Tag: air strikes

Russia Attacks Syrian Rebels. Putin Pie-faces Obama. This is “Smart Power”?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

th (33)Yesterday, was a seminal moment in World History. And, a sad and embarrassing moment for the United States of America.

The President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, was told to “‘step aside”, getting sand kicked into his face, like the 98-lb. weakling in those old Charles Atlas Ads, which used to be on the back of comic books, back in the day, during a time when our enemies knew better than to mess with us.

Yahoo News reports that

Russia’s dramatic entry Wednesday into the Syrian war put the United States on the back foot once again and left Washington struggling to regain the military and diplomatic initiative.

As US Secretary of State John Kerry was in New York trying to coordinate with his Kremlin opposite number Sergei Lavrov, a Russian officer contacted the US embassy in Baghdad.

His message was simple: Russian jets are about to launch air strikes in Syria, please stay out of their way.

Kerry quickly protested to Lavrov that this was not in the spirit of Moscow’s promise to agree a “de-confliction” mechanism to ensure Russian flights do not interfere with US-led operations.

But the strikes were already underway, potentially altering the balance of power in Syria back in favor of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and Washington was looking at a fait accompli.

Lavrov’s next move was to promise to bring a motion before the UN Security Council to coordinate “all forces standing up against Islamic State and other terrorist structures.”

This would be a plain victory for Assad, who invited the Russians to join his battle to cling on to power, and a defeat for the United States, which has demanded he step down.

The attacks came despite President Barack Obama sitting down with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Monday at the United Nations for 90 minutes of what both camps called “business-like” talks.

One week ago, Kerry — despite being in frequent contact with Lavrov — told reporters that Russia’s deployment of war planes was consistent with their only defending their own base.

And just hours before the strikes began he appeared on CNN to say that Russia’s involvement could be an “opportunity” to persuade them to apply pressure on Assad to moderate his behavior.

After the strikes Kerry addressed the UN Security Council, but even here his message was mixed.

He said the United States would welcome the Russian action if it reflected a “genuine commitment” towards destroying the IS group and not the moderate opposition rebels threatening Assad.

Even as he spoke, a US defense official in Washington briefed journalists that: “We have not seen any strikes against ISIL, what we have seen is strikes against Syrian opposition.”

Defense Secretary Ash Carter was cautious, saying: “It does appear they were in areas where there were probably not ISIL forces.”

Rush Limbaugh made the following succinct observation on his radio program, yesterday…

They’re attacking targets where our allies are operating, not ISIL.  So if Russia’s recent actions, we’re prepared to welcome them.  Our people are clueless here, sadly, is what it seems like and don’t know how to react to this. So the best they can do is to go out and act like Russia is following through on what it said it was gonna do.  This whole statement from Kerry sounds like it’s predicated on his belief that they’re hitting ISIS.  First half of this statement, he thinks they’re hitting ISIS. 

He knows they’re not.  He’s trying to tell anybody listening, “Hey, they’re hitting ISIS. We agreed to it and we’re all-in for ’em, but if they veer from this then we’re gonna have a sit-down with ’em.”  That isn’t gonna happen. The only reason Putin’s doing any of this is because he’s confident as hell we’re not gonna do anything about it.  What is this deconflict anyway?  And to find a way to deconflict our operations and thereby multiply the military?  We are so, so screwed.

In 1974, at the very first Conservative Political Action Conference, the future President of the United States said the following:

Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere, as has been pointed out in that best-selling record by a Canadian journalist. We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men that set foot on the moon, or who are now circling the earth above us in the Skylab. A sick society bereft of morality and courage did not produce the men who went through those years of torture and captivity in Vietnam. Where did we find such men? They are typical of this land as the Founding Fathers were typical. We found them in our streets, in the offices, the shops and the working places of our country and on the farms.

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, “The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.

We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth.

And when Reagan became president, he did everything within his power to uphold these lofty words.

I suppose that is why I hold Barack Hussein Obama in such disdain. As a young man just starting my new life in the business world, I was able to watch the economy start to turn around under the greatest president in our lifetime. There was a confidence in our strength as an American people that I had never seen before.

You could see it in people’s faces as you walked past them on the street… or at the gas station, as we all watched the price of a gallon of gas finally go down after the pain at the pump that we experienced during the Carter Presidency.

People who had been out of work and suffering along with their families were beginning to be hired again. And, young Americans who had no confidence in the previous commander in chief, were once again going to military recruiters asking to sign up to serve our country.

Yes, indeed. Once again, it was “Morning in America”.

However, the popularity of our president was not just limited to the boundaries of our nation. Reagan was admired the world over. The things that he accomplished, along with his friends, Prime Minister of Britain Margaret Thatcher, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and Pope John Paul II, have caused the decade of the 1980s to be recorded as a seminal moment in world history.

I remember watching President Reagan speak at the Berlin Wall. When he said, “Mr Gorbachev tear down this wall!”, I was never prouder to be an American and of an American president, than at that moment.

The Liberal Democrats lost their collective minds.

For you see, Liberal Democrats, just as they do now, hate it when Marxism gives way to Freedom.

Nothing bothers them more than when a strong American President is at the forefront of a conquering moment, when a strong foreign policy based on the reality that negotiating from a position of strength is always more effective than negotiating from a position of weakness.

Fast forward to the present, where an ineffective President Barack Hussein Obama is looking like a spineless fool to a world, who used to look to America as a bastion of strength and freedom, not weakness and political expediencies.

President Barack Hussein Obama has placed us in untenable position with his weak and vacillating “Smart Power” Foreign Policy.

Those who used to cringe in their desert tents, while calling us the Great Satan, now laugh in our faces as they walk across our southern borders with the rest of the illegal immigrants.

That is, if Obama simply does not invite them to the White House, give them a great big ol’ hug, and meet with them, as he has the Muslim Brotherhood.

…Or, give them Nuclear Capability, as he has the Radical Islamic Rogue Nation of Iran.

And now, the Russian Bear, Vladimir Putin, just swatted the President of the United States of America aside, as one would a fly at a picnic, daring Petulant President Pantywaist to do something about it.

I agree with Rush Limbaugh.

We are so, so screwed.

Has the trumpet sounded, yet?

Until He Comes (which could be anytime, now)

KJ

Obama Bombs North Vietnam…Err…Iraq

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

ObamaIraq2Remember back in 2011, when the President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) announced that he was following the timetable laid out by President George W. Bush and His Administration years ago, and was withdrawing American Troops from the country of Iraq?

Courtesy of whitehouse.gov 10/21/2011:

…This December will be a time to reflect on all that we’ve been though in this war.  I’ll join the American people in paying tribute to the more than 1 million Americans who have served in Iraq.  We’ll honor our many wounded warriors and the nearly 4,500 American patriots — and their Iraqi and coalition partners — who gave their lives to this effort.

And finally, I would note that the end of war in Iraq reflects a larger transition.  The tide of war is receding.  The drawdown in Iraq allowed us to refocus our fight against al Qaeda and achieve major victories against its leadership — including Osama bin Laden.  Now, even as we remove our last troops from Iraq, we’re beginning to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, where we’ve begun a transition to Afghan security and leadership.  When I took office, roughly 180,000 troops were deployed in both these wars.  And by the end of this year that number will be cut in half, and make no mistake:  It will continue to go down. 

Meanwhile, yesterday marked the definitive end of the Qaddafi regime in Libya.  And there, too, our military played a critical role in shaping a situation on the ground in which the Libyan people can build their own future.  Today, NATO is working to bring this successful mission to a close.

So to sum up, the United States is moving forward from a position of strength.  The long war in Iraq will come to an end by the end of this year.  The transition in Afghanistan is moving forward, and our troops are finally coming home.  As they do, fewer deployments and more time training will help keep our military the very best in the world.  And as we welcome home our newest veterans, we’ll never stop working to give them and their families the care, the benefits and the opportunities that they have earned. 

This includes enlisting our veterans in the greatest challenge that we now face as a nation — creating opportunity and jobs in this country.  Because after a decade of war, the nation that we need to build — and the nation that we will build — is our own; an America that sees its economic strength restored just as we’ve restored our leadership around the globe.

That was then. This is now.

Early on Thursday evening, The New York Times reported that

Airstrikes on towns in northern Iraq seized by Islamist militants began late Thursday in what Kurdish and Iraqi officials called the first stage of an American-led intervention to blunt the militants’ advance and provide emergency aid to tens of thousands of refugees.

Kurdish and Iraqi officials attributed the bombing campaign to American forces. But the Pentagon firmly denied that American forces had begun a bombing campaign. Pentagon officials said it was possible that allies of the United States, either the Iraqi or Turkish militaries, had conducted the bombing.

A Turkish official said the country’s air force had not conducted any operations. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Turkey had been helping the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq with humanitarian supplies. “There is no such thing,” he said, referring to airstrikes.

Early Friday in Ankara, the Turkish capital, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with the country’s top national security officials to discuss the situation.

An announcement on Kurdish television of what was described as an American intervention prompted street celebrations and horn-honking by residents of towns under siege by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Anwar Haji Osman, deputy minister of the pesh merga, the Kurdish military force, said in the televised statement that his forces had been in contact with the Americans and that the bombings had been carried out by fighter jets.

Kurdish officials said the bombings had initially targeted ISIS fighters who had seized two towns, Gwer and Mahmour, near the main Kurdish city of Erbil. A top Iraqi official in Baghdad close to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said that the Americans had consulted with the Iraqi government Thursday night about starting the campaign, the government had agreed and the bombing had begun.

Administration aides said on Thursday afternoon that Mr. Obama was considering airstrikes or airdrops of food and medicine to address a humanitarian crisis among as many as 40,000 members of religious minorities in Iraq, who have been dying of heat and thirst on a mountaintop where they took shelter after death threats from ISIS fighters.

In meetings with his national security team at the White House on Thursday morning, Mr. Obama weighed a series of options, ranging from dropping humanitarian supplies on Mount Sinjar to mounting military strikes on the fighters from ISIS who are now at the base of the mountain, a senior administration official said.

“There could be a humanitarian catastrophe there,” a second administration official said, adding that a decision from Mr. Obama was expected “imminently — this could be a fast-moving train.”

The Washington Free Beacon reported later last night that

President Obama announced he had ordered targeted airstrikes against the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) Thursday night, should they continue to advance toward the Iraqi city of Erbil.

“I said in June as the terrorist group ISIL began an advance across Iraq that the United States would be prepared to take targeted military action in Iraq if and when we determined that the situation required it,” Obama said. “In recent days, these terrorists have continued to move across Iraq and have neared the city of Erbil, where American diplomats serve at our consulate and American military personnel advise Iraqi forces. To stop the advance on Erbil, I have directed our military to take targeted strikes against ISIL terrorist convoys should they move toward the city. We intend to stay vigilant and take action if these terrorist forces threaten our personnel or facilities anywhere in Iraq, including our consulate and embassy in Baghdad.”

Obama said he would not be “dragged into fighting another war in Iraq,” saying combat troops would not return to the country since no American military solution existed for Iraq’s larger problems. He has been sharply criticized for the deteriorating situation and essential partitioning of Iraq since pulling troops out. The city of Fallujah, site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Iraq War for American troops, fell in January, and since then the entire nation has fallen into chaos as ISIL continues to seize key cities and facilities.

Obama also said Thursday he had ordered humanitarian assistance to the minority Iraqis stranded and dying of thirst on Mount Sinjar, who are facing threat of extermination by ISIL if they try to leave.

So, in 2014, with the American Embassy in Libya abandoned, due to the threat of occupation by Radical Muslims and now, with Obama ordering air strikes over Iraq, I say to myself, “Self, who could have predicted such an unrest and turmoil”?

“Self raises hand.”

Back on June 20, 2014, in a post titled “Will Iraq Be Obama’s Vietnam?”, I wrote the following summary…

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Obama got us out alright, blindly following a proposed schedule which President Bush had created years before, not taking into account the actual situation “on the ground”, “in country”.

As we found out in Vietnam, wars are best prosecuted in the Theater of War by our Military Leaders, NOT IN WASHINGTON, D.C. BY CLUELESS POLITICIANS.

Liberals like the President, trumpet their horns as “the smartest people in the room” over and over again, only to find out, the hard way, that they overestimated their own intelligence.

Remember “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?”

If this escalates into another Vietnam, we will pay for his vanity with American lives…and that cost will be way too high.

“The best laid plans of mice and men oft-times go awry.”

Especially premature evacuations.

Now, six weeks later, we’re bombing Iraq.

I hate it when I’m right.

Until He Comes,

KJ