U.S. Army PFC. Stephen Martin cleans his weapon inside a small shelter at an observation post near Combat Outpost Munoz in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Nov. 15, 2009. Martin is assigned to Company B, 3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Andrew Smith
Community organizers, government health care, perpetual welfare, victimization, and rewarding failure will never improve America.
Only unselfish, hard-working, devoted, self-sufficient Americans can improve America.
But as president, Mr. Obama has neglected the court. He has played only seven known games of basketball since taking office, compared with 25 rounds of golf, a sport he picked up about a decade ago when he was an Illinois state senator. That’s more golf than former President George W. Bush played in two terms, according to CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who tracks presidential trivia.
And Nero fiddled while his empire burned and his people suffered and died…
I have to give to the President for confirming what has been know to most of us and mentioned on this blog several times. For a man who ever had a need for the military or shown any real desire to know, understand, or honor them unless it benefits him politically, the honesty is welcome:
Obama arrived on the base 3:19 p.m. local time (1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time), and received a rousing welcome from 1,500 troops in camouflage uniforms, many holding cameras or pointing cell phones to snap pictures.
“You guys make a pretty good photo op,” the president said.
So, leaking characterizations is bad? Someone call the New York Times, The One does not approve of leaks. I am sure they don’t have anything in the works but it would be wise to warn the allies in the MSM.
Can anyone show me where Obama was ever concerned about the leaks during the Bush administration that actually put people in danger and compromised national security? I can wait.
Obama, speaking to CBS in Beijing, says he’s “furious” about the stream of leaks characterizing the Afghanistan deliberations.
THE PRESIDENT: “I think I am angrier than Bob Gates about it, partly because we have these deliberations in the Situation Room for a reason – because we are making decisions that are life-and-death, that affect how our troops will be able to operate in a theater of war. For people to be releasing information during the course of deliberation — where we haven’t made final decisions yet — I think is not appropriate.”
CHIP REID: “Firing offense??”
THE PRESIDENT: “Absolutely”
What’s odd about this is that many of the leaks (though certainly not all) have seemed deliberate, in tandem with Flickr photo releases from the meetings and in line with a message that Obama is considering deeply. And indeed, leaking has been a signature of the transition from the Plouffe/campaign era to a governing era run by Rahm Emanuel, who talks frequently to the press and whose hiring was one of the first major Obama leaks. Leaks from more senior officials make lower-level staffers, in turn, feel that it’s not actually a firing offense.
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. – Dwight David Eisenhower
President Obama and his merry band of Statists idiots have failed. They have failed – again and again, and it will continue.
At some point you chowder-heads who voted for this amateur are going to see the damage he is doing to the country. He’s created more debt than EVERY PRESIDENT WHO CAME BEFORE HIM COMBINED.
I don’t expect you O-bots to understand the damage he is doing to our military, maybe because you don’t care. I don’t know.
I know the president doesn’t really care about our service men and women and their mission. He doesn’t care the same way other presidents cared about our men and women in uniform at home or abroad. He showed it before the campaign. He pretended to be something else during the campaign. He has faked and postured his way from Dover to Arlington to Fort Hood attempting to convince the nation that he has their best interests in mind and supports their mission.
And now as ‘His Ditherness’ struggles to find the lint in his bellybutton, our finest, our bravest, our most patriotic sit, wait, bleed, and die while the “smart power” you voted in as your new ‘American Idol’ makes a f’ing decision about the “necessary war”, the central front on the War on Terror, that he chided President Bush and John McCain over. You know the war that Candidate Obama thought was sooo important:
“His plan comes up short. There’s not enough troops, not enough resources and not enough urgency. What President Bush and Senator McCain don’t understand is that the central front in the War on Terror is not in Iraq and never was. The central front is in Afghanistan and Pakistan where the terrorists who hit us on 9-11 are still plotting attacks seven years later.”
I am sure the ripples of HOPE® and CHANGE® are reaching our troops here and across the ocean in the dusty military posts, forts, and bases knowing that Barack Hussein Obama – mmm, mmm, mmm – is on his way to save the day with his own plan.
Morale has fallen among soldiers in Afghanistan, where troops are seeing record violence in the 8-year-old war, while those in Iraq show much improved mental health amid much lower violence, the Army said Friday…
Though findings of two new battlefield surveys are similar in several ways to the last ones taken in 2007, they come at a time of intense scrutiny on Afghanistan as President Barack Obama struggles to craft a new war strategy and planned troop buildup.
Obama “struggles” because he has no f’ing backbone and no clue about fighting for anything more than a community center or the Olympic Games.
He struggles because he doesn’t trust his military leaders. The people in our country who have led lives of substance, sacrifice, and purpose for decades already.
Obama’s never done anything of substance beyond be a lawyer and politician – two of the lowest professions possible falling in right next to prostitutes and thieves, but wait, I repeat myself.
It takes more to be a member of today’s military and face the uncertainties of war than it does to demagogue to the likes of SEIU, ACORN, Organizing for America, Egyptians, Germans, and guilty white Americans, when you yourself have stated you have not done anything of measure.
click for larger
So, it comes as no surprise our Commander-in-Chief is already looking to run away instead of fighting against evil ruthless radical religious zealots who torture and terrorize innocents in the name of Allah:
President Barack Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan will include a plan for “how we’re going to get folks out” after a secure environment can be passed to the Afghan government, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday.
“We have been there for eight years. And we’re not going to be there forever,” Gibbs said. “It’s important to fully examine not just how we’re going to get folks in but how we’re going to get folks out.”
Gibbs spoke en route to Alaska, where the president stopped at an Air Force base in Anchorage before traveling on to Tokyo for his maiden trip to Asia, which will take him to Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea.
The president “has asked for, and will want, benchmarks to evaluate our progress,” Gibbs said. “That’s part of his desire to get a sense of where we are rather than committing to an open-ended conflict.”
But whatever the reason, this man is making a mockery of our country and our military. He is destroying our economy. He is destroying our way of life. He is rewarding failure and taking away our liberty. He is destroying 230+ years of real human progress. And he intended to do it ever since he fell in with the pathetic refuse that surrounds him.
Osama bin Laden was right when he called the America a “Paper Tiger” in his declaration of war against our nation, he knew more about the majority of us than we would like to believe.
The impressionable useful idiots in our nation who believe HOPE® and CHANGE® are actually something more than novelty.
As long as the Democrats, Statists, Liberals, Progressives, and sheep of this nation lead us, a paper tiger is all we will be and we will continue our decline because of them.
There’s been plenty of debate about President Barack Obama’s omission of the word “terrorism” when he spoke Tuesday at Fort Hood to honor the 13 Americans shot to death and dozens wounded last week by a Muslim army psychiatrist, Nidal Hasan. More broadly troubling to my mind is a word that Obama did use: “incomprehensible.”
[...]
“These Americans did not die on a foreign field of battle. They were killed here, on American soil, in the heart of this great state and the heart of this great American community. This is the fact that makes the tragedy even more painful, even more incomprehensible.”
That might be language appropriate for a private conversation with the bereaved, whose interests may well center on the unfathomable ways of death and loss. But Obama was not holding a private conversation. Onstage at Fort Hood, he was speaking not only to the immediate survivors, but to the nation.
In that context, the death dealt out on a routine day, in deepest America, by the hand of someone yelling “Allahu Akbar,” is not only comprehensible, but a predictable feature of this war against the United States. [emphasis added - jcrue] We may not know exactly where or on which day the next attack will occur, or with what weapons. But this is a war of many dimensions, in which ideas preached in one part of the globe can translate swiftly into murder–more aptly known as terrorism–in another…
If that truth seems too obvious to bear repeating, then why, at a freighted emotional moment, in a speech watched by the world, does it elude the president of the United States? [I have an opinion on that but if you have ever been here before, I don't need to explain it - jcrue]
[...]
President Bush understood this, and during his first term pushed the frontlines of this war back from New York, Washington and skies over Pennsylvania to the home turf of America’s enemies. He toppled two of America’s most aggressive and brutal foes–Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the al-Qaida-hosting Taliban in Afghanistan. He cowed and harassed their despotic brethren with his push to promote their worst nightmare: freedom for their own people.
“Only the brave, who have stood the line, can comment on what has been done out here. And the glimmer of democracy and liberty in this once biblical land is a wonderful thing to behold. There are many who would say we are failing – but they are the doubters and the weak. Your son had courage and was one who believed in the true value of freedom.” – LTC John Holden, a British officer in the Queen’s Royal Artillery in a letter upon the death of my friend, Major David G. Taylor
Political correctness is a disease and one of the most debilitating agendas in our military.
It can be argued that fear of the backlash allowed the terrorist traitor Major Hasan to be able to murder his fellow soldiers. It can also be argued that it impedes our military leaders in their decision-making and their grasp of reality. It adversely affects those in charge of troops for fear of being investigated for discrimination when a promotion is denied or punitive actions are taking against others of a different race, religion, or background.
Worst it prevents our Commander-in-Chief and other politicians like him from being honest with the American people about the threats we face both foreign and domestic. It allows them to hide behind vague statements and cowardly rhetoric in their speeches – where no mention of terrorism, terrorists, terrorist acts, Muslims, or Islam are included for fear of what backlash these accurate, but touchy, subjects may cause.
We are cowards in our own country.
Here are a few examples of the political correction BS in our nation that is going on starting with the little know and moving to the big topic at hand:
An insufficiently colorful color guard? (via Powerline)
How deep does the culture of political correctness run in the military and the service academies? We’re getting some idea in the case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan. The Hasan story has rightly overwhelmed the news. Evidence of the red flags preceding his murder spree continues to accumulate and enrage. One inevitably sees in the disregarded red flags a case of political correctness run amok.
The story of the Naval Academy’s insufficiently colorful color guard has not quite broken out yet, and perhaps it won’t, but it provides additional context to the case of Nidal Hasan. It appears that Naval Academy senior commanders decided during the World Series to remove two Midshipmen from the color guard that appeared. What was their offense? The color guard was deemed too white and too male. There was accordingly a push to make the color guard more “diverse.” (more…)
During the American Revolution, many important political discussions took place in the inns and taverns of Philadelphia, including the founding of the Marine Corps.
A committee of the Continental Congress met at Tun Tavern to draft a resolution calling for two battalions of Marines able to fight for independence at sea and on shore.
The resolution was approved on November 10, 1775, officially forming the Continental Marines.
As the first order of business, Samuel Nicholas became Commandant of the newly formed Marines. Tun Tavern’s owner and popular patriot, Robert Mullan, became his first captain and recruiter. They began gathering support and were ready for action by early 1776.
Each year, the Marine Corps marks November 10th with a celebration of the brave spirit which compelled these men and thousands since to defend our country as United States Marines.
There is no better friend…and no worse enemy than a United States Marine. – General James N. Mattis
Hell, these are Marines. Men like them held Guadalcanal and took Iwo Jima. Bagdad ain’t shit. – Marine Major General John F. Kelly
There are only two kinds of people that understand Marines: Marines and the enemy. Everyone else has a second-hand opinion. – Gen. William Thornson, U.S. Army
I come in peace, I didn’t bring artillery. But I am pleading with you with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all. – Marine General James Mattis, to Iraqi tribal leaders
I love the Corps for those intangible possessions that cannot be issued: pride, honor, integrity, and being able to carry on the traditions for generations of warriors past. – Cpl. Jeff Sornig, USMC; in Navy Times, November 1994
They told (us) to open up the Embassy, or “we’ll blow you away.” And then they looked up and saw the Marines on the roof with these really big guns, and they said in Somali, “Igaralli ahow,” which means “Excuse me, I didn’t mean it, my mistake”. – Karen Aquilar, in the U.S. Embassy; Mogadishu, Somalia, 1991
Hours after the Fort Hood massacre, a grieving nation looked to the president for consolation and leadership. Instead, it got light banter and a “shout-out” before President Obama read a perfunctory statement. The president has always had a reputation for coolness, but in this case, he was utterly detached. He can’t blame the scriptwriter for his astonishing lack of empathy.
Mr. Obama was scheduled to speak at the Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. Rather than canceling the photo op or addressing the tragedy from another venue, the president chose to open with the kind of obligatory thanks and recognitions that would be appropriate in any other circumstance but not this one. The emotional shift was jarring and confusing. It was as though he were an actor switching scripts heedless of the emotional content of the event he was addressing.
Mr. Obama recently came under criticism, chiefly from liberals, for visiting New Orleans but declining to view the damage from Hurricane Katrina. One local blogger dubbed it the “tinkle-stop tour.” “Not even a flyover,” one resident complained, referring to President George W. Bush’s aerial tour of the ravaged city, which many mark as the beginning of his decline in popularity.
Mr. Bush also suffered his critics’ ire for reading “The Pet Goat” to a group of schoolchildren at Emma E. Booker Elementary School after he was informed of the aircraft hitting the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. He was charged with being out of touch, indecisive, tuned out. He was said to be unable to grasp the significance of the events unfolding around him.
The new president’s performance on Thursday afternoon was similar. As an anxious nation looked for reassurance, it saw a president conducting business as usual, seemingly unaware of the magnitude of the tragedy. By the time he got to his statement, the damage was done. It was Mr. Obama’s “Pet Goat” moment.
The man accused of killing 13 people and wounding 29 at Fort Hood is able to talk, a hospital spokesman said Monday, but it’s unknown when investigators might take advantage of his improving health to press forward with their probe into the shooting spree….
Sixteen victims remained hospitalized with gunshot wounds, and seven were in intensive care.
The plan would fall well short of the 80,000 troops that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, suggested as a “low-risk option” that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.
It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a “high-risk” one that called for 20,000 additional troops and a “medium-risk” one that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.
Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, visited wounded soldiers and their families near the site of the worst mass shooting on an Army post in the United States.
The Bushes made their private visit to Fort Hood’s Darnall Army Medical Center on Friday night. Bush spokesman David Sherzer said in an e-mail that the couple thanked Fort Hood’s military leaders and hospital staff for the “amazing care they are providing.”
We offer our condolences and prayers to the families that have a person who died,” said Imam Mohammed Abdullahi over loud-speakers that carried the weekly Muslim prayer to several hundred worshippers gathered at the mosque.
“Islam is not responsible,” he stressed.
Maybe not, but I believe it played a HUGE, HUGE part.
Were the Major yelling, “Praise Jesus,” or, “Hallelujah Xenu,” I might take the imam seriously.
President Obama didn’t wait long after Tuesday’s devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.
After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.
But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a “shout-out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow — that Congressional Medal of Honor winner.” Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms….
Indeed, an argument could be made that Obama should have canceled the Indian event, out of respect for people having been murdered at an Army post a few hours before. That would have prevented any sort of jarring emotional switch at the event.
Did the president’s team not realize what sort of image they were presenting to the country at this moment? The disconnect between what Americans at home knew had been going on — and the initial words coming out of their president’s mouth was jolting, if not disturbing.
The president’s words may be calculated to say one thing, but his actions since day one regarding all things military, really leads me to believe he holds them in the lowest regards as one of America’s institutions.
Twelve people have been killed and 31 wounded in a shooting spree at a Texas military base by what officials believe was possibly carried out by an Army officer.
The suspected gunman was identified by ABC News as Major Malik Nadal Hasan.
The shooter was killed and two other suspects, who are also soldiers, have been apprehended, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone said.
The tragedy and the bloodshed impacted the President so deeply that he was only able to address the incident after he gave a few “shout outs”.
Since late this summer General Stanley McChrystal has been asking for more troops for Afghanistan lest we lose the war. Early last month those sentiments were expressed in a formal request for 40,000 additional troops. General Patraeus and Secretary of Defense Gates have publicly endorsed Gen. McChrystal’s request.
Since that time you have been considering whether or not to provide those troops and whether or not the use of those troops in a counter-insurgency strategy — similar to that employed in Iraq — is wise or not. If press reports are to be believed, then top members of your administration have serious doubts as to whether or not the strategy as outlined by Gen. McChrystal and endorsed by Gen. Patraeus and Sec. Gates will work.
Your inaction on this request speaks volumes and one can only draw one logical inference from it: you do not trust the judgment of Gen. Patraeus, Sec. Gates, or Gen. McChrystal.
If you trusted their expertise, then you would have immediately begun to implement their strategy.
Since it is glaringly obvious that you do not trust the judgment of your top commanders in the field or of your own Sec. of Defense, then why don’t you fire them?
If they are so wrong, then they should be fired.
Personally, I don’t think Obama has the stones in his shorts to fire anyone (his wife on the other hand…).
Obama has never had to do anything truly important that included personal responsibility and risk, that is why he is unable to make decisions.
It’s ‘Petraeus’ just in case your internal spellcheck rang.
On Friday, the Justice Department released reams of newly declassified documents on the CIA interrogation program. Among the documents is a revised, October 2009 version of the Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s involvement in detainee interrogations.
This report proves, once and for all, that FBI interrogator Ali Soufan lied about his role in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah.
Soufan has become the hero of the left for his public assault on the CIA interrogation program. Critics cite him as proof that we could have gotten the same information from al-Qaeda terrorists without resorting to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.
As a military brat, a Marine, and a civilian I have always distrusted the Democrat Party and their values.
Once again, they prove just how f’d up their priorities are:
Twice as many Democrats say health care reform should be President Obama’s top priority as say the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be his top concern, according to a new Gallup poll.
Gallup asked people this question: “Which of the following should be Barack Obama’s top priority as president — the economy, health care, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy, the federal budget deficit, or something else…?”
The numbers help explain Obama’s slowness in reaching a decision on what to do in Afghanistan. There simply aren’t very many people in the president’s party who believe the war should be his top priority — just half as many as those who say health care should be his top concern. When it comes to pressure for a decision coming from his own party, there just isn’t much.
When I see numbers like that I don’t see an explanation of Obama’s slowness. I see their attitude towards our military, their sacrifices and the what they really believe when it comes to helping others.
President Barack Obama has only been in office for just over nine months, but he’s already hit the links as much as President Bush did in over two years.
CBS’ Mark Knoller — an unofficial documentarian and statistician of all things White House-related — wrote on his Twitter feed that, “Today – Obama ties Pres. Bush in the number of rounds of golf played in office: 24.
Took Bush 2 yrs & 10 months.”
This news comes on the heels of today’s news that Obama played golf with a woman — chief domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes — for the first time since taking office.
NAWA, Afghanistan — Before a battalion of U.S. Marines swooped into this dusty farming community along the Helmand River in early July, almost every stall in the bazaar had been padlocked, as had the school and the health clinic. Thousands of residents had fled. Government officials and municipal services were nonexistent. Taliban fighters swaggered about with impunity, setting up checkpoints and seeding the roads with bombs.
In the three months since the Marines arrived, the school has reopened, the district governor is on the job and the market is bustling. The insurgents have demonstrated far less resistance than U.S. commanders expected. Many of the residents who left are returning home, their possessions piled onto rickety trailers, and the Marines deem the central part of the town so secure that they routinely walk around without body armor and helmets.
2. Freedom isn’t free, someone has to pay the price, and it might as well be you.
3. Things often get worse before they get worse.
4. No whining.
5. Take care of your own business.
6. Sometimes you just need to find your backbone to do the right thing.
7. People who do the right thing aren’t heroes, they are just doing the right thing.
8. You are probably not entitled to any thing you didn’t work for.
Major David G. Taylor
David was a soldier’s soldier who would not like this part of the service. He was mostly modest– he really was– and he believed that the best soldier was the soldier who fought quietly for his country–not out of any Hollywood styled sense of patriotism but rather because it was an inherent duty and part of his obligation as a citizen living in this country…
David once mentioned to me that there are those people who merely talk about America and our wonderful freedom, rights and privileges and then there are those who step up and put their money where their mouth is…;he simply believed that evil had to be challenged and somebody had to take the lead.
I wished more people lived a life based upon the same values as David’s.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." - The 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution
In Helmand, a model for success?
