Hypothetical
Filed under: International Reflections, International War, National Party Politics, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism, United States at War
As most of you know I do a daily hour show on Paltalk News Network. Yesterday a listener presented me with a hypothetical. It is something I would like to share with you.
The hypothetical goes like this. Iran has strategically and surreptitiously placed numerous nuclear devices throughout various cities in the U.S. and demands that all our armed forces throughout the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia including our ships and planes surrender to Iranian forces or Iran will set off all the nuclear devices simultaneously throughout the country. The implication is that millions of Americans will die. What would you do if you were president of the United States my listener asked? This hypothetical was asked in the context of the recent prisoner exchange between Israel and the Palestinians. And since I expressed my vehement disagreement with it I suppose the listener thought that the hypothetical would be a good example of carrying my disagreement to its logical and ultimate, what the listener considered, silly conclusion: Namely, that sooner or later, with millions of Americans lives at stake I and the rest of the country would have to sacrifice this principal.
Well I didn’t and explained to my listening audience that when it comes to freedom there is only one principal: Live free or die. But the hypothetical is far more revealing. It represents the belief that if Iran doesn’t yet have a nuclear bomb it certainly has a clear field in obtaining one in the very near future and that the Obama administration has yet to arrive at a strategy that will block Iran in obtaining one, or two or in fact many.
The hypothetical turns out to be far closer to the truth than this current administration would like to admit. And the “strategically and surreptitiously placed numerous nuclear devices” as my listener described would only have to be “one.”
Iran Attack
Filed under: International Reflections, International War, National Party Politics, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism
At some point within the next 30 days the Obama administration will have to make a decision as to how to address the attempted attack on U.S. soil by Iran. Included within that deliberation will be Iran’s current nuclear capability and its defense thereof.
Since 9/11 America’s national security policy has been ambivalent when deciding how to deal with a defiant, fanatic and now a possibly nuclear armed Iran. Throughout these last ten years Iran has been wantonly involved in the killing and maiming of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been the source of power behind Israel’s enemies, Hezbollah and Hamas. And it has harbored and protected al-Qaeda fugitives and has allowed them to continue their war against the U.S.
Notwithstanding its overt hostility to the U.S. and its covert attacks upon our armed forces it has never attempted to attack our mainland believing that such an attack would result in an enraged America and therefore finding itself the subject of an armed attack upon their country by U.S. forces. This recent attempted attack by Iran reflects a possible belief by its theocratic leaders that they can now treat America with little deference since Iran has the nuclear capability to destroy whole American cities if the U.S. retaliates with armed force.
If this is true we can blame all of America’s prior administrations after Iran’s revolution in 1979 but in particular that of the current Obama administration since this is only one which actually believes that the U.S. can talk its way into a peaceful relationship with Iran. Even Hillary Clinton pointed out in the debates with Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign that such a policy was juvenile and dangerous.
Apply The Abraham Lincoln Rule
Filed under: Courts, Elections, Health Care, Immigration, International Reflections, International War, National Party Politics, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism, U.S. Economics, Unions, United States at War
When it comes to beating Obama in the 2012 presidential election Republican candidates should apply the Abraham Lincoln rule: Give up every single argument of your opponent with which you agree and beat him up mercilessly on those with which you disagree.
I realize that it is difficult for a Republican candidate to agree with President Obama on anything but the truth is there is an area of agreement which no Republican candidate can deny. When it comes to national security President Obama has adopted the George W. Bush doctrine and then some. He refuses to abandon the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq recognizing their strategic national security value by placing American boots on the necks of al-Queda operatives located throughout the Middle East. American military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq provides our armed forces the ability to fix the enemy while we kill their leadership by Special Forces or drone attacks. The killing of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki are recent examples of this successful strategy. President Obama has kept open the prison at Guantanamo and treats its prisoners as enemy combatants and therefore will try them in military tribunals. He has signed an even stronger amended Patriot Act. And the Justice Department has kept the heat on domestic terrorist organizations. In effect the Obama administration gets an A+ on National Security.
By recognizing this fact and thereby applying the Abraham Lincoln rule, a Republican presidential candidate will have a clear field to beat the hell out of the Obama administration for its oversized and systematic failures in matters economic, energy, environmental and everything else it has deemed to touch.
Walking With A Big Stick
Filed under: International Reflections, International War, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism, United States at War
After listening to President Obama’s speech last night concerning the war in Afghanistan I could not help but conclude that when it comes to matters of national security all American presidents carry a big stick.
Barack Obama as U. S. senator and as the 2008 Democratic candidate for president criticized President Bush’s war policies. Obama’s main focus was the doctrine which Bush established that rather than using force only when the U.S. was imminently threatened that it was in America’s long-term best interests to depose unfriendly regimes and promote democracy both militarily and diplomatically. In 2008 Obama traveled across the country vilifying Bush and describing him as a president who started unnecessary wars abroad, angering our allies and providing are enemies with new reasons to dislike us. Moreover he accused Bush of causing the deaths of thousands of our soldiers based upon an unproven doctrine. However throughout President Obama’s presidency he has adopted the Bush doctrine as his own. He has continued our military presence in Iraq, doubling down in Afghanistan by sending more troops into the conflict and entering the conflict in Libya. Last night in his speech to the American people concerning the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan President Obama informed the American people that the United States had no intention of making a massive troop withdrawal but rather hold fast to the strategy of counterinsurgency inside Afghanistan and continue to target by drones the Taliban and al-Qaeda in western Pakistan. What President Obama didn’t mention last night was that with respect to surveillance, Guantanamo, detention and habeas corpus and his recent ignoring of the war powers act he has become, in effect, Bush II. Thank you President Bush and as much as it hurts me to say this, thank you too President Obama.
Caught Between The Ax and the Anvil
In the world of international affairs must Americans accept hypocrisy as the underlying dominant force if freedom and liberty are to be achieved?
From the very birth of our nation it has been the guiding light for freedom loving humanity throughout the world. But before freedom and liberty are achieved in any society, no matter its religion or its ethnicity, the society must first obtain infrastructure and order. More often than not this can only be achieved with brutality and injustice. Modern history is replete with such examples: Germany and Japan at the hands of the Allies before the end of World War II, South Korea, Bosnia, Bangladesh, Iraq and now Afghanistan. And there lies the hypocrisy. This is a bitter pill for any free people to take but especially for us Americans who believe that the means determine the ends but who love liberty and hate, truly hate, violations of human rights and brutality.
Do we close our eyes and raise the ax? If not do we stand by and watch millions live in darkness and despair? Whether we like or not and uncomfortable as it is our history as a nation is to choose the ax and hypocrisy be damned.
Obama Uses His Wild Card
Filed under: International Reflections, International War, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism, United States at War
As much as most Republicans want Barack Obama to lose the 2012 presidential election the fact is whether he wins or loses has become, in the scheme of things, inconsequential, at least in the short run.
The decision to find and kill Osama bin Laden belongs to President Obama and in the last 2 weeks, because of his decision, his approval rating has soared. The American people are now convinced that when the matter involves national security President Obama can be trusted. Whether he or any member of his administration admits it or not President Obama has clung to those national security doctrines and practices laid down by President Bush: Support of the Patriot Act, enhanced surveillance techniques, military trials, if not enhanced interrogation at a minimum its use of information culled from its application, expansion of counter insurgency in Afghanistan, keeping Gitmo open for business, maintaining American troops in Iraq and the willingness to fight a third or even a fourth front against certain dictators who deny freedom and democracy to its people. Americans also know that the economic philosophy of this president is inconsistent with their best interests. However they are unconvinced that the Republicans have the answer to addressing the economic tsunami that awaits them in the decades to come.
It is fairly improbable that the Republicans over this next year and a half will convince the American people that Congressman Paul Ryan’s Plan should be adopted and therefore will require a president to sign off on its passage. Therefore the 2012 election has a good chance in resulting in a political stalemate: A socialist president and a challenging congress. This is just the outcome for which the U.S. Constitution was designed.
Friend Or Foe
Filed under: International Reflections, International War, Presidential Watch, Terrorism, United States at War
There are two components to every question concerning foreign policy when it comes to whether this country should intervene: Does the country have nuclear weapons and is it our ally?
From the moment Barack Obama entered upon the political scene right into his presidency he fiercely criticized George W. Bush’s foreign policy in regard to Afghanistan and Iraq, arguing that these interventions were unnecessarily pre-emptive. However when it came to the Libyan conflict he did not hesitate to have America intervene in its civil war while failing to explain why we were not also intervening in what can only be considered the civil wars of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Jordon. The answer is simple. These 4 countries are allies. For example, one could easily ask why hadn’t we intervened in the Russia-Chechnya civil war or for that matter the uprisings in China? Better yet why did President Obama slink away from confronting Iran during last year’s June uprising? Russia and China are hardly our allies but Russia and China have nuclear weapons. As for our enemy Iran, it may already have them.
So now we know that Barack Obama has finally learned what George W. Bush seemed to have known all along: Don’t pick on somebody your own size. Do you think President Obama might say I am sorry George? Don’t bet on it.
Who’s Next?
Filed under: International Reflections, International War, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism, United States at War
Will this President of the United States ever become a president of the United States? If the American people are asking this question in November of 2012 President Obama will serve only one term.
Let’s start from the top. President Obama doesn’t go to Congress when deliberating about whether the United States should involve itself in the Libyan rebellion, which, constitutionally he doesn’t have to do, but rather seeks UN approval which he seems to believe he is obligated to do.
Then, after the United States obtained UN approval to engage our armed forces, he makes no attempt to come before the American people and explain the basis of his action. This allows his opposition, which ironically comes from his liberal base, to have a field day in attacking the President as just another neo-con in sheep’s clothing.
The Libyan campaign, limited notwithstanding, at least so far, constitutes the sixth American military action involving Muslims in general or the Middle East in particular, over the last 20 years, 3 of which occurred since 9/11. Just to give some clarity to this, the United States has not been militarily involved in any other country or region during the same period. It is obvious therefore that those countries or regions that adhere to the Islamic faith, and especially located near or in the Middle East, have become a cauldron of revolution and rebellion. I don’t point this out as necessarily a bad thing since most of the governments of these Islamic countries which are presently on fire are autocratic and vicious. However every one of them, without exception, to one extent or another, are breeding grounds of America’s number one enemy, al-Qaeda. And many of them produce America’s number one and essential import, oil. So it’s not by accident that the United States finds itself entangled in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya while at the same time warily circling Iran looking for openings for conflict.
Tomorrow night, finally, the President of the United States will be addressing the American people about why we are now fighting in Libya. But he’s got to do more than that. The American people sense that this president lacks a vision when it comes to our role on the world stage. Worse they suspect that he does have a vision and it’s a United States that should take a back seat when it comes to international affairs. Will he actually come to the American people tomorrow and explain that the Libyan campaign is nothing more than a one-off? It’s not. But does he have the courage, or better yet the insight, to come before the American people and explain what as a candidate he denied: America is at war with a resolute enemy which promotes a theocratic, virulent Islamic vision for world governance. Tomorrow if he doesn’t provide for us the big picture Americans, on both sides of the political spectrum, will abandon him in droves.
Remember The Veterans
We send our soldiers off to war with glory. They return, some of them dead, only to be forgotten.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
This week Frank Buckles, the last surviving U.S. veteran of WWI, the war to end all wars, died at 110. 53,000 soldiers died in that war within two years while nearly five million joined the armed forces to fight. And today, for us, it is as if it never happened.
A little more than a third of the population supported the American Rebellion and General George Washington didn’t have much of choice at Valley Forge but to attack the Prussians in Trenton since within a very short period of time he was about to lose nearly his entire army through disease, starvation and legal furlough. How many of us today remember the Battle of Trenton and how it changed the course of the Rebellion and for that matter, the world?
James Webb, U.S. Senator from the Virginia wrote despairingly in “Born Fighting”, which explores how the Scots Irish shaped America, that we sacrifice our soldiers’ lives for wars more often than not and they are unimportant to our national security, and, when they return home they are abandoned and even worse, unremembered.
If all this is true – what is it that drives our young men and women to join the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, placing themselves in harm’s way, pulling themselves away from those they dearly love? Not a generation goes by when the U.S. finds itself on some far-flung battlefield fighting some ambiguous war that our politicians swear to us must be won. But Americans are not fools. They know the politicians are lying. And they know more about the chance for victory then all the pundits on FOX, CNN and MSNBC. But they also know what those who fought in WWI and the Vietnam War, and have fought and are stilling fighting in Afghanistan know.. that if we don’t fight the small stupid wars which we may lose from time to time we’ll be fighting the big important ones which we can’t.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
More Vasilations Mr. President?
Filed under: International Reflections, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism, United States at War
There are consequences to being uncertain: in love, in politics, in ambition and in war. President Obama is a reflection of that uncertainty, that irresolution that we now call Afghanistan.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
We entered the Afghan conflict only a few months from the aftermath of 9/11. We were in a state of shock and enraged at having been brutally and sadistically attacked on our home territory by people thousands of miles away who didn’t even own a tank, a plane or a ship and who we considered no more than barbarians.
It is now 9 years later and we seem to be no further in our accomplishment in Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and al-Queda than we were when we first walked into that country. And now the leader of that country, Hamid Karzai, the man we placed at the helm of this broken land, now shows his contempt for us, for our values, for our sacrifice of our blood and treasure and dances with our enemy, Iran.
With the recent revelations of President Karzai’s open admission of receiving “bags of money” from our sworn enemy, Iran and this Administration’s response of admitting knowledge of this travesty but offering nothing more manifests a blatant disregard of the sacrifices of the American people and especially of those families who have lost loved ones in this conflict.
President Obama came to office with the claim that the Afghan war was the right war and with the promise that he would prosecute it to the very end. Notwithstanding his recent commitment of troops and materiel into the conflict he revealed early on to the American people his indecisiveness and uncertainty when he promised that troops would begin to leave next year. His uncertainty about this conflict in Afghanistan will be his legacy and unfortunately ours long after his retreat into history.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
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