Romney Blasts Obama’s Foreign Policy

President-pending Mitt Romney spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in Nevada this week, and he gave a rather devastating critique of Obama’s foreign policy. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.

Romney began by laying out his standard for what our foreign policy should be, and he did this by ripping into Obama. Consider this the “Romney Doctrine”:

Has the American economy recovered?

Has our ability to shape world events been enhanced, or diminished?

Have we gained greater confidence among our allies, and greater respect from our adversaries?

And, perhaps most importantly, has the most severe security threat facing America and our friends, a nuclear-armed Iran, become more or less likely?

Bingo! That’s perfect foreign policy! That is exactly the test any President should apply to all foreign policy decision. Not coincidentally, this test also proves to be a devastating takedown of Obama’s failures because Obama cannot answer yes to any of these points.

Romney then got specific. He noted that Obama’s policies have strangled the recovery, which weakens America’s ability to project its power. He claimed Obama exposed the military to unjustifiable cuts which threaten the military. He attacked Obama for mishandling national secrets, which endangers our policies and our people. And he pointed out that Obama has “given trust where it is not earned, insult where it is not deserved, and apology where it is not due.” All true.

When our economy is weak, we stop being the shining beacon to the rest of the world. Our enemies see us as in decline and decide the opportunity to strike is at hand. Countries like China have used Obama’s term to bury us in debt, to push for the elimination of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, to become much more aggressive in Asia, to build up and modernize their military, to hoard resources, and to begin the unchecked economic colonization of Africa.

Our military has been stretched to the limit since 2001 and not only has Obama done little to help them, he used their budget as a bargaining chip. To get a budget deal, which the Democrats now refuse to perform, he proposed ripping a trillion dollars in cuts from the military. I don’t believe the military budget is inviolate, but that is obscene. Moreover, he’s politicized the military at all turns, from don’t ask don’t tell, to using the military as a campaign prop, to ignoring abuses by our frenemies like Karzai in Afghanistan while punishing and neglecting the Americans who risk their lives to prop up these failed policies. There is even a report out today that the Army stopped an investigation into a corrupt and horrific hospital in Afghanistan (the Dawood National Military Hospital) in 2010 because the report would have been issued too close to the election for Obama’s comfort.

This administration has been horrible about protecting secrets as well, which is ironic as they ruthlessly go after whistleblowers. They fed classified information to Hollywood so they could make films that are mere propaganda for Obama’s campaign. And now they’ve been leaking classified documents to the New York Times, e.g. documents about US cyber attacks against Iran and “kill lists” Obama has authorized. Even the Democrats admit these leaks are coming from the White House. Said Sen. Diane Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday, “I think the White House has to understand that some of this is coming from their ranks.” Democrat Pat Caddell has actually accused Obama National Security Adviser Tom Donilon of being the primary leaker.

Frankly, this has all been done to make Obama look tougher. And of this, Romney told the VFW: “[the administration] betrays our national interest [and] compromises our men and women in the field.” Again, all true.

Finally, Obama has been harsh to our friends and weak to our enemies. As Romney put it, he “abandoned our friends in Poland and the Czech Republic” and he kowtowed to Russia and China. And Romney said this about Israel:

The people of Israel deserve better than what they have received from the leader of the free world. And the chorus of accusations, threats, and insults at the United Nations should never again include the voice of the President of the United States.

And don’t forget, Obama tried to support a coup in Honduras against our friends in favor of a Chavez-like dictator wannabe. He’s been rude to Britain and India. He flooded Mexico with illegal guns. He stopped a needed Canadian pipeline. He’s been useless on the Euro crisis and useless in the Middle East. Heck, he didn’t even placate the world’s sensibilities by closing Gitmo. And he lost control over environmental issues to the BRICS and he managed to make pirating super profitable.

Obama’s record is a disaster. He’s made everything worse and achieved nothing. Is the US better off than it was four years ago? Hardly. But let’s let Romney sum this all up:

This is very simple: if you do not want America to be the strongest nation on earth, I am not your President. You have that President today.

Damn straight!

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Biting The Hand That Fed You

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has shown his perfidy on more than one occasion in the past. He has relied for monetary and military support from the United States. He has also relied on the fact that two administrations have treated Afghanistan as a partner rather than as a conquered nation. Unlike the Emperor of Japan and the Nazi high command at the end of WW II, Karzai has been handled as if he were a co-conqueror.

Without the cooperation of the United States government, Karzai has been treating with the very Taliban who destroyed Afghanistan and paved the way for Al Qaeda to launch its attacks on the Unites States and its allies. And now, in the face of the Obama administration's cut-and-run disengagement policy, Karzai has been emboldened to choose sides in a possible confrontation between America and Pakistan.

Many of the legislators in Kabul have issued stronger condemnations of Karzai's embrace of the Taliban and Pakistan than our own government. Karzai's exact statement was: "If fighting starts between Pakistan and the United States, we are beside Pakistan. If Pakistan is attacked and the people of Pakistan need Afghanistan's help, Afghanistan will be there with you." The statement was made on a Pakistani television station this past Saturday.

Both the American government and the legislators in Kabul have been saying repeatedly that Pakistan is providing sanctuary to militant groups which have launched attacks in and on Afghanistan. Factions of the Taliban and Al Qaeda associates have been camping out on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, executing incursions into Afghanistan on a regular basis. The Afghan interior minister blamed the sanctuary and Pakistani encouragement of militancy for the recent assassination of former Afghan president Burhanuddin.

The United States has never made any statement that would appear to suggest a war between the U.S. and Pakistan. But Karzai latched onto the statement by American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that said that if Islamabad is unwilling to take the fight to Al Qaeda and the Taliban/Pakistani terrorist group Haqqani, the U.S. would show them how to rid Pakistan of safe havens for the terrorists. Rather than wait for further diplomatic developments, Karzai hopped in as if the U.S. had just given Pakistan the ultimatum of total surrender or war. And he has chosen his ally in advance.

Despite clear language from the State Department saying that the U.S. has no intention of deploying ground troops in Pakistan, both the U.S. and NATO have been conducting operations designed to disrupt terrorist operations in Kabul and along the Afghan border with Pakistan. Some of those missions have utilized drones to take out Haqqani and Taliban strongholds in Pakistan. The increasingly-Islamist Pakistani government has expressed hurt feeling and some anger over the drone attacks, but is not about to go to war with the United States over them. In fact it seems that to protect their own rear ends, they decry the surgical strikes while secretly hoping the U.S. will do the job they're afraid to do.

So the question becomes, is Karzai serious or is he just maneuvering to polish his credentials with the Taliban, Haqqani, and major factions in the Pakistani government? It's easy to take sides in a war which is highly unlikely ever to occur. Karzai's recent overtures to Pakistan's mortal enemy India adds extra confusion to the formula. But people who play with other people's fire tend to get burned. It is entirely unnecessary to point out the hypocrisy and ingratitude of a leader who is in power thanks largely to the United States and its military. As the old saying goes, Karzai has all the fine traits of a bedbug except loyalty.

I suppose my next question is, if this continues through the final American withdrawal in 2014, how long before the Taliban and to a lesser-extent Haqqani string Karzai up in the central square in Kabul? I know I won't be conducting memorial services for him.

Note: On Monday, Karzai tried to talk his way out of his self-created mess. He claimed that his remarks were "taken out of context" and "mistranslated." If he ever needs a new job, he could move to the United States and become a non-apology apology writer for politicians caught with their pants down and their hands in the cookie jar. Karzai doesn't realize that with instant global communications and the worldwide web, it's just no longer possible to make a major policy statement to a particular audience and say the opposite to another audience without getting caught. Likewise, nobody with an IQ above room temperature is buying into the "mistranslation" baloney.
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With Friends Like Pakistan . . .

Admiral Mike Mullen recently testified at the Senate Armed Services Committee that our "ally" Pakistan has allowed the Taliban-supported faction Haqqani to become nothing less than an arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. This testimony comes from the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It wasn't very politic, and it has caused quite a stir.

We have been buoying up our Pakistani “allies” for years, often to the detriment of our much firmer ally, India. The Afghanistan War has opened wounds we either didn’t know we had or thought were healing. Pakistan makes no pretense of being a purely secular state. After all, its capital is Islamabad (“the abode of Islam”). But we counted on the fact that after the first round of Islamists were ousted from power decades back, the military would suppress the major jihadist impulses of the government and the Muslim clerics. They even elected a woman as head of state. It worked for awhile and up to a point.

The war in Afghanistan, a nation which borders Pakistan, has ripped the bandage off the long-festering wound. After successfully driving the largest groups of Taliban out of Afghanistan, we quickly discovered they were being given safe harbor and assistance in Pakistan, particularly the border province of Waziristan. Waziristan is comprised of two administrative districts, North and South, but for all intents and purposes, South Waziristan is an independent state under the very loose administrative control of the central Pakistani government.

Both parts of the province are comprised largely of warring tribes. In the South, the population is largely comprised of Waziris, Mahasuds and Burki. They are not ethnically close to the Pakistani Punjabis, Sindhi or Pashtuns, and consider Pakistan to be an occupying force. In the North, the main tribe is the Darwesh Khel, alternatively known as the Utmanzai Waziris. They are ethnically Waziri, but often at war with the southern Waziris. Unlike the South, which is largely uncontrolled, the North is actually under some direct control from Islamabad, but also unlike the South, the North shares an open border with Afghanistan. In fact, both North and South Waziristan sound a lot like Afghanistan just before the Taliban took over the government.

The battles between the North, the South and the central Pakistani government make this a slippery situation for both Islamabad and Washington DC. The problem that has come to light in recent years is that despite their internal battles, Pakistan and Waziristan are extremely Taliban-friendly. Pakistan makes occasional forays into Waziristan to stamp out open rebellions or arrest terrorists who want to blow up Islamabad. But by their own admission, the Pakistanis are unable to gain effective control of the province.

Though the government of Pakistan is still largely in military hands, those at the top are now more militantly Islamic and bellicose toward India and hesitant toward the United States. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) has been the recipient of complaints from the White House for its complicity in Taliban-sponsored terrorism since early in the Clinton administration. The army’s failure to gain effective control of the Afghan border regions has also been a source of considerable diplomatic maneuvering.

But it is only recently that a personage as important as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has publicly and clearly called Taliban-supported Pakistani terror group Haqqani a “veritable arm of the ISI.” American-Pakistani relations, already strained, were pulled to near-breaking by the honest words of an American Admiral. The official Pakistani response was very angry, indicating that the government believes America is interfering in internal Pakistani matters. The usual mad Muslims took to the streets in the thousands to warn America not to try to deal with Haqqani on its own (though there was no suggestion from any American official that America has any intention of doing anything faintly resembling acting independently on the Haqqani matter).

All that Admiral Mullen really did was point out the danger of an ally which officially claims to be doing its best, but in reality is at best neutral about Taliban/Haqqani terrorism and at worst, actively complicit. Having the truth pointed out in public caused the Pakistani government to announce that it would not tolerate American attacks on Taliban and Al Qaeda bases in Waziristan without prior permission from Islamabad. This, even though the government admits outright that it has scant control of the border regions. It doesn’t help that the Pakistani government at its highest levels has more leaks than a sieve, and that any forewarning to Islamabad about a pending American attack on terrorist bases would get to the terrorists faster than the drones and the bombs.

This is clearly a thorny problem. But pretending that we don’t know how treacherous Pakistan has been is simply no longer viable. The best example of all was the capture and killing of the greatest terrorist of the last half of the twentieth century—Osama bin Laden. He had been living comfortably in a very obvious compound a mere sixty miles from Islamabad, in a security zone, and practically on the grounds of a nearby Pakistani military base.

When a sophisticated American helicopter went down during the operation, the Pakistani government made sure the first people to get to it were the Chinese military experts. Yet we are expected to believe that our ally didn’t know about bin Laden’s compound, had no idea he was in Pakistan, and was acting in the interest of our alliance by allowing Chinese military operatives to sort through highly-sensitive war-making machinery before allowing the Americans in.

So how does the Obama administration react to the admiral’s statement? Just about as you would expect. It wussed out. Barack Obama has refused to publicly endorse the admiral’s statement, and is presently hiding under his desk. He has sent his better-half, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to soothe the Pakistani savage breast.

Despite recent border incursions from Pakistan into Afghan war zones aiding the Taliban, the Taliban-led attack on the US embassy in Kabul, and attacks on NATO outposts near the border, Clinton failed to address the fact that Haqqani was clearly linked to the attacks. Instead, she met for three hours with the Pakistani ambassador, repeating platitudes about cooperation and vital strategic interests.

This flies in the face of the unrefuted testimony of Admiral Mullen who named names and tied Pakistan and the terrorists together: “With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted the truck bomb attack on September 10 which killed five and wounded seventy-seven coalition soldiers. We also have credible evidence that Haqqani was behind the June 28th attack on the International Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations.”

So what did our brave Secretary of State do? Her department leaked a memo to the Washington Post that said: “Adm. Mike Mullen’s assertion last week than an anti-American insurgent group in Afghanistan is a veritable arm of Pakistan’s spy service was overstated and contributed to overheated reactions in Pakistan and misperceptions in Washington.” She doesn’t contradict the admiral’s statement with any evidence whatsoever, but makes it very clear we mustn’t upset our “allies.”

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Gender Equality Comes To The Taliban

Obama and the Surrendercrats are right after all. In fact, we don't even have to wait for a year or two for a near-complete drawdown in Afghanistan. At last, the Taliban have joined the 21st Century and have indicated their readiness to join the world of civilized nations. Taliban women are no longer property or second-class citizens. They're fully mainstream now--officially.

The Taliban announced publicly for the very first time that on two separate occasions in the past week, females were used in attacks on police and military officials in Pakistan near the Afghan border. Now what could be more equal and more enabling than to be able to join the men in blowing themselves to bits in the name of the Prophet? There has been speculation and some evidence that they have used women in the past for suicide bombings, but now it's proudly official.

In one instance, a husband and wife team dressed themselves in burqas in Kolachi, entered a police station, started firing, and after a five-hour standoff, blew themselves up. That resulted in ten deaths, not including the male-female team. It should be interesting to see how this plays out in the future. The duo was able to get into the police station largely because until now, two burqa-clad figures theoretically meant two women, and the Taliban would never use evil, degenerate women to please Allah. The locals are more likely now to take a quick peek under those outfits capable of concealing Fat Man and Little Boy both. You've come a long way, baby.

The other incident has gotten a bit more Taliban propaganda publicity, because the bomber in this case was an eight-year old girl. A child, you say? Don't forget that among the Taliban and other cave-dwelling primitives, the age of consent is somewhere around six, so this girl was nearly middle-aged. This sacrifice for the love of Allah took place in the Char Chino district of the Pakistani province of Uruzgan.

The Taliban are so anxious to get out the good news about gender equality that they didn't actually stage this second attack too well. It remains unclear if the girl actually had any idea what she was about to do. The elders handed her a bag with an improvised explosive device in it and told her to take it to police forces. She did, and blew herself up, but did little damage to the police station and there are no reported deaths other than the gender-equality one.

There is also the problem of the Taliban previously denying the use of willing gender-equal female bombers and attackers. About a year ago, a female suicide bomber wearing a chic burqa blew up a United Nations food distribution center in Pakistan, killing forty-five people. But the Taliban first denied involvement, then simply refused to take credit for the bombing. Today, they are making great progress in bringing women into the forefront of "liberation" as an official policy.

The Taliban didn't want anyone to confuse the current girl-bomber with the one who failed a week earlier. It would ruin the official version of her body parts being sent to the four winds. The earlier incident involved an attack that failed. In that case, a nine-year old girl told a harrowing tale of being kidnapped in Peshawar then sent off to blow up a Pakistani checkpoint. She was told by her handlers that she should walk calmly toward the checkpoint while reciting verses from the Koran until it was time to push the button. And therein lay the failure. It never occurred to the cave boys that a nine-year old kidnap victim might not be in the mood to spread herself over a half-acre of territory guarded by people she didn't know and had no quarrel with. Religious zealotry can go only just so far.

Interestingly, though proudly taking credit for the voluntary self-immolation of an eight-year old girl in Pakistan, the Taliban strongly deny using children at all for attacks inside Afghanistan. Despite the gracious protection given to the Taliban in Pakistan by sympathetic Pakistanis, they don't seem to have the same sensitivities toward child suicide bombing victims there as they do at home.

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What Passes For "Conservative" At HuffPo

Leftists are interesting creatures. They are immune to reality. Logic and truth are foreign concepts to them. They are seething with hate. They love to put their ignorance on display. And sometimes, they pretend to be conservatives. Take, for example, Eric Margolis, who rants at Huffpo on occasion. Eric claims to be moderately conservative, defining himself as an “Eisenhower Republican.” You can tell me in the comments if you buy into that laugher.

To properly get a sense of who Eric is, let’s look at two pieces that he ran over at Huffpo about Afghanistan and Iraq. But first, some background: Eric is a fool with no understanding of history, no grasp on reality and an indifference to facts. He believes that “America has become addicted to debt and war,” and he seems to despise the American military, which he describes derisively as “professional soldiers” (in the Roman context) and “mercenaries.” He also thinks that using modern weapons in a place like Afghanistan is “cowardly”:

“In my view, as an old soldier and war correspondent, using heavy bombers to attack tribal levies or employing gunships and drones against tribal compounds is cowardly.”

Note the assertion that “America’s professional soldiers” are waging a war against civilians.

You may also note that Eric mentions that he is a former solider. In fact, he reminds us of this over and over because he thinks this means something. Perhaps he’s forgetting that Lee Harvey Oswald, Hitler and Alan Alda also were soldiers, and they were all less paranoid than Eric.

And speaking of soldiers, Eric has no love for “fire-breathing Gen. Stanley McChrystal” or our “Special Forces ‘mafia’.” He also hates Fox News, Republicans and the American people, as he was just sure that those morons would make McChrystal into a hero, and thereby the Republicans would “again sadly demonstrate they have become the party of America's dim and ignorant.” He also hates the Tea Party because it appeals to the “fears and prejudices” of its followers, and he rejects the Republican Party because it is influenced by the evil Tea Party.

Oh, and speaking of evil, in a 2009 essay titled “Don’t Blame Hitler Alone for World War II,” Eric claims that it was wrong to give Hitler full blame for World War II, because this was a “preventive war” forced on Hitler by the Soviets.

Ok, so that’s conservative Eric. Now let’s take a quick look at what he just wrote about Iraq and Afghanistan. Here are some highlights.

The Taliban are resisting “western occupation” of Afghanistan. . . forget that the Taliban were there long before the West arrived.

And why would we occupy Afghanistan you ask? Well, first he rants something about the US wanting to control the biggest exporter of heroin. But then he changes his mind mid-rant to alert us that the US wants Afghanistan to control its “oil”. . . which doesn’t exist.

But his real hatred is aimed at our being in Iraq. See if you can follow this:

He starts by saying that we only went into Iraq because the “Seven Sisters” have been squeezed out of their oil fields in places like Iran, and they needed Iraq’s oil wealth to get back into the game. The “Seven Sisters,” by the way, was the name given to the big seven American oil firms in the 1950s. Only four still exist and only two remain American.

But then he suddenly realizes that people might not buy the idea that we need Iraq’s oil because. . . well, we don’t. So he says that the real reason we wanted their oil fields was to gain influence over people like Japan who need the oil. Apparently, occupying Japan doesn’t give us enough influence. His proof? Well, “as the old saying goes, America’s trinity is ‘God, guns and gasoline.’” Wow, now that’s definitive!

Then he gets a little crazy. . . er:

1. He notes that “American ‘liberation’ left Iraq politically, economically and socially shattered, ‘killed’ in the words of former foreign minister, Tariq Aziz.” To back this up, he claims that “reputable studies estimate Iraq’s death toll at mid-hundreds of thousands to one million, not counting claims by UN observers that 500,000 Iraqi children died of disease as a result of the US-led embargo before 2003.” Of course, there are no reputable studies that say this, there are only a couple of far left guesses. Even the AP only puts the death toll at 100,000.

2. He goes on: “four million Sunni Iraqis remain refugees.” FYI, that’s more Sunnis than exist.

3. He says the “surge” only worked because Iran ordered the Shia Mahdi Army militia “to temporarily end resistance” and because of “deft bribery” by the Americans who spent “untold millions bribing Sunni fighters.”

4. Then he takes a quick side trip to warn us that Washington is building new “fortified embassies” in Kabul, Islamabad and Baghdad? These “may hold 1,000 ‘diplomats.’ Osama bin Laden calls them, ‘Crusader Fortresses.’” You see people. . . it’s all there in black and white!

5. And what about the “50,000 US troops left until 2011 . . . to ‘advise and assist”? Well, “to this old war correspondent and military historian, that sounds an awful lot like the British Empires employment of native troops under white officers.” Military historian? Yeah, sure.

6. Of course, he couldn’t leave the Jews out of this because no paranoid rant is complete without a little anti-Semitism. So, did you know that “Large numbers of Iraqis doctors and scientists have been murdered”? And guess who did it? Well, Eric doesn’t want to say definitively because there’s no “hard evidence,” but he lets us know that a lot of people are saying they were killed “by Israel’s Mossad.”

That’s probably enough for you to get the point. Eric is an anti-Semitic, anti-American nutjob with paranoid delusions of American schemes to conquer the world. He fits right in at Huffpo. And he is anything but a “conservative.”

I guess it’s become the vogue thing for leftists to masquerade as “conservatives.”


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Afghanistan Failure

At the beginning of June, Afghanistan became our longest war -- longer than even Vietnam. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars and sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Yet, we are losing. The Taliban are running rampant and control huge swaths of the country. What’s worse, our current strategy won’t change that. We need to rethink this war. Let’s start this by going through the reasons that are routinely given for staying in Afghanistan and showing why those are bad. Then I’ll talk about a better plan.

Reason One: “Having invaded Afghanistan, the West has a duty to return a half-decent state to the Afghan people.”

I hear this a lot and it’s total bull. We owe these people nothing. Afghanistan is a primitive cesspool because its own people made it that way. It was like that when we got there, and it’s not our responsibility to change that. And frankly, claiming this is our responsibility with one hand while claiming that we need to respect their culture and religion with the other is a sucker's game.

Reason Two: “We need to deny al-Qaeda a haven.”

This is the primary reason given for being in Afghanistan. But we’ve already lost this one. Al-Qaeda has a haven in Pakistan, in Yemen, and in Somalia. The CIA has even noted that they are starting to use operatives from all over the world now, making “havens” almost irrelevant. Moreover, if the goal is just to deny them Afghanistan, a rather silly goal given their other havens, then there are better ways. Indeed, cutting a deal with the Taliban to toss al-Qaeda out would be more effective.

Reason Three: “If we leave, a civil war might start, which could suck in local powers like Iran, Pakistan, India and Russia.”

This one shows how little our policy people understand what is going on. This IS a civil war. The Taliban are not foreign invaders. They do not lack popular support. Indeed, recent polls show that one-third of Afghans openly support them, compared to only 25% who support the government. No matter how much we call them “insurgents,” we are participating in a civil war.

Our real target, al-Qaeda, has smartly piggybacked on the Taliban. Without the Taliban, al-Qaeda has no support in Afghanistan. Yet, we’ve lumped them together and, in so doing, we’ve chosen to fight tens of thousands of Taliban fighters who can draw upon local populations for support, when we should be fighting the 1,000 or so al-Qaeda members that the CIA claims are there and in Pakistan. In fact, once again, our best strategy would be to cut a deal with the Taliban to toss out al-Qaeda and we walk away.

Indeed, the military is starting to get this. Said one U.S. civil affairs officer: “We need to reevaluate who the enemy really is. . . Based on the evaluations and interviews in the report, we're not sure we're fighting the right war or fighting the war the right way."

And as for those other powers, who cares? Afghanistan is a worthless piece of rock populated by a few million goat-herders. It has no strategic value. And if Pakistan or Iran want it, let them have it. Where is the harm? Indeed, it might show the world that there are negative consequences to fighting with the United States. . . mess with us, lose your country.

Further, the idea that Pakistan and India or Iran would go to war over this is simply scare mongering. Those countries are ready to fight over any number of things already, tossing in the rocks and goats of Afghanistan won’t change a thing. Not to mention, we could partition the country before we leave to avoid any such conflicts entirely.

Reason Four: “A defeat would mark a humiliation for the West, that would encourage our enemies around the world.”

Finally, we come to the real reason we stay. It is absolutely true that the rest of the world follows the maxim -- “might makes right.” Thus, if we appear weak, then we will be weakened in the eyes of our enemies everywhere. And running away would make us appear weak. But so would losing. And make no mistake, we are losing and everybody knows it.

At the beginning of the year, the military put together an assessment called “The State of the Taliban.” This document paints a grim picture:

• U.S. and NATO leaders do not adequately understand the Afghan people, and our communication skills are poor.

• Our support for Karzai’s corrupt government has made it easy for the Taliban to recruit insurgents and prevents locals from working with NATO.

• The Afghan army and police forces are years away from providing security for the nation -- even though we’ve been training them for nine years.

• There are not enough civilian workers to complete construction projects, and fear prevents local workers from taking coalition jobs.

• Local governments steal project funding.

• Violence is up 87% since March and bombing is up 94% this year.

Said one official with knowledge of the report:

“We are getting beat up. The Taliban know their own people -- they are culturally accurate. We know the facts but we are culturally inaccurate. The main message in the report is that we don’t fully understand our enemy and we are not clearly communicating our message to the people.”

Indeed, the military admits that the Taliban are better propagandists than we are. They have persuaded the Afghan people that (1) 9/11 was a response to the planned invasion of Afghanistan by United States, (2) America does not allow Muslim women to cover themselves, and (3) mosques are not permitted in American cities. These are big recruiting points.

All of this leads to a quagmire. In fact, the situation is so bad, that the report recommends that US commanders mediate cease-fire negotiations with local Taliban commanders. But that’s not possible because the Taliban don’t respect our side. Said Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis: “The bulk of insurgents clearly do not see foreign forces as a credible negotiating partner.”

What was supposed to change all of this was the “surge” that Obama and McChrystal promised. But that’s proven to be a failure. It started in Marja, a farming district in Helmand province. Thirty thousand troops moved into the city to push out 400 Taliban fighters. Along with the troops came government people and truck-loads of money. The idea was to establish Afghan government control and thereby gain the trust of the locals, who would then reject the Taliban. That didn’t happen. The Afghan government proved ineffective and the locals were less than impressed with the temporary nature of our military plans. Indeed, the Taliban put out posters telling people the date they would return, right after our withdrawal date. McChrystal now calls this test case for our surge plan “a bleeding ulcer.”

And because of this failure, they have postponed the next step, which was the invasion of Kandahar, a city under the control of drug traffickers and the Taliban. According to the military, the local people in Kandahar “are not ready to back” the invasion yet. Ominously, McChrystal implied, before he was replaced, that if we don’t make significant, irreversible progress soon, Christmas would be the end of NATO operations, i.e. the date we quit.

So What Do We Do?

Actual victory is an illusion. What we need is a genuine exit strategy. Obama’s "wait one year and then run for our lives" plan is about the worst thing we can do, apart from staying without any plan except waiting to be driven out. Here are our options as I see them:

Option One: Our first option would be to totally replace the government and impose a modern state on these people. I doubt we have the stomach to do this, but this is the only way we can win over the people who oppose Karzai’s corrupt regime and also eliminate the handicaps that keep us from creating a stable state. This one would require a longer military stay and a realization that we can’t “respect” a defective culture.

Option Two: Our second option would be to carve the country up and hand it to the neighbors along ethnic lines. This strategy actually makes a lot of sense as the neighbors would then become responsible their new territories, and none of the neighbors like al-Qaeda or the Taliban. The weak link here would be Pakistan, which is already a problem in and of itself. BUT, the force in Pakistan that props up the Taliban is Pakistan’s intelligence service (the “ISI”). The ISI use the Taliban as a way to destabilize Afghanistan and fight off Iranian and Indian influence in Afghanistan. If Afghanistan were broken up, then the ISI would no longer need the Taliban. Indeed, their concerns then would turn to maintaining the stability of Pakistan, which would mean ending the Taliban.

Option Three: Our final option would be to negotiate a settlement with the Taliban. In exchange for the Taliban kicking out al-Qaeda, we would either (1) cut the country in half, leaving them with the part they already hold, (2) walk away and let the locals sort it out, or (3) force some sort of power-sharing arrangement on Karzai that included the Taliban.

The advantage to this would be that we could somewhat-credibly declare victory, al-Qaeda would be denied the Afghan haven, and this would likely prevent foreign powers from getting involved. And if the Taliban don’t want to agree, then we use Option Two and their whole country disappears right out from underneath them.

As I read the tea leaves, we are giving up at the end of December. If we don’t come up with a better plan than "keep doing what isn’t working," we will leave Afghanistan in disgrace and we will face a much broader mess. But if we act now, and we stop thinking about winning this war in the traditional sense, then we can salvage a real victory. If we don’t, then this will be a defeat we will regret.

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Hang On To Your Hat

Beside the hot air Barack Obama has been blowing at him, there's another hot wind blowing in the Middle East. Afghanistan's questionably elected president Hamid Karzai just paid a visit to his counterpart in Washington, DC. The two agreed that they must dismantle the Afghan insurgency, but the word "Taliban" hardly arose. After all, Karzai recently told Obama he might join the Taliban if Obama didn't lay off his criticism.

During the DC confab, the two leaders spoke a great deal about how they should handle the issue of the unnamed insurgents in the border regions with Pakistan. But during those discussions, the 500 pound gorilla in the room went unnoticed--Iran. It would appear from statements made by Karzai subsequent to the meetings with Obama that Iran was far too insignificant a problem for the two great ones to bother with.

So at a White House appearance, Karzai casually mentioned how important friendly relations with Iran are to his country. This occurred during a joint press conference, while Obama looked on with his usual stone face. The buddy-buddy routine about Iran didn't seem to phase the messiah at all. It's almost as if he fully expected it. Karzai apparently found nothing inconsistent about saying that though "Afghanistan is a partner and a friend of the United States--the U.S. is our greatest contributor to stability," still "Afghanistan's position here is clear to our brothers and counterparts in Iran." Brothers? Counterparts?

In case we didn't understand the first time. Karzai repeated that Afghanistan wants to be friends with both Iran and the United States (in that order). "Afghanistan is engaged in a strong, steady, long-term relationship with America. We also spoke to our American counterparts that Iran is our neighbor and brother. They have contributed to the Afghan reconstruction. We hope to remain friendly with both." So you get it, right? Iran has been declared a terrorist state, and by its own declarations will see to the destruction of both Israel and America. Nice friends, Hamid. Since they're a neighbor, will you wander across the border and ask "Hi, neighbor, may I borrow a nuke or two?"

Obama's mouthpiece, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, said on Tuesday that "We've given [Iran], I think, plenty of opportunity with which to join the international community, but being part of the international community means living up to the obligations and the treaties that you sign that are part of the international community. You can't be part of the international community and then not live up to your responsibilities as it relates to nuclear activities." Obama showed no signs of discomfort at Karzai announcing his friendship with a nation that lies about its nuclear activities.

Obama's own State Department says: "Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qaeda members it has detained, and has refused to publicly identify those senior members in custody. Iran has repeatedly resisted numerous calls to transfer custody of its al-Qaeda detainees to their countries of origin or third countries for trial. Iran also continued to fail to control the activities of some al-Qaeda members who fled to Iran following the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan." Piffle. Details. Why should this have any impact on Obama's warm feelings toward Karzai and his friends in Iran?

This is all part of a pattern of Obama behavior. He harshly criticized Karzai long-distance over the obviously crooked elections in Afghanistan that retained Karzai as president. But when Karzai came into town, robe and hat and all, Obama is suddenly either dumbstruck or cowed. As with all the Middle East dictators, potentates and simple crooks who come to the White House, Obama becomes obsequious. For some reason unknown to me, the only White House guest whom Obama has outright insulted, humiliated and ignored, was ally Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Maybe Netanyahu just has the wrong friends and neighbors. It makes me wonder when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be invited to enjoy the comforts of the Lincoln Bedroom.

On a somewhat related matter, today is Armed Forces Day. Instituted to remember and honor our men and women who have fallen in service to their nation, the flag should be raised briskly to the top of the staff, then lowered respectfully to half-staff until evening.
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Book Review: The Looming Tower

Last night we had the first Commentarama Book Club. We read The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, a book about the creation of Al Qaeda. You should read this book. It’s truly eye-opening.

Written by Lawrence Wright, a journalist who spent years teaching in Egypt, The Looming Tower tells the story of the birth of Al Qaeda up through the events of 9/11. To write the book, Wright conducted hundreds of interviews in the United States, Europe and throughout the Middle East. . . and it shows. The Looming Tower contains a wealth of information, much of which you have never heard before. Indeed, this is a gripping story with amazing revelations.

The book begins with the story of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian educator and the intellectual founder of what we consider militant Islam. And right out of the gate, the book smacks you with some fascinating information. Qutb, who would lay the foundations for the struggles that followed, wasn’t radical when he lived in Egypt. . . he became radical when he came to Fort Collins, Colorado to study. Much of Qutb’s motivation, by the way, appears to be a twisted response to an inability to relate to women -- a hang-up that has driven many of history’s crackpots and serial killers.

From there, the book takes you through Nasser’s rule in Egypt and how he and the Muslim Brotherhood became enemies. Interestingly, this introduces a repeating theme throughout the book as various governments try to exploit the radical fundamentalists, only to find that they ultimately lose control of these movements. Indeed, if there is one lesson to be taken from this book, it is that these radical movements would be nothing more than minor nuisances if it weren’t for regional governments trying to exploit them.

From Egypt, we move to the Afghan war. The war against the Soviets in Afghanistan became a holy war, with the faithful pouring into Afghanistan to defeat the atheist Soviets. Critically, most of these fighters came to Afghanistan because they were encouraged to go by their governments. Regional governments used the Afghan war as a way to dump their troublemakers, hoping they would all get themselves killed. But they weren’t killed, and this left an army of malcontents, with combat experience, who would soon find themselves without a home. They were a ripe for recruiting by the terrorists.

This is where we meet Osama Bin Laden. He spent several years in Afghanistan and became a hero with many followers. After the war, he returned to Saudi Arabia, where his family is quite wealthy. Interestingly, he is not. He was worth only about seven million dollars at the time and he relied on a stipend from his family to pay his bills.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Bin Laden went to the Saudis and promised to bring his Afghan followers to the peninsula to defend the Kingdom. They turned him down and instead called the Americans. Indeed, the Saudis viewed Bin Laden as insane for thinking that 70,000 Afghan could stand up to Saddam’s million man modern Army. Bin Laden viewed this as an insult and become incensed about the presence of American troops. Soon, he and the Saudi royal family were at war. . . though the Saudis refused to put an end to him.

Bin Laden moved to Sudan, where he and Al Qaeda turned themselves into a terrorist organization. At this point, we learn some fascinating facts that you will not have heard before. Bin Laden is not a very good businessman. He goes broke. He’s a bit of a moron. His deep religious convictions simply mirror what other people have written, and he doesn’t seem to really believe them or follow them.

We also learn that many of the acts attributed to Al Qaeda weren’t really theirs. They just took credit for them. There are surprises about how small Al Qaeda is as an organization, and how ineffective. They are also not very good terrorists. In Egypt and Algeria, Bin Laden's advice for the terrorist to kill indiscriminately turns the public against them and leads to security service crack downs that all but wiped out those radical movements. One terrorist forgets his gun in the car, another falls asleep and misses the attack. Their first attempt to attack an American ship fails when they overload their boat and it sinks. And so on. Not to mention that these guys sing like songbirds when they get caught, and that’s not even counting the several who get upset at Bin Laden and head straight to American embassies to sell their knowledge.

The book also explains how Bin Laden’s people overcame the Islamic prohibition on suicide by drawing a false distinction between dying in the killing of infidels and dying in any other fashion. This leads to some very disturbing discussions of various Al Qaeda attacks. Wright is not particularly graphic, but he gives enough of a picture that you will be angered and repulsed by what these bastards have done.

The book, by the way, doesn’t sugar coat anything. Take for example, the discussion of the Taliban who murder and rape their way through the country, who sodomize little boys because there aren’t any women around, who take sledge hammers to priceless works of art, and who mutilate and torture zoo animals.

The book soon turns incredibly frustrating, as Wright discusses the American efforts to catch Bin Laden. Several times, he was offered to us, and we blew it:

• Bin Laden wore out his welcome in Sudan and the Sudanese offered him to the Americans. The Americans didn’t want him. Despite the fact that the Egyptian security services knew all about him, and the Americans had been warned about his intentions, the Americans simply saw him as a minor nuisance. So they told Sudan to throw him out of the country (the Sudanese robbed him on the way out).

• When Bin Laden got to Afghanistan, the Taliban didn’t want him. They viewed him as too much trouble. But the Taliban were being financed by the Saudis and the Pakistani security services, in the hopes of ending the chaos that followed the Soviet withdrawal and of offsetting Iran’s influence. The Saudis had been unwilling to eliminate him or take him back, so they told the Taliban to keep him quiet.

But when Osama didn’t stay quiet, the Saudis finally decided to rid themselves of Bin Laden, and the Taliban agreed. But then Clinton fired the cruise missiles at Bin Laden and at Sudan, despite warnings that this would only make the situation worse. The effect was (1) to blow up a harmless civilian pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, (2) to miss every single Al Qaeda leader, (3) to give Bin Laden some dud cruise missiles that he could sell to the Chinese to replenish his fortune, and (4) to make Bin Laden an Islamic hero. After that, the Taliban changed their minds and decided not to give him up. 9/11 followed.

It is also amazing how much information “the government” had, which they could not put together because the agencies wouldn’t share it. Wright makes an excellent case that the government had more than enough information to stop 9/11, but couldn’t stop infighting long enough to do it. This part alone is well worth the read.

The sections on the American government, by the way, are very consistent with my experience working for the federal government some years ago -- interagency squabbling, the right hand refusing to talk to the left hand, bureaucratic turf wars, vendettas against productive employees, bizarre rules that interfere with any sort of useful action, and general incompetence. This will be eye-opening to anyone who thinks our government consists of dedicated professionals.

You will also read about other insane decisions, like when the CIA hired a Muslim who they immediately discovered was a traitor. Despite this discovery, they brought him to the United States under CIA protection and let him join the Army. From there, and from his later job with a defense contractor, he provided secrets to Al Qaeda and he wrote the Al Qaeda manual on terrorism based on what our military taught him. He actually spent months in Afghanistan establishing terrorist training camps while he worked for our government. . . the government accepted his claim that his absences were because he was buying rugs in Pakistan.

Finally, it was interesting to read that Bin Laden’s intent with 9/11 was not just to kill civilians, but to draw the United States into a ground war in Afghanistan, the Graveyard of Empires, where they could “bleed” us. Thus, it seems that we have played right into his hands. . . as we apparently have several times.

Do I recommend The Looming Tower? Absolutely. The writing style is good. It is easy to read and it flows. The names are difficult because we’re not accustomed to them, but Wright always gives you little reminders of who these guys are which makes it easy to follow -- though a chart would have been nice. Still, the information presented is invaluable for understanding what is going on in the Middle East and for understanding the shortcomings of our government and our policies.

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SOTU: Why Obama Is Doomed

Last night, Obama gave the single worst State of the Union speech I’ve ever heard and the worst speech of his career. There was nothing inspiring or memorable. His canned applause lines stunk, his “off the cuff” jokes were poorly scripted, and the rest of the speech can be summed up thusly: anger, accusation, blame shifting, political payoffs to interest groups and “admissions” that everyone else has served him poorly. This speech was meant to hit the reset button. . . it missed. It also tells us that he is doomed to failure.

Obama has a serious problem. Unlike other presidents whose approval ratings have risen and fallen with events, Obama’s have been on a steady downward course. This indicates a man who has lost the public. Thus, his objective last night was to reconnect with the public, to pull a mea culpa, to assure the public he will change, and to convince the public to give him a second chance. He failed. Instead, last night just highlighted why he lost the public in the first place.

Technical Problems: Lack of Inspiration

Obama is a poor speaker and his speech writers stink. He has yet to give a memorable speech, and last night was no exception. There were no memorable quotes, no incredible moments of truth, no compelling arguments, and no moment where he made a genuine call for all of us to come together. Instead, his speech was bland, with angry emphasis substituting for passion, half-hearted praise for America substituting for inspiration, an abundance of “too-perfect-to-be-true” letters from widows and orphans that felt like blatant manipulation, and “I” substituting liberally for “we.” He was snide, unpleasant, insulting and combative. He read poorly. His self-deprecating jokes were all backhanded slaps at his opponents, and he just wasn’t presidential at any point.

The contrast with Virginia Governor McDonnell could not have been starker.

Obama’s failure, by the way, was obvious in two facts from last night. First, the leftists hired by CNN to act as analysts were amazingly subdued. “He did what he had to do” was about the highest praise they could muster (even David Axelrod was subdued). They questioned his priorities (or lack thereof) and even scoffed at some of what he said. Not one person suggested this was a great speech or a memorable speech or that he’d “hit a homerun.” When your own PR people can’t praise your speech, something is wrong. Secondly, CNN’s instant poll showed a 20% drop in the number of people who gave this speech high marks compared to last year. Given that this poll would likely include a higher proportion of Democrats than last year’s, this was a horrible result for Obama.

Political Payoff Smorgasbord

Aside from poor writing and delivery, the main reason Obama’s speech will not resonate with the public is that it ultimately was not meant for the public, it was aimed at his special interest. As I’ve said before, the Democratic Party is no longer a party, it has become an alliance of tribes, each of whom want their share. Last night, emphasized that:

• Unions: Obama promised a second stimulus, aimed at putting “America” back to work. . . targeted at unionized jobs. Further, while he seemed to talk about free trade last night with South Korea, Panama and Columbia, he never said he would push the free trade deals already negotiated with those countries that are languishing in Congress. Instead, he talked about “enforcement,” which is the same anti-free trade garbage his side has been spewing about imposing environmental and labor regulations on our trading partners.

• Environmentalists: Obama promised to get a carbon tax, i.e. cap and trade, even if he had to bribe a handful of Republicans (like Lindsey Graham) to get it, by offering to include subsidies for nuclear power and limited off-shore drilling.

• Gays: He promised to end “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and he promised “increased” civil rights office enforcement, i.e. more lawsuits.

• Feminists: He promised to fight for the feminist panacea “equal pay.”

• Blacks: He promised a national hate crimes law.

The middle class? You get to pay for these promises, and he repeated the silly plan I discussed the other day -- though he shifted the blame on that one to Biden. (FYI, that plan is actually aimed at feminists and college students and the poor, not the middle class.)

To cover his giveaways, he paid lip service to the public’s complaints. For example,

• Obama’s Deficits: He acknowledged the deficit problem, by blaming it on Bush. He then promised a “total spending freeze.” What he did not say was that this would only cover 17% of spending and that Pelosi has already said it won’t get through the House. He then tried to make this sound impressive by talking about the savings this would generate over the next TWO decades. Wally from Dilbert tried this once, claiming his plan would save the company one million dollars. . . over a million years.

• Job Destruction: Obama acknowledged that people remain unemployed, a problem he blamed on Bush. First, he tried to lump the 6.3 million jobs that vanished under his policies on Bush by claiming that the economy had lost seven million jobs in the past two years. Then he blamed lobbyists (which made no sense). Then he bragged about his stimulus bill creating two million jobs -- a well documented lie. (See here and here.)

Now he’s promising targeted tax cuts for small business “for job creation.” No one has any idea what he’s talking about here -- he probably doesn’t even know himself -- but if this is nothing more than a “one time tax cut for hiring” (a new favorite among Democrats) then this is doomed to fail.

• Terrorism: Obama acknowledged that terrorism exists, a big step for him. But he blamed the failure to stop it on Bush, and he specifically blamed the Detroit near-bombing on policies put in place by Bush. Yet, while he acknowledged Bush’s failures he offered no plan to address terrorism other than more of the same. He then, amazingly, made the childish claim that he had “killed more terrorists” than Bush did in 2008. This brought near eye-rolls from the Joint Chiefs.

• Health Care: Obama also whined about the opposition to his health care bill, which he blamed on obstructionist Republicans, corrupt lobbyists, and cowardly Democrats who are worried about elections, i.e. public opinion. Then he said, “I’m no quitter” (another demonstrable falsehood). He then reformulated his plan as “health insurance reform” because no one likes insurance companies, and he challenged anyone who would oppose him to come up with their own plan -- something many have done, though he wouldn’t know that because he refuses to listen. But he waited 27 minutes into his speech to raise this issue, leading one CNN pundit to declare: “he won’t give up on health care, but he’s signaled that he won’t fight for it either.”

• Iran: He acknowledged that Iran hadn’t been fixed yet, which he blamed on the Iranians and prior administrations, i.e. Bush. He then swore that there would be real consequences if they didn’t comply this time. Of course, he couldn’t think of any consequence to mention, nor did he say who would bear them.

• Iraq: He promised again to bring home all of the (combat) troops from Iraq at some point in time, it’s just taking longer than expected because the “three” (formerly “two”) wars Bush left him were such disasters.

• Corruption: Recognizing that most polls put corruption at the top of the public’s concerns about his administration, he (1) promised “to fight corruption”. . . in Afghanistan, (2) he demonized lobbyists and claimed to have kicked them out of his administration -- another lie, (3) he talked about undoing the Supreme Court’s decision that allows corporations to donate money to causes, something recent polls show the public considers a matter of free speech, and (4) swore he would highlighting earmarks to the public. . . as compared to his campaign promise to stop them. He made no mention of his awarding a no-bid contract to a supporter (something he once called “corrupt”) or of the massive amounts of corruption in his administration and in Congress (see here, here and here).

In other words, he paid lip service to the public’s concerns, and he showed that he refuses to accept any responsibility for the public’s concerns and he doesn’t intend to actually address them except with more lip service.

Angry Obama Gives Way To Nasty Obama

Finally, we come to Obama’s biggest problem: his paranoid hatred of “those who oppose.” In a nod to Rodney King’s “can’t we all just get along,” Obama mentioned the word bipartisanship and he spoke of the need to change the tenor in Washington. But then, like a petulant child, he set about settling scores.

He attacked the Republicans over and over, using any falsehood he thought would help him. He tried to blame them for his own failures and then, like a cartoon villain, he incredibly warned them that they would be held responsible for any further failure on his part. He called his own party cowards for trying to hear the message of the people. He blamed Bush for every single one of his faults and failures. And, as noted before, he petulantly tried to sound tough by claiming that he killed more terrorists than Bush did in 2008.

He demonized bankers and lobbyists, in ways not heard since the 1930s -- all the while ignoring the fact that they are his biggest contributors, that they are his closest advisors, and that he appointed them to serve in his cabinet and to run his treasury department.

He even tried to play the self-pity, phony-acceptance-of-responsibility game by taking “my share of the blame” only to twist that into accepting the blame for being stopped by the self-interested and politically motivated acts of others.

Incredibly, he made a highly inappropriate attack on the Supreme Court, in their presence. It is not that he criticized a court decision, but that he attacked the court personally, when he angrily accused the court of destroying “a century of settled law” in favor of special interests (impugning their motives). This caused Justice Alito to mouth the words “not true”. . . giving Obama a second “you lie” moment in as many trips to Congress. And, indeed, it was not true. By the way, as an active attorney, his attack on the Court is an ethics violation and he should be sanctioned.

Finally, he thanked no one for anything.

This man is a child. He knows nothing, and it shows. He out hates Nixon as a paranoid gatherer of enemies and a serial assigner of blame. He out wimps Carter as an effete warrior. He makes the obviously stupid Bush II look like Einstein, and the smarmy insider Bush I look like a zealous reformer. And he makes the dishonest and dishonorable Bill Clinton look like George Washington.

Obama is finished. Not because he doesn’t have time to change, but because he’s not willing or able to change.

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Obama's Anti-Bounce

President Obama likes to think of himself as historic, and in many ways he is. He’s the first black President, the first foreign-born President, and the first President with no clue what he’s doing. Now we can add another first. Whenever a President makes a decision or gives an important speech, they receive a bounce in their poll numbers. Barack doesn’t.

This week, Obama’s approval rating fell to a new low at Gallup: 47%. That’s hardly a shocker, however, as he’s been below 50% at Gallup for most of the time since mid-November.

More ominously for Obama, perhaps, is that his approval rating would be a lot lower if not for Democratic groupthink -- 83% of Democrats rate him favorably. By comparison, only 14% of Republicans and only 42% of independents rate him favorably. If independents decide elections, then Obama loses in a landslide. Voter-opinion intensity matters too and those who strongly dislike Obama outnumber those who strongly like him by 11%.

Even more ominously, 71% of Americans say they are “angry” about the current policies of the federal government, with 46% describing themselves as “very angry.” That’s up 10% since September. At this rate, 520% of the American public will be very angry by the time he leaves office in 2012. . . just kidding, it will be 526%.

But we’re not here today just to talk about his current ratings or whether he’ll be able to go into a Home Depo with Joe Biden without getting spit on after he leaves office. No, we’re hear to talk about the Obama bounce. . . or the lack thereof.

Let’s take a look at Obama’s approval number again, this time in chart form:


Notice that Obama’s approval rating briefly rose from 49% to 52% last week before crashing to 47% a couple days later. That little rise is the bounce Obama got from his Afghanistan speech. That’s it: a 3% bounce! And he could only hold it for a day or two, before it vanished. . . taking two extra points with it.

This is actually becoming a pattern with Obama.

Obama got a 3% jump when he got his Norgie (his Nobel Prize for the uninitiated). He went from 53% to 56%. He kept that bounce all of two days before losing it. Within a week, he lost two more points, giving him a net loss of 2% within a week (from 53% to 51%) on that “bounce.”

His big health care speech got him a 4% bounce, from 47% to 51%. He kept that bounce one day before losing 6%. He lost another 3% the following day, giving him a net loss of 5% in four days (from 47% to 42%) on his “bounce.”

Obama’s jobs summit gave him a 1% bounce, from 51% to 52%, which he kept one day before that too vanished and took an additional 4% with it, giving him a net loss of 4% in two days (from 51% to 47%) on that “bounce.” Perhaps he should stop giving speeches?

What could explain Obama’s anti-bounce? Maybe people don’t trust/believe him:

• Sixty percent (60%) of Americans believe ObamaCare will increase the budget deficit and result in higher middle-class taxes, despite Obama's continued denials.

• Fifty-nine percent (59%) of voters believe scientists falsified the data upon which Obama is relying to push through an anti-global warming treaty.

• A full 58% of voters say that it’s unlikely the stimulus saved or created 600,000 jobs as Obama claims.

• Another 55% say Obama’s summit will not reduce unemployment, even before he announces his plan. That’s clear evidence of a loss of trust.

Indeed, when it comes to jobs (and other things), Americans have no faith in him. Despite Obama’s giddy self-congratulations over the dip in unemployment to 10%, 67% of Americans think the unemployment rate will be the same or higher a year from now. Perhaps they realize that the only reason the number was down was that people fell out of the work force, with another 100,000 having given up on finding work -- labor force participation fell to its lowest level in nearly 24 years. Maybe they just remember that 10% unemployment is higher than any President has caused since before the 1980s.

If we look at Obama’s approval on an issue by issue basis, you will see a dramatic lack of support on every issue Obama faces:


But the public doesn’t just oppose his handling efforts overall, they oppose his very goals:

• Sixty-two percent (62%) of voters are opposed to a second stimulus package.

• Sixty-two percent (62%) of voters oppose a single-payer health care system.

• Only 41% support the health care plan at all.

And what about that Afghanistan issue?

The media is reporting the topline number, that 53% of voters approve of Obama’s plan. But let’s look deeper. And when you break that 53% down, you find that only 20% of Americans agree with both parts of the plan -- increasing troop numbers and setting a withdrawal date. Moreover, the support appears to be at the partisan extremes: the right supports the increase in troop strength and the left supports withdrawing the troops. The middle is unsure or likes neither. Indeed, 58% of Democrats support the plan as do 55% of Republicans, but only 45% of independents support the plan. Thus, this support is unsustainable because it lacks broad-based support, and once either side feels let down, the support will collapse entirely rather than slowly fade.

Perhaps, that's why only 37% of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of this issue -- up a measly two points from before the speech.

Maybe he better avoid Home Depo after all.

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Obama: The Man Who Would Be King

All day yesterday, the media played up Obama’s pending speech. Obama cheerleader and NBC reporter, John Harwood, for example, claimed this would be the most important speech of Obama’s Presidency. “This was the moment the Afghan war would become Obama’s war,” he said with awe. As expected, Obama failed to live up to the challenge.

And it’s not just me that thinks Obama flopped. Within minutes of the speech, a series of normally-reflexive-Obama-supporters put out articles blasting Obama. Let’s start with those:

What Our Friends On The Left Said

Let's start with the most glaring. German leftist magazine Der Spiegel said this:

"Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America's new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric -- and left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught.

One didn't have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon hearing Obama's speech. It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly."

Time magazine blasted Obama for leaving out a key detail from his speech, namely how exactly we get the Afghan army to grow. They also criticized the entire strategy, pointing out that:

• US officers have described the Afghan forces as “slipshod and corrupt”;

• They are incapable of more that basic daytime operations;

• They have been unable to master the vital bookkeeping needed for a military to function;

• Deadlines and calendars are foreign concepts to their army, and their officers have a “God-willing mentality” that “delays progress for all routine and major actions”;

• They only respond to paper orders, which “freezes subordinates into doing nothing until specifically ordered”; and

• The relationship between US and Afghan forces are “plagued by mistrust, with the living quarters of allied and Afghan troops separated by walls, razor wire, guarded gates and machine-gun nests.”

The Christian Science Monitor noted that Obama’s speech did nothing to convince the Afghans that our intent isn’t to occupy their garden spot of a country. The Monitor wrote that across ethnic lines, Afghans believe that the foreign troops are there as occupiers -- a line of reasoning promoted by the Taliban. Many believe that the troops who are already in Afghanistan could defeat the Taliban if they wanted to, but the United States is using our supposed failure to defeat the Taliban as a pretext for bringing more troops to occupy the country. Said Jabar Wafaie, “The troops that are already here, they can do well now, if they wanted they could destroy the Taliban.” He added that “the additional 30,000 troops is going to be a good opportunity for the Taliban to recruit more.” Others agreed.

Waliullah Ramani, director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies, criticized the 18 month deadline Obama created, noting that the insurgents can merely wait out the 18 months. “For the Taliban, this is good news. If the Afghan government remains in the same situation that is today, it cannot remain in power for even a month when the US leaves.” The Monitor published these comments uncritically.

The Washington Post and the Associated Press both fact-checked Obama’s speech and found it lacking in several areas. The Post criticized Obama for setting a deadline, noting that “the administration has had real trouble meeting deadlines.” It noted that Obama’s claim that he could not have sent troops sooner was technically true, but really isn’t. And it criticized him for planning to use a supplemental appropriation to pay for the war -- “a practice Democrats heavily criticized during the Bush years and something Obama had said he would not do.”

The AP criticized the idea that we can “train competent Afghan security forces.” They noted that the problem with the Afghan forces is “an unwillingness to fight. Too many get into the fight but don’t remain or don’t perform.” The AP tossed cold water on Obama’s assertion that Europeans would provide additional troops: “history has shown that these troop contributions often are incremental, sometimes slow in materializing and frequently come with conditions attached.” They also tore apart his claim that Pakistan was helping defeat the Taliban:

“It's true the Pakistani army this year has launched offensives against extremist elements in the areas cited by Obama. What he did not mention, however, is that the groups being targeted by the Pakistanis are those that threaten the Pakistani government — not those, also based in Pakistan, that are focused on attacking U.S. and Afghan forces on the other side of the porous border. . . . [those] have so far not been confronted on the Pakistan side of the border, other than by air strikes from U.S. drones.”

So much for the speech of his Presidency.

Obama went into this speech with a 35% approval rating by the public on his handling of the Afghanistan situation:


And that support is even lower among Republicans and independents:


Nothing in his speech or in the coverage of his speech is going to help those numbers much, apart from the brief short term boost that normally follows speeches of this kind. But in this instance, I actually doubt he’ll get that large of a boost. Here’s why:

My Problems With The Speech

Obama’s speech was dull, yet petulant. It was arrogant, yet pleading. It was contradictory, and most importantly, it was uninspired. There was nothing in Obama’s speech to tell the average person why we are in Afghanistan, why we need to stay, why we should risk one more American life, or how we are going to prevail. Obama just assured us that he decided that it was important to our security that we stay.

Most of the speech was spent trying to walk a contradictory line: (1) Bush left the war in such a horrible state that it’s virtually unwinnable, but (2) I, Obama, fixed all of his mistakes and made it all better, but (3) the whole thing is messed up and will be a struggle to set right, but (4) I, Obama, fixed it and I will fix it.

And the policy behind the speech was worse.

Obama tried to placate the right by sending more troops -- a position that I disagree with. But he tried not to look like he was placating the right by cutting the number down from 40,000 to 30,000. He tried to placate the left by setting a firm deadline, which really isn’t very firm when you realize he only set 2011 as the date we “begin” to come home.

In the end, the only people he really placated were the Taliban. Indeed, those idiots issued a statement that seemed almost giddy:

“Obama will witness lots of coffins heading to America from Afghanistan. Their hope to control Afghanistan by military means will not become reality. The extra 30,000 troops that will come to Afghanistan will provoke stronger resistance and fighting, They will withdraw shamefully. They cannot achieve their hopes and goals.”

And, sadly, they are correct: they won a tremendous victory last night. All they need to do now is wait 18 months and we will leave, handing them Afghanistan on a platter. In the meantime, they can swing over more and more villagers who know that once the Americans leave, the Taliban will return. What villager will stand up to fight the Taliban now, knowing that in 18 months they will stand alone?

Moreover, try as I might, I could find no solutions in his speech, just promises of more of the same. As you know, I have come to believe that we are wasting time, money and lives in Afghanistan. I see no reason to believe that any mission to stabilize the Afghan government can succeed because Afghanistan the country is a fiction. Not only does it consist of a collection of warring tribes rather than a people with some common interests, but it lacks any of the history, culture or institutions needed to hold a democracy together. Thus, no matter what we do, I believe that our efforts will fall apart once we leave. And nothing in Obama’s speech last night told me that he recognizes this.

But even putting my views aside, where was the path to success last night? He offered more of the same, which hasn’t worked, and all he did was assure us that this time it would work. Why? How? And if all you're going to do is repeat what Bush was doing, why did we need you in the first place?

Does this man have no ideas?

Indeed, rather than enlighten us, most of the speech was spent blaming Bush for Obama's failures to come. When Obama first did this after his election, it was understandable. Every president inherits the messes of the prior president. And with the left in such bloodlust for Bush, it made sense to use Bush as a sort of boogey-man to hide behind when things weren’t working out. It wasn’t presidential and wasn’t the kind of behavior in which successful people engage, but it was understandable. But that was a long time ago.

Obama claimed during the campaign that he had a plan for Afghanistan. He replaced the command team there with his own hand-picked successors. He’s sent troops, sent diplomats and thoroughly reformed the war to his own liking. It is too late to blame Bush. And trying to blame Bush now just sounds whiny and weak.

But the biggest failure in the speech, the one Obama will regret the most, is that he failed to set a clear list of conditions that constitute an exit strategy. Yes, he set 2011 as the beginning for withdrawal, if conditions are right, but he never said what those conditions were. Nor did he set up a fall guy, i.e. Karzai, that he can blame for failing to meet those (non-existent) conditions. This all but guarantees that our leaving will be seen as Obama simply giving up. Talk about bad politics.

Other than that, it was a great speech.


** Update: Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and nominal Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent the day playing down the 2011 date. So they're already backtracking on the only real "decision" Obama made? Failure, they name is Barack.


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Should We Leave Afghanistan?

Time for more controversy. I have been thinking about Afghanistan for some time now, and I’m seriously starting to doubt the wisdom of staying. Unfortunately, I do not believe that our current strategy (or any strategy that we would employ) can succeed because our policies are promised on fallacies. If we don't reconsider our premises and change our strategy accordingly, we need to stop endanger any more American lives.

Before I delve into this issue, let me be clear -- this is not about Obama. I don’t believe that Obama is doing anything significantly different than Bush did or than McCain would have done. And in all honestly, it is difficult to fault him for doing what the entire establishment advocates.

Secondly, I do not think going into Afghanistan was a mistake. Far from it, it was a necessary act. Al Qaeda, a terrorist group bent on the death or forced conversion of all non-Muslims, was using Afghanistan as a base of operations against the United States. They had direct ties within the government itself and were using Afghan territory to train and equip terrorists who would attack the United States and other Western countries. Destroying that ability was the key reason to go into Afghanistan, and it was a worthwhile goal.

So what's the problem? The problem is that there is no exit strategy. . . there can be no exit strategy under our current thinking. And that is because we are working under the illusion that Afghanistan is a country. Every strategy put forward by the left or right begins with this assumption, and it is faulty.

Afghanistan the country is a fiction, like many countries in that part of the world. When the British arrived during their empire building phase, they found thousands of small fiefdoms, each ruled by a local prince or potentate. The British co-opted or conquered them all. When the British left, they drew arbitrary lines that bound groups of these fiefdoms into single countries. These new countries lumped together different ethnic groups, tribes, clans and religions, each of whom hated the others, and they’ve been fighting ever since.

Afghanistan is a collection of different ethnic tribes (see map above). They do not get along. They will form alliances with other tribes where it is in their interest, but they break those alliances the moment their interests change. They have no common beliefs to hold them together. To the contrary, they hold many ancient grudges that tear them apart. And even apart from the grudges, the influence of Iran and Pakistan tear the country apart.

Yet, all of our strategies assume not only that this collection of waring tribes can be turned into a single country if we only impose a democracy. But there is nothing about Afghanistan that tells me that they are ready for democracy.

And this is the core of the problem. Liberals and neocons naively believe that the rest of the world is “just like us, waiting to happen.” All we need to do is stick a ballot box under their noses, find a George Washington proxy, and they will suddenly become committed democrats. But that’s simply not true. There are people in this world who worship strength, who find lying to be an acceptable form of behavior, and who savor revenge for grievances that began thousands of years before they were born. These societies function on the same level as a fifth grade schoolyard. . . power is privilege.

From ethnic cleansing/revenge in the Balkans, to ethnic slaughters in Rwanda (and a half dozen other African countries), to the anti-Christian genocides in places like Somalia and Sudan, to clan on clan violence throughout the Middle East, the evidence is clear -- the Western model of civility and constitutional democracy is the outlier.

It took us 2000 years to get to the point where we are. Two thousand years to develop a legal system that prizes truth and clear rules. Two thousand years of overthrowing dictators for us to learn how to govern without force and accept rule of law. Two thousand years of church, and state, and educational institutions, and culture working together to instill in us the beliefs that are needed for a democracy to work. And even now, those beliefs are precariously balanced and sometimes fail us.

Afghanistan has no history akin to ours. They have no real educational system, and no culture of freedom or democracy. They have no shining government to look up to, no history of increasing freedoms. They have no independent courts. And, ominously, they have a religion that preaches hate and division, not unity and peace. For all practical purposes, it is a society of feral children grown old, all suffering from stunted intellectual and emotional growth.

There is nothing about Afghanistan (or anywhere else in the world) that tells me that democracy can be imposed by outsiders where it does not have strong roots already. Their culture is destructive and is simply not suited for any form of cooperative government. Yes, we can create a pretend democracy as long as we occupy the country. But the moment we leave, they will revert to their natural instincts. Thus, our plans to create a stable Afghanistan by imposing a democracy on these people are doomed to fail. The moment we leave, everything will evaporate.

Indeed, unless we impose democratic values on the Afghan people, any democracy we create will be a hoax. And therein lies the rub. Not only do I doubt that it is possible to impose such values on a backward people, but our policy makers would never even attempt it. To achieve that, we would need to reform their government, their educational system, their culture, and their religion, much like we did in Japan, and that would need to be imposed upon them. But that would make us “cultural imperialists,” and it would bring immediate cries that this is a war against Islam. This is unacceptable to our policy makers.

That leaves us with only one other viable strategy. Break Afghanistan into parts along ethnic lines (like what solved the Yugoslavia problem), and install favored strongmen in each enclave to ensure stability. But our policy makers won’t do this either because they can’t stomach the idea of abandoning the fiction that Afghanistan is a country. . . not to mention they refuse to be seen supporting dictators or warlords. So we are an impasse.

Thus, rather than correcting our strategy, we keep muddling through with the current strategy, hoping that somehow the house of cards we call the Afghan government suddenly morphs into a creature so wonderful that the Afghan people skip over 2000 years of cultural development, abandon everything they truly believe, and suddenly fall deeply in love with the concepts of democracy, rule of law, and clean government.

I see this as a fool’s errand.

Thus, I also question the desire to send more soldiers to Afghanistan. We are told they are needed to control the country (we’ve given up on the idea of destroying the Taliban) until the Afghan government and military can stand on their own feet. But the government will never stand on its own feet without a Western army to prop it up, and the Afghan army suffers the same lack of cohesion as the country. Indeed, they are beset with ethnic tensions, they are not trusted in most parts of the country, and they suffer a desertion rate in excess of 20%. And this is after we spent billions of dollars training them since 2002 -- a longer period, by the way, than World War II lasted from start to finish (1939-1945).

It strikes me that it’s time to face reality. There is no point to wasting American lives trying to prop up a government that will evaporate the second we leave. We either need to seriously remake their society from top to bottom, or we should admit that Afghanistan is a fiction and set about creating smaller, more stable fiefdoms and pairing them off with larger partners (like Pakistan or Iran) to keep the Taliban from returning. If we won't do that, then I don't think we should risk another American life.

At least, that’s how I’m see it.


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