This comes to us via Greyhawk at the Mudville Gazette.
Mr. Obama all but declared victory in Iraq, crediting the military but not Mr. Bush, who sent more troops in 2007. “A lesser Army might have seen its spirit broken,” Mr. Obama said. “But the American military is more resilient than that. Our troops adapted, they persisted, they partnered with coalition and Iraqi counterparts, and through their competence and creativity and courage, we are poised to end our combat mission in Iraq this summer.”
Yeah, we are resilient Mr. President. We persevered in spite of all the people in your party who declared the war all but lost, who enabled our enemies at every turn, who stuck knives in our back because they thought it would benefit them politically. So yeah, in spite of your best efforts we did the job.
THANKS FOR NOTHING.
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Well said; and, I’m sure that a significant number of American citizens feel the same way as you. Our less-than-commander-in-chief is as two-faced as they come.
Outlaw,
here’s a bit of a reminder that should tell you all you need to know about how we are viewed by POTUS (and his enablers).
—————————————
On March16, 2009, members of the American Legion met with President Obama where he discussed “a proposal to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries.” The non-profit veterans service organization, American Legion, issued a statement voicing its concerns on its web site shortly after the meeting. Click here for statement.
Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion said that Obama “ is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it.”
A March 17, 2009 CNN article said the “chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs vowed Tuesday that the plan would never gain the panel’s approval. ‘VA’s sacred duty is to care for veterans injured in honorable service to our nation, and the department should not turn to wounded warriors’ private insurance to pay for combat injures,’ said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii. ‘Under my chairmanship, the Veterans’ Affairs Committee will not advance any such legislation.’”
On the afternoon of March 18, 2009 Fox News reported that the Obama administration has changed their mind on this plan.
—————————————-
Just so everyone understands where this administration is coming from.
I can understand dodging any credit for Bush – after all, Bush got us there, and it was his administration that let things go to rot for two or three years. This is politics. If Obama was half as smart as he perceives himself, he would give Bush full-credit and that would give him much more slack to hammer Republicans for whom he deems “partisan” such as Rush Limbaugh, especially if he is “fair-minded” enough to give some credit to a Republican president.
But three years ago, these same troops were likened to the Nazis, Sadaam and whatever convenient metaphor in the Democratic thesaurus. This wasn’t a simple political disagreement over the handling of the war, it was just as divisive as Bush’s “with us or not” line – questioning supports of the war, the very nature of it, and the performance of everyone involved, as well as motivations and attaching all sorts of conspiracy silliness.
And they wonder why they are wimps. Democrats, and I run into plenty of them every day, believe in the “myth of the Democratic security weakling,” as some creation of 80s Republican marketing and p.r., but it’s of their own. They bailed on Vietnam, despite the human tragedy involved. That consequence shouldn’t be denied whether you believed it was worth fighting there in the first place, or not. When the insurgency kicked up in Iraq, it wasn’t enough to talk management or stick to the WMD issue, it went into a full-bore effort to demonize anyone who supported the war in the first place as evil, treacherous and the worst. The completely fallible Bush, who can’t string two sentences together, is suddenly infallible and malevolent enough to pull the wool over the entire Western world.
Latent back-patting of the military isn’t going to fix 30 years of history. Obama has done some things well in foreign policy (the Afghanistan surge, increased drone attacks, not pulling out troops) and other things not (McChrystal’s shenanigans), but for a man whose success is so succinctly tied to his rather voluminous and eloquent verbiage, he should know by now words have consequences. Especially to those who have fought over there, known those who have, and lost those who have.
Two parts of BHO’s statement stand out:
“…they partnered with coalition and Iraqi counterparts”
Not to demean the efforts of our allies, but the verb “partnered” implies an equality of both commitment and effectiveness. Our guys have commanded, trained, planned and executed to a degree that has been far more important and effective than anything anyone else has done. Our troops have “led,” not merely been “partners,” and the president’s choice of verb here both diminishes the role of our troops and the importance of that role.
“…we are poised to end our combat mission in Iraq this summer”
That’s the important part of this message for BHO: the signal to his liberal base that we’re finally getting out. Hooray! Here’s the problem with that statement. We’re not actually getting out. Tens of thousands of troops will remain in what Outlaw has taught us is called “the sandbox” for some time to come. What is and is not a combat mission is matter of semantics and politics. We’ll draw down our forces this summer and, clearly, Obama will impose some dopey rules of engagement intended to provide the appropriate political cover vis-a-vis the remaining troops not being engaged in combat. But anybody who thinks that the remaining troops aren’t going to be in harms way and aren’t going to actually engage in combat is smoking a brand of weed I clearly can not afford.
I share everyone’s disgust over the president’s hypocrisy. Nothing more needs to be said on that score. But, upon further examination, there is even more to be disgusted about. With Obama, that generally seems to be the case.
“Not to demean the efforts of our allies, but the verb “partnered” implies an equality of both commitment and effectiveness. Our guys have commanded, trained, planned and executed to a degree that has been far more important and effective than anything anyone else has done. Our troops have “led,” not merely been “partners,” and the president’s choice of verb here both diminishes the role of our troops and the importance of that role.”
It goes beyond that. Led, created in their own image – granted, plenty of credit goes to every day Iraqis putting their lives on the line, but there’s nothing without the American soldier. Obama, he himself of community organizing, couldn’t find some blue-collar button pushers new jobs – the U.S. military just re-created a democratic state, rebuilt its infrastructure from top to bottom, defended it against illiberal insurgency and did so with a smile on its face.
Well stated, Outlaw!
No other comments at this time, because I’m so angry at the admin. of our country I could spit!
“it absolutely was a bitch to fight an enemy overseas while a lot of shitbags in our own Congress kept saying they had won”
So I guess that means that you don’t think we’ve won the war?
If so, that’s good, be cause you can’t fight , least wise, win a “War on Terror. Terror is a tactic, and by definition you can’t when a war on a tactic.
General Dwight David Eisenhower (a true American hero) executed the successful “Overlord” mission on D-Day that took the beaches away from the Nazis and began the march to Berlin to crush Hitler’s Third Reich. That was a war.
When the planes struck our buildings the vast majority of the hijackers were Saudi Arabians. Logically one might retaliate against the Saudi Arabians, but deer in the headlights George, I mean little Dick decided we needed to go to a place where battles can’t be won(see Russia) Afghanistan. But not to worry, we were going to get that bastard “Dead or Alive”.
(Note: Little Dick grounded all the planes in North America that day. All except one. That one carried some 21 members of the Bin Laden family out of this country and back to Saudi Arabia NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Also George Senior was having lunch with a memb er of the Saud family inner circle. A man that George Senior referred to as “one of his family”. Well with family like this who needs enemies?)
Problem is, we didn’t want that bastard. That would put a premature ending to the fictional “War on Terror”. So, what to do? Well little Dick, Doug Feith, Frank Wolfiwitz, and not to forget Rummy came up with this great idea to conflate the 9/11 attack with Iraq. In fact as they did it they warmed to the idea and got real enthusiastic. You can tell all kinds of cool lies when you toss in the phrase “War on Terror” here and there.
So off we go so that George Junior can show that he has a bigger one than George Senior and so that little Dick can make lots of money for Halliburton and so that Rummy can feel all full of himself.
Who cares that the collateral damage is thousands of American lives? We just tell them they are heroes in the “War on Terror” while we tell anybody that is trying to stop the slaughter of our kids that they are traitors.
And on And on And on it goes. Bullshit lying old white men sending kids to die for nothing.
Of course that’s just my “traitorous point of view”
And lest you forget, that good ol’ boy W was a coke snorting, drunken, draft dodger. His parents must be proud.
So, you are bored to tears or off your meds? I ask because you’ve been trolling the interwebs posting that exact same comment on a number of sites.
Seems to me you are either an SEIU troll, or an Axelrod butt-kisser, because anyone born to a family whose tree actually branches would understand the moronocy of your statements.
Comments like yours, grounded in the fevered dreams of self-aggrieved adolescents are best left at places where the audience expects such writing, and the owners encourage it. You know, DKOS, DU, HuffPo, etc.
Folks here expect a standard of intelligence behind the comment, based upon some form of actual research, learning, or practical experience in the subject field, not simply regurgitated leftist talking points provided from Axelrod’s office staff.
But do carry on your little blatherings. If nothing else, they provide an amusing bit of leftist twaddle with which to compare facts and scholarship.
TTFN
I guess a real not imagined history lesson is in order about Iraq. We had been at war with Iraq and Saddam Hussein since 1990 when he chose to invade Kuwait. One could argue that George HW Bush didn’t go far enough during Desert Storm and finish Saddam then. The argument at the time was that the global coalition would have fallen apart as soon as we marched on Baghdad and that re-building that country would take years (in retrospect the part about re-building was correct).
At the cessation of hostilities in 1991, the government of Iraq signed a cease fire agreement, where they agreed to many things…not to operate surface to air missile systems within certain areas of their borders (broken), not to develop or own weapons of mass destruction (to include SCUD missiles) (broken…regardless if no stockpiles were found during the invasion, numerous SCUD missiles and launchers were found as well as chemical processing facilities and the precursors for the making of chemical and biological weapons), Not to attack their own people (broken, a virtual genocide was attempted against the Curds to include the use of chemical weapons which they weren’t supposed to have)…to name but a few.
Between 1991 and 2004 coalition aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone laid out in the cease fire agreement we constantly fired upon by Iraqi units in violation of the cease-fire agreement.
Saddam has a long history of supplying money to terrorist organizations even before 9/11 and stated his goal to develop nuclear weapons if given the chance.
The invasion of Iraq in 2004 was not based on 9/11 but in the effort to eliminate a despot from the region and a source of funding and training for terrorist organizations around the world. He also happened to be in violation of a cease fire agreement almost constantly since it was signed in 1991. Several presidents not just GWB pressed for a change of leadership in that country, most notably President Clinton’s administration.
In 2004 it was thought that the war in Afghanistan was well in hand and that attention could be paid to other places in the “War on Terror”, hence the invasion of Iraq.
Saudis do finance a good many madrases (SP?) where the thinking that brings about organizations like Al Qada comes from…but you seem to advocate an assault on Saudi Arabia, a nation which is a trading partner, ally in the region, because of a story you read on the INTERNET about the Bush family, Haliburton and the Saudis all in collusion to invade Iraq…and Bush is the coke snorting idiot.
Before you trot out the dead bodies of my friends that I served with, impinge their memory and question the cause that they fought for I would ask if you ever served or even been in Iraq? If you haven’t I can quite confidently say you might have a very difficult time describing what went on there and what we have or haven’t achieved.
The only facts you presented in your drivel were to the ones that described George W Bush as the President of the United States, the rest of that convoluted mess is pure conjecture or the product of some George Soros fever dream. I would encourage you to visit FT Hood, FT Bragg or Camp Pendleton and try out your theories on the folks who work there. The results may be interesting.
Outlaw,
You think THAT is loopy?!?!
You should look up some gulf war footage or a Bush tribute on youtube and patrol the comments.
Yo might have to take a shower.
Or we will read an article saying “Army Pilot Goes Nuts”. I’ve nearly lost my sanity reading them.
I mean YoU might have to take a shower.
My “u” is not working right.
ladcrpp’s response is instructive. His viewpoint has been formed by the left wing hate speech that has been spewed out of Move On, Huffington, and ‘news’ organizations such as MSNBC for many years now. There is not a single original thought in his diatribe – it’s like he was working down a list of DNC talking points …
I ask him directly – you seem to be completely convinced that Bush was a draft dodging drug addict. So, if those attributes piss you off so much, what do you think about:
Bill Clinton, who admitted to using illegal drugs in his youth, and truly dodged the draft on several occasions. In interviews, he has not expressed any regret about his actions to avoid service.
Hillary Clinton, whose drug use was admitted and was lockstep with Bill as he skipped around the world dodging military service.
Barack Obama, who has admitted openly that he used illegal drugs repeatedly during his youth. Although too young for Vietnam to be an issue, he could have easily volunteered for service, and quite possibly would have ended up spending time during the Gulf War or its aftermath. I have never heard him say he is sorry he did not serve in the US military.
You must think these three people are absolute scum. Or, do you subscribe to the left wing viewpoint that if you belong to the left, illegal activities are a badge of honor – and they are only ‘really’ illegal if someone from the right does them?
George W. Bush has admitted he had problems with alchohol abuse in his youth. I am not aware of any proof he had or continues to have drug problems, save tabloid headlines in the supermarket checkout stand.
George W. Bush went through USAF flight training, received his Wings, and flew F-102 interceptors with the 111th FIS out of Houston. No, he did not serve in Vietnam, but he did serve, he was a commissioned pilot, and he flew a fighter jet in an age where each time you took off was an adventure in survival. Yes, he was in an Air Guard unit – but several Air Guard units were called to active duty service during Vietnam, where their members flew combat missions and died alongside their active duty brothers. Joining an ANG unit in no way guaranteed that you wouldn’t go to Vietnam.
Sir, I don’t ask you to change your mind and start thinking straight. I just ask you to apply the same criteria to those you worship to those you hate.
“A lesser Army might have seen its spirit broken…”
Which was what the Democrats were hoping for.
The Dems have no spirit, therefore they want everyone else to be as cowardly as they!
To Outlaw: I bow to you, sir, and I thank you for your service. Please don’t come to Austin — it is a town filled with ladcrpp types who make *me* foam at the mouth, and I haven’t stood in your shoes (female, 58 next week and never inclined to the military). My dad was with VMT 242 in the Pacific in WW II (flew an Avenger in the squadron based off Iwo as soon as the airfield was cleared) and I respect your service deeply. When I think I can’t stand having this jerk as POTUS any more, I think of men like you and carry on.
I live up the road from you and I visit Austin regularly. Keep Austin Weird isn’t just a bumper sticker. But I’m a native Texan and take the good with the bad.
I am on vacation but need to chim in. first off Outlaw well said. Will
have hubs read it later. Second of all, Lad? Smart move moron. Outlaw
has actually been to Iraq, can you you insignificant dirt bag say the
same thing? I doubt it.
Great post, Chief and welcome home.
My favorite part of ladcrpp crapp:
“General Dwight David Eisenhower (a true American hero) executed the successful “Overlord” mission on D-Day that took the beaches away from the Nazis and began the march to Berlin to crush Hitler’s Third Reich. That was a war.”
Actually, while Ike was in overall command of Allied forces in Europe (and was obviously instrumental in planning Overlord), Monty was in operational control on D-Day. And actually, we didn’t march to Berlin. That would have been the Red Army. The moron thinks he’s educating us, but he’s the one who needs an education.
Anyway, there is one truth that he stumbled upon: “Terror is a tactic, and by definition you can’t when (sic) a war on a tactic.”
Ralph Peters has made the same point, albeit for much different reasons. Calling it the “war on terror” was politically-correct shorthand for what this war is really about: a war against Islamic jihadists and those who support them. (Of course BHO can’t even bring himself to use the shorthand). You can’t defeat a tactic. But you can “when” a war against enemies who employ a particular tactic. Perhaps you can even win one.
They should have called the invasion of Afghanistan The First Crusade
The invasion of Iraq the Second Crusade
The Surge in Iraq The Third Crusade
And Obama’s handling of this war The Children’s Crusade.
That is all.
“And Obama’s handling of this war The Children’s Crusade.”
Magnifique! I knew there was a reason we put up with you. And those two things you like to post. Frequently.
And Obama’s attacks against conservatives would be the Albigensian Crusade?
I’m certain that the leftists consider us modern day Cathars for refusing to submit to Pope Gore and the Church of Gaia.
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