Hamas-Israeli Fighting

Mike Walker

All,

No attempt here to lay blame for the root causes of the extremely complex Palestinian-Israeli issue in the Middle East.

However, the blame for the December 2008 fighting can be laid clearly at the feet of Hamas.

On 14 December 2008, during a celebration of the 21st anniversary of the creation of Hamas, its leaders unilaterally announced that they expected the ceasefire brokered by Egypt would expire on the 19 December deadline.

It should be remembered that Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The extremist Sunni Muslim Brotherhood is also the forebearer of al Qaeda.

Israel responded with a plea to extend the ceasefire but warned it would not tolerate renewed attacks on Israel.

The ceasefire had not worked as desired for either side, as have virtually all the preceding agreements, but it did effectively contain the violence between Hamas and Israel to a "tit-for-tat" level.   

Three days later, on 17 December, Hamas fired 20 rockets at Israeli civilian targets.

On 18 December Hamas formally declared that the ceasefire would end the next day, Friday 19 December 2008.  To emphasize the point they fired another 14 missiles at Israeli civilian targets.

On Saturday 27 December Israel responded with large scale strikes against Hamas soldiers and the Hamas military infrastructure.  As a veteran of the war in Iraq, I know that we always strove to keep a standoff distance between our forces and civilians in order to protect them from the fighting.  

I also know that Hamas, like al Qaeda in Iraq, deliberately places its military weaponry, supplies, command and control facilities, etc, in as close a proximity to the civilian population as possible.

Hamas, like al Qaeda in Iraq, does this in order to create the "big lie" that will be broadcast around the world that the Israelis are targeting innocent civilians.  

As an aside, as a long as the media continues to allow the "big lie" to be aired without condemnation, the numbers of innocent civilians killed in modern wars will only continue to increase.  

The modern media has done a great disservice in recklessly blurring the line between legitimate targeting of the military and the unconscionable deliberate targeting/inclusion of civilians by extremists in their operations.

Where this fighting will lead is anyone's guess.  I would keep an keen eye on Hezbollah in Lebanon for indicators of a possible wider war.

Israel miscalculated the strength and willingness of Hezbollah to fight a major campaign in 2006.  

It appears Hamas has miscalculated by ending the ceasefire and stepping up attacks on an Israel that appears prepared and willing to fight a major campaign against them in 2008.

Semper Fi,

Mike

All,

 

There are few subjects that I can talk to ad nauseam but one is the California state education budget and in second place is the California state budget in general.

 

There should be NO bailout by the American taxpayers to fill a huge multi-billion dollar hole created by a broken California budget process and a dysfunctional state government.

 

Much has been said about the fact that California is one of a handful of states that requires 2/3 majority to pass a budget.  Some claim this is the root of the problem.  BUNK! 

 

What is not said is that California is also one of a handful of states that has its elected officials get on a plane to Fantasy Expenditure Island each year when it passes the budget only to have it crash, all too often of late, on the Rocks of Real Revenues during the return trip.

 

I fully support a simple majority to pass a budget in the legislature but IF AND ONLY IF they permanently cancel the flights to Fantasy Expenditure Island.  In other words, the budget must to be rigidly tethered to revenues. 

 

This can be achieved by having the budget process BEGIN with a hard statutory revenue projection that caps expenditures for the Governor and the Legislature. 

 

This can be formulated by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office or the Department of Finance or perhaps some reputable non-partisan committee that includes these offices.  

 

During the budgeting process it may be prudent to allow for well-constrained revisions of the cap based upon revenue changes as reported by the formulating office/committee.

 

In the future, the "rainy day" fund that is now in place (but empty) can be used to get California through extreme/ difficult fiscal situations.

 

But that discussion has nothing to do with socking it to the taxpayers in the other 49 states by making them the enablers of California's irresponsible behavior.

We Californians created this mess all by our lonesome and we need to fix it ourselves.  It won't be any fun but it is the only path to curing the disease.

 Happy holidays from here in sunny and broke California!

Mike

It is the Economy Stupid

(Article contributed by Mike Walker)

(Cartoon contributed by Michael Ramirez)

My very brief musings on the current troubles in our economy.  Here are hard questions that need to be asked in Washington:

A.  Increase the velocity of the dollar in the economy.  This means getting the cash flowing again in our financial markets.  When the "quiz kids" and hat-in-hand bankers show up ask them how they are going to achieve this paramount goal.  If they waffle, dissemble, etc send them packing without a dime.

As an aside, it is a national loss that many investment banks have gone away.  Investment banks are a great engine for economic growth.  Their "velocity" in priming the economy is double that of commercial banks.  They are the best.

B. Good Stable Jobs = Support for Private Sector Businesses.

Job #1 is support for Small Business.  That is the road to turning the economy around.  Every other stimulus goal must be secondary.

When someone opines in Washington that they have the "magic bullet" to cure our ills ask them about small businesses.  If it ain't first and foremost then send them packing without a dime.

Job #2 is support for the rest of the private sector.  If we want to keep jobs in America we need to make American industry competitive.  We have the second highest corporate tax rate in the developed world.  Shame on us!  We need to be globally competitive and that means keeping big government out of the pockets of the private sector.

Job #3 is infrastructure development.  This is an essential but tricky issue.  Infrastructure can enhance economic growth but alone it cannot turn an economy around.  

When the gurus propose their infrastructure plans, ask how does this help our Country achieve Job #1 and Job #2? 

If it looks like they are giving you the "smoke screen" and really arguing infrastructure is Job # 1 then send them packing without a dime.

The purpose of infrastructure development is to create an environment that allows the private sector to thrive.  Building a bridge to make it economically efficient for local business to operate is super.  Building roads to provide access for new businesses is the ticket. 

But these projects are never ends in themselves.  They take years to get off the ground and it is short-term work.  Once the bridge is built the jobs go away for many decades.  

Ask how the project stimulates the private sector and how that will create long-term job growth.  If the nabobs can't clearly answer that question then send them packing without a dime.

The last Job.  Assisting failed/failing industries and State/big city bureaucracies.  When these guys come begging ask them to specifically explain how they are going to change.

Ask them to present a fiscally responsible plan for the future.  Ask them to explain in detail how the money they want from Washington is a one-time bridge to a responsible future.  If they can't provide the answers then send them packing without a dime.

C. Change the business model in Congress.  Kill the pork added to the economic actions.  Enough is enough.  This national economic downturn is a real problem.  It is a serious problem.  It is time for adult leadership in congress.

Congress needs to put our county first and their pork project/special interest pandering dead last.  

Ask your elected representatives if they are going to deal with the task at hand before they go back to politics as usual.  If they start to pontificate and ramble, vote them out the first chance you get.

Semper Fi,

Mike

A Veteran's Day Message

Mike Walker

All,

The Military Times did a poll of our men and women in uniform, our GI's, on the presidential election. If you are wondering what the Military Times does, it publishes a number of newspapers, the Navy Times, the Army Times, etc, that are widely read by GI's around the world.

The result of their poll is a reason to give all of us, especially the new administration, a good reason to pause and reflect.

While the American people, as whole, favored the Obama-Biden ticket by a close ratio of about 5:4, our GI's favored the McCain-Palin ticket by a ratio of nearly 3:1.

That is a huge disconnect. Why?

Now that I am retired, I can speak in a way that would be inappropriate were I still in uniform.

I believe it is not President-elect Obama. I believe that he will vigorously lead and support our men and women in uniform during the ongoing war against terror; a war we neither asked for nor wanted but had forced upon us on 9/11.

I do not believe it is Vice President-elect Biden. He has been a consistent voice of reason in developing the strategies needed for victory in this war. I do not agree with all of his arguments, but his message and intent are unmistakable. He knows the risks of failure and the importance of victory.

The problem is not with the top of the ticket, in my opinion. I believe the military is unshakable in its loyalty to our new administration. I know that the military will execute the orders of the new President to best of their ability, no matter what the personal risk or sacrifice.

The reason for the GI's great hesitancy in voting for the Obama-Biden ticket lies primarily elsewhere. The Obama-Biden ticket was rejected by a troubling margin of our GI's because of a real concern with the next level of leadership and their influence on the new administration.

It is a deep uncertainty over whether or not the new administration can and will be able to match their words of support with actions.

It is a fear that the men and women in uniform who are fighting this war will be let down by some powerful leaders in the Congress and the new administration may not prevent it.

That is why our GI's turned to the McCain-Palin ticket and away from the Obama-Biden ticket. They knew they would not be let down during a McCain presidency. They knew they would not be forced into defeat in the middle of battle due to a lapse of judgment and nerve by our Congress.

I believe I can sum up this fear and uncertainty in two words: Harry Reid.

As veteran of the war in Iraq, I tell you that words cannot describe the crushing effect of Harry Reid's infamous statement on 17 April 2007: "...THIS WAR IS LOST and the surge is not accomplishing anything..."

A rough analogy would be as if it were the last year's Superbowl and, during the third quarter, one of the Giants' assistant head coaches called a press conference on the sidelines to announce that, for the Giants, "..THIS GAME IS LOST and the play by our team on the field is not accomplishing anything..."

Of course this is a very poor comparison. The Superbowl, in the end, is only a game played by great athletes. Our men and women in uniform are not in a game. They are engaged in a life and death struggle to defend this country against some very bad people.

But through this analogy you can get a feel for the deep sense of betrayal and damage that was done by the words of Harry Reid on that fateful Thursday in 2007.

What needs to be done? We need change.

On 21 March 2007, President-elect Obama said: "...we must learn the lessons of Iraq. It is what we owe our soldiers. It is what we owe their families. And it is what we owe our country – now, and in all the days and months to come."

Harry Reid failed as a national leader in time of war. He failed our GI's. He failed their families. He failed our country in a time of great crisis.

As President-elect Obama has said, we must learn the lessons of Iraq and change requires more than speeches.

Change requires action.

Harry Reid must step down.

I am sure Harry Reid has done many fine things in areas not related to the war against terror. Well and good. Find him a new job where his strengths lie but he has no place as a national leader in the war effort.

President-elect Obama must ensure that Harry Reid is no longer the leader of the Senate.

Harry Reid needs to atone by doing the honorable thing in stepping down.

A generation or so ago, another Senator named Arthur Vandenberg said: "To me, 'bipartisan foreign policy' means a mutual effort, under our indispensable, two-party system, to unite our official voice at the water's edge so that America speaks with one voice to those who would divide and conquer us and the free world."

We need a leader in the Senate who will not divide but fight for victory here at home with the same determination, courage, and judgment as that of the GI's fighting on the battlefields overseas.

This is a change we GI's, past and present, need and deserve and many, many, more would say it loud and clear if duty permitted.

Semper Fi,

Mike

From Mike Walker, a timely word!

All,

We now have a new President. It is time to put our political differences aside and do what is best for our Country. I will be honest and state that I voted for John McCain and I have no intention of compromising my values or beliefs.

I have always been a centrist and will take the new President at his word that he will be moderate in his policies, especially towards the middle class and small businesses. I believe him when he says he will reach across the partisan divide to change our Country by unifying rather dividing.

No matter what your political philosophy, two facts are important.

First, there is no ignoring the race of Barak Obama. I was born into a world and nation that held firmly to unconscionable forms of racism. The election of Barak Obama makes a statement, heard round the world, of how far we have all progressed.

Second, we have reaffirmed the ideal of our Republic that the democratic process, with its secret ballot, freedom of political speech, and despite its many flaws, is still the most honest and just form of government for a free people.

I will be praying for and supporting our President as best I can.

We live in the greatest country on earth.

Let us keep it that way.

Semper Fi,

Mike

I think we haven't heard anything yet. if anyone is able to break the glass wall that protects him then we will surely know more about the New Party and ACORN.

And now a word from Mike Walker...


All,

The debate nicely summed up the failed socialist "income redistribution" policy in a nutshell.

Joe the Plumber works his whole life to be able to own his own plumbing business.

He runs head on into the income redistribution policy that ensures that the average person cannot step out of his or her economic class as predetermined by Big Government.

Joe is a working class fellow and his dream of owning his own business is crushed by the "income redistribution" policy.

What is truly fascinating is that the defense of the policy turns the whole argument on its head. It is a neat example of both political newspeak and a "Catch-22."

Middle-aged Joe is told that he must give up his life's dream through taxation to give money to others so they may have the same opportunity save up in the pursuit of their life's dream. Sounds good and fair on the surface.

But of course, in the near future, the recipient dreamers will become their own version of "Middle-aged Joe the Plumber. " When they too hope to realize their dream they will, in turn, have it crushed by "income redistribution" taxation.

That is the failure of socialism in a nutshell. It does do much to provide for those at the bottom but it also savagely crushes the dreams and aspirations of anyone trying to breakout.

Yet it is those selfsame citizens who do breakout that are the driving force in advancing standards of living, creating national wealth, and moving progressive societies forward.

Socialism, when all is said in done, is an economic model where a very few and very powerful number of bureaucrats rigidly and mindlessly enforce a mundane orthodoxy of institutional and societal mediocrity.

One other peculiarity, since when is the dream of a plumber to own his own business a crippling threat to the economic dreams of nurses and teachers?

This is odd indeed. In the school district where I work the top-end salary of a teacher is over $80,000 for ten months of work plus a generous health and retirement plan. The nurses make slightly more than the teachers.

Just how much income do plumbers need to redistribute to these folks?

Semper Fi,

Mike

Well, I guess the ACORN doesn't fall far from the tree.

Michael Ramirez and another truth...

This is from Mike Walker, USMC (retired)...

Supreme Injustice

On 11 September 2001, while the attacks on the United Stated were taking place, a Kuwaiti Islamic extremist was in Afghanistan working closely with the repressive and brutal Taliban regime. The Taliban were actively supporting Usama bin Laden and al Qaeda. This Kuwaiti fellow had received formal military training in his homeland before entering Afghanistan. He was, in fact, regarded a radical and considered a criminal deserter by the Kuwaiti government.

Several weeks later the United States launched a military operation against al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters in Afghanistan. The United States and its Coalition allies entered the war as adherents of the Geneva Conventions. Our enemies saw this as a weakness to exploit. Al Qaeda exceeded beyond their wildest dreams.

The Geneva Conventions began as an attempt to create a legal framework for the treatment of wounded soldiers on the battlefield and was later expanded to deal with prisoners of war. It gave birth to the International Red Cross.

In general terms, the Geneva Conventions define combatants as members of the armed forces or militias or individuals wearing a distinctive uniform and carrying open (vice concealed) arms/weapons/explosives. These individuals must also obey the orders and customs of war as defined by the Geneva protocols.

To be sadly truthful, the courts in the United States only hold US and Coalition forces to these standards. The enemy gets a de facto free pass against any and all transgressions within the framework of the Geneva Conventions. If they are prosecuted at al it is only through the American criminal justice system. Shame on them.

The courts have chosen the corrosive route of “selective prosecution” and the results are appropriately destructive not only to the ideals of justice and our American judicial system but to the safety and wellbeing of our citizens and the potential victims throughout the world.
The courts have, for whatever reason, failed in their responsibility to impartially enforce these standards as set by the international protocols that the United Stated has apparently “superficially” agreed to uphold. Shame on us and let us now reap the whirlwind.

How dare I write such a rant? Let the facts speak for themselves as we return to our well-armed Kuwaiti combatant.

By no later than late 2001, our Kuwait extremist joined the ranks of al Qaeda/Taliban (the two were one-in-the-same by this time in Afghanistan) serving as what is rationally accepted as a “combatant.” I use the word “rationally” in that he was a member of an organized combat unit, armed (AK-47 rifle, ammunition, grenades, etc), and participated in combat operations.

He fought with the Taliban/al Qaeda throughout the fall and into the winter of 2001-2002 and then into the spring of 2002; eight months of sustained armed combat operations against US/Coalition/Allied Afghan forces.

The United States mistakenly (or by foolishly naive idealism: hint Senators Obama & McCain) accepted the official assurance of the Pakistani Government that its military had secured the Afghan border at Tora Bora and Usama bin Laden and his minions would not be able to retreat into Pakistan or use Pakistan as a safe haven/military sanctuary.

Eventually, optimism and green inexperience gave way to hardened reality and Allied Forces in Afghanistan moved to close the Tora Bora escape valve without Pakistani “help.” It was at this point in 2002 that our Kuwaiti cum al Qaeda “soldier” was captured as he attempted to flee Afghanistan in order to join his al Qaeda comrades in their Pakistani sanctuary.

Now, as I wrote above, in any other war, our Kuwaiti fellow would be considered a prisoner of war and locked up for the duration. No. No. No.

We now have to consider the brutal and chaotic battlefield as a “crime scene.” Never mind that the witnesses are killed or that the evidence is destroyed in the fighting. Never mind the fact that the participants are a wee bit more focused on survival than police work that they are not trained for, nor ever envisioned to perform under the Geneva Conventions.
No matter that most human norms are abandoned or pushed aside as trivialities in combat. No, in America, we will subvert the truth. We will consciously ignore reality. We will deliberately suspend belief in what we know. Instead will superimpose an unrealistic and unattainable norm.

We will create burdens and hurdles and that are impossible to attain. Then we will condemn and penalize the participants for not making the impossible possible. We set them up for failure and then revel in it. The end result is a sad and gross injustice in its most arrogant and ignorant form established by those posing as the guardians of justice. It is, plain and simply, a travesty.

Why this outrage? Because our al Qaeda combatant was shipped off to Guantanamo Bay where he should have remained. Instead, on 3 November 2005, by the poisoned fruits of our own legal system, we released him to the selfsame Kuwaiti authorities that had allowed him to desert their armed forces and join the Taliban/al Qaeda so many years before.

As was completely predictable, he again slipped out of Kuwait and rejoined his al Qaeda comrades. This was exactly what he was attempting to do back in 2002 when he was captured. He never deviated from his armed struggle, poetic verses notwithstanding. Al Qaeda subsequently assigned him to Iraq where he personally murdered six (6) Iraqi policemen in Mosul, Iraq, on 26 April 2008 in a “martyr” operation.

I suppose some will take cold comfort in the fact that it was six Iraqi policeman and not six American soldiers who were murdered and that this fiend, Abdullah Saleh Ali al Ajmi, is now stone-cold dead. I cannot. I served in combat in Iraq. I came to deeply respect and admire the Iraqi people. I came to deeply respect and admire the Iraqi soldiers and policemen who served with us.

I cannot express my sorrow for the families of the dead Iraqi police officers or my outrage at the role my country’s courts recklessly played in their murder.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Barry, did you forget? How could you forget, maybe you just don't care.

Michael Ramirez's genius at work....along with some words by Paul Mirgengoff of Powerline... http://powerlineblog.com/

JULY 24, 2008
THE WASHINGTON POST NAILS IT
I've alluded to the Washington's Post outstanding editorial from yesterday about Barack Obama and Iraq, but it merits more attention than that. I'd like to focus in particular on two points that may not have received sufficient emphasis on this blog and others.

First, Prime Minister Maliki's statements (which are not fully in line with Obama's anyway) do not reflect the views of Sunni leaders in Anbar province. As the Post notes (and Obama has acknowledged) these leaders say that American troops are essential to maintaining the peace among Iraq's rival sects, and that they are worried about a rapid drawdown.

Incidentally, this view badly undercuts Obama's efforts to minimize the impact of the surge by insisting that the "Sunni awakening" was the key factor. If Sunni leaders still believe that American troops are essential, even after al Qaeda has been routed, then the role of our troops, and of the new strategy associated with the surge, must have played a critical role in sustaining the "awakening" when al Qaeda was running rampant.

Second, the Post brilliantly takes on Obama's claim that Afghanistan is the "central front" in the battle against terrorism:

[T]here are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

The Post calls Obama's position here "eccentric." I would have said "cynical, " and the last sentence in the quotation above hints at this, I think. Either way, Obama's position is misguided and dangerous.

A man's life and the measure of a man.


"The measure of this man's life can be found in his character, in his optimism, in his joy and humor, in his courage, in his passion for what was good and right, and in his love for God and family and neighbor and country. Tony Snow did not need a long life for us to measure. It was, rather, we who needed his life to be longer." Rev. David M. O'Connell

Another must read from a person who should know, Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired)

All,

My perspective on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is from a professional military standpoint.

To defeat an enemy you have to take the fight to them on their turf and you want pick the battlefield on your terms and on your schedule. The enemy tries to do the same, hence 9/11, etc.

Making Afghanistan the main theater of operations had its problems. Making it the sole theater of operations was and is very problematic.

First, it is taking the war to a place where the enemy intimately knows the ground and has long established areas of support, lines of communication/logistics, etc. That gives them a real edge in a gun fight.

The center of the war is now in the Helmand and adjoining Kandahar as well as Kunar wilayats (provinces). It is also important to note that Kandahar, which fell to the Taliban in 1994, was their first major prize in their drive for power after the Soviet withdrawal. We are really fighting in the heart of their home turf and where they have an excellent sanctuary/safehaven in Pakistan.

We all need to remember that the Afghan Taliban movement originated in the Pakistan border regions across from these provinces during the Afghan-Soviet war, NOT indigenously in Afghanistan.

We are also likely seeing AQ beginning to draw down in Iraq and redirecting resources into Afghanistan. This does not mean they are quitting Iraq in total. It does look like they are no longer making Iraq the priority in the war and are instead making southern and eastern Afghanistan the central front.

This is a good strategic move for them. Unlike Iraq, where they have lost support of the population, in eastern and southern Afghanistan there is still a hard-core base of support for both AQ and the Taliban. Further, as cited above, they have a secure sanctuary in Pakistan, a major advantage on the battlefield that does not exist in Iraq.

Making Afghanistan the main battleground has always been to AQ's advantage. Iraq would never have been a battlefield that they would have chosen (although they did remarkably well there for two years). It would appear that AQ is finally getting the fight they wanted at the place they wanted.

Finally, Afghanistan is also landlocked. That makes our lines of communication very perilous. It always best to have either a secure base or a coast or both. We have neither in Afghanistan. In the end we are relying on an airbridge that requires other countries to give us overflight permissions. Needless to say Iran is not one of those.

That leads us to biggest problem, Pakistan. Iraq was working on Nukes and had some WMD. Pakistan has it all in spades. They have about two dozen nukes as well as the delivery systems. Their army is far larger and better equipped than the Iraqi army was.

Are they our ally? Are they our enemy? They are trying to play both ends which almost always ends in disaster.

So how do we play it?

AQ (w/Usama) and the Taliban are still standing because they use Pakistan as a sanctuary. No sanctuary in Pakistan = strategic defeat of AQ. Thus to finally defeat them means we have to eliminate the sanctuary in Pakistan.

The problem is that most scenarios to accomplish that leads to ground combat by Coalition Forces in Pakistan followed by civil war there. It will be a far worst replay of 2004-2006 in Iraq.

In Iraq we had full support from the Kurdish region and always a strong majority of support in the Shi'a regions. We did this by capitalizing on being the liberators who removed the Saddam killing machine. We had a similar situation in Afghanistan due to the liberation from the Taliban and AQ.

We do not have the constituencies in Pakistan that will form a working majority alliance as in Iraq and Afghanistan. That makes winning there extremely difficult.

We also need to be aware of the long friction between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The presence of a NATO mission that is arming and training a strong and effective Afghan army is an immediate friction point in Pakistan who has desires of suzerainty there.

That makes the Pakistanis resist our goal of eliminating AQ. Some there want to have some Taliban and AQ hanging around to keep Afghanistan weak. Others in Pakistan want the Taliban and AQ eliminated.

And that points out the factionalism within Pakistan that makes civil war highly likely if we enter there to kill Usama and his minions.

If we make Afghanistan our whole basket of eggs we are going to get stuck to the Pakistan tar baby. And also do not forget that Iran has a long border with Afghanistan. If they feel that they helped drive us out of Iraq then they will step up their operations to get us out of Afghanistan as well.

I feel for the next President.

That is why fighting the war in Iraq to WIN is and has been to our advantage. We had Kuwait and the Gulf States as strong partners because they are/were too weak to stand up to revolutionary Iran or to the Saudis or to Saddam's Iraq. They love having us an ally.

Further, AQ had a very small presence in Iraq as compared to Afghanistan. That meant that they had to shift their forces to come to us. They HAD to make Iraq their main battlefield because the "Crusaders" were there in Muslim Arab lands.

We took away their initiative in the war and made them fight us on a ground they would never have chosen at a time they did not want.

That put them at a disadvantage and that is why you are seeing them on the edge of defeat there now. A defeat in a battle that even they declared is their most important fight.

It is ideal for us. It is makes AQ fight the US military in the Middle East and not US civilians in America. It is a battle against soldiers vice innocents. It is US troops over there killing AQ vice in US airports and cities.

The bigger looming problem is the catalyst that started this all, Iran.

Usama and AQ are, at their core, a Sunni counter-revolutionary movement. They are result of the Shi'a revolution in Iran.

The world changed forever in 1979 when the Shah was thrown out and none of us understood. Much of the turmoil and terror that has followed within the Muslim world has stemmed from that revolution.

Before that, violence in the Middle East was defined in a narrower, albeit highly complex, Arab v Israel context.

After 1979, Islam entered its first major civil war in a millennium and it dragged the rest of world into it. The Iran-Iraq war was one campaign. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the first campaign that drew in a Western power into the war. The AQ battle in Beirut last year was another manifestation; as is the rise of Hamas in opposition to the Palestinian Authority and violent revolutionary Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.

That is 95% of the global war on terrorism.

It is a tough fight. A lot of the Marines call it the LONG war. Many are now calling it a Generational War.

Not good news. Sorry.

It is going to be tough for us.

We will win.

God bless you and yours.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Murtha, every marine will remember your name... forever!

Michael Ramirez's view is the correct one, the detainees are not US citizens or criminals....they are terrorists.

Ann Coulter adds this in her TownHall piece...

After reading Justice Anthony Kennedy's recent majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush, I feel like I need to install a "1984"-style Big Brother camera in my home so Justice Kennedy can keep an eye on everything I do.

Until last week, the law had been that there were some places in the world where American courts had no jurisdiction. For example, U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over non-citizens who have never set foot in the United States.

But now, even aliens get special constitutional privileges merely for being caught on a battlefield trying to kill Americans. I think I prefer Canada's system of giving preference to non-citizens who have skills and assets.

If Justice Kennedy can review the procedures for detaining enemy combatants trying to kill Americans in the middle of a war, no place is safe. It's only a matter of time before the Supreme Court steps in to overrule Randy, Paula and Simon.

In the court's earlier attempts to stick its nose into such military operations as the detainment of enemy combatants at Guantanamo, the court dangled the possibility that it would eventually let go.

In its 2006 ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the court disallowed the Bush administration's combatant status review tribunals, but wrote: "Nothing prevents the president from returning to Congress to seek the authority (for trial by military commission) he believes necessary."

So Bush returned to Congress and sought authority for the military commissions he deemed necessary -- just as the court had suggested -- and Congress passed the Military Commissions Act. But as Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in dissent in the Boumediene case last week: It turns out the justices "were just kidding." This was the legal equivalent of the Supreme Court playing "got your nose!" with the commander in chief.

The majority opinion by Justice Kennedy in Boumediene held that it would be very troubling from the standpoint of "separation of powers" for there to be someplace in the world in which the political branches could operate without oversight from Justice Kennedy, one of the four powers of our government (the other three being the executive, legislative and judicial branches).

So now even procedures written by the legislative branch and signed into law by the executive branch have failed Kennedy's test. He says the law violates "separation of powers," which is true only if "separation of powers" means Justice Kennedy always gets final say.

Of course, before there is a "separation of powers" issue, there must be "power" to separate. As Justice Scalia points out, there is no general principle of separation of powers. There are a number of particular constitutional provisions that when added up are referred to, for short, as "separation of powers." But the general comes from the particular, not the other way around.

And the judiciary simply has no power over enemy combatants in wartime. Such power is committed to the executive as part of the commander in chief's power, and thus implicitly denied to the judiciary, just as is the power to declare war is unilaterally committed to Congress. As one law professor said to me, this is what happens when the swing justice is the dumb justice.

Kennedy's ruling thus effectively overturned the congressional declaration of war -- the use of force resolution voted for by Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, 75 other senators as well as 296 congressmen. If there's no war, then there are no enemy combatants. This is the diabolical arrogance of Kennedy's opinion.

We've been through this before: Should the military run the war or should the courts run the war?

I think the evidence is in.

The patriotic party says we are at war, and the Guantanamo detainees are enemy combatants. Approximately 10,000 prisoners were taken on the battlefield in Afghanistan. Of those, only about 800 ended up in Guantanamo, where their cases have been reviewed by military tribunals and hundreds have been released.

The detainees are not held because they are guilty; they're held to prevent them from returning to the battlefield against the U.S. Since being released, at least 30 Guantanamo detainees have returned to the battlefield, despite their promise to try not to kill any more Americans. I guess you can't trust anybody these days.

The treason party says the detainees are mostly charity workers who happened to be distributing cheese to the poor in Afghanistan when the war broke out, and it was their bad luck to be caught near the fighting.

They consider it self-evident that enemy combatants should have access to the same U.S. courts that recently acquitted R. Kelly of statutory rape despite the existence of a videotape. Good plan, liberals.

The New York Times article on the decision in Boumediene notes that some people "have asserted that those held at Guantanamo have fewer rights than people accused of crimes under American civilian and military law."

In the universal language of children: Duh.

The logical result of Boumediene is for the U.S. military to exert itself a little less trying to take enemy combatants alive. The military also might consider not sending the little darlings to the Guantanamo Spa and Resort.

Instead of playing soccer, volleyball, cards and checkers in Guantanamo, before returning to their cells with arrows pointed toward Mecca for their daily prayers, which are announced five times a day over a camp loudspeaker, the enemy combatants can rot in Egyptian prisons.

That may be the only place left that is safe from Justice Kennedy.

(In these perilous times we must resort to team efforts... here is Michael Ramirez and Mike Walker)

All,

Dusted off and updated an old paper I wrote in 2005.

It summarizes the reasons why this veteran of the
Global War On Terrorism (GWOT) and the Iraq Campaign
feel the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was justified.

I am not proposing that I am right and therefore
others are wrong headed. Nor am I casting aspersions
as to their patriotism or sense of service.

But I am emphatically and respectfully stating that my
support of the war is based upon facts and reasoned
judgment.

Semper Fi,

Mike
(Col. Mike Walker, USMC, retired)


The War against the Terror in Iraq
Unpublished work © 2008 Michael M. Walker



Contents

I. Going to War – Casus Belli

A. Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs
B. Liberation
C. The Saddam Regime and Global War on Terrorism
D. Conclusions on Going to War

I. Going to War

The casus belli that led to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) was built on three arguments. All three have stood the test of time. The first and primary cause was the perceived threat from Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Second was the liberation of the Iraqi people through the forced removal of Saddam’s regime. The third was to prevent Saddam’s regime from becoming a major opponent in the global war on terrorism.

A. Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) did not find large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq. The ISG did not find nuclear weapons. What did the ISG find? It found out too much. It proved that on the day Coalition Forces crossed the border into Iraq, the Saddam Regime was still maintaining what probably was one of the “top ten” most advanced WMD programs in the world. It uncovered a comprehensive failure of the international community, acting principally through the United Nations, to rein in the WMD activities of the Saddam Regime. It showed that Iraq’s WMD program did not end until the Saddam Regime was forcefully removed from power and driven to ground.

The failed actions taken to eliminate Saddam’s WMD capabilities before the war revolved around a long and progressive series of UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR’s). The most relevant being 687, 707, 1051, 1284, and 1441 with UNSCR 687 being the centerpiece. UNSCR 687 (3 August 1991) established a United Nations Special Commissioner (UNSCOM) responsible for:

1. Disarming Iraq’s Chemical Weapons (CW), Biological Weapons (BW), and Ballistic Missiles, to include destruction, removal, and rendering harmless the weapons associated programs, stocks, components, research, and facilities.

2. Ensuring that the above operations be conducted under international supervision.

Additionally, UNSCR 687 charged the UN International Atomic Energy Agency with the responsibility for the abolition of Iraq’s nuclear program.

When hostilities began in March 2003, Saddam’s regime had an active WMD program in direct violation of UNSCR 687. The Saddam Regime had not disarmed all its Chemical Weapons, Biological Weapons, or Ballistic Missiles. It had not destroyed, removed or rendered harmless all its associated CW/BW/Ballistic Missile programs, stocks, research, and facilities. In fact, rather than finding that there was no credible WMD program in Iraq, the ISG proved that quite the opposite was true. What follows is information primarily drawn from the ISG Final Report of 30 September 2004.

The Nuclear Weapons Program in 2003

This was the only program that was critically degraded. Virtually all of the research had stopped and the facilities eliminated before the war began. The only meaningful remnant of the program was the people who were not allowed to leave Iraq. Saddam kept these scientists and technicians on the payroll and while they conducted a very limited amount of research, his nuclear weapons program was almost extinct by March 2003.

The Chemical Weapons Program in 2003

On the eve of hostilities in March of 2003, the Saddam regime had retained a stockpile of “Sarin” nerve agent and mustard gas munitions dating from the Iran-Iraq war despite a decade of repeated claims that these munitions had been completely destroyed. The Saddam regime still had a cadre of CW researchers, CW producers, and, most importantly, CW “weaponizers.” It maintained the ability to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard agent within six (6) months and large quantities of nerve agents within two (2) years. The regime still maintained prototype experimental CW munitions in March 2003. Further, in March 2003, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) was still producing and storing limited quantities of sulfur mustard and nitrogen mustard agents as well as Sarin gas. The IIS had tested the efficacy of their Sarin agent on human subjects. The Saddam regime had no intention of ever abiding by the CW prohibitions of UNSCR 687.

The Biological Weapons Program in 2003

As the ISG reported, the Saddam regime never lost the scientific “know how” to produce Biological Weapons. In March of 2003, the Saddam regime still retained a BW-related “seed” stock that gave them the potential to start up the limited production of Biological Weapons within two months in complete violation of UNSCR 687. The regime actually expanded its BW capability from 1992 through 1994 in spite of UNSCR 687, UNSCR 707, and UNSCR 715. It was only due to the collapse of the state-run sector of the economy, resulting from the sanctions put in place under UNSCR 661, that Saddam’s regime unilaterally abandoned the major components of its BW program as unsupportable in 1995. Still, the Saddam regime maintained its BW potential from 1996 onward by continuing a declared and undeclared dual-use capability, a direct violation of UNSCR 1051.

The Ballistic Missile Program in 2003

Saddam’s ballistic missile program was active and productive right up to the day that the war began. As with the CW and BW programs, Iraqi missile technologies had their roots in the old Soviet Union cold war weapons inventory. Saddam’s regime conducted extensive work in delivery systems through the Al Samid Surface-to-Surface Missile (SSM) as well as the Iskandar SSM, amongst others. The international scope of Saddam’s ballistic missile program was dizzying. They obtained technology from Syria who used false “end user” documents to thwart UN sanctions. They illegally obtained ballistic missile guidance and control systems from North Korea as well as Russian, Serbian, and Belarus companies. Saddam’s regime formed front companies to allow them to produce liquid fuel propellants banned by the UN Resolutions. They illegally conducted advanced research on solid propellants, improperly obtaining Aluminum Powder (AP) from companies in India, China, France and others, and by secretly exploiting carbon fiber technologies for the Al Fatah SSM in violation of UNSCR 687 and 1051.

The record shows that the Saddam Regime blatantly and systematically violated every meaningful UNSC Resolution passed until the bitter end. They violated UNSCR 687 by maintaining BW, CW, and Ballistic Missile programs. They violated UNSCR 707 by, amongst other things, continuously attempting to conceal facilities and move or conceal materials related to their weapons of mass destruction programs. They violated UNSCR 1051 by deliberately failing to report shipments of dual-use items related to weapons of mass destruction to the UN and IAEA. And this extended well beyond violating “dual use reporting.” In order to keep their WMD programs active, they relied on smuggling operations of all manner and type, falsifying “end user” documentation, disguising shipments, and presenting false final destinations. They bribed and set up front companies to make these activities more efficient.
Perhaps the most egregious WMD related violations dealt with UNSCR 1284. This resolution created the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission (UNMOVIC) to replace UNSCOM. The Saddamists never fully allowed UNMOVIC "immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access" to Iraqi officials and facilities. They never fulfilled the commitment to return Gulf War prisoners, because, as we learned after the war began, they had all been executed years earlier. While the resolution had little effect on curbing the bad behavior of the Saddam Regime it had a disastrous outcome for the Iraqi people by creating the Oil-For-Food Program. In the most Machiavellian and heartless tactic of all, they used Oil-For-Food (OFF) vouchers and “kickbacks” worth hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for their illicit WMD program despite the resolution’s requirement for the Saddam Regime to distribute humanitarian goods and medical supplies to its people and address the needs of vulnerable Iraqis without discrimination.

In a chillingly brilliant parallel move, a move that would have drawn the admiration of Hitler and Josef Goebbels, Saddam’s Regime continuously spewed forth a stream of false propaganda stating that the sanctions resulted in an insufficiency of medicines and humanitarian supplies causing the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children. They did this in order to hide the truth that the regime was stealing the hundreds of millions of OFF dollars needed to care for these people in order to maintain their army, prop up the dictatorship, and support their WMD program.

Thus it was inevitable that war would ensue when UNSCR 1441 was passed in November 2002. Eleven long years after UNSCR 687, the UN provided one final opportunity for the Saddam Regime to comply. The Saddam Regime never complied. For Saddam’s apologists, the ISG found out too much indeed.

To understand the importance of this truth recall the 26 January 2008 CBS “60-Minutes” interview of FBI Special Agent George Piro by correspondent Scott Pelley regarding the interrogations of Saddam and Saddam’s WMD goals:

Special Agent Piro: “The folks that he needed to reconstitute the program are still there.”
CBS Correspondent Pelley: “And that was his intention?”
Special Agent Piro: “Yes.”
CBS Correspondent Pelley: “What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?”
Special Agent Piro: “He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire WMD program.”
CBS Correspondent Pelley: “Chemical, biological, even nuclear?”
Special Agent Piro: “Yes.”
B. Liberation

The liberation of the Iraqi people was always a clear objective of the war. To state the obvious, Coalition actions were conducted under “Operation Iraqi Freedom” not “Operation Maximum UNSCR Compliance.” To argue that the liberation of the Iraqi people was not a major goal of the war is to beggar the truth. The March 2003 Coalition military operation against Saddam was universally referred to as the liberation by the Iraqis we met; not just by the Kurds, Shi’a, and progressive Sunni’s but even by the Sunni’s who were unrepentant Ba’athists and strongly opposed to the presence of Coalition Forces after the end of the convention battle. To understand this we need to look back at the recent history of Iraq under Saddam.

During the sixteen years prior to the liberation, hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women, and children were murdered by the state. Additionally, by the close of 2002, over three million Iraqis had fled the Saddam Regime (+15% of the population) and close to another million Iraqis were internally displaced. The internally displaced were predominantly the Marsh Arabs. The ecological attack on them, what some have called an ecological genocide, began in 1992 with the destruction of nearly five million acres of marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Although precise numbers are still not available, from 1987 until 2002, roughly 425,000 Iraqis were murdered by the Saddam Regime , the most deadly years being 1987-88 (when genocidal attacks killed approximately 100,000 Kurds) and 1991 (when an estimated 165,000 Shi’a and Kurds were put to death); that averages to over 26,000 victims per year or an average over 2,200 civilian deaths per month during the later half of Saddam’s era of power.

How did life end for the hundreds of thousands of Saddam’s victims? Thousands died through the use of WMD in chemical warfare (CW) attacks. For example, in September 1988 Ali Hassan al-Majid, AKA “Chemical Ali,” began the Anfal Operation. In those Kurdish regions spared the horrors of chemical attacks, he specifically issued orders to execute all civilians between 15-70 years of age after any information of intelligence value was “extracted” from them. Many Iraqis died through the accepted state means of execution, hanging, firing squad, beheading, etc. More died through torture that extended far beyond beatings and electric shocks but branched out into sodomy, eye gouging, acid baths, the drilling holes through hands with power tools and more. Victims were found with blackened genitals, blown into gaping pieces of raw flesh from grenades inserted into shirt pockets after being bound, arms and legs. Other victims had their tongues ripped out during interrogations and bled to death.

And Saddam’s henchmen did not differentiate between men and women or even children. During a “retribution campaign” against the Shi’a, Saddam’s operatives killed babies by smashing their bodies against walls. One Saddam loyalist “fighter” had his occupation listed as a violator of women’s honor, a full-time rapist on the government payroll. Nor were the victims limited to traditional anti-government opponents. Hazani Oraha owned an art gallery. He showed art works that were deemed “controversial” by the Saddam Regime. In addition to losing his gallery and having the art confiscated, he was hung from a ceiling fan, with his legs bound. The fan was then tuned on, twisting him until his back was broken. A female doctor who criticized corruption in the Ministry of Health was arrested, charged with prostitution and beheaded. These are a few examples of hundreds of thousands of people who died under the Saddam Regime.

The liberation that resulted from Operation Iraqi Freedom was too late for these victims but thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children are alive today because the Coalition Forces put an end to this madness. The one thing that has remained unchanged since the liberation is the determination of Saddam’s remaining henchmen, in alliance with Al Qaeda, to continue to murder innocent Iraqi civilians. Although they can no longer kill in the large numbers seen before the war and have largely lost the ability to conduct their murderous business outside the harsh glare of humanity, they are still killing as best they can. Putting a final end to that and allowing the Iraqi people to move forward in creating a new and peaceful Iraq is the task at hand.

C. The Saddam Regime and the Global War on Terrorism

While Saddam’s IIS was in frequent contact with various Al Qaeda operatives, there is no evidence that the Saddam Regime had any direct connection to the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States on 9/11. But the regime is linked to other terror attacks on the United States by al Qaeda followers. If the Global War on Terrorism is completely limited to fighting al Qaeda and its supporters, then in March 2003, the Saddam Regime was certainly involved on a limited basis both through its support of Abdul Rahman Yasin and the Ansar al Islam (AaI) terrorist group. The Saddam regime provided a safe haven and funding to Iraqi Abdul Rahman Yasin after he was listed on the FBI’s most wanted list for alleged participation in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six and injured 1,042 Americans. Yasin is still at large.

Also before the war, Saddam supported AaI by providing bases in northern Iraq along the Iranian border. AaI was used by Saddam as an indirect terrorist weapon against the Iraqi Kurdish region after he could no longer directly attack due to the Coalition’s enforcement of the UN “no-fly zone” established there. He further supported AaI because of its violent opposition to the radical Shi’a regime in Iran. After the 2003 invasion, AaI’s training camps, along with its weapons and munitions caches were destroyed, its operations against the Kurds and Iran terminated, its leaders forced underground, and many of its members killed or captured.

The Saddam Regime also had a long history of working with other terrorists and their organizations. The regime actively aided and abetted the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO). Besides carrying out a number of infamous aircraft hijackings and attacks at airports, ANO was responsible for assassinating a Jordanian diplomat, PLO Chairman Arafat’s Second-in-Command, and an attack on a synagogue in Israel where 22 worshipers were killed.

The Regime also backed the terrorist organization Hamas by providing a “Blessing from Saddam” in the form of a $25,000 payout to families of suicide bombers. To be clear, Hamas is not simply an enemy of Israel. It is a potent threat to the Palestinian Authority and evolving into a terrorist threat to the peoples of the Middle East.

Saddam’s Intelligence Services had contacts with terrorist Chechen organizations although these were limited for fear of alienating Saddam’s most important ally, Russia. And the IIS needed to be circumspect in regards to Russia:

In recent months, radical Islamist Chechen leaders such as Shamil Basayev, along with Osama bin Laden, have been "clear" about wanting to "set Russia on fire," says Michael Radu, a terrorism expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Saddam was the chief supporter of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), a paramilitary force made up of Iranians operating in Iraq dedicated to violently seizing power in Iran. This Marxist oriented organization targeted and killed a number of Americans in Iran during the 1970’s and actively supported the seizure of the US Embassy in Iran in 1980. In 1991, it assisted the Saddam Regime in suppressing the Shi’a rebellion in southern Iraq and the Kurdish uprisings in the north. In April 1992, the MEK, headquartered in Iraq, conducted near-simultaneous attacks on Iranian Embassies and installations in 13 countries, demonstrating the group’s ability to mount large-scale operations overseas. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Coalition Forces seized and destroyed MEK munitions and weapons, and about 4,000 MEK operatives were consolidated, detained, disarmed, and screened for any past terrorist acts.

Although Saddam’s intelligence service had long been in contact with Al Qaeda, there is no credible evidence that Al Qaeda and Saddam’s regime were solid allies in March 2003. It is equally true that the two groups were following a complementary policy in their pursuit of terror as demonstrated by the Saddam Regime’s support for Abdul Rahman Yasin and the Ansar al Islam terrorists. The facts cannot allow one’s eyes to be closed to the reality that in March 2003 Saddam was providing active and bloody support to a number of terrorist organizations that were and are still our enemies in the Global War on Terrorism.

The destruction of the Saddam Regime removed one of the most potent and dangerous forces in world terrorism.

D. Conclusions on Going to War

The evidence would allow a reasonable person to conclude that the war was and is justified. The WMD argument boils down to an old saying, one usually used in a far more positive context; if you give someone a fish they eat for a day, if you teach someone how to fish they can eat for a lifetime. If you allow a tyrant to horde a stockpile of WMD he can only use it once, if you allow him to maintain a WMD program, he can potentially use the weapons forever and that was the exact aim of Saddam.

By going to war we liberated an oppressed people. By destroying the Saddam Regime we ended, once and for all, both its WMD programs and its long established and very active support of world-wide terrorist organizations. For this author, who served two tours in Iraq, those were and are honorable and worthwhile objectives worth pursuing.

Man, Michael Ramirez should get a Pulitzer for his work, oh yeah, he has!

Michael Ramirez

A Gaffe, an Absurdity, and a Policy
By Charles Krauthammer
Townhall.com

WASHINGTON -- When the House of Representatives takes up arms against $4 gas by voting 324-84 to sue OPEC, you know that election-year discourse has gone surreal. Another unmistakable sign is when a presidential candidate makes a gaffe, then, realizing it is too egregious to take back without suffering humiliation, decides to make it a centerpiece of his foreign policy.
Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers. But in that debate, he was asked about doing exactly that. Unprepared, he said sure -- then got fancy, declaring the Bush administration's refusal to do so not just "ridiculous" but "a disgrace."
After that, there was no going back. So he doubled down. What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity.
Should the president ever meet with enemies? Sometimes, but only after minimal American objectives -- i.e. preconditions -- have been met. The Shanghai communique was largely written long before Richard Nixon ever touched down in China. Yet Obama thinks Nixon to China confirms the wisdom of his willingness to undertake a worldwide freshman-year tyrants tour.
Most of the time you don't negotiate with enemy leaders because there is nothing to negotiate. Does Obama imagine that North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela are insufficiently informed about American requirements for improved relations?
There are always contacts through back channels or intermediaries. Iran, for example, has engaged in five years of talks with our closest European allies and the International Atomic Energy Agency, to say nothing of the hundreds of official U.S. statements outlining exactly what we would give them in return for suspending uranium enrichment.
Obama pretends that while he is for such "engagement," the cowboy Republicans oppose it. Another absurdity. No one is debating the need for contacts. The debate is over the stupidity of elevating rogue states and their tyrants, easing their isolation and increasing their leverage by granting them unconditional meetings with the president of the world's superpower.
Obama cited Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as presidents who met with enemies. Does he know no history? Neither Roosevelt nor Truman ever met with any of the leaders of the Axis powers. Obama must be referring to the pictures he's seen of Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, and Truman and Stalin at Potsdam. Does he not know that at that time Stalin was a wartime ally?
During the subsequent Cold War, Truman never met with Stalin. Nor Mao. Nor Kim Il Sung. Truman was no fool.
Obama cites John Kennedy meeting Nikita Khrushchev as another example of what he wants to emulate. Really? That Vienna summit of a young, inexperienced, untested American president was disastrous, emboldening Khrushchev to push Kennedy on Berlin -- and then near fatally in Cuba, leading almost directly to the Cuban missile crisis. Is that the precedent Obama aspires to follow?
A meeting with Ahmadinejad would not just strengthen and vindicate him at home, it would instantly and powerfully ease the mullahs' isolation, inviting other world leaders to follow. And with that would come a flood of commercial contracts, oil deals, diplomatic agreements -- undermining precisely the very sanctions and isolation that Obama says he would employ against Iran.
As every seasoned diplomat knows, the danger of a summit is that it creates enormous pressure for results. And results require mutual concessions. That is why conditions and concessions are worked out in advance, not on the scene.
What concessions does Obama imagine Ahmadinejad will make to him on Iran's nuclear program? And what new concessions will Obama offer? To abandon Lebanon? To recognize Hamas? Or perhaps to squeeze Israel?
Having lashed himself to the ridiculous, unprecedented promise of unconditional presidential negotiations -- and then having compounded the problem by elevating it to a principle -- Obama keeps trying to explain. On Sunday, he declared in Pendleton, Ore., that by Soviet standards Iran and others "don't pose a serious threat to us." (On the contrary. Islamic Iran is dangerously apocalyptic. Soviet Russia was not.) The next day in Billings, Mont.: "I've made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave."
That's the very next day, mind you. Such rhetorical flailing has done more than create an intellectual mess. It has given rise to a new political phenomenon: the metastatic gaffe. The one begets another, begets another, begets ...

May 20, 2008
Appeasement and Its Discontents
Obama & Dubya.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

So spoke President’s Bush to the Israeli Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the birth of the Jewish state last week. Ostensibly the president’s historical references made perfect sense for a variety of reasons. First, the state of Israel is inextricably a result of the Holocaust — a genocide that was in itself the logical consequence of an ascendant Nazi state, whose industry of death might could been circumvented by concerted action earlier in the late 1930s by the then stronger liberal democracies.

Bush was assuring the Israelis that the United States would not, in contrast to liberal democracies of the past, appease states and organizations intent on killing Jews by the millions.

Second, Bush’s warning came in a climate of fear and weariness in the West, in which calls to meet without preconditions with both Iran and Hamas — the former state whose president has forecast the impending destruction of Israel, the latter terrorist organization whose charter hinges on the end of the Jewish state — have been voiced by several public figures, most prominently in recent days by former President Carter.

Third, the warning about appeasement comes not just after, and in implied defense of, military action in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but in the case of the United States, also after the September 11 catastrophe, which itself followed a decade of bipartisan inability to confront and respond to a number of al Qaeda serial provocations.

The speech caused outrage among Democrats who insisted that it was “appalling” and a “smear” on Barack Obama, who has advocated talks, without preconditions, with Iran, and who had been informally endorsed by a Hamas official, and who had recently fired a Middle Eastern adviser, Robert Malley, for meeting with Hamas leaders. Obama fired off the following reply:

It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack...It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel…George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.

Three questions are raised by this controversy. First: What constitutes appeasement in the 21st-century age of globalization? Second: If President Bush had wished to imply a connection with the unnamed Barack Obama, how fair would such a charge have been? Third: Has President Bush himself followed his own advice and shunned the appeasement of “with terrorists and radicals”?

Most define appeasement not by the mere willingness on occasion to negotiate with enemies (i.e., the heads of nation states rather than criminal terrorist cliques). Rather, appeasement is an overriding desire to avoid war or confrontation to such a degree so as to engage in a serial pattern of behavior that results in an accommodation of an enemy’s demands — and ultimately the inadvertent enhancement of its agendas. Key here is the caveat that there must muscular alternatives to appeasement, as was true with a rather weak 1936 Nazi Germany or a non-nuclear theocratic Iran.

Talking with an Iranian theocrat like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad per se might not necessarily constitute appeasement. But continuing such talks without preconditions that made no progress in curbing Iranian nuclear agendas, or support for Hezbollah terrorists and Shiite militias in Iraq would not only be futile, but encourage further Iranian adventurism — by the assurance that negotiations were infinite and there would be few lines in the sand and little chance of military opposition to follow. In our era, the locus classicus of appeasement is the near decade of negotiations, empty threats, and drawnout diplomacy with Slobodan Milosevic, in which with virtual impunity he butchered thousands of Croats, Kosovars, and Bosnians — until a belated bombing war forced him to capitulate.

Bush in his Knesset address may have acknowledged that expansive notion of appeasement when he elaborated on his “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” line, with the proviso of futility — namely that such talking assumed an “ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.” In addition, Bush’s example — that when “Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided” — suggests that his reference to appeasement meant not just one-time talking, but delusional and persistent engagement that is oblivious to facts on the ground.

If the president also meant to include Obama among those who would engage in such appeasement, would there be any evidence for such a view? Obama himself has never been in a position of exercising executive judgments, so we have only his campaign statements from which to surmise. In this regard, we certainly know that Obama is willing to meet any and all our enemies without preconditions. During a televised debate he was asked directly whether he would agree “to meet separately, without precondition . . . with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea,” Obama replied: “I would.”

His website amplifies that answer with the boast that “Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.” The problem here would not be in theory talking with an Iran or Syria — Sec. of Defense Gates on numerous occasions has advocated negotiations with Teheran — but in a priori signaling to tyrants such an eagerness to elevate their grievances to head-of-state diplomacy. Under what conditions, how long, and to what degree Obama would be willing to exercise non-diplomatic options when talks proved futile would adjudicate whether his preference for unconditional talks devolved from diplomacy to appeasement.

If a President Obama were to enter into multiple negotiations with Iran, and if Iran were to continue to subvert the Lebanese government and threaten Israel through its surrogate Hezbollah, and continue to develop a nuclear arsenal while promising the destruction of Israel, at what point would he be willing not merely to cease talking, but to accept that his negotiations had done more harm than good and thus required a radical change of course — and would it be in time?

Given President Bush’s admonitions about appeasement, does the president practice what he preaches?

That depends on a variety of factors such as whether enemies are nuclear or not, whom exactly we define as adversaries — Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Sudan, Libya? — and to what degree our existing negotiations are proving not only futile, but emboldening our enemies by the assurance that we will neither cease diplomacy nor threaten the use of force.

Both the president and Obama, in arguing abstractly over appeasement, do not factor in such realist concerns of leverage that govern decisions to negotiate, such as exporting ten million barrels a day of scarce oil (Saudi Arabia), the possession of nuclear weapons in the hands of an unstable government (Pakistan and North Korea), or the unwillingness of American public opinion to support an armed intervention (Darfur).

In that regard, Barack Obama shows his own inexperience when he evokes past summits that a John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan conducted with the nuclear Soviets — contemporary rivalries in which escalation to nuclear annihilation was a real worry, and at the time Soviet combatants (as is true in Iraq) were not killing our own soldiers.

In short, nothing in the president’s speech was inaccurate, inflammatory, or hypocritical. Whether Barack Obama believes he was a target of the president’s rhetoric, or whether he would engage in appeasement, hinges on whether his overeagerness to talk without preconditions to the world’s thugs and rogues would persist in the face of unpleasant facts — and so make the likelihood of eventual military action more, rather than less, likely.

©2008 Victor Davis Hanson