The American Spectator

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NAILING IT
Re: John R. Guardiano's What Obama Really Said Last Night:

"…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…"
--Franklin D. Roosevelt
March, 1933

"… we shall fight on the beaches…we shall never surrender…"
-- Winston S. Churchill
June, 1941

‘… ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."
-- John F. Kennedy
January, 1961

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
-- Ronald W. Reagan

"Blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda…."
-- Barack H. Obama

When it comes to the subtext of Obama's speech at West point, John Guardiano really nailed it!
-- Gretchen Chellson

Barack Obama has just handed the Taliban and its terrorist organization victory sometime after 2012 but not before his first term is up. Like LBJ specifically and Nixon later who ran on Peace with Honor slogan to get out of Vietnam, Obama has now made it a war for the Taliban to lose not us to win.

For those that don't grasp this, we took down a reported Taliban force of 45,000 in 2001 with 15,000 Northern Alliance, Special Forces and air power. Most of that force got away and has been bidding its time in safe heavens outside and in some cases inside Afghanistan. Eight years later with over 100,000 NATO and US forces combined and 60-90,000 so called Afghanistan armed forces the place is falling apart due to a larger, stronger and smarter Taliban force. All that force has to do now is bide its time more and improve upon what it has done over the last 8 years, just as the VC and NVA did between 1970 and the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. The parallels are striking and not surprising since both the Taliban and their embedded terrorist organization have patterned their strategy on what the successful North Vietnamese communists did to win their war against the last two Democrat administrations that played at war along with the one before that couldn't win against the Communists Chinese in Korea after the Japanese had wiped up the battlefield with them for almost 9 years in China. Our enemies clearly have our number on this.

The timed withdrawal, being a predictable timetable for the Taliban as well as us, is bad enough but the overall timing is clearly designed to serve a political purpose more than a military one. Obama knows a deteriorating situation on his watch would do even more harm to his reelection chances and thus wants only to do what buys him time through the 2012 election cycle. To those that support this charade, I would point out that having Afghanistan fail after the 2012 election will not serve anyone's long term interest, especially ours. The Taliban and their embedded terrorist organization have strategic plans for outside Afghanistan unlike the North Vietnamese communists. Letting this place fall to an even stronger Taliban regime will have long term positive consequences for their movement. Even fewer people are going to trust us if this place falls apart and becomes the breeding ground it was in 2001. To those that think an Afghanistan armed forces of sufficient size can be trained up in this time period after 8 years of trying to do this on that country's GDP and our tens of billions a year are delusional at best. The very nature of defensive war, which is all this has ever been, is grossly inefficient in terms of force structure and the odds are always with the smaller force that has the freedom of movement and action on its terms. The VC and NVA proved this time and time again over our 12 years in South Vietnam.

Short of destroying the Taliban's ability to wage war on its terms and removing a base of operations for its pet terrorist organization, we are watching the beginning of the end for us and the beginning of a more powerful Taliban controlled Afghanistan and a continuation of what brought us there in the first place less we forget why we went there in 2001. This is political pandering and triangulation at its worst (or best if you are a US military defeat loving Democrat). Long live King Obama......
-- Thom Bateman
Newport News, Virginia

FRAUD SCIENCE
Re: Max Schulz's Bob Dylan Rocks:

Maybe "God on Our side" would be more appropriate. because if he is, he'll stop the insanity sweeping the world by way of fraud science.
-- Bill

A more appropriate Dylan lyric for the Ecofascists and UNEP:

"Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth,
Blowing down the back roads headin' south.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You're an idiot, babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe."
-- I.M.Kessel