You could have heard a pin drop

At a time when our politicians tend to apologize for our country’s prior actions, here’s a refresher on how some of our former patriots handled negative comments about our country. These are good.


JFK’S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60′s when DeGaulle decided to pull out of NATO. DeGaulle said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible.

Rusk responded, “Does that include those who are buried here?”

DeGaulle did not respond.

You could have heard a pin drop.

When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of ‘empire building’ by George Bush.

He answered by saying, “Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American.

During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, “Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?”

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: “Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?”

You could have heard a pin drop.

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries.

Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, “Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?”

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, “Maybe it’s because the Brit’s, Canadians, Aussie’s and Americans arranged it so you wouldn’t have to speak German.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

AND THIS STORY FITS RIGHT IN WITH THE ABOVE…

Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on.

“You have been to France before, monsieur?” the customs officer asked sarcastically.

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had indeed been to France previously.

“Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.”

The American said, “The last time I was here, I didn’t have to show it.”

“Impossible. Americans always have to show their passports on arrival in France !”

The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, ”Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn’t find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

# # #

A tip of the hat to my friend, Fred Witzell, who posted this reminder

that's been around a while.

http://texasfred.net/



Afghanistan is Hell, Time to Leave

Afghans protesting the burning of korans

By Alan Caruba

Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman gained everlasting fame when he said “War is Hell.”

The definition holds true, but one might also add that Afghanistan is Hell. Even after Alexander the Great defeated the Persian forces in six month’s time it took three years, from 330 BC to 327 BC, to get some measure of control over Afghanistan. For the Soviet Union, the war in Afghanistan dragged on for ten years (1979 to 1989) and led to its collapse.

The news is full of the story of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan who went on a killing spree, leaving at least sixteen civilians dead, among whom were women and children, while wounding another five.

The death not noted in the news reports is the death of the American/NATO mission in Afghanistan, one that began with an October 2001 attack ordered by President Bush. Its purpose was to drive out the Taliban and elements of al Qaeda that had reportedly planned the 9/11 attack in outposts established there.

The Taliban are still in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan.

The figures on American and NATO casualties went from twelve in 2001 to 68 just thus far this year. During the “surges” to gain control over various provinces, 2009 resulted in 521 dead, 2010’s toll was 7ll. In all, there have been 2,915 coalition soldiers who have lost their lives there; 1,910 from the U.S., 404 from the United Kingdom, and 150 from our neighbor, Canada.

The effort has included soldiers from nations that include Denmark (47), Poland (35), Spain (34), the Netherlands (25), and France (82) a total of some twenty-eight nations.

It has been a failure.

That failure is seen now in the slaughter of innocents by a lone, American soldier, believed to be a staff sergeant, as yet unnamed. There are many unknowns at this point, but what is known is that trying to fight a war where Afghan soldiers are as likely to kill you as the designated enemy can drive a man to madness.

Trying to fight a war where two soldiers in an Afghan ministry were assassinated because some Korans were burned and others suffer a similar fate is itself madness. Such a place is the very definition of Hell.

America and its NATO allies, just like the Russians, have to leave. Plots against America can be planned anywhere. Afghanistan is the worst place in the world to fight a war. Alexander the Great found that out, the Soviets, and now it is our turn.

I think I know why we are still there. Neither Bush, nor Obama, want to be the President who was defeated by an enemy that isn’t even an army or even a local militia. It is a group of Islamic fanatics for whom time stopped in the seventh century. That is still the calendar in Afghanistan today, so many centuries later.

Not to put too fine a point on it, despite the heroism and sacrifice of our armed forces, but America hasn’t actually won a war since World War II and hasn’t formally declared war since 1941.

There will surely be punishment for the soldier who committed this massacre, but some may look back and conclude this was the day Americans decided finally to leave. We left Vietnam. We have left Iraq—twice now. The Middle East may someday embrace the values of freedom and liberty, but not in our lifetimes, if ever.

Estimates of the total U.S. military expenses in Afghanistan are calculated to exceed $190 billion.

In 2010 alone, U.S. military assistance to Afghanistan was $5.6 billion. Some element of those billions was spent on humanitarian infrastructure, health, community development, education and other worthy, but utterly wasted efforts. Most was stolen by an utterly corrupt “government” led by Hamid Karzai.

Afghanistan has no income producing agriculture, industrial or economic structure. Its only export of any significance is opium with which to produce heroin.

The war in Afghanistan is now the longest American war we have ever fought, longer even than the war in Vietnam. Pay no attention to the “progress” reports by U.S. generals. There has been no progress in Afghanistan. There is only the dark hole of Islamic fanaticism.

It is time to leave Afghanistan. It is time to leave Hell.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Obama Weakens the Military

By Alan Caruba

“Si vis pacem, para bellum.” If you want peace, plan for war. The adage is attributed to the 4th or 5th century Latin author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus’s tract De Re Militari book 3. This fundamental wisdom is being ignored by President Obama, one of two recent Commanders-in-Chief who never spent a day in uniform, let alone under fire.

In a recent American Thinker commentary by Jim Yardley, he said, “It is apparent that the president, in developing his strategy, used the same extensive knowledge, his superior intellect, and worldly wealth of experience that he brought to his strategy for his $800-billion stimulus, his strategy for providing cost-free health care to millions of Americans, and his strategy for using ‘smart diplomacy’ to defuse not spots around the world.”

Perhaps receiving the Nobel Peace Prize barely months into his first year as President has convinced Obama that he is the man to get all our enemies to join hands and sing Kumbaya. Obama accepted the prize that has gone to other seekers of peace like Yassir Arafat, founder of the Palestinian Liberation Organization or co-winners, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore. The IPCC and Gore have led the greatest hoax of the modern era, global warming, and Arafat rejected every effort at peace offered by Israel by going back on his word and using terrorism to achieve his goals.

There is no question that the announced cuts to the U.S. military budget are, in part, the result of the domestic run up of debt and borrowing the followed the financial crisis of 2008; itself the result of bad government policies regarding the wholesale granting of mortgages to people who could not afford homes, then bundling those bad mortgages and selling them as assets to the banks.

While the economy is showing some small signs of regaining its footing, the government is still borrowing forty cents of every dollar it spends and has shown no real intent to reduce spending.

While this is occurring we have a President who has made clear his antipathy of the role of the military. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial noted that “The Pentagon shouldn’t be immune to fiscal scrutiny, yet this Administration has targeted defense from its earliest days and has kept on squeezing. The White House last year settled with Congress on $450 billion in military budget cuts through 2012, on top of the $350 billion in weapons programs killed earlier,” adding “Taken altogether, the budget could shrink by over 30% in the next decade.”

Following a 1993 attempt to destroy the World Trade Center Osama bin Laden, a still largely obscure Islamic fanatic, declared war on the United States in 1996. In 2001, al Qaeda succeeded, killing nearly 3,000. To underestimate the intent of his successors to destroy the nation would be a grave error. To think that his assassination along with the killing of a relative handfull of other al Qaeda leaders has ended the threat is wishful thinking.

To think that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq will not at some point result in the possible breakup of that nation or the withdrawal from Afghanistan will rid us of the threat of Islamic fanaticsim is still more wishful thinking.

Right now and ever since 1979, the threat of Iran is the largest facing the Middle East and the West. Its leaders have never made a secret of its intent to acquire nuclear weapons, to threaten all other Middle Eastern nations, as well as Europe and America is on a par with the threat the rise of Nazism posed in Germany in the 1930s.

After World War Two, America emerged as a superpower and it took on the role of global policeman. No military prescience predicted the attack on South Korea by North Korea, nor was our strategy in Vietnam successful. We had earlier failed to anticipate the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor despite efforts to keep out of the war that had begun in 1939.

The lesson that should have been learned is that overwhelming military strength contributes greatly to avoiding wars.

President Obama is ignoring that. It is not, however, to say that he is taking Iran lightly. In early January, thousands of U.S. troops were deployed to Israel and senior U.S. military sources say they anticipate they will remain through the year. Obstensively, they are there to participate in joint U.S.-Israeli war games. They will be joined by a U.S. aircraft carrier and, as we know, we have a task force in place in the event the Iranians try to close the Strait of Hormuz through which passes one sixth of the world’s oil supplies.

The U.S. could be energy independent in a decade if the Administration and Congress would remove the obstacles to accessing our enormous reserves of coal, oil and natural gas, but that remains unlikely as this is written.

The decision to reduce the size of our military to 490,000 troops from 570,000 could not come at a worse time. Air and naval assets, we’re told, will be maintained. Holding evacuated or captured territory requires “boots on the ground.” The decision of former President Bush to “surge” in Iraq by increasing troop strength turned a potential defeat into a success. A war-weary America and the current Iraqi regime wanted us out and we are out.

Meanwhile Egypt that underwent “the Arab Spring” has fallen into the hands of a militant, anti-American and anti-Israel Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey has joined the Islamic frenzy, the future of Syria remains unknown, so anyone who thinks that military action anywhere, but especially in Iran, is not a real potential is not paying attention.

President Obama’s claim that “the tide of war is receding” is likely to rank with British PM Neville Chamberlains claim of “peace in our time” after a visit with Hitler.

It is wishful thinking or worse. It is the deliberate effort to ignore the dangers in the world. Shifting military personnel and assets to Asia acknowledges China’s rising power, but U.S. military leaders have warned against a war in Asia for decades. It is doubtful the Chinese want one.

What is not in doubt is that this is the wrong time to reduce our military strength and capabilities. We did that after World War One and paid a price for it. President Obama’s policies put us in the same peril.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

2012's State of the World

By Alan Caruba

"Only the Dead have seen the End of War" – Plato

For myself and a lot of other Americans, the killing of Osama bin Laden was the highpoint of 2011. A decade has passed since nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001. He was found in an army town in Pakistan.

Meanwhile the war in Afghanistan grinds on for no explicable reason, but the war in Iraq was declared ended for U.S. troops on December 15. Within twenty-four hours of the last troops departure bombings occurred in Baghdad and the nation began to come apart. The single unifying force in Iraq had been—you guessed it—the U.S. military.

Evil men met their end in 2011, but surely not enough of them. Gone now are Libya’s Colonel Gadhafi, North Korea’s Kim Jung Il. Classic dictators, it is likely that Syria’s Bashar Assad will be overthrown in 2012. The year began when Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the nation he had controlled for four decades. In February Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign.

The “Arab Spring” was declared. It was and is an illusion. In terms of its lack of democracy, the Middle East, the seat of Islam, remains a rebuke to the modern world.

In 1979, the Iranians overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, and replaced him with the even worse dictatorship of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini. His passing put Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in charge and bogus elections have made Mamoud Ahmadinejad president. The balance of power in the Middle East will shift dramatically if Iran achieves nuclear weapons.

As regions go, Africa just barely managed to retain a few democratic nations while others remain in the grip of dictators of varying degrees of evil. The northern tier, known as the Maghreb, had been the spark of revolutions from Tunisia to Libya to Egypt. One sign of hope was the succession of South Sudan in July. In Africa, too, the emnity of Muslims toward its growing Christian population continues to spark unrest. In Nigeria, Muslim terrorists bombed churches on Christmas Day. How great an outrage is that?

Not all killer events in 2011 were wars and revolutions. In March, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck eastern Japan killing nearly 16,000 and leaving nearly 4,000 missing. Four nuclear power plants were shut down after technical failures created widespread zones of radiation.

The European Union which was created in the wake of two wars on that continent remains in turmoil after several member nations posed a threat of financial default due to the socialist mismanagement of their economies. Its fate remains unknown, but it well could deconstruct itself in favor of a return to individual sovereignties.

In October, Israel---reviled by most of the world for having the temerity to exist--- returned 1,077 Palestinian terrorists to Hamas in exchange—are you ready for this—for a single Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been kidnapped and held prisoner since 2006. Though not a sovereign nation, Palestine was admitted as a member by UNESCO, an agency of the United Nations, on October 31. Ever since 1948 when the Israelis defeated an attack by five Arab nations the UN has maintained an agency, UNRWA, whose sole purpose is to service Palestinians.

A former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Mier, said it best. “We shall have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” She could have been speaking of America as well because we are high on the list of Arab hatreds.

As 2011 came to an end, Americans were pleased to see their troops come home from combat in Iraq and would feel the same about Afghanistan. The two wars fought in Iraq have been sobering experiences, reminders of the role of the U.S. as the world’s policeman. 

We fight now with a volunteer military and one whose equipment from aircraft to ships to combat vehicles is growing old or being retired at a rate that raises serious questions about our ability to defend the homeland or wage war abroad.

The enduring truth of any year of recorded history has been that tribes, religions, and nations go to war with one another. It is naïve to believe that another war is not just around the corner, most likely in the Middle East and mostly likely with Iran. Israel has been in a state of war, hot or cold, with all its “neighbors” in the Middle East since its founding in 1948. It is being inexorably forced to the decision to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Leadership is a critical factor when war threatens. The nation is in great need of it, but there are few signs it exists in the White House and among the political class in Congress these days.

I began with a quote from Plato. I will end with one from Marcus Tullious Cicero:

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.”

© Alan Caruba, 2011

US Navy's Lesbian Kiss Makes Waves

By Alan Caruba

For generations of Americans, the most famous kiss between a Navy sailor and a nurse occurred during the celebration of V-J Day in New York’s Times Square on August 14, 1945.

The photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt was published in Life magazine a week later. It said everything you needed to know about the joy with which the nation responded to the end of World War Two and everything about the shared values of the nation.

So, when a photo of a homecoming kiss between Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta kissing her “partner”, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell went public on December 22, it set gay and lesbian hearts atwitter. What the predominantly heterosexual population thought of it was unreported.

According to news reports, “Navy officials said it was the first time a same-sex couple was chosen to have the first kiss. The first-kiss is a Navy tradition for ships returning to port. David Bauer, the commanding officer of the Oak Hill, said the crew’s reaction was positive” and he informed the Associated Press “It’s going to happen and the crew’s going to enjoy it.”

Different times, different values. Perhaps.

But why? The answer is the way the U.S. military has been used by gay and lesbian advocacy groups as a petri dish to force social change. The other location for influencing such change is in our nation’s schools and manifests itself in charges of massive bullying and questionable sex education curriculums, many of which evoke outrage among today’s parents.

When then-candidate Barack Obama promised transformational change in America, it is doubtful that those who voted for him realized that part of that change was his advocacy of gay rights. In June, at a fund-raiser in New York composed of gay, lesbian, and transsexual supporters, Obama touted his efforts to advance gay rights and promised further progress. He stopped short of declaring support for legalizing same-sex marriage.

Earlier, however, in February the Obama administration said it would no longer oppose legal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), just two months after Congress and the President agreed to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, the military’s ban on openly gay service members. Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Congress saying that DOMA, passed in 1996, “discriminated” against gays.

Let that sink in. The Obama administration thinks that the defense of traditional marriage between a man and a woman is “discrimination.” Since the dawn of civilization, the union between a man and a woman has been the keystone of societies everywhere. Even the extension of “civil unions” with expanded rights for gay couples has not been enough for advocates of homosexuality.

Those with short memories may not recall that it was another Democrat President, Bill Clinton, who created an uproar within days of taking office when he let it be known in 1993 that he intended to repeal the ban on homosexuals serving in the U.S. military. At the time, a Pentagon study concluded that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service.” The study, however, also proposed a policy that came to be known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” preventing recruiters from screening or discouraging homosexuals from joining.

There were and are still good reasons for the military’s opposition to homosexuals serving. Let it be said that homosexuals have probably always served. When I was in the Army in the 1960s, I and others in my unit knew of gays serving along side us, but practiced a tolerance we took for granted by neither acknowledging it, nor engaging in any action based on it.

At the time, there was no such thing as “gay rights” and, were it not for the incessant demands for them, they would not exist today. Gays and lesbians play on the inherent sense of fairness and tolerance that is a hallmark of American society. The result is that homosexuality is now widely represented in popular culture to the point of being accepted as “normal.” It is not “normal.” It is a sexual aberration involving a very small portion of the overall population, perhaps no more than four percent. Always was, always will be.

The U.S. military is a unique element of our society. The 1993 Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law stated that “there is no constitutional right to serve” and pointed out that the military is a “specialized society” that is “fundamentally different from civilian life.” This was and is so self-evident that the present state of affairs is nothing less than astonishing. Homosexuality was deemed an “unacceptable risk” to good order, discipline, morale and unit cohesion—qualities essential for combat readiness.

Suffice to say Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell opened a Pandora’s box of difficulties for all the ranks. Its repeal has not made those difficulties magically disappear.

The photo of two Navy lesbians kissing represents the “progress” that a vocal minority has made, given the support of liberal politicians on both sides of the aisle working against the tide of resistance of majority Americans who are fighting the social implications of “gay rights”, the demands for “gay marriage”, and the influence over young minds passing through government school systems.

It says something about life in America today, one that is very different from America at the end of World War Two.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Leaving Iraq

March 2003, Baghdad, Iraq, Shock and Awe

By Alan Caruba

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. - John Stuart Mill English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873)

Among some foreign policy analysts, the popular conclusion regarding the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is that the U.S. won the war…for Iran.

In practical terms, however, predicting anything about the future of the Middle East these days is likely to leave one looking foolish. Who thought Tunisians would toss out their dictator? Or that Egyptians would demand and get Mubarack to resign? Or that Syrians, after two generations of dictatorship, would turn on the Assad family? Revolution is in the air in the Middle East which is to say that change—rapid change—is the order of the day.

President Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops entirely from Iraq is ignorant of history and dismissive of reality. When the Axis was defeated in World War Two, the U.S. retained troops in Europe to ensure a transition to democracy. Same with Japan. And later, the same with South Korea.

President Obama, so reluctant to admit that the U.S. has ever done anything right and ill-inclined to let it happen, has led to the full-scale withdrawal of U.S. troops and, I suggest, set up a situation in which a newly emerging democracy—a distinct rarity in the Middle East—could be deprived of the time to be fully and securely established.

There were real reasons for invading Iraq twice in recent times; first to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and second to remove him as a dangerous, destabilizing force who threatened all the Gulf States.

Forgotten by most, Iraq under Saddam Hussein engaged Iran in war for eight years from 1979 to 1988. Inasmuch as Iran’s Islamic revolution had taken U.S. diplomats hostage in 1979 and held them for 444 days, the U.S. backed Saddam, though officially it took a neutral position.

U.S. policymakers in the administrations following the Carter years regarded Ayatollah Khomeini as a serious threat to the stability of the region and nothing has changed since them. His successors are nothing but trouble.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki found sanctuary in Iran to avoid being killed by Saddam. He is said to have strong ties to the current regime in Iran which is, after all, a very big neighbor with a long common border to the east of Iraq.

On the occasion of the official end of the war and the withdrawal of U.S. military, Maliki’s close ties to Iran were on display at the White House when he brought Iraqi Transportation Minister Hadi Farhan al-Amiri with him. Farhan had formerly been a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The Guards are suspected by U.S. law enforcement of participating in the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen billeted there.

Had the invasion of Iraq in 2003 been a limited mission, Saddam might have been toppled and the Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis would have been left to kill each other in the typical Arab fashion of resolving disputes. Also in the mix would have been the Kurds in northern Iraq whom Saddam persecuted and killed throughout his regime.

Eight years later, the tendency of the media has been to focus on U.S. and Iraqi war dead, but there is little mention of the earlier Iraq-Iran conflict with estimates between 500,000 and a million war dead, 1-2 million wounded, and more than 80,000 prisoners. In one 1985 battle alone when Iran launched an offensive to cut the main highway between Baghdad and Basra, it is estimated that the combined total of dead numbered 40,000.

The U.S. still does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, a situation in place since 1979. Iran has declared the U.S. to be its biggest enemy and makes no secret of its intention to destroy Israel. Much of the world is wondering when Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. The failure of the U.S. to support this would be a strategic mistake on the order of the British PM, Neville Chamberlain’s claim to have achieved “peace in our time” after negotiations with Adolf Hitler.

Obama’s “diplomatic” efforts with Iran have been a total failure. The latest embarrassment was his “request” for the return of the drone spycraft that the Iranians brought down, apparently without firing a shot. Obama has worried out loud that U.S. diplomats would be targeted for assassination in Iraq…after bargaining away force protection.

It is no stretch to say that President Obama has been a global diplomatic disaster, routinely offending and insulting other nations out of pure ignorance and indifference. His successors will be mending fences in the Middle East and elsewhere for decades.

In the course of three years in office, Obama has only succeeded in fleeing what he regarded as a “dumb” war. He was elected largely on his opposition to it.

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial warned that the failure of the Obama administration to consolidate an alliance with Iraq ignored the Middle East’s upheavals and, in particular, in Iran’s longtime ally, Syria. In the best of outcomes, Iraq could have become an outpost of stability in the Middle East, but Obama’s indifference may contribute to its falling “prey to Tehran’s encroachments.”

In an analysis by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, published in Beirut’s The Daily Star, he anticipates that most of the future violence in Iraq will be between “political factions, even those of the same ethnic and religious group.” The Sunnis are the predominant Islamic sect in most of the Middle East, but the Shiites are the largest sect in both Iraq and Iran.

Al-Maliki heads a loose confederation of many different political parties, but seems to have asserted a very strong level of control over government policies at this point. Ironically, both Saddam and now Al-Maliki must contend with a semi-autonomous Kurdish faction that is pushing for resolution of territorial boundaries, seeking to reverse changes made by Saddam in Arab-Kurdish areas.

Ultimately, everything in the Middle East involves who controls oil revenues.

Iraq’s 2005 constitution promised a hydrocarbon law that would settle issues related to who had the final say of various oil deals. No such law has been legislated to date and the Kurds have pretty much gone their own way. Al-Maliki’s government has declared Kurdish contracts with oil companies illegal, banning companies that have signed them from bidding on oil business in the rest of Iraq.

In the recent history of the Middle East, dating from the fall of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, its nations have been ruled by dictators and monarchs. Such “democracy” as exists is mostly one in which the ruling regime stuffs the ballot boxes and the military determines the winner. Egypt’s recent turmoil is an example. Syria’s ruthless suppression of its people is another. Iran remains a prison state intent on imposing its hegemony over the region.

Can Iraq sustain its fledgling democracy? Nobody knows. If history is any guide the prospect is not good. Only a strong America could have played a role and Obama has chosen to leave.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

WAPO Slanders U.S. Military in Iraq

By Alan Caruba

I rarely read The New York Times or Washington Post because the reporting is so biased it sickens me. Pick any topic, from politics to science, these and other liberal mainstream newspapers are divorced from the most basic standards of honesty and accuracy.

On Sundays, however, I visit their websites to get a sense of the latest liberal themes and, on the Washington Post site, I found “Civilian killings created insurmountable hurdle to extended U.S. troop presence in Iraq” by Liz Sly. It made me very angry and it should make anyone who lost a father, a brother, a sister or mother who served in Iraq, not just to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, but since 2003 to depose him from power and see him brought to justice in Iraq by Iraqis.

Thanks as well to those who served, but returned with grievous injuries, often from improvised explosive devises—many of which were made in Iran, along with all the others who returned home from the nightmare of fighting an enemy who looked like every other Iraqi.

The point of Ms. Sly’s article was to defame all who served in Iraq and, of course, those who died there. Quoting an Iraqi who lost family members, she encapsulated the theme of her article. “They are barbarians,” he said. He went on to say, “We wish they never had come.” One Iraqi hardly speaks for all Iraqis, of course, but in the context of Ms. Sly’s article, he did.

By the second paragraph, she was citing “a group of Marines (who) went on a shooting spree in which 24 Iraqi civilians were killed” on November 19, 2005. You had to read nine more paragraphs into the article to learn that charges were brought against seven Marines and dropped against six of them. A seventh was acquitted while an eighth will stand trial in January.

You had to read even further before Ms. Sly cites a U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan regarding the period of 2005-2007. Gen. Buchanan is not directly quoted, but Ms. Sly notes that “The vast majority of civilian deaths were the result of Iraqis killing Iraqis.” No kidding!

Iraqis killing Iraqis was endemic to the Saddam Hussein regime. The history of Iraq after he came to power in 1979 until his fall in 2003 is one of mass murder, summary and arbitrary executions, rape, and torture.

For example, in March 15-19, 1988, Saddam authorized the use of poison gas against the citizens of a Kurdish town, Halabja, killing thousands. That same year, he launched an Al-Anfal campaign of extermination against Kurds living in Northern Iraq. Their crime was siding with Iranians during the Iraq-Iran war that had lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. The attacks resulted in deaths estimated to be between 50,000 and 100,000, many of whom were women and children.

Saddam repeated this in April 1991 after having been driven out of Kuwait by allied forces led by the U.S. Uprisings in northern Iraq resulted in estimates of civilian dead ranging from 20,000 to 100,000 Kurds and between 60,000 to 130,000 for Shiites.

When U.S. troops invaded in 2003 several mass graves were found, believed to have been a response to a 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein.

None of this information was unavailable to the Washington Post reporter who quoted a lawmaker, Sami al-Askari, identified as “a close aid to Prime Minister Mouri al-Maliki.” He said, “The image of the American soldier is as a killer, not a defender. And how can you give a killer immunity?”

American troops were and are always subject to U.S. military justice, but those troops often found themselves in fire fights with an enemy that did not wear uniforms. Civilians were killed in the fog of war.

The world shall probably never know how many Iraqis died in Saddam Hussein’s prisons or as the result of campaigns carried out against Kurds and tribes in the south. He had already used weapons of mass destruction, poison gas, and it was widely believed he retained the capacity to use them if invaded. The intelligence agencies of several Western nations were convinced of this, though few were found in the wake of the invasion.

It is a wonder to me that Ms. Sly took the time to report that, according to the Department of Defense, 4,474 American service members died in Iraq, 3,518 of whom were killed in action.

Our military is withdrawing at long last from Iraq. I will not engage in an analysis of the decisions that were made to invade, but the best one was to rid Iraq of a monster called Saddam Hussein who killed far more Iraqis than the American military ever did.

It should not escape anyone’s notice that, in the wake of the Iraq war, the citizens of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and currently in Syria, rose up to rid themselves of dictators. Were they encouraged by the U.S. military campaign and the result in Iraq? Yes.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Super Committee Suicide

By Alan Caruba

By the weekend, news reports indicated that the congressional Super Committee was closing in on an agreement. The deficit-cutting panel is mandated to trim at least $1.2 trillion in federal spending over the next ten years and, failing an agreement, automatic cuts would begin in 2013, after the national elections.

In days, however, it was clear that there was no agreement and the Super Committee, as Congress has always done, was looking at a variety of gimmicks and magical thinking to avoid having to address what is now a $15 trillion national debt, more than an entire year’s Gross Domestic Product.

The Super Committee was and is a bad idea on many levels if for no other reason than the Constitution requires that all bills involving expenditures must originate in the House of Representatives (Article 1, Section 7), but “the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.” The Constitution, however, has mattered less and less to U.S. Congresses for a very long time.

On November 8, ABC News reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “suggested that the White House is pulling for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction…to fail because success would step on their storyline of Republican obstructionism.” Because Washington is a house of mirrors, the news of the past week has been of Democratic obstructionism.

By the end of the week, the President said that he would not sign any bill that repeals the automatic spending reductions that would occur if the Committee does not come to an agreement. “That veto threat,” said a Wall Street Journal article “was a response to GOP lawmakers’ proposals to shield the Pentagon from such cuts.”

On Veteran’s Day, November 11th, a Wall Street Journal editorial, “If Iran Gets the Bomb", took note of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that Iran was closing in on having its own nuclear weapons, saying that “The serious choice now before the Administration is between military strikes and more of the same. As the IAEA report makes painfully clear, more of the same means a nuclear Iran, possibly within a year.”

So, while Iran closes in on becoming a nuclear power, national election campaigns will be raging in 2012 with Obama’s only hope of reelection being to claim that the Republican Party is blocking his efforts to tame unemployment, revive the economy, and keep America safe. Meanwhile, Democrat members of the committee keep pushing for new taxes in the midst of a “recession” that rivals the Great Depression.

If it wasn’t so absurd, it would be laughable, but it is also the worst possible time to have automatic budget cuts that would take as much as $500 billion out of the Pentagon’s budget over the next decade if the Super Committee cannot find agreement. Reportedly, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was looking for potential savings in the budget by cutting the Pentagon’s nuclear arsenal!

The state of our military equipment is geriatric and it is dwindling. The F-15 fighter jets that make up half the fleet, have an average age of 25 years! Air force strategic bombers average 34 years of age and refueling aircraft are 47 years old. The Navy has fewer ships today than on 9/11; 284 now compared to 316 in 2001.

Equipment and vehicles in use since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq are in need of replacement. If the automatic cuts kick in, the Pentagon budget will be cut by $500 billion over the next ten years, precisely at the time the military will need the means to fight a war that would presumably start in the Middle East if Iran’s threats mean anything.

Cutting the Pentagon budget at this time and into the near future is the worst idea to come out of Congress when a kindergartner could find ways to cut $1.5 trillion from the U.S. budget.

Iran’s leaders, from the day in 1979 they seized American diplomats and held them hostage for 444 days, have been in a state of war against America. An Iranian truck bomb was used against the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon and against Marine barracks in 1983. Iranian-made IEDs killed many U.S. military personnel in Iraq. Within recent weeks we learned of a thwarted Iranian plan to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in a Washington, D.C. restaurant.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei has called for the destruction of Israel, the “little Satan” and America, the “big Satan.”

Ignoring such threats is suicidal.

Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor with a preemptive strike in 1981 and did the same to Syria’s secret nuclear program in 2007. It is unimaginable how events would have played out if Iraq had acquired nuclear weapons. The notion that the United States of America must depend on Israel to end the Iranian threat is cowardly and shameful.

Cutting the Pentagon’s budget now or over the next decade would be suicidal.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The News from Iraq (as Usual) is Bad

By Alan Caruba

In the 1960s and throughout the 1970s it seemed that all I read or heard every day was about Vietnam. It dominated the news as its forces took on the colonial French in an effort to liberate the nation. The effort was led by Ho Chi Minh, a man who would have been regarded as a patriot had he not been a communist.

Ho was determined to unite both northern and southern Vietnam and, if he had to fight the French and take on the United States, so be it. You could have asked just about every general in the Pentagon if getting involved in a war there was a good idea and the only one who would have thought so would have been Gen. William Westmoreland who was willing to fight until the last dead American. Going to war in Asia is always a bad idea.

The problem at the time was the “domino theory” that said that a loss of any nation in Southeast Asia meant all the others would go communist as well. The result was that the U.S. lost the war and it would be a long time before it regained its fighting spirit. By then, the Draft was history and we had an all-volunteer military.

Vietnam slipped from the news pages and we began to read a lot about Iran after our diplomats were taken hostage in 1979 during the course of what would be called the Islamic revolution there. Bordering Iran is Iraq and it was the satrapy of Saddam Hussein, the local dictator. Iraq sat atop a lot of oil that generated a lot of money, but Saddam wanted more. He invaded Iran to grab off some oil fields. At the time, the U.S. was his ally. The war became an eight-year stalemate.

We stopped being his ally when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. President George H.W. Bush put together a coalition that drove him out in 1991.Then came September 11, 2001 and this time it was George W. Bush in office. After driving the Taliban and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, Bush43 and his neocons turned their attention to Saddam Hussein. Largely unmentioned in the war that followed was the very long border Iraq shares with the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, a presumptive ally. The rest, as they say, is history.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a great success militarily, but a total disaster from the point of view of having no plans and not enough troops to deal with the chaos that almost immediately followed. Typical of the Middle East, everything is about one’s tribal and/or religious affiliation. When you add in the vast oil revenues at stake, the Shiites were soon fighting the Sunnis and the Kurds were fighting anyone trying to take over their province. It was a classic SNAFU, everything was FUBAR.

Bush43 finally put enough troops into Iraq to assert control, but the politics of the place is like herding cats or sticking your hand into a basket of snakes. That’s why headlines such as the one in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, “Iraq Factions Spar Over Security Force” are, no pun intended, the writing on the wall.

I can’t think of many Americans who want to stay in Iraq as a military occupying force and you can include me. President Barack Hussein Obama made getting out of Iraq a 2008 campaign theme and we are, in 2011, getting out.



Nouri al-Maliki

 And that’s the problem. Without the U.S. as a stabilizing, balancing force, Iraq is just going to go to hell. Yes, they have had elections there and a parliament, but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is also running the ministries of defense, interior, and national security. Somewhere in Hell, Saddam Hussein is laughing…a lot.

For those who have not been paying attention, there is NO democracy in the Middle East; at least not the kind that doesn’t need an army and police to make sure the people don’t get restive.

When they do, as in the case of Egypt, the current dictator is deposed or in Libya he is chased, found, and then shot in the head. In Tunisia the dictator was forced to flee, while in places like the Sudan and Yemen, chaos reigns. In Syria, the dictator is busy killing protesters in the streets.

The odds that Iraq will devolve either into a dictatorship or break apart in some fashion or be run as a puppet state of Iran are very good.

The odds that we and/or the Israelis are going to turn parts of Iran into giant craters are also very good.

Sometimes you fight a war and discover the effort was a huge waste of money, men, and time. Curiously, they always seem to be a good idea at the time.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Disarming America's Military

By Alan Caruba

In the preamble of the Constitution, the founding fathers made clear their priorities and among them was “provide for the common defense” to “secure the blessings of liberty.”

Ramping up an army and navy was an early priority of the nation’s first presidents because, then as now, the United States had real enemies.

The congressional “super committee” charged with finding cuts in the budget is testimony to the failure of Congress to attend to one of its primary duties and to the gridlock of partisanship. The notion of an automatic across-the-boards budget cut of $1.5 trillion is aimed at the growth in spending over the next decade, not a reduction in those programs that are responsible for an unsustainable debt.

A Rasmussen Reports survey released on September 28 revealed that “Americans think that tax hikes are more likely than spending cuts in any deficit reduction deal that comes out of Congress and are more convinced than ever that any new tax monies will be spent on new government programs.”

Nearly two-thirds of American adults, 62%, have no confidence in Congress’s ability to actually reduce spending for the purpose of reducing the federal deficit. The latest poll on this topic represented an increase of four points over the previous one in February.

In an article posted on Military.com, a September 26 report released by the House Armed Services Committee warned that $465 billion in cuts to the defense budget over ten years would “transform a Superpower into a Regional Power” and return the military to funding levels of “the post-Vietnam Carter era of the late 1970s.”

The report contemplated cuts that would “eliminate 60 ships, two carrier battle groups, and over 200,000 troops through 2021. The Army would lose ground combat vehicles. The Navy would suffer cuts in ship building and replacements for older ships. The Air Force would likely lose the next generation bombers and aerial refueling tanker aircraft. The Marine Corps would lose personnel carriers and indefinitely postpone replacements for new amphibious assault vehicles and ships.

Michael M. Dunn, president of the Air Force Association, in a memo to its members, referred to the cuts as draconian, noting that “It would gut many programs, throw tens of thousands of troops out of work, cause major force reductions, and necessitate closing bases. Our allies would begin to question our commitments in both conventional and extended deterrence realms.”

The budget and debt problems the nation faces are based in large part on our so-called “entitlement” programs that are hugely wasteful and in need of reform. There are entire federal departments such as Education that could be eliminated to the benefit of the nation, returning this function to the states instead.

Lost in the current debate is the fact that it is Congress that authorizes the funding of the many programs that waste millions on a weekly basis. An across the boards cut ignores priorities and, among them all, defense is the most essential.

Lost, too, is the realization that the U.S. has entered into an entirely new era of warfare. In a speech in June to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, William J. Lyon, Deputy Secretary of Defense, noted that “For centuries, the most economically developed nations wielded the most lethal military power”, but not anymore.

How has war changed? Think about this, “Our deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have now lasted longer than the U.S. participation in World War I and World War II combined,” said Lyon. “We must sustain long-term commitments for a range of plausible conflicts.” Moreover, today’s military must be ready for both high-end and low-end (insurgencies) threats." And the newest threat, cyberwarfare.

No one suggests that the Defense Department is a paragon or that it does not need to review issues such as its pension programs that begin at age 38 when retired personnel have twenty more years of productivity left. Even with aspects of the military that need revision, a United States of America with a military expected to fight with the weapons of the Vietnam era is an invitation to the nation’s enemies.

A look back over the era since the end of World War Two in 1945 demonstrates that the world has been a far safer place precisely because America has been a military superpower.

As China builds its military, non-state combatants challenge nations around the world, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons continues apace, this is no time to undermine a military that has answered the nation’s call to arms with courage and distinction.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

America's Decline Follows a Familiar Pattern

By Alan Caruba

History is a relentless process and one that does repeat itself. Empires emerge, hold power, grow wealthy, and then find ways to commit suicide while new ones push them aside.

I was thinking of this while listening to outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ speech on NATO’s future. He virtually spelled out why the United States is in decline and why Great Britain and Europe, once the seat of great empires, have been in decline since the end of World War Two.

The Second World War so sapped the energy of Europe and the United Kingdom that neither were able to retain the sources of their former wealth, their colonial empires composed of nations in the Middle East and Asia. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was formed after World War Two out of fear of an aggressive Soviet Union.

The United Nations was also created at that time and it too has long been sustained by U.S. financial support.

Gates made no secret of the fact that he thought the European members had been getting a free ride from NATO as U.S. funding had risen from “roughly 50 percent of all NATO spending” to “more than 75 percent in the twenty years since the collapse (1989) of the Berlin Wall”. The USSR ceased in 1991 and became the Russian Federation.

The generations that lived through the Cold War from the end of World War Two in 1945 until 1991 are now senior citizens. For nearly fifty years it was the focus of American concern and wars from Korea to Vietnam were fought to restrain Communist expansion whether it was motivated by Russia or China. Those wars, however, left those generations, their children and grandchildren, with a distinct distaste for combat in far-off places.

The 9/11 attack was unique in that it was not perpetrated by a nation-state, but by a stateless organization calling itself al Qaeda. It took a decade to find and kill its leader, Osama bin Laden. In the meantime, the United States had become mired in Afghanistan for over a decade. The invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 to rid the Middle East of Saddam Hussein was presumably taken to rid the region of a constant threat.

It’s not that the United States wasn’t joined by a coalition of NATO and other nations. It was, but it was also understood that the U.S. would contribute the bulk of the forces and machinery of war.

There is considerable irony in the way the Iraq war has since led to the instability of Middle Eastern nations whose dictators have been forced to flee or fight. If Saddam Hussein could be brought to justice, Arabs concluded that any dictator could be overthrown if they united against them. It did not escape notice that even longtime U.S. allies like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarack would be abandoned.

The result is that the U.S. and NATO have stumbled into a conflict in Libya that has demonstrated their present state of weakness. Moreover, the mission in Afghanistan is jeopardized by the need for access routes through Pakistan!

As Secretary Gates noted, “It is no secret that for too long, the international military effort in Afghanistan suffered from a lack of focus, resources, and attention, a situation exacerbated by America’s primary focus on Iraq for most of the past decade.” He warned against NATO nations pulling out “on their own timeline in a way that undermines the mission and increases risks to other allies.”

“Turning to the NATO operation over Libya,” said Gates, “it has become painfully clear that similar shortcomings—in capability and will—have the potential to jeopardize the alliance’s ability” to conduct a successful mission. The key word here is “will.” When a coalition lacks the will to win, it will not.

This applies as well to the United States. Said Gates, “The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress and in the American body politic writ large to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”

Just as the NATO nations lost the will to defend themselves, preferring to let the U.S. pick up the bill, it is America’s turn to examine its own financial situation and likely have to reduce its own defense expenditures.

For some time now, it has been reducing its naval capabilities in terms of warships. It has aircraft that are wonders of technology, but much of the fleet is aging and in need of replacement. Its warriors have been in fields of combat for twice as long as it took to fight and win World War Two in two separate theatres, Europe and the Pacific.

As the U.S. appetite for combat diminishes and its financial stability remains uncertain, it is experiencing much the same kind of events that ended the British Empire. At one time it was so vast it was said that the sun never set upon it.

The juggernaut that was U.S. military power is being hollowed out. The value of the U.S. dollar, the default currency for the world, is declining. The empire that was Great Britain is no more and the influence that the U.S. has had and the power it could once project is fading.

Some very hard decisions must be made—and soon—or the United States of America will join the ranks of empires that exhausted themselves.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Memorial Day 2011

A poem by Henry Reed from World War Two captures the brutal absurdity of war as it depicts a new soldier listening to a field lecture on the various parts of a rifle and compares it to the beauty of the world around him. Unspoken is the need, from time to time, to fight for the freedom to enjoy that beauty.

Naming of Parts

By Henry Reed

Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,

We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,

We shall have what to do after firing. But today,

Today we have naming of parts. Japonica

Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,

And today we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this

Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,

When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,

Which in your case you have not got. The branches

Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,

Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released

With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me

See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy

If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms

Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see

Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this

Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it

Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this

Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards

The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers

They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy

If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,

And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,

Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom

Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,

For today we have naming of parts.

Editor's note: Henry Reed was a British poet and we should recall that WWII cemeteries

are filled with our British, Canadian, and Australian allies as well.

Armed Forces Day

By Alan Caruba

Saturday, May 21, is Armed Forces Day. Unless you are on active duty, a military family member, or a veteran, I suspect this is one national holiday that slips under the radar of most Americans.

I am a veteran, U.S. Army, Second Infantry Division, Second Engineer Battalion, formerly based in Fort Benning, Georgia. If you have ever served in the military, it is highly unlikely you will ever forget the unit in which you spent the most time. Military life indelibly imprints itself on all who have served.

Like my generation and earlier ones, I was conscripted for service by what was called the “Draft”. It ended in 1973, but young men between 18 and 25 must still register for Selective Service in the event a really big war breaks out. I am sure the voluntary military is sufficient, but it worries me that we are taking a great toll on the young men and women in combat zones serving repeated tours of duty.

To my good fortune, I never saw combat, but I look back on the experience fondly because it taught any number of useful lessons. For many it was their first experience with the need to practice a measure of self-discipline. Orders are issued. You obey them. It is the nature of the military that it takes in boys and teaches them to be men.

You have no doubt noticed I have written that it “teaches them to be men.” I do not much care for the creeping feminization of our military. I don’t much like the inclusion of women in the military except in an ancillary capacity exclusive of battle. I understand times have changed, but that doesn’t mean that human nature has.

I don’t believe the military is a place for homosexuals. Bill Clinton tried to integrate homosexuals in the military and was met with such resistance from “the brass” that he saddled it with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, an invitation to hypocrisy. Recently there was a report that Navy chaplains had been told to get ready to perform same-sex marriages, but that idiotic idea was swiftly quashed, presumably in the name of morality and common sense.

If I sound like some cranky old man nostalgic for “the old days”, I would remind you that, for me, the old days were the Cold War that included some hot wars fought in Korea and Vietnam. From the days of General MacArthur onward, American presidents and Congress had been told not to fight a war in the Far East.

Likewise, every empire that proposed to fight a war in Afghanistan, from Alexander the Great to the former Soviet Union, got their butts kicked, but in 2001, instead of a short demonstration of why attacking the American homeland is a very bad idea, we turned that operation in a decade of wasted money, material, and personnel.

“Regime change” anywhere should be short and brutal. Leave it to the survivors to form a new government. Iraq turned into a quagmire because we invaded with too few troops to police the nation and because L. Paul Bremer, the presidential envoy, disbanded the Iraqi army, instantly rendering thousands of men unemployed and very unhappy about it. Billions of dollars and thousands of American lives later, we are still in Iraq. Expecting Arabs to behave in a rational fashion is a fool's errand.

Ask anyone in the military, particularly in the officer class, and you will discover that no one likes war less than those who must fight it for the politicians and too many ungrateful civilians at home.

We no longer fight huge land wars like those of World War Two. The conflict in Korea ended in a stalemate and a truce that exists to this day. At the time, no one wanted to go to war with Red China and that was probably the right judgment. Vietnam was essentially a lost war by the French, a colonial power, followed by a civil war between north and south. Inserting ourselves into any civil war is unwise. Vietnam became a meat grinder for more than 53,000 young men who came home in coffins.

On a recent edition of “Sixty Minutes”, outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates described his job as “leading a department that is organized to plan for war but not to fight a war. And so everything that I’ve wanted to do to try and help the men and women in the field I’ve had to do outside the normal Pentagon bureaucracy.”

That department oversees a military that is deployed in 150 countries around the world with more than 369,000 of its1,580,255 active-duty in foreign nations. We still have 53,951 in Germany as a holdover from the Cold War. Some 28,500 are still in Korea and 32,803 in Japan. Simply put, there are real threats still in these locations that must be defended.

We are the world’s policeman. If we do not maintain this role, it will go to hell even faster than its current pace.

All of which brings me full circle to the worthy reason for Armed Forces Day. I have my arguments with some of the policies affecting today’s military, but hopefully they are transitory.

I have no argument with the courage, the patriotism, and the power our armed forces—yes, our men and women—project around the world.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Jihad is Forever

By Alan Caruba

Americans greeted news of Osama bin Laden's death with a celebration of the payback it represents for the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001.

As former Vice President Dick Cheney said on hearing the news, “Today, the message our forces have sent is clear—if you attack the United States, we will find you and bring you to justice.”

This is part of the American psyche. A great power cannot allow itself to be attacked and harmed without rendering retribution. Every day bin Laden drew breath after 9/11 was a rebuke to America.

The 9/11 attack, however, grew out of a larger context, the Islamic central concept of jihad. Far from being “a religion of peace”, the Koran is a battle plan for the conquest of the world by Islam and jihad is regarded as a sacred duty for all Muslims.

This is why political correctness regarding how we deal with Muslim demands in the United States is a danger to the nation. Islam is one big hate crime directed at all other religious faiths. Failure to understand that is to sign the nation’s and the world’s death warrant.

The irony of al Qaeda’s legacy has been the vast numbers of Muslims that have died as a result of its efforts to overthrow the governments of nations whose wrath it invoked. In the bizarre illogic of the Arab world, even as many Saudis allegedly contributed to al Qaeda, one of its aims was to overthrow the Saudi royal family who bin Laden had condemned for allowing American troops to encamp on its “sacred sands” in the first war against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

Al Qaeda was and remains a threat to the existing governments throughout the Middle East and, of course, anywhere in the world it wants to target. The U.S. has cut off the snake’s head, but must now remain even more vigilant against retaliation. That said, there is no doubt the organization has been significantly weakened with the loss of its symbolic leader.

Osama bin Laden has become to many Arabs what the Cuban butcher, Che Guevera, became to Communists and their dupes.

My suspicion is that al Qaeda will break into more isolated, individual units in nations throughout the Middle East and become even more vulnerable to being dismembered and destroyed. It is, however, northern African and Middle Eastern nations that are being restructured from within by millions of Muslims who have grown tired of the century’s old oppression that has been Islam’s hallmark.

Americans should not expect democracy to break out in the Maghreb or the Middle East, but it can expect governments there to become more responsive to the expectations and demands of their people. Even those in the Middle East know they are far behind those in the West in terms of any true freedom and justice. They have seen it and they want it.

We are told bin Laden’s body is in American hands. My suggestion—a fanciful one—is that it be embalmed and put on display in the Smithsonian as a reminder of the threat the nation will continue to face for decades to come.

Lastly, at a time when there are discussions of cutting the defense budget, we need to take heed of the courage and skill of those military who attacked the bin Laden compound in Pakistan and rendered the ultimate justice.

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf” is a quote attributed to George Orwell, the author of “1984”, a novel warning against all forms of totalitarian government.

Americans, despite our present economic distress, have to keep in mind that our nation has real enemies in the world and they aren’t exclusively Muslim. They are the reincarnated version of the former Soviet Union, Chinese Communists, North Korea, and others that wish us ill.

Their greatest allies will be those who preach isolationism and passivity.

Thus, the role of our military, the wars we choose to fight and where we choose to fight them has never been more critical. Jihad is forever.

For that, we must put our financial house in order and soon---or we shall witness our enemies celebrating, just as we celebrate today.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Pfc Bradley Manning, A Warning Writ Large

By Alan Caruba

“All warfare is based on deception. There is no place where espionage is not used. Offer the enemy bait to lure him.” --Sun-Tzu (--400 B.C.)

His cherubic face can be found on the many articles about an audacious assault on the military and diplomatic security of the nation. Liberals have adopted Private First Class Bradley Manning as their hero because he is gay and he despises America, two things about which they care deeply.

In a chat log published in June by Wired News, Manning “bragged to Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned him in, that he was going to unleash ‘worldwide anarchy in CVS (comma separated value) format.’”

For Manning the thrill came from contemplating that “Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” adding “Everywhere there’s a US post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed.”

Manning’s infamy goes back to a story in the July 27, 2010 Wall Street Journal that reported “Military investigators are checking computers used by Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst charged this month with leaking classified information, to see if he is the source of thousands of military documents published Sunday by WikiLeaks.”

According to Lamo, there is not any doubt as to the source of the data provided to WikiLeaks. Manning bragged about it to him. “No one suspected a thing,” said Manning, adding, “Kind of sad.”

What’s sad is that it will take months, perhaps years, before Manning is brought before a military tribunal and likely sentenced to life imprisonment instead of being put before a firing squad.

We are, after all, talking about one of the most massive acts of espionage against the United States in the modern era. Those defending Manning appear to be completely blind to that and, indeed, are accusing the U.S. of “torturing” Manning by keeping him in solitary confinement while he awaits courts martial.

Manning had been arrested in May on suspicion of leaking a video of a U.S. helicopter attack. Based in Iraq, he rapidly became the main suspect for the WikiLeak data dump.

Openly gay, despite the then-existing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that allowed him to remain in the Army, Manning had experienced rejection by a homosexual lover, declaring on his Facebook page that he was “livid” after being “lectured by ex-boyfriend.”

When you’re twenty-two years old, astonishingly immature, and “frustrated with people and society at large”, does that give you permission to betray your nation?

At about the same age, I was working in G-2 Army intelligence in a minor capacity. It never occurred to me to hand over secret documents to enemies of the nation. How many other young men over the years have been given this level of trust by their nation? A lot!

It took, however, just one Bradley Manning to think the rules of conduct, let alone his oath of service, could and should be set aside as a balm for his hurt feelings because his boyfriend dumped him.

This is why the armed forces resisted Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell when it was first foisted on them. From long experience, both military and civilian intelligence personnel knew and understood that homosexuals were particularly vulnerable to blackmail and, even as attitudes changed toward the gay and lesbian population, their emotional stability remained open to question.

It is why today’s frontline Marines in combat do not want to rely on homosexuals in their units, but the military has become so politically correct over the years that even an unstable Muslim Army major was allowed to serve until he killed thirteen servicemen and women at Fort Hood.

Military service is very different from civilian life. It has a different code of honor that dates back to the days of Sun-Tzu.

In a time when the U.S. military is engaged in a war with Islam-fascism and the world is seeking to counter it on every continent, the ancient admonitions about espionage and warfare are still true. There is no one more dangerous to our nation’s survival than a traitor.

Bradley Manning is every warning against permitting gays and lesbians to serve in the military writ large.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Is Anything Secret Anymore? Depends on Whose Secrets!

By Alan Caruba

The one thing that the pundicracy---the columnists, former government and other folk who express themselves in print and broadcast media---have missed about the latest WikiLeaks outrage is that, like the earlier one regarding Afghan military operations, both have been directed solely at the United States of America.

Are we really surprised that the Saudis want the United States to bomb the hell out of Iran’s nuclear facilities? Is it some kind of revelation that many leaders of many nations cordially dislike one another?

After growing tired of paying bribes to the Barbary pirates, Thomas Jefferson commissioned our first naval warships and sent in the U.S. Marines. Today we have two carrier groups off the coast of North and South Korea. As the French say, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose—the more things change, the more they stay the same.

It is instructive that Julian Assange, the face for WikiLeaks, has not hacked into and exposed the secret files of Russia, China, North Korea, or comparable nations that are unfriendly to American interests and policies.

The reason, simply stated, is that Assange knows we would be talking about him in the past tense if he had.


We have been told that these revelations have materially affected our relations with other nations, but it would be a good idea to keep in mind that they, too, have their phalanxes of spies and analysts who examine everything that is said and done by America, diplomatically, militarily, economically, and politically.

They are the counterparts of our Central Intelligence Agency that essentially does the same thing. These functions are also carried out by the Pentagon and the Department of State. Intelligence is the currency of national survival. Other U.S. agencies keep track of crop statistics, maritime activity, and just about anything and everything else that can be measured.

That said, we were absolutely astonished to learn that North Korea was so advanced in its production of nuclear weapons and missiles. We had no idea that Saddam Hussein had not stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, despite widely believed, but flawed intelligence. Et cetera. Et cetera.

The great revelation of 9/11 was that the U.S. generated tons of intelligence, much of which was, in spycraft terminology, “stove piped”; isolated within an agency and not shared. In the effort to make that intelligence more available to more people within our vast government, WikiLeaks found a way into it.

One of those ways was an openly gay Private First Class in the U.S. Army who, in less politically correct times, would never had been inducted or permitted to serve.

All intelligence is vulnerable to spies and turncoats. When it is stored digitally, it becomes even more vulnerable and that is the downside of the most extraordinary technology ever invented by man.

It is one thing to deliberately hack into it—something the People’s Republic of China, the Russians, and others try to do on a daily basis—but it is quite another to make it available to anyone who wants to look at it and I do mean anyone.

All of which brings us back to Julian Assange, a rather pathetic individual who would otherwise be ignored except for his “talent” for hacking other people’s computer data. Somewhere along the way Julian developed a deep animus for the United States of America.

No doubt he and others see America as the modern version of the Roman Empire, but Julian is likely unaware of the success of the Roman Empire, a republic that lasted some five hundred years. Indeed, Romans were always reluctant to go to war unless either attacked or, as was frequently the case, invited to offer the protection of Pax Romana.

There is only one nation on planet Earth to which small nations and large can turn for protection against the aggression, real or anticipated, of the current rogue’s gallery of despots and lunatics that threaten peace in the Middle East, those nations on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, nations bordering the Sea of Japan, and the Somali Peninsula, to name just a few places.

When and if the Swedes get through prosecuting Julian for alleged sexual crimes, the United States should reach out and bring him here for the crime of espionage. After which he should be subjected to a firing squad as an object lesson to others.

The most curious aspect of the WikiLeaks crimes is the failure of the Obama administration’s Department of Justice to take any action whatsoever. We are either witnessing that most inept DOJ in the history of the nation or one shot through with people who might actually sympathize with Julian Assange.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Last Full Measure of Devotion

Excerpt from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863:

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."



Do We Need a Huge Military?

By Alan Caruba

In a recessionary era that promises to last longer than usual it is a good idea to reexamine our national priorities and needs. Ever since the end of World War Two, sixty-five years ago, more than two generations, America has militarily been a superpower.

Despite that, it came as a rude shock to have been forced out of Vietnam in the 1970s and to have found ourselves in a lengthy occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan in this decade. With regard to these current conflicts, it is worth noting that, while we maintain a large military presence with a considerable arsenal of weapons, vehicles, and personnel, the enemy operates with quite a bit less while wearing out U.S. public support at the same time.

The question today is do we need a huge military?

Benjamin Friedman and Christopher Preble, both Cato Institute scholars, address this question in a policy analysis titled “Budgetary Savings from Military Restraint.” While I believe the U.S. should maintain a strong military, I have long harbored the concern that the U.S. military is too large for our actual needs.

America entered a period of “empire” following World War II, expanding our military to involve bases throughout a world threatened primarily by the former Soviet Union that was seeking to expand communism. The threat was real and it was met in Korea. Our military strength deterred offensive missiles in Cuba. It was successfully challenged in Vietnam. It played a NATO role in Serbia to quell the violence there.

It can be argued that our huge presence in Europe deterred Soviet ambitions and protected Japan and Taiwan against Red Chinese ambitions, but present global realities are such that European nations and South Korea should be playing a greater role in defending themselves, given their economic strength.

The Middle East will likely be the scene of conflict for many years to come, but it does not pose a direct threat to the homeland and our presence there is more likely to exacerbate anti-U.S. views than reduce them. I have argued for military withdrawal from Afghanistan and, while we shall likely have to maintain a military force in Iraq for many years to come, the real problem posed by Iran is its quest for nuclear weapons rather than an invasion of other nations in the region. This is evidenced in its use of proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas

The Cato scholars argue that present U.S. military strategy should not include “the occupation of failing states and indefinite commitments to defend healthy ones.” The history of past empires amply demonstrates that their populations grew weary of this policy and that it often sapped their strength until failure set in.

“With fewer missions, the military can shrink its force structure—reducing personnel, the weapons and vehicles procured for them, and operational costs. The resulting force would be more elite, less strained, and far less expensive. By avoiding needless military conflict and protecting our prosperity, these changes would make Americans more secure.” The Cato scholars project cuts that would total more than $1.2 trillion over ten years.

“The United States does not need to spend $700 billion a year—nearly half of global military spending—to preserve its security.” Long ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the “military-industrial complex” and there isn’t a politician since then has not argued against the shutting down of a military installation in their state while the procurement of new weapons systems has frequently been supported on the basis that it will generate more jobs.

We have to begin to move away from such thinking, the product of the last world war, smaller wars since then and unfounded fears of invasion or attack. 9/11 was a terrorist attack by a small, stateless enemy and must be seen as such.

Degrading the jihadist capabilities can be and is being accomplished at far less cost than maintaining large military forces in the Middle East. As the Cato scholars note, “Contrary to conventional wisdom, counterterrorism does not require much military spending.”

Among the arguments put forth for high military spending is that the U.S. military primacy underlies global security, but the Cato scholars note that “During the Cold War, Japan, Western Europe and South Korea grew wealthy enough to defend themselves” and that “the threats to global trade today are quite limited.”

“The United States confuses what it wants from its military, which is global primacy or hegemony, with what it needs, which is safety. Our leaders tend to exaggerate the capabilities of the enemies we have and invent new enemies by defining traditional foreign troubles—geopolitical competition among states and instability within them, for example—as pressing threats to our security.”

There will always be threats to our security. No one suggests otherwise, but the failure to defend our southern border may be seen in retrospect as having been a far greater threat to our security than anything occurring elsewhere, farther from our homeland.

The Middle East promises to remain unstable for a very long time to come, but we have seen that a huge investment in lengthy occupations may not yield any more real security than smaller, counterterrorism strategies.

Even with the cuts proposed the U.S. can project more military power than any other nation and it is time to ask ourselves if new technologies have not in fact given us the opportunity to reduce a massive Navy, Air Force, and Army to achieve national security in a new world that has seen the end of the Soviet Union, the economic rise of China and India, among others, and the need to address our own present economic problems.

© Alan Caruba, 2010