poor Tegucigalpa neighborhood warned: “Your Life is Not Worth a Vote!” The intent of the message was to scare voters away from the November 29 national elections in Honduras.
As I rode around town in my capacity as an electoral observer, I turned on a pro-Zelaya radio station, Radio Globo. It was broadcasting endless reports about repression, massive absenteeism, and government intimidation. At first I thought I should flee to the safety of my hotel, but instead I turned off the radio when I realized it had nothing to do with the reality around me.
Across Honduras, people did what they normally do on election Sunday. Voters voted, officials officiated, and the police and military kept away hooligans and drunks. A soccer-hungry nation watched Barcelona battle Real Madrid, while Sunday strollers laughed at the antics of clowns before the cathedral in central Tegucigalpa.
In general, the media-induced sense of crisis contrasted starkly with the reality of a pro-American nation anxious to put Manuel Zelaya and his Hugo Chavez–like antics behind it.
The Honduran electoral process, with its carefully controlled paper ballots, tamper-proof national identity/voter cards, and bevy of domestic and foreign observers, was filled with checks and safeguards to prevent electoral tampering. The electoral process had begun well before the June 28 removal of Manuel Zelaya, and it moved forward largely independent of the political turmoil that was churning the country.
Even the U.S. State Department, as Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela said before the Organization of American States (OAS) on November 23, recognized that
this was not an election invented by a de facto government in search of an exit strategy or as a means to whitewash a coup d’état. To the contrary, it is an election consonant with the constitutionally mandated renewal of congressional and presidential mandates permitting the Honduran people to exercise their sovereign will.
When the dust settled, the voter turnout appeared to have exceeded the turnout of 2005 — despite the campaign of the so-called resistance aimed at scaring people away. Unlike in 2005, there is a clear winner, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo of the National party. Lobo won with a huge mandate, one that makes Latin American populists like Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua extremely jealous.
The bottom line for Honduras is that radical, pro-Chávez populism represents a faction of its population, but not a majority. This populist radicalism can prosper only when government officials subvert the checks and balances and protections built into the Honduran constitution of 1982. Zelaya tried it and failed. That should be a lesson to his successors.
For the time being, Mad Mel Zelaya will live on in the diplomatic space of the increasingly leftist-dominated OAS; in the double-standardism of a Brazil that warmly welcomes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but refuses to send observers to, and repudiates a free and fair election in, Honduras; and in the propaganda machinery of the “Bolivarian” ALBA alliance, with its media arms like Radio Globo and the Telesur network.
On November 29, the Honduran people voted for sanity, normality, and a chance to make their own future. It is time that Washington and the inter-American community woke up to this fact.
— Ray Walser is a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
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