How is it that the Administration is absolutely double-dog certain that Assad launched chemical weapons – in an area with no US presence, much less sovereign control – but after one full year still claims not to know what happened in Benghazi?
Last night, I caught a bit of Hugh Hewitt. His line is that we need to start convincing Congress to support some sort of action in Syria. Not so much to “support the President”, but to support some sort of decisive action against Syria.
Hugh’s a smart guy, and a great friend of mine and of the NARN broadcast.
But he’s wrong on this one. So are all the Republicans who are getting rolled into supporting this idea – Boehner, Cantor, McCain.
Hugh’s point is that we can’t stand by and watch children getting murdered, especially the ghastly murders we saw on YouTube last month. There’s scarcely a person among us, especially parents, who didn’t see that video and want to load up the B52s and go all Jack Bauer on the perps.
Whoever they were.
The Motives: We’re assured it was Assad – by the same intelligence services that have been covering the President’s butt for the last year in re Benghai, and that have a worse record than the Macalester football team. Others aren’t so sure it was Assad.
I’m sure not. Think about it. Assad was slowly but surely winning his war against the rebels; by most accounts, the rebels’ tide peaked last year, and has been ebbing. Armed by his Russian and Iranian benefactors, supported by the same parts of Syrian society that support the Mullahs’ in Iran – the not-so-photogenic rural crowd that doesn’t speak English as a second language and doesn’t make it onto NPR stories about life in Syria – Assad was slowly winning the war, block by bloody block. It wasn’t pretty – but “bloody and ugly” can serve a dictator just as well as fast and surgical.
There’s plenty of evidence that chemical weapons have been used many times in the Syrian Civil War, by both sides, in small, “surgical” attacks, away from the public eye.
So with the war swinging his direction, what was, exactly, Assad’s motivation to launch a large, carpet-bombing raid with Sarin in Ain Tarma, Zamalka and Jobar – densely-populated rebel-controlled suburbs of Damascus?
Where all of the world’s media are, ensuring the attack would receive (by police-state standards) saturation coverage?
Eggs For the Omelet: Now, the Assad family has all kinds of blood on its hands. There’ve been countless massacres under the Assad family’s control of Syria. One might surmise that all of them have been done at such a time and place and magnitude as to avoid drawing untoward Western scrutiny, since until the civil war started you probably had little to no idea of Syria’s human rights record. Right?
And then, suddenly, 1,400 dead people, 400 of them children, killed right where all the cameras area.
Assad isn’t above doing it – but what would be the point of bringing down the opprobium of the entire world just as the war is starting to swing his way?
But the extreme elements of the “rebels?” Killing their own people has been a treasured part of the extremist playbook for centuries. The French, Russian and Chinese revolutions are clogged with tales of extremists killing their own people, or allowing them to be killed, for propaganda purposes. It serves several purposes; it’s grade A grist for the propaganda mill, and if you do it right, you get rid of some of the “allies” that you’ll need to dispense with to solidify your own faction’s control (see Marat, the Mensheviks, Ernst Röhm). All of them – especially the children – are eggs that regrettably must be broken to make the omelet.
I think the case against the “rebels” makes a lot more sense than the one against Assad.
Politics:Leaving aside the actual incident? Obama is playing the GOP for fools. And they’re obliging.
If it succeeds, of course, Obama – aided by his compliant Praetorian Guard in the media – will engineer a Caesarian triumph. The NYTimes will proclaim that it’s Obama’s victory. That’d happen whether he gets Congressional approval or, for that matter, if he’d disregarded Congress and charged in with guns blazing.
By seeking Congressional approval – and going through the charade of being seen to “want” GOP buy-in – Obama is setting up the GOP up to take the blame when the action turns into a fiasco. As it pretty likelly will – more below.
This, as Obamacare spirals into full debacle mode, as the IRS and Benghazi and NSA and Fast and Furious scandals are begging for attention, and as the economic “recovery” starts to look more and more like a high-functioning coma.
The Fiasco Within: George Patton summed up the goal of war pretty well. You kill the enemy as fast and as violently and as constantly as you can, so that the war ends as soon as possible, with victory. You know your objective, and you kill whatever it takes to achieve it, because it’s in acheiving the objective that the war ends with as many of your people as possible alive.
And I picture Patton – or really any soldier worthy of the uniform – looking at Obama’s puling, PR-focus-grouped “plan”, replete with “sending messages” and “degrading capabilities” and “punishing the regime”, and puking his guts out with revulsion.
You do not risk American lives to “send messages”.
You do not parlay American blood and treasure to rap a gangster thug across the knuckles and mess with his networks.
You do either, or both, to win the war, provided that the war was worth fighting in the first place; that American security and interests were genuinely, tangibly threatened, in a war that makes and keeps this country safer.
So why are we flirting with an action that could open a huge regional war – and blow up what’s left of our economy to boot? What’s the objective that’s worth so much American blood and treasure?
Even our military has a hard time explaining. And that’s a huge problem.
On the other hand, some of our greatest, most rational minds on the subject of military action – Victor Davis Hanson among ’em – can spell out the case against intervention in so many ways you’re tempted to say “enough with the overkill”.
Wag The Boehner: This action is the tail wagging the dog. I strongly suspect that it’s an epic deception – and whether it is or isn’t, it’s being manipulated by the Administration for political purposes, to give a war-weary public something else to hold against Republicans in 2014, just in time to give Obama control of the House.
And John Boehner and Eric Cantor are aiding and abetting it.
Are they doing it for all the right reasons – to avenge the dead children. Who doesn’t want to keep the children safe? Everyone!
Sure. And so they’ll go down in history – having been brutally manipulated into a colossal mistake, for all the right reasons.
The Nobel Peace-Prize-winning Obama Administration has been beating the war drums like John Bonham has risen from the dead and wants to get through the gig so he can trash the hotel already
And still we’ve seen no sign of Madea Benjamin.
Or Cindy “Absolute Moral Authority” Sheehan.
Or Code Pink.
Their relatives are starting to get nervous.
If you have any information as to their whereabouts, please call 1-976-PEACECREEPS.
Thanks.
Say what you will about Dubya. He spent like a lib, after all.
And say whatever you’d like about Iraq. Well-advised? Perhaps not, in retrospect.
But when we went to war with Iraq, we did it with 40 other nations and the UN.
(SCENE: The cockpit of a US Navy F-18 Super Hornet strike fighter. The plane, loaded with JDAM precision-guided bombs, flies through the clear desert skies as the camera closes in on the PILOT).
PILOT: “Cobra Two Five, On Station”
CONTROLLER (flying in an AWACS plane over the eastern Mediterranean): “Welcome to Syria, Cobra Two Five. We’ve got an air support call from “ABU”. Go ahead, Abu”
ABU: (mildly distorted, on the radio) “This is Abu Fuad Hadji Al-Ramshish. We are trying to advance through Al-Khebab, and there is a group of government tanks blocking the way”.
PILOT: “Copy, I’m five minutes out…hey, wait. Abu Fuad Hadji Al-Ramshish?
ABU: “That is correct”
PILOT: “Didn’t a bunch of Marines call me in on an ground support strike against you near Fallujah back in 2005? Weren’t you an Al Quaeda commander?”
ABU: “Why yes! I thought you sounded familiar, Cobra Two Five! Call sign…er…Mobster?”
PILOT: “Er, yes. Wow. So you’ve switched…”
ABU: “Oh, merciful heavens, no. Your bomb missed me, I left Iraq, I got promoted, did a tour in Afghanistan…”
PILOT: “Hey, me too…”
ABU: “…and now I’m here”.
PILOT: “Well, I’ll be”.
ABU: “Small world, isn’t it?”
PILOT: “And now I’m flying air support for…uh…”
ABU: “For me, an Al Quaeda operative. That is correct.”
PILOT: “Huh. OK. Well, Cobra Two Five, I’m at the IP”
CONTROLLER: “Weapons Free, Cobra Five, clear to go hot”
ABU: “Good shooting, Mobster. And then die, American infidel pig dog”.
Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit:
Hmm. Seeking a coalition of the willing to take down an Arab Ba’athist dictator over WMDs. Where have I heard this before?
How many times do we need to repeat it?
At least so far Obama’s copied the parts of Bush’s administration that actually worked. Now he’s treading into “squib” territory.
The left-leaning media – meaning “most of the media” – is tittering and cavorting about the sparks that’ve been flying between New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. “GOP CIVIL WAR”, they bellow, as if it’s something new.
It’s not.
There are three different definitions of “Conservative” in American political life:
So the Christie/Paul kerfuffle isn’t just a battle between candidates; it’s a battle between fundamentally different schools of American conservatism.
And after reading both of them, it’s clear; they’re both right.
Christie Was Right – Libertarians, when it comes to national security, frequently are lost in la-la land. I’ve long since lost count of the Ron Paul supporters who sincerely believe that Iran would be a great friend of the US if we just acted nice to them (and left the Israelis to their own devices with no further ado). Not a few libertarians are just as lost in the fog as Vietnam-era anti-war liberals when it comes to one of history’s great facts; societies that practice war eat societies that would eschew it for breakfast.
Sure – the relatively peaceful, relatively liberal democracies of the West did in fact eventually defeat the warmongering totalitarian Nazis, to pick an example – but only at staggering cost and dislocation.
If you accept that war happens, and that sometimes those wars come to us against our national will, and that it’s better to win them than lose them, then some form of effort to gain intelligence about ones’ enemies’ intentions is one of those things that one trades for, among other things, casualties. And don’t kid yourself – intelligence-gathering has been an incredibly intrusive force in Americans’ lives in the pasts; FDR ordered his intelligence and counter-intelligence services to read every single piece of snail-mail, every telegraph, and eavesdrop on every single phone conversation entering and leaving the United States during WWII.
And like winning wars, staying a jump ahead of your enemies is an ugly, messy thing; it’s the sausage you really don’t want to see getting made. Like fighting crime – there’s a trade-off between liberty and effectiveness. A perfect police state might, hypothetically, be crime-free (at the cost of being, in essence, a criminal state itself); a pure libertarian state might be “Crime-free” in that, having no government, it recognizes no crime.
Say what you will about libertarian purism; if you stop short of anarchy, then defending your society from those who’d harm you is the most direct justification to have a government in the first place. It’s one of the few really good reasons to have a government; without defense (and courts to enforce contracts), really, what truly useful purpose do they serve that the private sector doesn’t do better? If government can’t keep the people safe from foreign aggression, why have it in the first place? Even libertarians that aren’t anarchists largely agree on this, right?
If you think you prevent airplans from crashing into skyscrapers, or underwear bombers from blowing your kids out of the sky as they come home from London, happens by just squirting good-will at the world, you are completely nuts.
But Wait – Rand Paul Is Also Right! – But then you’re also nuts if you believe that government doesn’t take a mile for every inch you give it, or that “Defending the Nation” is a static, unchanging thing.
All of you national-security hawks who say “The FISA Courts, into which was have no visibiliity and into which there is exceptionally limited oversight, are ample protection of due process for Americans” have apparently forgotten the IRS scandal. Or Fast and Furious. Or the trampling of the Fourth Amendment, or the growing militarization of the police.
In short, law and order conservatives who are pollyannaish about government are no less addled than those who are pollyannaish about the role of unilateral good-will in keeping the world at peace.
“We’re from the government and we’re here to help” is no less a joke coming from the NSA than it is from the Fish and Wildlife Service. Just as liberals would suspend the Bill of Rights to cut CO2 emissions, some conservatives – especially the ones that are comfortable with “the System”, and there is nobody who can grow more comfortable with “The System” than a federal prosecutor like Christie – are perfectly fine saying “would you trade the Fourth Amendment for getting that drug dealer out of your neighborhood?”
As to defense? The libertarians are wrong, we need a strong one. But the definition of “a strong defense” changes, and changes radically, over time. Is it the right time to engage the American military in an endless counterinsurgency that might be better suited to intelligence and proxies to carry out (uh oh, now the Libertarians and Liberals will get upset) when the Russians and the Chicoms are taking the world in a much more convention direction again?
The point being that re-assessing what the nation’s strategy actually is, and how the military forwards it, and what kind of military we need to do the job isn’t “anti-military”.
Above all? Due process needs to be more than just an inconvenient speed bump for the authorities – or what’s the point of pretending to be a “representative Republic” anyway?
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The Benghazi story keeps getting weirder.
Notice the FBI is on the job. The first 5 suspects have been identified, but not enough evidence has been gathered to try them in court. Enough exists to kill them if the Big O says so, but not enough to capture and try them. Is it just me, or is this administration’s War on Terror policy bewildering?
The guy who made that Mohammad video must have been the greatest filmmaker of all time, to provoke this much response with one low-budget flick.
Joe Doakes
And the “Poles” who attacked the radio station at Gleiwitz must have had some serious momentum to have started all that fuss by themselves.
Just think how much worse this story would be if Britons had the means and legal right to resist violent crime.
When American gun-grab advocates talk about the UK’s crime rate, they gloss over the fact that general violent crime in the UK Is higher than in the US.
Someone tell Representative Martens.
…for all time the quaint, pollyannaish notion that the “elite” media exist as anything but a Praetorian Guard for the Democrat party.
CBS News has been busted gundecking coverage of Benghazi that afflicts the Administration narrative
The biggest Benghazi-related story that took place outside of the House Oversight Committee’s hearing room today is this item in Politico, regarding CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. She’s the reporter who famously drew White House officials’ profane ire over her unapologetic pursuit of the Fast & Furious scandal story; now she’s apparently facing searing criticism from another source: Her own bosses. Why? Because she’s been covering the Benghazi story too aggressively
Read the whole thing.
If Bohner and Cantor don’t get a select committee on Benghazi going yesterday, then what the hell is the point of even having an opposition party?
Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed me a link to this piece, by Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club in re not so much the police response to the Boston Marathon bombing, but our newfound cultural non-response to all sorts of violent threats:
Read the whole thing, natch – but here’s the money quote;
We focus on things because it is prohibited to focus on people. The TSA looks for things — scissors, liquids, shoes, etc — but it doesn’t stop the underwear bomber. People now want to blame “access to guns” for the Tsarnaevs. But it would be uncouth to ask about what they heard from their imam or their teachers.
This is in contrast to the “El Al” system of screening. They look at the man first. “Who are you?” is in many ways more important than “How long are your scissors?” But since we can’t inquire into the man, might as well look into the scissors.
As time passes, more and more acquaintances will come forward saying, “Well, come to think of it he did say this and that and this. …” It will transpire that many knew. Many suspected.
But no one came forward. Why not? Because the system doesn’t do things. It doesn’t do people. It doesn’t do mental strife. But the system has really nifty swords. Armored vehicles, dogs, drones, thermal scanners, .50 cal sniper rifles. Heck, there might even be a minigun or two out in Watertown. Betcha they work real good too. Pity they might have to be used in those neighborhoods.
It’s easier to clean up messes afterwards (and creates more unionized public works jobs!) than to risk the lawsuits involved in getting it right in the first place.
One Boston Marathon bombing suspect dead, one on the lam, one cop dead.
Black hat (who David Sirota hopes is named “Billy Bob Bodine”) killed in shooting. White hat (Sirota hopes it’s “Todd Thorstenson”) still on the loose.
First responders; on the off chance you see this, stay safe out there.
It’s best to try to engage your opponents’ best arguments; that makes your own arguments stronger.
David Sirota’s Salon piece, “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American“, is not one of our opponents’ better arguments:
As we now move into the official Political Aftermath period of the Boston bombing — the period that will determine the long-term legislative fallout of the atrocity — the dynamics of privilege will undoubtedly influence the nation’s collective reaction to the attacks. That’s because privilege tends to determine: 1) which groups are — and are not — collectively denigrated or targeted for the unlawful actions of individuals; and 2) how big and politically game-changing the overall reaction ends up being.
According to Sirota, “white privilege” has prevented white males from coming under the sort of scrutiny that, say, Arabs have for ghastly crimes.
This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.
Likewise, in the context of terrorist attacks, such privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as “lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.
Yeah, it could be the “white privilege”.
Or it could be the fact that nearly all of the Arab mass murderers – from Major Hassan up to the 9/11 hijackers – have actually been members of, or allegedly explicit sympathizers with, major extranational military/terror movements, while the white males have represented tiny fringes of tiny fringes of our society:
By contrast, even though America has seen a consistent barrage of attacks from domestic non-Islamic terrorists, the privilege and double standards baked into our national security ideologies means those attacks have resulted in no systemic action of the scope marshaled against foreign terrorists.
“Consistent barrage?”
The examples Sirota gives (drawn from the lefty idiotblog Crooks and Liars – the only blog in the world that can’t shake its head at what dolts the Daily Kos diary writers are) are largely lone crazies, many of them implicated in “white supremacy” by the thinnest of threads; some of them (John Patrick Bedell) are actually lefties; the article itself considered the Gabby Giffords shooting a “terror attack”.
And beyond that?
In fact, it has been quite the opposite — according to Darryl Johnson, the senior domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, the conservative movement backlash to merely reporting the rising threat of such domestic terrorism resulted in DHS seriously curtailing its initiatives against that particular threat.
Sirota is apparently writing to an audience of the addled; DHS Secretary Napolitano’s “reporting” (along with her camp followers at the Southern Poverty Law Center) was less “reporting” than “releasing a list of groups that opposed the Democrats”. The right was correct to mock both “efforts”.
Is there an element of “racism” in the way our society treats crime? Sure – although the term might better be called “we-ism”. Everyone in the world is a “we-ist”; they’re more tolerant of people who look, speak and act more like them, and less tolerant of those who don’t. It’s true of everyone; middle-class black professionals are twitchy around urban Latinos; alpaca-clad Volvo-driving fashionably-gray NPR-listening upper-middle-class white liberals get nervous around leather-wearing Bud-drinking bikers. Our society is still largely white, and the male half of that majority is, well, male; to the extent that the idea of a “white male majority” includes both David Sirota and, well, me, I guess you could say “we” are more forgiving of people like “us”, whoever they are.
So you could chalk this up to “white privilege”.
Or maybe to the fact that so many Arabs who’ve attacked us have expressed sympathy with the goals of the groups that attacked us in 9/11 (notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of American Arabs are no less American than anyone in Bemidji), while the vast majority of “white terror” suspects have indeed been lone wolves (I mean, if you’re going by evidence rather than Sirota’s fervent, nearly evidence-free wish that it were otherwise) might have something to do with it.
As this is written, news reports indicate two bomb blasts along the route of the Boston Marathon have put over 100 in the hospital.
A suspect – reportedly a 20-year-old Saudi national – has reportedly been detained. Reports say the FBI and DHS are checking him for ties to pro-life, Second Amendment or tax protest groups.
UPDATE: The “Saudi national” story came from CBS, and may have been wrong. We’ll see.
Clinton Romesha becomes the fourth living Medal of Honor recipient, for his actions at the ill-fated Forward Operating Base Keating:
“I’m feeling conflicted with this medal I now wear,” Romesha told reporters outside the West Wing after the ceremony. “The joy comes from recognition for us doing our jobs as soldiers on distant battlefields, but is countered by the constant reminder of the loss of our battle buddies, my battle buddies, my soldiers, my friends.”
Eight U.S. soldiers were killed in the fighting and other 22 wounded, including Romesha, who was peppered with shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade in the hip, arm and neck. But he fought through his wounds to help lead other soldiers to safety, defend the burning camp from encroaching Taliban fighters, personally taking out at least 10, and retrieve the bodies of the fallen Americans.
And although he’s not a native, I’m going to give a homer shout-out:
Romesha grew up in the small town of Lake City, Calif., and deployed out of Fort Carson, Colo., fulfilling a tradition of military service shared by his grandfather, his father and his brothers. He now lives in Minot, N.D., with his wife and three children and works in the oil fields.
That’ll be a conversation starter in Minot.
I’d hope to run into the sergeant next time I’m in Minot – but I’d imagine he’ll be busy.
I listened to Hillary!’s little outburst in front of Congress yesterday – her “What difference does it make?” outburst, and I thought “Madame de Torquemada just set feminism back 50 years”. She could not have played the “stop picking on me, I’m a girl” card any more blatantly.
James Taranto:
[WI Senator Ron] Johnson pressed her about the administration’s conflicting explanations for the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed the ambassador and three other Americans. “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans,” said the secretary snappishly to the senator. “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.”
So it’s “our job to figure out what happened” but it doesn’t make a difference what happened? Huh? What would we do without rhetorical questions? We suppose we’d answer them, as Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin does:
“The answer to her question is clear. An administration that sought, for political purposes, to give the American people the idea that al-Qaeda had been “decimated” and was effectively out of commission had a clear motive during a presidential campaign to mislead the public about Benghazi. The fact that questions are still unanswered about this crime and that Clinton and President Obama seem more interested in burying this story along with the four Americans that died is an outrage that won’t be forgotten.”
Tobin has more faith in the media-addled American attention span than I do – but we’ll certainly do our best.
Especially if she runs for president in 2016. As we watched this exchange, it occurred to us that Mrs. Clinton was back in a familiar role, and an ironic one for someone who is supposed to be a feminist icon. Once again, she was helping the most powerful man in the world dodge accountability for scandalous behavior.
I’m trying to imagine the outrage in the media had Ronald Reagan (or his SecState, George Schultz) said “what difference does it make?” after the Marines were blown up in Beirut.
Hillary’s bit about the 3AM phone call was one of the best lines in the 2008 Democrat primary. About Obama, it’s been resoundingly true. But I’m guessing that if a President Clinton got awoken by a 3AM phone call, “what difference does it make?” is not the answer the country’ll need, either.
With French and African forces bearing down on Islamist rebels, the question arises – is Europe lying to itself about their commitment to Mali?
As Barack Obama declared that “a decade of war is now ending,” French warplanes hit the positions of Islamists who didn’t get the memo.
The re-taking of two Malian towns signified immediate progress for French forces fighting to prevent a Somalia-like failed state in what foreign policy experts call “the largest al Qaeda-controlled space in the world.” The instability of Mali predates NATO’s Libyan intervention but was significantly exasperated by the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. Malian fighters, both for and against Gaddafi, flowed into Libya as fast as arms flowed back into Mali once the major fighting was done (to say nothing of the present violence in Libya).
The French intervention has gained tepid material support from the U.S. and NATO allies (with onerous financial strings attached), showcasing once again the limitations of “leading from behind” – including placing a far from resolute President at the heart of the fighting in the shape of French President François Hollande:
It was supposed to be a quick and dramatic blow that would send the Islamists scurrying back to their hide-outs in northern Mali, buying time for the deployment of an African force to stabilize the situation. Instead it is turning into what looks like a complex and drawn-out military and diplomatic operation that Mr. Hollande’s critics are already calling a desert version of a quagmire, like Vietnam or Afghanistan…
Mr. Hollande, who has a reputation for indecisiveness, has certainly taken on a difficult task. The French are fighting to preserve the integrity of a country that is divided in half, of a state that is broken. They are fighting for the survival of an interim government with no democratic legitimacy that took power in the aftermath of a coup.
Hollande has continued the post-WWII French tradition of an obtuse foreign policy. Despite saying almost nothing on foreign policy during his campaign, Hollande has at once suggested that France will leave Afghanistan, NATO and yet invade Syria. It’s little wonder than that France’s stated position on Mali is equally confusing. An objective of “total conquest” (a charged word when fighting Muslims; or so we’re told when a Republican President says something similar) sounds aggressive and determined. Instead, it represents something entirely different:
Camille Grand, a defense expert and director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, said the French objective is “to return to the status quo ante, where those Islamist groups are cornered in the gray zones on the borders, with limited ability to act and not controlling population centers, where it is difficult for them to make raids or take hostages.”
Those goals, he said, are “definitely something that makes sense from a military standpoint. But “if the ultimate objective is to eradicate the presence of radical Islam in the Sahel,” he warned, “it probably won’t happen; it’s a bridge too far for anyone.”
The French offensive is designed to push the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) back to their southern stronghold – a sort of Malian 38th parallel. Considering there might be as few as 3,000 Tuareg fighters for the MNLA, the French objective might be quickly reached. What remains less likely is that a French victory along these lines will accomplish anything. The MNLA, or an offshoot, will likely just regroup and march north again unless Malian government soliders, which have significantly outnumbered the MNLA, can stand their ground. Talk of French or NATO training of Malian troops sounds promising, but after a decade-plus of a similar commitment to Afghanistan, the historical results of such training don’t look promising.
So we’re left with Libya – the sequel. Neither Europe, or NATO, or the U.S. have the stomach to resolve the conflict nor stand aside and watch as Mali falls and al-Qaeda gains a new forward base for attacks abroad. The moves of the French and others thus far provide limited political or military risk, but also limited to nonexistent gains. Again, like Libya, if Europe or the West want their preferred side to prevail, they’ll likely have to do most of the fighting themselves. Considering the nomadic Tuareg opposition (literally translated into “abandoned by God”), are solid guerilla tacticians, a long-term French ground war will inevitably bring French casualties. The intervention is politically popular in France – for now. What happens if that changes? The outlook isn’t good when the man in charge is known as “Flanby,” a type of flan dessert.
The lack of U.S. leadership in the matter isn’t going unnoticed in Europe either. In the choice of victory or defeat in Mali, the American choice seems to be to vote ‘present.’
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The State Department’s internal report is out and as a result, Congress is rushing to fortify the barn door.
What I still want to know is: whose idea was it to tone down American consulate security to present a more welcoming, more open appearance to Mid-East locals to enhance America’s image in the world? Who decided Benghazi should be a temporary facility, and an unguarded one at that?
The “welcoming appearance” theory of diplomacy always held the danger our diplomats could be attacked because we intentionally did not cower behind machine-gun toting Marines. But if it was the correct theory, then Benghazi was an unfortunate incident but not cause to fortify and arm up. The fact we’re abandoning the theory makes it look as if we’re rebuking the proponent of the theory and wasn’t that . . . President Obama himself?
So, the President’s idea was wrong: dangerously, stupidly and perhaps even criminally so? Is that what we’re saying? Cuz that’s certainly what it sounds like we’re saying, just not in so many words. Spell it out for me. Was Barak Obama’s signature diplomatic initiative flat wrong?
Joe Doakes
Como Park.
That’d be a great question for our Secretary of State.
If we can ever find her.
Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:
Even after the Cease-Fire brokered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took effect (at a cost of nearly $50 billion in bribes to various tribes), Palestinians were still shooting missiles into Israel.
You keep using that word “Cease-fire” Hillary. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
If this is what “extending the hand of friendship to Muslims” accomplishes, we might as well go back to Bush’s Cowboy Diplomacy. At least our embassies were safe.
Joe Doakes
Como Park
It’s a rhetorical cease-fire. One that both sides – the US and Hamas, the ones the Administration really cares about – can wave about at the UN.
Contestant: “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”
Trebek: “Correct, and you have the board…”
For the benefit of our Commander in Chief, a look at a recent, modern, counterinsurgency use of the bayonet – which is still issued as standard equipment to infantry around the world:
In May 2004, approximately 20 British troops in Basra were ambushed and forced out of their vehicles by about 100 Shiite militia fighters. When ammunition ran low, the British troops fixed bayonets and charged the enemy. About 20 militiamen were killed in the assault without any British deaths.
Soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders – the “Argylls” – who carried out a successful bayonet charge in Basra in 2004, killing 20 Mahdi without casualties. Although to be fair to President Obama, they were not on horseback.
The bayonet charge appeared to succeed for three main reasons. First, the attack was the first of its kind in that region and captured the element of surprise. Second, enemy fighters probably believed jihadist propaganda stating that coalition troops were cowards unwilling to fight in close combat, further enhancing the element of surprise. Third, the strict discipline of the British troops overwhelmed the ability of the militia fighters to organize a cohesive counteraction.
I can imagine a Scottish squad leader muttering “That’s jooost crrrrezzy enoof to wairk”.
Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:
Holy Cow, it turns out Hillary Clinton actually DID win the election and actually HAS been running the government while Obama golfed.
I Knew It!!
Joe Doakes
Como Park
Truly a profile in courage.
On Obama’s part, naturally.
Lara Logan shreds the Administration’s lies on Afghanistan:
Remember all those years Democrats looked their knowing looks and said “but Bush hasn’t gotten Bin Laden!”, concluding with a smug grin like a toddler who’d just filled a diaper. We’d reply “if they killed Bin Laden tomorrow, the war wouldn’t end” – but they were too busy showing the diaper, apparently, to pay attention.
Sometimes it sucks to be right.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
I’ve changed my mind. Benghazi was not a terrorist attack.
Terrorism is a tactic. The purpose of terrorism is to create terror in a population. The intended result is the population capitulates to the aggressor rather than continue to suffer terrifying attacks.
More below the jump.
You are currently browsing the archives for the War On Terror category.
