Another must read contributed by Mike Walker, USMC Colonel (retired)

Comments on a dubious e-mail

All,

You are familiar with all manner of bunk communicated via e-mail.  Received the same probably spurious e-mail from two friends today but felt it was worth sending on a few words in reply.  It dealt with Israel, the New York Times, and Islam.  In a nutshell, it posited that the problem facing Israel is Islam. 

Is Islam the primary ‘problem’ facing Israel?  I argue no.  Anti-Semitism is more accurate but still wanting and neither term explains the essential support of the political left in the West.  We need to look carefully at some of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict to get a better understanding.

During the first decades following the birth of the State of Israel the bordering regimes and organizations fighting to destroy Israel were overwhelmingly both secular socialists and Arab nationalists.  This, over time, made them attractive to the western left especially after the Cold War put Israel squarely in the western camp. 

That is the critical fact in understanding why so many in the left in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere are so vehemently anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian today. 

Starting in the 1970’s, the violent radical left (Rote Armee Faktion (RAF) in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, Japanese Red Army, etc) were all brothers and sisters in arms against Israel.  The RAF trained in the Middle East (to include Saddam's Iraq) under the sponsorship of Palestinian terrorist groups and they coordinated their attacks (recall the hijackings carried out by the Abu Nidal Organization designed to free RAF prisoners in German jails).  The Japanese Red Army was actually formed in Lebanon not Japan and its leader was also a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Their shared opinion on religion was that it was an archaic opiate of the masses à la Marx.  Islam played no role for the radical left, Arab or otherwise, yet the goal, the destruction of the State of Israel, remained unchanged from that of the 1940’s and 1950’s.

These radicals have long been romanticized as heroes by too many on the left both here and abroad.  That means that a pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli policy is de rigueur in those circles today.  If you are an authentic leftist then you must oppose the State of Israel and you must take up the Palestinian cause. There are, however, contradictory forces working away at the ranks in the left that make this issue more controversial and offers a hint to a different outcome in the future.

The main contradictory force came to life with the rise of the Islamic theocracy movement that began in Iran in 1979 under the Shi'a ayatollahs that sent shock waves throughout the Islamic world.  This gave rise to bin Laden as a leader in a Sunni counterrevolutionary movement and re-legitimized the Sunni theocracy philosophy preached by the Muslim Brotherhood.

It created an endless friction point for the far left that abhors the concept of God, religion, and the male-dominated culture associated with radical Islam.  This works to weaken the decades-old and unquestioning support of the Palestinian cause and rejection of the State of Israel by the left.

The second is the inescapable fact that there are millions of Israelis and millions of Palestinians at the same place.  Neither is going to go away and somehow both need a state.  That is the legitimate argument that strengthens the left in its anti-Israeli crusade yet causes a dilemma regarding the fate of the citizens of Israel except for the most extreme and genocidal of their brethren.

The final force at work is the old adage 'My enemy's enemy is my friend.'  Both the hard left in the West and the Islamist radicals hate the capitalist democratic system.  As it stands today, both are more than ready to hold their respective noses and grasp the hand of the other in common cause against the free-market West.  But that begs the question, what will happen if the common enemy is removed?  As Hobbes put it, life during that ensuing civil war will be nasty, brutish, and short.

It is true that Islam plays a greater role today than at any other time in the ranks of those bent on destroying Israel but as the historical record shows it has never been a necessary and sufficient condition to seek that destruction.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Mike Walker, Colonel USMC (retired) 

The death of UBL has led to a spate of misinformation regarding the relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda.  Basing decisions on misinformation at this point would be a tragic and far-reaching mistake.

First, let us go over the history between these two organizations.  Al Qaeda was led, until this week, by UBL.  The Taliban is led by Mullah Omar.  The current alliance between the two began in earnest when Mullah Omar invited UBL and al Qaeda into Afghanistan from the Sudan within months of the Taliban taking control of Kabul in 1996. 

The leaders of the two movements were indivisibly joined in the tradition of that region, i.e. the feudal intermarriage between the two families to cement the alliance.  Most reliable open source reports cite the fact that a daughter from each family married into the other’s family.  They are joined together in blood on many levels.

In May 1998 al Qaeda declared war on the United States during a conference hosted by the Taliban in Afghanistan.  In 1999 al Qaeda began detailed planning and training for the 9/11 attacks from camps provided to them by the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

By 9/11 2001 al Qaeda was an official unit in the Taliban Army in Afghanistan and was designated as 055 Brigade.  In other words, the fighters in al Qaeda and the fighters in the Taliban were seamlessly integrated in common cause against us on the battlefield from day one. 

The Taliban alliance with al Qaeda is a strong today as it was on 9/11.

Second, we need to understand how important personal leadership is to movements like this.  When Zarqawi, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), was killed in 2006 the organization carried on normally for a few months.  But after the previously planned operations were completed AQI began to falter.  New and well-coordinated operations did not easily follow and the organization soon faded as a viable threat to Iraqi sovereignty.  

A fair portion of this collapse was due directly to the loss of the ‘great leader.’  It was not simply a case of a key billet that urgently needed to be filled as is the experience in the Western or Eastern military tradition where the army is bigger than any one person.  It was a hole that could never be filled.  In organizations like al Qaeda the leader often is the organization.  This is especially true when the heart and soul of the organization is so deeply based on faith in God as are the al Qaeda and Taliban movements. 

The inescapable question now facing every true believer in al Qaeda is why did God kill UBL?  That leads almost immediately to asking why has God forsaken us, why are we being punished, what did we do that was so wrong?   The death of UBL is not simply the loss of a key or even the key leader; it represents a shattering of the previously unchallenged belief that UBL was the righteous arm of God.  Clearly he was not. Great personal piety is no excuse for merciless and compassionless murder of innocents.

The death of UBL has caused a crisis of faith in the ranks that al Qaeda will probably never recover from.  A similar fate probably awaits the Taliban should Mullah Omar meet his just deserts.

Finally, let us go over what we do not know.  We do not know that UBL was only a figurehead or symbolic leader.  We do not know that he was an active leader running operations directly from his compound in Pakistan.  We will, however, know which assumption is true shortly. 

Open source reports claim that significant amounts information in the form of documents and electronic storage media were captured.  Reportedly, he had several "thumb drives" whose information was so sensitive that he carried them on his body at all times. 

If that reporting is largely true then that information will be exploited by the intelligence community and we be able to assess just how involved UBL was in al Qaeda operations.  Perhaps more importantly, we will find out how deeply UBL was or was not involved in operations conducted by the Taliban, Haqqani Network, and Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami Faction in Afghanistan. 

If he was an active member of the enemy’s Afghan operational leadership then that could have a profound effect on both the Taliban and Haqqani Network (or less likely, on Hekmatyar's) spring offensives now underway in Afghanistan as those plans may now be compromised.

My bet is that UBL was actively involved.  Too many intelligence and operational leaders underestimated UBL too many times in the past.  The assumption that he was a mere figurehead may become one more miscalculation on our part in understanding the threat we face on the battlefield.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Mike Walker and Mike Ramirez combine to warn us... are we listening? Mike Walker is a retired USMC Colonel and Superintendent of Business Services for a California school district.

What happened to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform report?

Why are we playing partisan games over the Obama and Ryan plans when a very good plan was already submitted?  It was not a creature of political bloodletting.  Is that why it was ignored in hyper-partisan Washington?

Gee, it was comprehensive, balanced, and bipartisan.  It was the product of a very talented group of Americans even for those jaded by Washington shenanigans.  More importantly, why are we waiting?  We need to act and we need to act now.  Here are two stories from the “trenches” of the governmental budget crisis in California. 

A Local Lesson

Our school district, like almost every district in California, has been hit with the largest budget cuts since the Great Depression and will likely surpass those cuts in the coming months.  Some of us learned that acting early to cut expenditures is everything in an on-going fiscal crisis like the one in California and one America is facing in Washington DC.  Yet amid this unprecedented crisis we are not laying off employees this year.  Many are asking why.  It is because we were amongst the school districts that acted early to reduce expenditures. 

When we eliminated around 25 positions for the 2009-10 school year it reduced expenditures by about $1.5M per year.  For the upcoming 2011-12 school year that yields a total expenditure reduction of $4.5 million. 

Comparable school districts that did not act in 2009 but put off the reductions until 2011 are still facing the same $4.5 million problem.  Ours is already fixed.  Their problem is not.  They now have to eliminate about 75 comparable positions to get the $4.5 million reduction for 2011-12. 

That is now gutting their educational program.  We will have the equivalent of fifty more professional educators serving the same number of students next year and we met the same $4.5 million goal.  The delay taken by our peers was a terrible miscalculation.  The lesson is that putting off painful cuts does not lessen the problem it exacerbates it.

A State Lesson. 

A few weeks ago the California State Legislature passed a little over $10 billion in cuts to expenditures in order to help address a $26 billion deficit for the 2011-12 fiscal year.  If they had made the exact same cuts starting with the 2009-10 budget, something many in and out of Sacramento had proposed, then the immediate crisis would be over and California would be looking at a $4 billion surplus on 30 June 2012.  Instead, Sacramento, like a lot of California school districts, resisted making timely cuts.  Instead of taking painful yet prudent cuts when first confronted with the crisis they dithered and delayed thereby creating a nightmare scenario in the here and now.

Learn from our mistakes.  If we want America to wait until the budget cutting is truly savage in its consequences then do what most did in California, keep playing politics and kicking the can down the road with accounting gimmicks. 

If we are serious about fiscal responsibility then we should start by pulling together simply as Americans and implement the Commission’s plan now.  There will be plenty of time to have a debate, politically driven or not, over the Obama and Ryan plans later.

Regards,

Mike

Paul Ryan's Growth Plan

Larry Kudlow ,   The Caller

Larry Kudlow is the host of CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report.”

Of all the discussion about Paul Ryan’s big-bang budget plan, the element I like best was caught in this Wall Street Journal op-ed title: “The GOP Path to Prosperity.” In other words, it’s a growth budget. It has plenty of spending cuts, but it also has significant pro-growth tax reform.

Obsessing over the debt is not by itself a policy. Advancing the economy and setting the stage for more job creation is a policy. Mr. Ryan kept an important dose of Ronald Reagan in both the spirit and reality of his plan. Limited government, lower tax rates, and deregulation (of energy) will all promote the path to prosperity.

The other big-picture thought is that the fiscal-policy ball is moving in the right direction. Most of what is being proposed faces a rocky political future. But the direction is unmistakable: less government, lower taxes.

This really started back in December with the extension of the Bush tax cuts and the withdrawal of the trillion-dollar omnibus continuing-resolution spending bill. It continues into the new year with new CRs. Whether Speaker Boehner gets $30 billion or $40 billion in cuts, the direction is clear: lower spending.

Just before the election, John Boehner told us he would stop the bad stuff. Looks like he has. And now Mr. Ryan keeps the drumbeat going with a 2012 budget that would cut $179 billion from the president’s budget baseline. In 2013, Ryan would take down over $220 billion. Over ten years, Ryan would lop off $6 trillion. The key point is not the actual numbers, but the direction of the numbers. Spending is coming down.

Ryan included the thinking of Dave Camp (the Ways and Means chair) on tax reform, which is a 25 percent top rate for individuals and businesses with a full-scale reduction in all the tax-credit, K Street, flotsam-and-jetsam loopholes. That’s very pro-growth.

Ryan also includes deregulation of energy for drill, drill, drill — another big growth and jobs measure.

The health care entitlement picture is going to be very muddled, and the outcome is impossible to figure. So I’ll leave that aside for a moment. The only thing Ryan neglected to do was highlight the need for stable money to stop the damaging Fed rollercoaster. But with so much on his plate, I can understand that omission for now.

Ryan basically stole the budget bacon from President Obama, who should have put this kind of plan in his State of the Union. He didn’t. And now he’s got to play catch-up. The Senate Democrats are utterly hopeless. But the public mood is still where it was last fall: less government spending and borrowing. Ryan delivers on that and then some with his tax-cut growth booster.

The cause of the debt bomb is too much spending and too little growth. Ryan attacks this with new spending rules and tough policy decisions. He also provides the new flat-tax reform incentives to grow the economy.

So if we look at the debt bomb as a share of GDP, what will happen — if Ryan prevails even modestly — is the numerator of debt will steady while the denominator of growth is unleashed.

We will be fine. I can almost hear Paul Ryan saying, “I will not allow America to become Greece.” Amen.

Larry Kudlow is the host of CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report.”

The empty-office presidency

BY ED MORRISSEY, HotAir

My new column for The Week focuses on the, er, unique handling of the launch of a new war by Barack Obama.  Before we get to my take on Obama’s absence on a South American tour during the start of hostilities against Libya, though, let’s first get Dana Milbank’s takeon what he casts as Obama’s tactical error.  Ducking out of town while the bombs started falling, Milbank writes, allowed Republicans to paint Obama as weak:

But the “weak leader” charge gained traction over the weekend, as Obama chose to launch the attack on Gaddafi’s forces while on an excellent adventure in South America with his family.

At about the moment the Tomahawk missiles began to rain down on Libya, Obama was joking with Brazilians about Carnival, the World Cup and the Olympics. Rather than hearing an Oval Office address announcing the new war, Americans got word from the president in a scratchy audio recording. As thousand-pound warheads pounded Libyan forces, Obama was kicking a soccer ball, seeing the sights and watching cowboys in sequins.

It was perilously close to George W. Bush’s My-Pet-Goat moment, when then-President Bush continued reading a storybook with children on Sept. 11, 2001, after he was told that the second World Trade Center tower had been hit. Bush later said he was trying to maintain calm; likewise, White House officials tell me the decision to proceed with the South America trip was made in part to convey that the Libya bombardment was not a major military action.

Obama administration officials calculated that he would take a hit for proceeding with the voyage. But they appear to have been surprised by the force of the weakling complaint, coming not just from usual suspects such as Karl Rove but from liberals such as my Post colleague Richard Cohen, who saw Obama “quite literally distancing himself from the consequences of his own policy.”

Sorry, Dana, but this isn’t comparable to Bush’s My Pet Goat moment.  For one thing, Bush may have waited a few minutes to finish up with the kids, but he didn’t absent himself from the response for four entire days.  Bush didn’t leave the country to finish reading the book to the kids, either.  Second, the 9/11 attack came as a surprise to Bush, while Obama launched this war himself and left the country knowing full well it would take place in his absence.

Let’s talk about that decision for a moment, too.  The White House wants to argue that the trip had been planned for months, and that they deliberately chose not to reschedule it as a show of strength.  Milbank buys into that, too:

Since his earliest days on the campaign trail in Iowa, he has made clear his aversion to the flavor-of-the-day news cycle, instead measuring his progress toward a few broad-brush goals, such as American competitiveness and America’s standing in the world. If something — like, say, the uprisings in the Middle East — doesn’t fit unambiguously within his big goals, his instinct is to brush it off.

“I know everybody here is on a 24-hour news cycle,” he told reporters once. “I’m not. Okay?”

The problem for Milbank and the White House is that they have already established a precedent on postponing previously-scheduled trips when emergent situations occur, as I point out in my column:

Obama had scheduled his tour of Latin America months earlier, but the same was true of his trip to Indonesia in 2010. That trip got postponed twice as domestic politics intruded on the president’s schedule. First, Obama pushed the date from March 2010 to June 2010 in order to push his health care reform bill to final passage. In June, he postponed the trip again, this time to take more control of the Gulf oil spill. It’s hard to argue that ObamaCare ranked as a higher priority than going to war, and yet Obama refused to delay his trip to Rio de Janeiro, where photo ops depicted him playing soccer in the street and watching children dance in the first two days of his war.

Recall that the trip to Indonesia wasn’t just your typical foreign junket, either.  Obama had insisted that only a man of the world such as he could heal the breach between the West and the Muslim world, and he pledged to leverage his unique life story to bridge that gap.  The speech in Cairo was part of that strategy, as was the trip to the most populous Muslim nation — Indonesia.  It carried considerably more weight for Obama’s global strategy than a trade tour of South America.  Yet Obama postponed that trip twice, with one postponement occurring so that he could flack ObamaCare a little more to get Congress to pass it.

That’s an interesting set of priorities.  Obama refused to leave the country whenObamaCare was at risk, but refused to postpone a trip while putting the US military in harm’s way in Libya for the first time.

Note too that Obama wasn’t the only one out of the country, either:

And where was the defense secretary at this time? The second in civilian command of the military also left town on the 20th. Gates was scheduled to leave on the 19th, but he waited a day to “keep tabs” on the military action in Libya. Did he fly to consult with a member of the military coalition imposing the no-fly zone to coordinate efforts, as Obama announced two days earlier? Not exactly; Gates flew to Russia, which had to be talked out of vetoing U.N. Resolution 1973.

Once again, let’s remember the stink that arose when Chris Christie and his lieutenant governor Kim Guadagno both left New Jersey for vacations at the end of last year and a freak snowstorm locked up the Garden State.  Liberals screamed about the dereliction of duty in having both executives out of state when an emergency arose.  Now we have the two men in civilian command of the military out of the country when starting a new war.

My column concludes that most presidents would have welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate leadership at this moment.  Obama preferred to play soccer in the streets and do a samba chair dance instead.

ONE-THIRD OF A FRENCH FRY SHORT OF A BIG MAC MEAL

John Hinderaker, Powerline.com

How can we put the current debate over the federal budget into a tangible perspective that anyone can understand? This morning I read a post by Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute in which he criticized the Washington Post's characterization of the $6 billion cut in the most recent continuing resolution as "slashing" the federal budget:

Federal spending has soared by more than $2,000,000,000,000 during the Bush-Obama years, pushing the burden of government up to $3,800,000,000,000, yet the reporters who put together this story said that an agreement to trim a trivially tiny slice of 2011 spending would "slash the budget."

As Charlie Brown would say, good grief. This is the budgetary equivalent of going on a diet by leaving a couple of french fries in the bottom of the bag after bingeing on three Big Mac meals at McDonald's.

That struck me as a pretty good analogy. I wondered: if you do the math, what part of a Big Mac Extra Value Meal would a $6 billion budget cut represent?

The arithmetic is pretty simple, due to the extensive nutrition information that McDonalds makes available online. A Big Mac Extra Value Meal has three components: a Big Mac, a large order of french fries, and a medium soda. The McDonalds site tells us that a Big Mac has 540 calories, a large fries has 570 and a medium Coke has 210, for a total of 1,320 calories.

Meanwhile, the federal budget is currently around $3.8 trillion, which means that a $6 billion cut represents one 633rd of the total. What would be an equivalent cut in a Big Mac Extra Value Meal?

One variable is not readily available online; that is, how many french fries are there in a large order? To answer that question, I went to a nearby McDonalds at lunch time, paid for a large order of fries, and counted them. There were 87. (I counted fries regardless of size, but did not count the hard bits in the bottom of the container.)

This allows us to complete the calculation. If there are 570 calories in a large order of fries, and 87 fries per order, each french fry, on the average, contains 6.5 calories. One 633rd of the total calorie content of a Big Mac Extra Value Meal is 1,320/633, or 2.1 calories. That equals almost exactly one-third of an average sized french fry.

So, consider: if you were to go on what the Democrats consider a starvation diet, and "slash" your calorie intake to exactly the same degree that the Republicans' $6 billion cut has "slashed" the federal budget, you would do the following. Go to McDonalds and order a Big Mac Extra Value meal. Eat the Big Mac. Drink the Coke. Eat 86 of the 87 french fries. Carefully take the last fry and bite off two-thirds of it. Put the remaining one-third of one fry back in the bag.

If you seriously think that you have just "slashed" your diet, you are a Democrat. Most likely, an overweight Democrat.

Pretty sad, our strongest allies consistently rebuffed, critical international situations ignored, and our "Ditherer-in-Chief" fiddles with his image as the world burns... and we can do nothing but watch this excruciatingly slow train wreck unfold.

A little more... from Express.co.uk

By Anna Pukas

INEFFECTUAL, invisible, unable to honour pledges and now blamed for letting Gaddafi off the hook. Why Obama’s gone from ‘Yes we can’ to ‘Er, maybe we shouldn’t’...

Let us cast our minds back to those remarkable days in November 2008 when the son of a Kenyan goatherd was elected to the White House. It was a bright new dawn – even brighter than the coming of the Kennedys and their new Camelot. JFK may be considered as being from an ethnic and religious minority – Irish and Catholic – but he was still very rich and very white. Barack Obama, by contrast, was a true breakthrough president. The world would change because obviously America had changed.

Obama’s campaign slogan was mesmerisingly simple and brimming with self-belief: “Yes we can.” His presidency, however, is turning out to be more about “no we won’t.” Even more worryingly, it seems to be very much about: “Maybe we can… do what, exactly?“ The world feels like a dangerous place when leaders are seen to lack certitude but the only thing President Obama seems decisive about is his indecision. What should the US do about Libya? What should the US do about the Middle East in general? What about the country’s crippling debts? What is the US going to do about Afghanistan, about Iran?

What is President Obama doing about anything? The most alarming answer – your guess is as good as mine – is also, frankly, the most accurate one. What the President is not doing is being clear, resolute and pro-active, which is surely a big part of his job description. This is what he has to say about the popular uprising in Libya: “Gaddafi must go.” At least, that was his position on March 3.

Since then, other countries – most notably Britain and France – have been calling for some kind of intervention. Even the Arab League, a notoriously conservative organisation, has declared support for sanctions. But from the White House has come only the blah-blah of bland statements filled with meaningless expressions and vague phrases. Of decisive action and leadership – even of clearly defined opinion – there is precious little sign.

What is the Obama administration’s position on the protests in the Gulf island state of Bahrain, which the authorities there are savagely suppressing with the help of troops shipped in from Saudi Arabia? What is the White House view on the alarming prospect of the unrest spreading to Saudi Arabia itself? Who knows? Certainly not the American people, nor the leaders of nations which would consider themselves allies of America.

The President has not really shared his views, which leads us to conclude that he either doesn’t know or chooses, for reasons best known to himself, not to say. The result is that a very real opportunity to remove an unpredictable despot from power may well have been lost. Who knows when or if such an opportunity will come along again?

Every day for almost the last two months our television screens, radio broadcasts and the pages of our newspapers have been filled with the pictures, sounds and words of the most tumultuous events any of us can remember in the Arab world. The outcome of these events, once the dust has settled, could literally change the world. Yet Obama seems content to sit this one out. He has barely engaged in the debate. Such ostrich-like behaviour is not untypical of the 49-year-old President who burst through America’s colour barrier to become the first African-American to occupy the White House.

Two days after taking office in January 2009, he pledged to close down the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, which has become notorious for holding detainees for years without trial. Obama promised to lose the prison within 12 months and to abolish the practice of military trials of terrorism suspects. It was an important promise. America’s reputation had been severely tarnished by revelations about the conditions at Guantanamo, by reports of waterboarding and extraordinary rendition (transporting prisoners to a third country for torture) and by the appalling treatment of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Closing Guantanamo was a redemptive gesture. Two years on, not only is the prison still in use but its future is as assured as ever. Ten days ago, the President signed an executive order reinstating the military commissions at the island prison. Human rights organisations were outraged. “With the stroke of a pen, President Obama extinguished any lingering hope that his administration would return the United States to the rule of law,” said Amnesty International while Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, declared the President’s action to be “unlawful, unwise and un-American.”

White House spokesmen insisted the President was still committed to closing Guantanamo, which currently has 172 detainees in custody. It was Congress, they said, that had refused to sanction the transfer of the prisoners to the US mainland for trial, leaving no option but to keep the prison open in Cuba. Very little has been achieved in the quest to secure peace in the Middle East. Under Obama, US foreign policy is founded on extreme caution. At first this cool-headedness was a welcome change from the naked aggression of George W Bush and his henchmen Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

It is also true that the President is constantly stymied by a hostile, Republican-ruled Congress. But Obama’s apparent reluctance to engage with momentous events is starting to look like more than aloofness. Some tempering of America’s role as the world’s No1 busybody may be no bad thing but under Obama the US appears to be heading towards isolationism. He is hardly doing much better at home. Economically, the US is in big trouble but the national debt is not shrinking.

Ditto the country’s ecological health; the American love affair with the car and oil remains undiminished despite any alleged commitment. But the White House appears to shy away from any tough action. The energy with which Obama entered the White House seems to have all gone in the push to bring in health care reform, which many Americans didn’t want (or still don’t realise they want).

All of which means that it is starting to look as if Obama and the Democratic Party have but one aim in mind for the rest of this presidential term: to get elected for a second. That means not doing anything that might upset any number of special interest or niche groups, which in effect means not doing very much at all. So, not too many harsh but necessary measures to tackle the financial deficit; no clear direction on where America goes with Afghanistan, even though the war there is going nowhere except from bad to worse.

The Obama government can’t even give clear direction on whether the American people are in danger of exposure to nuclear fallout from Japan following the devastating earthquake and tsunami. The US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin advised San Francisco residents to stock up on radiation antidotes, prompting a run on potassium iodide pills, while the President said experts had assured him that any harmful radiation would have receded long before reaching the Western shores of the US.

Yes we can was a noble and powerful mantra which secured for Barack Obama the leadership of the free world. Those than can, do. It is time he started doing.

Mike Walker, Colonel USMC (retired)

If only...

All,

Here is an AP quote from the President regarding a potential lock-out/strike in the NFL:

"I'm a big football fan," Obama said, "but I also think that for an industry that's making $9 billion a year in revenue, they can figure out how to divide it up in a sensible way and be true to their fans, who are the ones who obviously allow for all the money that they're making."

If only it went like this: 

"I'm a big Government fan," Obama said, "but I also think that for a government that's taking in $billions a year in tax revenue, they can figure out how to divide it up in a sensible way and be true to their taxpayers, who are the ones who obviously allow for all the money that they're taking in."

Regards,

Mike