Back to Sun Tsu and The Art of War: Victory begins with a profound understanding of your adversary. With the Somali Islamists threatening to attack American shopping malls as they did in Nairobi last year, and the President refusing to utter the phrase "Islamic terrorism", it is no wonder that the portion of Americans who believe that we are winning this war is down to 15%.
This week's highlight, Rudy Giuliani's comments at a New York fundraiser for Scott Walker:
“I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that this President loves America. He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up to love this country.”
And Rudy's clarification:
“I don’t (see) this President as being particularly a product of African-American society or something like that. He isn’t. Logically, think about his background. . . The ideas that are troubling me and are leading to this come from communists with whom he associated when he was 9 years old” referring to close family friend Frank Marshall Davis, an outspoken communist. Add to that his Kenyan father and Indonesian step-father, Reverend Wright, Saul Alinsky, and Bill Ayers it is easy to see how the casual observer might come to that conclusion.
The usual suspects - CNN, the New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC - have gone crazy: obviously racist; a bitter old has-been; must be overtly rejected as a litmus test for any Republican presidential aspirant. Darrell Issa and Bobby Jindal have received a brief headline for supporting Rudy. Others have cautiously abstained.
But there really is something strange going on here - while reasonable people can disagree on how much socialism we should have, and his African-American constituency loves his and Eric Holder's anti-police rhetoric, Obama's handling of ISIS is a complete mystery. Consider:
- Only months before they took over a third of Syria and Iraq, President Obama - with all of the intelligence available to the Western world - called ISIS "the JayVees," continuing the narrative that the war on terror was in its final stages with the killing of Osama bin Laden.
- Obama insists on using the term ISIL (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) instead of ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which everyone else calls them.) Chuck Todd opines that calling them ISIS would require more definitive action in Syria. Whatever, now they have affiliates offering allegiance in Yemen, Libya, the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, and Afghanistan and they have taken to calling themselves the global Islamic State.
- In November former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking for a large portion of the military leadership, noted that President Obama had provided a mission of "degrading and destroying" ISIS without providing the necessary authorizations. Obama has subsequently asked for Congressional approval for his six-month old program of air support, but no fundamental change to operations in Iraq or Syria in a proposal that the Washington Post called "weak and unnecessary."
- In what even leftist commentator Bill Maher calls "Orwellian" language, Obama refuses to acknowledge recent violence in Iraq, Syria, Paris, Amsterdam, Canada, and elsewhere as Islamist, but offers the myth that it is "violent extremism" unrelated to Islam, and attributes the problem to poverty and a lack of opportunity - ignoring the fact that many recruits are coming from the West.
- Needing to do something, Obama last week convened a conference in Washington to discuss "violent extremism", inviting law enforcement leaders from around the world including the top cop from Russia - but not the head of the FBI. In Obama's headline opinion, ISIL may be committing atrocities, but so did the Christian Crusaders.
The reality is that we have two problems to live with for the next two years.
1. Giuliani is correct that Obama really does have a different world view. Read his autobiography, Dreams from My Father; watch Dinesh D'Souza's documentary, America. Wealth should be spread around; American society is unequal and racist; third world countries still suffer from European, now American, imperialism. In 2008 and 2012 a majority of people voted for change, his background was available to those who looked, and elections have consequences.
2. Obama is an incompetent executive. There are times when this is bad - the decision to not leave a residual force in Iraq; the trade of five Taliban leaders for an Army deserter; the insistence on trying war criminals in civilian courts; a disinterest in negotiating budgets with Congress; the "open borders" immigration policy; the roll-out of ObamaCare. But it does seem that the national security establishment is now forcing some good decisions - the new Secretary of Defense apparently will be able to keep a small fighting force in Afghanistan well after the previous deadline and in a combat role; there will apparently be a few "boots on the ground" in Iraq - not as many as the Iranians, but at least a few.
Obama will play out his game before the responsible adults can restore common sense. Hopefully that won't mean Hillary who, equally detached from reality, doesn't think it matters whether folks attacking US diplomats are terrorists or "just a bunch of guys out for a walk."
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There are two conflicting videos this week - Eric Clapper (the Director of National Intelligence) saying that 2014 was a record year for terrorist violence, and John Kerry (Secretary of State) saying that we are living in a period of reduced threats to Americans. Alice and the Looking Glass come to mind.
bill bowen - 2/27/15
AL--You nailed it! Today the President assured us he can prove that his solution to Iran is the best. In his 7th year of the Presidency he thinks we might get a deal in Switzerland. How far did they get in the 6 years since the line in the sand was crossed?
Posted by: Bill McCormick | March 03, 2015 at 05:30 PM
So, where is the surprise? Our president comes from a background of radicals, his only job experience is as a Community Organizer, he had the most liberal voting record in the Senate (more liberal than Ted Kennedy), and ran on a platform of "transforming America". He immediately placed Andy Stern (then Pres of SEIU, now at Columbia U.) in charge of Regulatory Affairs on the White House Staff, where Andy proudly stated that his job was to accomplish through Regulations whatever Obama could not achieve through Legislation. Just before the last election, Obama tells the Russians that his hands will no longer be tied after the election. We are there. There will be a non-stop drip of executive and Regulatory action (or inaction in case of the Pipe Line)to implement his cause, and reward his friends, until the last minute of his Presidency.
I have no doubts about the sincerity and consistency of Obama. But, I am astonished that the Republican Party leaders are so feckless that they ping/pong from "crisis" to "crisis", being outplayed on every shot by a far superior political strategist (Obama). If the Republicans do not develop some "savvy" on how to counter the grinding inroads of Obama's agenda,they will not deserve to win the next Presidential. It is bothersome that our great Country is being transformed into parity with Greece in part due to incompetence of Republican Party "leaders".
Posted by: Al B | February 27, 2015 at 06:50 PM
THIS WAR WILL NOT BE WON--it will be fought. There are wars that cannot and will not be won only fought. The war on drugs. The war on crime. The war against poverty. The leveling of the playing field. The war against Discrimination.--The list is endless. These wars are for the most part a struggle for strategies and resource allocation. For thousands of years the wars of religion have waged. This one is no different. It is just in the forefront of the world public view. GWB told us this war will be long and forever is very long. It is being fought globally. It is being fought in public--beheadings and nightly news. It is being fought invisibly with special force deployments, hidden implants in commercial products, intelligence systems and in cyberspace. The resources that the Western World is allocating to contain this threat is almost immeasurable. If there is anything that over the past 80 years has inhibited the civilized world from addressing poverty and human welfare it is WAR and the costs of limiting the outbreaks of war from escalating to the point of human extinction. Get used to these political arguments: the use of terror attacks will not end. And, the ability to defend against them and still fund societies priorities will be argued just as we trade off the budgets for firefighters versus education. When terror will actually threaten society is when, instead of sheep herders using the tactics, it is nuclear armed countries using the tactics through proxies directly against each other. Then we will test the Theory of Structured Deterrence which we hope guides nuclear powers from confronting each other. It is not a welcome thought when you assess our children's world.
Posted by: Bill McCormick | February 27, 2015 at 04:15 PM
HOW OFTEN can Republicans open the door to sound bites that lose the elections for them? Today Senator Orin Hatch when asked what he thought of the Republican Senate candidates for the Presidency answered by saying that Senators are not electable and recommending looking at the Governors. So much for Mario if he is nominated.
What is worse is Congressional Republicans allowing themselves to be painted as unwilling to fund Homeland Defense by tying it to the President's executive orders on Immigration. How many times do they have to fall into this trap always baited for them by the Far Right who can't seem to understand how to win any election bigger than a state.
Posted by: Bill McCormick | February 27, 2015 at 01:56 PM