Category Archives: War Commentary

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Syria’s Chemical Weapons

The Obama administration’s non-existent red line:

Obama says he means not to contain the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons, but to prevent Tehran from acquiring them. Actions, however, speak louder than words. His new cabinet picks, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and John Brennan, are all longtime advocates of engagement with rogue regimes—without any fallback plan in the predictable event that talking to the mullahs comes to nothing, as it has for more than 30 years. With his Syria policy, Obama is in effect telling the Islamic Republic that if engagement doesn’t work, if sanctions don’t make the regime reconsider, then he’ll do nothing to stop them.

But you already knew that, unless you were a low-information voter who reelected Obama because…Bain Capital! And lady parts!

Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The Defense Budget

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How much can we cut?

In addition to the points that Megan makes, a lot of the Pentagon budget is wasteful, for the same reason that a lot of NASA’s is — because the lawmakers on the committees overseeing it like it that way. But the other problem is that we can’t always predict what we’ll need, and in that sense, defense spending is like advertising — only half of it is effective, but no one knows which half.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Four Months After The Benghazi Attack

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Where are the killers?

On Tuesday, the Tunisian government released Ali Ani al-Harzi, a leading suspect in the attack who was taken into custody after fleeing Libya for Turkey and then sent to Tunisia. Officials say Harzi was released over Washington’s objections, as Tunis cited a “lack of evidence.” While the FBI eventually got access to Harzi, efforts to press him on what he knew were often blocked by bureaucratic objections by the Tunisian government and its court system. In December, the Tunisian branch of the Islamist militia Ansar al-Sharia posted photos of people they claimed to be FBI agents who interviewed Harzi, according to the counterterrorism website Long War Journal. The U.S. intelligence community believes members of Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi participated in the attack four months ago.

While some U.S. officials feared that Harzi’s release was coming, Tunisian officials did not inform the U.S. government ahead of time.

It’s a good thing Obama has so improved our relations with other countries.

And then there’s this:

One source of frustration for U.S. intelligence community: the president’s decision to make the Benghazi probe a criminal investigation. While the CIA has an ever-changing list of suspects it dubs the “Benghazi attack network,” the drones and Special Operations teams that are used to hunt al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Yemen are not being used to track down Stevens’s killers. Instead the investigation is being led by the FBI, which relies on cooperation from local and national police in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt.

Brilliant.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

It’s The Foreign Policy

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…and yes, we are stupid (at least those of us who voted for Obama):

Since World War II, the world has survived and prospered to a remarkable degree under U.S. leadership. Nazism was defeated, followed by the downfall or reformation of equally murderous communist regimes.

Barack Obama’s deepest intention — emotionally and ideologically — is to change all that.

Forget objective reality. As Dinesh D’Souza demonstrated in his book and film, Obama’s psychological makeup — his heart — is influenced to a significant degree by a belief that America is a dangerous colonial power, that world leadership must be shared.

Yet “leading from behind” is a euphemism. There is no such leading.

Our near-certain next secretary of State, John Kerry, our only slightly less certain next secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, and our next CIA director, John Brennan, hold the same views as Obama, or are close enough to those views to be easily manipulated.

Besides the obvious expected policies, such as pushing Israel to make self-destructive concessions for a two-state solution the Palestinians have shown no evidence of wanting, this triumvirate will support Obama in undercutting numerous formerly bipartisan policies. Including, perhaps most significantly, the gutting of the defense budget.

They also will continue the administration’s bizarre Middle East policy that has resulted in the rise of Islamism everywhere from Mali to Egypt and beyond. And no matter the rhetoric we will most likely hear at confirmation hearings, Iran will get the message that serious American power is in actuality “off the table” when it comes to interdicting the mullahs’ march to nuclear weapons.

Outside of the usual Middle East hotspots, Russia and China are watching.

It’s feeling a lot like the thirties in ways other than the continuing sick economy.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Hagel and the Jews:

…our concerns in respect of Senator Hagel aren’t about his views on the Jews. And we appreciate the fact that he served as an enlisted man in Vietnam, an experience we tend to credit (although neither is it dispositive). But we’ve been covering his antics for years, and where we’ve come out is that he’s just over his head in terms of policy. So he’s emerged as a shill for Israel’s most implacable foes. It doesn’t take a genius to comprehend what the mullahs in Iran are going to make of this nomination.

The same thing they made of Obama’s reelection. Plus this:

It looks like Mr. Hagel’s anti-Israel record is the very raison d’etre of the nomination. It looks like the nomination is about the President’s determination to block Israel from going to its own defense against a regime that, in Iran, is preparing, by its own account, an attempt to annihilate the Jewish state. Imagine what Mr. Hagel would be like if he actually did have a problem with the Jews.

Yes, imagine.