Tag 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

“Not Useful”

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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey insists that Americans shouldn’t be criticizing American leadership because they once were in uniform.  He seems to think that their free speech rights—appropriately curtailed (but not abrogated) along with a number of other fundamental rights while serving on active duty—become permanently lost to these men and women by dint of their military service.  He says that the political activity of Americans, once having served in uniform, is “not useful.”

Dempsey had this to say, in particular, last Wednesday about a 22 minute film released by the organization Special Ops OPSEC, a group that consists of a broad range of ex-military, ex-CIA, and others no longer affiliated with the military or any Federal agency:

If someone uses the uniform, whatever uniform, for partisan politics, I am disappointed because I think it does erode that bond of trust we have with the American people[.]

I have to wonder if Gen Dempsey actually has viewed the video (presented on the organization’s Home page, as well as here).  I saw no uniforms on any of the participants, and none of the participants were on active duty.

Indeed, as one participant put it, correctly (at about 16:20 of the video),

As a citizen, it is my civic duty to tell the President to stop leaking information to the enemy.  It will get Americans killed.

It’s dismaying that Dempsey seems not to understand that.

There’s more: Dempsey appears to disagree with a former SecDef.  Or were Robert Gates’ two years on active duty in the United States Air Force not long enough to disqualify his free speech rights in perpetuity?  Gates had this to say about the ongoing leaks:

Shut the f— up.

The men and women in uniform understand that they cannot engage in political activity while in uniform as well as the legitimacy of that ban.  Jamie Wilson (Col, Special Forces, Ret) noted this while making a larger point about the need to have a watchdog facility to make it harder for politicians to leak information for political gain.  On telling former colleagues at a military installation about this plan, their response was (roughly 18:03):

You’ve got to do this.  You’ve got to speak, because we can’t.

I have to wonder how politicized Dempsey has allowed himself to become with this blatant attempt to stifle the free speech of honorable Americans, whose only misbehavior is that they publically disagree with his boss.  Dempsey’s behavior is “not useful.”

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.