Clueless Commander

Israel’s enemies and our enemies are the same. Why doesn’t President Obama know this? This guy is supposed to be brilliant? Either he’s clueless or he’s conspiring to turn our biggest ally in the Middle East over to our mutual enemies. I cannot think of any other reason why he would make a major speech saying Israel must return to its 1967 borders. Doesn’t he know this would invite still another invasion of Israel by the hostile, Arab-Muslim countries which surround it? They’ve already invaded three times: First in 1948, then again in 1967, and still again in 1973. These countries didn’t want peace with Israel. They wanted Israel gone.The Amin al-Husseini, Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, cooperated with Hitler during WWII, recruiting Muslims to serve in Himmler’s SS to kill Jews during the Holocaust. During their attempted 1948 Arab invasion of Israel, Nazis were recruited to kill Jews again. At least some Palestinian Muslims were advised to get out of the way because the invaders intended to kill Jews and it would be nasty, so thousands left for Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt lest they get in the way. They expected to return when the Jews were all killed, but it didn’t work out that way. Those pesky Jews, with their backs to the wall and fighting for the first time in two millennia for their own homeland, prevailed over much larger invading Arab armies whose humiliation was intense. Afterward, they had all those Palestinian Arab refugees in their home countries to whom they’d bragged about their military prowess. These hapless Palestinians were now homeless and unwanted even by their fellow Arabs. Arab Muslim humiliation was so intense they invaded again in 1967, but again were defeated by scrappy Jews. This time though, Israel retained the West Bank from the invading Jordanians, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from invading Egyptians, and the Golan Heights from the invading Syrians. Even though those countries invaded Israel again in 1973, Obama wants Israel to give those strategic lands back to the invaders as a way to “achieve peace” in the region? What planet does he live on?Yours truly at the Temple Mount (taken from Palestinian East Jerusalem)

After 1967, Jews were in possession of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount - their holiest place - for the first time in 2000 years. Constructed on top, however, was the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, as an “in-your-face” gesture to Christians and Jews more than 1200 hundred years ago. Nonetheless, Israeli allowed Muslims to maintain control over their shrines on top, and were content to worship at the Wailing Wall below the Temple Mount in the back - all that remains of Herod’s Temple. Now President Obama expects Israel to give it all over to the radical Muslims in Hamas who are dedicated in their very charter to destroy the Jews. Is he crazy?Church of the Nativity

If Israel went back to the pre-1967 borders as Obama insists, not only would Israel become indefensible, Hamas would also control the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Old Jerusalem. Those are the holiest sites in Christendom, where Christ was born, where he died and where Christians believe he rose from the dead - sacred places for 1.5 billion people around the world. What could we expect with radical Muslim control of these sacred sites if it becomes a Palestinian state?Church of the Holy Sepulcher

In 2002, Muslims assaulted the Church of the Nativity - oldest Christian Church in the world and held it for 39 days. It is located in Bethlehem, of course, which is in the West Bank. Radical Muslim Palestinians shot it up, ransacked it, urinated and defecated inside and held Christian clerics hostage. When I was there in May, 2007, it still hadn’t been completely cleaned up.

Israelis know what their Muslim enemies have planned for them even if President Obama doesn’t, and they won’t go like sheep to the slaughter as they did under the Nazis. Radical Muslim Iran is building nuclear weapons to “wipe Israel off the map,” but Israel has had its own nukes for fifty years. Does Obama really think Israel is going to lay down and die to appease Muslim pride?

If he does, he truly lives in La-La Land. His proposals won’t lead to peace in the region. Instead, they’ll make a wider, more devastating war more likely. It’s time for Obama to become our former president.

Gutsy Decision?

“This is a Viet Cong captive being waterboarded,” I said to the class after fast-forwarding through a videotape from Stanley Karnow’s “Vietnam: A Television History.” We were studying the Vietnam War in the context of the Cold War.

“You can see that South Vietnamese intelligence officers have placed a cloth over the captive’s face and are pouring water on it. This gives the captive the feeling that he is drowning as the water goes into his mouth and up his nostrils when he tries to breathe.” After viewing the whole clip, I asked: “Does this look like torture to you?”

Each had watched intently but none would offer an opinion. Then I explained that after we captured the third-highest-ranking official in al Qaeda, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, he was waterboarded and gave up information that eventually led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. “And,” I told them, “Khalid Sheik Mohammed planned the September 11th attack for Osama Bin Laden.”

I waited for that to sink in and said, “Is this torture?”

“It was worth it if it led us to Bin Laden,” said a boy.

“Okay,” I answered, “But is it torture?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, Khalid Sheik Mohammed wasn’t a prisoner of war. He was a terrorist, so I don’t think the Geneva Conventions apply to him,” said another boy.

“Is it torture?” I repeated.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

“Left-wing journalist Christopher Hitchens agreed to be waterboarded to see what it was like,” I explained. “He said it doesn’t simulate drowning: ‘You are drowning, or rather being drowned. . . . Believe me, it’s torture.’”
I played the Hitchens clip from Youtube.

“So what do you think?” I asked. “Is it torture?”

“It’s all right if it was done on the guy who planned the September 11th attacks,” said a girl. “He killed 3000 people.”

Back in September I’d shown them a “Today Show” recording of the events of that day to give them a feel for what happened in 2001 when they were only four years old. “The Bush/Cheney Administration called waterboarding one of their ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’” I explained. “Is that a euphemism for torture?”

“It’s all right if it’s against terrorists,” said another boy.

“Is it torture?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Open your books to page 885,” I said. “Look at the Eighth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.” I asked a girl to read it.

Dutifully, she read: “‘Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.’”

“Thank you,” I said. “The part where it says, ‘nor cruel and unusual punishments imposed’ is what I wanted you to see. Our country has a long tradition of outlawing torture, but that would be against American citizens.”

“Yeah,” said the boy. “These people were not citizens and they weren’t prisoners of war either. They were terrorists. They had no rights. It was all right to waterboard them to get information that would be useful in fighting them.”

“Obama’s CIA Director, Leon Panetta, said the information about who Bin Laden’s courier was - someone who carried messages back and forth between him and others in al Qaeda - came from Khalid Sheik Mohammed while he was being waterboarded during the Bush Administration,” I said. “With that information, the CIA tracked him down and began following him. He led them right to the house where Osama Bin Laden was living with three of his wives. Without waterboarding, the USA might never have gotten Bin Laden. Other officials in the Obama Administration, however, deny that.”

“So, who thinks it was all right to waterboard KSM?” I asked.

Half raised their hands.

“Who things it was wrong?”

Three hands went up.

“Eric Holder, Attorney General in the Obama Administration, is investigating our CIA agents who waterboarded KSM and two other terrorists while Bush was president. He’s trying to build a case against them for war crimes,” I explained. “That might be one reason other officials in the Obama Administration deny that waterboarding had anything to do with discovering where Osama Bin Laden was hiding.”

President Obama was interviewed about killing Bin Laden on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, but Steve Croft didn’t ask him any tough questions,” I continued. “However, Obama’s National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon was interviewed on “Fox News Sunday,” and Chris Wallace asked him, ‘Why is shooting an unarmed man in the face legal and proper . . . but [waterboarding] Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is just as bad an operator, isn’t?’”


“Donilon said, ‘[Waterboarding] is not consistent with our values.’”

“Then Wallace said, ‘But shooting an unarmed man in the face is consistent with our values?’”

“Donilon said, ‘We’re at war with Osama Bin Laden.’”

“Wallace said, ‘We’re at war with Khalid Sheik Mohammed.’”

I played the above exchange for the class and asked, “Did Donilon answer Wallace’s questions to your satisfaction?”

“Not really,” said a boy.

Other students shook their heads.

“Another thing,” I continued. “Generals appointed by President Obama made new ‘rules of engagement’ for our soldiers fighting in Afghanistan - many of them former students from this classroom - under which our guys can’t shoot until they’re shot at first. And, if they’re shot at from a group of civilians, they can’t shoot back at all.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said another boy. Others nodded agreement.

“And now, even in cases where they capture Taliban terrorists who they’ve videotaped planting IEDs or ‘Improvised Explosive Devices,’ or ‘roadside bombs’ as they’re sometimes called, which have killed hundreds of our soldiers, and these terrorists have been tested to reveal explosive residue on their hands, they have to be released after 96 hours. Our soldiers know they’re going to plant more bombs and still they have to release them! This is discouraging to say the least, and it makes it much more risky our our guys.”

“Our Commander-in-Chief is putting our soldiers at risk with these rules of engagement,” I continued, “but his staff is telling us what a ‘gutsy decision’ Obama made by approving a strike on Bin Laden from the comfort and safety of the White House.”

In Dubious Battle

There’s a war in Libya and we’re in it. Obama Administration officials don’t want to call it a war and they don’t want to call it a battle either. They prefer to call it a “kinetic military action.” President Obama ordered our military to protect civilians in Libya who were being killed by Colonel Kaddafi as he tries to wipe out rebels there who want to overthrow him. It’s much more complicated than that though, as wars always are. We’re taking the side of the rebels in a civil war. They’re going to benefit as we restrict Kaddafi’s forces, but who are these rebels we’re helping? If and when they take over Libya, will they be better than Kaddafi? Let’s hope. Might they be worse? Evidence exists that they could be worse, both for Libya and for us. We don’t know, and that’s the problem with what President Obama is doing.

Does our president have a long-term policy in the Middle East or is he just reacting to events as they occur? Is he operating under the auspices of the United Nations? NATO? Is the United States leading this operation or following? Who is with us and who is against us? None of that is clear. If we’re protecting civilians from a dictator, why are we doing that in Libya and not Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Bahrain, or Iran in which civilians are suffering fully as much as they are in Libya?

Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, advised him that Libya was not a threat to America and we had no strategic interests there. Several weeks ago, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, advised him that we needed to establish a “no-fly zone” in the country as soon as possible and so did Senator John Kerry but Obama did nothing for two weeks. He claims to have been a professor of Constitutional law, but then he acted without consulting Congress, which is constitutionally dubious and which prompted Ohio Democrat Congressman Dennis Kucinich to call for his impeachment.

We have a commander-in-chief who can read a speech from a teleprompter very well. While campaigning, he can appear confident and smart to voters, 52% of whom elected him. Reading from a teleprompter isn’t enough anymore, but it’s increasingly evident that he isn’t good at much of anything else. He’s president now though, and he has to make tough decisions. He can’t just vote “present” the way he was accustomed to in the Illinois legislature, but he’s avoiding decisions until he’s absolutely forced to make them - and Libya is the result.

Is there some other way to make sense of all this? It looks to me like Obama epitomizes the worst of the liberal baby-boomer world view. He’s a reflection of the people who elected him. Baby boomers blame their parents for the evils of the world; Obama blames George Bush. He believes the world would be a better place if it were not for capitalism and US foreign policy. Rather than believing that America is an exceptional country in the history of the world, he sees America as a problem. He’s a utopian who thinks people around the world would get along fine if they weren’t “exploited.” The world would be all smiling happy people holding hands if it weren’t for US imperialism.

Obama admires a Europe which has spent two generations apologizing and flailing itself for colonizing Africa and Asia and then expanding socialist welfare programs for everyone, including illegal immigrants. Now it looks like he’s earnestly trying to copy those policies here in the United States. That both Europe and America are going bankrupt as a result seems not to bother him.

As for dealing with the Middle East, President Obama’s actions so far indicate that his plan has been to make nice speeches in Muslim countries apologizing for American “arrogance” and all will be well there, but it isn’t working. They’re burning him in effigy just as they did George Bush. That the rebel commander we’re helping in Libya fought against the United States in Afghanistan, that he recruits al Qaida terrorists to his side doesn’t seem to trouble our president. That they’re murdering black immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa doesn’t trouble him either.Rebel Commander Abdel-Hakim Al-Hasidi from Daily Telegraph UK

Until last week when he intervened, Arab Muslim terrorists were killing each other in Libya and we didn’t have to do anything but watch. What could be better than that? Why mess that up? I just don’t understand the rationale and neither, it seems, does our president. I listened to his speech Monday night, but came away still not understanding why we’re going further into debt and further committing our already overstretched military to install a government in Libya that shows all signs of being worse than terrorist, transvestite, mentally-disturbed Colonel Kaddafi.

If our commander-in-chief is going to commit our soldiers anywhere, he has to know what the goal is, then use maximum force to achieve it as quickly as possible. Or, don’t go in at all.