It is good to know that leftist logic never changes.
A quote from President Obama yesterday, that would have been right at home in protests of the 1960's....
"...in order for us to defeat terrorist groups like ISIL and al Qaeda it's going to also require us to discredit their ideology -- the twisted thinking that draws vulnerable people into their ranks. As I’ve said before -- and I know our military leaders agree -- this broader challenge of countering violent extremism is not simply a military effort. Ideologies are not defeated with guns; they’re defeated by better ideas..."
Hmmm, are we sure about that?
Now, yes, evil ideologies must be supplanted by better ideas, but most times that supplanting must be done at the point of a gun. Those nasty evil guns....and lots of soldiers with guns, occupying enemy territory, and delivering defeat.
"Know what really discredits ideologies? Unconditional surrender, occupying their capitals, wrecking their cities, defeating their armies." - @20Committee
To use a time tested maxim, "Hope is not a strategy". And "No Boots on-the-Ground" is not a winning strategy either.
Better ideas can't retake Ramadi. Better ideas can't retake Mosul. And better ideas can't defeat ISIL.
Not on their own. Our better ideas require guns to conquer the evil ideas that are washing over the landscape unabated.
Evil ideologies are not just defeated with guns, they’re defeated by better ideas backed by the threat, even the use, of guns. The sooner the President realizes that, the better.
Mitt Romney on
getting Americans to focus on the difficult, sometimes abstract issues
of the deficit and accumulating national debt:
“I think it helps to translate the federal-debt and
unfunded-liability numbers into personal numbers. The total amount of
accumulated debt and unfunded liabilities is approximately $520,000 per
American household. What that means is that each household will be
paying the interest on the debt and paying the principal on the unfunded
liabilities over the coming decade or two. It means that our kids will
get saddled with that $520,000 — which of course will become a good deal
larger over the next four or five years if the president is reelected.
“That number says that as interest rates go up, as they undoubtedly
will down the road, people will get burdened with a tax figure that
makes it harder for them to start their lives out, get homes, and build a
future for themselves. It really kills the American Dream to be
burdened with that kind of a figure from the beginning of your life. And
so I think that’s the most effective way I can talk about the personal
impact, long term, of this debt and unfunded-liability burden.
“There is also a recognition in this country that what Greece and
Italy and Spain are facing could conceivably be brought home to us. The
recognition that you reach a point where the world decides that your
obligations are perhaps not going to be met, or that they will be
inflated away — in which case people will ask for higher interest rates,
and you’ll find yourself in a doom loop.”
Last week when talking of the attempted Times Square car bombing, President Obama said the following:
...They will stop at nothing to kill and disrupt our way of life. But once again, an attempted attack has been—failed...
Awkward phrasing to say the least, but as the Weekly Standard says, "It is as if the president wanted to say the attack “has been thwarted” but then realized he could not. The attack failed because Shahzad did not do a better job of constructing his makeshift bomb. No government agency can take credit for that."
However the most interesting word in that quote from the President is 'they'. Who *is* 'they'??
If we depend upon the White House's official statements, we will never know. for as it turns out, the words words 'terrorism', 'jihad', 'Islam', and even 'enemy' are no longer welcome in the official lexicon of the Global War on Terror Overseas Contingency Operations.
There are two recent looks at this 'phenomenon'.
First from the aforementioned Weekly Standard "Don’t Mention the War", in which authors Stephen Hayes and Thomas Jocelyn ask:
"Why does the Obama administration find it so hard to utter the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘jihad’ and ‘Islamic extremism’?"
[...]
So, three attacks in six months, by attackers with connections to the global jihadist network—connections that administration officials have gone out of their way to diminish.
The most striking thing about all three attacks is not what we heard, but what we haven’t heard. There has been very little talk about the global war that the Obama administration sometimes acknowledges we are fighting and virtually nothing about what motivates our enemy: radical Islam.
This is no accident.
Near the end of their article they cite the incomparable Janet Napolitano, who said she doesn't use the word terrorism in order to avoid “the politics of fear.”
Great. We apparently want to avoid offending those who would instill us with terror (and death), by not engaging in “the politics of fear.” As Glenn Reynolds likes to say, the country is in the very best of hands.
In addition to the Weekly Standard, PJTV released an instructive look at how the lexicon has changed in the past several years.
In their video "Censorship of Islamic Terminology" from April 23d, you will see how along with 'terrorism' the offending terms 'jihad', 'Islam', and even 'enemy' are totally absent from important Obama Administration documents like the National Intelligence Strategy, FBI Counter-Terrorism Lexicon, and Lesson from Ft Hood report.
I wonder what words might be included in the report on the "Times Square Incident"? Recent evidence does not inspire confidence. I guess the real question should be...is this best categorized as cultural sensitivity, or appeasement?
At the very least, this should inspire a rise in billboard space rental....
Could President Obama be getting his first 3am Phone call?
Let the Testing Begin
We've often written that President Obama will face at least one national security crisis during 2010. From the Middle East to the Far East, there is no shortage of rivals and rogue states willing to test the administration and its mettle. Put another way, we may soon get a look at Mr. Obama's "spine of steel," famously touted by running mate Joe Biden during the 2008 campaign.
And that first test may come on the Korean Peninsula, based on this dispatch from the Washington Post. Quoting South Korea's semi-official Yonhap News Agency, the Post is reporting that a ROK Navy vessel is sinking in waters near the North Korean coast, possibly the result of a torpedo attack from the DPRK.
What actually happened here remains to be seen, as I am always ready to remind all of a key tenet of breaking news -- "The first reports are always wrong."
More to follow...
