The Weekly Good, Bad and Really Ugly

Haven't posted in a few days so here's a quick review of the week:

THE GOOD

-US, British and Canadian forces are attacking the Taliban in the Helmand Province town of Marjah. This is the largest offensive in years and the first big offensive since Obama took office. Thank you to our great and long-term allies who are helping us. This will be a tough slog but we have the greatest military in the world and the best soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to get the job done. Two NATO fighters have given the ultimate for the cause.

-NJ Governor Chris Christie was elected to get the Garden State's fiscal house in order. He's living up to that by freezing spending via executive order and pissing off the Democrats in the process. He's making some hard choices and has stuck to his pledge to cut spending and not raise taxes even though the pressure to do so has been intense. Expect to hear some bad things about the guv and expect to read story after story of how people are suffering because of the cold-hearted conservative currently leading the state with the highest taxes in the nation. The Dems/libs will come after him hard led by the left-wing rag the Newark Star-Ledger.

THE BAD:

-A professor whom was denied tenure shot three people in Huntsville, AL. Liberals will paint this as some crazed hillbilly gun nut who clings to religion shooting up a school. They would be lying.

-Obama signs Pay Go--a pay as you go plan-the day after he signs off on a debt ceiling increase of another $1.9-trillion. Yes, with a "t". He's spending us into oblivion.

THE UGLY

-Joe Biden actually had the gall to say the following:

I am very optimistic about Iraq. I think it's going to be one of the great achievements of this administration.

This is the same a-hole who proposed a dumb ass three-state solution and Obama is the one who was vehemently against the surge when President Bush proposed it. The very same surge that cost Bush a ton politically but saved the Iraqi nation and the lives of a great many of our troops. Obama was in the Harry Reid and Murtha camp and didn't trust in our military leaders as capable. After Bush's instincts proved successful and our men and women accomplished the supposed impossible, Biden claims credit for the man who did nothing. The Iraq war wasn't even a campaign issue by the end of the summer in 2008. For the record, the Iraq Victory celebration happened even before Obama was inaugurated.

If I had the ear of prominent Republicans, I would produce ads featuring Obama, Biden, Reid and Pelosi expressing severe doubts about the surge and then add that little claim by Biden at the end. The American people know damn well who won and who will get credit and sure as hell won't be Obama or Biden.

-How much money was redistributed in the name of saving the climate? Trillions and trillions on a claim that has been proven to be hideously wrong. At least we didn't fall for it as much as the Aussie's or Europe did.

I Guess 17,000 Troops Isn't a "Surge"

When George W. Bush went against everyone--including many in his own party--and ordered an increase in troops to quell Iraqi violence, the media went nuts and dubbed it "The Surge". Democrats seized on it and made "surge" a bad word.

Now the tables have turned and Obama has ordered a large contingent of new troops into Afghanistan and it's not labeled a surge anymore:

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Tuesday signed off on an increase in U.S. forces for the flagging war in Afghanistan.

"To meet urgent security needs, I approved a request from (Defense) Secretary Gates to deploy a Marine Expeditionary Brigade later this spring and an Army Stryker Brigade and the enabling forces necessary to support them later this summer," Obama said in a statement issued by the White House.

About 8,000 Marines are expected to go in first, followed by about 9,000 Army troops. Some 34,000 U.S. troops are already in Afghanistan.

Granted, Obama has essentially said throughout his campaign that diverting troops from Afghanistan into Iraq was a bad strategy and has rightly decided to upgrade but where are the anti-warriors who screamed about both wars? You know that some case of wayward soldiers acting badly will occur. It happens in every war. Will that case become what defines Obama as Abu Ghraib did Bush?

Mark my words, we will now hear about huge gains in Afghanistan now that it's Obama who is the CinC. The dirty little secret is that we've been winning huge battles up to this point if anyone took the time to actually report it.

Make no mistake, this is now Obama's war. Bush ensured we won the one he was called responsible for. By taking the tack that we should not have diverted our strength from the mountains of Afghanistan for use in Iraq, Obama made this a just war and a war he supported.

We won in Iraq, can we win in Afghanistan with an increase in troop strength? Here's hoping we can.

Obama Admits Surge Worked

After getting pummeled by Sarah Palin about not using the word "victory" once when talking about Iraq, Obama was forced on the defensive and said this:

As recently as July, the Democratic presidential candidate declined to rate the surge a success, but said it had helped reduce violence in the country. On Thursday, Obama acknowledged the 2007 increase in U.S. troops has benefited the Iraqi people.

“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

What will piss the lefties off more, the fact he said it or the fact he said it to O'Reilly on Fox News? I'm guessing some of the former and a hell of a lot of the latter.

It has been gospel to this point--from Harry Reid to Nancy Pelosi--that the Surge has been a dismal failure. They've clung to the though of defeat even though they seemed like the bumbling "Comical Ali" who claimed the Americans were losing in Iraq as we were surrounding Baghdad.

Obama was forced into saying essentially that we won and that's unacceptable for liberals. Of course he goes on to talk about "political reconciliation" not being what it should be, etc. even though Arab politics tend to never be based on any type of universal agreement between coalitions.

McCain was a leading advocate of the Surge and it could have cost him everything politically if it had failed. Thank the Good Lord it didn't and now McCain deserves the accolades that come with backing a strategy that seemed certain to fail when first discussed and implemented. Obama, on the other hand, was against the Surge from the beginning and was wrong. It was the most-important foreign policy issue taken up by the Senate in the last three years and he failed.

At least he admits that our military can do something right--a monumental shift in the Democratic party.

Palin is paying huge dividends already.

Why Does Anyone Still Listen to Zbigniew Brzezinski?

The Huff Po reports that former National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter Zbigniew Brzezinski is at it again:

All of a sudden, everyone seems to be in favor of sending more troops to Afghanistan. As Barack Obama encourages Europeans to dispatch more NATO forces and John McCain says that U.S. troops could be sent in greater numbers, the idea that a bigger military footprint is needed has become something of a consensus in the political mainstream.

But Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski is not on board -- though it's not the first time President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser has cast a skeptic's eye on the usefulness of dispatching great numbers of troops to the country.

Brzezinski has been spectacularly wrong on so many counts that his counsel should be eschewed as soon as it leaves his mouth. As head of the NSA for Carter, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan because he aided the Mujahideen, scores of hostages were taken by radical students in Iran during his tenure, the Soviet sphere of interest in South America mushroomed and our military readiness plummeted yet we are supposed to heed this mans words?

In recent years, Brzezinski has been wrong on every major issue with the most glaring being his opposition to the "surge" in Iraq when he wrote in January 2007:

· The commitment of 21,500 more troops is a political gimmick of limited tactical significance and of no strategic benefit. It is insufficient to win the war militarily. It will engage U.S. forces in bloody street fighting that will not resolve with finality the ongoing turmoil and the sectarian and ethnic strife, not to mention the anti-American insurgency.

· The decision to escalate the level of the U.S. military involvement while imposing "benchmarks" on the "sovereign" Iraqi regime, and to emphasize the external threat posed by Syria and Iran, leaves the administration with two options once it becomes clear -- as it almost certainly will -- that the benchmarks are not being met. One option is to adopt the policy of "blame and run": i.e., to withdraw because the Iraqi government failed to deliver. That would not provide a remedy for the dubious "falling dominoes" scenario, which the president so often has outlined as the inevitable, horrific consequence of U.S. withdrawal. The other alternative, perhaps already lurking in the back of Bush's mind, is to widen the conflict by taking military action against Syria or Iran. It is a safe bet that some of the neocons around the president and outside the White House will be pushing for that. Others, such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman, may also favor it.

Read those two bullet points and tell me how he could have been any more wrong. His main points being that additional troops were a "gimmick" was wrong. Writing the "surge" would not end "sectarian and ethnic strife" was wrong. Positing that the benchmarks would not be met was wrong. A widened conflict involving military action against Syria and Iran was wrong. In total, the entire piece full of tragic predictions has been shown to be completely wrong yet we are supposed to heed the words of Brzezinski now?

The Carter years were the worst this nation saw in the second half of the 20th Century and many of his policies were the policies of Brzezinski. We have turned a definite loss in Iraq into a stunning win and now must set our sites on acomplishing the same in Afghanistan. It's surprising to no one that we again are reading the meaningless words of naysayers and pessimists like Brzezinski who have shown time and again that they lack complete faith in out military to gain strategic victories. Perhaps it's well past time for Mr. Brzezinski to just go away and contemplate his stance quietly rather than face embarrassment on an epic scale once again.

Bush Is Feeling His Oats

President Bush speaking at the Heritage Foundation throws some serious red meat to the conservative faithful:

"When it comes to funding, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground and less time responding to MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters."

Nice! I wish he has just said liberal bloggers as a whole and also named Move0n aand Code Pink but why quibble? With successes mounting in Iraq and al-Qaeda getting pounded daily, he should feel good.

I've written it before and will say it again, history will have a completely different view of President Bush when it is all said and done. Just as Reagan was shown to be among the greatest and Carter the worst, history after 20 or so years tends to be correct.

Plus. watching Hillary implode in front of the nation the other night was probably entertaining to Dubya as well.

McClatchy Papers Spin Iraq Successes

I know, I know, a real shocka there. Check out the headline:

Combat deaths in Iraq decline; reasons aren't clear

To anyone who has actually been paying attention and has watched how General Petraeus has executed his surge plan, this is not news at all. He has implemented a policy that ousts the al-Qaeda insurgents by coopting the local tribal leaders and towns people who have grown weary of the Sharia law oppressing them. He has worked to exterminate insurgents that stand and fight and he has done it all in a relatively short period of time. The piece begins:

WASHINGTON — American combat deaths in Iraq have dropped by half in the three months since the buildup of 28,000 additional U.S. troops reached full strength, surprising analysts and dividing them as to why.

U.S. officials had predicted that the increase would lead to higher American casualties as the troops "took the fight to the enemy." But that hasn't happened, even though U.S. forces have launched major offensives involving thousands of troops north and south of Baghdad.

Of course US officials predicted higher casualties as with any major offensive thrust, the Marines and Soldiers are more open to attack, however, the military has gotten smarter as to how to do counter-insurgency work and have learned from past mistakes, hence, we have fewer of our bravest dying.

September is here and the report to be delivered by Petraeus is coming in eight days. Will it change anything? To those on the left who are hoping for our defeat, no it will not. They are "all in" on defeat and nothing said will change their feeble minds. The crucial group is the people in the middle who want victory but are tired of the long slog. If they believe that we are making progress (and indications are that they are), they will begin to believe in the war effort again as well.

Two More Sens. Praise Surge

The two ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee from their respective parties--Senators Carl Levin and John Warner expressed optimism in the military gains but stuck close to the consensus that the government remains a problem.:

"We have seen indications that the surge of additional brigades to Baghdad and its immediate vicinity and the revitalized counter-insurgency strategy being employed have produced tangible results in making several areas of the capital more secure. We are also encouraged by continuing positive results -- in al Anbar Province, from the recent decisions of some of the Sunni tribes to turn against Al Qaeda and cooperate with coalition force efforts to kill or capture its adherents," the two said in a statement issued after leaving the country.

"We remain concerned, however, that in the absence of overall national political reconciliation, we may be inadvertently helping to create another militia which will have to be dealt with in the future," the two said.

I suppose Sen. Levin didn't get the memo that the pessimism is back as the Democrat stance as shown by the downer piece in yesterday's NY Times.