Sobering thoughts of what could be... from Mike Walker. This is like a train wreck... every event is obvious, predictable... 

The Really Bad Scenario: Israeli-Iranian Nuclear War

I should not read certain articles in the Atlantic but can’t help myself so these dark musings are a consequence of that folly.  Nuclear warfareis the ultimate "dismal science.” I never had the stomach for it so it was the Marine Corps (not USAF SAC) for me.  But here goes anyway.

Post-Shah Iranian leaders have long professed that their strategic goal is to destroy Israel and Jews in general as they see them as a disease that plagues humanity. You can't make this stuff up.  This a return to the darkest days of Naziism.  Contrary to some conventional wisdom, the Nazis held that Arabs were Semites thus only one cut above the Jews.  The Iranians, on the other hand, were an Aryan people and therefore had much to be admired. 

By the late 1930's Nazi Germany was one of Iran's closest international friends and trading partners.  Since then there has always been a small Iranian elite who have reciprocated that feeling of admiration for Hitler and the Nazi movement.  Today's rulers in Tehran share that perverse ideological legacy.

Iran's leaders are giving us a replay of the famous Hitler-Stalin comparison:  Both killed millions upon millions of innocent people but Stalin lied about everything and everyone believed him while Hitler told everyone the truth and no one believed him.  The Iranian leadership is telling everyone the truth about their ultimate aims but no one believes them.  As a result they will get nuclear weapons and they will use them to try to wipe Israel off the map, their words.  

So how will it play out after Iran has nuclear weapons?

Either Israel will launch a much-too-late preemptive conventional attack to eliminate Iran's nuclear strike capability and will have to weather the counterstrike with what remains in Iran’s arsenal or they will feel the full force of a first strike.  In either case, Israel will be able to launch a nuclear counterstrike against Iran no matter the effectiveness of a nuclear attack ordered by the Mullahs in Tehran.  This is based on three factors.

First, how many weapons can Iran launch?  Will they be enough to take out both Israeli civilian centers as well as hardened military targets?  The answer to latter queston will likely be no.

Second, will Israeli defenses knock out a significant portion of the incoming missiles and/or aircraft?  Israel has the most modern version of the Patriot missiles which do well against MRBM's.  If a missile were intercepted then there would still be a lethal pile of burning radioactive junk landing somewhere but a nuclear detonation would be avoided. 

Third, it is believed that Israel has nuclear-armed cruise missiles on board its submarine fleet including submarines on station in or near thePersian Gulf.  They also have strip-alert nuclear-armed aircraft.  When Iran goes nuclear Israel may go to airborne nuclear-armed aircraft on station like the United States did during the height of the Cold War. 

These factors ensure that Israel will be able to launch a nuclear counterstrike against Iran and that means the two countries are back to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) with the distinction that one side’s leaders (the radicals in Tehran) may view this as an acceptable course of action.

Iran's goal will be to kill off several million Israeli civilians.  At that point Israel will be in an existential war of annihilation that Iran hopes to win by sheer numbers.  However, the majority of Iran's population lives in about 14 urban centers.  Israel has the capacity to destroy all of them.  Iran would cease to exist as a cohesive nation within hours.  It is also safe to assume that the United States would launch a conventional attack against Iran’s military to eliminate whatever war-making capacity that remains.

The next question is what will possible regional supporters of Tehran's Mullahs do?  

If Hezbollah attacks Israel after an Iranian nuclear strike in order to finish Israel off then the only viable option for Israel would be a nuclear strike against the pro-Hezbollah Shi'a populations in Lebanon.  These won’t be the tit-for-tat conventional attacks as in 2006.  After a million or more of your civilian population has been killed or are dying there is no such thing as a non-combatant, there is only survival.   By day's end, the Shi’a will be reduced to an ineffective rump minority in Lebanon.  This could be a similar outcome for Gaza where two nuclear weapons would decimate the population if Hamas or some of the more radical splinter groups were to attack Israel in support of Iran.

The problem is that all this could happen within a day or two.  Once begun it would be impossible to stop until the nuclear arsenals were depleted.   And we should expect these bombs to be dirty.  Millions of men, women, and children, (overwhelming innocent victims) would be dead or dying.  Some serious folks in Iran need to dust off all those medical studies related to Hiroshima and read them carefully.

Who would be the big losers?  

          Iran  

          Israel  

          Any regional power/group that joined in with Iran

          The World, especially those in the path of the atomic fallout  

          The United Nations.  An outbreak of a nuclear war will do to the UN what           WWII did to the League of Nations  

          The United States 

          The global economy 

          Everyone who was making a buck off Iran and buying their oil

Who would be winners?  

          The Arabs, if they play their cards right (and the wind blows the right way).  If they side with Iran then they will be big losers as well afterMecca and Medina are vaporized to include the Kaaba and the Grand Mosque.  The Dome of the Rock (w/rock) in Jerusalem will similarly be relegated to memory.  Islam would never be the same.

          Al Qaeda?  It could certainly be a big boost to al Qaeda and its followers (if the Arab States stay out of it).  The war would be seen as the hand of God who smote down the hated Zionists and the apostate Shi'a theocracy in one fell swoop.  There could be no greater proof to demonstrate that God is on the side of al Qaeda and against their enemies.  As they defeated the godless Soviet Russian superpower and now have lived to see both Israel and Iran laid waste, how much longer before God strikes down the United States?

Tragically, this will not be a replay of the Cold War.  This is a likely outcome of a nuclear armed Iran.  

This could be our future.

But think happy thoughts.

Who gets first consideration? The first to mount the walls when anyone disagrees with admin.

Obama getting head-faked by Iran again?

AUGUST 6, 2010 BY ED MORRISSEY, HotAir 

Eighteen months into his term as President, Barack Obama still hasn’t quite figured out that Iran wants to build a nuke and not a friendship with the US.  David Ignatius at the Washington Post reports that Obama has once again decided to offer the “open hand” approach that has worked so well since Obama took office that Iran has felt free to brutally oppress its opposition and subvert NATO ally Turkey:

President Obama put the issue of negotiating with Iranfirmly back on the table Wednesday in an unusual White House session with journalists. His message was that even as U.N. sanctions squeeze Tehran, he is leaving open a “pathway” for a peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue.

“It is very important to put before the Iranians a clear set of steps that we would consider sufficient to show that they are not pursuing nuclear weapons,” Obama said, adding: “They should know what they can say ‘yes’ to.” As in the past, he left open the possibility that the United States would accept a deal that allows Iran to maintain its civilian nuclear program, so long as Iran provides “confidence-building measures” to verify that it is not building a bomb.

The renewed opening to Iran also included a proposal for talks on Afghanistan. Obama said he favored a “separate track” for discussion of this issue, in which the two sides have a “mutual interest” in fighting the Taliban. He urged that, as part of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s push for “reintegration” with the Taliban, Iran should be included in regional talks about stability. “Iran should be a part of that and could be a constructive partner,” he said.

Ignatius thinks that the time is ripe for another such effort, because sanctions are now “beginning to bite” Tehran.  Even the administration doesn’t really believe that, as Ignatius concedes.  They have never seen sanctions as a way to get Iran to end its nuclear program, but merely part of a “cost-benefit analysis.”

That makes sense only if one believes that the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons has a rational basis.  It doesn’t; the Iranians want it for non-rational, messianic-belief reasons.  The contemporaneous economic cost only matters to them if it destabilizes the regime to the extent it will collapse, but otherwise nothing will deflect Iran from its purpose in gaining nuclear weapons.

In fact, this is well known to almost everyone but the White House.  Even the Associated Press gets it:

As Iran and world powers prepare for new nuclear talks, letters by Tehran’s envoys to top international officials and shared with The Associated Press suggest major progress is unlikely, with Tehran combative and unlikely to offer any concessions.

Two letters, both written late last month, reflect Iran’s apparent determination to continue the nuclear activities that have led to new rounds of U.N., EU, and U.S. sanctions in recent weeks over fears that Tehran might be seeking to develop nuclear arms. …

Iran insists it want to enrich uranium only to make fuel for a planned reactor network and denies accusations that it will use the program to make fissile warhead material.

But international suspicions are strong. Tehran hid its enrichment program until it was revealed from the outside. And it acknowledged constructing a secret nuclear facility last year to the International Atomic Energy Agency last year only days before its existence was publicly revealed by the U.S. and Britain.

According to the documents, Iran has enriched much more uranium than previously thought, and to a higher degree as well.  Transferring the amount proposed last year will still leave Iran with more than enough enriched uranium to produce at least one nuclear weapon and maybe more.  Clearly, time is running out on stopping the mullahs from their doomsday pursuit, and open hands to the regime have hardly been effective over the last several years, including the last eighteen months.  Either we need to get serious about other options or concede that we’re not serious at all.

Michael Ramirez is a genius with a pen, brush and thought...

This is a growing story, and an important one. Betrayal of the news-client, you and me, by the "protectors of the truth" or our media members that make the "news" available to the everyday Americans. What if the "news" developers were not interested in discovering and broadcasting the truth but to alter/ ignore facts/ redirect opinion through coordinated attacks. This is not on a small scale but hundreds of reporters, editors, professors. Stay tuned...BH

Letter fom Editor -in-Chief Tucker Carlson on The Daily Caller's Journolist coverage... Tucker Carlson, The Daily Caller

We began our series on Journolist earlier this week with the expectation that our stories would be met with a fury of criticism from the Left. A hurt dog barks, after all.

The response hasn’t been all that furious, actually, probably because there isn’t much for the exposed members of Journolist to say. We caught them. They’re ashamed. The wise ones are waiting for the tempest to pass.

There have, however, been two lines of argument that we probably ought to respond to, if only because they may harden into received wisdom if we don’t. The first is that our pieces have proved only that liberal journalists have liberal views, and that’s hardly news.

To be clear: We’re not contesting the right of anyone, journalist or not, to have political opinions. (I, for one, have made a pretty good living expressing mine.) What we object to is partisanship, which is by its nature dishonest, a species of intellectual corruption. Again and again, we discovered members of Journolist working to coordinate talking points on behalf of Democratic politicians, principally Barack Obama. That is not journalism, and those who engage in it are not journalists. They should stop pretending to be. The news organizations they work for should stop pretending, too.

The second line of attack we’ve encountered since we began the series is familiar to anyone who has ever published a piece whose subject didn’t like the finished product: “You quoted me out of context!”

The short answer is, no we didn’t. I edited the first four stories myself, and I can say that our reporter Jonathan Strong is as meticulous and fair as anyone I have worked with.

That assurance won’t stop the attacks, of course. So why don’t we publish whatever portions of the Journolist archive we have and end the debate? Because a lot of them have no obvious news value, for one thing. Gather 400 lefty reporters and academics on one listserv and it turns out you wind up with a strikingly high concentration of bitchiness. Shocking amounts, actually. So while it might be amusing to air threads theorizing about the personal and sexual shortcomings of various New Republic staffers, we’ve decided to pull back.

Plus, a lot of the material on Journolist is actually pretty banal. In addition to being partisan hacks, a lot of these guys turn out to be pedestrian thinkers. Disappointing.

We reserve the right to change our minds about this in the future, but for now there’s an easy solution to this question: Anyone on Journolist who claims we quoted him “out of context” can reveal the context himself. Every member of Journolist received new threads from the group every day, most of which are likely still sitting in Gmail accounts all over Washington and New York. So feel free to try to prove your allegations, or else stop making them.

One final note: Editing this series has been something of a depressing experience for me. I’ve been in journalism my entire adult life, and have often defended it against fellow conservatives who claim the news business is fundamentally corrupt. It’s harder to make that defense now. It will be easier when honest (and, yes, liberal) journalists denounce what happened on Journolist as wrong.

Deep Thoughts by Barack Obama

Scott Johnson, Powerline.com

There's something funny about the higher wisdom operative in the Obama administration's foreign policy generally and in its approach to the Muslim world specifically; it's not very smart. The discrepancy between its purported sophistication and its obvious absurdity would be a fertile source of humor if we could get a little distance on it. In "Islam: Unmentionable in DC," former Middle East CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht captures something of the absurdity with unusual concision:

Now it's possible that President Obama's play-nice approach to the Muslim world won't leave us in any worse shape than we were in when he arrived in the White House. It is, however, questionable. When Mr. Obama's attorney general twists himself into knots trying to avoid juxtaposing the word "Islam" with the word "terrorism," and when the president's senior counterterrorism advisor gives speeches on Islam that would be more appropriate on "Sesame Street," you gotta wonder whether the dumbed-down level of public Washington discourse is the visible sign of internal bureaucratic rot.

Gerecht's reference to bureaucratic rot puts one in mind of the adage about fish. A fish, according to the adage, rots from the head. Thus it certainly is with the bureaucratic rot that Gerecht apprehends.

Another sign of the rot came into view earlier this week in President Obama's interview with South African Broadcasting Corporation. According to Obama, the trouble with al Qaeda and friends is their racism. Speaking about the Uganda bombings, Obama said: "What you've seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organizations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself. They see it as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents without regard to long-term consequences for their short-term tactical gains."

Explicating Obama's comments, another high-ranking author of the bureaucratic rot diagnosed by Gerecht also weighed in. According to this administration official, Obama "references the fact that both U.S. intelligence and past al Qaeda actions make clear that al Qaeda -- and the groups like al Shabaab that they inspire -- do not value African life. The actions of al Qaeda and the groups that it has inspired show a willingness to sacrifice innocent African life to reach their targets." Glenn Reynolds has some pointed comments here.

Obama appears to have overlooked the equal opportunity approach that al Qaeda et al. take in their targets. If anything, the United States is at the top of their target list. And not for reasons having anything to do with race. (What was it again?) You'd think the President of the United States might have taken note.

As Gerecht says, you gotta wonder. Is this some kind of a joke? If so, the joke is on us.

Srebrenica, Bosnia,  Anniversary of Massacre, July 1995

A response from Mike Walker, Colonel, MSMC (retired) to a letter concerning Srebrenica. This is an interesting letter that gives a different perspective from someone who was there and experienced the problems of entities such as the UN and their inability to control the situation. Reminds us how aware we must be.

Mike,

Yeah, that was part of my AO on my second assignment in FRY.  Of course, I got to Srebrenica a few years after the massacre.  At that time, one of our priority requirements was trying to find PIFWC's like Mladic.  In a different part of the AO we were working on PLIE's/PFIE's or Possible Local/Foreign Islamic Extremists.  They were much more dangerous than the PIFWC's.  

That was where I lost my "cherry" regarding the true nature of radical Muslims and their "civil war" with moderate Muslims that is ripping the Islamic world apart.  Most people don't realize that the first hard intelligence on the formation of al Qaeda was obtained in Bosnia.

Srebre refers to silver as it was the site of a silver mine during the Roman times.  It is currently a site of small hotels with warm spring spas like Sarajevo.  Ran one operation in Srebrenica that was a bit dicey.  It is located in beautiful country, rich green forested hills with clear flowing streams, and idyllic farm country.

Unfortunately, you could still see bleached bones with scraps of cloth in the more remote wooded areas.  There were so many unmarked mines and booby-traps plus gobs of unexploded ordinance that it was not possible for the local people to retrieve the bodies for a proper burial. 

The 1995 massacre was highly organized, a true war crime.  It took days of preparation and a lot of resources to put it together.  The operations section wrote up the plan, subordinate commanders were tasked with providing security and "assault" elements.  The killing field was carefully selected to include close proximity to a garbage dump for disposing of the bodies.     Holding areas for the victims, transportation, and ammunition requirements were covered by the logistics section.  The actual killings were systematically efficient.  The wall where most of the men and boys were lined up and shot still had fresh bullet marks when I was there but all traces of the blood were gone.  General Mladic directed the planning and had overall command of the operation during the execution phase.

Had the Dutch battalion been aggressively backed up with air support, it never would have happened.  Instead, the Dutch soldiers surrendered to Mladic without firing a shot, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The Bosniaks there hated the UN leadership, especially Akashi Yasushi.  He was nearly an absolute pacifist who considered following that philosophical ideal more important than facing the reality that unbounded pacifism does NOT stop the killing.  His "social experiment" failed tragically.

Unfortunately, some Americans are just like Akashi.  Thank God they will never have the authority to put their beliefs into practice in a place like Srebrenica.  I wonder if they should thank God for that "passing of the cup"as it allows them to continue to live in ignorant bliss?

Semper Fi,

Mike

'The Crisis at Which We Are Arrived'

Don't fear the tea parties.

By William Kristol, The Weekly Standard

After an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

—Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 1

We are not now quite at a founding moment, or even a re-founding moment. But we have arrived at a genuine crisis, or a set of crises, and we may well be at a decisive moment for the country.

This sense of crisis is what animates the Tea Parties. I had the pleasure of attending the “Proud to be an American July 4th Tea Party” outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It featured patriotic songs and speeches, and expressions of support for our troops and praise for our country. Yet the mood of patriotic gratitude was mixed with expressions of alarm from my fellow Tea Partiers about the administration now in charge of our government. The combination of patriotic gratitude and urgent alarm produces a determination to act and a willingness to deal boldly with the crises in the economy, in foreign policy, and in self-government that the country faces.

In this respect, the Tea Parties are ahead of the two major parties. As established political parties are wont to do, both remain constricted in their views, attached to business as usual, and invested in established modes and orders—too much so to easily come to grips with a moment like the present.

Of course, the leaders of the Democratic party don’t want to come to grips with the present moment. Committed to stale progressive policies, they’re doing their very best to push more of them through, even as the failure of those policies becomes ever more evident. Serious reflection on the failure of their favored policies, both at home and abroad, would be too painful. It would require a rethinking too consequential and too disruptive to be willingly undertaken. After all, experience has shown that liberals are more disposed to have the rest of us suffer, than to right themselves by rethinking the dogmas by which they are enthralled.

But it’s increasingly clear that “the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government,” in our case welfare state liberalism, is no longer sufferable. Out-of-control spending and debt really do threaten our economic future. Weakness and timidity abroad really do threaten a world in which terrorists and fanatics possess, and use, nuclear weapons. The nanny state, at once all-intrusive and all thumbs, really does threaten the future of self-government. The dogmas of multiculturalism really do threaten the strength of a free society.

I was telling a friend about the Philly Tea Party, noting a few eccentric proposals from some of its participants. He commented, “Well, that’s better than talking points.” He’s right. At this moment, bold and seemingly impolitic or impractical ideas are more useful than the diligent repetition of mostly sensible short-term critiques and proposals. At a moment like this, talking points are not enough.

That’s the challenge for the Republican party. It is of course a real, existing political party, with real existing responsibilities. So it has to do the day-to-day work of a loyal opposition—helping Generals Petraeus, Mattis, and Odierno to win the wars we’re fighting and which we certainly can’t afford to lose, resisting foolish Obama administration programs and appointments, proposing legislation and amendments that would improve public policy or at least highlight the difference between the two parties.

But the GOP can be the party of the future as well as the present. It can be the party of fundamental reflection and radical choice as well as the party of day-to-day criticism and opposition. This isn’t easy. It can lead to mistakes and missteps, tensions and confusions. But it’s what the moment requires.

So fear not the Tea Parties. Be open to fundamental reforms. Belt-tightening and program-trimming, more transparency and greater efficiency, are not enough. The danger for Republicans isn’t that they will address the current crisis too boldly. It’s that they won’t be bold enough.

—William Kristol 

Click on the link below to hear this man speak the truth... there is a storm brewing!
Lt. Colonel Allen West speaks up....

A response to the two following posts from Mike Walker, Colonel USMC (retired)

Bruce,

Denying that the war is with radical Islam is deeply disturbing.  It goes to heart of credibility and trust.  If our leaders are willing to suppress a fundamental truth in this war, it begs the question what else are they willing to be dishonest about?  What else are they being untruthful about and what else are they hiding from the American people?

I understand some are going through these mental gymnastics out of fear of offending Muslims.  Even if that goal was for the better good of all, by denying the truth you get yourself so far down the slippery slope that it can prove to be a fatal mistake.  If a leader loses his credibility then he loses everything.   If you cannot trust what a leader is telling you then that person ceases to be a leader and becomes an ineffective manager filling a command billet.

What makes this a double tragedy is that the moderate Muslims I worked with overseas wanted the United States to make a clear distinction between them and the radicals.  They did NOT want all Muslims to tarred with the same brush but they equally wanted us to show our support for them by discrediting the enemy as BAD Muslims.  They know that this war is inseparable from Islam.  Some in the current administration have it very, very wrong and that is a very, very bad thing.  

The bottom line is that you cannot develop a winning strategy in a war if you do not understand the fundamental nature of the war.

As for the CRM.  It does not as yet exist.  It has been formally discussed by the Afghanistan command.  It is not a good idea.  Below are the comments I sent a Marine friend (hence the abbreviations) on this issue earlier:

'A "Courageous Restraint" medal seems a bit silly.

If they want to address the issue, they could simply start approving existing awards (NMCAM's/NMCCM's/MSM's) where the write-up highlights presence of mind and/or sound decision making/leadership of the Marine in safeguarding civilians/saving the lives of innocent civilians where the risk of enemy fire was great and expected to be encountered.

If the Marines know they can be recognized with an award (albeit not one associated with valor) then it will achieve the goal desired which is an important one in this war.'

Semper Fi,

Mike

McChrystal knew exactly what he as doing plus new Rules of Engagement explained. This explains a lot:
They should plant the Yellow Heart (as CRM is now being called) firmly in the middle of Obama's forehead and send him back to Chicago - or maybe to Mecca

    

The General and the Community Organizer

by Paul R. Hollrah

Channel-surfing from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN through MSNBC and Fox News, the inside-the-beltway pundits had a field day trying to get inside the heads of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, General Stanley McChrystal, and McChrystal’s top aides.  The one thing common to all of the analyses, by the most famous and highly-paid talking heads in the Western World, was that they are all wrong… dead wrong.  What is certain is that they all owe General McChrystal and his senior aides an apology for assuming that they are lame-brained numbskulls.

The facts of the McChrystal case are not in dispute.  General McChrystal and his senior officers allowed a reporter for Rolling Stone Magazine, Michael Hastings, to have almost unprecedented access during an extended stay in Paris .  The extended stay was due, in part, to an excess of atmospheric ash from Iceland ’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano, keeping the McChrystal party grounded for days.

In an interview with CNN, Hastings reported that he had a tape recorder in his hand most of the time and that McChrystal was “very aware” that his comments would find their way into print.  He said, “McChrystal and his people set no ground rules for their conversations, although they did ask that some parts of their conversations were off the record.”   Hastings subsequently published a lengthy profile of General McChrystal on June 22, titled, The Runaway General.

 As Hastings wrote in his profile <http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236> , McChrystal thought that Obama looked “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the roomful of military brass during their first meeting.  Of their second meeting, an advisor to McChrystal quoted the general as saying that it was “a 10-minute photo op.”  He went on to say, “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about (McChrystal), who he was.  Here’s the guy who’s going to run his f_ _ _ing war, but he didn’t seem very engaged.  The Boss was pretty disappointed.”

As General McChrystal flew from Afghanistan to Washington to face Obama in the Oval Office, the almost unanimous opinion of the talking heads was that the comments made by McChrystal and his staff were off the cuff and inadvertent.  But to believe that is to totally ignore who these men are.

General McChrystal and his top officers are not simple-minded, knuckle-dragging brutes.  To the contrary, they are intelligent, thoughtful, highly educated, patriots… graduates of West Point and other fine universities… who are dedicated to duty, honor, and country. To think that such men would be so careless as to speak unflatteringly of Obama, Biden, and other top administration figures, in the presence of a reporter for a notoriously left wing publication, defies logic… at the very least.  To think that men who are trained to be careful and deliberate in everything they do, could do something so careless and so unguarded is simply beyond comprehension.

I would argue that McChrystal and his aides knew exactly what they were doing.

From the day that he became the handpicked “spear carrier” for Obama’s unique brand of warfare… playing at being Commander in Chief while playing to his far left constituency… McChrystal’s life had been one of constant frustration.  After telling Obama exactly how many troops he needed to carry out his mission, Obama dithered for months before deciding to give him just half the troops he requested.  McChrystal could not have been happy about that.

The Obama team insisted on new Rules of Engagement designed to reduce collateral damage (civilian casualties).  Obama’s ROE required that U.S. troops must be able to see the enemy with weapon in hand before they were allowed to return fire.  One videotape circulated on the Internet showed a platoon of Marines pinned down by enemy sniper fire.  But since the enemy was firing from some distance behind the open window of a building, the Marines could not actually see the weapon being fired.  Although they were taking deadly fire, they were prohibited by the ROE from putting small arms fire or an RPG through the window opening.

Under Obama’s politically correct ROE, our soldiers and Marines were required to fight with one hand tied behind their backs.  McChrystal could not have been happy about that.

A strict new interrogation policy, dictated by Attorney General Eric Holder, required that prisoners must be delivered to an Interrogation Center within twenty-four hours of being captured or be released.  A great deal of actionable intelligence was lost as a result and battle-hardened enemy fighters were returned to the field to kill Americans.  McChrystal must have found that to be incomprehensible.

But the greatest insult to our troops in the field, and to the officers who lead them, may be a new battlefield medal designed by the Obama team.  It is called the Courageous Restraint Medal and is awarded to soldiers and Marines who demonstrate uncommon restrain in combat by not firing their weapons even when they feel threatened by the enemy.  Would we be surprised to learn that the preponderance of these medals were awarded posthumously?  McChrystal must have found that to be an insanity.

I suggest that, having his best military judgments subjected to the White House political sieve for nearly a year and a half, McChrystal decided that he’d had enough.  And when he announced to his senior staff that he was prepared to retire they decided to push back… to make the most of a bad situation.  It was clear that, if McChrystal were to simply take off his uniform and walk away, his retirement would be page-twenty news for a day or two before the mainstream media and the American people forgot all about him.

They had to make the most of his retirement because it provided a one-time opportunity to show the American people, as well as our enemies and our allies, that the man who claims the title of Commander in Chief of the U.S. military does not command the respect of our men and women in uniform.  To make the most of that opportunity they had to choose their messenger very carefully.

They knew that, by openly showing their disrespect for Obama in front of just any newsman, they may not attract the attention they desired.  Like any astute observer of the MSM, they knew that most reporters would turn on their own mothers if it meant a good story. But they could not take a chance that a mainstream media reporter might suffer a rare pang of conscience when confronted with the prospect of ruining the careers of some of the most senior officers in the War on Terror.  They had to fix the odds as much as possible in their favor so they chose to use Michael Hastings and Rolling Stone Magazine.

During the long hours that General McChrystal was in the air between Kabul and Washington , Obama knew that he had just two choices… both bad.  He could declare McChrystal to be an irreplaceable asset in the war effort, give him a public reprimand, and send him back to Kabul .  Or he could fire McChrystal, sending a clear message that, at least in his own mind, he was the Commander in Chief.

In the former case, he was certain to appear weak and ineffectual… a man not totally in charge.  In the latter case, he might at least win a few rave reviews from the Kool-Ade drinkers in the mainstream media.  He chose the latter of the two options.

But what is now lost in all of the hand-wringing and speculation is the fact that McChrystal and his people have succeeded in doing exactly what they set out to do.  They wanted to plant the seed in the minds of the American people that Obama is not up to the task of being Commander in Chief and that he does not command the respect of the men and women of the uniformed services… from the newest Private E-1 up to the top four-star generals and admirals.

That seed is now firmly planted and it cannot be unplanted. 

Charles Krauthammer

JULY 2, 2010 12:00 A.M.

Terror — and Candor 

The administration’s denial of “radical Islam” is dangerous, dishonest, and demoralizing.

The Fort Hood shooter, the Christmas Day bomber, the Times Square attacker. On May 13, the following exchange occurred at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee:
Rep. Lamar Smith (R.,Texas): Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?
Attorney General Eric Holder: There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions. . . .
– Smith: Okay, but radical Islam could have been one of the reasons?
Holder: There are a variety of reasons why people—
Smith: But was radical Islam one of them?
Holder: There are a variety of reasons why people do these things. Some of them are potentially religious-based.

Potentially, mind you. This went on until the questioner gave up in exasperation.

A similar question arose last week in U.S. District Court when Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square attacker, pleaded guilty. Explained Shahzad: “One has to understand where I’m coming from. . . . I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier.”

Well, that is clarifying. As was the self-printed business card of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, identifying himself as “SoA”: Soldier of Allah.

Holder’s avoidance of the obvious continues the absurd and embarrassing refusal of the Obama administration to acknowledge who out there is trying to kill Americans and why. In fact, it has banned from its official vocabulary the terms “jihadist,” “Islamist,” and “Islamic terrorism.”

Instead, President Obama’s National Security Strategy insists on calling the enemy — how else do you define those seeking your destruction? — “a loose network of violent extremists.” But this is utterly meaningless. This is not an anger-management therapy group gone rogue. These are people professing a powerful ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam, in whose name they propagandize, proselytize, terrorize, and kill.

Why is this important? Because the first rule of war is to know your enemy. If you don’t, you wander into intellectual cul-de-sacs and ignore the real causes that might allow you to prevent recurrences.

The Pentagon report on the Fort Hood shooter runs 86 pages with not a single mention of Hasan’s Islamism. It contains such politically correct inanities as “religious fundamentalism alone is not a risk factor.”

Of course it is. Indeed, Islamist fundamentalism is not only a risk factor. It is the risk factor, the common denominator linking all the great terror attacks of this century — from 9/11 to Mumbai, from Fort Hood to Times Square, from London to Madrid to Bali. The attackers were of various national origin, occupation, age, social class, native tongue, and race. The one thing that united them was the jihadist vision in whose name they acted.

To deny this undeniable truth leads to further absurdities. Remember the wave of speculation about Hasan’s supposedly secondary post-traumatic stress disorder — that he was so deeply affected by the heart-rending stories of his war-traumatized patients that he became radicalized? On the contrary. He was moved not by their suffering but by the suffering they (and the rest of the U.S. military) inflicted on Hasan’s fellow Muslims, in whose name he gunned down 12 American soldiers while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

With Shahzad, we find the equivalent ridiculous — and exculpating — speculation that perhaps he was driven over the edge by the foreclosure of his home. Good grief. Of course his home went into foreclosure — so would yours if you voluntarily quit your job and stopped house payments to go to Pakistan for jihadist training. As the Washington Post’s Charles Lane pointed out, foreclosure was a result of Shahzad’s radicalism, not the cause.

There’s a final reason why the administration’s cowardice about identifying those trying to kill us cannot be allowed to pass. It is demoralizing. It trivializes the war between jihadi barbarism and Western decency, and diminishes the memory of those (including thousands of brave Muslims — Iraqi, Pakistani, Afghan, and Western) who have died fighting it.

Churchill famously mobilized the English language and sent it into battle. But his greatness lay not just in eloquence but in his appeal to the moral core of a decent people to rise against an ideology the nature of which Churchill never hesitated to define and describe — and to pronounce (“Nahhhhzzzzi”) in an accent dripping with loathing and contempt.

No one is asking Obama or Holder to match Churchill’s rhetoric — just Shahzad’s candor.

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010, the Washington Post Writers Group.