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“Where is the Leadership?”
Petty Officer First Class Charles Keating IV
We learned last week of Charles Keating IV, 31, a Navy SEAL who was killed in action in Iraq. From the Wall Street Journal:
Petty Officer First Class Charles Keating IV was killed Tuesday during a firefight with Islamic State in Iraq, the third American service member to die in combat since the Obama administration began fighting Islamic State there in 2014. Petty Officer Keating was part of a quick reaction force deployed to rescue another group of American service members who were meeting with local forces in the area. His death outside the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul has raised questions about the role of American service members in Iraq and the nature of the U.S. mission.
Keating, a high school track star in his native Arizona, went on to compete at Indiana University before joining the Navy. He was married in a private ceremony before deployment; he and his wife had planned a more public celebration this November, when he was scheduled to return.
I don’t know why, but this news makes me really angry. President Obama crowed about “ending” the war in Iraq, withdrawing all forces over the objections of top brass. Then — when military action was, nonetheless, required — he insisted it would not involve “boots on the ground.” Then, he insisted the troops he sent would be advisors, not to be involved in combat. Anyone paying attention knew these assertions could not be true. Did the president delude himself, or lie to us?
And as Obama sends the best of our young warriors — in the prime of their lives — to fight, there is no apparent strategy for victory, other than waiting for the arc of history to bend the way he wants it to. What, exactly, is the point of their mission? It’s as if President Obama is replicating the same desultory half measures that characterized our initial involvement in Vietnam, only this time, he’s had thirteen years in which to study.
So, to again quote our Secretary of State: How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?
Published in General
BS.
Mr. Carter was wrong about the best way to deal with the Soviets, but he did view them as dangerous, needing to be confronted at some level, and that the confrontation demanded American leadership. He wrongly thought that he could diffuse some tensions by unilaterally backing down from the arms race. He sought to weaken American standing as a way to reach out. He was wrong, but not anti-American.
Jimmy Carter had very little to say about Vietnam. The Democrat Congress had cut and run, abandoned our allies and friends to a horrible fate, Saigon had fallen and half a million were being slaughtered even as Carter was maneuvering to charge strong into the primaries. It was in the best interests for all the Democratic candidates who wanted to unseat Gerald Ford to hush and let Americans forget about Vietnam.
To our national shame, we did just that. The Leftist mass media just did not cover the killings. They did show us a little bit about the boat people, but that was easily covered once and then forgotten, until the next boatload of starving and dead refugees was caught on video by Indonesian or Philippine fishermen. We averted our eyes to the horrors. Carter was racing towards the 1976 victory before we began to learn the extent of the killing fields slaughter.
I don’t recall Democrats having much to say about Vietnam. I do recall journalists and Leftist professors and Leftist clerics declaiming about how it was all America’s fault.
Both Wilson and FDR were Progressives who wanted to improve America by raising the poor up out of their poverty. I am unaware of any evidence that either wanted America to forego a position of leadership in the world. Didn’t Wilson champion the League of Nations, with a leadership role for America? And FDR made a place for American leadership in the United Nations.
Contrast this with Obama, who thinks America is unworthy of a leadership role on the world stage and has been working to reduce our standing and our capability to lead.
Nobody thinks Mr. Carter does not love America. We have plenty of evidence to think Mr. Obama does not love America.
And, I had thought you were better dialed in to conservative niche media. How have you missed the way Mr. Carter is regularly trashed by our chattering class?
Regarding the Norks. Bill Clinton and G.W.Bush both were delicately dealing with an unstable character in Kim Jong Il. Both of them had the example of Reagan and G.H.W.Bush to consider. They both could reasonably expect that if the North Korean situation could be stabilized, then we could outlast Kim Jong Il and hope for a collapse of the regime when Kim Jong Il passed.
It turned out that crazy old Kim Jong Il had actually done a good job of succession planning. Who knew?
I think they should have been more aggressive, but this is a minor fault.
So, All-American, homegrown anti-Americanism. Still thoroughly anti-American in a way that surpasses his Progressive forebears.
Here, here.
This is the first useful contribution you have made in this discussion.
Americans weren’t interested? If so, and it nearly is true, it is because the Leftist mass media and 95% of Democrats had engaged in anti-war, anti-Bush hateful bitter rhetoric for four years leading up to Obama’s inauguration. And there is no evidence that Obama ever considered helping Iraq to stabilize. He took every excuse to drop off negotiations, and started pulling out at the earliest possible opportunities. He campaigned on pulling out, and he damn well did pull out as soon as he could.
The chaos that ensued had been predicted. It was predicted by our military staff and even by State Department officials. It was predicted by John McCain and by Mitt Romney and by Alan Keyes, Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee. We knew that chaos would envelop Iraq if we pulled out, and that the bad guys would take advantage of the power vacuum.
Obama did not care. He pulled out anyway.
“Yes” to MJB’s remarks, and I would add, conditions on the ground are very different today than they were under previous progressive presidents.
People are either ill-informed or misinformed about the country’s founding and history. The “narratives” spun by Ben Rhodes and “force multiplied” by an ignorant and complicit media would have been laughed out of the public arena in earlier eras. Iranian President Rouhani a moderate?? What a joke!
Americans today are about as aware of the cultural Marxism they’re swimming in as a fish is of water.
The gullibility of the people is largely thanks to the Left’s “success” in the sexual revolution and concurrent takeover by the
inmatesstudents of theasylumdean’s office at our universities, which has trickled down through the education establishment to primary “public” schools.I don’t blame Obama for all this. I blame the Left. He just happens to be the leftist with the most powerful position in the world.
And just a little later, that same media and the “anti-war” activists have gone silent as Obama sends troops back. Code Pink stages protests at… Ted Cruz rallies. Where are the anti-war protests against Obama?
Dont get me wrong, I’m not anti-war per se. But there are costs and benefits to any military action, and the president’s half-measures seem to me to carry the costs of action without the benefit.
Part of this comes from his unrealistic views on collateral damage, the inevitability of victory, and the costs of defeat. Some of it too comes surely from his unwillingness — as in Vietnam — to properly identify the enemy.
I agree that as C-in-c, Mr. Obama is a bigger disappointment than anyone since Mr. Carter. I agree that that has to do with an unwillingness to take war as seriously as we conservatives believe it should.
As I said, I agree that there is a treason party.
But I think we need to consider, too, the problems with how Mr. W. Bush ran the war. I’ll list them below, but first let me give you my reasons. The only way America is going to get back its confidence is successful prosecution of just wars. I believe that was the case in Iraq; I’m not fond of the war in Afghanistan, not least because it seems to last forever. Success in wars requires seriousness about American politics we mostly lack.
1. He could not do what he tried in two terms, which is in itself pretty shocking, not least because you’d expect him to know what the other party is like. If we recall to mind Vietnam, does he not?
2. I’ve heard people including Gen. Petraeaus say publicly that as of 2006 not even the Congressional GOP could be counted on to sustain the war effort.
3. Not even the conservative movement or the electorate of the GOP has been persuaded & firmly attached to the persuasion of the justice of the war in Iraq–which is somewhat separate from whether it was prudent to fight it or whether it was prudently fought.
So far as I understand American politics, we as conservatives face a real problem understanding public sentiment & addressing ourselves to it in full seriousness. Neither the case for the wars nor the public dedication of politics to their prosecution were undertaken seriously.
I think the GOP & conservative movement are now pretty seriously split about war & the winning faction more or less supports Mr. Trump, who seems to have no respect for what Mr. W. Bush tried to accomplish or what he did accomplish in Iraq. It will be a long hard fight to rehabilitate the former president & the justice of America’s cause in Iraq. I believe it is a necessary fight, but I do not know if it can be won–there is now no party who thinks it was just & necessary, if not too successful.
I think this shows that there is a lot wrong with how we think about politics & conduct it. I would be much more comfortable in blaming Mr. Obama if on our side we were dealing with war & politics adequately. More & more I hear people blaming Mr. Obama for his depressingly bad conduct of Middle Eastern foreign policy–one constantly fears, worse is yet to come–without any awareness that that’s not the big deal for us.
The big deal for us is to remember what Mr. W. Bush did right & what wrong, try to come to a serious account of it all, & make sure at least our party is united on this!
Getting partisan unity primarily by blaming Mr. Obama is a poor substitute for that & a pretty good guarantee that in future, war will be as badly conducted.
So I think that blaming the president is part of the practical business of forming judgment & trying to foster partisan agreement on peace & war & addressing that partisan agreement to the nation as a party platform & as an attitude. I see very little of this & what there is depresses me. It either ‘blame Obama’ (most of the presidential contenders) or ‘blame both Bush & Obama’ (Mr. Trump).
When blame becomes too partisan or too bitter, judgment is foreclosed. The relationship between what’s been done & what’s happened in Iraq & American politics is simply severed. People end up speaking as though war presidents need not consider politics…
The head of the treason party is Obama. He is no patriot. In this sense he is much worse than any of his predecessors. Having an anti-American President has been bad for the entire world. There is less global stability, global finances are worse off, all the bad guys are empowered, American political, fiscal, military and moral capabilities and standing are all in full retreat.
Bush handed off stable situations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He cannot be blamed for the way his successor betrayed our friends and allies and left them to the ravages of the jihadiis.
The key is persuasion. Our Leftist mass media have been cheerleaders for the anti-war movement since 2004. They lobbied for failure and they got it.
I agree about the anti-war movement. I’d like to see the conservative-GOP party counter it. Not happening; instead, the GOP is split in-between anti-Bush Trump-types & the people who tried to continue the Bush policy, like Sen. Rubio, to choose only the famous people. & Mr. Trump seems to have won.
Anyway, if after eight years all America got was ‘stable situations,’ with the super-star general saying the war would take generations–well, conservatives have not learned much from Vietnam…
The Treason Party thought that if America left the Middle East, that the people there could sort things out on their own. They thought that the bad guys were primarily motivated by economic deprivation, and they blame the West, and America for the poor economies of those countries.
That is an ignorant assessment. The outcomes were predicted.
Until the GOP undertakes a war against Leftist mass media and thoroughly discredits their credibility, Americans are vulnerable to wrong-headed ideas that lead to very bad outcomes.
GOP politicians have not been outspoken about Iraq and Syria because their constituents are still primarily uninformed by the Leftist mass media apologists for Team Obama. These same charlatans pretending to be journalists are now serving as an extension of the Hillary campaign.
Americans are not suffering all that much from Obama’s treasonous betrayal of our allies. The people who suffer are a quarter-million dead Syrians, and four million Syrian refugees. A half-million dead Iraqis, and 1.5 million Iraqi refugees.
It is difficult to draw useful lessons from Vietnam because our people are so poorly informed about it. Most information about the Vietnam War is a rehash of the anti-war anti-American version that is popular in the Leftist mass media.
Most conservatives knew that creating democracy with real protections for human rights in the Muslim Middle East would be a heavy lift and take a lot of determination. I blame the NeoCons for blowing the call on the degree of difficulty.
President W is deserving of great praise for correctly discerning the problems, making the needed course correction and initiating “The Surge” in the face of howling opposition. That was the successful measure needed; it allowed him to hand off stable situations to his successor.
The failures in Iraq and Afghanistan I blame squarely on anti-American Obama, the Treason Party, and, especially, the Leftist mass media.
Very little of the GOP is “anti-Bush Trump-types.” Our problem is our system of open primaries. We want to be able to appeal to everyone to the extent possible, and we want conservatives to be able to vote Republican without needing to register as Republican Party members.
This led to a vulnerability. It will probably cause the GOP leadership to make changes to the primary system for the next cycle. I don’t trust them to do that well, but I believe that they do need to make some changes. As it stands, the current system has been revealed to have a vulnerability to “Celebrity,” and the American electorate has been revealed to have shifted to a more populist persuasion.
Our problem is that even our own people are so badly informed about how events actually played out under President Bush. They think “he lost the war” and that Obama inherited a losing position and cut his losses.
We have a lot of disinformation that needs correcting before we can establish a political consensus that will allow really useful and helpful measures to fight the bad guys and help our friends in the Middle East.
I think when it comes to the problems of the GOP & the conservative movement, we are agreed without qualifications.
Much work is necessary to rescue GOP presidents from what the public thinks of them. If blaming Mr. Obama was as a rule tied up to saying something about Mr. W. Bush, I’d be ok with that. There is much bad, but there is more that’s good. We’d end up with a more realistic view of our political position & the party would be better off while retaining the necessary partisanship of politics.
My problem with Obama-blaming on Ricochet & elsewhere is like the Trump-conversations. They make everyone angry & bitter, & take up all the space & time available for political conversations. So I have lost patience with people who do it. If they spent more time retelling the story of the Bush years–precisely because things are so quickly forgotten or turned on their head like the Tet offensive!–I’d be proud to be told off by these guys for my defense of Mr. Obama.
But try as you might, you’ll only find anger at the president on Ricochet. Not even we care enough, apparently, about our own side. That’s something we need to change.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, Titus! Conservative outlets are the only places you hear any criticism of Obama! the rest of the media being so in the tank for him.
I think you have it exactly backward. You’re acting like a conservative under rules of evidence — “must maintain credibility by presenting criticisms of our side too.” Meanwhile the domestic enemy of the United States has no compunction about rewriting history — as it’s happening (in Iran, for example — see Rhodes, Ben) — and shows no interest in doing what is good for America (“raising tax rates will lower revenues, but it’s the ‘right’ thing to do”), unless by some chance it overlaps with their progressive agenda.
You’re being a cheeky foreigner. Which we love about you! But, c’mon.
WC, I agree that the media could only be called asleep on the job if that dreamy, wet stare in their eyes were any glassier than it already is.
My problem is not that conservative outlets blame the president: Only that we do it among ourselves, & reflexively, & never-endingly. I don’t need any proof that Ricochet is anti-Obama throughout the membership. Just look around at how many people say nice things about him: It’s me & two or three other guys. I don’t say everyone should be doing it. I don’t mind catching hell for doing it. Let’s just agree that this is already a no-Obama zone!
Some dude in a fit of Obama-craze snaps at me that it’s my fault that Mr. Romney lost or that it’s my kind of thinking that did it. He doesn’t know me from Adam, but he knows this is the right place for that sort of talk. Now, I wasn’t here in 2012, but my bet is, Ricochet was not in the tank for Mr. Obama! The problem with that guy is that he’s probably no worse than anyone else, if ill-mannered. He just refuses to distinguish how we talk to each other from how we talk to other people.
So because Mr. Romney did not fight hard & dirty, that means he has to treat me like dirt. I think that’s Obama-craze.
Obama has been the Commander in Chief for some 7 and a half years. At what point does he, and not GWB, become responsible for military and diplomatic decisions made while he’s president?
Spengler, I’m not saying, don’t report the news or don’t comment on events!
I’m all for that. The more public the better.
I’m saying, I’d like it if for every comment bitching about the president there were one recalling the previous. Not to criticize him or to criticize both equally. Just to prevent the kind of situation that seems almost inevitable: Forgetting, utterly, or simply by leaving out of mind a long time.
Mr. Bubba & I had reached an agreement that we really need to do a better job telling our own partisans & people who are at least somewhat friendly disposed to us what really happened in Iraq, as opposed to the story one reads in the press. That’s my purpose here.
I think the moral opprobrium is both in itself excessive & in its effect on our rehearsal of history. We need more effort to give a reasonable account of events & to fend off the sense of helplessness that so often pervades conservatism. It’s always, he deserves it! But do we?
As I said in a previous comment section, Titus. There are threads on Ricochet that are in a death-spiral over politics. So much foreboding. Sad.
Deeply concerning.
Oh, dear, no, not “asleep.” They’re wide-awake, active propagandists. Completely committed to the (un-American) progressive cause — not the truth.
Prager was saying yesterday, there are no “hypocrites” on the Left because they don’t have any standards (of evidence or truth) to violate (this, according to the contemporary progressive definition of “hypocrite”). What you seem to be advocating plays perfectly into Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. “Make them live up to their own standards.”
This is how the Left is destroying social cohesion in this country. I’m not taking any blame for that, and I won’t hold it against my right-wing compatriots if they don’t either.
Goodness, ma’am, I had a really good one about how they’re not asleep, they’re glassy-eyed dreamy! If we’re too serious to laugh at my jokes–I wonder what the point is anymore… I’m going to have to go rethink things…