Category Archives: Terrorism

"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.

“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.

UPDATE II: Hamasnik Joins hands With B. Hussein (No Faith In Islam)

Barack Obama, Islam, Palestinian Authority, Private Property, Terrorism, The West

“With the president’s intervention,” writes Pat Buchanan, “the issue [of the mega-mosque at Ground Zero] has metastasized into a major clash in America’s religious and culture war. It has gone global, as Hamas has now weighed in on the side of building the mosque near Ground Zero.” Dah.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.
“In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer,” he said on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC. “We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church and Israelis are building their holy places.”

B. Hussein is seconded by Hamas. The mega-mosque affairs has gone from farce to burlesque. What next in the theater of the absurd?

UPDATE I: SHALOM SHARIA. Writes Diana West:

“Since 2006, Rauf [“of the ground zero mosque”] has coordinated a series of international meetings with Shariah experts ranging from Muslim Brotherhood associates to Iran’s Mohammad Javad Larijani, ‘who,’ as Brim reports, ‘has justified torture of Iranian dissidents as legal punishments under Shariah law.'”

“That’s not all Larijani, who heads Iran’s Human Rights Council (for real), has justified. He has also justified Shariah-sanctioned stoning. As Anne Bayefsky recently reported, Rauf’s picture with Larijani (and former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Sada Cumber) disappeared from the Cordoba Initiative Web site, too.”

“So much to hide – but the Shariah is out of the bag.

What would expanding Shariah mean here? More halal-butchered livestock leading, as in Europe, to halal-only menus?

More midnight football practice during Ramadan? More sex-segregated swimming pools?

More incitement to jihad in ‘radical’ mosques? More ‘apostates’ living in fear? More self-censorship, I mean ‘respect,’ when it comes to discussing Islam?

An excellent benchmark of Shariah’s remarkable and, think of it, post-9/11 progress is that none of the above manifestations of Islamic law – all designed to synchronize society with Islamic practice – are shocking to us.” …

UPDATE II (Aug. 23): No Faith In Islam. Another community, this time in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, does not wish to see a mosque rise up in its midst.

“The Murfreesboro mosque is hundreds of miles from New York City and the national furor about whether an Islamic community center should be built near Ground Zero. But the intense feelings driving that debate have surfaced in communities from California to Florida,” writes WaPo correspondent, Ann Gowen.

“So many things about Islam are disconcerting,” [another resident] said. “As they get bigger, there will be concerns about the ideology, what they preach and what they believe.”

And it is as I said in “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?” “It’s in the faith of Islam and its adherents that Americans have no faith.”

If Christians raised a cathedral at Liberty St. and Church St., most Americans would not mind. If the Hari Krishna set up a place of worship in the vicinity, and bobbed up and down the exact complex in Lower Manhattan, Americans would smile benignly. Ditto if a Jewish tabernacle were to be erected around the corner; this reaction would not have occurred.

I’ve had it with the incoherent, emotional, asinine refrains I keep hearing from Ground-Zero activists: “I love Muslims; it’s just this one mosque I hate.” Come out with what you mean, already.

No Faith In Islam

Barack Obama, Islam, Multiculturalism, Religion, Terrorism

In “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?” I said what is now being restated by the president and reluctantly by everyone one, even by some of the sentimentalists fighting the Mega-Mosque with appeals to emotions: “Restricting acquisitive property rights in a free society should never be entertained.” (It is the proper libertarian position that rights of property subsume freedom of religion. You can’t demand to practice your religion on my property).

Obama reignited the mosque-at-ground-zero debate, which never really died down. A yet another White House event, this time celebrating Ramadan (Bush put on a big bash on Cinco de Mayo; not sure how he celebrated Ramadan), Obama, “expressed his support for the mosque, which will replace a building damaged by the attacks.”

“Let me be clear: As a citizen and as President I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country.”

‘That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.’

“But the next day,” reports the Mail Online, “he insisted he had not been commenting on the ‘wisdom’ of placing a mosque in such a symbolic place.”

Challenged about his comments during a family trip to Florida at the weekend, the President said: ‘I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. ‘I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding.”

As CNN’s John King reported today, there are other mosques in that radius. The small Muslim community is well-served in Lower Manhattan and the surrounds. He also pointed out that the “not in my backyard” attitude to the erection of mosques is shared across the country. His chorus of Republican and Democrat commentators agreed that what we have here is anti-Muslim bias.

What we have here are people who won’t come out with it. What do I mean by “IT”? I said so in “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?”:

“Having examined only their feelings, Americans campaigning against occupiers in-the-making have failed to examine what it is they are really saying and, then, say it out coolly and clearly, and then take cover.

If Christians raised a cathedral at Liberty St. and Church St., most Americans would not mind. If the Hari Krishna set up a place of worship in the vicinity, and bobbed up and down the exact complex in Lower Manhattan, Americans would smile benignly. Ditto if a Jewish tabernacle were to be erected around the corner; this reaction would not have occurred.

It’s in the faith of Islam and its adherents that Americans have no faith.”

“Such pleas [for sensitivity] remind me of the victim impact statement so popular in our Courts. How humiliating and futile is it to plead for contrition from sadists who’ve amply proved they are incapable of such sentiment, and derive sadistic pleasure from watching their victims squirm.”