Category Archives: War Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Trouble In Timbuktu

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Walter Russell Mead laments:

Via Meadia is glad the press doesn’t hate Obama as much as it hated Bush; otherwise the papers would be full every day with stories about the unintended, tragic consequences of the humanitarian intervention gone awry in Libya and about the policy failures and miscalculations that landed us in this mess. There would be eloquent lamentations and beautifully choreographed hand wringings by our professional moralists and the custodians of the collective conscience at our better universities and more prestigious magazines. There would be telling comparisons of the destruction of the tombs in Timbuktu with the looting of the Baghdad museums. There would be impassioned denunciations of the hubris that led the ideological zealots to promote the holy war, and scathing, mocking reminders of the promises they made about how nice things would be if we took their advice.

As it is, we are just doing our best to ignore the rubble and move on, while many of the same people who pushed the Libya intervention try to gin up a new war in Syria. At least if we make a mess in Syria there is a strong national interest case for the intervention, and a small war in Syria might well reduce the risk of much uglier and nastier war with Iran. Via Meadia is still scratching its head wondering what exactly we gained that was worth the humanitarian catastrophes and bloodbaths the Libyan war unleashed.

Only a few months until November.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Speaking of Libya, it has an increasing gun problem. And before anyone accuses me of being a hypocrite in my Second Amendment support, it’s not really a gun problem — it’s a culture problem.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

President Narcissist

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Thoughts on Mr. I, Me, Mine:

So what is the problem with a charismatic, narcissistic president? After all, most presidents by definition must be somewhat self-absorbed. Yet the rub is that the world has tuned Obama out. All his prime-time rhetoric from Afghanistan, the cool multicultural accentuation of Pakîstan and the Talîban, the photo-op reminders that it was Obama who ordered the mission that took out bin Laden — all this meant nothing to the Taliban, who will now patiently wait us out, unleash a North Vietnamese–like offensive very soon, and remind us that just because we don’t believe there are still things like victory and defeat in our messy wars, that does not mean there are not.

In other words, I worry that Vladimir Putin, the Iranian theocrats, the North Korean apparat, the Chinese central committee, the Muslim Brotherhood, and all the others who detest the United States have sized up Barack Obama. For 40 months they have acknowledged that his postracial image and his youthful charisma, as David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs rightly insisted, threw them for a loop — for a while. And that “for a while” is now ending, replaced with a new belief abroad that the more Obama talks about himself and his team, and the more emphatic he becomes with his “Make no mistake about it” and “Let me be perfectly clear” vacuities, the more he can at first safely be ignored, and then, quite soon, safely be taken advantage of.

Let’s hope it’s not for more than a few more months.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire, War Commentary

President Roosevelt Takes Credit For Terrorist Assassination

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April 19th, 1944

WASHINGTON (Routers) President Roosevelt celebrated the first anniversary of the death of Isoroku Yamamoto with a national radio address on Tuesday, declaring the war essentially won as a result, despite the fact that Congress approved the extension of the Lend-Lease Act for another year today.

Yamamoto was the mastermind of the terrorist attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawai’i two-and-a-half years ago, that killed both civilian and military personnel. His air transport was supposedly shot down last April 18th by several “Allied” P-38 “Lightning” fighters after the Army received intelligence of his whereabouts on the island of Rabaul in the southern Pacific Ocean. Some are skeptical of his death, however, because the War Department has never released photos of the dead commander, despite rumors that they exist in Japanese hands.

Many view it as a controversial action, because the intelligence that allowed the Lightnings to surprise the aerial armada was obtained through the cracking of Japanese codes [Full disclosure: this news agency was the only one brave enough to report this]. However, the administration continues to defend such practices, and has expressed outrage at publication of the fact that they have done so, claiming that it would somehow compromise the war effort. Skeptics, however, have complained that such behavior is a violation of the rules of war. They say that the enemy deserves to be treated with respect and honesty, and that the nation loses its moral standing in the world with such tactics.

In his speech, the president also said that the terror leader would still be alive had someone else been in the White House at the time. Referring to Governor Thomas Dewey, the presumptive Republican nominee in the coming fall election, he said that “…the little man on the wedding cake wouldn’t have had the guts to order that mission, as I did. He won’t even debate on foreign policy.” Many say that the president has a point, given that Dewey only wants to discuss domestic policy and the possibility of communists in key posts in the Roosevelt administration.

Republicans, however, say that the president’s speech is unseemly and un-presidential. “Certainly the president deserves credit for the death of Yamamoto, but the notion that Governor Dewey wouldn’t have done the same thing is ludicrous,” said a campaign staffer. “He can’t possibly know that, and any president, even Woodrow “League of Nations” Wilson would have done so. This is nothing but politics in an election year where the president feels vulnerable.”

An unnamed senior official at the War Department followed up with the president’s speech, stating on background that, “…the ‘War on Aircraft Carriers’ is over.” He went on, “”Now that we have killed tens of thousands of Japanese troops with the president’s brutal island-hopping strategy, and destroyed their morale with the death of their leader, the Japanese people have come to see the potential for legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into the Japanese Imperial Forces now see an opportunity for a legitimate Shintoism.”

Administration critics scoff at the notion. “Yes, I suppose you could say ‘the War on Aircraft Carriers is over’ if you ignore the fact that the Japanese still have fifteen of them, and continue to commission new ones almost every month,” said one Republican Senate staffer. “We’re slowly taking back the Pacific, island by island, but it’s a long bloody mess ahead, and the Nazis still control the continent of Europe. If this is a war that’s ‘over,’ I’d hate to see one that was raging.”