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How "Normal" is Bowe Bergdahl?

Bowe Bergdahl and a Taliban friend

By Alan Caruba

There are few military crimes worse than desertion to the enemy short of outright treason by giving them aid and comfort.

So why is the U.S. Army declaring Sgt. Berghdal (he received a promotion from private first class while being either a Taliban captive or guest) a “normal soldier now”?  When one’s entire unit declares him a deserter for leaving their Afghanistan based on June 30, 2009—as they did on a show with Fox’s Megyn Kelly—by what stretch of the imagination is he just a normal soldier stationed at the headquarters of Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston?

Fox News reported that former Army Sgt. Evan Buetow who served with Bergdahl as saying “I think it’s very clear he deserted his post. He thought about what he was doing, he mailed some things home, he walked away and we have witnesses who saw him walking away. And if you’re walking away in one of the worst, most dangerous areas of Afghanistan without your weapon and gear, I don’t believe you’re planning on coming back.”

If he is found to be a deserter, the release of five high level Taliban generals to get him back is one more Obama obscenity since it is well known that he has wanted to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention center for enemy combatants captured on the field. Having already investigated the circumstances surrounding his having left his unit, the U.S. Army surely knew whether Bergdahl was a deserter at the time the decision was made to swap for him. I suspect, too, that a major ransom was paid the Taliban for his release.

This is, however, a different Army than the past. It, like the other elements of our military has become highly politicized by the Obama administration; one that continues to reduce its size under the cover of sequestration. Many of the military’s top officers have been relieved of command or pushed into retirement. Even officers in the field in Afghanistan are being fired. The effect on the troop’s morale is incalculable.

Fox News reported on July 14 that “Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl could have a tax-free $350,000 dropped into his bank account if the current investigation into his disappearance from his base in Afghanistan was not desertion, and if he is deemed to have been a prisoner of war for the five years he was held by Islamic militants.” 

Given the circumstances of his decision to leave his unit, immediately becoming liable to capture, and the reported statements, letters, and other views he held about his deployment and about the U.S. Army, Berghdal is most certainly not “a normal soldier.”

One must ask why Obama thought the announcement of his release merited a White House presentation that included his parents; his father uttered an Islamic phrase that drew a presidential smile. The phrase “bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim” is a common Arabic phrase, considered by some to be a major pillar of Islam and featured prominently in the Koran.

To date, however, Bergdahl has reportedly not spoken to his parents. Why? And how “normal” is that?

If Bergdahl went AWOL in Afghanistan, why are we being told he is free to move around at will? One has to wonder if he doesn’t have some military “minders” with him at all times to avoid a problem that would cause a big scandal. What we do know is that this Army sergeant has hired a Yale University legal scholar to represent him.

I suspect that a major cover-up is going on and that the official Army decision will be that he was a prisoner of war after leaving his unit. A soldier whose return was celebrated in the White House rose garden by the President is not likely to see a day in the brig. At most he might receive a dishonorable discharge for going AWOL. After that both the White House and the Army will hope he sinks into anonymity.

Everything surrounding Bergdahl’s “disappearance” from his unit and his return shouts cover-up. One element is likely to be a very lengthy “investigation”, one that surely will not come to a conclusion before the forthcoming November midterm elections.

Given the honor, loyalty and sacrifice of thousands of U.S. soldiers on duty today, as veterans and as fallen heroes, the Bergdahl story is an offence to them and to all Americans. It is one more chapter in the legacy of a President who has been far more sympathetic to our nation’s enemies than our military.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Obamacare Must Be Repealed

By Alan Caruba

While the issue of immigration is uppermost in people’s minds right now, it is likely at this point halfway through his second term that President Obama will be identified by historians most closely with his signature, namesake legislation, the Affordable Patient Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

They will do so for two reasons; that he lied to everyone about it and it has been a failure in countless ways from the moment its website was introduced.

In April PolitiFact, a project of the Tampa Bay Times, announced the “most significant falsehood of the year” and it came as no surprise it was “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” An April Fox News poll revealed that 61% of respondents said the Obama lies at least some of the time on important issues. Only 15% thought he was completely truthful. 

By July 2 a Quinnipiac University poll announced that its survey had determined that 33% of the respondents believed Obama was the “Worst President Since WWII.”  The poll also revealed that between 54% and 44% believed the Obama administration was not competent to run the government.

If you want proof of that, you need only follow the horror story of Obamacare.

In September 2013, prior to Obamacare’s implementation the following month, Daniel Henninger, a Wall Street Journal columnist, wisely noted that “Obamacare is the biggest bet that American liberalism has made in 80 years on its fundamental beliefs. This thing called ‘Obamacare’ carries on its back all the justifications, hopes and dreams of the entitlement state.”

“If Obamacare fails, or seriously falters, the entitlement state will suffer a historic loss of credibility with the American people” adding that “only the American people can kill Obamacare.”

The great Prohibition experiment was killed by the American people and it took a Constitutional amendment to do it. It was a monumental failure.

I would be remiss if I did not point out that no Republican voted for Obamacare. It was entirely a Democratic Party creation, one it has wanted going back to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid.

What Americans have learned in the short time since Obamacare has been implemented is that virtually everything they were told about it was and is a lie.

People who were insured lost their health plan—six million had been cancelled by May, nor could they keep their doctor because many health care plans sold on federal and state exchanges have a limited number of in-network physicians from whom to choose. The costs of Obamacare plans costs are frequently in excess of those from the previous free market and include elements that do not fit the age or sex of those who sign up, such as maternity coverage for women beyond childbearing age.

Obamacare exists because the Supreme Court deemed it to be a “tax”, but it is demonstrably unconstitutional insofar as it represents the mandate of the federal government that everyone buy something that they may not want and, more importantly, cannot afford. When the government can tell you what you must buy, you are no longer living in a free society.

Sharyl Attkisson, writing in Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, reported one source as saying, “In general healthy people are paying more and unhealthy people are paying less.” There isn’t even a “smidgen” of fairness in this.

At no point before or since its inception has the Obama administration told the truth about any aspect of Obamacare, particularly how many legitimate enrollments there have been thus far. In April the number cited was eight million. Attkisson reported that observers immediately pointed out that “the figure is overstated because it counted people who weren’t actually covered because they hadn’t paid their premiums. That actual enrollment was likely closer to between 6.4 and 6.8 million, both below the eight million figure and the stated target of seven million.”

Arnold Ahlert, writing for CanadaFreePress.com, noted in early July that “A pair of reports released by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General reveal ‘internal’ controls for evaluating healthcare applications are ineffective, and 85% of 2.9 million data ‘inconsistencies’ on Obamacare applications cannot be resolved, even after nine months of attempting to do so.” Not only did many of the 39 state exchanges fail to work, but the enrollments are plagued with evidence of both data errors and fraud.

Obamacare is so flawed that the President has had to unilaterally and unconstitutionally step in to alter the terms of the law thus far. That is an impeachable offense.

Obamacare is a massive travesty and, hidden below the headlines is the fact that the failures inherent in its implementation are causing some to die because of bureaucratic delays encountered while waiting to receive the care their plans are supposed to provide, if they were even able to secure a plan.

The election in November of enough Republicans to control the Senate and an increase in the House would permit them to act upon the numerous bills the House has passed to end Obamacare and which are blocked in the Senate by Harry Reid, its Majority Leader.  Ending Obamacare would truly be a blessing for all Americans.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Is Criticizing Obama, Racist?

By Alan Caruba

I predict that, as Obama’s approval and popularity continues to decline, we will hear him and his soul mate, Attorney General Eric Holder, increasingly express the view that their race has something—maybe a lot—to do with the criticism they receive.

In a recent ABC News interview Holder said, “There’s a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that’s directed at me (and) directed at the President. You know, people talking about taking their country back…There’s a certain racial component to this for some people. I don’t think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some, there’s a racial animus.”

Well, duh! Of course, “for some people” there’s a racial animus because “some people” are racists, but the AG neglected to note that they come in all colors, not just white. Nor are they exclusively Republicans.

Was it “racist” for 96% of black voters to pull the lever for Barack Obama in 2008 and 93% to do so in 2012? Were they voting exclusively because of the color of his skin and theirs? There is a strong likelihood of that and why not? This would be a good time to note that Obama would not be President without a substantial amount of support from white voters, 43% in 2008 and 39% in 2012.

It’s safe to say that the white voters were not racists. It’s also safe to say that most of them were Democrats.

Have blacks made progress in the nation’s halls of power? In the 113^th Congress, there are 43 African-Americans in the House of Representatives and one in the Senate. Many of the nation’s cities have black mayors. There have been black governors as well. Et cetera! In June, the nation celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. It worked.

Compare that with Obama’s chief legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act which has less and less public support with every passing day. It was widely protested prior to receiving the solid Democratic vote to pass it. No Republican voted for it. It is not likely to celebrate a comparable anniversary and I suspect that it will be repealed if the GOP gains control of the White House and Congress because that’s what they will have been elected to do.

Things have been going badly for the President and it has nothing to do with his race. (Last time I checked he was half-white.)

It has been Holder who has been most widely quoted for his comments on race and racism, and since he is black, it may seem odd that an African-American who has risen to such a high position should be so conscious of race, but he surely is. Some years back he called the United States a “nation of cowards” on race. During his ABC interview he said “I wouldn’t walk away from that speech. I think we are still a nation that is too afraid to confront racial issues.”

I respectfully disagree. For someone who can recall the last years of the Jim Crow laws in the South and other elements of racism affecting blacks, the emergence of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and laws that were passed to end open bigotry have been such that two generations of blacks in America have been spared a lot of grief as doors were opened everywhere.

Obama was a major beneficiary of the changes that have occurred in our society, but he noted his drop in popularity and approval in the 2013 polls saying “There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President,” adding, “Now, on the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black President.”

More Americans than ever—not just “some folks”—are less inclined to give him the benefit of doubt over his performance in office and it has nothing to do with his race and everything to do with a succession of scandals and other failures that more than five years in office has inflicted on their nation.

It’s not just the President and the Attorney General who believe that any criticism leveled against them has more to do with racism than reality. Oprah Winfrey, when asked if she ever thought that Obama was treated differently because he’s black, famously said, “There is a level of disrespect for the office (of President) that occurs. And that occurs, in some cases—and maybe even many cases—because he’s an African-American.”

Oprah went on to say that “There are still generations of older people who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism. And they just have to die.”  Oy!

It’s not racism. If racism were a factor he wouldn’t be President. Elected twice!

He is being criticized for a growing perception of incompetence, a lack of management and leadership skills, a sense that he would rather be on the golf course than in his office, and a sense of his immaturity. He has never accepted blame for anything. The fact that he routinely lies about everything might have something to do with the criticisms as well.

Sadly, too, the former community organizer has sought to pit one group of Americans against another. Instead of uniting Americans, he has sought to split them off into sectors of race, sex, wealth, and other factors.

The one factor uniting Americans today is the desperate wish that his second term was over.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

It's Only a "War" if Israel Defends Itself

By Alan Caruba

There are many reasons why Hamas, a terrorist organization according to the U.S. State Department, has increased its rocketing of Israel. And it is an increase because Hamas has never ceased from rocketing Israel following it seizure of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority, also known as Fatah.

Hamas is Iran’s Palestinian proxy in the war on Israel in much the same fashion as Hezbollah which controls Lebanon. It lost its support from Syria’s dictator who is engaged in a civil war with Islamists who, controlling a swath of its northern region, have now declared an Islamic State and are threatening Baghdad in Iraq after a swift military victory in its northern and central region. Hamas has also lost the support of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood which has been banned there.

The rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel have generated four conflicts since 2006 during which Israel took military action to reduce them. Israel is only considered to be “at war” when it takes steps to defend itself.

Hamas knows it cannot “win” a military conflict, but as Middle East expert, Dr. Daniel Pipes, noted in the July 11 edition of National Review Online, “The holy grail of political warfare is to win the sympathy of the global Left by presenting oneself as underdog and victim.” The current conflict began when three Israeli teens were kidnapped and killed. This led Israel to round up suspects in the West Bank in the course of searching for the boys. Regrettably an Arab youth was killed in revenge and this was followed by a rain of missiles and rockets from Gaza.

As Jonathan Spyer, a senior research fellow at Israel’s Global Research in International Affairs Center, noted, “There is a tendency to see the Israel-Palestinian arena as somehow set apart from the rest of the Mideast neighborhood, but this is an illusion. Firstly, in the most tangible way, the most potent elements of the Hamas assault on Israeli cities of recent days is made possible only by the movement’s link with Iran.”

The primary reason Israel has not suffered the problems of Syria and Iraq has been its defense forces. “More profoundly, in the simple and brutal logic of the neighborhood, Israel is trying to remind Hamas of the cost of tangling with the Jewish state,” says Spyer. “The objective of this is not to reconquer Gaza, nor to impact on local politics, still less to impose suffering on the Palestinians for its own sake.”

To demonstrate how deeply rooted the hatred of Israel is in the minds and hearts of Palestinians who have never agreed to any terms of peace, David Horowitz, the editor of Times of Israel noted on July 8 that “Gaza could have flourished after Israel wrenched its 8,000 civilians from the 20-plus settlements there in 2005.” Yes, it was Israel that cleared Gaza of its Jewish population to provide a place for the Palestinians to live together!

“Gazans,” said Horowitz, “could have built an island of democracy. Investment could have grown, as it did in the early 1990s, when expat Palestinian investors, believing better times were at hand, fueled a brief property boom. Gaza’s golden beaches could have been a promising tourism draw. If Gaza had become a seemingly stable area, Israel might even have felt sufficiently trusting of the Palestinians as to attempt a similar unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank.”

Instead, “hostility to Israel was so profound that Gazans couldn’t even restrain themselves for long enough to fool us into trusting them.” Instead, in recent weeks “Hamas is firing some of its 100,000-rocket arsenal because it has nothing much to lose anymore—that it has lost the support of Egypt, that it can’t get the money to pay salaries…” Hamas, the Palestinians, and the Sunni-Shiite hostilities of the Mideast all testify to the complete inability of its Arab population to seek peace with anyone, including each other.

As a July 9 Wall Street Journal editorial noted, “Hamas may also believe it can repeatedly go to war against a militarily superior foe because Israel has never exacted a fatal price. Hamas’s aggression serves its political purposes, while Palestinian casualties serve its propaganda purposes.”

“All of this will be condemned by the usual suspects. But Israelis will be denounced for whatever they do, so they might as well act effectively.”

Dr. Pipes noted that, at this point, “Worldwide condemnations of Israel have yet to pour in. Even the Arabic media are relatively quiet. If this pattern holds, Hamas might conclude that raining rockets on Israeli homes is not such a good idea. Indeed, to dissuade it from initiating another assault in a few years, it needs to lose both the military and the political wars, and lose them very badly.”

Israel knows this and will engage in a significant military effort that includes sending troops into Gaza in addition to air strikes.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Mexico is Deliberately Aiding Illegal Aliens

By Alan Caruba

It no doubt strikes a lot of Americans as odd that a U.S. Marine reservist, Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, a 25 year old California native who had served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, was arrested in March for illegally entering Mexico when he made a wrong turn in Tijuana. Being in possession of registered firearms, about which he informed the customs officials, didn’t help. He is still in jail while awaiting a court judgment.

The fact is that Mexico’s illegal immigration laws are a lot tougher than those of the U.S. Under Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be jailed for ten years. Visa violators can be sentenced for six-year terms and Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered to be criminals.

It doesn’t end there. Under Mexican law, foreigners can be deported if they are deemed detrimental to “economic or national interests”, violate Mexican law, are not “physically or mentally healthy”, or lack the “necessary funds for their sustenance.” This applies to their dependents as well.

Somehow, though, thousands of “migrants” from nations to the south of Mexico are passing through to get to our border and are, in the process, no less illegal in Mexico than here. That has changed, however. On July 9, the Examiner reported that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto had met with Guatemalan president Otto Perez Molina and they held a joint press conference to “officially announce an agreement to make it easier for those making the illegal journey to the United States from Central American, to cross into Mexico.” They will be issued a “Regional Visitor’s Card” that allows them to stay in Mexico for 72 hours, just long enough to make it to the U.S. border. The arrangement will include Belize as well. No doubt it will be extended to San Salvador and Honduras.

I have no doubt this has the blessing of the White House. The result is a deliberate program to alter the demographic map of America, increasing the number of Hispanics. It is an illegal assault on the nation, a “transformation” few Americans could ever imagine.

The popular notion is that it has been Mexico’s rural poor that have been eager to come here. The fifth largest country in the Americas, it has a population of more than 113 million and one of the world’s largest economies as the tenth largest oil producer in the world and the largest producer of silver. Mexico is home to the sixth largest electronics industry in the world and it produces the most automobiles of any North American nation. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have had plants in Mexico since the 1930s and Nissan and Volkswagen built plants there in the 1960s.

Mexico is regarded as a firmly established upper middle-income nation, but somewhere between 35% to 46% of the population, about 52 million persons, are regarded to be living in extreme to moderate poverty. It is that population that represents the bulk of the illegal aliens who enter the U.S. They send remittances back to Mexico estimated to be $25 billion, but that represents 0.2% of its GDP.

In 2004 the Center for Immigration Studies released a study that found that illegal alien households were estimated to use $2,700 in services than they pay in taxes, creating a fiscal burden of nearly $10.4 billion on the 2002 federal budget. That, no doubt, has increased over the past decade. Among the federal costs are Medicaid, treatment for the uninsured, food assistance programs, the federal prison and court systems, and federal aid to schools. Illegals generally lack a level of education and hold jobs that represent low levels of skill.

To put it mildly, Mexico is happy to export its own citizens to become illegal aliens in the United States and now, thanks to President Obama’s policies, so do Honduras, San Salvador, and Guatemala. It's worth noting that the children of illegals are awarded American citizenship at birth under current law.

In 2005, writing in The Washington Times on “Border policy perplexities, Stephen Johnson, a senior policy analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation, noted that “Mexican oligarchs see free movement northward as a safety valve to relieve pressure from a million workers entering Mexico’s labor force with no job prospects. Rather than liberalize their economy to end corrupt monopolies, strengthen property rights and establish the rule of law, they would rather keep things as they are and merely ship their jobless, poorly educated throngs north.”

With 92 million Americans out of work or who have ceased looking, it is little wonder that there is little sympathy for Mexicans and others who illegally enter the nation. Even so, there is outrage that so many are now children and that President Obama could not stir himself from a schedule of fund raisers to visit the border or one of the detention centers to house them.

According to a 2012 estimate of the Homeland Security Department, there were approximately 11.5 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. by the end of 2011. As reported in The Washington Times in March 2012, “Of the current illegal population, only 14% have entered the U.S. since 2005. That means the vast majority have been in the country for years, putting down the kind of roots that immigrant-rights advocates say should earn them the change to achieve citizenship. Those favoring stricter enforcement balk at that, saying it amounts to rewarding those who have broken the law the longest.”

Mexicans still account for most of the illegal aliens at 6.8 million or 59%. If they were living illegally in Mexico, they would be deported. Moreover, illegals from other nations such as China and from the Mideast are also passing through without the Mexican legal system taking any notice of them.

The current “humanitarian crisis” has sharpened the political divisions between those who want to build a big wall to keep out all illegals and those who want to extend amnesty to those who have been living here for several years. The recent defeat of the House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, (R-VA) has signaled the growing opposition to policies that facilitate illegal immigration.

What is clear, however, is that Mexico, in addition to its double standard regarding aliens who enter it, is now actively engaging what should be called an act of war.

America is already in deep financial debt. It cannot afford to absorb and pay for thousands of illegal aliens. Laws have to be changed. Fences need to be built and the border needs aggressive patrol. The alternative is to begin referring to the United States of America as the Estados Unidos.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

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