Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

AP assures us that Obama’s Afghanistan dithering is actually a show of strength *UPDATED*

Obama has known for more than 12 months that he was going to become CIC, with responsibility for Afghanistan.  This means 12 months of presidential advisers able to give this neophyte help in figuring out the best strategy for the war that he declared, during the campaign, was the essential, central battlefield in the war [...]

Two must reads *UPDATED*

American Thinker is a site I check regularly, at least twice a day.  It’s not just that the editors are kind enough to publish my work occasionally.  It’s because the articles that appear there routinely range from really good to out-of-the-park stupendous. Today, there are two that fall in the latter category.  These are the [...]

It isn’t hard to predict a narcissist’s behavior

On October 22, 2008, I wrote this: The MSM has been remarkably cavalier about Joe Biden’s bizarre statement regarding the “fact” that America will be attacked six months into a Barack Obama presidency and that people will be shocked and disappointed by Obama’s response (meaning that he’ll either collapse in a sobbing heap, thereby horrifying [...]

About that word “insurgents” *UPDATED*

I saw a headline at Drudge, to the effect that there is a photo of Afghan “insurgents” with U.S. ammo.  The story, although I’m sure it’s interesting, interested me less than that word “insurgent.”  We’ve all talked about the fact that “insurgent” a word that allows a politically correct, liberal media to avoid such words [...]

Obama’s shopping cart — by guest blogger Sadie

It’s like standing in line at the check out counter:  You find yourself peering into the cart in front of you to see what people are eating. The obviously overweight person in front of you has filled his cart with junk food, sugary cereals, ice cream, no vegetables, lots of frozen pizza, no fruit, lots [...]

The war under Generals Obama, Kerry and Biden

I don’t often do this, as you know, but I’m going to quote Jennifer Rubin’s post in its entirety here.  I think it’s important that people understand precisely what is going on in Washington and how it’s affecting men and women in Afghanistan.  Rubin, unsurprisingly, does as good a job as anyone summing up the [...]

Obama needs to figure out that he’s president, not place holder

Charles Krauthammer goes on full throttle attack against Barack Obama based on Obama’s endless, weasely whining that everything that’s gone wrong with the first nine months of his presidency is all Bush’s fault.  The central focus of this whining, of course, is Afghanistan, which candidate Obama claimed was the necessary war and which candidate Obama [...]

More on Obama’s hostile relationship to the military

Jennifer Rubin has two posts this morning, both of which illustrate my point about the dangerous relationship between our CIC and the military he’s supposed to be leading.  In the first, she talks about the insane decision-making process in D.C., which seems to have little to do with either victory or troop safety: The White [...]

Is the administration setting up a Vietnam in Afghanistan? *UPDATED*

I’ve said it a million times and I’ll now say it for the million and first time:  You fight wars to win.  If you’re not committed to winning, leave.  If you don’t leave, and fight a half-assed war, you end with dead soldiers.  That’s what happened in Vietnam, and that’s what Obama and Biden are [...]

What the president really meant to say in his talk to the troops

James Taranto nails what the President really meant to say when he spoke to troops about Afghanistan: “I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm’s way,” FoxNews.com quotes the president as telling servicemen. As for the servicemen who are already in harm’s way: Jeez, guys, be patient! He’ll figure out what [...]

Get ‘er done — Bush and Obama; a study in contrasts

There’ve been accusations and counter-accusations flying about Obama fiddling while Afghanistan burns.  Cheney accuses him of being a do-nothing.  Gibb claims Bush did nothing.  Jake Tapper looked into the matter and discovered that, while Iraq was a priority, Bush indeed did little with troop requests, struggling to fill them, but only getting bout 1/5 of [...]

A scathing indictment of our Commander in Chief’s wartime conduct

In Best of the Web Today, James Taranto politely savages Barack Obama’s absentee leadership as American troops live and die in the line of Taliban fire: “The United States cannot wait for problems surrounding the legitimacy of the Afghan government to be resolved before making a decision on troops, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates [...]

US Soldiers in Afghanistan need your help

I blogged last week about Bravo Troop 361 Cavalry, the unit that was overrun by a horde of Taliban, and whose members stayed to fight despite their wounds.  As with all these stories, there’s a back story too, and the back story is that the guys in that fight didn’t lose just their friends, they [...]

Jennifer Rubin on Obama’s approach to Afghanistan

As usual, the gal’s nailed it: One almost gets the sense that the Obama team may have not learned anything from our recent experiences in two war theaters. It is not as if Donald Rumsfeld and a slew of generals didn’t try in Iraq to use the fewest possible troops, spend the least possible amount of [...]

Our American troops show extraordinary bravery and honor *UPDATED*

It was like a battle scene in an old Hollywood movie, when Americans still knew in their arts that American soldiers are ordinary Americans — good people — only braver and more honorable: Fighting raged at two remote U.S. outpostsnear the Pakistan border this weekend, that left eight U.S. soldiers dead and 24 wounded. The [...]

Conservative cartoonists double-down on Obama, the Olympics and Afghanistan

If only I could draw, I try to draw this type of political cartoon.

President Obama stages his own retreat from Afghanistan *UPDATED*

When Bush was in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan was the good war and Iraq was Vietnam.  Now that Bush is gone, and Iraq is holding stable (for the time being at least), the liberals can give over their pretense about the possibility of a good war and, instead, given in to their default and [...]

Charles Krauthammer lays out Obama’s warped priorities re American wars & foreign policy

My belief, getting stronger by the minute, is that Obama’s sole Afghanistan policy was to be the un-Bush.  Bush’s critics claimed Iraq was the bad war and Afghanistan the good war.  So Obama immediately stated that he’d focus on Afghanistan.  Obama, though, true Leftist that he is, and with his deep affinity for totalitarian rulers [...]

Kids make great targets — if you’re the Taliban

The American and world media go into a screaming frenzy whenever American or Israeli troops injure or kill a child.  They do this despite the fact that such incidents are rare and, more significantly, they are aberrant:  both the American and the Israeli military go out of their way to avoid injuring civilians, even if [...]

Why not victory

Bruce Kesler sent around an email asking whether we thought victory was possible in Afghanistan.  My reply was that I don’t think the Democrats can conceive of victory as a possible outcome.  As I wrote to him, I’m the child of parents who fought in WWII and the Israeli War of Independence.  Although they were [...]

It turns out that, in a little corner of Afghanistan, there’ll always be an England

Before their cultural implosion, the English had a reputation for bravery and sangfroid.  Although they are taking a beating in Afghanistan (in large part because the morally bankrupt Labour government refuses to give them necessary support), the troops on the ground are still fighting, dying and showing extraordinary bravery under terrible circumstances: An heroic army [...]

Will the Black Panthers, encouraged by Eric Holders’ decision to dismiss charges against them, go to new levels of intimidation?

During the November 2008 election, Black Panthers appeared on video standing in front of polling places with billy clubs: Eric Holder, however, was unconcerned, and dropped the voter intimidation case against the Black Panthers.  Having learned that they get a free pass for egregious behavior antithetical to democratic government gets a free pass, I wonder [...]

The world continues to be too insane for satire

During the 1970s, there was a post-Yom Kippur War joke that was very popular in Jewish circles: Arab soldiers realized that at least half the Israeli troops they were fighting were named David.  They decided to use this information to deal with situations in whch they were facing Israeli fighters who were hidden from sight.  [...]

“Let’s not, but let’s say that we did.” *UPDATE*

Rusty Shackleford is spitting bullets about the fact that the Taliban have kidnapped Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl and are parading him for propaganda purposes.  Although it’s easy to get all tangled up about international law and whether the Geneva Convention should extend to these people, Dr. Shackleford gets to the core point, which is the fact [...]

Is the Obama administration playing games?

Greyhawk is trying to put the pieces together in Iraq and Afghanistan when it comes to troop rotation.  Right now, on the information available, it looks as if their’s some sleight of hand going on with regarding to troop movements and the American public.  What do you think? In the mid-19th Century, Palmerston called the [...]