Krauthammer does it again

It’s still Okay to be a Muslim in America. Barack Obama just doesn’t know it.

How Peace Protestors have made peace an impossibility

They drove returning Vietnam vets from the lighted areas, forcing them to hold court for decades, only with those who shared their experience. The ”Make Love Not War” movement warped the reality of the world, twisting it into blissful visions of half-naked, twirling children of Aquarius who believed they’d caught a glimpse of a reality truer than this one, while chasing White Rabbits and living on Lisurgic Acid.

A generation of our young men returned from Saigon to find a country that had abandoned them and labeled them baby-killers. It was great fun for the Aquarians, the feeling of utter self-righteousness. They’d taken up their cause, not for America, not to protect our soldiers, but for themselves. They didn’t like this world, because they’d refused to accept that life is pain. So they quelled the pain that is so obvious, with drugs and feelings of ideological superiority, trashing cities, rioting, lighting fires, committing acts of terrorism against federal institutions–all in the name of peace.

These folks are still around to some measure, though much less animated. Blogs allow them to vent. But in many ways they’re the same, in that the refuse to see the world as it is, and how it will always be. By their hyperbolic rhetoric and impossible demands, they paralyze even the candidates they put in office. Or their demands are so preposterous, that no party would make their ideologies part of the party-line. Not for long anyways.

By transposing their fantastic views of how the world should be, over the reality of how it really is, the Peace Monger increases suffering. He breaks bread with mass-murderers, if only to prove his world-views are real.  The hateful rhetoric and mantric labels (fascist, baby-killer, War Monger) bears no relation to history. Paul Wolfowitz, for example, in the beginnings of the Iraq War was met by howling crowds calling him a Nazi or Fascist. None of these Neo-Aquarians knew probably, that almost all of Wolfowitz’ family died in the holocaust.

The Aquarians are about to take a huge blow. Obama’s election has no doubt quelled some of the animus. But when realities set in, and US troops are shipped overseas to do the killing that sometimes needs to be done, the Golden Boy will tarnish like metals of the ancient warrior: Iron and bronze.

There is a better way for the Middle East, but Islam fears the path

Islam fears women's liberty

Yesterday, while reading through Oliver North’s excellent book, Heroes, I suddenly felt a greatsorrow for the people of the Middle east, in particular, the women. The book has many high quality pictures, and several of them showed women smiling as they displayed purple voting fingers. Their faces, were finally able to be touched by sun light, without fear of a Taliban commissar whipping their ankles for breaching Sharia.

In so many parts of the world, Islam targets women and children, denying them education and basic freedoms. But the cat has clawed its way out of the bag. Freedom, education, and a life without crushing guilt have smashed Sharia’s bulwark.

The media got it wrong. The world is a better, if still unstable place. I don’t think Iraq will ever go back to the way it was under Saddam. They’d never take back the past in exchange for America’s absence. Liberals, either well-meaning or merely hateful, would have left the women of that sandy part of the world to a certain doom.

Islam fears children. It fears women. Mostly because the men of Islam in many cases, fear themselves, their own impulses frighten them and they grant blame to the fairer sex the way they do the the West.

Article by Mark Bowden on Bush and shoe-throwing incident.

Mark Bowden is the famed author of, Blackhawk Down–A Story of Modern War. He has written several award-winning books since then, as well as several articles for various papers.

Though Bowden is certainly no Republican, I find his thinking and writing to be honest and I can ask no more from anyone. In this article, Bowden argues that George Bush should ask that the shoe-thrower be released. And I agree with Bowden on this. As Bowden pointed out, Bush immediately joked about the situation, calling the shoe a “Size 10 missile”. He was unharmed. I would like to know what the thrower’s attitude would be if Bush asked for his release. I think it would be the Christian thing to do, and sometimes there’s nothing better at embarrassing your enemies than to offer him the other cheek.

Iraq is the Middle East’s last hope–and now the Dems own it.

You see, I’ve been accused of being a “Neoconservative”. Neocon, they say. Now I know humans need labels to identify things, so I won’t go on a tirade about not labeling me. No, we need labels–such as Moonbat. I like that one and plan to keep on using it.

People have accused me of being an apologist for Bush. I don’t know if that fits the bill, but what I do know is that George Bush was steam-rolled by the biggest Moonbat machine that I’ve witnessed in my life. The Iraq War simply sent the left into a blind, near-psychotic rage. It was embarrassing to watch really. First Bush facilitated the attacks on the Twin Towers. Then he lied about WMD. Then, Saddam Hussein wasn’t that bad of a guy after all. Then David Patraeus was a liar and Bush crony. Then the surge didn’t really work. Then we were building more terrorists by killing Saddam.

The Dems tried to block money that would buy the troops equipment–while deployed in a war zone and fighting the modern Barbarian Horde–Extreme Islam. They denied having voted for the war–which everyone knows they did–Hillary, Kerry, Gore–all Democratic presidential candidates that gave Bush the power to persecute the war with extreme prejudice.

So again, the Democrat party did what it’s done my whole life–stand against our own military and snuggle up to horrible dictators. They were willing to let our country lose this war, as long as it brought them votes. And it worked. But now it’s their hot potato. Be sure that they don’t want thousands of Americans slain in a 30 minutes window as happened on that clear day, back in 2001. Because for the last 8 years they’ve been trying to tell us that nothing Bush did was really working. It was all coincidence. So now Barack does the wise thing and hires on the best people for our defense. And the Moonbats are hating it. But none of these people have executive power. They merely advise the president, for the most part. And we won this war with them. And we’ll keep fighting it with them–and the Moonbats will keep doing what they do best–denying that war can be the answer.

So it’s yours Democrats. Have fun. I know I won’t blame you if no more Americans die by terrorist attacks on our soil.

Iraq is the last hope for the Arab world. The last hope for Democracy there.  The Middle East has already rejected the West. It cast the British out, but still wanted to mimic what they’d seen the British do. But the Arabs failed. Now, that part of the world only gazes at the West through jealous eyes, masking its resentment with the mythology of Western oppression. So the Democrats fought against the last hope for the Arab world to free itself–prove itself. To cast aside the yolk of totalitarian regime, genocide, hate, starvation and privation.

The Democrats ranted against hope itself, but now the ball’s in their court. Let the games begin.

Applaud Obama where it’s due…but Russia looms.

Let’s be happy about recent appointments by Obama. He’s decided to keep Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. Gates did an outstanding job in a position that garners no sympathy and is always a prime target for wacky far-lefters. Sweeping out the rubble that Rumsfeld left on the Iraqi battlefield, Gates calmly went about turning a disaster into a clear victory. He has bi-partisan support, too.

Obama also decided to bring on retired Gen. James Jones as a national security advisor. It was Gates, acting as NATO supreme commander, who appointed Gen. David Patraeus to lead the surge effort in Iraq. Quite honestly, I’m shocked. Instead of appointing hacks and demogogues to these important and decidedly un-leftist positions, Obama brought in men proven in battle. Jones represents the first military man to serve as top security advisor since Colin Powell served 20 years ago under Reagan.

Bush’s appointment of Rumsfeld is probably the single biggest reason that the Democrats now hold power. He arrogance is legendary. No military man of any regard was immune from Rumsfeld’s attempts to put powerful men in uniform, “in their place.” Instead of listening to men who knew and had experience, such as Gen Shinseki, Rumsfeld blazed ahead in a world of his own making–and killed our soldiers and national morale in doing so.

Russia, after brokering some new deals with Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chavez, sent a flotilla of warships to the coast of Venezuela. Russian President Medvedev has been visiting the country after Russia sold Venezuela over $4 Billion in arms. Chavez is attempting to have constitutional ammendments made that will ensure he remains president for life. However, his popularity is waning. His people are starving while he makes riduiculous statements, wastes money on weapons he’ll never use (if he loves his life and his county’s infrastructure) and cosy’s up to evil geniuses Medvedev and Putin.

It’s gonna be an interesting eight years…

Slowly and surely, Russia is attempting to undermine the United States. They’ll continue for the next eight years, or more.

Have we learned nothing?

The testing is done here, for my platoon at Ft. Huachuca. We have only a 9 day field training exercise to overcome before we move onto a short vacation and then to our duty-stations.

Last week in class we participated in a wargame called “Red Vs. Blue.” The class was split in half and one side was assigned blue (American Forces) the other, red (insurgents). The diceless wargame simulated American forces conducting stability operations in the town of Sierra Vista, where Ft. Huachuca is located.

I won’t go into needless detail abut what happened, but know that I was assigned to the American side and then assigned as the 101st Airborne targeting analyst. My job was to non-lethally or lethally target high value targets as they appeared through recon and surveillance assets. This could be done in a number of ways.

One of the students is an E-5 Sergeant. He is re-classing his MOS to become a Intel Analyst. Though I’m student class leader, the Sergeant is the actual class leader, being a permanent party member and of course, out-ranking me. We are very different kinds of people, he and I. He’s OCD in the extreme. I’m messy. He’s a liberal Democrat from New York. I’m a conservative from Maine. He’s reluctant to use force in situations that I believe it’s needed.

The final round of our wargame had commenced. As an analyst, I’ve been trained by a former Marine Captain to give my superiors my educated opinion on what needs to be done, even if I know he won’t want to hear it. In the previous turns, Red Cell had managed to assassinate a city council member and blow up Wal-Mart, while we’d managed to kill several insurgents and capture one of them for interrogation at a traffic control point. Blue Cell (us) was conducting what is called phase IV operations, or stability ops. In other words, the primary full-spectrum military assault was over and our mission was to stabilize the local government and encourage rule of law.

The insurgent controlled areas had been identified on the map and we’d narrowed the possible location of the insurgent safehouse to a 2 square kilomter area at the south-eastern portion of Sierra Vista.

I knew what had to be done this late in the game. We had to kill and capture the terrorists, not sit back and hope that we’d deployed security forces at the right locations each turn, while the terrorists picked targets of opportunity. It was only logical and in line with military doctrine of seizing the initiative–and never giving it back.

The Sergeant didn’t see things my way. He was afraid of friendly casualties. I explained to him that it was the Army’s job to fight the insurgents, and thus gain the trust of the local populace by protecting them from harm. To do this we had to place troops in harms way so that we could win the fight the only way it can be won: By inflicting more pain on the enemy than he inflicts on you.

I knew I was in for a fight not only with Red Cell, but with my Democrat Sergeant and one other analyst who didn’t get it. The other analyst advised that we place traffic control points away from the border of the insurgent controlled area of the city. Originally, I had placed them along the border of a neutral area and the insurgent’s zone. I knew that we had to gain the trust of the populace in the neutral zone–because as the saying goes in counter-insurgency ops: The populace is key terrain. By moving the TCPs away from the insurgent controlled border, we would allow the insurgents to freely move into the neutral area, bend the populace to their will and then conduct ops from their new terrain into the area that we controlled.

I argued my case, and the Sergeant reluctantly agreed to go with my plan.

Last turn: I advised that we organized a door-to-door sweep of all populated areas in the insurgent controlled zone. I pointed to the map and noted that there were only about ten small streets in the 2×2 Km area and that 2 battalions of infantry with Stryker infantry fighting vehicles and Humvees could clear each house in about 6 hours. That was 300 men, going to each house, kicking the doors if they had to and verifying the location of the terrorist safehouse.

The Sergeant really hated this. He said he wouldn’t put the soldier’s lives in danger. I argued that it had to be done, and that this kind of straight-up fight was the last thing insurgents want. They prefer hit and run tactics because of inferior training and numbers. The Sergeant said that we’d make enemies of the local populace by invading their homes. I told him that they were already our enemies, hence the insurgent controlled label the area had. We had already established marshal law, and in order to make the populace in that area ours we needed to control it. Most importantly we needed to kill or capture those conducting the attacks. We would deal with the populace’s opinion later, but for now we had to show that we were in control.

It wasn’t to be. Our team played for the tie and that’s exactly what we got in the last turn according to the game’s arbiters.

Lesson: This is exactly what happened in Iraq after the invasion and things went to hell as we allowed insurgents free reign in places like Fallujah. We were afraid of CNN and Newsweek, even as terroists continued to bomb us and the Iraqi government until the camels came home. Then came Patraeus, who knew that the war had to be fought on every level. You do hand out soccer balls and candy, but you also continue killing the enemy. Things will get broken, but as we’ve seen, it works.

The hearts and minds campaign got headlines in this war. War hasn’t changed though. There were several reasons that Patraeus’ surge worked, not the least of which was more infantry with more guns… please admit that Mr. Obama.

Army considering replacing M-4 carbine

Colt’s M-4 carbine contract with the US Army is near expiration. Since 1994 Colt has been contracted with the Army, supplying our troops in Iraq with the M-4, a cut-down version of the M-16. The M-4 also provides modular capabilities.

Recently though, as a result of some troops experiences in the dusty conditions of Iraq, the weapon’s performance has come under fire in its own right. The Army has conducted testing at its laboratory in Maryland, pitting the M-4 against newer weapons systems. All of the weapons were sprinkled with talcum powder in an attempt to simulate conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Things didn’t work out well for Colt.

The M-4 finished last in weapons jams. Its competitors were the FN Herstal SCAR, H+K 416 and the H+K XM8. The M-4 experienced more jams than all of the other weapons combined. The other weapons are comparable–or even slightly cheaper–than the M-4: About $1,500 a piece.

Brig. General Mark Brown defended Colt’s system by stating that the testing was not an exact replica of the conditions in Iraq and that soldiers need to clean their weapons regardless of the system; muzzle-loader or assault rifle.

At the risk of destroying my new career in the army, I think General Brown is ignoring an obvious problem. While 89% of polled troops in Iraq stated that the M-4 performed adequately, 19% percent of 2600 troops that were veterans of firefights said that their M-4 jammed during the shooting. This is a horrible ratio of good performance to weapon’s failure. Nearly 1 in 5 of troops involved in shooting their weapon at enemy forces can expect their weapon to fail them, if only until they can conduct clearing measures.

Anecdotally, I can say that the M-16’s performance is far below what I would expect from my weapon in combat. Even in training, I’ve experienced numerous stoppages, as has every soldier I work with. Some can only fire one or two rounds at a time before clearing a jam and continuing, only to have to repeat the process a few rounds later. This is from weapons right out of the armory–not new–but nonetheless very clean.

One of the problems that I see is the weapon’s breach. It’s called a “star chamber.” It is shaped like a star and is designed to funnel a 5.56 round up and into the barrel. The star chamber has grooves that, when slightly dirty, can grab rounds before they are seated in the barrel. Not good. More reliable assault rifles, such as the AK-47, merely have a polished chrome ramp that rides the bullet to its home.

The M-4 does have some excellent qualities. It’s super light, compact and accurate. It’s modular rail system allow soldiers and operators to modify the weapon to their immediate preferences and needs. The Army wants a rifle with an effective range of about 600 meters. The M-4 is about 500.

With all of the good qualities noted, it’s a shame that none of them matter if the weapon doesn’t work when it’s most needed. The Army has already been through this in Vietnam, when the first generation M-16 cost American lives by repeatedly failing in the muddy, wet conditions of Indo-China.

The Army has changed a lot in the years since the Iraq War began. New body armor, up-armored HMVVs, new tactics and technology for defeating IEDs and insurgents. It would be a shame if we deny our warriors their most important asset: a reliable personal weapon.

Anbar Province

Anbar Province, the most violent province in Iraq before David Patraeus took over the job as lead commander in Iraq, has now been handed back to the people of Iraq. American blood shed in Fallujah and Ramadi washed defeat away from victory– and revealed too that Barak Obama cannot lead this country–because he denies that blood the honor it deserves.

And where are the headlines? Instead, we hear about Sarah Palin’s personal issues, if they can even be called that.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden have already made astoundingly bad choices for America and the world, not to mention for millions of Iraqis, and the Democratic ticket hasn’t even reached the President’s office yet.

They both wanted out of Iraq when Patraeus spoke to Congress not too long ago. Hillary Clinton too. They’re all afraid of Iraq, because they know nothing of war’s purpose, so they just want to avoid things they know little of. It’s only human nature. And reading the polls told them they could get votes by avoiding tough choices.

 Biden and Obama, against all perceivable evidence, continued to deny that the surge would and did work. The event took place right in front of their eyes, and yet they could not cast aside they’re own beliefs, beliefs they got from their own adoring media-that success was not an option.

Why in the world should I vote for them? Say what you will about George Bush. Say he is clueless, dumb, a cowboy, incompetent, say all of it. But Obama’s conclusions on Iraq are even more stupid. He had the advantage of having Iraq develop right in front of him, where Bush had to make decisions as things developed from 9/11 on.

And still, Obama, Biden and virtually all of the pandering Democrats couldn’t make the right choice. And as long as their party lives and dies by the failures of George Bush, they will never understand. They took the unpopularity of Iraq and ran with it for purely political reasons. They selfishly placed the lives of millions at risk, so they could have power, and even now they deny their own spoken conclusions, uttered mere months ago.

Yet, Obama still maintains his image as a different kind of politician.

He simply doesn’t understand. He’s out of his league on force options. It doesn’t fit what he was taught at his liberal colleges, what he discussed with unshaven dissidents in Political Science class.

If only he knew that the child’s playground is as edifying as the classroom when it comes to dealing with bullies and tyrants alike.

War’s Future

Despite our hopes and efforts, we are epochs away from hammering swords into plowshares.

Pax Americana is real, though. Industrial war is but a romantic memory, resolved for the time being,  to lurk amongst the pages of high school history books and hour-long Discovery Channel shows. Millions of lives are saved for that.

Instead of the classic “couldron battles” of yesteryear, war is reduced to the simmer of a slow-cooker. No more massive tank clashes. No more dashing field marshalls with tactical brilliance. The true king of the battlefield will have to master cultural and mass psychology. How to control groups of people who are willing to kill and die over thousand year blood-feuds.

Under the leadership of men like Gen. David Patraeus, we’ve come a long way in learning to deal with insurgencies. But I’m not sure some future politicians will get it. In an article that I recently posted about Patraeus, one Democrat criticizes the surge, not for it’s effectiveness but because of its effectiveness. He states that because there was a huge reduction in violence after the surge, future administartions may be more apt to believe that problems can be solved with violence.  

And he’s right. But it’s nothing to be ashamed about.

The myth that violence solves nothing has been smashed, its death celebrated in a hundred wars of ideology, land grabs and blood feuds. We can never afford though, to allow our enemies to know the truth–that violence works–while ourselves denying that same truth. Millions around the world, and throughout history have died or suffered the most horrible tortures because evil men knew that violence was an option, while the premise was denied by hopeful or just plain cowardly leaders and populace.

We must not elect men to office who tell us, that through policy, we can make the world an easy place to be. Easier, yes. But we can never avoid choosing. Not once.

Those that want isolationism seek to gain a moral high-ground with their rhetoric. They believe that America has done more damage than good in its foreign wars, especially recently. They misconstrue losing the wars, or those wars having no easily defined outcome, with the morality of fighting in the first place. I will grant, that states should always consider whether a war in winnable before entering into it. And obviously it is not right to throw away the lives of a nation’s soldiers in un-winnable wars.

But many of those arguments are made behind the veil of time, through which the evils of Soviet power remain blurred. Not only ideological evil, resulting in millions of executions and persecutions, but stupid economic evil too. Communism just doesn’t make money. So people starve and become slow, dumb, uncreative and in the end–unloving. Ask the women of old Soviet Russia what their men were like. Barbarians, that’s what. Lazy, drunkards whose wages were the same if they scrubbed toilets or performed bypasses. So corruption became the order of the day. It was the only way to get ahead, and it’s doomed modern Russia to be its slave.

I digress, as I’m prone.

We can not claim though, a moral high ground, when millions die and something can be done about it. Neither are we right when our own people face danger in the form of jihadists, zealots and cataclysmic madmen, but we choose to ignore them in hopes they’ll go away.

They won’t.

When governments ignore terrorism, at least the larger acts of it, it encourages the terrorist. As much as many of them claim to want martydom, the biological impulse to live remains. The idea of laser-guided bombs and efficient American troops raiding their layers, is frightening.

And yes, we must kill them.

We will have to deal with their propaganda and recruiting efforts after. But remember that for one who wants to hate, for one who feels empowered by his hate, there is always a reason to hate. Combining that hatred with a slight twist to the tenets of Islam will always bring armies of more haters.

So America must protect the populace in which the terrorist grows. We must show the people that we are not only using military force to protect America, but to protect them. In doing so, we again protect ourselves. We segregate the suicide bomber from his own people. Instead of the populace believing that the violence will stop if America just leaves, they must know that the violence will stop when the terroists are gone. When there are no more terror-schools.

In the end we must choose where we stand on American intervention abroad. This Iraq war did indeed carry on for far too long. But confusing it’s length with its rightness is a mistake.