“Undimmed Promise”
Hillary Clinton made an impassioned plea to send more money to the Arab Spring. She cited the “undimmed promise” of democratic movements and called the continuation of the administration’s policy “a strategic necessity”.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States must look past the violence and extremism that has erupted after the “Arab Spring” revolutions and boost support for the region’s young democracies to forge long-term security, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday…. “We recognize that these transitions are not America’s to manage, and certainly not ours to win or lose,” Clinton said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
“For the United States, supporting democratic transitions is not a matter of idealism. It is a strategic necessity,” she said. And she pointed to the “undimmed promise of the Arab Spring” in the backlash against extremist groups in Libya and Tunisia, saying that in many cases newly empowered Arab societies were standing up for peaceful, pluralistic democratic principles…. The Obama administration has earmarked some $1 billion in assistance for countries emerging from the Arab Spring revolutions, and has asked Congress for a separate $770 million fund tied to specific political and economic reforms…. Clinton urged the lawmakers to release the money, citing U.S.-sponsored programs and security partnerships she said could both reinforce democratic gains and increase pressure on extremist groups.
It is certainly a political necessity. The administration is so deeply committed to their Middle Eastern policy that they cant admit to error. It would mean they were capable of it.
In those circumstances it is quite reasonable to ask: what outcome, set of outcomes or events in the region would would lead them to reconsider the correctness of their chosen path? What metrics can be reasonably established to measure the ‘success’ of the Obama administration’s policy in the Middle East? There must be some way to distinguish between the virtue persisting on a hard but ultimately fruitful path and simple the vice of “reinforcing failure”; it should be possible to tell the difference between doubling-down on a losing proposition and waiting till it turns a profit.
Perhaps the most infamous recent historical example of the inability to distinguish between the two was the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. I recommend Martin Windrow’s The Last Valley which is an excellent account of what was really a complex battle. It describes how bravery, endurance and ingenuity cannot always compensate for the pure stupidity of one’s own high command. The problem with the French was that the more paras they poured into Dien Bien Phu the more they had to add to save the ones they had already dropped in.
They were doubling down. That much is well known. They got themselves into a place where they had to be right. There was no Plan B for being wrong.
What is less frequently realized is that Giap almost lost it. He was doubling down too. Giap’s initial strategy was premised on winning a rapid victory. So he sent his men pell-mell against the French lines. “Though effective, that approach was costly. Between 13 and 16 March, the Viet-minh suffered more than 9,000 casualties, including 2,000 dead”.
Giap had the sense to know when something was not working. He did the math and changed to siege tactics therafter and began building encircling trenches. His casualties immediately dropped by a dramatic extent. Then began Giap’s campaign of asphyxiation. Giap learned faster than the French high command.
But the French were not yet beaten. If the French high command had screwed the pooch at least they didn’t stand in the way of two enterprising Para Colonels, Langlais and Bigeard who effectively took over command of the French fortress and did something very counterintutive. They took the offensive and began counterattacking Viet Min positions.
Why did this work? By regaining the iniative Bigeard could choose which point to attack and more importantly, force the Viet Minh had to come out of their trenches to meet the French thus walking into their remaining artillery and machine gun fire. Bigeard had remembered the First World War lesson of “bite and hold” and would use it to slaughter the Viet Minh. He understood that mobile warfare was France’s friend and sought to play to his remaining strengths. The two colonel’s problem was that they didn’t have the resources to pull it off.
Even under such conditions French counterattacks continued to be effective. The high-point, indeed the last real victory for the French at Dein Bien Phu, was a brilliantly-planned night strike on April 10 that retook Éliane 1, driving off Vietminh troops while visiting heavy losses upon them. The French re-capture of Éliane 1 was an important moment in this phase of the battle. It seems to have had a serious adverse affect on Vietminh troop morale, leading to the appearance of “rightist and negative” tendencies (the quote is from Giap). Bernard Fall believes that the Vietminh morale collapsed and was restored only by heroic efforts on the part of the political commissars.
Time and again the ability to learn from one’s mistakes proves to be all the difference between winning and losing. The French learned, but learned too late. The counterattacks are memorialized in Windrow’s book. In one memorable passage Windrow describes the French Vietnamese troops moving out into the dark. And quite spontaneously, to the surprise of the other members of the garrison the Vietnamese troops began to sing La Marseillaise.
Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
It’s an astonishing reminder that contrary to the trope that of bad colonial versus Communist freedom fighter, that there were many thousands of Vietnamese who were fighting for France, fighting for their country. That’s how the fight lasted 55 days. But the Langlais and Bigeard’s innovations could not make up for fundamental defects in strategy. Giap was reinforced and his commissars by propaganda and threat restored order. Dien Bien Phu fell.
Perhaps Hillary and President Obama know the difference between persisting in error and simply persisting. And who knows but Congress may even give them the money for more of the Arab Spring. But not all the money in the world can make up for reinforcing failure and refusing to learn.
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Napoleon, about whom you, Wretchard, so well-said in another thread “could walk on water” (along with Alexander) apparently observed that there are no bad soldiers, only bad generals. Sun Tzu himself said the good general puts his troops into a position where the most cowardly can be brave, and the enemy’s troops into a position where the most brave will be cowardly.
It sounds like the para colonels, Langlais and Bigeard, were excellent. But what was it about Vietnam? We ourselves won again and again, and a number of times the North was almost ready to throw in the towel, (esp re: Nixon’s bombing) but our own high command messed it all up.
Maybe, in some way, the Mideast/Arab Spring/terrorist comeback will be the Democrats new Vietnam. (They apparently seem to be enamored of turning Afghanistan into it.) It certainly is shaping up to be Hillary’s, at least.
You’d think orcs would be smarter than that.
An Préachán
The Democrats are very smart about the wars they want to win. And since World War 2 there has only been one war they really want to win. That is the war for US government power. Everything else is weighed in the light of that objective.
Victory abroad has no intrinsic meaning to some Democrats. That’s why the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq were always two wars. The one overseas and the domestic one. You fight wars to “win” LGBT rights, more welfare, more housing, more benefits.
The Democrats are quite smart, it’s the game they play that’s crazy. The Middle East however, is a case of war with domestic consequences — fuel price for example — and which can possibly unleash large scale terror attacks on America itself. Once that happens it will become important to the Democrats. But maybe too late.
Thanks, W. That explains it: “And since World War 2 there has only been one war they really want to win. That is the war for US government power. Everything else is weighed in the light of that objective.”
I’ve understood the basic idea, esp re: their “Long March Through Academia” and their “Sexual Revolution” gambit (a product of the Marxist Frankfurt School). But I’ve not thought about it in terms of Korea and Vietnam, and now the Mideast.
Sheesh–where is the “Holy Inquisition” when you need ‘em? Whatever else they did, they kept at bay the types who’ve been eating away at Western Civ the last 150 years. If we survive the near future, we’ll have to have some sort of such audit, to keep the cancer from returning. (‘IF’ is, of course, a massive word, the size of mountain ranges beneath the depths of the sea.
An Préachán
I’m afraid you have it backwards, An Préachán. The inquisitor types are still with us, and still enforcing orthodoxy. They simply switched clothes. Skynet *is* the virus. They *are* the left you would have them attack.
The most important thing about the last 150 years isn’t that Western Civ has been attacked from the inside, it’s that it’s transformed huge swathes of the world into areas of prosperity, health, and even freedom that were unimaginable for most previously — and may continue to do so, if we let it. But it took abandoning orthodoxies to achieve that.
America has an interest in promoting the development of peaceful productive societies. That is a “Good Thing.”
Socialists, who have a flawed vision for domestic policy, are incapable of articulating and implementing a vision for other societies that is not flawed. They cannot pick winners and losers since even their winners turn out to be losers. The Arab Spring/ Muslim Brotherhood has turned out to be the Solyndra of foreign policy. We can only hope that once they lose their grip on the US Taxpayer revenue stream the Islamists will implode as completely.
“Time and again the ability to learn from one’s mistakes proves to be all the difference between winning and losing.”
And Jimmy Carter had his “Persian spring”.
#4 someone
But it took abandoning orthodoxies to achieve that.
And there in the open is the Grand Canard, the embrace of the delusion of delusions that must compel me to believe that abandoning orthodoxy means not only that buggering thy neighbor (literally) is not a bad thing, it is the highest form of tolerance and autonomous liberty. Bad is good and good is… well there is no such thing.
And from whence did this thing formerly known as Western Civilization spring from? Could it be those darn orthodox cathedral schools and universities that exalted logic, reason and the discovery of the truth and beauty found in the natural order of the world? Can’t have any of that. We all know that those orthodox types hate prosperity and health, don’t we?
But I feel so enlightened from the Enlightenment you say. It gave us Locke and Declaration of Independence after all. Didn’t it? Only if we first ignore the greatest revolution in social thought yet experienced by homo sapiens – 1st Century Catholicism (Christianity to you Luther types) that taught and practiced (to death in many cases) that each human being has equal dignity, whether patrician or plebe, man or woman, master or slave. Go try and make a civil society without that little gem of orthodoxy.
Orthodox Catholicism IS Western Civilization. Whatever we have today is a poor and corrupt imitation.
Obama’s foreign policy and smart diplomacy have been an unmitigated disaster. Where four years ago there was ‘relative’ stability in the Middle East and America appeared to be making serious inroads against terror groups in the Iraq/Afghanistan region we now see spreading civil war giving rise to Islamic theocracies and the likelihood of a bellicose, terror-sponsoring Iran becoming a nuclear power. These are ominous developments and are likely uncontainable. The implications for Europe with it’s proximity to the conflagration and growing Muslim population is frightening. This isn’t about Israel and oil anymore.
They need another billion of our dollars to wage war on us ’cause they ain’t getting the job done fast enough to suit ‘Jugears and Cankles’.
It wasn’t ever about, Israel nor oil nor even Democracy. “It” is about POWER and CONTROL.
The Left/Communists learned from both WWI and WWII that by sending the patriotic males off to combat to die then you are by subtraction left with the disinterested and malleable population. Easily duped and controlled. The British were put through the grinder and what was left quickly voted for the chains of Socialism.
The Democrat/American Communist party has worked diligently with their fellow travelers in the Republican party to see that our most patriotic men and women are killed and demoralized in foreign lands for the supposed purpose of igniting the flame of freedom and liberty. This is why they don’t fight to win.
The U.S. govt sends our best and brightest into the grinder and spends the rest of the population into penury.
Spit yourself out of the system. Take the red pill.
It looks like the hounds have finally found the scent. Perhaps they will run the fox to ground before the first week of November.
I just love Belmont and coffee in the morning.
#2. wretchard
Once again, you have nailed it. Much of what has gone wrong with the US is a direct result of this dynamic. Most of the expansion of the welfare state has come about as a result of compromises. The Democrats have held national security as a hostage, demanding the rise of the welfare/patronage state as the cost of providing for essential national defence. So far their strategy has been very successful.
“These are ominous developments and are likely uncontainable.”
We can never ensure an enduring resolution to do good in the world when 47% of our native population is against the success of the remaining percent. It appears to me that the USG never strains to understand its own people as much as it does its enemies. Which answers another fundamental question, who is the enemy? It is the 53%. There can be little doubt left.
Fix the middle east? A little late for that now. We must barricade our families at our front door and expand out, back down the trails of the long march. Without our institutions there are no foundations and no future to gain. We are not holding our own lines.
Vietnam was lost on Democrat veto of funds. They didn’t do that to hurt the Vietnamese. They did it to hurt Republican Americans and millions died. They shed no tear but used their own hubris to beat down their enemy at home.
“The United States must look past the violence and extremism that has erupted after the “Arab Spring” revolutions and boost support for the region’s young democracies to forge long-term security, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday…”
I think some one like in congress needs to ask Hilary what kind of democracy is she talking about?
Are we talking about a constitutional republic with all of our unalienable rights or one that gives preference to Sharia Law?
If the latter, she can take a hike. Fighting to support an Islamic democracy that denies people their unalienable rights is absolutely not what we should support. And while we are at it, can we ask whether Hil, Buraq and all their nitwit friends support our constitutional republic at home? All the evidence points to the contrary.
Of course the grand poobahs of the Republican Party would not dare bring such clarity to our public debates. Too much truth is bad for you, don’t ya know.
And adding to the list of Hil/Buraq foreign policy failures, Russia just announced it ain’t into dismantling WMD’s in it’s former republics anymore. http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Disturbing-News-From-Russia-Confirms-Failure-of-Reset
I think there’s a silver lining in this fiasco; we can now surely junk the whole START process and ABM up big time. There ain’t too many fig leafs left for the traitorous Left to hide behind anymore to preserve that cowardly START capitulation.
Just another example of what leading from behind gets ya.
PB at 7: Excellent comment.
G. K. Chesterton said the world was living of its “Catholic capital”, meaning exactly what you wrote.
The long-term problem I was thinking of is that even were we to survive these evil times and our abomination of a president (just one i.e., http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/01/obama_waives_sanctions_on_countries_that_use_child_soldiers) our “open” and Classical Liberal political system will spawn more pathogens such as Marx. Give people their heads, and more than a few of them will run off a cliff; worse, some of those will insist on taking you with them (Lenin, Mao, even Hitler fits—another child of Rousseau, of course).
How do you guard against it? One way is to support the religion that created Western Civ, as PB (and Chesterton) suggest. I don’t advocate a police state, either, but it seems to be true that we carry the madness of our own self-destruction within ourselves. The Lawgiver in the old Planet of the Apes movies is supposed to have said, “Beware the beast Man, for he will make a desert of his own forest, and yours, too.” (Something like that, and surely the 20th century supports THAT idea.) Christianity is a program to prevent that from happening. Islam seems to be a virus wholly dedicated to MAKING it happen, and the same can be said of Marxism.
All this deeper discussion may be academic. As Annoy Mouse says, right now it’s time to man the barricades of hearth and home.
Or as the Mideast and Unsk’s reports about Russia suggest, there’s probably no “may” about it.
An Préachán
@13 “Vietnam was lost on Democrat veto of funds. They didn’t do that to hurt the Vietnamese. They did it to hurt Republican Americans and millions died. They shed no tear but used their own hubris to beat down their enemy at home.”
Well done.
Hillary Clinton made an impassioned plea to send more money to the Arab Spring.
So, they take eleven billion dollars, put it in a #10 envelope, write on it the address “Arab Spring”, and drop it in the corner mailbox, right?
hopefully things will get better as the damn baby boomers start dying off.
why treat anything obama or hillary say with any seriousness? they are not serious people, and i wouldn’t put money on them even being sane.
After closely following and supporting Bush’s efforts after 9/11 I saw that democracy promotion didn’t always work out well. Like in Gaza and in Lebanon, where Herpies and Ebolla were the real winners. I saw the purple fingers in Iraq signifying a desire to vote and I eventually came to appreciate the difficulties of trying to introduce liberal democracy to premodern societies. Indeed, events forced me to recognize the limitations of the neoconservative policies of the Bush administration. Therefore I have been appalled by the Obama administration doubling down on democracy in the Middle East. Their ‘progressive’ ideology is different from the neocon’s but they both stem from liberalism and I doubt that the Islamists much appreciate the differences. Both Bush and Obama have tried to support a tiny minority of the population who understands Western democracy. The rest are not interested because they do not live in a win win society but in a dominate or be dominated society. We keep projecting our Western liberal win win mentality on them and it ain’t working. Obama is a post modern president and so is prone to try to substitute narratives for policies. The engagement narrative for Ajad, the democracy narrative for Hosni, and the duty to protect narrative for the Late Great Loon. One of the pitfalls of postmodernism is that you can get your narratives in the wrong place. In my modest view Obama should have applied the duty to protect when Ajad stole the election and played engagement kabuki with Hosni and Loon.
7. Peter Boston
I think someone#4 has a point if you replace “abandoning orthodoxies” with “relentless innovation”. Western Capitalism of course has benefited the West in all the ways we can list in our sleep but it did that largely by unleashing widespread and in some ways runaway innovation.
The other mighty benefit of that innovation has been changes in attitudes, societies and economies in poverty stricken parts of the world. These changes, caused by the adoption and/or modification of Western Capitalism have lifted billions of people out of miserable poverty.
That is truly something to celebrate and for us Western Capitalists to be proud of. I think the present decline of the West is largely due to the strangling of innovation by bureaucracies and lefty ideologues who think Western Capitalism is the devil incarnate. They want to choke innovation with regulations, political correctness and dead end religions like the Church of Green.
Maybe someone#4 wasn’t thinking about the Catholic Church; maybe they were. Who knows? Personally I like the small c definition of catholic – “broad in sympathies, tastes, or interests”.
Unhinged Malody
Oh, my secretary Clinton
I’ve hungered for your cash
A long, lonely time
And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
I need your cash
I need your cash
Allah speed your cash to me!
Lonely Nile flows
To the sea, to the sea
Can you buy Mercedes for me?
Lonely deserts dry
“Too sandy, too sandy”
Arab Spring money will set me free!
Oh, my love, my dhimmi
I’ve hungered, hungered for your cash
A long, lonely time
And time goes by so slowly
Your cash can do so much
Send jizya immediately!
I need your cash
I need your cash
Allah speed your cash to me!
Re. # 8. Arty “Where four years ago there was ‘relative’ stability in the Middle East and America appeared to be making serious inroads against terror groups in the Iraq/Afghanistan region…”
Not 4 years ago. In my recollection it was about 10 years ago just few weeks following Iraq invasion: Gaddafi soiled his pants and gave up nuclear dreams, Ayatollahs became quiet as a church, pardon me, mosque mouse, and Taliban fled from Afg. Than the field personnel was prevented from shooting fleeting Taliban honchos (charitable reason is stupidity or “to engage” Pakis, and uncharitable one….), idiotic “hearts and minds” ideas took over and it was all the way down since.
And, BTW, it NEVER was about Israel.
if you want to see how the red/black alliance between leftists and islamicists is going to turn out, this is it (benghazi attack).
“attacks on the Japanese.
The Viet Minh’s Foreign Legion
One of the genuine “dirty little secrets” of the First Indochina War was the fact that the Viet Minh had serving in its ranks some former Imperial Japanese troops and even Nazi German personnel.
When Japan surrendered to the Allies, between 1,500 and 4,000 Japanese troops joined the Viet Minh. Led by a Lieutenant Colonel Mukayama, who was later killed in action fighting the French, these troops included some members of the dread Kempetai, or military secret police. Many of the Japanese troops served as technicians and trainers with the Viet Minh, and some served in combat. The Japanese 51st Mountain Artillery Regiment, some nine hundred strong, seems to have provided the core about which the Viet Minh built their first artillery units.
Joining these Japanese troops were some former Nazi official and even German troops recruited in Asia by the Nazi Auslander organization who had been serving in Indochina (a forgotten footnote to World War II), preferring to take chances with the Communists than the Allied war crimes tribunal.
The Viet Minh also aquired some erstwhile Nazi troops through capturing members of the French Foreign Legion, which was heavily German in the post-World War II period. In fact, Ho Chi Minh went so far as to “adopt” one, who took the name Ho Chi Long, an obvious ploy to entice more defections from the ranks of the French.
This co-option of former enemy troops was by no means an unusual occurrence in the post-World War II period. Both sides in the post-1945 Chinese Civil War made use of former Japanese personnel who, for various reasons, preferred not to return home. Despite “denazification” in Germany and other parts of Europe, a lot of former Nazis managed to turn up in positions of authority on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The infamous Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny reportedly served as a technical advisor to the South Vietnamese Army for a time in the 1950’s. (page 38-39)
http://tinyurl.com/934afnl
“The African American experience in Vietnam: brothers in arms
By James E. Westheider
Sometime in early 1945, a small American military mission parachuted into the rugged countryside of northern Vietnam. The men went to assist a band of Vietnamese guerillas who called themselves the “Vietminh” and were fighting the Japanese occupation of Vietnam. “Vietminh”, which loosely translated means “freedom fighters”, was short for “Viet Man Doc Lap Dong Minh”, or “the Vietnamese League for Independence.” It was organized in May 1941 by three men who would play a major role in America’s war in that country, Pham Van Dong, Vo Nguyen Giap, and the leader of the movement, Ho Chi Minh. (p. 17)
In 1940, Japanese troops occupied French Indochina, including Vietnam. France was in no position to resist the invasion of the Nazi’s Pacific ally, having just been defeated by Germany and forced into a humbling surrender. The Japanese were brutal overlords, exploiting the Vietnamese people and seizing the rice, rubber and coal that their empire needed. In resisting the Japanese, Vietnamese nationalist leaders saw an opportunity to strike a blow against yet another foreign invader and further the cause of independence. Ho returned to Vietnam in 1941 to organize the Vietminh. But the new Vietminh presented itself as a nationalist, not a communist movement, and since Nguyen Ai Quoc was a well-known communist, he changed his name to Ho Chi Minh to downplay his communist ties.
The Viet Minh rescued American pilots shot down by the Japanese and provided the Americans with useful intelligence about enemy troop movements. In return, the American military began to provide the Viet Minh with weapons. The Americans had already entered into an alliance with the Soviet Union to fight Nazi Germany, so the Vietminh’s communist connections were not an issue during the war. Most Americans agreed that Ho, Giap, and their followers were Viet namese nationalists first and communists second. The only stipulation the United States placed on the arms it supplied to the Vietminh was that they not sue them againt the French. With American military support the Vietminh not only fought the Japanese but also slowly established political control over much of northern Vietnam and extended their reach southward for the first time.
By the summer of 1945 it was obvious that the Japanese were headed for defeat. Ho was determined to take advantage fo the temporary power vaccuum before the French had a chance to reassert colonial control. In August 1945, the Vietminh occupied and took control of Hanoi and the old imperial capital of Hue. On September 2, 1945, from a balconey in Hanoi and with American intelligence officer Major Archimedes Patti at this side, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed an independent Vietnam. American military officers joined Giap to review marching Vietminh troops, and at least one American warplane few over the crowd and dipped its wings in salute to the newly proclaimed republic. Ho hoped the United States would support an independent Vietnam, but American support of the Vietminh soon faltered. (page 18-19)”
The French knew that Viet Nam was a lost cause, it had little support in Paris political elite, nor in parliament, the soldiers though made a honnor challenge to jump into the hell there, they were all volontary engaged.
I still remember how the surviving soldiers of this campain were seen afterword, some kind of zombies, with psycho problems, that no one wanted to approach.
One had a room in our café village, his occupation was to go fishing into the pond that bordered our way to school, and of course getting drunk into the café. As kids we were kinda afraid to talk to him, though he wasn’t rude with us. Just that none understands of which planet he came from
The French wanted to get rid of this war (as recommanded by General Leclerc, but he died too early in a car crash, to ddefend the independance cause), but the crubber lobbies were pressing on our government, to carry on the fightings, since they were subsidied at 65% by the Americans, hey we were fighting the commies,, that ironically were subsidied by the Americans for getting rid of the Japanese.
Also the equation there, was 3 (the French troops) vs 10 (the Vietmin troops)
27. Marie Claude
What does ‘crubber lobbies’ refer to? I don’t recognize the term.
Rubber tire companies such as Michelen.
rubber lobby
yes,
sanhetnik
hmm sorry for the typos
Peter Bostom #4:
Interesting leadoff straw man. Modernity and multiculti nihilism aren’t the same, but they are brothers. The problem is how to keep the latter from killing the former. The west transformed the world by learning, as stevesmith said, to innovate: that means to pay attention to results, to put aside leaders and structures and hypotheses that don’t produce them, and of course to heed the ever-shifting signals of the market… and to adopt the habit of considering these things first instead of whatever the received opinion and nomenklatura of the day might demand. The Church in its established form retarded these developments; in its modern form it helps preserve them… but it certainly could not have taught this worldly lesson in the first place.
If you believe the Church is what matters, then you’ll be happy to know that it will survive Obamaworld, just as it survived and/or made accomodation with unfreedom in centuries past. But our prosperity and freedom will not.
One thing to remember relative to Hillary’s being tossed Under The Bus.
She belongs there.
It was the SECSTATE who, while Obama partied in Rio, cut a deal for the US to bail out the Euros in Libya. Obama was in the position of saying “What’s that you say, Hillary? Look you’re breaking up, bad! This line is terrible! We’ll talk about it when I get back to DC. Luvya, bye!”
It was Obama that invented “Lead From Behind” as a way of saying “Wasn’t me! That phone line was terrible! And not only that, Hillary ran out of quarters and they were about to cut us off anyway. Hell, I could have sworn she said Liberia, not Libya!”
Why can’t we say that ONLY countries that immortalize our First Amendment can spend tax dollars from FREE Americans? Are we SCARED OF FREEDOM?
The Associated Press reports: “Hillary Clinton: Still no clear picture of Benghazi”
The truth is “out there”. The article mentions a new line of defense against the ‘politicization’ of the Benghazi hearings: prove that providing more security would have saved the Americans.
Meanwhile the real news today is that it’s the 37th Wedding Anniversary of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The Huffington Post features a slideshow of the Clintons through the years.
But not all the money in the world can make up for reinforcing failure and refusing to learn.
True. If you are a decision-maker or policy-maker, your biases can get you in trouble. Which is why if you are smart you surround yourself with people who represent a mix of viewpoints and ideologies, to avoid the pitfalls of a groupthink echo chamber. This administration has many true believers in progressive PC thought as the basis for economic and foreign policy creation. Is there anyone among them that dares to think differently?
That is what I think is the key to the Obama admin’s failures: They don’t recognize the concept of a loyal opposition. They can never analyze why they are failing because there is no one among them able to suggest an alternate path to success; and they refuse to accept criticism from those they disagree with ideologically due to an ingrained bias against conservative thought.
The knee-jerk response to criticism of progressive liberal policies is to attack the character of the critic. Administration critics are branded liars and haters- thus nothing they say can be worthy of consideration. You saw that attitude on display in Bidens’s antics. And that attitude has been encouraged by the chattering intellectual class and the media who largely agree that conservatives and Republicans are, as a group, despicable people.
This can not end well. If they are not voted out, we will see more of this divisiveness, and we can expect more policy failures from an administration that is willfully devoid of self-criticism.
wretchard @ 2:
The Democrats are very smart about the wars they want to win. And since World War 2 there has only been one war they really want to win. That is the war for US government power. Everything else is weighed in the light of that objective.
Exactly.
Politics hasn’t stopped at the water’s edge for a very long time now for the Democratic Party. Defending our interests internationally is to be avoided, or the can to be kicked down the road; domestic programs — bread and circuses — are what it’s all about and what wins the next election cycle, two years out.
And even those among them who aren’t craven opportunists can’t seem ever to see when military force is necessary. Sam Nunn, their heavyweight on military matters and foreign affairs at the time, argued against going to war against Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait, even as part of a multinational coalition.
We won’t be safe again as a nation until there is true bipartisanship in service of the idea that the U.S. and the freedom it represents are worth defending, and that there are times in international affairs when war, however terrible it is in the waging, is necessary to defend it and its position in the world.
cjm @ 19:
Sure, why not open those FEMA camps? Tell me where to report. You do not have the courage to really come out of your closet you little Fascist. ….and the horse you rode in on…..
Do you have the stones to kill your own parents? “You first.”
People like you need to be drawn into the public square for who you really are. No longer can this type of language be unchallenged in public. You have become what you say you dislike.
I don’t get Hilary. Is she really as blinded by ideology as she appears? I mean, what sort of idiot thinks that an “Arab spring” that installs the Muslim Brotherhood as the leaders of at least two (and probably more before we’re done) countries is a “democratic movement”?
OT but hopefully in context.
How was the Benghazi attack not a carefully-orchestrated strike by AlQ and cohorts?
Really, the Consulate was collateral damage compared to the catastrophe suffered by the closeby CIA site. 37 of our folks escaped. That was a significant operation, needing constant re-supply. A DC-3-ful at least.
What that large a cadre of infidel spies were doing there had to have become obvious to the enemy. At home, they willfully under-estimated the enemy their subordinates faced and withheld protection.
It seems to me this loss exceeds the fiasco in Afghanland, were we lost the whole station to a suicidal mole. Killing our Amb. was a side benefit. And, it’s about a video? As has been said here, this act of war has nothing to do with Israel or oil.
It’s been bugging me that no one in the media is shouting about the war we’re in with radical Islam.
All I can say is ‘is this biatch for real’?? Is jugears and cankles are so insane to demand taxpayers forking even more money to their enemies? They have lost all sense of reality!
38. Bob Smith
Jesse Stone: “The truth is out there. All you have to do is let it in.”
Earth to Hillary: “We let in the truth within 36 hours without Intel, pictures, or transcripts. We just used common sense. All the intrigue, of course, is still known only by you and your buddy in the White House. It is also clear, however, that with a compliant Republican party, the LSM, and a congress replete with cowards, that November 6 will pass to the delight of the fat, dumb and happy, the evil and the stupid without a single ray of truth crossing the government’s lips.”
Prediction: Obama will remain in the White House no matter the results of the election. Our Democrat fiends are already braying about the coming heist:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/connecticut-dem-jokes-about-corruption_654445.html
Somewhere, government agent(s) are collecting data, transcripts, and all manner of digital voice transmissions of interest, to support future opportunities and actions.
Somewhere, however, there may already be private data collection efforts to define which of our public officials who put their hand on a Bible and uttered an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic” and then broke that oath.
7. Peter Boston
Orthodox Catholicism IS Western Civilization.
With all due respect, the seed of Western Civilization is Christ, not any of the religions that tried to screw up His message in the Bible. Not Luther’s American disciples who put Man above Man in their justification of slavery nor the Popes who inserted Man between Christ and HIS flock, and raised themselves above Christ with indulgences. Both of the above examples are clear apostasies and unworthy of those “Christians” who, with great error, ‘chose’ to support them.
“Whatever we have today is a poor and corrupt imitation.”
Well, on that I must agree. As we substitute secular cultural solutions for the values espoused in the Bible, we have come to the point where we kill our offspring and raise the Snail Darter above Man as a more holy being.
“ We save the trees while we kill the children.” – Casting Crowns
There’s also that pesky “works” thingy that puts a 4 foot wide black line between us Southern Baptists and them thar Catholics, Mormons, and the JWs. I know – navel gazing for the faithful.
Notwithstanding the obvious differences between faiths, this Southern Baptist is voting for Romney and Ryan. I’ve looked into the face of evil on the other side and I can see it clearly reflected back, blindingly, today. After the Bengazi debacle and the lies that perpetrated and extended it, evil is oozing out of every orifice of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. I’m expecting to see a Ghost Busters appearance and Biden’s head turn all the way around. Is anyone else channeling Tubular Bells these days?
3. An Préachán, 4. Someone, 21. Stevesmith
The level of “diversity” in the “solutions” offered by these posts may in fact illustrate why we western civilization types are so befuddled about what our common goals are and why our secular solutions are so completely ineffective – aided by the confusion these “original” ideas spawn. There’s no “there” there; no central agreement except that we all see something different as the “solution,” most often because we haven’t truthfully studied the problem.
#21 figures the lack of innovation recently practiced is the culprit, however, he neglects to note the pillars of our society that have been targeted and destroyed by significant “innovation” by the Marxists. That is the real blindness that this culture today embraces and it is that flawed analysis that will invite the garrote – from behind.
It is no wonder why our days are numbered. It’s not that we believe in nothing; we believe in anything. Today, so many of us disbelieve what we can’t, not know…except for our druthers. The bulk of us are simply too enlightened for our own good and have lost the concept of humbleness; pride tells us that we got it wired. Just look at President Obama.
The Islamists are united. United, passionate, and frenzied people willing to die for their cause, will beat the snot out of irresolute folk every.single.time. And America, because of its inability to speak the truth of things becomes weaker by the day. And we all have a hand in that weakness.
16. An Préachán.
Ah, back to the basics.
42. Sgian Dubh
Your idea that totalitarianism, Marxism etc are innovations is new to me. The label “Marxism” may be new but it’s domination and coercion of a whole people by a select ruling class is not new. To my mind Chistianity was one of the great innovations that led to Western Civilizaton’s great strength. I’ve heard that riff about belief that you quoted before and it sounds hollow to me. I am quite sure that it is impossible to believe in nothing and equally certain that it’s impossible to believe in everything. Neither idea makes sense to me.
Another Western innovation that I believe in is the idea that the State exists mainly to serve the individual instead of the individual existing primarily to serve the State. Western Capitalism and individual liberty would not exist without that idea.
43. stevesmith
Totalitarianism is not an innovation. I agree. Depending on how you treat the arc of history, Marxism was certainly an innovation in its time, just an evil one, with very smart and devious folk attempting to confuse the weak minded. And a totalitarian one with another name. The pitfalls of the domination and coercion part had to be learned; and learned the hard way by those gullible enough to think that crafting an individual life is “easy” and that our goal as human beings is to find the easiest way to proceed without using our common sense.
The passage about belief is vintage Chesterton. It asserts that those who are intellectually unhinged and/or religiously uncommitted are really not concerned with nailing their 95 Theses to the door of anything. Hence, their lack of thought or structure tends to lead them…anywhere…in their postulation on the basic questions of life.
The difference of opinion in the faith realm about works is vibrant, strong and divisive. Should it be? I think if we asked Christ he would shake his head and realize his creation might need another 3 or 4 centuries to come to their own conclusion. Is it important? Yes. Will it keep me from voting for someone whom I consider a good man? No, not if the question and the analysis is approached appropriately with humility and a pure desire to know the truth.
Thank you for your response.