Category Archives: Iraq
Better than his Advisers
In 2008 President Obama offered this self evaluation.
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Anything You Can Do, I Can do Better
Last week The Washington Post said the president doesn’t work well with others in the military. Mark Theissen, also in the Post, said Obama ignored his top general when he pulled all troops out of Iraq – allowing ISIS to move in – and he’s still ignoring him.
Doctors, Farmers, and the JV Team
The Senate just approved a continuing resolution to fund the government and train Syrian rebels to fight against ISIS. President Obama previously dismissed the rebels as “doctors, pharmacists, and farmers”. That’s a positive endorsement considering he called ISIS the “JV team”.
Is the Caliphate Islamic?
Is the Pope Catholic?
President Obama says the Islamic State isn’t Islamic. The Washington Post says “Americans disagree” and has nifty charts and polls to prove it. Daniel Pipes disagrees too. The Middle East scholar says ISIS is “100% Islamic”.
Dennis B. Ross says, in the NYT, that ISIS is Islamist and “Islamists are not our friends”.
What the Islamists all have in common is that they subordinate national identities to an Islamic identity.
Peggy Noonan (click The Genocide of the Mideastern Christians – WSJ) says the Islamic State is “de-Christianising the Mideast where Christianity began”.
An estimated two-thirds of the Christians of Iraq have fled that country since the 2003 U.S. invasion. They are being driven from their villages in northern Iraq. They are terrorized, brutalized, executed. This week an eyewitness in Mosul, which fell to Islamic State in June, told NBC News the jihadists were committing atrocities. In Syria, too, they have executed Christians for refusing to convert.
Update: John Kerry is putting “the real Islam out there”.
Andrew Wilson in The American Spectator calls Obama’s claim “the grossest nonsense”.
Under Mohammed, Islam began as a religion of conquest. A commitment to wage jihad or holy war and to “smite the necks” of unbelievers has been part of Islam from the earliest days. In the 100 years following Mohammed’s death in AD 632, when Islam was still confined to the Arabian peninsula, Arab armies spread the faith as far west as Spain and as far east as northern India and the frontier of China.
Bokbluster Weekend NATO Editon
Last week President Obama assured member nations that NATO would defend them. Meanwhile, terrorists frolicked by the pool at the abandoned American Embassy in Tripoli.
Not NATO
On Friday Ukraine signed a ceasefire agreement with Russian separatists. Ukraine isn’t a NATO member. The only American military assistance it received where Meals Ready to Eat. Still it was making progress against the separatists. That is until Russian tanks invaded.
The beheading of two Americans seems to have concentrated the country’s attention on the use of military force. Even Rand Paul wants to wipe out ISIS. He says he’s always been in favor of war if it’s in the national interest. How far does the national interest go?
Pretty far, according to Robert Kagan and Victor Davis Hanson. They both made the same point that when you withdraw military power bad guys fill the vacuum.
Brett Bair interviewed three CIA contractors who were on the ground in Benghazi when Ambassador Stevens was killed. They say their station chief told them to stand down. Eventually they defied orders and fought the terrorists, some of whom may now be poolside in Tripoli.
Degrade and Destroy
Last week President Obama said he didn’t have a strategy for dealing with ISIL, the Islamist terror concern occupying large swaths of Iraq and Syria.
Degrade and Destroy
This week he said he would “degrade and destroy” those same head sawing barbarians. Moments later he dialed that back, saying he would reduce ISIL to a “manageable problem“.
Just to keep things interesting Joe Biden vowed to chase them to the gates of hell.
Daniel Henninger of the WSJ (you should get a one-time pass) thinks Obama believes America’s real enemies are the unmanageable, “ideologically rigid, anti-science” congressional Republicans.
