Category Archives: Military

"A War He Can Call His Own" Revisited By Woodward

Barack Obama, Military, Neoconservatism, Politics, Republicans, Terrorism, War

Distilled, the Big Idea behind Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars,” was outlined over these pixelated pages on July 18, 2008, in “A War He Can Call His Own”:

Obama needs a “good” war. Electability in fin de siècle America hinges on projecting strength around the world—an American leader has to aspire to protect borders and people not his own. In other words, Obama needs a war he can call his own. In Afghanistan, Obama has found such a war.
By promising to broaden the scope of operations in Afghanistan, Obama has found a “good” war to make him look the part. By staking out Afghanistan as his preferred theater of war—and pledging an uptick in operations against the Taliban—Obama achieves two things: He can cleave to the Iraq policy that excited his base. While winding down one war, he can ratchet up another, thereby demonstrating his commander-in-chief credentials.

Okay, so Woodward has framed as dovish “the president’s decision to order a surge of 30,000 additional troops late last year — 10,000 fewer than what top military leaders had been strongly pushing — with a withdrawal date of July 2011.”

The bottom line is that the president pushed for enough of a commitment, in blood and treasure in Afghanistan, to make him the presidential pick of a blood-lusting public.

That commitment was slightly less than the one the military had in mind—“to keep the troop commitment more open-ended.”

Talk about triangulation—BHO was able to shed just enough blood to give the left a foot in the door, while pacifying the murderous neoconservatives (Repbulicans in all permutations).

Calibration: that was the genius of the cunning Obama.

UPDATED: U.S. Military Gone Gaga, Making Osama Smile

Feminism, Gender, Military

The following is from my new WND column, “U.S. Military Gone Gaga, Making Osama Smile”:

“In 2002, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, then Osama bin Laden’s spokesman, gave an interview to an Algerian newspaper in which he mocked the American campaign to dismantle al-Qaida, calling it a ‘Hollywood script.’

Back then, OBL and his aides had quite a bit to snicker about. The massive welfare-warfare machine that is the American military was preoccupied with a weighty, waste-management matter: incontinence and urinary tract infections among its women. The (malodorous) matter made news headlines across the US.

Our ascetic enemies are not encumbered by feminine plumbing problems. Al-Qaida maintains Esprit de corps among its men by confining the role the ladies perform in their outfit: Wahabbi women may combust for the cause; but they do not get to disable the ranks with feminine and feminist special pleading—OB/GYN and urinary tract requirements, sexual harassment lawsuits, out-of–wedlock pregnancies, and welfarism.

As if to confirm al-Qaida’s expressed contempt for the Empire’s army and soft recruits; the military proceeded, back then, to launch a Hollywood-like production proper. The Pentagon, no less, endorsed a VH1 series entitled ‘Military Diaries,’ a bit of ‘militarytainment’ that made Abu Ghaith’s reference to a “Hollywood script” impossible to dispute.

‘Military Diaries’ was touted as a ‘powerful firsthand look at our heroes, their stories and the music that gets them through.’ The viewer was treated to the thrusting pelvis and swaying breasts of a recruit by the name of Charlie, followed by Laurie, Danielle, Paul, and Jimmie, among others. These poster-girlie GIs wanted America to know that their ‘real duty was to provide humanitarian aid to the Afghans.’ They shared with us their dreams of being ‘self-help authors.’ And they imparted the joys of manning posts like ‘Diversity Awareness Officers’ or ‘Drug and Alcohol Counselors.’

The production sure put a ‘human face’ on our coed men and women of the armed forces. But it was a face that exuded mush, not mettle. And it was seen and savored by an enemy, to whom the ‘Promised Land’ is a military victory, not a spot on Oprah Winfrey’s concave couch (due to that lady’s mighty keister).

Cut to 2010. A politically powerful faction of the military-media-industrial-congressional complex is cobbling together another production to motivate OBL and his men. It features a pathetic pop tartlet called Lady Gaga, whose iconic status, in the absence of any artistic merit, tells you all you need to know about her fans.” …

Read the complete column, “U.S. Military Gone Gaga, Making Osama Smile”

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material and reviews. Get your copy (or copies) now!

UPDATE (Sept. 24): Please read John McClain’s lengthy missive in the Comments Section; it is a stirring account from a veteran about how females were foisted on men in the trenches, and the effects this tyranny has had on the moral of the men who do the heavy lifting.

UPDATE III: 2010 Battle For Baghdad

Foreign Policy, Iraq, Law, Military, War

“The futility of establishing the rule of law in a place which has no tradition of it, notwithstanding, even if some color is given to the claim that the surge [has] ‘worked,’ it has to be clear that force is a limited weapon against a cause with unlimited recruits. It can cut back the number of insurgents by killing lots, it cannot eliminate the causes fueling the insurgency—these are, predominantly, the religious animus between Shia and Sunni that dates back to AD 680, and the American occupation. Brute force will temporarily curtail the first, but will only inflame the reaction to the last.”

That is how I summed up a September 14, 2007 column, on the week of the tiresome testimonies of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker as to the surge-related success in reducing violence in Iraq. During that week, 79 Iraqis were murdered and 38 were wounded.

Tell me if anything has changed, 3 years on. According to the AP, “Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq’s ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.

It was the first exchange of fire involving U.S. troops in Baghdad since the Aug. 31 deadline for formally ending the combat mission, and it showed that American troops remaining in the country are still being drawn into the fighting.”

Read MORE.

Of course, now the battle is on for the spoils of occupation. Without one strongman to provide law and order in that blighted and benighted spot, many smaller, less benevolent dictators have been loosed on the long-suffering Iraqis.

UPDATE I: To Mike: Bibi Netanyahu might have waxed fat about the wonders of exporting democracy, but did he adopt this American—previously French-Jacobin—form of oppression? Not on your life. Israel pretty much sticks to defending its threatened borders.

UPDATE II: Mike, Bibi speaks a superb Hebrew too. As a matter of fact, his son recently won Israel’s prestigious National Bible Quiz for Youth. I will be pleasantly surprised if the US has an equivalent competition. You have to be very bright to win this prize. It was always big deal and we all watched it on TV as youngsters. (You’d try and shout out the answers, but could seldom keep up with the talent.)

I think Chelsea Clinton is a hard-working, smart young woman (and pretty refined). But I can’t imagine the Bush, Obama, or McCain brood doing something seriously intellectual; the kind of thing that required unadulterated brain power (a degree in math), rather than feel-goodism (speak up for gay marriage).

UPDATE III: BACK to the topic. From PBS come the stories of Iraqi refugees on the joys of Daisy-Cutter delivered democracy (and yes, neo-creeps, Iraq once had a very viable professional class):

“DR. JALAL AL BAYA, dental surgeon (through translator): I had the largest dental practice in the country. And I had to abandon it when I fled to Jordan. There were lots of threats. And most of the scientists and doctors were targeted, so we had to reach out for a safe haven that was closest. And, for us, that was Jordan.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The large family home was destroyed in a car bombing and shelling that ripped through their Baghdad neighborhood. That’s when Al Baya joined an exodus of Iraqi professionals, fleeing threats of kidnapping or just running from the wrong side of a political or religious divide. By some estimates, since 2003, at least 60 percent of Iraq’s doctors have either left or stopped practicing.”

MORE.

A Bright Spot: Obama Oratory Infuriates Neocons

Barack Obama, Economy, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Military, Neoconservatism, War

Even though President Obama obviously listened to William Kristol’s advice given a day in advance of BHO’s his speech on Iraq, the Fox News neoconservative coterie was unhappy with the role carved out by the president for America abroad.

Chuckie Krauthammer lamented Obama’s lack of ‘vision’ when it comes to America’s role in world. These insular chauvinists don’t get it, do they? America is a crippled, credit-wracked waning economy—and empire. Largely due to their Jacobin expeditions.

Nevertheless, Krauthammer and his colleague on the Fox New All-Star panel, took the president’s reference to the minor, irrelevant “economic stuff” as a sign that “that his heart is not in these missions abroad, but is in changing America at home.”

If only the first accusation were true.

At least 4500 Special Ops soldiers are still doing battle in Iraq, and will be doing so for the foreseeable future.

Later.