Quotes of the day

President Obama has seen fit to replace the sitting ISAF commander with a General McChrystal. Suffice it to say that Gen McChrystal’s understanding of the Warrior ethos is somewhat askew from the mainstream. Also let us cut to the chase and identify him more as a political mouthpiece than a field commander. Add to this the dubious addition of General James L. Jones, who unlike McChrystal has actual combat experience but still shares the same ultimate goals and one world vision as both McChrystal and Obama. What you have here is an unholy trinity injecting their shared philosophy of ‘spare the civilians at all cost’ – even though those civilians are not US citizens and are in fact complicit in their own misfortune. The new ROE presented by McChrystal and under which operation Khanjar was mounted is nothing less than disgraceful, immoral and fatal for our Marines, Sailors and Soldiers on the ground. The Marines and Soldiers that are ‘holding’ territories of dubious worth like Now Zad and Golestan without reinforcement, denial of fire-support and refusal to allow them to hunt and kill the very enemy we are there to confront are nothing more than sitting ducks. Denying them even the ability to fight, which is their only purpose for existing, to defend themselves in a foreign land that sees them first as agents of the devil is detestable to the secular world and immoral to the rest of us.
- John J. Bernard (1stSgt USMC ret) – 7/23/2009

MB4 on October 19, 2009 at 10:48 PM

General McChrystal has bought into the argument that there are those in the Islamic culture of Afghanistan that want what we have and need and want our help. He is wrong, and, to quote yet another scripture, ‘he has left his first love.’(stolen from Rev 2:45 describing the cold heartedness of the Ephesians to the Church) has been telling us that his real concern is for the safety and well-being of another people at great cost to his own. The General’s first responsibility is to his oath as it is for all sworn and elected officials. He has determined that the protection of a foreign entity, be they friendly or not (I dare say the events of the past several weeks say, not) is far more important than the lives of the Americans fighting in that foreign land. The latest example can be found in this link http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8289200.stm. This is a quote taken from the article that should make every American angry: “In a statement, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said that tribal militia launched attacks on foreign and Afghan military outposts from a mosque and a nearby village.”

The General is flirting with treason as defined as an act of disloyalty toward the sovereignty of this nation. Willful destruction of the uniformed forces of this nation certainly seems to qualify.

MB4 on October 19, 2009 at 10:57 PM

… We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. …
-Barack Obama Quote

canopfor on October 19, 2009 at 11:16 PM

That sounds like the intro to a masturbation manual.

MB4 on October 19, 2009 at 11:18 PM

Domestically, people are weary of war. If we escalate we would be in war for a whole decade! Far beyond any military commitment of this size before.

ckoeber on October 19, 2009 at 11:40 PM

I am “assuming” that you mean another 10 years as it has already been 8 years. I believe Michael Yon (seemingly trying so hard NOT to make the sale for staying) said it could be a 100 year war.

MB4 on October 19, 2009 at 11:44 PM

We shall not submit.

hillbillyjim on October 20, 2009 at 12:09 AM

We have already submitted. Islamic (Shariah) law is enshrined in the U.S. sponsored Afgan Constitution and Obama’s General Stanley McCyrstal has changed the ROE to favor Muslims at the expense of American troops.

Diana West -

If you read McChrystal’s report, the general makes it very clear that his change in strategy, not his change in troop levels, is his top priority. But this change in strategy is almost always left out of debate — and certainly out of the conservative end of the debate, which focuses on giving the general the forces he wants to win. What McChrystal actually wants to win — the support of the Afghan people, which is the basis of his new strategy — is never mentioned.

This strategy change to “population protection” at the expense of “force protection” (or, better, this strategy change intensification because certainly key aspects of such a policy have long been in place) is in fact a politically correct and ineffective recipe for defeat, and, therefore, something right up the boss’s alley.

Although in Washington they may talk about the 90,000 soldiers in the Afghan National Army, no one has reported actually seeing such an army anywhere in Afghanistan. When 4,000 U.S. Marines were sent into Helmand Province in July to take on the Taliban in what is considered one of its strongholds, accompanying them were only about 600 Afghan security forces, some of whom were police. Why, you might ask, didn’t the ANA, 90,000 strong after eight years of training and mentoring, handle Helmand on its own?

U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren’t near the village.” What Landay describes sounds like a disastrous manifestation of what Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal talked about all summer — what I’ve called our war on civilian casualties. It is being waged, the hallucinatory thinking goes, to win Afghan “hearts and minds” and thus the “counterinsurgency” against the Taliban. McChrystal and this strategy currently enjoy the support of both the Obama Left and the surger-cons on the Right, who, under the auspices of a new conservative think tank, the Foreign Policy Initiative, recently wrote an open letter to President Obama specifically applauding the president for choosing the McChrystal team, and expressing confidence in its new strategy.

Topsy-turvy worldwatch:

1) Stupid war goal: Minimize civilian casualties in order to win hearts and minds and unicorn and rainbows and … Dream on, holistic ones.

2) Further restrict US troops’ ability to defend themselves.

3) Pay money to casualties’ “survivors” “even where cause of death/injury is unclear, thus creating Afghanistan’s only growth industry since opium.

4) Report to Senate that civilian casualties have fallen 40 percent while US-led coalition casualties have risen 75 percent without a paper bag over head.

5) Expect (receive) pat on back, not demand for resignation.

Is it just me, or does Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s increasingly pathological obsession with “the people we seek to protect” — Afghans — to the exclusion of everything else, including the body parts of his own troops, begin to resemble the pathological obsession of another famous, albeit fictional, commander (whistling begins … )? Key is the shared blndness to national interest and enemy strategy.

MB4 on October 20, 2009 at 12:20 AM

We don’t win by destroying the Taliban. We don’t win by body count. We don’t win by the number of successful military raids or attacks, we win when the [Afghan] people decide we win.
- General McChrystal (in London last week)

Pre-occupied with protection of our own forces, we have operated in a manner that distances us — physically and psychologically — from the people we seek to protect.
- General McChrystal (from his COMISAF assessment of the war in Afghanistan)

If I were President I would name Stanley McChrystal to head to Peace Corp.

MB4 on October 20, 2009 at 12:29 AM

To me Islam is the enemy and if we are going to fight Islam we need to fight Islam when and where and how we choose and in a way that puts the lives of our troops at minimal risk.

MB4 on October 20, 2009 at 12:36 AM

Tough talk here. 100,000+ troops?

Definitly not. Certainly not for an extended perriod of time. You must have missed my last 1,000 comments.

Massive bombing runs?

ckoeber on October 20, 2009 at 1:05 AM

Certainly not to be ruled out if good opportunity presents.

MB4 on October 20, 2009 at 1:16 AM

Better ideas, please.

ckoeber on October 20, 2009 at 1:05 AM

They “better idea” is to recognize that Islam is our enemy, not our new friend.

MB4 on October 20, 2009 at 1:22 AM