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  • #31
    Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
    I shudder even more when I think of Gordon England's blunder of ordering that the "Don't Tread On Me" navy jack be flown from all USN ships until the end of the War On Terror.
    Kinda reminds me of the republicans in the mid eighties using Springsteens "Born in the USA" as a theme song for thier campaigning and every political moron that has played it since. They don't even know what the songs about as with England and the Navy Jack.

    Guess its a good thing the majority of the public knows not of the true meaning of that flag or that song hence a politician might look stupid.

    Comment


    • #32
      Originally posted by S-2 View Post
      I think Troung and Gun Grape have done a fine job diminishing some of the beef here. There's nothing spectacular about the guy yet nor impossible to overcome.

      I have great faith in the system's ability to defeat the endeavors-good or bad-of any temporal entity such as a measly president. The monster is bigger than us all, even our pillars of checks and balances pale before the Washington protocol.

      Everybody and everything is buffered to palatable levels by "advise and consent".

      Remember that we're a country that managed to elevate Dwight Eisenhower to president but somehow missed on George C. Marshall. Go figure...:))
      Krauthammer and I think all three of you are wrong.

      December 26, 2009
      2009: The Year of Living Fecklessly
      By Charles Krauthammer

      WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not just reject President Obama's latest feckless floating nuclear deadline. He spat on it, declaring that Iran "will continue resisting" until the U.S. has gotten rid of its 8,000 nuclear warheads.

      So ends 2009, the year of "engagement," of the extended hand, of the gratuitous apology -- and of spinning centrifuges, two-stage rockets and a secret enrichment facility that brought Iran materially closer to becoming a nuclear power.

      We lost a year. But it was not just any year. It was a year of spectacularly squandered opportunity. In Iran, it was a year of revolution, beginning with a contested election and culminating this week in huge demonstrations mourning the death of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri -- and demanding no longer a recount of the stolen election but the overthrow of the clerical dictatorship.

      Obama responded by distancing himself from this new birth of freedom. First, scandalous silence. Then, a few grudging words. Then relentless engagement with the murderous regime. With offer after offer, gesture after gesture -- to not Iran, but the "Islamic Republic of Iran," as Obama ever so respectfully called these clerical fascists -- the U.S. conferred legitimacy on a regime desperate to regain it.

      Why is this so important? Because revolutions succeed at that singular moment, that imperceptible historical inflection, when the people, and particularly those in power, realize that the regime has lost the mandate of heaven. With this weakening dictatorship desperate for affirmation, why is the U.S. repeatedly offering just such affirmation?

      Apart from ostracizing and delegitimizing these gangsters, we should be encouraging and reinforcing the demonstrators. This is no trivial matter. When pursued, beaten, arrested and imprisoned, dissidents can easily succumb to feelings of despair and isolation. Natan Sharansky testifies to the electric effect Ronald Reagan's Evil Empire speech had on lifting spirits in the Gulag. The news was spread cell to cell in code tapped on the walls. They knew they weren't alone, that America was committed to their cause.

      Yet so aloof has Obama been that on Hate America Day (Nov. 4, the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran), pro-American counter-demonstrators chanted "Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them," i.e., their oppressors.

      Such cool indifference is more than a betrayal of our values. It's a strategic blunder of the first order.

      Forget about human rights. Assume you care only about the nuclear issue. How to defuse it? Negotiations are going nowhere, and whatever U.N. sanctions we might get will be weak, partial, grudging and late. The only real hope is regime change. The revered and widely supported Montazeri had actually issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.

      And even if a successor government were to act otherwise, the nuclear threat would be highly attenuated because it's not the weapon but the regime that creates the danger. (Think India or Britain, for example.) Any proliferation is troubling, but a nonaggressive pro-Western Tehran would completely change the strategic equation and make the threat minimal and manageable.

      What should we do? Pressure from without -- cutting off gasoline supplies, for example -- to complement and reinforce pressure from within. The pressure should be aimed not at changing the current regime's nuclear policy -- that will never happen -- but at helping change the regime itself.

      Give the kind of covert support to assist dissident communication and circumvent censorship that, for example, we gave Solidarity in Poland during the 1980s. (In those days that meant broadcasting equipment and copying machines.) But of equal importance is robust rhetorical and diplomatic support from the very highest level: full-throated denunciation of the regime's savagery and persecution. In detail -- highlighting cases, the way Western leaders adopted the causes of Sharansky and Andrei Sakharov during the rise of the dissident movement that helped bring down the Soviet empire.

      Will this revolution succeed? The odds are long but the reward immense. Its ripple effects would extend from Afghanistan to Iraq (in both conflicts, Iran actively supports insurgents who have long been killing Americans and their allies) to Lebanon and Gaza where Iran's proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are arming for war.

      One way or the other, Iran will dominate 2010. Either there will be an Israeli attack or Iran will arrive at -- or cross -- the nuclear threshold. Unless revolution intervenes. Which is why to fail to do everything in our power to support this popular revolt is unforgivable.

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by Bluesman View Post
        Krauthammer and I think all three of you are wrong.
        I'm with ya as well. Krauthammer seems to me, really has the word on everything current in this pol arena. Ever notice how nobody(but a mannerless libtard) will interrupt him when speaking on any of the news shows he is on. I think most the pundits get thier cues or thier points to be argued directly from him. He is at the top of his game right now and has the best play by play and diagnosis of current events than anyone else, IMO.

        Comment


        • #34
          Originally posted by 7thsfsniper View Post
          Kinda reminds me of the republicans in the mid eighties using Springsteens "Born in the USA" as a theme song for thier campaigning and every political moron that has played it since. They don't even know what the songs about as with England and the Navy Jack.
          Oh so true!

          I remember Ron Reagan commenting about his father's use of the song and his specifically mentioning Springsteen in a speech.

          Ron, somewhat annoyed, noted that his father didn't know Bruce Springsteen from Bruce Jenner.

          Bill Clinton made somewhat the same gaffe by using Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" for his campaign song.

          I believe it was Mick Fleetwood who made the slightly amused observation that the song was written about divorce!
          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

          Comment


          • #35
            Report: Obama’s national security team ‘incredibly weak’

            Report: Obama’s national security team ‘incredibly weak’
            Posted By Josh Rogin Wednesday, November 4, 2009

            Despite an expansion of the National Security Council staff, coordination of national security policy is still dysfunctional and there is a lack of strategic guidance from President Obama, according to a group of leading outside experts and former officials.

            "Reform must take place," said James Locher, President & CEO of the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR), "If you did not like what happened in the last 7 or 8 years... you're not going to like what's coming in the future."

            "Momentum for reform is building, but it is largely rhetoric and good intentions," reads PNSR's new report . The congressionally funded group was begun as the result of a cooperative agreement between the Defense Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "Strategic management of the national security system remains absent and is desperately needed to make it integrated, cohesive, and agile," the report continues.

            Calling reform of the national security infrastructure "the number one national security issue," Locher said that America's ability to operate in international arenas the world over is "crippled" by the dysfunction within the system.

            He called the White House's national security staff "incredibly weak," preventing integration and coordination that the National Security Council should be doing.

            "There's almost no strategic guidance from the president or the executive office of the president," Locher said, adding, "We have almost no knowledge management in the national security system."

            There's also no effective means for delegating the president's authority, he added.

            Locher spoke a an event rolling out the latest PNSR report at the New American Foundation, hosted by its foreign policy chief and editor of The Washington Note Steve Clemons.

            Clemons noted that according to the Goldwater-Nichols act, President Obama was required to submit a national security strategy by June 18, 150 days into his presidency, but he failed to do so.

            The "Guiding Coalition" that oversaw the PNSR report included heavyweights such as former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, former Amb. Robert Blackwill, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, retired Adm. Ed Giambastiani, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, plus Washington players Brent Scowcroft, Thomas Pickering, and Joseph Nye.

            Last November's version of the PNSR report included input from now Obama officials Jim Jones, James Steinberg, Michele Flournoy, and Dennis Blair. It declared that "the national security of the United States of America is fundamentally at risk."

            Report: Obama?s national security team ?incredibly weak? | The Cable

            Comment


            • #36
              Julie,
              Bush took 20 months and 14 months during his two terms to roll out the NSS. Also recall that PNSR wants bad press about the NSC structure to give themselves good press; afterall, it's hard to motivate reform if your message is that the status quo is peachy.
              "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

              Comment


              • #37
                Bluesman Reply

                "Krauthammer and I think all three of you are wrong."

                Yeah, I read Charlie's op-ed and thought HE was wrong. If you and him think, as example, that some social revolution generated by our hand is gonna gitterdun before these guys go nuclear and take this whole nightmare from the theoretical to fact, I disagree.

                We're too inept at more levels than simply the executive to pull that off and do so quickly.

                Better to just nuke 'em while we're ahead and call it a day.
                Last edited by S2; 27 Dec 09,, 04:36.
                "This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
                "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs

                Comment


                • #38
                  Originally posted by S-2 View Post
                  "Krauthammer and I think all three of you are wrong."

                  Yeah, I read Charlie's op-ed and thought HE was wrong. If you and him think, as example, that some social revolution generated by our hand is gonna gitterdun before these guys go nuclear and take this whole nightmare from the theoretical to fact, I disagree.

                  We're too inept at more levels than simply the executive to pull that off and do so quickly.

                  Better to just nuke 'em while we're ahead and call it a day.
                  Not your usual moderate stance, sir. :)

                  Seriously, that WAS the only track off of the rail line that leads directly into Nuclear-Armed Iran. And it was squandered. Frankly, I think you DO see that and are either pride-bound or too contrarian to state it.

                  Very Gun Grape-like.

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Originally posted by Countezero View Post
                    That's a great post.

                    As far as the whole ending the War on Terror bit, I don't have a problem with it. Paul Pillar, the CIA's former CTC chief, wrote that dubbing the struggle against terrorism would be a mistake. He did so in a book he wrote BEFORE 9/11. So far as I know, his opinion has not changed. Paul Pillar, believes the expectations for any campaign against terrorism must be realistic in both its scope and its aims. “If there is a ‘war’ against terrorism,” he writes, “it is a war that cannot be won.”

                    Such criticisms return us to the question about whether the so-called “war-footing” is appropriate for this political, economic and military undertaking. Specifically, by dubbing the conflict a war, the Bush administration has unconsciously established an unrealistic expectation for how victory against radical Islam and transnational terrorism will be achieved. Unlike the previous wars fought between states, Philip H. Gordon tells us that victory in the War on Terror “will not come when foreign leaders accept certain terms but when political changes erode and ultimately undermine the support for the ideology and strategy for those determined to destroy the United States.” According to J. Martin Rochester, in practical terms, this means that the “war” itself “will consist of the management of terrorism so that what incidents do occur are isolated and relatively minor in their lethality and destructiveness.” For Gordon and Rochester, terrorism is “like violent crime, deadly disease, and other scourges … it can be reduced and contained. But it cannot totally be eliminated. … The goal of eliminating terrorism entirely is not only unrealistic but also counterproductive.”
                    Should be no surprise that I disagree with you and TopHatter, too.

                    From PowerLine:

                    "Don't Say We're Violent, Or We'll Kill You"
                    December 26, 2009 Posted by John at 5:38 PM
                    That has been the message of Islamic extremists on a number of occasions, e.g. the Mohammed cartoons. An extreme case occurred recently when the proprietor of the web site Religion of Peace received a death threat from members of the religion of peace:

                    A recent e-mail to a website launched after the 9/11 terror attacks to document the instances of Islamic violence said simply: "We will kill you. Like this ... "

                    The message included a photograph of a man who had been beheaded, his body resting chest down on grass and his lifeless head placed in the middle of his own back. Another photograph showed a bloody knife.
                    Religion of Peace keeps a running tally of Islamic terrorist attacks. There are far more of them than you probably realize. Quite remarkably, it required ten pages of screen shots to reproduce Religion of Peace's tally for just the last two months.

                    It is worth noting that these attacks, all during the last 60 days, occurred in 18 countries. Altogether, jihadists have carried out 14,578 fatal terrorist attacks since September 11. No wonder the Obama administration has declared an end to the war on terror!

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Originally posted by Bluesman View Post
                      Should be no surprise that I disagree with you and TopHatter, too.

                      From PowerLine:
                      I stand by my assertion: "Declaring war" on terror is an exercise in wishful thinking that will last only as long as the administration that did the declaring is in power.

                      It might survive a same-party transition (debating that is purely academic now, of course) but at the end of the day, the "war" is going to be quietly rescinded and the country as a whole looks foolish for declaring "war" on an ideology or mindset in the first place.

                      The War on Poverty, The War on Drugs. The War on Terror. All of those "enemies" have been with us since the beginning of time and they will continue to be so, "war" or no "war". You'd think that somebody would've figured that by now.

                      Combat them? Unquestionably.

                      But a grandstanding, grandiloquent declaration of war?
                      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
                        I stand by my assertion: "Declaring war" on terror is an exercise in wishful thinking that will last only as long as the administration that did the declaring is in power.

                        It might survive a same-party transition (debating that is purely academic now, of course) but at the end of the day, the "war" is going to be quietly rescinded and the country as a whole looks foolish for declaring "war" on an ideology or mindset in the first place.

                        The War on Poverty, The War on Drugs. The War on Terror. All of those "enemies" have been with us since the beginning of time and they will continue to be so, "war" or no "war". You'd think that somebody would've figured that by now.

                        Combat them? Unquestionably.

                        But a grandstanding, grandiloquent declaration of war?
                        It's a mind-set. If it WERE a declared war - and I think we missed a great opportunity to actually put this country on a war footing, which would've settled some of the puerile 'debates' we seem to be unable to avoid, at our extreme cost - and actually FIGHT this like we mean it.

                        I sat through two of the most incredible briefings last week: a total of THREE HOURS' worth of 'education' on what is and is not permitted to do in the intercept of foreign communications, all delivered by lawyers that are far more empowered and sure of their mission than the Director of the National Security Agency that employs them.

                        Mind you, I'm not talking about the bright, clear lines drawn around US citizens' rights. I'm referring to a set of arcane and intricate constraints on this nation's ability to wage a war like it IS a war, and not some civil suit. These are NOT questions of post-9/11 measures to defend the nation's People or property or interests. These are unbelievably minute points that simply MUST have the terrorists exclaiming that Allah is indeed mighty, that he can bind the greatest Power on Earth with chains of their own making.

                        We simply have not learned a dam' thing. We'll pay for it, too. We're paying for it RIGHT NOW.

                        And if this country believed itself to be in a righteous war of our very existence, MAYBE then - certainly, ONLY then - would we fight like we actually believed our country was worth protecting.

                        There IS a point to calling it a War on Terror, and I think you discount the intangible but absolutely vital aspect of the mentality of the people.

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
                          Wanna bet that if it is done under Obama he will either be accused of claiming a false victory or 'giving up'. ;)
                          I had a chuckle at that - I knew it was coming. Whatever you do don't mention Afghanistan 'Plain sailing' with 8000 troops' - with Mission Accomplished in Iraq'. In fact I see more correlation with Bush's early Afghanistan Policy replete with "Carteresque" Administration policies using the same logic.

                          But still, I guess one has to come up with an article to feed the faithful - with the veracity of the 2007/8 campaign trail it looks like WAB has a robust comedy thread in the making springing to life :)
                          Ego Numquam

                          Comment


                          • #43
                            Originally posted by Chunder View Post
                            I had a chuckle at that - I knew it was coming. Whatever you do don't mention Afghanistan 'Plain sailing' with 8000 troops' - with Mission Accomplished in Iraq'. In fact I see more correlation with Bush's early Afghanistan Policy replete with "Carteresque" Administration policies using the same logic.

                            But still, I guess one has to come up with an article to feed the faithful - with the veracity of the 2007/8 campaign trail it looks like WAB has a robust comedy thread in the making springing to life :)
                            How many times are you going to trot out that 'Mission Accomplished' trope? You may or may not realize that there was no 'Mission Accomplished in Iraq' banner, nor even message, EVER, but you bunch of liars just LOVE throwing that in the face of Bush and his supporters, don't you? Do you have any idea what that banner was all about? Do you care? Do you know how much bilge water you've drunk because it accords with your worldview that is simply incorrect about so many varied things?

                            You're the comedian here. But it's not really a very good act.

                            GONG.

                            Oh, and that dead guy you quoted? Doesn't surprise me you find him funny, either. But when Obama really DOES give up in Afghanistan - and he WILL, because he's been trying to all along; he was just acting all butch for the mob when he was trying to get elected, but most of us knew he didn't mean it - it will be because he really DID give up.

                            He COULD have won. But then he gave the speech, and absolutely assured the Afghans we were going to bugger off before they could do what we had been telling them for eight years that we'd assure the conditions would allow them to preserve themselves IF they would just trust us, and get on-side.

                            Well, they're just as big a set of fools as the 1991 Shiite Iraqis were: they trusted us to keep our word.

                            Nobody with any sense in this wide world will EVER make THAT mistake again. Hell, we won't be able to talk ANYbody into ANYthing we would like 'em to help us with from here on out.

                            Not the Poles.

                            Not the Czechs.

                            We are SO SCREWED, and you're chuckling.

                            Great. Laugh it up, man.

                            Comment


                            • #44
                              Originally posted by Bluesman View Post
                              There IS a point to calling it a War on Terror, and I think you discount the intangible but absolutely vital aspect of the mentality of the people.
                              I don't disagree with most of what you just said. But I also find some of it hopelessly impossible.

                              The problem is, people in this country just don't give a damn about anything that isn't jammed in their faces.

                              People were bitching and moaning about inconvenient airport security within mere months (or even weeks) after 9/11.

                              Mindset? Mentality? War-footing? For the people actually doing the fighting, unquestionably.

                              For everybody else it's just bombast from a politician. Something to be scoffed at, eyes rolling, and dismissed with contempt.

                              And oddly enough, they have a point. Bush's thoughtless cowboy rhetoric and "let's go invade Iraq when the enemy is in Afghanistan" brilliance cost us potential allies and international goodwill, which are now sorely needed. The United States simply cannot bear the burden of Afghanistan alone, to say nothing of his "war" on terrorism internationally.
                              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
                                I don't disagree with most of what you just said. But I also find some of it hopelessly impossible.

                                The problem is, people in this country just don't give a damn about anything that isn't jammed in their faces.

                                People were bitching and moaning about inconvenient airport security within mere months (or even weeks) after 9/11.

                                Mindset? Mentality? War-footing? For the people actually doing the fighting, unquestionably.

                                For everybody else it's just bombast from a politician. Something to be scoffed at, eyes rolling, and dismissed with contempt.

                                And oddly enough, they have a point. Bush's thoughtless cowboy rhetoric and "let's go invade Iraq when the enemy is in Afghanistan" brilliance cost us potential allies and international goodwill, which are now sorely needed. The United States simply cannot bear the burden of Afghanistan alone, to say nothing of his "war" on terrorism internationally.
                                They COULD, if they believed in it. Clearly, you think they should believe LESS in it, not more. Because you are making a case for just conceding that John Q. Public ain't a-gonna help noways, so why disturb him?

                                How 'bout dis, instead: tell him his country is at WAR, remind him every dam' day, and get his support for it? You think making it a military/law enforcement/government-from-the-top-down proposition is actually going to make him support it MORE?

                                I don't think you really see this clearly, ole buddy. This is going to take the NATION to win, and you're giving everybody BUT the part that counts the most - the PEOPLE - the hard job, and making it harder, BECAUSE eventually the thing you're describing as a net negative - SUPPORT - will be lacking when it counts.

                                Here's the crucial aspect all of you seem to have missed: it IS a real war. It IS against terrorists, AND their use of Terror as a method of achieving their objective. And it CAN be made to work, BUT...

                                NOT if you do not have the united will of the People to support it ALL THE WAY THROUGH.

                                And the course you advocate will absolutely assure that WE WILL LOSE.

                                Comment

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