At long last, a map of US forces in the region on the night of the Benghazi attack, from the In From the Cold blog. Their post includes a link to a Townhall.com article from April 2013, that’s worth a read too.
Category Archives: Military
Another Benghazi Report
The House Armed Services Committee released an interim report today (full report here). Bridget Johnson at PJ Media posted an outline of the highlights from this report (her article here). Did you know the Obama administration saw fit to upgrade embassy security in Yemen prior to 9/11 in 2012, but didn’t bother with upgrading security in Libya? Leon Panetta visited Libya with General Ham in December 2011 and noted:
Although General Ham cautioned that he was not speaking for Secretary Panetta, he recounted to the committee that it was his impression that the secretary shared the general’s sense that a weakening Libyan government was a “dangerous development” which “created opportunities for Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist organizations to, in some cases, reinsert themselves or operatives into Libya.”
Each additional report on Benghazi raises more questions, not only on the inept Obama administration, but as to what the true state of our military readiness is to respond quickly in a crisis.
Filed under Foreign Policy, Military, Politics
Our Gumby really does have feet of clay…..
The time warp continues as the mainstream media emerges from self-imposed hibernation from reality, yawns a few times, shakes the dust devils from their eyes, meandering about in dismay and confusion. Could it possibly be true that their revered leader, The One, coldly and calculatingly used American troops for cannon (or IED and small arms) fodder for gross personal political purposes and not for a mission in furtherance of American national interests? Oh, I’m shocked, I tell you, this just can’t be…. “President Obama didn’t believe in the mission he sent young American soldiers to die fighting?” they murmur. Now, the reporters stumble about realizing, that not only did he lie about his “surge” in Afghanistan and happy talk about “winning the hearts and minds” of a populace ensconced in corruption, which is inherent in a narco-state run by assorted theocratic thugs and opportunistic criminals, but he lied about Al Qaeda being on the run too.
Of course, I posted, “Afghanistan already a lost cause?” in December 2012, but a lady should never brag and of course, a real military expert, unlike my amateur blogging, had penned an excellent piece, which I cited in my post, “The Endless and Unwinnable War” , by Carlo D’Este. To the larger question on this president’s character, well, I am very good on judging character. Yes, I am. I listen closely to what people say, I watch their mannerisms and non-verbal body language too and sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but President Obama is a Gumby of a man – he’s a malleable glob of clay, willing to remold his words for political expediency, as needed. He lacks character – he lies a lot and why Americans choose to be duped by political partisans and invest so much emotional energy into propping up these types of political charlatans, eludes me. Watch not only what people say, but look at what they do too – ahem, I’ve been yammering to the wall that President Obama announced his surge and simultaneously announced his withdrawal date since General McChrystal fell under the media spotlight in 2010. That oil and water combo never mixed – ie, it was obvious he was lying. Yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus, but rest assured Osama bin Laden’s spirit still lives on. Oh, no, another horrific moment for the Obamaite faithful, “Al Qaeda controls more territory than ever in the Middle East”, brought to you courtesy of Peter Bergen, the reporter who came to prominence snagging the first TV interview with an elusive bin Laden in 1997.
I’ll end with a quote from a May 2013 blog post of mine, “Al Qaeda is not dead, in fact, it has been breathed new life by the Arab Spring revolutions and these Muslim Brotherhood dominated countries will aid, fund, arm and utilize these al Qaeda groups to do their dirty work.” (full post here) Time to go do some real work – laundry, dusting and vacuuming await and I’m thinking about putting a pot of ham and great northern beans on to simmer away this afternoon. Now, the important question, should I bake cornbread or biscuits to go with the ham and beans?
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Islam, Military, Politics
Sans context: America’s foreign policy adrift
The political instability in Iraq should come as no surprise to anyone. To add my two cents worth to the big picture chaos in the Mid-East, here are a few quick thoughts, which I’ll elaborate on later – after I read through a pile of information in my in-box, courtesy of Justin. All the history plays into the centuries old Shia/Sunni power plays, it seems to me. Beyond wanting to annihilate the infidels and use our technology to buff up their killing potentials, Muslims are like the Las Vegas commercial – “What happens in Vegas- stays in Vegas.” We are peripheral to their internal divide in Islam.
Rest assured, whichever moves would be in our strategic interests, this administration will move posthaste 180 degrees in the other direction. While Obama isn’t at “fault” per se and even the Republicans get it wrong in the ME too, the real things we should have done decades ago to distance ourselves from being beholden to any of these Muslim/ME strongmen is to develop American energy independence. On a smaller scale, I’m also alarmed at how our military now utilizes non-US acquisition sources for weaponry and such – really bad idea there, imo. All the sensible things, to distance ourselves from some of these complex wheeling and dealing antics in the ME, we haven’t done and the only option we ever talk about is the military option. The American Left always lacks strategic vision and their entire operational modus operandi is reactionary, consistently lacking any deep thought process or dedicated historical research and analysis – they only seek “facts” which will bolster their political viewpoint.
The Republican strategic camp vacillates between the brain trust (term used very loosely here) of the McCain/Graham camp and the more serious-minded types like John Bolton. The McCain/Graham camp can be counted on for grandiose reactionary military gambits, which play fast and loose with historical reality and they simplistically wrap up all their high-flown rhetoric in the American flag. John Bolton, a very brilliant strategist, can be counted on for clear-sighted analysis, replete with solid historical scholarship to back his position and the only fault I can take from his policy advice, is that often the things he suggests require a stronger political backbone than exists in either political party. We don’t have the political will to tough out many of the actions required to actually be successful, especially in this hotbed of sensationalized journalism in the modern era. We capitulate to third-world propaganda fueled by the ubiquitous photos, sans context, hitting the internet and airwaves. Here’s a very good Bolton piece on the Kerry ME peace initiative.
What we should start doing before we plan any foreign policy is devote more time to looking at maps, thinking about the big picture and asking ourselves what issues about the various regions matter to our own interests. Most of our foreign policy debates become entangled with and controlled by people who have vested interests in particular regions of the world and it behooves us to always step back and refocus on the big picture, which for America should be our own national interests. Only after we’ve studied maps a good bit and done some background historical research should we begin formulating policy. Then we should always put the horse before the cart, which sad to say isn’t our usual reactionary response mode. We need to formulate the big picture foreign policy goals first and then we would be prepared for the little picture crises that keep flaring up. Yawn now, it’s okay, this lecture is over. More to come though, after I read through a lot more information. Yes, Justin, covers everything from modern jihadis all the way back to Tamerlane, but I sure appreciate all the links he sends my way!
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, History, Islam, Military
“the best opportunity to succeed” (code for lower standards)
Here are two small news bits that demonstrate the big picture/little picture way strident feminists view issues and tool their propaganda accordingly. For these women, men are the problem, but hey, they’ve won every battle thus far and in the halls of power in America, men behave like cowed eunuchs, ever-cautious to fetch and carry the feminist agenda load. Hanna Rosin penned a short opinion piece, “Men Are Obsolete”, in Time, which offers a few bullet-point statements to make the big picture case and it behooves men to avoid beating their chests, screaming about how life has gotten so unfair for them or huddling in safe tree houses, where they can defiantly post a sign, “NO GIRLS ALLOWED”. Ms Rosin’s sentiments rise far above snarky bravado. In point of fact, from Obamacare’s forcing equality in requiring men to pay for maternity coverage, in the name of “fairness”, to President Obama opening combat positions to women, the ardent feminists have won and they’re declaring victory.
In the little picture world, where the political plays out in the real world, the feminist vision collapses and puts a lie to Ms Rosin and the Sisterhood’s cocksure(less) world view: “Marines delay female fitness plan after half fail” (USA Today). Having been a guinea pig in the feminization of the American military plan for a very short time decades ago, I’ll share with you how this goes. The political factions within the Pentagon will begin tinkering with new ways to make it appear that women can do these heavy-lifting, grueling combat tasks by eliminating as many of the tasks from the physical standards as necessary to get women into these positions. The physical standards for men will lower and all sorts of concessions will be made to soften the ride for women to succeed in these jobs. They’ll desperately seek a few über herculean gruntettes to become the face of the new Amazon band of sisters for the full court press, to “prove” women are just as strong as men. Here’s the Marine Corps capitulation to political correctness:
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos wants training officials to “continue to gather data and ensure that female Marines are provided with the best opportunity to succeed,” Capt. Maureen Krebs, a Marine spokeswoman, said Thursday.
You can be sure the data gathered will be sufficiently adjusted to insure the previous upper-body strength standards weren’t really necessary and next will be lowering the weight loads for combat troops to carry on their backs and oh, of course, those grueling 12 mile foot marches carrying 70 lbs of gear in three hours will be deemed superfluous too. No need to be strong enough to scale walls or carry your own gear, the argument will go, after all, this is the modern military and we travel by vehicles now. Yep, expect to hear a full-throated diversionary argument for mechanized infantry to emerge……..
Filed under Culture Wars, Military, Politics
Worth a rerun
In April 2013 an Hungarian dance group, Attraction Shadow Theatre Dancers, performed on Britain’s Got Talent 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Fv98jttYA
This performance left such an impression that I’ve watched this video several more times throughout the year. Who says a dance routine can’t speak to big geopolitical issues and they did it without saying a word….
Filed under Food for Thought, Foreign Policy, Military, Politics
Control of the Home Roost
This post will surely anger, irritate, and cause many parents to call me ignorant of their child’s “problems”, but since this is my blog and my opinions – feel free to disagree and find a nice cozy “support group” for other parents like you – the millions of parents who drug their young children as a first course for behavioral problems, rather than exhaust changing your parenting techniques. I’ve been reading about and talking to parents for over 26 years about this subject and my mind is made up on the matter. Americans love creating new “medical maladies” for bad behavior, from early childhood all through adulthood it’s easier to create serious-sounding ailments and dole out drugs to treat the “symptoms”, when the truth lies that in most cases the ailment is nothing more than a bad behavioral “choice”. We’ve turned alcoholism and drug abuse into diseases and worked our way back to creating psychiatric conditions in need of medical intervention as soon as children start interacting with their world. Pharmaceutical companies responded with a boon of pills to pop and we’ve got an entire society in need of a cold turkey detox from this vicious, free fall collapse of morality and dependence on “experts” rather than taking responsibility for our behavior and the behavior of our children. G. Murphy Donovan tackles the larger picture of our cultural lunacy in a piece at The American Thinker yesterday, “The Psychobabble Bubble“.
Long ago (26 years ago), I took my second son to an Army medical facility for a well-baby check-up. He was 2 years old. Now, this son was child number three and I was used to caring for my own babies and since I grew-up out in the country within a large family and even larger extended family, I had spent my life around lots of children. I worked as a babysitter from the time I was 13 years old, I got stuck with the youngest preschoolers during vacation Bible school at church in summertime as a teenager. Small children, with their varied behavioral challenges were nothing new to me. I knew my son was perfectly normal. Mind you this was a “well-baby” visit, so there I sat for a very long time in the waiting room and then longer still in the actual examination room awaiting the pediatrician. My son was tired of sitting on my lap so long and once we were in the examination room, I let him get down off my lap and move around. He loved to run and explore everything, but he still conformed to living by my rules and yes, I had set mealtimes, set nap time and once I weaned my kids off of the bottle they learned the rule of sitting at the table for snack time and drinks. I didn’t allow my kids to wander around the house with food and drinks and this rule held into their teens. I constantly told them, “We eat at the table!” – it wasn’t optional. I taught them how to set the table and basic table manners by consistent reinforcement – that’s how you train dogs and that’s how you train people too.
So, there we were sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting and finally the doctor entered the room, so I scooped my son back onto my lap and he squirmed and wanted to get down and run some more. That minute or so of him squirming led to the pediatrician telling me my son was “hyperactive” and should be medicated for this – to avoid future problems. My first reaction was “Oh no, there’s something wrong with him”, which was swiftly followed by the rebellious thought, “I know my son and this man has been around my son a couple of minutes, what the hell does he know about him.” Mind you my son wasn’t screaming, he was just squirming a lot and when the doctor told me to set him down, my son took off running around exploring the office. He insisted that my son is hyperactive, but I sat there watching my son and his behavior seemed like normal two-year old behavior. So, I politely told this “expert” that we like our son just the way he is and that we were here for a well-baby check-up. I refused medication.
My son always busily explored the world around him and once he learned to read, he explored books as actively as the world. He loves to take things apart and try to put them back together, after he figured out how they work. When we first got a PC, he quickly became the family tech support expert. Now, this son is the only one of my kids who was shy like me and he kind of hangs back and listens when in a crowd. He doesn’t like competing with other people, because he’s so busy with his own personal quests. He sets a lot of personal goals – this supposedly hyperactive child spent years reading through 800+ page computer manuals, exhaustively learning everything he could about computers – hardware stuff and software stuff. He loves math and signed out calculus books during one summer vacation as a young teen (long before he studied calculus in school), because he said, “Calculus is fun!”
We urged him to go to college right out of high school, but he didn’t want to do that, despite having excellent grades. He enlisted in the Air Force and worked on electronic systems on fighter planes. He deployed to Iraq once and did well in the Air Force, with his commanders urging him to consider attending the Air Force Academy, but he had other plans. He finished his four-year stint, came home and went to college. He graduated summa cum laude with a degree in physics and although he wanted to go to grad school immediately, he changed that plan upon marrying a girl here. She didn’t want to move away from her family, so he decided to find a job here. He landed a good job doing software design for a company that does a lot of contract work for the Air Force and then moved on to a better job working for an aeronautical corporation as a software engineer – despite taking not a single computer class in college – he is self-taught. He still plans to go to grad school and pursue theoretical physics research, which he got hooked on in college, working for the head of the physics department as a research assistant. He attended several American Physical Society meetings around the country with this professor, who presents his research there too. We’re very proud of him and I often remind him that long ago some doctor wanted us to drug him into submission, but I am so glad I told that doctor we like him just the way he is.
This isn’t meant to sound like I am a great a parent or my kids are so great, because I have another son who has problems. He also is a brilliant, talented young man too, but he hit some roadblocks and hasn’t figured out how to move past them and as a parent, these roadblocks are frustrating and filled with anguish. For this post I want to stick to the ritalin generation topic.
A few days ago, America’s paper of record, The New York Times, ran a front page story,“The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder”, decades late, but at long last a counter-movement to this insidiously destructive epidemic of medical malpractice seems to be gaining some traction. Dr. Keith Connors, an early advocate for drug therapy for childhood ADD now looks back at the statistics and states:
“The numbers make it look like an epidemic. Well, it’s not. It’s preposterous,” Dr. Conners, a psychologist and professor emeritus at Duke University, said in a subsequent interview. “This is a concoction to justify the giving out of medication at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels.”
These statistics which so alarm Connors, quoting from the Times piece, “that the number of children on medication for the disorder had soared to 3.5 million from 600,000 in 1990” and he considers these numbers “a national disaster of dangerous proportions”. When I look back to how my son could have been a part of that statistic, I am always so thankful that my mother, a dedicated registered nurse, refused to buy into so much of the mental health industry’s push toward the Oprahization of medicine, where creating national awareness using flimsy “experts” converted America from a self-reliant culture to a self-absorbed culture where the national pastime centers on investing extraordinary amounts of time into self-awareness and self-empowerment, with the requisite prescriptions of medication to soften the ride, toward finding yourself.
Around the Army, we moved frequently, our kids had to leave friends behind, start over at new schools and make new friends constantly. My husband spent large amounts of time away from home training with the Army. The central focus in my life, being a stay-at-home mother, was making sure my kids had a set routine and adjusted to these changes. Sure, I learned as I moved more often, but my kids adjusted well and of course there were a few instances of small problems here and there, but my kids thrived in school and they made friends quickly. Now, my son mentioned in this post had a small issue when we moved back from Germany after 5 years living there. His teacher (4th grade if my memory serves me) called me one day early in the school year to discuss my son’s reading “problems”. She told me he does not know how to read, which stunned me, because my son was an excellent reader. I asked her how she determined this and she said when she called on him to read out loud he couldn’t read well and stumbled over most of the words. I told her that he is very shy and he doesn’t know any of the kids or her. I assured her that he was an excellent reader, as his school records from his previous school could affirm. I urged her that with some patience he would become comfortable in this new classroom. He did and he was an excellent student there too.
I met many parents around the Army who didn’t spend much time focusing on their kids and the kids got shuffled along, while the parents indulged in their own self-absorbed activities, leaving the kids to run wild. You combine frequent moving, absent parents, and lack of structure in the home and it’s no wonder the military rates for these so-called behavioral maladies are much higher.
Here’s one of those home truths that Army commanders and the support agencies that deal with Army families know, but won’t ever articulate – way too many young Army families have a “welfare mentality”, which the Army perpetuates by sloganeering stuff like, “we take care of our own” or you’re part of the “Army family”. A fortune is spent on providing services for families in the Army and since I dedicated a lot of time to helping in Army family support activities and I lived in Army communities, I feel qualified to say this. Efforts have been made to work toward teaching “self-reliance”, but when you encourage dependency through your messaging and then expect self-reliance when soldiers deploy, you’ve set up your support agencies to be bombarded. If you live in an environment prone to disorder, like moving all the time, creating stability in your home becomes even more crucial to children’s welfare. If you show me a kid with ADD, I’ll show you a home where there is either a lack of structure and routine, a lack of consistent discipline or both. Kids are like dogs – some are easier to train than others, but all except a very minuscule fraction are beyond training.
We’ve got way too many parents who have never learned any self-restraint, self-discipline or how to follow a routine and then you stick kids into this chaotic mix and naturally the more disordered the home routine, the worse the kids behave. Set some rules and a routine and the vast majority of kids thrive and kids with problems benefit the most from a structured routine and consistent discipline. We all thrive if there is order in our lives.
In recent years the “experts” have grown their list from ADD to ADHD and now it’s autism and Asperger’s syndrome too. I walk away when parents start regaling me with this crap, because in most (maybe even all) of these situations, I look at the parents and then I have my answer as to “the real problem”. The problem runs deeper than bad parenting, it runs to men and particularly women buying into other people’s ideas on parental roles and how to view these roles – with the push toward women pursuing careers in lieu of staying home full-time with children. Fathers latched onto the feminist push out the door and way too many play peripheral roles in their children’s lives rather than playing a central leadership role in the home. A home is a place where civilization is nurtured and if we abandon that, our culture suffers. Mary Eberstadt penned an excellent piece at National Review Online today, “Why Ritalin Still Rules”, leaving this prescient observation on the rampant drugging of American children – “In the ashes of the sexual revolution, someone has found a gold mine.”
You want a simple solution – Quit buying into other people’s bullshit! Think for yourself! Quit listening to so many celebrity experts, mental health experts, and commercials selling magic pills. Make your family the central focus of your life. Start by learning to live by a routine and some rules yourself, then expand out to getting some organization in your family’s routine. American culture is in chaos, because American homes are in chaos – it’s way past time for American women to regain control of the home roost.
Filed under Culture Wars, Food for Thought, General Interest, Military, The Media
A must read on America’s nuclear arsenal by Matthew Kroenig
Foreign Policy magazine offers this lengthy article written by associate professor and international relations field chair of Georgetown University’s Department of Government, Matthew Kroenig, on nuclear disarmament and the many myths about nuclear strategic concerns, that certainly offers an analysis that runs counter to the usual nuclear issues commentary. (Foreign Policy article here and Kroenig’s website here)
And now to harken back to a libertybelle blog post on this issue, “Global Zero: Another Nothing-Burger Plan”, from June 18, 2013. At last, I’m not a lone voice in the wilderness, happy day:-)
Filed under Foreign Policy, Military, Politics
Eggs Benedict
Where do we go from here with our incoherent foreign policies? Under this President no single foreign policy position articulating American interests clearly and unambiguously exists, but many hazy, wisps float about, with little focus or strategic sense and as soon as you try to shine the harsh light of reality on them, into thin air they vanish. To change course requires a degree of introspection that probably lies beyond the egocentric political mouthpieces in either of our political parties and it certainly, based on the past 4+ years, presents a challenge well beyond the most overrated politician in American history, whose foreign affairs and strategic thinking abilities fall well below a level required for commanding U.S. Armed Forces and deciding the weighty issues facing our republic in decline.
Here we are, more than a decade into military engagements, in an ever more hostile Muslim world, and yet this President can’t seem to forge together any semblance of a strategically sound path forward. Certainly it’s true that he inherited a misguided, American adventuristic policy from his predecessor, but rather than coming up with some organized, collaborative exit strategy with our Iraqi and Afghan partners, this egomaniac decided to just fold completely on the ground, while simultaneously embarking on an unchecked drone war.
All those reliable wailers on war crimes and American torture during the two GWB terms fell strangely silent, which screams loudly that they were nothing but political ideologues above all else. Where are all the protestors about an out of control executive branch that escalated a drone war into many countries beyond the geographical confines of any traditionally accepted sense of a “battlefield”?
Nightwatch, the excellent intelligence analysis site pointed out some important considerations regarding President Obama’s escalated drone war in the November 7,2013 edition (report here), referring to the selection of the Pakistani-Taliban’s new leader, Mullah Fazlullah:
“Fazlullah’s election signifies rejection of Prime Minister Sharif’s peace overture. It also highlights a degenerative leadership pattern resulting from the US program of leadership decapitation. First, there is always someone waiting for the chance to be leader. Second, the new leaders are less experienced and wise than the men they replace. Third, the new generation of leaders is more extreme and theologically rigid than its predecessors. Finally, the new leaders tend to be unknown to intelligence relative to their predecessors. Decapitation is not a permanent solution to an insurgency or an uprising.”
How the American public ever went along with such an unethical program where the executive branch operates its own hit list and we silently allow even American citizens to be summarily executed based on “secret” files compiled by the executive branch, with no trial or due process, but only the President and his CIA director seeming to decide who lives and who dies and why. That a 16-year-old American kid was executed by a drone strike and the mainstream press yawned and took a pass on seriously investigating and reporting this shows how unreliable and politically motivated our “free press” really is.
Now that we’ve set the precedent for international lawlessness regarding our drone war, that fat chicken has come home to roost for this President and his CIA kill list organizer, John Brennan, as they now uneasily watch as 87 countries possess drone technology. Since President Obama set the international standard of striking with no respect to sovereignty or international norms, and his policy is a huge pile of scrambled policy eggs (Washington Times report here). He can run around flapping his wings, but he’s literally cut off his own head when it comes to moral force and setting a standard for others to follow. You know, it’s only fitting that this President will be the prime casualty of his own drone policy, decapitating his own leadership ability more than any terrorists. Scrambled, over easy, nah more like eggs Benedict, a traitor to our American values.
Filed under Foreign Policy, Military, Politics, The Media
libertybelle diaries 