Category Archives: War Commentary
“This Is A Religious War”
Thoughts from Andrew Sullivan. Almost thirteen years ago.
My views have changed very little since. Have his?
The American Dunkirk
Remembering the Manhattan boat lift.
@dancingpilot And amazingly, it happened without government bureaucrats directing it. #America
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 11, 2014
I should note, though, that it’s not really fair to compare the time taken for the two events. You can make a lot more trips across the Hudson in a given time than across the Channel.
[Afternoon update]
As Paul notes in comments, it’s also a lot easier to evacuate when you don’t have the Luftwaffe attacking you.
The Latest Gallup Poll
This has to be a nightmare if you’re a Democrat, less than two months before the election.
I used to say that the best thing that Bill Clinton did for the country was to end the Democrats’ grip on Congress. Barack Obama has done the same thing, and it may be longer lasting.
Obama’s “Coalition”
All of this doublespeak in the media reminds me of the glossary I wrote a couple of months before the removal of Saddam.
Susan Rice
In one meeting, Rice pressed the German delegation relentlessly for leadership within the European Union. The Germans sought more time and consultation with other EU member states, frustrating Rice to the point that she lost her cool and reportedly launched into a profanity-filled lecture that featured a rare diplomatic appearance of the word “motherfucker.” Germany’s national security advisor, Christoph Heusgen, was so angered that he told an American confidante it was the worst meeting of his professional life.
…Rice’s bluntness and hot temper have undercut her effectiveness throughout her career. In July 2014, the New Republic reported that she once confronted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas outside the Oval Office, saying, “You Palestinians can never see the fucking big picture.” A U.N. ambassador of one of the world’s major powers told me that he didn’t “understand what she thinks she is achieving by talking to us like a longshoreman.” The brusqueness hasn’t helped with her interpersonal relationships within the administration or with her staff, either.
Actually, though, the piece is really a critique of the administration overall, and Obama in particular:
The problem is that in seeking to sidestep the pitfalls that plagued Bush, Obama has inadvertently created his own. Yet unlike Bush, whose flaw-riddled first-term foreign policy was followed by important and not fully appreciated second-term course corrections, Obama seems steadfast in his resistance both to learning from his past errors and to managing his team so that future errors are prevented. It is hard to think of a recent president who has grown so little in office.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
The Anniversary
It’s been thirteen years now, hard to believe. I’m sort of relieved that there have been no apparent attempts on the part of the enemy to commemorate it with an attack, but the day is still young. Instapundit has a lot of links.
The World, At War
Victor Davis Hanson describes the depressing state of chaos in the Middle East, and an administration that wants to pretend that we’re not at war.
The Problem With “Fierce Minimalism”
Thoughts on crises, and urgency:
One of the implicit assumptions of “fierce minimalism” is that action fuels the flames. Obama argued as much at an American Legion speech. He said, ”the answer is not to send in large scale military deployments that over stretch our military, and lead for us occupying countries for a long period of time and end up feeding extremism.” An alternative point of view using almost an identical metaphor was articulated by Franklin Roosevelt. “Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire.”
The difference in the two presidential fire examples is the element of urgency. Roosevelt was aware that the fireman’s enemy is time and one of the points of the hose story, which everyone in that era understood, was the importance of dousing the fire while it was still small. Obama, by contrast, lacks the dimension of time. His approach implicitly assumes he has the leisure to add an ounce here and an ounce there to achieve a nuanced outcome. Roosevelt understood that a crisis was urgent. In the current case, Obama is busy calibrating, thinking and golfing like he had all the time in the world.
What happens when a fierce minimalist meets a fierce fire?
Things can get out of control very quickly.
And then there’s this additional comment:
Any return to the Middle East will be as a salvage party re-entering the smoking hulk of a ship looking for survivors. And whoever reboards that derelict in the future had better be alert. In the glare of their flashlights they’ll glimpse strange, furtive forms.
“Was that a man I saw Captain?”, one boarder will ask. “It looked funny but I only saw it for an instant.”
“That’s because he was carrying a head.”
“Oh. What’s through this door Captain?”
“It used to be Lebanon. Ok men, form a stack. On my count …”
There is no way back to the status quo ante. The Iraq legacy, for good or ill, is gone. The Cold War victory of 1989 is gone. What Kissinger called “a brief moment in human history when one could speak of an incipient global world order” is gone. Maybe for the best.
Obama will be remembered as an extremely consequential president. He did “fundamentally change” the world but not in the way he can understand. I almost wish he did by design. But I have a feeling the verdict of history will be that he pushed the wrong buttons by accident, simply because they had bright colors and made beeping sounds.
Frighteningly true.
Geert Wilders
…says “I told you so” and enough is enough:
In all naivety, Deputy Prime Minister Asscher states that there is an “urgent demand” from Muslims to “crack down” on this phenomenon. Last Friday, in its letter to Parliament, the Cabinet wrote that jihadists are hardly significant. They are called a “sect”, and a “small” group.
This is what those who look away wish, these deniers of the painful truth for ten years and two days, the ostrich brigade Rutte 2.
But the reality is different. According to a study, 73% of all Moroccans and Turks in the Netherlands are of the opinion that those who go to Syria to fight in the jihad are “heroes.” People whom they admire.
And this is not a new phenomenon. Thirteen years ago, 3,000 people died in the attacks of 9/11. We remember the images of burning people jumping from the twin towers. Then, also, three-quarters of the Muslims in the Netherlands condoned this atrocity. That is not a few Muslims, but hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the Netherlands condoning terrorism and saying jihadists are heroes. I do not make this up. It has been investigated. It is a ticking time bomb.
Madam Speaker, is it a coincidence that for centuries Muslims were involved in all these atrocities? No, it is not a coincidence. They simply act according to their ideology. According to Islam, Allah dictated the truth to Muhammad, “the perfect man.” Hence, whoever denies the Koran, denies Allah. And Allah leaves no ambiguity about what he wants.
I think we’re reaching a tipping point.