Defense Secretary #AshtonCarter’s #Iraq No-Brainer

Iran, Iraq, John McCain, Military, Nationhood, Pseudo-history, Republicans

John McCain will be rising on his hind legs when he hears what US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has just said. The rest of the War Party will be irate too–even more so than the Iraqi prime minister was (who is he these days? Ah: Haider al-AbadiIt)

What Defense Secretary Carter said is a no-brainer, really; such observations were routine when Bush 43 began swinging the wrecking ball in Iraq. But the War Party is ahistoric—the War party-line is to continue duping ditto-heads into believing that the sorry state of Iraq is Obama’s doing. Not on my watch (having been in the position to witness and document the last 13 years, summed up last week in “Iraq Liars & Deniers: we knew then what we know now”).

So what did Carter say this Memorial Day weekend (a timing armchair warrior Mark Levin is sure to mention)?

Carter said “the rout of Iraqi forces at the city of Ramadi showed they lacked the will to fight against Islamic State. Mr Carter told CNN’s State of the Union the Iraqis ‘vastly outnumbered’ the IS forces but chose to withdraw.” Via BBC News

“What apparently happened is the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force.”
Describing the situation as “very concerning”, he added: “We can give them training, we can give them equipment – we obviously can’t give them the will to fight.”

In 2006 , the Hildebeest demanded to know when the “Iraqi government and the Iraqi Army would step up to the task?” “I have heard over and over again, ‘the government must do this, the Iraqi Army must do that’,” warbot Clinton complained (and I documented) to Gen. John P. Abizaid, then top American military commander in the Middle East. “Can you offer us more than the hope that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Army will step up to the task?”

Watch Mrs. Clinton feign amnesia about that TODAY.

Since the 2003 invasion, the Iraqi military has fled before the opposition, whoever that was. The thing we call the Iraqi military has been unable and/or unwilling to fight the wars America wishes it to fight. It did, however, fight and win a war against Iran under Saddam.

UPDATED: Our #Afrikaner Brethren Must Not Despair (Or Discount #IntoTheCannibalsPot)

Ilana Mercer, IMMIGRATION, Race, Racism, South-Africa

This is a note to an Afrikaner brother, “a farm attack victim, whose wife, friends and many acquaintances” have been murdered. Understandably, he does not think the work done by ex-pats like this writer in his cause is significant. I would venture that this is a perception fed by the fact that this work—book, extensive Articles Archive, ongoing, current Blog coverage, other media, when given the opportunity—is not easily accessible in “free” South Africa, a fact that accounts for why he cannot see the good it does beyond his country. (Example: “Mandela Mum About Systematic Murder Of Whites”)

So, to Ignatius Beyers I say this: Your world is in South Africa (SA). You judge the good of other work by the measure of how many members of your community know about it. But South Africa is a tiny speck on the world stage—and it has become even tinier and more insignificant on that indifferent stage since “freedom.” However, whether you know it or not, activism within SA matters very little to the world. I know it, for I’ve tried to spread the word in an indifferent world. That’s why I wrote “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.”

Whether you and your community know it or not, the book is being used in litigating the cases of South African refugees across the globe (I hear from their lawyers) and is serving and will serve as a lasting, enduring testament to the history, heritage and patrimony of the Afrikaners.

Afrikaners need SYSTEMATIC THINKERS outside SA to make a cogent case for their rights of self-determinism. This “The Cannibal” does in spades. So while you do not think I do much good because it’s hard to get my work in SA—Amazon doesn’t even sell books in that country; and Amazon, sadly, is more powerful than local Boer activists—we are at the forefront of the struggle on the global stage.

More significantly, “The Cannibal” dismantles the intellectually impoverished accusations of racism-as-raison d’être levied at the Boers; accusations that are deployed to dehumanize Afrikaners to the world. As you know, dehumanization is a means to delegitimize a people’s cause and plight. So do not discount the enduring, intellectual work done in “The Cannibal” to counter such garbage.

If anything, oddball statements made by local South African activists often further alienate that community from the world. I love the activists Mr. Beyers mentioned, but to outsiders who do not apprecaite the culture; their words often come out wrong, if you know what I mean. Thus, it often falls to quieter thinkers like myself to finesses inartful, inadvertently harmful expression. This I did in decrying “The Onslaught Against Steve Hofmeyr.”

While on the topic of delegitimzation (a stage in ethnoocide), Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, may not be a rowdy activist in South Africa, but his work is immensely important in garnering international attention for the Boer community. He and I both spoke to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about farm murders.

Raising hell in SA may seem important to people living in the country—and it is mighty important. Unfortunately, what counts in the pinko world is dismantling the libel against the Boers, which is what I’ve done.

Therefore, the people to whom “The Cannibal” is dedicated (to quote: “To my Afrikaner brothers betrayed”) should not discount the enduring testimony “The Cannibal” serves, and the systematic analytical framework it presents of the South African quagmire, down to a history of the Boers and the morality of secession. It is making your case for you where it matters: to an indifferent world community.

You and the under siege-Afrikaner community should flood your local bookstores across South Africa with requests and orders for the new book by Dutch MP Martin Bosma, if indeed it is as promising as Adriana Stuijt’s Censorbugbear claims, for “Into The Cannibal’s Pot” (bookstores can contact its courageous publisher), for the great Dan Roodt’s books, and the output of the aforementioned documentarian Adriana Stuijt, cited in “The Cannibal.” (It is my hope that Ms. Stuijt will produce a periodic publication, for sale on Amazon. A series of these things on Amazon, the largest bookstore in the world, would do wonders.) It’s all about the miraculous division of labor.

On a personal note: Ignatius Beyers, however painful, please email me your story in private (ilana@ilanamercer.com), and I will incorporate it into a WND column. While the libertarian community has been almost as indifferent (and certainly ignorant, as highlighted in “Apartheid South Africa: Reality Vs. Libertarian Fantasy”) as the rest; our good friends in Germany (see: Klein-Amerika an der Spitze Afrikas) may translate it.

Remember: Some work is seen by you and the Afrikaner community because it occurs in your neck of the woods; other work is unseen by you, but is as important.

UPDATE: To Americans who think South Africans are able to simply up and leave: Most people in the US have never lived outside this country. They take for granted EVERYTHING. They don’t get how hard it is to get permission to immigrate legally into the US, UK, Europe, Canada, Australia. And they don’t get that anything is better than Africa, South America and East Europe, included. These are lower-crime options, where a family doesn’t have to fear daily death. I am kinda tired of addressing these typically insular and cloistered attitudes.

#Langley Has The Last Word:#ForeignPolicy On The#CIA

Foreign Policy, Military, The State

A Foreign Policy essay makes the case that the CIA is, effectively, running American foreign policy. It concedes what seems obvious: Despite a budget of billions ($14.7 billion in 2013, “up from the $4.8 billion in 1994”), the agency “was notoriously wrong about Saddam Hussein’s alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, a cataclysmic mistake that eased the path to the Iraq War,” and it failed “to help detect or prevent the 9/11 plot.”

Some salient points:

* The agency has “a direct line to the White House for open-ended covert programs.”
* It has “explicit permission to use [drones] in larger areas of Pakistan than before.” “‘The CIA gets what it wants,’ Obama has told his aides.”
* “Through … machinations, the spy agency has managed to weaken or eliminate crucial counterweights to its own power.”
* “Since its creation in 1947, the CIA has steadily evolved from an agency devoted to its mission of spying on foreign governments to one whose current priority is tracking and killing individual militants in an increasing number of countries.”
* “… from drone strikes in the Middle East to the network of secret prisons around the world and the torture that occurred within their walls—[all] originated at Langley.”
* “… the agency had waded even more deeply into the dark world of assassinations by hiring outside contractors associated with Blackwater, a firm synonymous with abuses in Iraq, to kill individual militants on the ground.”
* “In Pakistan alone, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates, CIA drones killed as many as 960 civilians between June 2004 and April 2015, including up to 207 children.”
* The CIA’s has just about direct access to the White House. It “answers to no one except the president.”
* “… much of its workforce has been plugged into ‘the Ivy League, Eastern power structure of American politics.’ … its alumni are in key positions throughout the U.S. government.”
* Obama has embraced “the Bush-era CIA abuses,” this, presumably, includes torture, rendition, etc.

Since its creation in 1947, the CIA has steadily evolved from an agency devoted to its mission of spying on foreign governments to one whose current priority is tracking and killing individual militants in an increasing number of countries.

READ “Mission Unstoppable.”

#IraqWar Liars: We Knew Then What We Know Now

Bush, Iraq, Journalism, Just War, Media, Republicans, WMD

“Iraq Liars & Deniers: We Knew Then What We Know Now” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“If we knew what we know today, we would not have gone into Iraq”: This is as good an apology Republicans vying for the highest office are willing to offer, 12 years after launching a war that was immoral and unjust from the inception—as some of us pointed out from the inception—cost trillions in treasure, tens of thousands of lives (American and Iraqi), and flouted America’s national interests.

The big reveal began with Jeb Bush, who told anchor Megyn Kelly that knowing what we know now about Iraq, he would absolutely still have invaded Iraq. Broadcaster Laura Ingraham was having none of it. With the benefit of hindsight, she had arrived at the belated conclusion that the invasion was wrong. Ingraham suggested that Bush III was insane for sticking to his guns about Iraq.

Next to disgrace was Sen. Marco Rubio, also in the running. Six weeks back, Rubio had been unrepentant about the catastrophic invasion. After The Shaming of Jeb, Rubio changed his tune.

The title of Judith Chalabi Miller’s “rehab book tour” is, “If we knew what we now know … .” Over the pages of the New York Times, Miller, the Gray Lady’s prized reporter had shilled for the Iraq war like there was no tomorrow. In her reporting, she channeled Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi conman who fed the moronic Miller with misinformation and lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The other conman was Bush II, president at the time. His administration assisted Miller—a woman already prone to seeing faces in the clouds—to tune-out and become turned-on and hot for war (also the title of a January 2003, “Return To Reason” column). No tale was too tall for our Judith; no fabrication too fantastic.

Miller’s “mistakes,” and those of America’s news cartel, are no laughing matter. But it took a Comedy Central icon to deconstruct her national bid for redemption. The fact that others were on board, Republicans and Democrats, is not exculpatory. Idiocy is bipartisan. Not everybody got it wrong. Miller and her ilk chose not to consult those who got it right.

Miller had company. The Fox News war harpies were certainly a dream come true for many American men. Who cared about honest reporting or basic fact-checking when a heaving bosom is yelling from the screen, “Sock it to Saddam, Dubya!”?

In any event, the meme, “If we knew what we know now, we would not have gone to war in Iraq,” is false; a lie. We most certainly knew what we know now as far back as 2002, which was when this column wrote:

Iraq is a secular dictatorship profoundly at odds with Islamic fundamentalism. No less an authority than the former head of the CIA’s counterterrorism office, Vincent Cannistraro, stated categorically that there was no evidence of Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda. Even the putative Prague meeting between Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of Sept. 11, and Iraqi intelligence, turned out to be bogus. … Iraq has been 95-percent disarmed and has no weapons of mass destruction, an assessment backed by many experts in strategic studies.

The column excerpted was published on September 19, 2002, in Canada’s national newspaper. On that day, the flirty notes and the gracious dinner invitations from America’s leading neoconservatives ceased.

Indeed, there were many experts, credible ones, who categorically rejected the contention that there were WMD in Iraq. But they were silenced …

Read the rest. “Iraq Liars & Deniers: We Knew Then What We Know Now” is now on WND.