The U.S. delivered part of an $8.6 million military aid package to Lebanon today including laser-guided artillery shells and Hellfire air-to-surface missiles. This amounts to a doubling of military aid to Lebanon.
The story from the Obama Administration is that these munitions are to help Lebanon's military defend the country’s eastern border from what the State Department referred to as "violent extremists."
The armaments the Obama Administration is giving Lebanon will thus be freely available to Hezbollah and used against Israel when the time comes.That's why the Israelis made a formal announcement that if they were attacked from Lebanon again, unlike the last time they would consider it an attack on Israel by Lebanon, not just Hezbollah.
And it even gets worse than that.
Those extremists the Obama Administration is blathering about?A reasonable person might think that would include Jaish al-Fatah, the Army of Conquest. These are the so-called 'moderates' funded, armed and trained by President Obama in conjunction with Turkey, Qatar and the Saudis. Jaish al-Fatah is primarily composed of 'moderates' like Ahrar ash-Sham, an officially designated terrorist group and the al-Qaeda offshoot al-Nusrah.And they're right on Lebanon's border in Idlib province.
These are the same wonderful folks the Obama administration is complaining about Vladimir Putin conducting air strikes on:
“Greater than 90 percent of the strikes that we’ve seen them take to date have not been against ISIL or al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby.
“They’ve been largely against opposition groups that want a better future for Syria and don’t want to see the Assad regime stay in power.
Al-Nusrah isn't affiliated with al-Qaedah? That's certainly not what they say. Read up on al-Nusrah and Ahrar ash-Sham. You'll quickly find out what kind of future these hard line Islamists want for Syria, and their differences with ISIS could basically be summed up by the phrase 'Who's going to be king of the mountain ?'
And by the way, this is exactly how ISIS was created...out of the Syrian Free Army funded, trained and armed by the Obama Administration, Turkey and Qatar.
What we have here is material aid to terrorism, something that is clearly against U.S. law except when President Obama does it. Even more, we're aiding both sides in this conflict who, whatever their differences hate us and have plenty of American blood on their hands.Our president's actions have already ensured that we lose out either way.
At least Russia's Vladimir Putin seems to know whose side he's on. And he seems to be actually taking on those 'Sunni extremists' and 'al-Qada affiliated terrorists' John Kirby was talking about.
As for me, I have to confess something. When my tax dollars are going to a government that funds groups that would happily murder me and my family let alone my friends in Israel, it is definitely food for thought.
Certainly I never want to hear this president or any of his minions talk about how they 'have Israel's back' when they're arming. training and funding genocidal terrorists.
Some of my sources have given me an outline of some of what's in the coming Iranian nuclear agreement, and it's even worse than I thought it would be. The blather we heard about 'no deal being better than a bad deal' and 'hard choices' from Secretary of State John Kerry turned out to mean a deal at any price, and the hard choices being made not by Iran but by John Kerry and the Obama Administration.
For starters, remember how we were told that Iran would be required to allow inspections to verify they were keeping their agreement? Well, in this new agreement, there are no real inspections involved, and the IAEA has been totally castrated. Any inspections that do take place will be prearranged with the Iranian regime at a time and place of their choosing. Since the Iranians have already said repeatedly that no inspections will be allowed in any of their military facilities under any circumstances, that essentially means no inspections at all and no ability to verify if Iran is keeping its word.
Considering the sort of regime we're dealing with, backing down on inspections is unbelievable.
Another red line the Iranians have been able to get President Obama to back down on was the insistence that Iran detail all activities it conducted regrading weaponization in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it signed prior to the this new agreement. This was important because the whole idea of this farce was supposedly to keep Iran within one year of 'breakout' - the time when the Iranians can develop a nuclear weapon.
Since the Obama Administration backed off on this condition, we now will have no idea how close they are to breakout, there will be absolutely no way to tell if they're a year away, six months away of one month away..especially as there will also be no meaningful inspections.
Originally, the position of the P5+1(the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany)was that Iran would be allowed only 500 to 1,500 centrifuges and they were all supposed to be IR-1s, Iran’s first generation centrifuge. That number is now 6,500, and the Iranians have actually been offered more up-to-date centrifuges by the P5+1 as an incentive. To give you an idea of the realities involved, contrary to President Obama's own assurances about 'freezing Iran's enrichment', Iran has actually increased its nuclear stockpile in violation of the framework agreement. This is 20% enriched uranium, 90% of the way toward weaponization, which can be reconverted into material suitable for further enriching to weapons-grade levels in only a few weeks at most. Just as we have no idea of exactly what or where all of Iran's nuclear facilities are, we have no clue as to exactly how much enriched uranium they have...nor will we, based on the current agreement being finalized.
Another important concession Iran won is their 'right' to continue what Iran's President Rouhani called 'all forms of nuclear research and development.' That includes Iran's plutonium producing heavy water reactor at Arak, which has no peacetime application. You might remember that when John Kerry originally presented the framework agreement back in November 2013, he claimed that the Iranians had agreed to shut Arak down. The Iranians said in no uncertain terms that Kerry and President Obama were lying, and the end result was that the Obama team signed off on Arak, where Iran will continue to produce plutonium.
I could be charitable and say it was an error in translation, but in view of all the other differences between what our president and his secretary of State told the world and what the Iranians claim they agreed to, I'll call it willful deception.
Keep in mind that none of this has anything to do with a peaceful nuclear power or medical uses because nuclear enrichment isn't needed for that. Canada, Sweden, Argentina and other countries all have peaceful nuclear programs without enrichment capacity. It's only needed if you're building nuclear weapons. President Barack Obama himself admitted this, back in December 2013.
But wait, there's more.
President Obama made a point of using the term 'snap back sanctions' last April to describe what the consequences for Iran would be if they cheated on the agreement. As our president knew full well, this term meant nothing when he used it and is even more meaningless now.
The sanctions regime took years to assemble in a form where at least most of the international community would go along with it. The sanctions have now been almost totally undone since the president's Iranian-born consigliere Valerie Jarret's secret, back channel negotiations with Iran for most of 2013 were concluded. President Obama actually watered down many of the sanctions with waivers prior to and after the initial framework agreement, and when he spoke to the American people last April, he knew that the sanctions regime was history.
Moreover, he also knew that Russia and China, whom were never that keen on the sanctions to begin with had already announced that they won't participate in future sanctions, something Russian Foreign Minister Serge Lavrov recently repeated. And of course, with verification now entirely gutted, any attempt at revising the sanctions for cause is going to be difficult if not impossible to get through the UN. I'm informed that there may be a face saving plank moving sanctions relief to 2016, but that's fairly meaningless because it's not going to be observed anyway.
You see, not only did President Obama invalidate the sanctions, the one thing that brought Iran to the table. He rewarded the fascist Iranian regime with billions in badly needed cash for the privilege of talking to them. In fact, the Iranian regime's central bank just received 13 tons of gold with a value of $11.9 billion as part of a package of sanctions relief before signing or agreeing to anything. Any idiot knows that money changes hands when a deal is concluded, not before. The Iranians will keep that money regardless, and it's surprising to me that John Kerry left the conference room in Vienna still retaining his pants and shoes.
And there's even more. The Iranian regime came up with yet another demand at the last minute. As a major supporter and enabler of Islamist terrorism worldwide, Iran is under a UN arms embargo. And Iran is insisting that it be lifted as part of this deal. No word yet, but according to the Iranian Official News source Fars, the Obama Administration is going to go along with that too. And why not? They've given the Ayatollahs everything else they wanted.
And don't be surprised if the US provides some of those weapons, In fact, right now in Iraq, US advisers are sharing bases with Hezbollah fighters and Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops, and some are surprised to see Hezbollah troops flaunting US weaponry. They shouldn't be.
Having created ISIS, President Obama wants Iran to do the dirty work on the ground to clean up the mess he created. To get that, he's willing to allow Basher Assad to survive, return Iraq to Iran as a Shi'ite colony, and allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. The arms race this will set off in the region is of no concern to him. Neither is the security threat to the US of a nuclear armed Iran, or the Second Holocaust the Iranians continue to promise to unleash on Israel as soon as they're able to do so.
So to sum up, this deal does not provide for any real verification of Iran's breakout capacity, nuclear facilities or IBCMs, does not stop Iran from proceeding towards developing nuclear weapons, does away with what's left of the sanctions, and will reward the Iranian regime with billions in cash beyond what they've already received. In exchange for that, there's a worthless piece of paper President Obama can figuratively wave in the Rose Garden.
Would you like to know how President Obama is going to try to sell this to the American people? Here's a sneak preview:
Why yes, it's Mr. Bill, whom some Americans still see a a great president. The North Korean deal he and Marilyn Albright cooked up with the Kims led directly to Pakistan's nuclear weapons and Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons program. President Obama will attempt to use the same sort of turgid prose to tell us all lies about what a wonderful deal this is. After all, he'll almost certainly be out of office when the damage he did to this nation becomes evident, just like Bill Clinton. And rest assured, that damage will likely be profound.
Because of the way President Barack Hussein Obama has set this up, congress is entirely out of the loop on a major security issue because this is agreement is being done via the UN Security Council. The Senate can vote for a motion of disapproval, which would keep some US sanctions in force. But when the president vetoes it, the chances of getting 12 Democrats senators to vote to override that veto are very slim, given the pressure being put on them.
The real joke is that even if the Iranians don't sign on to this deal, they still got everything they wanted - 17 months to continue their nuclear weapons development and to further protect their nuclear facilities from attacks, billions in cash and the destruction of the sanctions regime. And if they do sign on, nothing changes.After all, what's one more UN resolution to cheat on? They don't even have to make a pretense of changing their hostility to the west or their ultimate objective towards the nation they call The Great Satan as they move towards the day they announce their successful test of a nuclear device.
The Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's President Rouhani and Iran's Foreign Minister and chief negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif sized up early the weak, craven and self-obsessed men they were dealing with quite some time ago,and played them thoroughly.
This is the post-American presidency indeed, when the practitioners of what my friend calls wifebeater patriotism have taken over our Republic and are doing their very best to loot it, damage it, and weaken it for their own purposes as they attempt to remake it to conform to the distorted mirror of their own image.
UPDATE: The Iranian nuclear deal was announced today, and once again my notorious Little Birdies came through - the deal as presented was pretty much what they said it would be, with a few last minute minor changes, none of which mean much in practical terms. The name of this new agreement is a dead giveaway - the 'Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.' Note the word 'plan.'
If you read between the lines of the always servile AP's drivel, the new policy allows families to attempt to scrape up the ransom for their loved ones, facilitated by the creation of what the president referred to as a "Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell" to 'coordinate recovery efforts among various government agencies.' Oh, and threats of criminal prosecution against families willing to mortgage their home and empty their bank accounts to try and get their loved ones back will cease.
Shamelessly, the president said that his administration would continue to abide by the "no concessions" policy when it came to hostages, but that families "who have suffered enough" would no longer be bound by that.
Instead, our government will now have a framework to operate as a go-between and courier between kidnappers and ransom payers.
What this president just did was to legitimize the wholesale kidnapping of Americans...not just by people like ISIS or the government of Iran but by entities like the Mexican drug cartels, who can now concentrate on going after targets of lesser dollar value but in greater volume.
Who says President Obama doesn't create jobs?
This president, contrary to his supposedly high moral stance here paid millions of taxpayer dollars and released five top Taliban commanders from Guantanamo in exchange for a deserter like Bowe Bergdahl, because he wanted to for obvious reasons. Today, he announced that not only American hostages but their families are now on their own, except that fancy 'Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell' to help communicate with the kidnappers and handle the transactions of victims for cash.
I wonder how long the American people are going to continue to put up with being treated with such contempt.
By now, many of you know about a terrorist attack that took place in Garland, Texas during the Mohammed Art Exhibit and Contest. A law enforcement officer was shot and two jihadis killed.
The exhibit and contest itself involved speakers and drawings of Mohammed competing for a $10,000 prize.
What basically happened is that two jihadis - Ellis Simpson and Nadir Soofi - attacked the community center with AR-15s to try and kill off as many attendees as possible, after sending a tweet announcing "“The bro with me and myself have given bay’ah to Amirul Mu’mineen. May Allah accept us as mujahideen, make dua,”
This was essentially a pledge of allegiance (bay'ah) to 'Amirul Mu'mineen' the 'prince of believers' which is another name for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the head of Islamic State. Then they went off to kill some infidels for Allah.
They managed to shoot and wound one policeman, but both of them took the dirt nap thanks to an off duty cop working security. From what I heard a number of attendees also were strapped and prepared for action....silly jihadis,this is Garland, Texas,not San Francisco or DC! The event itself was put together by Pam Geller and her American Freedom Defense Initiative to reportedly make a stand for free speech following violence over Muhammad drawings like the Charlie Hebdo attack.
As some of you may recall, I don't support this kind of activity for some very practical reasons, among them that there are far better uses of resources. But if Pam Geller wants to sponsor a 'draw Mohammed' cartoon contest that's her right and her prerogative.
What I'm far more concerned about is what this reveals about our country's continued tolerance for jihadis and Islamist radicalism. This pair were known jihadis whom had been on the FBI's radar for years, yet they were able to operate freely and even purchase weapons:
Ellis Simpson was born in Illinois and converted to Islam at a young age, court documents show. The government began investigating him in 2006, recording conversations between him and a paid informant.
In May 2009, according a federal court document, Simpson told an FBI informant: “It’s time to go to Somalia, brother.” He added: “It’s time. I’m tellin’ you man. We gonna make it to the battlefield…it’s time to roll.”
Simpson was arrested by the FBI in January 2010 after a lengthy investigation (4 years? WTF?). He was charged with lying to agents in connection with terrorism. Authorities suspected he was trying to fly to Somalia, but Simpson claimed at the time he had intended to travel to South Africa to go to school and study Islam there.
They had him on tape telling an FBI informant the real story. And he was facing up to eight years in prison. But then guess what happened? One of those wonderful Obama appointees stepped in:
Following a bench trial, a judge dropped the terrorism enhancement, citing insufficient evidence. The judge, Mary H. Murguia, said in March 2011 that the government had failed to prove that Simpson intended to wage violent jihad in Somalia. Murguia reduced the charge to making a false statement to federal officials and sentenced Simpson to three years of probation. Authorities also returned his passport, which they had confiscated after his arrest.
Yes, even though the FBI had Simpson on tape with an informant talking about how he was going to Somalia to fight the jihad, this clueless Obama appointed judge let him off the hook. And nicely gave him his passport, so he could sneak overseas for jihadi training if he wanted.
Simpson then moved to Phoenix and found himself a nice radical mosque to hang out at. That's where he met up with Nadir Soofi, whose story is similar. They became roomates, spending their days fantasizing about fighting for Islam and killing infidels. Yesterday, they put their plans into action.
And that to me is the real story here.
We are allowing jihad to get a major foothold here in America, especially since Barack Hussein Obama and his team took over. We have allowed over 600,000 Muslim immigrants to come to America since 2009, many of them without adequate vetting and more on the way. That's especially true of those coming from Somalia or Syria claiming refugee status.
With a few exceptions, we aren't blocking Islamist propaganda and websites from overseas. We aren't monitoring mosques or the imams running them. We aren't vetting the imams trolling for converts in our prisons, which is probably where Ellis Simpson, pictured above was recruited.
We aren't even vetting our police or military for jihadis, which is why Major Nidal Hasan was able to murder so many at Fort Hood. And we certainly aren't securing our borders.
In fact, trying to do anything but the politically correct cha cha in these areas in a sure way to end your career in law enforcement, the military or the government these days.
Thanks to our failure to confront it and combat it actively, Jihad has become a brand name here in America, our government is aiding and abetting it and even worse, we're allowing it.
Is it any wonder we have these so-called 'lone wolf' attacks?
Expect more of these. This one turned out well thanks to an off duty traffic cop with steel nerves, a firearm and excellent aim. We might not be that lucky in the future.
-Selah-
UPDATE: ISIS has posted a death threat agaonst Pam Geller and 'those who protect her.. Everyone who houses her events' on JustPasteIt:
Bismillah Ar Rahman Ar Raheem
“The New Era”
To our brothers and sisters fighting for the Sake of Allah, we make dua for you and ask Allah to guide your bullets, terrify your enemies, and establish you in the Land. As our noble brother in the Phillipines said in his bayah, “This is the Golden Era, everyone who believes… is running for Shaheed”.
The attack by the Islamic State in America is only the beginning of our efforts to establish a wiliyah in the heart of our enemy. Our aim was the khanzeer Pamela Geller and to show her that we don’t care what land she hides in or what sky shields her; we will send all our Lions to achieve her slaughter. This will heal the hearts of our brothers and disperse the ones behind her. To those who protect her: this will be your only warning of housing this woman and her circus show. Everyone who houses her events, gives her a platform to spill her filth are legitimate targets. We have been watching closely who was present at this event and the shooter of our brothers. We knew that the target was protected. Our intention was to show how easy we give our lives for the Sake of Allah.
We have 71 trained soldiers in 15 different states ready at our word to attack any target we desire. Out of the 71 trained soldiers 23 have signed up for missions like Sunday, We are increasing in number bithnillah. Of the 15 states, 5 we will name… Virginia, Maryland, Illinois, California, and Michigan. The disbelievers who shot our brothers think that you killed someone untrained, nay, they gave you their bodies in plain view because we were watching.
The next six months will be interesting, To our Amir Al Mu’mineen make dua for us and continue your reign, May Allah enoble your face.
May Allah send His peace and blessings upon our Prophet Muhummad and all those who follow until the last Day.
Abu Ibrahim Al Ameriki
Quick, somebody call White House spokeshole Josh Earnest - can we call it a terrorist attack yet?
I notice Texas isn't on the list of states...who says these people are incapable of learning?
Actually, there's something to that. When we start treating these people like the mortal enemies they are instead of tip-toeing around the fact that there's a mainstream reading of Islam and the Qu'ran that condones this behavior - in other words, when we start dealing with reality and refuse to tolerate any manifestation of that reading and that behavior - we will begin to deal with this threat as it should have been dealt with from the very beginning.
There are aspects of Islam that are simply not compatible with a free society, although there are Muslims who certainly are. It's high time we stopped appeasing the others at every turn, but that won't happen until President Barack Hussein Obama is out of the White House.
And yes, I know exactly what that statement implies.
US intelligence officials have now revealed that during the Iran nuclear negotiations, North Korea has sent several shipments of advanced missile components to the Iranian regime in violation of UN sanctions - and that the Obama Administration hid the violations from the UN.
Since September more than two shipments of missile parts have been monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies as they transited from North Korea to Iran, said officials familiar with intelligence reports who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Details of the arms shipments were included in President Obama’s daily intelligence briefings and officials suggested information about the transfers was kept secret from the United Nations, which is in charge of monitoring sanctions violations.
Critics of the U.S.-led nuclear framework agreement reached in Switzerland earlier this month have said one major deficiency of the accord is its failure to address Iran’s missile program, considered a key nuclear delivery system for the Islamist regime.
CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani declined to comment on the missile component shipments, citing a policy of not discussing classified information.
But other officials said the transfers included goods covered by the Missile Technology Control Regime, a voluntary agreement among 34 nations that limits transfers of missiles and components of systems with ranges of greater than 186 miles.
One official said the transfers between North Korea and Iran included large diameter engines, which could be used for a future Iranian long-range missile system.
President Barack Obama was given details of the shipments in his daily intelligence briefings (assuming he read them), but the officials said the information was hidden from the UN by the White House so that it would not take action on the sanctions violations.
This was confirmed by a spokesperson for Spain's mission to the UN, (which now overseas the UN's sanctions committee)who said the committee was not been told about the shipments by the US since Spain took over in January, 2015.
According to award winning reporter Bill Gertz, who broke this story, this is nothing new:
A classified State Department cable from October 2009 reveals that Iran is one of North Korea’s key missile customers.
The cable, made public by Wikileaks, states that since the 1980s North Korea has provided Iran with complete Scud missiles and production technology used in developing 620-mile-range Nodong missiles.
Additionally, North Korea also supplied Iran with a medium-range missile called the BM-25 that is a variant of the North Korean Musudan missile.
“This technology would provide Iran with more advanced missile technology than currently used in its Shahab-series of ballistic missiles and could form the basis for future Iranian missile and [space launch vehicle] designs.”
“Pyongyang’s assistance to Iran’s [space launch vehicle] program suggests that North Korea and Iran may also be cooperating on the development of long-range ballistic missiles.”
A second cable from September 2009 states that Iran’s Safir rocket uses missile steering engines likely provided by North Korea that are based on Soviet-era SS-N-6 submarine launched ballistic missiles.
That technology transfer was significant because it has allowed Iran to develop a self-igniting missile propellant that the cable said “could significantly enhance Tehran’s ability to develop a new generation of more-advanced ballistic missiles.”
“All of these technologies, demonstrated in the Safir [space launch vehicle] are critical to the development of long-range ballistic missiles and highlight the possibility of Iran using the Safir as a platform to further its ballistic missile development.”
No wonder the Iranians insisted that their ballistic missiles program was off the table in any negotiations. Why the president agreed to it is another matter entirely, especially since he had to have known the sanctions he kept boasting about were being grossly violated.
U.N. sanctions imposed in 2009 on North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests prohibit the export of missiles and related technology, and obviously the president didn't want to make an issue of that either, even if it meant deceiving the UN and the P5+1.
There's no telling how far Iran is with its ballistic missiles, but they're obviously a lot farther along than they were since Barack Hussein Obama took over the White House in 2009. This president was simply willing to look the other way.
According to Gertz, both White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan and State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf declined to comment on this story.
Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani created a press-fueled tempest in a teapot when he raised those issues at a private dinner. As you know, only Democrats and Leftists are entitled to private conversations and secrecy even the Mafia would envy. And of course, to the freedom to express their opinions no matter how bat sh*t crazy they are. Rudy Giuliani obviously doesn't qualify for that kind of protection.
Of course the press leaped on this. The current administration and its minions are free to refer to 'right wing Tea Partiers' as terrorists and to deride a serving US General commanding a combat operation as 'General Betray Us' in the New York Times, but again, the rule for Democrats and the Left is that you may never question their patriotism under any circumstances, no matter what they say or do.
Having pretty much struck out trying to smear GOP front runner Governor Scott Walker for not undergoing four years or more of Leftist indoctrination at someplace like Harvard, Yale, Columbia or Princeton, the Obama media decided to grab at another straw and make a point of asking Governor Walker if he thought this president was a Christian.
His quite sensible reply was that he didn't know, and as Byron York pointed out, a fair amount of Americans don't know either. I suppose it all depends on whether you consider Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church with its radical politics and its anti-Semitic and racialist overtones 'Christian.' Or whether you're confused about a president who defends Islam and Islamists at every turn while dissing Christianity and standing by and doing nothing while Christians are being ethnically cleansed from the Middle East by those peaceful Islamists.
But at any rate, the only way to know for sure would be to look inside this president's head and heart, and Walker was astute in simply saying he wasn't going to attempt that.
Now, does this president love America? Again, like the question about Christianity, it all depends on what your definition of loving America is.
In his memoir about his time as Secretary of Defense in the Bush and Obama Administrations, Robert Gates chronicled his struggle to contain his rage as former Democrat Senators and 2008 presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden chuckled to Gates about how their efforts during the second Bush administration to sabotage America's war effort in Iraq and the Surge in particular while our troops were under fire were 'hah hah,just politics, ho ho.' As Gates related, these efforts along with their calculated attempts to insult and emasculate its commander General Petraeus literally cost American lives.
Now again, some people are going to say 'what difference does it make?' Others would be outraged at this and a lot of other things that have happened in this administration.
So you see, it all depends on your point of view.
But walk with me a minute.
Let's say,just for giggles, we elected a president who actually didn't love the country, but whose agenda could more accurately be described in one word - payback.
How would such a president behave?
Would he openly openly defy the Constitution, use government bureaus like the IRS and the EPA to attack people he perceived as his political enemies and devote significant resources to spying indiscriminately on his fellow citizens to a greater degree than any other president in history? Would he violate the separation of powers doctrine with dictatorial 'executive orders' and make a constant show of his contempt for congress?
Would he use rhetoric and take actions deliberately designed to foster division and friction between Americans, especially racial enmity? Would he use his appointees to try and control education and opposing voices in the press?
Would he and the people he surrounded himself with allow our borders to remain unguarded for political reasons, even though that's a severe national security risk?
Would he run up huge debts? Would he waste billions of taxpayer dollars on a totally unnecessary war that provided vast stockpiles of arms to our enemies? Or on pushing through a dysfunctional 'healthcare' program that actually made healthcare less affordable and led to a loss of jobs and cuts in full time jobs and income for many Americans? Would he take steps resulting in higher costs in food prices, fuel and utilities for the average American?
Would he severely downsize our military and our anti-missile defenses? Would he release dangerous terrorist from a secure facility, even though the evidence was clear that a number of these people who'd been freed went right back to terrorist activities? Would he openly protect anti-American groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and its various front groups here in America and abroad?
Would he markedly and openly alienate traditional allies of America while attempting to appease countries that openly declare themselves our outright enemies?
In short, if, say, President Barack Obama didn't care all that much for the America he was elected to lead, if he thought that there was no such thing as 'American exceptionalism', if he thought America needed to be somehow punished for what all his closest associates for decades have told him are America's sins....
What exactly would he be doing differently? And just to add to the mix, it's worth noting President Obama had a model for making America bankrupt, sharia respecting and virtually defenseless.
Again, this all very much depends on what your definition of what loving America is. So I'm sure all of you can answer that question for yourselves, each in his or her own way.
The Pentagon has announced that that up to 1,300 U.S. soldiers will be heading to Iraq in the New Year, in spite of those promises by President Obama that there would be “no boots on the ground” in Iraq or Syria.
The troops involved found out today.
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel took the fall for the president and “authorized” the
deployment,. It will initially consist of about 1,000 soldiers the 82nd Airborne Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, based out of Fort Bragg.
Their mission, according to
Pentagon Spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby "will be
to train, advise, and assist Iraqi security forces.”
Based on how those Iraqi security forces have been performing so far, I'd say the emphasis is on 'assist.'
This will be the second of President Barack Hussein Obama'a illegal wars. Even Pravda -On-The-Hudson, AKA The New York Timesrecognized this.
Just imagine what the press would say if George W. Bush had done anything like this.
President Obama's plans to deal with the Islamic State have garnered a huge amount of criticism. Relying on haphazard airstrikes and al-Qaeda and Islamist Syrian rebels and the dysfunctional Iraqi Army for boots on the ground is not a recipe for success, and either is essential acting as Iran and Hezbollah's air force.
Even the New York Times, among other sources has reported on the president's refusal to listen to his military advisers, and former Marine commandant General James Conway and former CENTCOM Commander General James “Mad Dog” Mattis,both retired as part of the president's military purge on experienced generals he considers politically unfriendly have weighed in.
The highly decorated and capable Mattis told the House Intelligence Committee, “You just don’t take anything off the table up front, which it appears the administration has tried to do. Specifically, if this threat to our nation is determined to be as significant as I believe it is, we may not wish to reassure our enemies our enemies in advance that they will not see American ‘boots on the ground.’ If a brigade of our paratroopers or a battalion landing team of our Marines would strengthen our allies at a key juncture and create havoc/humiliation for our adversaries, then we should do what is necessary with our forces that exist for that very purpose.”
General Conway was even more outspoken, saying, “I don’t think the president’s plan has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding.”
A number of the military and ex-military who are regular visitors to these pages were even more explicit, and as you know I had some fairly pungent critiques of President Obama's non-strategy here, here and here.
So it's important at this point to remember something I brought up right after the president's dismal speech. This isn't about actually destroying The Islamic State.It's about appeasing his far Left base while still trying to appear like he's actually doing something to the American people to try and rescue his awful poll numbers before the midterms.
You see, President Obama's strategy doesn't have to make military sense or even common sense as long as it makes political sense.That's where his priorities lie. That, and kicking the can down the road for the next president to deal with, so he can get back to his usual routine.
Yes, President Obama has given the orders and has set a brand new objective for our military. But it's definitely not ISIS, fighting jihad or protecting our borders.
In fact, (forget about the border) he's actually cutting back on counterterrorism efforts to send 3,000 US troops on an unclear mission to Monrovia, Liberia in West Africa, the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak.
According to what President Obama's Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey has reportedly told senior officers, “The Department of Defense’s number one priority is combating Ebola.”
Even the White house appears unclear on exactly what the soldiers are going to be doing.
'U.S. Africa Command will set up a Joint Force Command headquartered in Monrovia, Liberia, to provide regional command and control support to U.S. military activities and facilitate coordination with U.S. government and international relief efforts,' a statement from the White House press office said.
'A general from U.S. Army Africa, the Army component of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), will lead this effort, which will involve an estimated 3,000 U.S. forces.'
All of which are hazy, non-specific and generic terms. What does 'regional command and control support for U.S. military activities' mean? What U.S. military activities are being planned? Are they basically being sent into a dangerous area where a highly contagious disease is running rampant to be policemen of some kind, enforcing some other country's law and order? Maybe several countries?
And the president's rationale for this is frankly ridiculous at a time when our military is already stretched thin, thousands of personnel have been released from the service and defense spending has already been cut 21 per cent since 2010, President Obama's first fiscal year in office.
On a Sept. 7 interview on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' as reported by the UK's Daily Mail, President Obama called the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a 'national security priority.'
'If we don't make that effort now, and this spreads not just through Africa, but other parts of the world, there's the prospect then that the virus mutates, it becomes more easily transmittable, and then it could be a serious danger to the United States,” said Obama.
So let's get this straight...the way to stop Ebola from being transmitted to the U.S. is not by policing our borders, cracking down on illegal migration, or quarantining nationals and limiting visas from the affected countries.
Instead, the president obviously feels that the way to stop Ebola from becoming a problem in America is to ignore all these things and send 3,000 soldiers we can't really spare right now into the middle of an epidemic. Can you think of a better way to bring Ebola home to America?
I can certainly see humanitarian aid, and apparently military engineers are going to slap together some makeshift hospitals. The U.S has done similar things before. But the biggest hospital project the U.S. has committed to isn't for the locals. It's a fully equipped 25-bed 'field-deployable hospital,' that will be used solely to treat infected health care personnel and presumably those members of our military that become infected.
And the State Department, tellingly, has just purchased 5,000 body bags.
Why is the president doing this? Obviously this is not a 'national security issue'. But when it come to President Obama, there are two motivating factors you can always count on...politics and his own ego and aggrandizement.
The politics are pretty simple. With the midterms coming up, it's yet another way to dupe African-American voters into thinking that Obama cares about them, even though for all practical purposes their voting bloc is being taken for granted and has been dumped to cater to Latinos.
The ego and aggrandizement? That's pretty simple too. In spite of that totally unearned Nobel Peace Prize, in spite of all the rhetoric, President Obama has actually done very little in the way of humanitarian efforts, especially when you compare him to President Bush,who is particularly beloved in Africa for his efforts to combat AIDS and hunger. So this becomes an Obama bragging point - at other people's risk and expense, of course.
The U.S. military in many ways has always been one of America's meritocracies, at least since President Eisenhower put VP Richard Nixon in charge of desegregating it. As in any organization, there was always a certain amount of politics involved, with Democrat presidents promoting Democrat generals and Republican presidents leaning towards Republicans, but by and large there was always the goal of the best and brightest rising to the top, and in many cases that goal was realized.
Things have changed.
Ive already written before about how admission standards to get into Annapolis have been lowered for minority candidates based strictly on race in the name of diversity.
It appears now that the Army has decided to follow the trend... no doubt prompted by the Obama Administration. They're now concerned that there are too many white officers and not enough black ones, and we can't. have. that.
So they're apparently going to do what the Navy did. They will start by lowering standards for black candidates to get into West Point, or as they told USA Today, "One of the Army’s plans for addressing the issue will be to put more emphasis on recruiting and mentoring minority officers."
I think we can all translate what that means in reality.
The Army reports that only 10 percent of its active-duty officers are black, which has contributed to its dearth of black officers leading soldiers with occupational specialties in infantry, armor and artillery.
“It certainly is a problem for several reasons,” Col. Irving Smith, director of sociology at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, told USA Today. “First we are a public institution. And as a public institution we certainly have more of a responsibility to our nation than a private company to reflect it. In order to maintain their trust and confidence, the people of America need to know that the Army is not only effective but representative of them.”
And here you thought the Army's primary responsibility was to protect the country, and to pick the very best soldiers to lead it regardless of race? Not in the age of Obama. Job one is now 'social justice' and racial bean counting.
No one is even alleging that the Army has discriminated against black soldiers. No, they're being pressured for a very different and obvious reason.
The American people, or at least the vast majority aren't losing trust and confidence in our military because there were too many white people leading it, or because their aren't enough black officers. Nor are they worrying about the military's ability to defend the country, and one big reason for that is because they perceive the military as a meritocracy where the best and brightest succeed. Ah, but these issues are a primary concern of the Obama Administration which views everything through two prisms - race and politics.
This amounts to changing the nature of our military politically....forcing dozens of experienced officers and generals out of the service and into early retirement while replacing them with people the Regime feels are more likely to support them politically. And if it means that spaces at West Point, the other service academies and Officer Candidate Schools are taken up by people who are less qualified than others strictly on racial grounds, that isn't a concern.
Watch what happens to the quality of our volunteer military and to the American people's perception of it if this trend continues.
That actually surprised me at first, since at first glance the U.S. taking out ISIS would appear to aid Iran in their own ambition...putting together a nuclear armed Shi'ite bloc including Iraq, Syria. Lebanon and Iran. But Khamenei is obviously weighing the president's non-strategy and probable failure against cooperating with the Great Satan and decided it was better to bow out. I can understand that, from Khamenei's viewpoint.
The Iranians can now simply sit back, eat popcorn and enjoy the show, (and incidentally, keep the centrifuges running on their rogue nuclear weapons program)while the U.S. spends its time, blood and treasure.
As I pointed out, President Obama has no coalition at this point. The only country who has agreed to come in with any concrete and useful help are our dear friends in Oz, who always seem to be willing to stand by our side no matter what, G-d bless 'em. PM Tony Abbot has stated that Australia will send 600 advisers of their own to help fight ISIS.
Given this president's no win plan, I'm not sure how wise this is, but it's an absolutely wonderful gesture. And as anyone who served with them in 'Nam, AfPak or Iraq knows, the Diggers are superb fighting men who punch far above their weight in numbers. They will cause some serious mayhem among the jihadis.
My friend Commander Jennifer D. Dyer (ret) has a great piece on the Obama Administration's non-strategy that will definitely reward your attention. Among other things, it details exactly how the president's preferred strategy collapsed between his turgid speech last Wednesday and today..because ISIS was listening and took action..emphasis mine:
ISIS is busy neutralizing the Syrian factions that might make common cause with the United States. On Thursday, Breitbart London reported that several dozen leaders of Syrian rebel factions opposed to ISIS, who were gathered at a meeting in northwestern Syria, were killed in a massive explosion on Wednesday.
Huffington Post on Friday evening summarized reports that ISIS has signed a non-aggression deal with a separate group of rebel factions in Syria, nominally so that all of the factions can continue to fight the Assad regime.
The SRF has been losing ground in recent weeks, suffering a major blow when one of its top commanders was killed at the end of August. At the same time, the SRF was reported to be fighting alongside al-Qaeda-affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra in southern Syria, including the battle for the crossing point with Israel in the Golan over which the rebel factions claimed control on 27 August.
Now it appears that the non-aggression pact with ISIS was brokered by Jabhat al-Nusra.(ed note: an ISIS ally) None of this comes as a surprise to those who’ve been following along with Patrick Poole at PJ Media. On 3 September, Poole outlined the continuing cooperation of factions in the Free Syrian Army with ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra – cooperation that has resulted in a flow of U.S.-supplied weaponry to the latter two armies. On 9 September, he expounded on a report from the Los Angeles Times that one of the “vetted moderate” groups, Harakat Hazm, is quite open about fighting alongside Jabhat al-Nusra.
The U.S. has already given this group anti-tank missiles. Appended to Poole’s analysis is the tweeted text of an alliance agreement concluded by “vetted moderate” faction Harakat Hazm and other similar groups with Jabhat al-Nusra. The text was tweeted on 8 July.
It’s not just credible, it’s highly bloody likely that some of the rebel factions – including U.S. client SRF – have indeed made a pact with ISIS. The fact that it won’t be worth a bucket of warm spit ought to serve not as an encouragement to U.S. delusions of a meaningful alliance in Syria, but as a warning.[....]
In fact, ISIS hasn’t sat still. Once Obama made his speech on Wednesday, the option of mounting coordinated attacks on ISIS’s strategic rear in Syria immediately became a major threat posed by the U.S. If we could do it effectively, we could force ISIS to defend its rear: shift resources away from the campaign in Iraq, and perhaps even rework its overall strategy.
So ISIS promptly took out nearly 50 opposition rebel leaders and signed its non-aggression agreement with America’s potential partners in Syria.
Remember that ISIS doesn’t have to show good faith over time with any of those Syrian factions. It just has to preempt their cooperation with the United States. The mechanism for that is straightforward. We’re an easy read – ponderous making decisions, easily spooked, committed to at least perfunctory public transparency – and our president is a slow learner.
If ISIS can prevent anyone in Syria from cooperating with the U.S., ISIS can concentrate its effort in Iraq, where our forces on the ground will be: small, scattered, un-concentrated, embedded with local groups which may not all be fighting for the same objectives. Remember this also: Obama is determined not to overlay an obtrusively coherent U.S. framework on this operation. Kurds fighting in northern Iraq and Sunnis fighting along the Euphrates in Anbar – each with a separate ill-defined connection to the struggling Shia-majority government in Baghdad – will have the lead.
Even in Vietnam and Somalia, I don’t think we’ve ever backed into anything with our hindquarters flapping quite so egregiously in the breeze. Military success doesn’t just happen. It’s as much a matter of political will, and a coherent strategy and operational plan, as it is of training, expertise, and weapons superiority at the tactical level. Assuming we do go ahead with the plan-deficient, few-boots non-war the Obama administration has been proclaiming for the last 72 hours, I am very concerned that American troops could find themselves vulnerable under fire and fighting for their lives within weeks.
I would actually feel better at this point if we weren’t enlarging our footprint in Irbil at all, but instead planned to just keeping flying strike-fighters from Kuwait and Qatar. There are sound operational reasons to be gravely concerned about Obama’s decision to dismiss the advice of his military leaders and go with a toxic brew of half-measure objectives and exposed deployment situations.
The rapid, cynical, homicidal initiative shown by ISIS in seeking to neutralize Obama’s Syria option is a pretty good indicator of what we’ll be up against. Pundits and officials who are vocally criticizing the president are not just showing partisan sour grapes. This is real, and it’s bad.
Commander Dyer also makes the point that the troops we do have in the region are going to be in very small concentrations, particularly in the vulnerable Kurdish capitol of Erbil. We going to be basing both troops and fighter planes there because, as I reported before, our Turkish 'ally' won't let us use bases in their country to attack ISIS, even ones we pay a handsome fee to lease, most notably Incirlik, a mere 100 miles from the front. So much for all that appeasement .
Moreover, as Commander Dyer points out, putting together an airbase in Erbil, this close to the front with ISIS makes the planes vulnerable to any heat seeking missiles, of which ISIS has plenty.It's one thing once they're up in the air, but very different when it comes to landing and takeoff. The bottom line, of course, is is that there is no real strategy, except a political one. President Obama isn't trying to destroy ISIS, he merely wants to rescue his poll numbers by launching a few airstrikes and giving the appearance of doing something so he can kick the can down the road for his successor.
Of course having opened his mouth in prime time on national television, the president has pretty much destroyed any chance of real cooperation with any Syrian opposition. The ones whom ISIS thought might be a problem are dead, and the others are neutralized, especially after they saw what happened to the others. Read the rest of Commander Dyer's piece here..
President Obama's ridiculous speech last night on combating the Islamic State had these main components - making sure to mention that Islamic State was neither a state or Islamic, airstrikes on Iraq and Syria, reassuring his Leftist base that no U.S. ground troops would be participating, and this:
This is our strategy. And in each of these four parts of our strategy, America will be joined by a broad coalition of partners.
Apparently President Obama opened his mouth before actually taking roll call on those 'allies.'
The Brits, supposedly our closest strategic ally have already said they won't do any airstrikes in Iraq and have expanded that 'no thanks': to include Syria:
Britain’s foreign secretary says his country won’t participate in airstrikes on Syria, following an announcement from Washington that it would begin hitting targets inside the country.
Speaking Thursday after talks with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Philip Hammond said Britain won’t be “revisiting” the issue after Parliament decided last year against participating in airstrikes.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told a news conference in Berlin that Germany has not been asked to take part in the air strikes and would not be participating. “To quite clear, we have not been asked to do so and neither will we do so,” Steinmeier said.
Even more importantly, President Barack Obama's dear Islamist friend Turkey not only said it will not participate, but won't even let American forces use bases we lease in Turkey to attack The Islamic State:
Turkey will refuse to allow a US-led coalition to attack jihadists in neighbouring Iraq and Syria from its air bases, nor will it take part in combat operations against militants, a government official told AFP Thursday.
"Turkey will not be involved in any armed operation but will entirely concentrate on humanitarian operations," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Turkey's non-participation is key, because it borders both Iraq and Syria and has a reasonably strong, U.S. equipped military.
The Turks are refusing to get involved because when Mosul fell to The Islamic State, so did the Turkish Consulate and 49 hostages...and also because they don't want to encourage the Kurds because of their own suppressed Kurdinh minority in Turkey. And because they have backed The Islamic State from the start against Assad. You'd think someone might have whispered this in the ear of our prevaricator-in-chief before he asked them to join up.
So who's left? The French? Possible, in a very limited way, but doubtful...remember all those French Muslim voters and the upcoming elections.Hollande and the socialists will need every vote they can get.
New Europe? The Poles, Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine all contributed to Iraq and Afghanistan, but after the way the Obama Administration has treated them and what with Putin on the prowl, faggeddabbouddit.
There's the Sunni Arab states, and Secretary of State Kerry is headed there as I write this. The Saudis and the GCC may help,but again in a limited way and certainly not with boots on the ground. Aside from the fact that one of them Qatar is actually funding the Islamic State and has been for some time, there's also the problem of Iran, the president's new friend. The Saudis and the Emirates are smart enough to know even if Obama and Kerry aren't that if ISIS is taken off the board, there's no obstacle to Iran achieving its long time goal of a Shi'ite nuclear armed bloc.
They've long since stop trusting Obama's assurances on the matter. It remains to be seen what Kerry can promise them to get them fully involved. Certainly it won't be with boots on the ground.
The same applies to the Egyptians who are not exactly Obama fans at this point and have their own jihadis to deal with at home and next door in Libya thanks to this president. They won't be fighting in Iraq and Syria in any large way, and anything they do it will be for a steep price demanded of Obama.
That leaves Iran, Iran's Shi'ite militias, Hezbollah, the Iraqi army none of whom have been able to stop Islamic State's fighters thus far. And the Kurds, who don't trust Obama and will concentrate on defending their own territory. Oh, and about1,700 US 'advisers' (the president glossed over those in his speech) who are basically in the same position our advisers in Vietnam were circa 1962.
Islamic State isn't going to be defeated by air strikes, and those are the boots on the ground. And is the U.S. going to act as the Shi'ite air force now, taking sides in the sectarian conflict in the region? I do seem to remember a certain freshman senator from Illinois and his Democrat buddies criticizing President Bush for getting us involved in a sectarian civil war in Iraq,don't you?
I hope I'm wrong, but just watch as he sends more 'advisers' in to cover his chest thumping rhetoric.
President Obama has no real strategy, except to make it look like he's doing something and improve his terrible poll numbers before the election to try and hold the senate. As always, everything is about politics with this president - not the country.
UPDATE: It appears that just as I predicted, the Arab Countries are not entirely on board either. Can it be they too no longer trust this president? I guess when you lie to people habitually...
For those of you who didn't catch the president's latest teleprompter fed offering, as always, I watch this stuff so you don't have to. The president's full remarks are here, if you're that much of a masochist.
This one wasn't as bad as some of his State of the Union outings, but it was obvious that the president was not really engaged in what he was saying..just an unpleasant chore to get through so he could check off the box and go back to his usual routine.
The president started off with some chest thumping (bin-Laden, yadda yadda) talked about how he had eliminated "much of al Qaeda’s leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan" (blatantly untrue) and again talked about all the troops he'd brought home and how we'll be retreating from AfPak and letting the Taliban take over at the end of this year.
The president then began shoveling the stuff in earnest, and all of it reveals that his 'startegy' will ensure that the Islamic State not only isn't defeated but actually grows stronger.
First there was the expected part appeasing Islam, in which a non-Muslim Barack Obama informed the Muslims in ISIL that there nothing Islamic about what they're doing. That's not quite what the Qu'ran says. and many of ISIL's supporters would disagree with him, but he felt it necessary to make sure that no one would actually identify the ideology we're fighting, a necessary condition for victory.
The president then announced that he's going to rely on airstrikes to take out ISIL, but underlined that no American troops are going to be sent in..no boots on the ground. He plans to rely on the Shi'ite Iraqi army for that, except for a few hundred U.S. soldiers to actually do the dirty work. Think 'advisers' in South Vietnam circa 1962 or so. Of course, with no US boots on the ground, it isn't going to happen, especially given the performance of the Iraqi army against ISIL fighters. I only hope this president doesn't constantly expand the number of American advisers as this becomes evident.
The president also mentioned that he's going to arm and finance the Syrian rebels again. After all, look how well that worked out last time!
Meanwhile, President Obama talked a great deal about a 'coalition' he's assembling to fight ISIL, which of course includes Iran something the president saw fit not to emphasize, as well Iraq's Iran-supported Shi'ite militias and the Shi'ite Iraqi Army. How Iran is going to react to President Obama arming and training fighters to depose Iran's ally, Syria's Basher Assad is another little detail President Obama decided to gloss over.
He'll also throw money at the problem. Of course.
President Obama also mentioned humanitarian aid for Muslims and for Christians 'driven from their ancient homelands'. Those Christians have been being driven from their homes since Barack Obama became president and especially since we left Iraq. It's nice that he finally noticed, I suppose..although helping them is not going to sit well with many of the local Muslims in his 'coalition' especially in Iraq and Syria.
Details, mere details.
He then went on to tout the removal of Syria's chemical weapons (really untrue) and his providing rations for Christians and Yedizis trapped on a mountain top ( true, except a lot of the stuff was dropped from 15,000 feet up with no chutes and simply exploded on impact with the ground).
So what we have here is not some kind of forceful strategy so much as a political speech to massage his far left base while hopefully convincing average American he's involved.
As I pointed out earlier, there's nothing here that's going to destroy ISIL, but I'm sure President Obama is not particularly concerned with that...he's concerned about whether it looks like he's doing something and if it maybe improves his dismal approval ratings.
That's what tonight's shoveling job was all about And no matter how it's polished or packaged by the president or his friends in the media it still smells the same...
President Obama is set to reveal his strategy on prime time tomorrow. Based on what's being reported so far, it's not only as bad as I predicted, it's even worse.
The president apparently hasn't learned from the mistakes he made previously. After covertly arming ISIS without consulting congress and creating the current mess, he now wants congress to exacerbate his folly by including a last minute authorization to arm 'Syrian rebels' in a must-pass spending bill that comes before the House tomorrow..with no oversight from congress on who gets the $5 billion he wants or how it gets spent.
By the way, this is yet another one of those continuing resolutions. The word 'budget' appears to be extinct, at least when it comes to the Obama Administration and the Democrat controlled senate.
Being President Obama, he has also tacked on partisan amendments to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank and an Internet tax measure. something hugely unpopular with most Republicans and even some Democrats, and for for good reason. That way, if the Republican controlled House refuses to pass this CR, or insists on more oversight and details, the president and his part can accuse them of 'obstructing the fight against terrorism' and spin this to blame them for his ineptness.
So we're talking about $5 billion dollars to 'fight terrorism', a blank check with no oversight, and no guarantees on how funds and/or arms won't simply go to jihadis again. That's especially relevant given this administration's previous fiascoes in that area. Listen to this Democrat, who's all ready to give the president what he wants no questions asked:
“We don’t know what the details are, so we can’t say what is in it and what isn’t,” said Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, who said the fund could be used to fight ISIS in Iraq or even Syria if that’s what the president decides to do. “I think that kind of flexibility is useful.”
You can't make this stuff up.That money, according to the way the White House CR is now written could literally go to anyone, anywhere.It could go to al-Qaeda allied militias, or to Iran allied Shi'ite militias like Moqtadah al_Sadr's Mahdi Army. It could go to Hamas, or to Hezbollah. It could even go to domestic campaign funding, or covertly to elections in say, Israel to help elect far Left candidates to the Knesset who will do the Administration's bidding and surrender to the Arabs whom identify themselves as Palestinians.
With this president, anything is possible.
And to show you how ridiculous this is, President Obama is talking about arming the Syrian rebels on the one hand while engaging with our new allies, Iran in 'security cooperation' and 'coordinated action' on the other. Has no one explained to him that Iran is allied with Syria's Basher Assad?
And speaking of Iran, have you noticed that nothing's being said lately about their illegal nuclear weapons program or their failure to cooperate with inspections by the IAEA?
Meanwhile, the president took pains to inform congress that even though he wants the money, he can attack Islamic State without consulting them. and do pretty much what he wants, as the Washington Examiner reports:
President Obama told congressional leaders in a meeting Tuesday that he has the authority to launch broader attacks against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, downplaying the prospect of a Capitol Hill vote on his military plan ahead of his prime-time address to the nation Wednesday night. Obama “told the leaders that he has the authority he needs to take action against [the Islamic State] in accordance with the mission he will lay out in his address tomorrow,” the White House said in a readout of the meeting that included Obama, Vice President Joe Biden; House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif
.
This has the potential to turn into even a bigger catastrophe than the president's illegal war in Libya.
It's about time congress assumed some responsibility for what's going on. They need to find a credible spokesperson (Ted Cruz, Rand Paul or Duncan Hunter Jr. would be good choices) to explain to the American people exactly what's going on, why they're refusing to fund another illegal Obama war and what they need from this president in the way of oversight in order to even consider authorizing the funding...which includes, by the way, a clean resolution without the partisan add ons.
Islamic State isn't the JayVee Mr.President, you are. And not even in the starting lineup at that.
President Obama has revealed - surprise! - that he has no strategy for even combating, let alone defeating Islamic State. His excuse is that he's ordered his military advisers to give him “a range of options,” which is another confession of how inept this president is.
He's known about Islamic State (formerly ISIS) for a long time now now, and even had a significant part in Islamic State's growth, arming and training them with the assistance of Turkey and Qatar.The mess with Islamic State is very much of Barack Obama's making. And let's not forget that his illegal intervention in Libya to save the jihadis and al-Qaeda militias in Benghazi, that allowed all of Khaddaffi's arsenal fall into jihadi hands and created a failed state now known as 'jihadi central' where groups like Islamic State's allies al Nusrah, al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) and others now have a base to arm and train.
Yet, after all that, this president never bothered to have our military put together a contingency plan to deal with any possible blowback, and is just now consulting with the military and 'waiting for options!'
In the president's actual statement, he of course substituted 'we' rather then 'he', because as you know, nothing is ever his fault.I actually know children who are more responsible when they're confronted by an error.
But the problem of defeating Islamic State is not as simple as it seems. The president's dysfunctional buffoonery aside, there are a lot of considerations here that need to be looked at.
The first part of making any decision is actually having definable foreign policy goals, something this president seems to lack except for his fetish for empowering and protecting Islamists.
So job one, the way I see it, is to formulate such goals. I think eliminating imminent security risks to America is a good one. And if that's the goal, simply bombing the hummus out of Islamic State, something I've heard a lot of people push for, won't do it. The reverse in fact.
It has apparently never occurred to them that odious as Islamic State is, they are a counterbalance to an almost equally odious Iranian regime. Taking out Islamic State only helps Iran and the likes of Hezbollah consolidate their goal of a nuclear armed Shi'ite bloc.
That, by the way, is one of the main reasons why taking out Saddam Hussein was such a dumb idea, and why old hands like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld tried to talk George W. Bush out of it.
Iran has been gulling the West on their rogue nuclear weapons program for almost a decade now, and here has been no progress in terms of diplomacy in getting them to stop, while the centrifuges keep spinning. Nor will there be. Iran is the key to this situation, and a much more serious threat than Islamic State.
So, how to accomplish the goal of eliminating these security threats to America?
The first thing, of course, is to be honest at long last and finally let the peoples of the West know what we're fighting. Call it Islamism, Islamic fascism, Radical Islam, jihad, whatever you will. But identifying it without tiptoeing around it and letting the peoples of the West know what's at stake is key. We are fighting an ideology.And it's an ideology that has to be shamed, demonized and ridiculed, especially in the West, with no false notions about political correctness. Propaganda works both ways:
The West need to understand what characterizes jihad, and that while Islamic State is a Sunni organization, the same applies to Iran, the other, Shi'ite side of the same coin. We are not dealing with rational actors as we understand the term, and we need to understand the dedication and fanaticism of our enemies, just as we did in WWII. And we need to also understand that this needs to be a war, not an 'operation' or a few desultory airstrikes. This video, from Islamic State about the taking of Mosul and surrounding areas is valuable in achieving that perspective:
The simplest and best first step is the old one of arming and strengthening our friends while destroying our enemies. To me, that means a strong and independent Kurdistan that's a US ally, while leaving the Shi'ites to hold their line in the south near Baghdad. There's no sense whatsoever in giving the Shi'ite regime in Iraq much more in money and support. They've already had over $25 billion in arms, training and logistics lavished on them and have performed with all the martial fervor and expertise of the majority of the ARVN troops in South Vietnam. All those shiny American arms and supplies ended up in Islamic State's hands. But the Iraqi army can can probably manage to hold a line at Baghdad and points south, especially if The Islamic State has other fronts to worry about.
The Kurds, on the other hand have already proven that in anything like an equal fight they can hold their own and win. And they would also have the incentive of fighting for an independent Kurdistan, a dream they've had for years. Kurdistan is where we should have made out base and our stand in the beginning, a naturally democratic,pro-American enclave that begged us to do so. At least they were pro-American until they were betrayed by President Bush and President Obama, but I think the relationship with the Kurds is salvageable, although perhaps not with President Obama in power.
The next step would be a much improved relationship with Israel. This would include a joint project for a pre-emptive strike to take out Iran's nukes and Iran's capacity to cause mischief to anyone for some time. Tactical nukes might unfortunately be necessary. At this point, it would almost certainly be necessary to take out Iran's oil and gas infrastructure and refineries as well to make sure their nuclear ambitions stay dormant, something that could have been avoided had the job been done a lot earlier.
I would also leave the carnage and destruction intact,certainly as long as any semblance of the present regime is in power.Some monuments are built of stone, others of rubble. But both fulfill a similar function, that of remembrance. Just ask the Germans and the Japanese.
I repeat, Iran is the key to the region, not Islamic State. And Iran can be dealt with, more or less swiftly and decisively because of its systemic vulnerabilities, its fixed address and its lack of sufficient air and sea power. This is not to say that a strike on Iran would be without cost, but the cost will be infinitely less if it is done now before Iran achieves nuclear weapons capability than later.President Obama's thoughts about strategy to the contrary, a nuclear amred Shi'ite block is not going to be something that can be worked with or 'contained.' Iran's demographics and plunging birthrate doesn't give Iran much time to put the Shi'ite hegemony they want together, and the Ayatollahs know it.
It is our failure to deal effectively with Iran, it's fomenting of terrorism and its rogue nuclear program that has caused the present crisis.If not for that, the Russians would not be a factor and Basher Assad would have had to come to terms with Syria’s Sunni majority. Instead, he had the means to expel millions of them.
Without the war in Syria, ISIS would never have received arms and training covertly from the Obama Administration, with the help of Turkey and Qatar. Without Iran, Iraq’s Shi'ites would have had to compromise with the Sunnis and Kurds and disaffected Sunnis would not have allied themselves with ISIS,Islamic State's former identity.
There is no victory possible in this war without taking Iran off the board.
The destruction of Islamic State and its affiliated jihadis is going to be more difficult, but again not beyond our capabilities. Again, let's remember that we are fighting an ideology. To start, were I president, I would insist on a formal declaration of war by Congress. To get that, I would have to make the case of Islamic State and it's allied militias constituting an imminent security risk to America, and then put forth the clear goal of its defeat and exactly what that would look like.
A Declaration of War clarifies exactly what a war is about, who the enemy is and gives a commander-in-chief certain powers that can come in handy where sedition, espionage and sabotage are concerned. And it puts congress on board in a much more decisive and straight forward way then foggy 'resolutions.' It says volumes about President Obama's arrogance and unsuitability as commander-in-chief that his plans reportedly include not consulting congress at all. But moving on...
After a significant amount of education of the home front and being nationally honest about openly naming our enemies and declaring war, the next step would be securing the home front, including our borders and a crackdown on certain organizations and websites that encourage Islamism and jihadi recruitment. For instance, in a real, declared war CAIR's campaign urging Muslims not to cooperate with the FBI can legally be labeled treason and dealt with accordingly.
Another important step involves the cooperation of certain bad actors in the region. Both Qatar and Turkey would need to be put on notice that any funding or arming of Islamic State and its allies would have serious consequences, with a genial nod in the general direction of Iran to emphasize the point. Trust me, they would understand.
Europe too would need to understand that cooperation in keeping their home grown jihadis under control and stopping them from going overseas to join Islamic State is a must. According to an ICM poll, support for Islamic State is at 7% in UK and at 16% in France (27% among what we'll call the cannon fodder years,18 -25). Those are astounding numbers,but considering how these countries have been importing Muslim immigrants for a decade, not entirely unexpected. We would probably be wise not to count on much in the way of help from the EU militarily, but most foreign countries can be coerced into cooperating in choking off jihadi recruits, jihad fundraising and finance by the simple expedient of letting them know that non-cooperation will lead to them being forbidden from doing any transactions with U.S. financial institutions or foreign financial institutions doing business with U.S. firms.It's the ultimate sanction.
For all the talk about 'leaving the dollar' and 'alternative financial structures', the financial pulse of the world still flows through New York City, because of the huge American consumer market if nothing else. President George W. Bush used this weapon successfully to bring down several banks who were financing jihad, one of the few thing he did right during his 'war on terror.'
We might also be surprised to find that Russia and China might be far more cooperative than we expect in taking out Islamic State and other assorted jihadi groups. China is dealing with a vicious jihadi problem among the Uighers in Western China, there have been a number of terrorist incidents and the Chinese people themselves are very aware of this menace. Russia has been fighting Muslims for 4 centuries, still has the Chechens to deal with and a growing demographics problem with the native Russian population shrinking due to low birthrates while Russia's Muslim birthrate continues to grow. Even the Russian Army has experienced a number of incidents involving violent riots and fighting between Muslim and native Russian soldiers. Whatever else you might think of him, Vladimir Putin is no fool.
The military campaign against the Islamic State itself would be a joint effort, most likely in conjunction with Israel, the Saudis, the GCE countries and Egypt.The destruction of Iran would have a decided effect on the demeanor both our friends and our enemies, and cooperation would probably be much more cohesive than after that. While I doubt we could expect much from Europe, Canada and Australia would likely send their forces in to help, and they'd be a very welcome and effective addition as anyone who served with them in Iraq or AfPak knows.
Let's look at what we'd be up against.
The Islamic State currently has something like 3 divisions worth of fighters according to the best estimates, something between 15,000 and 20,000 fighters.They're well armed, experienced and motivated fighters, with ManPads for use against helicopters, armor of both the Russian and American varieties and plenty of ammo and supplies thanks to the meltdown of the Iraqi Army and their recent victories in Syria.
They lack one major, vital component. Pilots. Islamic State has taken over several air bases, so they have planes and platforms...but they have no pilots.And Islamic State lacks to the topography to wage the sort of war the North Vietnamese did. There's no place to hide.
Modern war in the desert is fought over large, open and mostly flat topography. It depends on two components, armor and air power being used in conjunction. Armor and infantry without air cover is a recipe for disaster, as every modern army who has tried to fight that way in the Middle East could tell you.
The Saudis alone have something like 300 F-15s, more than enough to defend themselves and decimate an offensive by Islamic State if it comes to that.
So the Islamic State would more than likely attempt to wage war with these strategies: tying up our forces with guerrilla warfare and terrorism while using their domestic supporters in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere as well as on the home front to increase terrorism and sedition is almost a given. They might also end up reinforcing strong points in their territory the way Hamas did with Gaza City, figuring that the West would not be willing to inflict casualties if they use human shields. Needless to say, any garrison cities are going to have to be destroyed,with little regard for human shields or collateral damage if this last tactic is to be successfully defeated.
And finally, they may open up new fronts.Lebanon, for instance,where the Lebanese army and the Shi'ite forces of Hezbollah integrated with the Lebanese Army suffered a serious defeat on the Syrian border.
These boundaries change according to the fortunes of war, but The Islamic state currently controls something like 57,000 square miles (90,000 square kilometers) roughly the size of Jordan. Their territory includes big swaths of north and northeast Syria including include pieces of major cities like Aleppo and Raqqa, while in Iraq, the Islamic State's new caliphate stretches from the northern and northwestern parts of country to Fallujah,Mosul and just west of Kirkuk.
Their revenues are estimated at between $1 and $4 million per day. Most of the money either comes from donors or from criminal enterprises - selling stolen oil on the black market, 'taxes' and protection money in the areas where the Islamic State rules, carjackings, bank robberies, kidnappings for ransom, and the sale of narcotics and of sex slaves.
Because Islamic State is a quasi national body, the only place to wage war on them economically is by attempting to crack down on donors and suspect banks. But the Islamic State probably also utilizes the time honored hawala system, where money brokers transfer funds for a small commission using what amounts to an honor system, avoiding banks and promissory notes entirely.
The key to defeating The Islamic State is going to involve destroying its capacity to make war, not 'containment.' And a successful war against The Islamic State likely involves internalizing the lessons of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.
A man ahead of his time in many ways, General Sherman realized that the path to victory was not only in defeating the Confederate Army in the field but in destroying the Confederacy's material ability and psychological will to wage war.
His strategy involved moving his armies through the Southern heartland by using his superior numbers and firepower to consistently outflank and force back Confederate troops under General Joe Johnston and later General John Bell Hood...and destroying anything the enemy could possibly use. His army killed comparatively few civilians, but lived off the land and left a swathe of destruction in its path.
He refused to allow his army to be tied down occupying bases. After conquering Atlanta, the South's primary railroad and communications hub, he simply had the population evacuate to the Confederate lines, destroyed the railroads, ammunition and stores Hood's army had left behind along with anything else his own troops couldn't use (including a large part of the city itself) and continued to move east to Savannah on the Atlantic coast and then north through the Carolinas, using the same tactics. According to Johnston's own memoirs, Sherman's troops moved at the rate of something like a dozen miles a day, leaving virtually nothing that could be used by the Confederate armies behind them. This also forced the local populations to concentrate on survival and subsistence rather than providing either men, food or materials in support 'for the Cause.' It is a fact that there was very little if any guerrilla warfare behind Sherman's lines in the conquered territory.
Sherman eventually forced Johnston's army to make a stand in North Carolina at the Battle of Bentonville, where he decisively defeated Johnston's troops, and eventually took the surrender of Johnston and all the remaining confederate forces in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas on April 26, 1865, the largest surrender of Confederate troops during the war.
The lesson of General Sherman is an important one. Whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, The Islamic State has a lot more popular support in the Muslim world ( including Muslims in the West) than we realize. That mistake has to be brought home to them, and the sooner it is, the shorter the war will be, ultimately saving many lives.
With modern adaptations, (for instance, using air power supporting armor to force Islamic State's forces back) General Sherman's strategy would both destroy The Islamic State's capacity to wage war, bankrupt it by eliminating the finance and support it gets from its base and discrediting its ideology among the people it most needs to be discredited with - Muslims. It would end their psychological support for jihad, because the jihadist forces would be defeated and discredited in plain sight of the population.
In contrast to WWI, Germany in WWII suffered total and unmistakable defeat. Germans were able to see first hand the destruction and death that following National Socialism and Hitler had brought upon them. The lesson was brought home and thus the German people had the ability to rebuild and start with something like a clean slate.
There is one final thing we are going to need in order to win this war, and it's unfortunately something deeply lacking - leadership.
That's a problem the best strategy and armies available can't solve. President Barack Obama will almost certainly take none of the steps I've outlined above. Among other things, he sees Iran as an ally, a strategic partner. Even never Chamberlain never saw Hitler that way, and Chamberlain at least had a piece of paper with Hitler's signature on it. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry don't even have that much from Rouheni or the Ayatollah Khamenei.
Moreover, this president has downsized our military severely and forced skilled and battle hardened generals like David Petraeus, Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, formerly of Delta Force, Stanley A. McChrystal, Carter Ham, Army Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady, and Marine General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis among others into early retirement. Just a casual look at these men's records will tell you how big a loss that is.
How ever it falls, we will eventually be forced to fight the War on Jihad. Whether we fight it at a time of our choosing or of our enemy's is an open question at this point. But there's no doubt in my mind that it's coming.
What I've presented here is how I see us winning it.
