Category Archives: Afghanistan

Finally a good comparison

I’m frankly sick of the he said, she said arguments about who ran up the deficit, Barry or Bush. I thought it was Barry. Now I know it:

“Once this latest round of stimulus (in the form of expanded unemployment benefits) has gone out the door, we will have spent more trying to stimulate the economy than we spent on the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war — combined. To what end? Ten percent unemployment? A tottering recovery?”

Stimulus, my Aunt Fanny. Come on, November. Time to vote these Demwit bums and their pork wallow out to pasture. Or wherever hack, urban politicians go these days. Chicago, probably.

Via Instapundit.

McChrystal out, Yon back in

Invited, at least. Hope Michael does embed in Afghanistan again. Maybe we can find out what’s really going on out there.

VDH is such a hoot

The famed military historian and one of my favorite authors on our pathetically inept prez:

“His speech today was fine—if one ignores the usual serial invocation of ‘I’, ‘me,’ and ‘my’ that we’ve become accustomed to, as the president tries to radiate authority with first person pronouns rather than common sense reality.”

Heh.

Yon vindicated?

Looks like he has been. This is what I meant by bickering generals.

With this funny observation about the legacy media from Instapundit: “Under a Republican President, it’s listen to the generals. Under a Democratic President, it’s all about civilian control of the military.”

UPDATE: The most amazing thing about the McChrystal affair is how dumb the general was. Really, really dumb, as VDH notes:

“Is it smart to be in Paris within a mile of any creep from Rolling Stone? How dumb is that? Such tag-along groupie folk exist to trash the military, and only get close to officers by being disingenuous in a manner that most teenagers would not fall for — much less a four-star general supposedly adept in insurgency trickery.”

Sgt. Mario Rodriguez Jr., R.I.P.

Events keep dragging me back to my earlier conclusion: we need to get out of Afghanistan. Where the indigenous president is a crook, our generals bicker, and our good troops, like Sgt. R., die young, leaving behind small children. All for gains that are increasingly hard to see. Even Gen. Petraeus is stressed.

UPDATE:  Sgt. R.’s remains arrive home in Smithville.

Soldier-Citizen candidates

“…other than a shared furor at out-of-control spending, government takeovers and corruption, the [more than twenty Iraq and Afghanistan veteran] soldier-citizen candidates are an odd bunch. Some are officers; others are enlisted men. A surprising number were wounded in combat.

“The vast majority are running as Republicans and seem to have little if any money. They were not so much preselected by Republican operatives as pushed forward through grassroots and sometimes Tea Party support.”

Read it all.

What’s up with Yon Michael?

I’m still sending him a donation every month, and I have enjoyed his recent work, mostly photo essays from Afghanistan Good ones. I’m not necessarily concerned that his embed has abruptly ended, or that some milbloggers are coming down on him for his recent subsequent condemnation of Allied and NATO C.O. Gen. McChrystal.

The concomitant whacks of some liberal bloggers aren’t important. Gen. M, after all, is a servant of Obamalot, and Obamalot is hardly inspiring these days.  So I’ll just cross my fingers that Yon’s stunning (and rather petulant)  Facebook remarks are as supportable as the rest of his work has been for many years. And then just wait and see.