Novice In Chief

Reportedly opts to ignore his generals. IPS:

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (IPS) – CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.

But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn’t convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.

Obama’s decision to override Petraeus’s recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama’s decision.

Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, “Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama.”

I have no idea how reliable this IPS article is. I hope it isn’t at all. Before we get to the abandonment part, let’s stop and consider how Bush and Rumsfeld got raked over the coals for disagreeing with generals. Looks like Obama’s disagreeing with his own SecDef as well. You’d think he wouldn’t want to argue with success … especially when the Iraqis are begging him not to bail on them. But you know what Obama says. He won. They need to stop listening to that Bush guy.

That bit about senior military officers preparing to fire up a public campaign sounds awfully familiar, too. Sounds like what goes around, comes around. The rest of the article posits a lot of Machiavellian policy manipulation and blame-gaming on an expected post-withdrawal collapse. Whether or not such an outcome is a given, here’s the most telling couple of graph:

If Obama does not change the policy, according to the source, they (senior officers) hope to have planted the seeds of a future political narrative blaming his withdrawal policy for the “collapse” they expect in an Iraq without U.S. troops.

That line seems likely to appeal to reporters covering the Iraq troop withdrawal issue. Ever since Obama’s inauguration, media coverage of the issue has treated Obama’ s 16-month withdrawal proposal as a concession to anti-war sentiment which will have to be adjusted to the “realities” as defined by the advice to Obama from Gates, Petreaus and Odierno.

The pace of an Iraq withdrawal is one of the few campaign promises Obama has power to control unilaterally, and it is probably the only one that no one of any consequence would blame him for reneging on, particularly when he can cite having sensibly taken the advice of his generals. Like he already said he was going to. Especially since the basis for a rapid withdrawal was always, charitably, a bad idea based on a complete misunderstanding of the situation. Or uncharitably, cynical political pandering. Maybe this guy is as dangerous some people say he is, after all.

Sorry I made fun of you, Barack, for adopting Bush’s war policy. If that’s what it was, I promise I won’t do it anymore if you just, you know, adopt Bush’s war policy.

Found on JulesCrittenden.com

Daniel Pearl And The Normalization Of Evil

This one reminds me of that line from the old lefty anthem, “… when will they ever learn?” UCLA Prof Judea Pearl at WSJ looks at the world around him and, as the 7th anniversary of his son’s murder approaches, finds it hard to look Daniel Pearl’s portrait and say, “You did not die in vain.” –Jules Crittenden

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today’s world emerged after his tragedy?

The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.

Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of “the resistance.” Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.

No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny’s murder would be a turning point in the history of man’s inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of “resistance,” has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words “war on terror” cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism — the ideological license to elevate one’s grievances above the norms of civilized society — was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable “tactical” considerations. Continue reading . . .

He Won

Obama, still a little cranky a day after getting testy with the press, demonstrates his across-the-aisle manner, lecturing Repubs on electoral politics when they raise concerns about a giveaway of your money. Politico: “I won.”

It’s a good line, worth filing away for future reference.

***

Osama bin Laden: “Derka derka derka. Mohammed Jihad!”

Obama: “I won.”

Osama bin Laden: ”Aieeeee! Martyrdom now please!”

***

Hamas: “Hamdela hamdela. Derka derka derka. Rocketi al-Zionist entitiya!”

Obama: “I won.”

Hamas: “Aieeeeeee! Two-state solution please!”

***

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “Hamdela hamdela hamdela. Nukular kaboom!”

Obama: “I won.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “Aieeeeeee! Have mercy, effendi!”

***

(Mockery above presented in order of likelihood)

All kidding aside, it’s actually kind of Bushian. ”I won.” Like Bush’s 2004 “I earned political capital … and I intend to spend it.” It’s talking the talk. Walking the walk is the hard part. That November election is so two months ago. Obama may want to study Bush’s second term, which stands as a great historical example of how to be president of the United States and how to deal with Congress, under dire and contentious circumstances. There’s the having a majority part and the losing the majority part. There’s the leading an opposition Congress around by the nose part. And the part about having major Congressional power players on your side, and losing.

Hot Air takes a quick look at the package and the politics, suggests GOP isn’t interested in obstruction just yet.

via Gateway, he also lectured Repubs on the Hill about their rightwing talk-radio listening habits. Sounds like being president is going to someone’s head.

Some lefty PR ditz at HuffPo, swooning over the tough-guy act, displays some inadvertant high irony:

Looks like President Barack Obama may be ready to post a little sign on the Oval Office door, saying something like this:

The appeasement stops here.

TNR’s The Plank is lulled into a sense of security. “Obama defangs McConnell.” False or true? We’ll see. Four years is a long time. Two go by quickly.

This is pretty good. Gandelman at the Moderate Voice issues a stern warning to Repub bloggers about the dangers of demonizing a president.

Note to Republicans who choose to go this route. There are a lot of independent voters who are truly tired of this kind of rhetoric and will not cast their vote for a party that indulges in it or encourages it.

That raises a fascinating point. How the heck did the Dems win last November?

I dunno, but it’s the percentage that counts. Tim Blair explains all. 50.7 percent, you’re a Great Divider. 52.9 percent, you’re a globally unifying uniter. It’s the critical 2.2 percent.

Surber runs down the end of the week, GOOD or EVIL? You do the math. I’d just like to say New York’s new senator looks like a damn fine choice. Or is a damn fine looking choice. Something like that.

Don notes: “NRA endorsed. Blue dog Democrat. Liberals hate. So is her appointment … GOOD or EVIL?”

Found on JulesCrittenden

4th Graders Try to Poison Classmate & Teacher’s Pet

She was too smart… so they tried to kill her.

Bye-Bye, teacher’s pet.
The Local reported, via Free Republic:

School children have tried to poison their classmate at a primary school in Hamburg because she was too smart, daily Express reported this week.

The eight-year old girl still can’t believe what happened to her. “They wanted to poison me and wanted me to die,” she said in an interview on television broadcaster RTL’s “Punkt12” show, the paper reported on Wednesday.

Her fourth grade classmates apparently disliked the smart girl because she got the best marks and had already skipped two classes. Two boys and two girls were so jealous they plotted to poison her.

One of the boys mixed what the students thought would be a deadly cocktail of shoe polish, perfume, window and bath cleaner at home. Another boy poured the mix into the girl’s drink bottle during recess the next day at school.

When the eight-year-old came back from her break, she noticed suspicious bubbles in the liquid and took only a small sip.

“I still got a stomach ache,” she told the television show. She was taken to hospital where doctors informed poison experts from the local police unit.

Despite the fact that her four classmates confessed to the poisoning, they can’t be charged with a crime because they are under the age of legal responsibility.

More… Jules Crittenden has today’s 4th Grader science news.

Found on Gateway Pundit and Jules Crittenden

Take That!

Libs crow about Shinseki, Obama’s slap in the face to the hated Bushitler regime … at last! But first, libs voice concerns about Obama. Politico:

Liberals are growing increasingly nervous – and some just flat-out angry – that President-elect Barack Obama seems to be stiffing them on Cabinet jobs and policy choices.

Obama has reversed pledges to immediately repeal tax cuts for the wealthy and take on Big Oil. He’s hedged his call for a quick drawdown in Iraq. And he’s stocking his White House with anything but stalwarts of the left.

Now some are shedding a reluctance to puncture the liberal euphoria at being rid of President George W. Bush to say, in effect, that the new boss looks like the old boss.

“He has confirmed what our suspicions were by surrounding himself with a centrist to right cabinet. But we do hope that before it’s all over we can get at least one authentic progressive appointment,” said Tim Carpenter, national director of the Progressive Democrats of America.

Continue reading . .

Dishonest Narrative Decried

Bill Ayers at NYT, upset about the “dishonesty of the narrative,” informs us that ”cast in the ‘unrepentant terrorist’ role; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s “1984,” when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing.”

He goes on to describe his history of terrorism as a co-founder of the Weather Underground, which he fails to note, killed people. NYT gives him a free, or paid, pass on that. To his credit, Ayers finally repents. For his “mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else.” He explains helpfully that it is impossible to reach his state of maturity without amassing regrets of that sort. Continue reading . . .

Found on Jules Crittenden.com

Hate Speech

Gets tossed in a ditch. Gateway with the details on what happened to the plaque posted by some atheists who aren’t content with the other 364 days of the year, they need to crap on this one.

Found on Jules Crittenden.com

The Doghouse . . .

We’ve all been there. An innocent remark, or a thoughtful gift. You know, a weed wacker, a set of really nice cooking pots. You’re in The Doghouse. It’s life, vacuum-cleaner dude. No parole.

Found on Jules Crittenden.com

A Combat Vet’s Reading List

Larry Gwin, former US Army captain, Silver Star, Purple Heart, XO of Alpha Co., 2/7 Cav, 1st Cav Division, veteran of the Ia Drang battles of 1965 and author of “Baptism: A Vietnam Memoir,” spent many years trying to understand war and find some context for his own horrific combat experience by exploring war literature. It is useful exercise, because in this manner the combat veteran may learn from other people, find commonality in what they write, ease the alienation and find his or her place in history. It is an important part of the post-combat normalization process. Make that post-combat normality transcendence process. There is the risk of obsession, but if that is an issue, take it up with your shrink.

In any case, Larry got bored the other morning, drafted his quick combat reading list, and emailed it. A couple of his buddies, on an email list that runs from Guadalcanal through Korea and Vietnam to Petraeus’ Baghdad staff and the Afghan Counterinsurgency Academy, added to it:

Found on Jules Crittenden.com

South Comfort Levels

Up in Lousiana, where the GOP wins two. Didn’t anyone tell those people Republicans cause killer hurricanes?

Found on Jules Crittenden’s site