As catchy as the subject is serious:
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The war on our southern border continues to escalate:
The Mexican military seized improvised explosive devices just miles from the Valley. The IEDs (or roadside bombs) are the same weapons terrorists use in the Middle East.
The homemade explosives can be sophisticated or crude. They’re often deadly. They’ve killed troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
…On March 30, more than 50 cartel members attacked the Mexican military in Matamoros and Reynosa. Eighteen people died.
Soldiers seized 50 rifles, 60 hand grenades, and eight IEDs.
A reminder: Mexico’s Coming Implosion
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This is absurd even for the Obama regime:
President Barack Obama’s advisers will remove religious terms such as “Islamic extremism” from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.
The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.”
…The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.
It’s one thing to disagree about the severity of the threat posed by radical Islamic Jihad or about the appropriate policy response. It’s another thing entirely to allow one’s silly PC ideology to overwhelm reality. You cannot effectively combat that which you refuse to admit exists. And radical Islamic Jihad most certainly exists.
Eagerly awaiting the chance to talk to Obama about health care
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Barack Obama will today roll out new rules describing official U.S. policy on the use of nuclear weapons.
Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.
…It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.
Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.
I haven’t entirely made up my mind on these changes, yet. On the one hand, I think it makes sense to provide an incentive for nations not to pursue nuclear weapons. I’m also open to the idea that our arsenal of conventional weapons can provide a sufficient deterrent in many cases. We do have very impressive weapons, after all. However, if we’re going to be relying more heavily on such weapons, we probably ought to be looking to spend more on them, rather than less.
Other parts of the President’s apparent agenda on nuclear weapons concerns me. His continued stated desire to aim for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons is simply naive. You can never eliminate the knowledge of how to create nuclear weapons, and abandoning our own stock entirely would only encourage more nations to try and establish themselves as world’s dominant military power by building their own. The world, and America, is safer for our having at least some nuclear arms.
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Some actor named Matthew Modine said something dumb. I know, stop the press, right? But it’s worth addressing.
“Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama Bin Ladin, and say, ‘listen man,what is it that you’re so angry at me about that you’re willing to have people strap bombs to themselves or get inside get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings.’ That would be the miracle if we can get, sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us.”
Osama bin Laden has plenty of ways to hear us. The problem is he doesn’t like what he hears. Moreover, he’s already explained in significant detail why he’s mad at us.
Neville Chamberlain not only talked to his enemy, he got him to sign a piece of paper!
In 1996 bin Laden issued a fatwa called “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places.” The land to which he refers, of the two holy places, is Saudi Arabia.
In the fatwa he relays a long list of grievances, many of them imagined, to justify his war on the United States. “It should not be hidden from you,” he wrote, “that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies.”
Much of his complaints also focus on Saudi Arabia, where he essentially blames the US for any efforts toward modernity and reform made by the ruling family. He demands the strict application of Shari’ah law. Are you listening, Mr. Modine?
Sometimes it is worthwhile to talk with one’s enemies. When their grievances are based in reality, and their leadership rational, non-violent solutions to disputes may be possible. But when the heart of the issue is an inflexible subservience to doctrinaire intolerance and oppression, talking is rather futile. Whatever one thinks is the appropriate policy response, Osama bin Laden’s demands for the death of America are not a good starting point for compromise.
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One of the things I was expecting to see at CPAC this year was an interesting debate on foreign policy and defense issues, and I have not been disappointed. Day 2 saw this issue come up several times.
First, there was a panel debate which asked “does security trump freedom?” I don’t particularly care for the question as framed, because it sets freedom and security as opposed, as if one must go down when the other goes up. While that’s often true, I don’t think it always is.
But the debate itself was quite informative, and both sides made decent points. On the one side was Jim Gilmore and Bob Barr, and on the other was Rep. Lungren and Viet Dinh of Georgetown University Law Center.
On the issue of trying terrorist, Gilmore argued that civilian courts are the proper place because it send this message that terrorists are common criminals, and are not waging a justified war. It was a fair point, but I think it’s overwhelmed by the issues of security, in particular the need to protect intelligence sources. Military tribunals are the best way to balance the need to ensure that detentions are not abused without compromising matters of intelligence.
Overall, the audience was as split as the panel, cheering and jeering both sides. The fact that Ron Paul was slated to speak later probably has some impact on that.
The left-wing blogosphere is trumping a very small part of the debate, where Bob Barr got some boos for asserting that waterboarding is torture. I don’t think that’s a particularly important question. Decide it one way or another and move on. It’s the broad policy questions of foreign policy that conservatives will eventually need to settle.
Ron Paul made his case on just that question later in the evening. He said repeatedly that there’s nothing unconservative about calling for foreign policy restraint, avoiding international entanglements and concentrating instead on a strong defense. He is absolutely right that those are valid positions within the conservative movement, and have a strong historical tradition. He was also right to assert that George W. Bush ran and won on a campaign rejecting Clinton-era nation building.
But restraint need not devolve into isolationism, which could ultimately make America more susceptible to certain threats. There is a time and a place for proactive defense. Certainly we’ve learned lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan that ought to caution us against any further efforts to spread democracy through military means. Regardless of one’s opinion of the necessity of those wars, we now know how much it costs to engage in long-term nation and political building of that kind, and the difficulty in achieving success. If it must be done, so be it, but we have to make sure that it is truly necessary before we make such decisions.
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Although he doesn’t explicitly say to end it, Cheney has essentially thrown his support behind repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a move which I recently endorsed.
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The reason Barack Obama made a call to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” in his State of the Union speech is obviously political. He is in a tough way and needs a win to bring home to his base. That said, he has been consistent on this position from the beginning, and it’s not just his base that should be pleased. Conservatives should support repealing the policy as well, for the simple reason that it’s the right thing to do.
The enforcement of DADT has resulted in the loss of key personnel, such as translators, at a time when we cannot afford such. Why must we fight with one gay hand behind our back?
For years, concerns over unit cohesion have been sufficient to prevent revisiting the 90’s era rule. But are these concerns justified? Twenty-five countries allow gays to serve openly in the military, including the highly effective Israeli Defense Force. The Israeli decision in 1993 to allow gays to serve openly, if they choose, had no negative impact on their effectiveness.
It’s time for the U.S. to stop limiting our resources by denying qualified soldiers the chance to serve on the basis of their preferences in the bed room.
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More (previous here) on why it’s so difficult to be the world’s savior:
Leave a commentFidel Castro is questioning why the U.S. and other countries sent soldiers to quake-ravaged Haiti, saying military presence hindered international cooperation.
The former Cuban president writes that “without anyone knowing how or why,” Washington dispatched troops “to occupy Haitian territory,” and other nations followed suit.
In an opinion column Sunday in state-controlled media, Castro said neither the U.N nor the U.S. “has offered an explanation to the people of the world.”
Castro noted that several governments complained that the troops kept them from landing aid flights and called on the U.N. to investigate.
Bolivian President Evo Morales, a Castro ally, is seeking a U.N. condemnation of what he called the U.S. occupation of Haiti.
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While the difficulties continue to mount in Haiti, tough policy choices will have to be made. Do we send in more troops to create order? No matter what we do, it’s clear some will never be pleased:
The United States is using the humanitarian crisis in Haiti as an excuse to occupy the earthquake-hit island nation, two of Washington’s most vocal leftist critics in Latin America implied at the weekend.
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“What is happening in Haiti seriously concerns me as U.S. troops have already taken control of the airport,” Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said late Friday.
Did Obama’s betrayal of democracy in Honduras buy us nothing with these dictators? Sheesh.
Even our real allies are complaining about a supposed “occupation.” This just goes to show that in the international arena, no American good deed goes unpunished.
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science and work in public policy, but please don't hold that against me.
