Back to Basics

U.S. police and military trainers and advisors have returned to Yemen and are training that nation’s security forces, Defense Department officials announced on Monday.

President Barack Obama’s administration had ordered the training mission in Yemen to be suspended due to the political turmoil in that nation. The United States recently began reintroducing a small number of trainers into the country, Navy Captain John Kirby, Pentagon spokesman, said.

Kirby, speaking to reporters during a press briefing, noted that U.S. advisors had been working for years with the Yemeni government, police agencies, and military forces to combat increasingly powerful al-Qaeda threat throughout the Muslim nation.

“That threat doesn’t just threaten the Yemeni people but also Americans,” Captain Kirby said.

“There was a suspension of some of that activity in Yemen for a while due to the political instability in that country,” the spokesman said. “We are now beginning to resume more of that routine military-to-military cooperation.”

Just this week, the American people were told about how CIA agents thwarted an attempt by al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner one year after the killing of Osama bin Laden, according to a statement released on Monday. What surprised many counterterrorism experts was the sophistication of the upgrade of the so-called underwear bomb.

Pentagon officials will not discuss operations in Yemen, Kirby said. “And I’m certainly not going to provide specific details on the numbers of individuals that we have there,” he said.

The Somali group known as al-Shabaab has provided weapons, fighters and training with explosives over the last few months to the Yemen-based al-Qaeda branch that has been battling with the Yemeni police and army forces in Abyan since May 2011, according to officials such as Congressman Pete King (R-NY).

The country’s interior ministry reported earlier this month that al-Shabaab had sent 300 armed men to fight alongside the Yemen-based al-Qaeda wing known locally as Partisans of Sharia ( Islamic law) in Abyan province. The group is also known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Al-Qaeda militants, who took advantage of the conflicts in the country, have seized several towns in Abyan and Shabwa provinces after severe fighting with government troops backed by U.S. drones, according to the Law Enforcement Examiner’s police adviser source.

In January 2009, al-Qaeda affiliates in Saudi Arabia and Yemen officially merged and formed Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as reported in the Examiner.

President Obama seems to be swift-boating himself. His campaign’s “I killed Bin Laden” ad has encountered some major pushback. First, it further pissed off current and former Navy SEALs. Secondly, it is shining even more light on just how self-centered Team Obama and their willing accomplices — such as Bill Clinton — really are.

First, here’s the ad if you missed it:

*****

Bill Clinton in the ad:

“Suppose [the SEALs had] been captured or killed. The downside would have been horrible for him [Obama].”

Horrible for Obama? Silly me, the first thought that popped into my head is how horrible it would have been for the SEALs. People like Clinton and Obama are indeed singularly focused — on how events affect their ongoing desperate attempts to cling to power. Or in Bubba’s case, get a blow job.

Team Obama had a legitimate chance at a tempered bragging right, but they ruined it. Obama is, as Tim Stanley wrote at The Telegraph, “so politically tone deaf that he makes Joe Biden look like Machiavelli.”

Update: Obama spoke to the troops Tuesday in Afghanistan, and with his custom humility, he gave himself a shout-out:

President Barack Obama’s planned defense and national security budget cuts are expected to have an adverse impact on the U.S. Coast Guard’s ability to perform its constitutional duty as both a law enforcement agency and branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, according to a Heritage Foundation study by Mackenzie Eaglen and Jim Dolbow.

The U.S. Coast Guard is both a law enforcement agency and a branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. Photo credit: DoD File Photo

The reduction in resources comes at a time when most security experts believe more is needed to protect the U.S. and its interests in the midst of threats and attacks by international terrorists.

However, because of the ignorance of political leaders regarding their constitutional duties — or because they find it expedient to ignore those duties — they fail to protect the integrity of the U.S. Armed Forces, according security experts.

As documented in The Heritage Foundation’s Budget Chart Book, even eliminating all defense spending would not solve the federal spending crisis. Since 1976, annual entitlement spending has exceeded defense spending, even with the cost of wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Because entitlement spending has tripled while defense spending declined as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), entitlement spending (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) is now 10 percent of GDP, whereas defensespending is only 5 percent. Defense spending is now 20.1 percent of federal outlays. Yet some, such as President Obama, want the brunt of spending cutbacks to come from the military. Obama’s revised (but not detailed) plan for fiscal year (FY) 2012 calls for $400 billion in defense cuts over the next 10 years, mostly by canceling or delaying over 50 major weapons programs.

President Bill Clinton upon taking office had a similar plan. Of the 305,000 employees removed from the federal payroll, 286,000 (or 90%) were military cuts. The statistics for America’s defense during the Clinton years reveal the deep-seated animosity of the administration toward those who served in the military. The Army was cut from 18 divisions to 12. The Navy was reduced from 546 ships to 380. Air Force flight squadrons were cut from 76 to 50.

Obama’s budget cut request for the Coast Guard weighs the prospect of reducing the Maritime Safety & Security Teams from 12 units to seven as well as retiring nine aircraft and five Coast Guard cutters.

“Congress should hold oversight hearings and require a study to determine both Coast Guard law enforcement specialist requirements and an associate national training structure,” wrote Eaglen and Dolbow.

Such hearings and subsequent report(s) would pressure the White House and Obama’s so-called security team develop a real security and safety plan for maritime response with standards for local, state, and federal maritime law enforcement. Congress should also demand that the current commandant submit an unfunded priorities list to House and Senate committee members detailing the downside of using an axe rather than a scalpel in making budget cuts.

The Heritage report states that “Congress should reject the maritime team cuts and examine whether the MSSTs—to be fully effective—need to be expanded to 17 with additional helicopters and more specialized training.”

Established in the aftermath of 9/11, the MSSTs were created to detect and intercept criminal or catastrophic risks well beyond U.S. shores.

Back in December, after a US drone went down in Iran, President Obama said “we’ve asked for it back — we’ll see how they respond.”

Obama forgot to say “pretty please,” because Iran still has the drone and claims to be almost finished decoding it and also trying to build a copy for themselves:

Iran claimed Sunday that it had recovered data from an American spy drone that went down in Iran last year, including information that the aircraft was used to spy on Osama bin Laden weeks before he was killed. Iran also said it was building a copy of the drone.

Similar unmanned surveillance planes have been used in Afghanistan for years and kept watch on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. But U.S. officials have said little about the history of the particular aircraft now in Iran’s possession.

Tehran, which has also been known to exaggerate its military and technological prowess, says it brought down the RQ-170 Sentinel, a top-secret drone equipped with stealth technology, and has flaunted the capture as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States.

After the drone went down in Iran, options to prevent the drone from falling into Iranian hands included sending in a special-ops team to retrieve it or blow it up, or launching an airstrike to destroy it. President Gutsy Call didn’t employ any of those options, much to the dismay of Dick Cheney.

What Iran could do with the technology is questionable:

A former intelligence official told Fox News it’s unlikely the Iranians could figure out how to recreate the drone, and that the pressing concern would be to try to use the technology to bargain with the Chinese or the Russians.

While China does not necessarily have the technology to help significantly advance Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for access to drone parts, China could offer Iran an IOU of sorts — for a favor like a veto at the U.N. Security Council, the former official said.

The Russians would also be interested in any U.S. intelligence collection capability, and could offer Iran ballistics technology useful for a nuclear delivery system.

I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

Early indications are that Iran is in fact having trouble replicating the technology, as this photo of Tehran’s first test flight of their copy of the captured US surveillance drone seems to confirm:

Update: Dennis Miller: By “copy” the drone, Iran means they’re going to trace it.

At a time when our politicians tend to apologize for our country’s prior actions, here’s a refresher on how some of our former patriots handled negative comments about our country. These are good.

JFK’S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60′s when DeGaulle decided to pull out of NATO. DeGaulle said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible.

Rusk responded, “Does that include those who are buried here?”

DeGaulle did not respond.

You could have heard a pin drop.

When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of ‘empire building’ by George Bush.

He answered by saying, “Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American.

During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, “Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?”

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: “Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?”

You could have heard a pin drop.

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries.

Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, “Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?”

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, “Maybe it’s because the Brit’s, Canadians, Aussie’s and Americans arranged it so you wouldn’t have to speak German.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

AND THIS STORY FITS RIGHT IN WITH THE ABOVE…

Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on.

“You have been to France before, monsieur?” the customs officer asked sarcastically.

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had indeed been to France previously.

“Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.”

The American said, “The last time I was here, I didn’t have to show it.”

“Impossible.

In the notorious recent open-microphone exchange with Dmitry Medvedev, Obama’s apparent assurance to Russia’s Putin that he proposes to continue dismantling our national defense capabilities can be interpreted in several ways, none of them good for the future of the United States.

The first possibility is that Obama simply desires a diminution of America’s leadership role in the world community, because that’s one of the radical left’s strongest demands.  Premature withdrawal of our military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan also supports this thesis.

A second possibility is the liberal-progressive dogma, often articulated in Obama’s speeches, that history is moving us toward a single worldwide government under leadership of the UN and a world justice court.  Reducing our military capabilities would further that effort.

A third possibility is the expectation that reduction of our military capabilities will, at no serious cost to our nation, free more funds to support expansion of our welfare state. This “peace dividend” idea, popular with liberal-progressives after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, is dangerously simplistic, wishful thinking.

The implicit assumption is that the good aspects of the post-World War II world order wrought by the United States’s superpower status would continue if we cede our leadership role.

Robert Kagan’s recently published The World America Made makes clear, however, that a policy of diminishing America’s leadership in world affairs requires ignorance of history.  If we step down, there will always be some nations with the will and the military and economic power to fill the vacuum.  Struggles of national ambition to succeed the United States are likely to involve the world in more wars and other conflicts than we have experienced in the past sixty-seven years, when the rest of the world knew that the United States was prepared to impose economic or military sanctions to maintain world order.

The world order that America made includes, among many other things, the fact that Western Europe survived and rebuilt its economies, free of Soviet domination, because of the Marshall Plan.  Japan and Germany were converted from beaten down losers to strong economic and diplomatic allies of the United States to serve as bulwarks against the expansionist policies of China and the Soviet Union.  Trade lanes and free movement of people and goods around the world have been sustained by NATO and the United States Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force.  We support the growing prosperity of developing nations.  Russia and China aim to control those economies to monopolize use of their resources.  The Cold War ended with the dissolution of the malevolent Soviet Union only because of our policy of containment that made clear to the Soviet leaders that we were prepared to stop them whenever they sought expansion outside their Eastern European sphere of influence.

Russia or China, if allowed to displace us, will seek to control international trade to their advantage by restricting free movement of people and goods.  Both have tightly controlled economies with laughable personal freedoms for their citizens.  Judging from post-World War II history, neither will be shy about imposing those conditions upon their neighbors and trading partners.

If liberal-progressives succeed in reducing the United States to some level of vassalage to other nations, the world we take for granted will be changed in many unpleasant ways.

We are told that Sergeant Robert Bales navigated his way through Taliban-infested areas and killed 17 Afghan civilians, including women and toddlers. Then he took time out from shooting to stack up several of the bodies and light them on fire. One might expect that such a shooter would be running from any angry mob who identified this obvious intruder in their midst, if not be pinned down in a battle with the local Taliban. Instead, we are told that he walked back alone and calmly surrendered.

How could he have done this by himself? And how could the most horrific case of mass murder committed by a U.S. soldier since Fort Hood just be a case of too much war stress?

Gordon Duff is a favorite of Iranian Press TV. His website says Sergeant Bales was a Christian extremist

Claims that he suffered from PTSD or a brain injury do not square with the methodological approach that he apparently took in the killings. This was not a madman going berserk. The rampage had the earmarks of somebody programmed or manipulated to kill, with the killings and the aftermath being carefully orchestrated by those in on the secret of what actually happened.

Bales’ lawyer claims he “does not remember everything” from the day of the shootings, and  that he has not actually confessed.

It is eerily reminiscent of when fanatical Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan, a Marxist who killed Robert F. Kennedy, claimed he couldn’t remember anything, after initially confessing to the crime. Few today remember that RFK was actually the target of a terrorist attack on American soil motivated by Sirhan Sirhan’s allegiance to Palestinian nationalism and Arab socialism.

What is apparent in the Bales case is that the level of violence carried out against civilians is strikingly similar to the terror and assassination that the Taliban inflicts on communities that dare to oppose them. This was clearly premeditated mass murder. But for what purpose? And who or what was behind it?

What we know, at this point, is that Iranian Press TV and Moscow-funded Russia Today (RT) are blaming the killings not on one man but a high-level U.S. conspiracy. They insist that Bales did not act alone but was assisted by other U.S. military personnel in what was a planned and systematic massacre of civilians. The conspiracies being offered by Press TV and RT should not be dismissed but rather understood in the context of what they want us to believe and why. This is a global information war and the ultimate prize is control of the Middle East.

The stakes are high as President Obama embraces the anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, Russia and China continue to support Iran, the regime in Syria hangs on to power with the help of Russia, and the Chinese-backed Islamic regime in Sudan continues to wreak havoc in Africa, including through its support for warlord Joseph Kony.

The malicious charges stemming from the Bales case clearly endanger our troops throughout the world, especially the Middle East. We know that U.S. troops have already withdrawn from Iraq and that a panicked departure from Afghanistan would be a major debacle that would lead to the takeover of the country by the Taliban, the same group which hosted the 9/11 plotters.

UPI FILE

A U.S. Marine crosses a bridge during a security patrol in Afghanistan.

America is a declining empire trying to resurrect itself through military intervention and armed occupation.

The more than $1 trillion decade with Iraq has finally ended. But neocon dreams of democracy for Iraq did not pan out. Iraq has a corrupt, shaky and ineffective government. Thousands of people continue to die in sectarian violence as Iraq wallows in a bloody civil war.

As for Afghanistan, most of the original terrorists in al-Qaida who planned 9/11 are either dead, in prison, on the run or holed up in Pakistan. Washington tells us that Pakistan is our most trusted Muslim ally, ignoring Peter Bergen’s 2011 New York Times bestseller The Longest War: The enduring conflict between America and al-Qaeda. Bergen writes that Pakistan has consistently been found to be “one of the most anti-American countries in the world.”

It seems obvious that the continued occupation of Afghanistan — a country that has defeated the armies of the Russian tsars, the British Empire and the Soviet Union — is doomed to fail.

We Need Cronkite

What makes news today are celebrity overdoses, dirt on Presidential candidates and the best new reality series. But consider what Walter Cronkite said on Feb. 27, 1968, following the Tet Offensive: “It seems now more certain than ever, that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.”

Cronkite made this statement four years into that war. America is into its second decade of fighting in Afghanistan, and even a stalemate now seems impossible.

If the goals of victory were the killing of Osama bin Laden and the almost complete destruction of al-Qaida within Afghanistan, then victory has been achieved. But if the neoconservatives still believe we can institute a democratic government in Kabul, they are either naïve or initiating wars simply for the sake of war.

For decades, our government has been arrogant in imposing Western principals and ideals. Washington cannot understand that Afghanistan, a tribal and Muslim country, will not accept Western ideals any more than we would accept a prescript declared on us by a foreign power.

Imposing On Others

I am a peaceful fellow who is past middle age. I always tried to either walk or, better yet, run away from a real conflict. But if armed Chinese soldiers occupied and patrolled the streets of my city, I would clean the barrel on my hunting rifle. I am willing to bet that a great many of you would do the same to resist foreign occupation.

Yet Washington thinks American ideals should be welcomed with outstretched arms. Some of this has to do with the experience of World War II and how Europeans welcomed the United States as a liberator.

Here is the catch: The period 1925 to 1945 was an aberration — 20 years of dictators. Consider that before Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, much of Europe had thrived for decades with democracy.

This has been the most blaring case of military personnel meltdown since the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968 when Lt. William Calley, an American soldier in South Viet Nam snapped and opened fire on unarmed civilians, killing 347-504. The remorseful man regretted this for the rest of his life.

It is easy to jockey through this current tragedy, start blaming Sgt. Robert Bales as a violent trouble-maker and bring up that he had been guilty of domestic abuse charges and a hit and run charge. A misfit that would always be a misfit. Neighbors say his house was unkempt where he lived with his wife and children.

There is no question that Sgt. Bales must answer to the charges that he killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan and face punishment.

But there are other things that MUST be considered at the same time. Let us start with the military itself. Sgt. Bales had been obligated to go on four consecutive tours of duty.  He had already been on the battle field for three solid years and one month without letup. He suffered a concussion in Iraq and lost part of a foot in another battle field injury. And he had to go back on that 4th tour of front line duty.

This is brutal. There should be two tours maximum, then let military personnel be transferred to a non battlefield assignment. Three consistent tours of duty would be really pushing it. But a fourth consecutive tour is unconscionable.

By that time, facing yet another trip to the front lines,  a numb soldier would see his life as one battlefield after another with the goal to kill as many people as possible…one after another..

He did not want to go on that fourth tour of duty…had gone on three already, was fatigued and wanted to go home to his wife and children. Indeed, he was told that he would not have to go on that 4th tour after all.  He and his family had planned some time together in more peaceful surroundings.

BUT the army reneged on its promise, yanked him up and sent him back to the front lines.  That alone could cause a normally balanced individual to snap.Next his house wound up in foreclosure proceedings because of financial difficulties. And he could not be there to help.

On top of that, the day before the tragedy, Sgt. Bales saw a friend of his be hit with an explosive that blew off his leg. He was right there and saw it along with his screaming friend going through unspeakable agony. That was the point when he went berserk. All he wanted to do was kill anyone within the race of people that had done this to his friend. And on March11th, it happened. The same month Lt. Calley went on his rampage. And strangely enough, the date was the 11th….the same day of 9-11.

It could have all been prevented.

There was a time, during the Greatest Generation of World War II when we had professional soldiers. The military did its job swiftly and efficiently. That was then.