Obama Wants the Military’s Trust
Jul 8, 2008 Military, Political
Senator Barack Obama did an interview with the Army Times and in it he said he had to earn the trust of the military especially since he has not served. Obama is accurate in this statement but to develop the trust of the military the men and women who serve in it need to know the Commander in Chief is ready to stand behind them and ensure they complete the job that the elected leaders sent them to do. Obama and the Democrats want to pull the troops out of Iraq and give victory to the enemy. Obama talks a good game but the truth is he has stated he has a 16 month withdraw plan and while he will listen to the commanders, the decision is his.
America’s military does not decide when and where to go to war. Those decisions are made by the people elected to office and though everyone likes to call this “Bush’s war” the fact is, Democrats and Republicans in Congress voted to send the military into combat. The troops went willingly and did what they were told. They do not have the luxury of changing their minds for the sake of political expedience because they are obligated to serve when and where they are told. A member of the military who refuses to fight in the war has committed a crime and can be severely punished but no such punishment exists for members of Congress who vote to send them to war and then change their minds based on a poll.
Obama certainly has a long way to go. Here is a tip Barry, learn what you are talking about:
Earning trust, he said, means listening to advice from military people, including top uniformed leaders, combatant commanders and senior noncommissioned officers and petty officers. It also means standing up for the military on critical issues and keeping promises, Obama said.
Petty Officers ARE noncommissioned officers.
It is interesting to note that Obama, despite his admitted lack of service, feels he is better qualified to lead the military than John McCain who was serving in the military when little Barry was living with his typical white grandmother and experimenting with drugs. Barry cites his service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his extensive travel as a youth as qualifications. I believe that McCain has quite a bit more experience in travel around the world and he has it as an adult, not a hazy eyed child. Additionally, Obama has been in the Senate about 4 years and has been campaigning for about 2 of them. How much did he learn from the position on that Committee when he has not been there very much?
Obama also talked about accountability:
During the interview, Obama discussed the issue of accountability for military leaders, including times when, he said, he believes the Bush administration has blamed senior officers for things that were not their fault. He contrasted his own personal standards of accountability that he said would apply if he becomes president.
His own personal standards of accountability? He has not taken responsibility for anything. Anyone who does something wrong is labeled as “not the person I knew” and is summarily thrown under the bus. Obama took no responsibility for spending 20 years in a racist, hate filled church. Obama has taken no responsibility for the controversial statements made by his surrogates and his “present” votes while a state senator certainly lack any hint of responsibility.
Barack Obama will not get the military vote. He can take credit for programs or bills that he had little or nothing to do with and he can make pie in the sky promises about what he will do for the members of the armed forces but they are not like the mind numbed drones who follow his every move. They know what he is about and since an overwhelming number of them are conservative, they do not like his liberal policies. Members of the military want to win and come home, in that order. They do not want to come home with a loss because their leaders lacked the testicular fortitude to follow through on their actions like they did during Vietnam.
In General Patton’s most famous speech he said:
When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.” The Famous Patton Speech
The idea of losing is not hateful to liberals because they want America to lose. Patton understood the American psyche and he knew that we all admire winners and that the thought of losing is hateful to any true American. When Patton made this speech he said that this is why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war but that was because he did not know the breed of Democrat that would soon infest this nation. Patton is still spinning in his grave because of Vietnam.
Barry Obama has a prescription for losing and the members of the military do not want to be losers. They joined to serve this nation in peace and war and they are dedicated to ensuring VICTORY. The only exit plan they understand is the plan that Patton and all true patriots espouse:
WIN.
Tags: accountability, commander, McCain, military times, Obama, patton, war
Democrats Flip-Flop on Importance of Military Service
Jul 1, 2008 Political
It seems that the Democratic strategy is to minimize John McCain’s military service so as to put him on an even playing field with Barack Obama with regard to experience and ability to lead the country as well as the armed forces. Obama surrogates have been minimizing McCain’s service and repeating that it does not give him any experience needed to be president and the sole purpose is to make people think that McCain is no more qualified with regard to military matters. The interesting thing is that after 6 or 7 of his surrogates have beaten up on McCain (the latest being Wesley Clark) they have changed tact and now want McCain to stop discussing his military service (which McCain does very little of). Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia put it this way:
“I think what we really need to work on over the next four, five months, and it goes back to the speech that Sen. Obama gave [Monday] and this little fight that I’ve been watching and that is, we need to make sure that we take politics out of service,” Webb said. “People don’t serve their country for political issues.”
He continued: “And John McCain’s my long-time friend, if that is one area that I would ask him to calm down on, it`s that, don’t be standing up and uttering your political views and implying that all the people in the military support them because they don’t, any more than when the Democrats have political issues during the Vietnam War. Let’s get the politics out of the military, take care of our military people, or have our political arguments in other areas.”
First of all, McCain does not go around discussing his military credentials because they are well known. I have never heard him state that people in the military agree with him because of his service though most members of the military are conservative and vote Republican.
Secondly, why is it that Webb and the others want McCain not to discuss his service? They want to take this issue off the table. The military angle is designed to make people believe that the military does not support McCain and that is why they told that flat out lie. The Democrats want to negate the military vote as much as possible and want to diminish any support McCain might get from the military.
The interesting thing about all this is that the very people who want McCain to tone down the military talk felt perfectly comfortable using their own service to advance their careers. Jim Webb touted his service all over when he was running for office and he made a big stink about his son being in the war zone. Contrast that with McCain who takes care not to mention his 3 sons serving in the military, one of whom is in combat. Webb had no issue when he ran a campaign ad that showed footage of Ronald Reagan praising him for his service as a Marine. Webb certainly didn’t have any objection when he used military women who endorsed him to quell woman who were upset with Webb’s article that stated women can’t fight. I guess it was OK to use his service for politics then because he is a Democrat.
When 2004 rolled around and John Kerry reported for duty and tried to trump his three months of service in Vietnam into an adventure filled, full blown, military career, these very people were behind him every step of the way. They allowed Kerry to embellish his record and to act as if he were a war hero while they ridiculed George Bush as a drunken, drugging, AWOL National Guardsman. John Kerry’s war experience was what we needed to lead this country and Democrats like Clark and Webb were pushing this executive responsibility as the salvation the country needed. Never once did any of them tell Kerry to tone it down or to keep his service out of the race. They actively pushed this aspect of Kerry’s life while ignoring the anti war protesting that he engaged in for about two years, or nearly eight times longer than he served in Vietnam. The Democrats wanted us to honor his service and vote for him because of it while ignoring the disgrace he brought to military members still fighting in Vietnam. All of this was perfectly OK because Kerry is a Democrat and they always have a different set of rules by which they play.
The only time military service does not matter is when Democrats are running candidates without any. When they run people who served we are told they are war heroes but when they run people with no service experience then we are told that military experience is not needed. Bill Clinton had no military service and gamed the system in order to dodge the draft. Not important, too much emphasis put on military experience so let’s move on, nothing to see here.
Now they are in the same boat. They have Barack Obama who has no military experience so now it is no longer important. If Obama had been in the service, he too would be reporting for duty and they would be trumpeting his great service as if he were Sun Tzu. Instead, they must marginalize John McCain’s service because Obama, like Clinton, did not serve. That is how they intend to level the playing field. They believe they were able to do it with Clinton and will try to do it again with Obama.
The big difference is that when Clinton ran we were not at war. The person who assumes the leadership of this country will inherit a war. It would be a good idea to have someone familiar with the concept running the show. The public knows it and the Democrats know it and that is the sole reason they are attacking McCain’s service and the value of it. They cannot compete in this arena and they know it.
We cannot allow them to denigrate McCain’s service for political expediency. His service and military experience is as good as Clark’s (despite what Clark thinks) and it is certainly far superior to that of John Kerry, both of whom ran for the office of president while emphasizing their military credentials.
This is one battle Senator Hopenchange cannot win so long as we do not allow the enemy to rewrite history, a feat at which Democrats are quite skilled.
Source:
The Hill
Tags: Democrats, jim webb, McCain, military service, Obama, protests, war, wesley clark
The Hypocrisy of Wesley Clark
Jul 1, 2008 Political
Right from the start let me say that I am not into denigrating the military service of veterans who served honorably. Wesley Clark served this country honorably and I do not intend to attack that service. However, his recent attack on the service of John McCain leaves open some questions about the ability of Clark to make reasoned decisions and to think cogently about an issue. To recap, Wesley Clark stated:
Because in the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk. It’s a matter of gauging your opponents, and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility.
We will not get into the fact that if McCain’s military credentials do not qualify him to be the Commander in Chief or to serve as President in general then Obama’s sickly resume hardly qualifies him to be the guy who directs traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue. Besides, Clark already stated that Obama has judgment and character and that those items are qualifications for the job. Let us just look instead at the hypocrisy of Wesley Clark.
Four years ago Wesley Clark and John Kerry were running for the Democratic nomination which Kerry eventually won. Wesley Clark backed John Kerry. To Clark, Kerry’s three month stint in Vietnam qualified him to be Commander in Chief as opposed to McCain’s meager service. Or, as Clark might say [if Kerry were a Republican], getting a few splinters and leaving early hardly qualifies as executive responsibility.
But the heart of the matter is Clark himself. He ran for president which means he believed that he possessed experience that demonstrated executive responsibility. How did his service qualify him any more than John McCain’s? Clark led a company in Vietnam for exactly one month before he was wounded and sent to Fort Knox where he commanded a company of wounded soldiers. There are two other shots that Clark took at McCain and they are important:
“That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded – that wasn’t a wartime squadron.”
~snip~
“Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,”
Clark served as a commander for one month before he was shot and sent home. I hardly think serving one month as getting shot qualifies him any more than getting shot down in an airplane but that never entered his mind when he ran. As for command time, what does Clark have besides that one month? He was commander of the Allied forces in Kosovo so one could debate whether that service qualifies him as a wartime commander. Even if it does (and I believe it did), what about being relieved of his command qualifies as executive responsibility?
Like I said, I am not into dishonoring anyone’s service and that is not my intent here. I am pointing out that Wesley Clark is dismissing the service of John McCain when he had no problem with Kerry’s thin military resume (but very think traitor credentials) and Clark never felt as if his own military experience was less than qualifying for the job when he ran. This in spite of the fact that the very issues Clark brought up with regard to McCain very easily apply to Clark.
The bigger issue here is why Clark is doing it. He is trying to diminish a few of McCain’s strongest attributes, his vast military experience and his foreign policy credentials. The left is trying to negate this as an item that can be used as a comparison to Obama because Obama cannot win that match up. By reducing the importance of the issue they hope to even the playing field and have voters believe that McCain has as little experience as Obambi. Clark did this out of fear.
I predict this will backfire. Regardless of what people think about the war, a great number of them support the troops. Our military has higher approval ratings than the president and the Congress combined (and probably twice the combined total). Attacking a veteran is an unwise move.
General Clark might have handed McCain the White House on a platter.
Tags: experience, McCain, Military, Obama, war, wesley clark
Some Advice for Israel
Jun 10, 2008 General
Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has been in captivity for two years after he was abducted by militants in Gaza. He recently sent a letter begging his country not to forget him and that he wanted to be home. He also indicated that his health was failing. There is no reason that this soldier should still be in captivity. His country started fighting to get him back but the UN complained about the disproportionate response. Sadly, our own country worked to get the fighting stopped. The people who took Shalit will not let him go unless they are afraid. Here is what Israel should do:
Send notification to the UN that they have one week to get the soldier released. He needs to be alive and relatively unharmed. If, at the end of the week, the UN has failed to get him released Israel will give his captors an additional 24 hours to send him home. Israel needs to make it clear to the UN and to the terrorists holding him that they plan to bomb his captors into oblivion if they fail to release him as outlined.
Israel needs to make absolutely certain that the UN and the captors as well as those harboring them know that the bombing campaign will not stop until the place is leveled and every living thing is killed. Then, if he is not released, Israel needs to make good on the threat and they need to continue bombing the place until the soldier is released or everyone is killed. It is that simple and the UN needs to understand that Israel will not bow to pressure because they gave that body its chance.
If other countries feel the need to get involved Israel needs to make clear its intent to use nuclear weapons against any country that jumps into the fray. Israel should be relentless and keep killing until they put fear in the hearts of everyone so that they will be left alone. It should also be made clear that any news organization that gets in the way will be considered the enemy and dealt with. Israel does not need more of al-Reuters passing around a baby that Israel did not kill as propaganda.
Gilad Shalit might end up dying in the attack but it is obvious that he is in poor health and that his captors do not care about him. They can, of course, avoid a massacre by releasing the soldier. After the demands are made the ball will be in the court of the UN and the captors. The deadline might seem short but they have had two years to solve this problem.
It is time to stop playing games with these terrorists and start injecting them with fear instead.
Source:
breitbart
Tags: bombing, captive, gilad shalit, Israel, terrorists, war
What, no cut and run from Hillary?
May 14, 2008 Political
A recent poll shows that a majority of Democrats think Hillary Clinton should stay in the race. The candidate herself, despite insurmountable odds, has indicated she will stay in until the end and that she plans to win. Hillary and her supporters want her to stay even though it looks impossible to win and even though she is broke and lending her campaign money.
These are the same people who want us to cut and run from Iraq. They are the folks who tell us that we cannot win in Iraq and that it is costing a lot of money (it is). The successes in Iraq are certainly more evident than in the Clinton campaign but nonetheless, they want us to cut and run from the war.
Why is it that people who advocate cutting and running from a war we are having success in advocate for Hillary to stay the course even though she cannot win without her party screwing Barack Obama over?
If these people applied the same standard to Hillary’s campaign as they do to the war then she would have been gone long ago. Not that I want to see her leave but one would think these people could at least be consistent.
The painful truth is that if the Democrats had a winner take all primary, Hillary would have locked up the nomination long ago. However, the Democrats chose to play games with their system and now they are in a pickle. There will be blood at their convention and a lot of people will have hurt feelings.
Who could ask for anything more?
Related items:
Washington Post
Rasmussen Reports