Mission Impossible

I had referenced this article earlier here, but reading it again it deserves to be reposted in its entirety as often as possible. Just doing our part.

Russ

Via Human Events

By Col. Oliver North (Ret.)

The commander in chief’s December 1 lecture at the U.S. Military Academy has to go down in history as one of the strangest presentations ever offered by a war-time president. The robotically-delivered address is defended by administration officials as the culmination of a carefully thought-out “strategy review,” in which Obama proffered the “rationale” for deploying additional troops and explained “The Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Unfortunately, it failed to do any of this.

Though he was standing before West Point’s Corps of Cadets, the president’s remarks were devoid of strategic vision, lacking any definition of victory and empty of the rhetoric elected leaders employ to rally democratic people to a cause requiring the sacrifice of blood and treasure. The speech did, however, provide another Obama “first.” Giving the enemy a timetable for withdrawing American troops while simultaneously committing additional combat forces to a war zone is unprecedented. No commander in chief has ever done such a thing before -- because it makes no sense from either a political or military perspective.

To his credit, Obama said, “I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.” These additional troops, trainers and mobility assets are desperately needed. But he offered no rationale for how he arrived at a number that is 25 percent less than what his hand-picked commander, General Stanley McChrystal requested. Then he devoted five additional passages to defending his statement that, “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.”


Since Tuesday, Obama has stopped talking about the war in Afghanistan and moved on to “Creating Jobs” -- a topic he raised four times in his West Point speech. He left Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Admiral Mike Mullins, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a host nameless “administration spokesmen” to explain the extraordinary announcement that we will “begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.”

The contortions required to support this statement were particularly evident in Congressional testimony this week -- particularly for Mr. Gates. When the Defense Secretary appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) said to Mr. Gates: “You said in April 2007, with regard to Iraq, ‘I’ve been pretty clear that I think the enactment of specific deadlines would be a bad mistake.’”

Pence summed up the good sense of most Americans by noting, “I’m someone who believes it never makes sense to tell the enemy when you’re going to quit fighting in a war. Mr. Secretary, I wonder…what’s changed in your view here? What am I missing?”

The defense secretary’s response offers a glimpse into the deceptive double-think so prevalent in the Obama administration: “First of all, I have adamantly opposed deadlines; I opposed them in Iraq and I opposed deadlines in Afghanistan.” Gates continued, “But what the President has announced is the beginning of a process, not the end of a process; and it is clear that this will be a gradual process and -- as he said last night -- based on conditions on the ground. So there is no deadline for the withdrawal of American forces in Afghanistan.”

The following day, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Gates said that “July 2011 is the beginning of a process, an inflection point if you will, of when Afghan forces will assume greater responsibility.”

Thus, a publicly announced “troop withdrawal timeline” and a “timeframe for our transition to Afghan responsibility,” won’t tell the Taliban and al Qaeda how long they have to go to ground or hide out. According to the O-Team, July 2011 is just “the beginning of a process,” an “inflection point.” If that’s what they really believe, they aren’t just trying to mislead us -- they are deceiving themselves.   

Finally, Obama’s self-centric West Point remarks -- he referred to himself no less than 57 times -- also prove that he and his speechwriters don’t know history either. He claimed that Afghanistan would not become “another Vietnam,” because “Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency.” Whoever wrote these words is simply wrong.

The Republic of Vietnam wasn’t lost to a “popular insurgency.” By April 1969, the Viet Cong had been eliminated as a military threat. The frail, flawed democratic government in Saigon collapsed in April 1975 -- three years after the last American combat troops were withdrawn -- because in December 1974 the country was invaded and subsequently conquered by a hostile neighbor -- North Vietnam -- only after the U.S. Congress rebuffed President Gerald Ford’s request for $522 million in emergency aid.

A head of state who distorts the lessons of history is a peril. A leader who tries to deceive himself and his people is dangerous. We can only pray that this commander in chief isn’t committing a hundred thousand young Americans to a mission impossible in the shadows of the Hindu Kush.

Professor Obama as Dutiful Commander in Chief

Just a very quick note about this article. I happen to disagree with Barone when he says that "these acts seem to me an indication that Obama takes seriously his responsibilities as a military commander and that he steels himself to do his duty even when it is unpleasant (as George W. Bush did, though he did not see fit to mention it in his major speeches)."

As you'll read below, "these acts" are nothing more than words he spoke at West Point. His only real "action" is sending 30,000 troops to Afghanistan for an 18-month tour. That action is hardly one of a man who takes his duty as CiC seriously. He has laid out our game plan for the enemy and committed less than half of the troops his Generals requested. It took him three months to make the worst decision possible. Obama does not take his duties as Commander seriously. It is political and nothing more. I offer this article, however, so that you can draw your own conclusions as to whether you think Obama has been the 'dutiful' Commander in Chief.

Russ

Via Townhall.com

By Michael Barone

Every time I visit the White House, I am struck by its military environment.

Military guards are on duty, the staff has lunch in the White House mess and there's a helicopter pad for Marine One out on the lawn. You see nothing like this in any governor's office I have visited or in the offices of members of Congress, and certainly not in the headquarters of a political campaign or a community organizer.

This military atmosphere may have seemed congenial to a president who made a career in the military like Dwight Eisenhower, and it was not unfamiliar to those who served in World War II, as his seven successors did. But it can be off-putting to those without military experience, such as the Bill Clinton staffer who refused to speak to Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a snub that required an apology from the president, who had once declared that he loathed the military.

This atmosphere may seem jarring as well to Barack Obama, our only president who lived most of his adult life in university neighborhoods, the part of our society most hostile to the military. But now Obama, who was an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago Law School, is commander, in chief and in a time of war, he must issue commands that will result in the deaths of men and women in uniform.

Watching his Dec. 1 speech announcing his new policy on Afghanistan, I thought I saw two Obamas speaking, the professor and the commander in chief.

He chose a venue even more military than the White House, the Eisenhower Theatre at West Point, and spoke gravely and unsmilingly to the assembled cadets.

"It is in the vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan," the commander in chief informed them. And then he added, as if speaking to the faculty club, "After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home." The professor continued, in a paragraph twice as long, to recall his opposition to the war in Iraq, to describe what he considered its baleful effects and to segue to a discussion of the "worst economic crisis since the Great Depression" -- something that Franklin Roosevelt, who was much closer to that economic crisis, seldom if ever mentioned during World War II.

The commander in chief then noted that the military and their families have "already borne the heaviest of all burdens." And he mentioned some of his own: The condolence letters he has signed, the visits to Walter Reed, greeting the caskets at Dover Air Force Base.

These acts seem to me an indication that Obama takes seriously his responsibilities as a military commander and that he steels himself to do his duty even when it is unpleasant (as George W. Bush did, though he did not see fit to mention it in his major speeches).

I suspect the rest of us cannot fully appreciate the psychic burden of ordering into harm's way men and women whom you see in front of you and shake hands with. Only the most cynical person, more cynical than any of our presidents, could fail to be affected by this, and this commander in chief devoted several paragraphs to explaining why he believed the war in Afghanistan was worth the sacrifices it must entail.

Then the professor also chimed in, addressing complaints he might hear on campus. This time, he said, the allies will provide more troops (though they haven't promised to do so), we'll clamp down on corruption in Afghanistan, and no, this is not another Vietnam. And we won't spend so much on guns to cut down the supply of butter to the big government programs Democrats favor at home.

But there was one word the professor would not allow the commander in chief to utter.

Presidents often refer to the words of their predecessors, and in his peroration Obama said, "We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might." Alas, this is not always so: Think of the millions who died under Nazism and communism.

Still, the rhyme does echo a ringing phrase in Franklin Roosevelt's speech to Congress the day after Pearl Harbor, which triggered the most tumultuous applause of the day. "The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory." Too bad we didn't hear that last word from this commander in chief at West Point.