Category Archives: Afghanistan
West Point Speech
The president gave the commencement address at West Point this week. The speech apparently didn’t have enough trigger points or insensitive comments to get him thrown out. The graduating West Point cadets tolerated their commander’s speech but didn’t give him a very rousing response. Quiet as a mouse according to Krauthammer.
West Point
Patching up his previous comments, Obama insisted he believes in American exceptionalism with every fiber of his being. But just because we are strong like hammer doesn’t mean everyone else is a nail. We must lead by example. Presumably North Korea, Syria, and Iran will follow. It was a little confusing.
Dick Cheney was not convinced.
Benghazi: Bad Movie Review or Act of Terror?
David Kirkpatrick wrote a long piece in the NYT December 28 that said the attack on Benghazi was the act of a bunch of locals very pissed off about a movie. The Washington Post later reported that a former GITMO detainee who had trained under Osama bin Laden and fought with the Taliban played a role in the attack.
As they say, “what difference does it make?” Well, President Obama did say that al Qaeda was on the run and headed for defeat. After the attack Susan Rice went on five Sunday news shows to say it was caused by the internet video. And Hillary promised the father of murdered Navy Seal, Tyrone Woods, that they would prosecute the movie maker.
Was Benghazi a Bad Movie Review or Act of Terror?
The fact is the mystery of Benghazi can easily be solved by the man himself. In the second 2012 presidential debate Obama insisted that it is was an act of terror.
Here’s Andrew Wilson’s review in The American Spectator.
Gates’ Book
Update:
The Democrats hoped to change the subject for the new year from ObamaCare to income inequality. Former defense secretary Robert Gates, a Republican, didn’t get the memo.
A WSJ review of his new book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War says Gates treated Bush and Obama in a nonpartisan way. But Bob Woodward’s review in the Washington Post called the book an emotional and seething critique of Obama’s top aids.
Gates didn’t hold back. He called Congress “ugly”, said Biden was wrong on every foreign policy issue for the last forty years, and criticized Obama for making national security choices based on getting re-elected.
Al Qaeda on the Run
After retreating from Iraq, Afghanistan, and US embassies around the Muslim world, the president called in the marines – as background props for a Camp Pendleton speech – to announce that the “United States is never going to retreat from the world”. “We don’t get terrorized,” he said.
He also repeated his claim that “the core of Al Qaeda is on the way to defeat”.
Or as the late Osama bin Laden put it, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse they like the strong horse”.
Afghan Plan
President Obama considered Afghanistan the smart war and Iraq a dumb war with smart bombs. In 2009 he joined together a surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan and a plan for withdrawal.
The surge got the boot with a drawdown in 2011. Obama claimed the killing of Osama bin Laden had put al Qaeda on a path to defeat and that the tide of war was receding. Terrorists in Boston, London, Nigeria, Libya, and Syria missed that speech.
Now he’s threatening Hamid Karzai with a “zero option” which would mean the total withdrawal of U.S. troops – same as Iraq.
