Category Archives: defense policy

He’s Been Booker’d

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Fox News reported this last night:

The office of the United States’ top intelligence official appeared to take the blame Friday for the Obama administration’s changing narrative on the US Consulate attack in Libya, saying administration officials who initially claimed the attack was spontaneous did so based on intelligence officials’ guidance.

The statement by Shawn Turner, spokesman for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, was put out late Friday….

As Fox News put it, “Turner’s statement marked a complete reversal from the initial claims.”  Turner’s statement included this, in part:

In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo.  We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available.  Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving.

However, Fox News also has been reporting that two intel sources have told them that intelligence officials knew within 24 hours that the attack was terrorism and that they suspected it was tied to Al Qaeda.  As Fox dryly put it, it’s unclear why the intelligence community told Executive Branch officials it was spontaneous.

This is highly reminiscent of the event late last spring involving Newark, NJ, Mayor Cory Booker.  In a May “Meet the Press” interview, Booker told NBC’s host, Dick Gregory, that the Democratic Party campaign’s attacks on Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney (in all but name at the time) for his time at Bain Capital were “nauseating.”  Twenty-four hours later, Booker had been browbeaten by the White House into apologizing for his nauseating remark.

This is what is being done to Clapper—he’s being forced to take the fall for this administration’s dishonesty in its mischaracterization of the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left our Ambassador to Libya murdered along with three of his staff.

Foreign Policy and China

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As useless and timid as our foreign policy “strategy” has so graphically shown itself to be in the Middle East and northern Africa, it’s just as foolish in Asia, most especially regarding the People’s Republic of China.

In response to Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s much ballyhooed (in some circles) “pivot toward Asia,” Ambassador John Bolton, writing for The Wall Street Journal at the above link, points out these small details concerning the PRC and its relationship with us.

Whoever becomes president in January will require a policy of sustained American involvement and leadership….  The US is already perilously close to the point strategically where China will simply run the table with its claims [to the South China Sea, right up to the shores of the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia].  Potential hostilities are no longer hypothetical.

Last week in Beijing, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated the usual US bromides, namely: resolving the region’s maritime disputes peacefully through negotiation consistent with international-law principles regarding freedom of navigation.

The PRC answered this nonsense with a naked threat of war if we don’t shape up and accede.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi replied bluntly that China was sovereign over the territories, and government media mouthpiece Xinhua warned the US that “strategic miscalculations about a rising power could well lead to confrontations and even bloody conflicts, like the war between ancient Athens and Sparta.  To avoid such a catastrophic scenario, Washington has to change its obsolete and doubt-ridden thinking pattern and cooperate with Beijing to settle their differences.

So. Obama has received his marching orders.

Bolton then offers a solution, albeit one that the present administration will find itself unable to implement after looking in the mirror.

Such [timidity] must give way to a strategic approach based on three key elements.

First, the US must decide unequivocally that Beijing’s expansionism…is contrary to American national interests.  There are high, tangible stakes for us and our Asian and Pacific friends, ranging broadly from Japan and South Korea to Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) including Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.  The stakes include undersea mineral resources and sea lanes of communication and trade critical to US and global prosperity.
…
This is about power and resolve.

Second, we must rapidly rebuild America’s Navy, without which any shift in strategic thinking is hollow.  This is a maritime problem at the operational level, demanding adequate resources

China is building its own blue-water navy…actively pursuing anti-access, area-denial tactics and weapons systems intended to push the US back from the Western Pacific.  Unless we increase the Navy’s capabilities, or essentially abandon other ocean spaces, the negative direction and ultimate outcome in the waters off China are clear.

America’s current approach—watching while initially minor incidents risk escalating—puts us at a distinct disadvantage.  Passivity will allow Beijing to prevail repeatedly, incident after incident, until US weakness becomes so palpable that there is no doubt of China’s across-the-board success.

Third, we must work diplomatically, largely behind the scenes, to resolve differences among the other claimants.  In the East China Sea, Japan is the major competitor, while Beijing butts heads with Vietnam, the Philippines and other ASEAN members in the South China Sea.  These regions…for China both are part of the same strategic picture. So it must be for America.

Fat chance.

Obama, Israel, and Iran

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The Blaze reported on a meeting in Israel several days ago that involved Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R, MI) wherein this apparently happened [emphasis mine]:

At the start of the meeting, [Netanyahu] opened with a sharp attack on the Obama administration which according to him has not done enough on the Iranian issue.  “Instead of effectively pressuring Iran, Obama and his people are pressuring us not to attack the nuclear facilities,” he said, and then moved on to a harsh criticism of the administration’s pronouncements indicating there is still room for diplomacy.  “The time has run out,” he said resolutely.

At one point, an anomalous thing occurred in the office, which is very unacceptable in diplomatic code.  Shapiro who was appointed by President Obama and for years was among his closest advisers decided he’d had enough.  Enough is enough.  He spoke and answered Netanyahu politely but in a manner that left no room for doubt.

The ambassador in fact accused Netanyahu of distorting Obama’s position.  He quoted the president, who promised he would not allow a nuclear Iran and said that all options – including a military strike – are on the table […]

It’s dismaying—and frightening, because it’s so dangerous—that all Shapiro could do was quote Obama’s words—he could cite only Obamatalk.  Shapiro could name no actual deeds as Iran, which has sworn to wipe Israel from the map, moves at an accelerating pace to achieve a nuclear bomb.

In fact, Obama actively is refusing to take concrete action, despite the “promises” of his Obamatalk.  He said, through his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey (who finds it “not useful” for ex-military to express their opinions when those opinions run counter to Party dogma), while speaking to reporters in London,

I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it [execute their own military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities].

“Complicit?”  You’re “complicit” when you go along with illegal activities….

Obama also pretended, through Dempsey, not to know Iran’s intentions.  The Guardian cited Dempsey as making this claim in those same remarks.  Apparently, the Iranian leadership with whom Obama is so desperate to engage is not to be taken at its word when those words are inconvenient:

Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury.
–Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Our dear Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement.
–Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

 

I regard supporting the plan for independence of Israel and its recognition a tragedy for the Muslims and an explosion for the Islamic governments.
–Ayatollah Khomeini

Israel must be eradicated from the page of history.
–Ayatollah Khomeini

And the routine invocation during Friday prayers in Tehran:

Death to Israel

 

h/t Power Line

Defense Cuts on the Stump

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President Obama, speaking before the VFW the other day, had some interesting words to say about defense, and cuts to our defense capability that are looming.  Naturally, I have a few words to say about what he said.

People in Congress ought to be able to come together and agree on a plan, a balanced approach that reduces the deficit and keeps our military strong[.]

Indeed.  When are the President and his fellow Progressives in the Senate going to get out of the way of a bipartisan solution and allow one, instead of throwing our nation’s security away on his demand to raise taxes on his disfavored group of Americans?  After all, it’s Obama’s demand that taxes be raised, rather than spending be cut elsewhere—like in our bloated entitlement programs—that’s standing in the way of salvaging our defense establishment.

And there are a number of Republicans in Congress who don’t want you to know that most of them voted for these cuts. Now they’re trying to wriggle out of what they agreed to.

Nah—they’ve made no bones about this.  Obama held a gun to their heads and forced the idiocy of sequestration during the debt ceiling “negotiations” when he threatened to destroy our economy if he couldn’t get his tax increases, even to the point of cynically blowing up an agreement that had been reached—including revenue increases, if not tax rate bumps—with his last-minute (literally) demand for an additional $1 trillion increase in taxes.

Instead of making tough choices to reduce the deficit, they’d rather protect tax cuts for some of the wealthiest Americans, even if it risks big cuts in our military.

Again, indeed.  Instead of making tough choices to reduce the deficit, Obama is ready to impose destructive cuts on our military in order to get his taxes on his disfavored Americans, and I’ve got to tell you, Mr Obama, I disagree.

As we look ahead to the challenges that we face as a nation and the leadership that’s required, you don’t just have my words, you have my deeds.

President Obama’s deeds are especially frightening.  His “deeds” include the idle chit-chat that’s allowing Iran to get nuclear weapons.  His “deeds” include the idle chit-chat that’s allowing the Syrian boss Assad to butcher his own citizens—19,000 of his fellow Syrians—and to move his chemical weapons arsenal and prepare it for use against surviving Syrians dissidents.  His deeds include surrendering to Russian demands and throwing Poland and the Czech Republic into the teeth of the Bear and cancelling a plan to build missile defense installations in those two countries.  His deeds include surrendering American foreign policy to the veto authority of Russia and The People’s Republic of China, especially vis-à-vis Iran and northern Korea.

His deeds include his claimed end to a war in Iraq that was already won and done, with only a SOFA to facilitate American troop presence for training to be negotiated.  Without any American presence—Obama’s crowning achievement here—Iraq is falling apart under terrorist attacks and secular and religious strife, and al Qaeda is resurgent.

His deeds include winding down the war in Afghanistan with an announced withdrawal schedule and nothing left behind.  He’s snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as the Taliban are still in the field and effective, while the Afghan army is neither.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman, Buck McKeon (R, CA) has the right of it:

President Obama played no small part in setting the time bomb that is sequestration.  Indeed, automatic defense cuts were included in the Budget Control Act at his insistence.  Now he owes our troops his best efforts to defuse the cuts.  Ultimatums from the campaign trail are not enough.

The challenges we face as a nation are legion, the future is near, and the leadership Obama has demonstrated and the deeds he’s done, make change imperative.

Paper Tiger

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There has been a disturbing development in the South China Sea, an area of the world toward which Our government claims it’s pivoting as central to American security.

Scarborough Shoal is a dinky little set of islands lying 140 miles west of Luzon Island, Republic of the Philippines, and 750 miles south of the People’s Republic of China.  This is a wholly unremarkable set of islands, except for the rich fishing and the equally rich oil deposits below the bottom of the region there.  And it’s entirely within the Philippine 200 mile Economic Exclusion Zone.

Because of its wealth, the PRC sent its fishing vessels and its armed patrol boats to the area in a naked attempt to occupy it.  The Philippine navy responded with two of its coast guard cutters, and the face-off lasted until a typhoon forced everyone to leave.

President Obama’s response?  Against the backdrop of a 1951 treaty that binds us to the defense of the Republic of the Philippines and that’s still, nominally, in force, Obama did nothing.  Nada.  Just meekly watched from the sidelines (if he was paying even that much attention).  He did not execute his favored tactic of getting a coterie of nations together to cry out and shake their collective finger very firmly at the Chinese.  He sent no USN destroyer to the area.  He raised no objection at all.  He left our ally to twist in the wind.

While this was going on, the PRC also sent a fishing boat into the territorial waters of the Republic of Palau, another dinky little island—population 21,000—way on the other side of the Philippines.  Palau objected, and when the Chinese vessel refused to leave, they fired on it, captured it, and forced the Chinese to pay a fine for their trespass.

As the WSJ (not quite) put it, it’s a sad day when the government of a tiny speck of an island shows more courage in standing up to an enemy than does our own President.