Category Archives: The War

Of proportionate response and so forth

Posted on September 5, 2013 | 7 comments

Crawford42, a commenter at Instapundit, has a good one I will repeat:

“Lefties have this bizarre idea you can ‘tune’ the level of violence to get the result you want. The result is rhetoric about ‘shots across the bow’ and ‘just muscular enough.’ They also have a child’s faith in how Hollywood depicts violence, with unarmed men (and small women) taking out hordes of heavily armed soldiers, guns shot out of peoples’ hands, etc.

“The result is the ‘redefinition’ [Obongo & pals are seeking re Assad]. They’re trying to find just the RIGHT LEVEL of violence to get the result they want, without actually engaging in anything resembling war fighting.”

And, of course, it won’t work. Too little and they’ll only get a sneer. Too much and they may get more than they bargained for in response. Either way, it’s a fool’s game probably based on the wellknown Lefty aversion to military service, hence military reality.

Although I remember President Nixon (who did serve in WW2) doing the same thing in incrementally bombing North Viet Nam, following LBJ’s lede. That worked so well.

7 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, The War

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Presto-Chango: our 13-year-old president

Posted on September 4, 2013 | 5 comments

Obozo is a lot like a 13-year-old whose first weapon in his arsenal is the lie. The “red line” has come back to haunt him. So guess what? He never said it.

“First of all, I didn’t set a red line,” Barack Obama said [Wednesday] at a press conference in Stockholm. “The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98% of the world’s population said the use of chemical weapons are [sic] abhorrent and passed a treaty forbidding their use, even when countries are engaged in war.”

Except that he did set a red line, specifically, way back on August 20, 2012.

“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”

He didn’t just say it once and let it go. His own spokesfolk were later authorized to underline it:

“‘We go on to reaffirm that the President has set a clear red line as it relates to the United States that the use of chemical weapons . . . is a red line that is not acceptable to us, nor should it be to the international community,’ an unnamed ‘White House official’ said during introductory remarks in an April 25, 2013 conference call with reporters.

“‘Lest there be any question, the official went on to say in response to a question: ‘The people in Syria and the Assad regime should know that the President means what he says when he set that red line. And keep in mind, he is the one who laid down that marker.'”

Until President-Pass-the-Buck decided that his red line not only made him look stupid but committed him to something he really doesn’t want to do. Then—presto chango!—he never said it.

Except when he did. Has he now made his mendacity perfectly clear?

Via Best of The Web Today.

5 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Obsessions, The War

Syria’s poison gas: Gulf of Tonkin redux?

Posted on September 2, 2013 | 16 comments

Lost amid all the babble about Obongo’s brilliance turning to humiliation in the wink of an eye (couldn’t happen to a ruder SOB) is the alleged case for Syrian president Assad’s use of poison gas on civilians.

Come again? We are to believe this lying, prevaricating, sneering Democrat administration really has proof? Why, exactly? Because Lurch wouldn’t lie? Ha, ha. He’s made a career of lying, starting with his testimony to Congress about systematic war crimes in Vietnam.

There is this from the August 25 edition of USA Today:

“YouTube videos posted by Syrian activists of children gasping for air while being rinsed with water by barehanded medical personnel are not consistent with chemical weapons known to be in the Syrian arsenal, said Dan Kaszeta, managing director of U.K.-based security consultancy Strongpoint Security. Kaszeta worked 20 years on chemical biological and nuclear defense in the U.S. government and military.

“Kaszeta said the videos show convulsions that affect some limbs but not all; no skin burns or blisters, which would indicate mustard gas; and no vomiting. He did not have access to any of the victims and his opinions are based solely on the video.

“‘(With) sarin or nerve agents there would be much more widespread symptoms,’ he said. ‘We need physical evidence, blood, urine, tissue, a chest X-ray of one of these guys who died.'”

It wouldn’t be the first time Muslims phonied up a video. They do it all the time in Gaza. But what we really need are politicians we can believe, and that may be beyond hope. Obozo surely knows from his daily briefings that Assad can’t go to the toilet without permission from Tehran. So if he did this, then Iran is complicit and more. So why are we focusing on Syria?

But more to the point is the little matter of the Gulf of Tonkin attacks that LBJ made up (with the help of the Pentagon) to justify his war policy. And he wasn’t trying to divert attention from a lengthy string of political scandals like Obozo.

LBJ was a Democrat, too. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

UPDATE:  I’m not the only one doubting the admin’s tale: “…there are calls from many quarters for independent, scientific evidence to support the U.S. narrative that the Assad regime used sarin gas in an operation that killed 1,429 people, including more than 400 children.” Good.

There seems to be less doubt that one of Assad’s pilots dropped napalm on a schoolyard but it’s been noted that D.C. is less likely to complain about that since the U.S. military also uses napalm. Tell me again, why is poison gas worse?

16 Comments

Posted in Obamalot, Scribbles, The War, Troops, Viet Nam

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Has the illegal bombing started yet?

Posted on August 29, 2013 | 2 comments

If so, it’s proof that so long as there’s a Democrat in the White House, the snooze media couldn’t care less if he’s also a dictator who doesn’t bother seeking advance approval for military adventurism from the UN or Congress.

Unlike W., the president who did seek advance approval and got called BusHitler for it anyway. But he was a Republican.

Not that the bombing or cruise missiling we’ve been told to expect to begin today is likely to have much effect, especially not after Barry leaked his plans in advance, apparently to make sure Iran didn’t hate on him and his other Jihadi pals had time to hunker down.

“There is no credible chance the U.S. can locate or destroy Syria’s entire holding [of chemical weapons] without a massive air campaign and [G-d forbid] some kind of presence on the ground. Even if the Assad regime has not done the obvious, and used the last few months to covertly disperse a large portion of its weapons, cruise missiles simply don’t have that kind of destructive power… the military impact will be marginal at best. Moreover, anyone who has actually seen wounds from conventional artillery — or badly treated body wounds from small arms — realizes that chemical weapons do not cause more horrible wounds.”

“Or as Nancy Pelosi might say, ‘We must bomb Syria to know what is in Syria.’ We are about to find out.”

Me, I’ll be happy if none of our pilots and assorted others, including Israelis, get hurt.

Via Great Satan’s Girlfriend, Joshua Pundit, DiploMad 2.0, and Simply Jews.

UPDATE:  Barry Rubin says Obongo & Co. are bluffing, simple as that.

MORE:  Indeed, five days later, we’re still waiting for Obozo to drop a shoe, let alone a bomb.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, Obamalot, The War, Troops

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Obongo: our terrorist-loving prez

Posted on August 28, 2013 | 10 comments

“Never did I imagine that the Americans would elect a president who would give open support to the Muslim Brotherhood, or that a Secretary of State would take as one of her closest advisers a woman whose family and background are connected closely to the highest levels of the Muslim Brotherhood organization,”  Howard Rotberg, on the Freedom Press blog.

Well, there is the amusing part that the close adviser turned out to be so dumb that she married a flasher. But not all of us voted for the black moron who sucks up to terrorists and we won’t vote for the Lizard Queen, either.

I’d just add that Mr. R.’s remark therein that Slick Willie disarmed American soldiers on their bases in 1993, setting up Fort Hood for a massacre, is pure BS. American soldiers have not, at least since the 1960s, carried arms on their bases except when in training or on guard duty. Nor were officers then allowed to carry personal firearms. I know the IDF does it, but that’s a holdover from 1973 when the invading Syrians caught them temporarily unarmed.

Via Simply Jews.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, Obamalot, Obsessions, The War, Troops

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Barry’s secret $8 billion deal

Posted on August 25, 2013 | 4 comments

The fall of Egpt’s Muslim Brotherhood took with it an $8 billion secret deal with the White House for the Brotherhood to hand over 40 percent of the Sinai to Gaza’s Hamas rulers, according to JoshuaPundit’s reading of a French Canadian report on Arab news media.

“There’s no question either than Morsi and the Brotherhood would sign off on the deal, since they needed the money and since their loyalty is to the Brotherhood and the making of the Caliphate rather than Egypt per se. The deal would also be a step towards integrating Hamasistan with Egypt, something else Morsi and his friends were very interested in. So the deal was a win-win for both sides.”

Was a win-win. Was. It would have expanded Gaza enormously, though the expansion would have been mostly sand and rocks. Now the sand and rocks will remain part of Egypt, courtesy of the IDF whose proviso is that Egyptian military does its best to keep it terrorist-free.

4 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, Obamalot, The War

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Is Barry insane?

Posted on August 22, 2013 | 5 comments

We know he’s a narcissist. But so are a lot of Americans these days. But, despite their destruction of at least 54 churches and monasteries in Egypt, he still backs the Muslim Brotherhood over the Egyptian military. Using the fig leaf about the MB’s dictatorship-in-the-making being democratically-elected and, as he did with Iran’s brief uprising, ignoring the popular will.

“What is the explanation for this absolutely self-destructive, even idiotic, policy on our part? There can be only one — the president of the United States is actually psychologically disturbed. He does not react in a normal manner. I know that’s a vicious and importunate thing to say, but the reaction to Egypt (and to Benghazi, for that matter) is not one of a psychologically healthy human being.”

PJMedia exec Roger L. Simon really, really doesn’t like Obongo. Even more so than me. But I’m coming around to his view.

5 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, Obsessions, The War

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