In connection with your current effort in Libya, I’m offering the services of the Institute for Modifying All Governmental Entities (IMAGE, for short). It’s the job of IMAGE to enhance the persona of a client in such a way as to make him/her appear acceptable to the public regardless of how brilliant, incompetent, stupid, or just squirrelly he/she (equal opportunity, diversity, multiculturalism, ethnicity, creed, etc. always observed respectfully) may be. Speaker Boehner is publicly on your case presently regarding all those Libyans you have ordered killed in behalf of saving other Libyans’ lives, or something like that. This is not a criticism of your heroic effort, just stating facts. Senator McCain was in Libya in April and said the Libyans you’re saving are his heroes, besides being nice people we can trust.
The arm of IMAGE that would be appropriate at the beginning is the seminar entitled Waging Alien Readjustments, or WAR, for short. You are entitled, as any president is, to conduct at least one war, with two or more even better. Your problem now is that you have told a number of heads of governments to get out of Dodge (little old-west levity there, meaning “run for their lives”) but some of them have refused to do so and have even had the temerity to pay no attention to you, an actual act of diplomatic war, figuratively speaking, requiring not diplomatic revenge, but a reasoned explanation of why they should obey the loudest mouth in the world. WAR operatives can help you form these reasoned arguments, even if there aren’t any, and explain why you can’t just order world leaders around or accuse them of acting stupidly, as you have done with regard to white policemen.
The arm of IMAGE that would obviously follow is the Bureau for Utilizing Loquaciousness in Liberty-Yammering, otherwise known as BULLY. In connection with Libya, you have done what any playground monster would do, namely, pick on the smallest available potential victim. Libya’s population is two-million less than that of New York City and Qadaffi has to make do with hired assassins from the Congo or somewhere, so you could hardly lose, although you actually do need to give Qadaffi the “Osama treatment” before Boehner starts blathering about NATO’s costs, which are mostly borne by American taxpayers. Your choice of Libya for your war was not the problem; rather, you haven’t explained why you chose it. No one expected you to invade Russia or China or even Syria for your war.
Both the Constitution and the War Powers Act of 1973 have to do with your responsibility to protect the public from invasions, etc., but you haven’t explained how Libya was a clear and present danger to this country. BULLY operatives would prepare your teleprompters in such a way as to make the case that Qaddafi threatened the whole world with his huge army (76,000 troops) during his UN speech in 2009 about global things. Also, when he pitched his tent in New York City and demanded camel-space in violation of city ordinances, he was obviously sending a message that a hotel might come under attack at any moment, meaning one that he had planned but obviously went awry. See the difference between all that compassion-dribble and far better, more reasoned propaganda? BULLY would also help you explain why you didn’t listen to the military guys, Gates and Mullen, both of whom said publicly that attacking Libya was strictly bananas.
The next entity in IMAGE that would help you is the Agency for Rationalizing Arab Beheadings and Stoning Prerogatives in Rebellions/Insurrections Necessitating Gravitas, otherwise known by its acronym, ARAB SPRING. This is right in line with your glorification of all the people in the streets this year in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and now Libya, despite the fact that a slew of them have already been buried on the same day their protests took place. If you had been in IMAGE’s care, you would not have encouraged young people, for instance, to take the fall, but old codgers, who are pretty well washed up anyway. ARAB SPRING will help you explain to the American people that Muslims are happy and of no threat, and that their requirements for societal welfare are just different from those of even hillbilly Kentucky. Instead of an eye-for-an-eye, they sometimes require a whole body-for-an-eye. It’s just a matter of degree.
The second area of ARAB SPRING, regarding gravitas, has to do with your needed efforts to convince Arabs and Muslims that they need to have better reasons for cutting off limbs, for instance, just for stealing a loaf of bread. Or, you need to convince them of the need to explain to the world how their punishment is better than civilized punishment, to wit for instance, that a one-armed teenager will have a harder time breaking and entering in order to steal another loaf of bread, or in this country, Lebron James sneakers. This will require IMAGE-ARAB SPRING to work with your state department, but a bit of caution is in order regarding personnel. William Ayers, your friend and mentor, of Weather Underground – Community Organizing fame, is not a candidate for dealing with the Muslims since he is just like them. The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright might be helpful since he’s made it clear that one can damn this country but still thrive quite well in it. That should make any Arab happy and score points for you in 2012.
Hoping to hear from you.
Respectfully,
I.M. Reverself, CEO
IMAGE
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Weiner's Partners in Crime
Everyone is piling on Congressman Weiner now and, of course, he deserves it as more of his disgraceful shenanigans are exposed almost daily. His claim to be seeking solutions (would Obamacare cover it?) for his problem seems vague enough. Is he having a “Tiger Woods Moment?” No such thing as sex-addiction has ever been declared by any psychiatric or social or psychological agency, so all the stuff about treating it is smoke and mirrors.
Interestingly, not much is said about the fact that on the other end of all Weiner’s tweets or Facebook whatevers – everything from phone sex to lewd pictures? – is a gaggle of females, many if not most of them perfectly willing to go along with the sleaze. They’re characterized in the media as “victims,” the watchword of modern-day America – everybody just has to be a victim of some kind – while poor Weiner is the only villain. Gimme a break!
I surfed onto Hannity the other evening (I’m not a Hannity type) and who was there all the way from Seattle or somewhere out west but the (gasp) college student victimized by Weiner, naturally just horrified – actually, amused – by the whole thing and obviously enjoying her 15 minutes of fame. She’s 26, a single mom (child’s father not mentioned) and a veteran of the U.S. Army, hardly a naïve college girl being seduced by a lecherous old congressman. She was as calm and collected as anyone could hope to be on Fox News, not the least bit upset. Even Barbara Walters or Diane Sawyer couldn’t have made her weep bitter tears of trauma, though they might talk her into suing Weiner. That would be a great story.
Well…the network girls have dragged out Sanford, Spitzer, Edwards and hammered them, the cads, with great fervor, but don’t mention the distaff operatives involved in their hanky-panky. They even dredged up poor old Gary Hart and resurrected him from the eighties, the better to make their case that men are animals while the women are poor things just USED – oh, mercy, bless them all – by the insensitive creatures. An errant Congressman is not to be tolerated while practitioners of the oldest profession are to be pitied and glorified for showing strength amidst catastrophe. Egad!
I surfed onto ABC the other morning (okay, just five minutes, admittedly) to discover Christiane Amanpour conducting a panel comprised of some of the highest-profile women to be found anywhere. I gathered in my short viewing that the girls agreed that women are team-oriented and get things done while men are competitive to the point of pushing themselves at the expense of everything and everybody else, the devil take the hindmost. Oh…those cro-magnon-types…keepers of the Glass Ceiling, the devils!
The cutest irony, though, concerns the cuties who do these shows – not all but many, especially news and commentary – and take the lead in crucifying poor Weiner. That infamous press conference of his is still playing, and the cuties, who make sure to exhibit the greatest possible cleavage and the most possible thigh-skin put the dagger in Weiner’s back while displaying the most amazing come-ons ever imagined by the girl-on-the-move, doncha know. They give a show-and-tell lesson about how Weiner got hooked…or “hookered.”
The cuties contrive to give learned opinions (oh, the legal eagles among them) and talk about tornadoes and murders and Middle-East blood-in-the-streets while being painted and primped to the penultimate like they just dropped in for less serious things while on their way to the nearest cocktail party. While their male counterparts are dressed to the nines head-to-foot, suit-and-tie, they come in dressed off-the-shoulder (or sometimes off of more) and, prim and proper with their legs crossed just so, seeming to tease the camera-man about a possible crotch-shot lapse.
Let’s face it. Weiner has had it. I don’t care if he resigns or not. After all, the people elected him, and Congress has featured, does feature, and will always feature strange people, so Weiner is not necessarily out of place. If Slick Willie, who makes Weiner look like a Boy Scout, could hold the presidency, Satan itself could hold a seat from New York. In both perverted behavior and consummate lying, Weiner could never hold a candle to Bubba, who actually discovered what “is” is, perhaps the greatest lesson learned from his peccadilloes. Maybe Weiner will discover what “are” is, or maybe that should be what “are” are. Who knows…or cares?
In the meantime, let’s hear it for the girls who do the necessary in order to seduce these weak legislators and then make hay of it (how smart they are!) and the girls in their iffy clothes (or non-clothes) who make the Tube even boober as they juice up the nightly news and the morning doldrums.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Interestingly, not much is said about the fact that on the other end of all Weiner’s tweets or Facebook whatevers – everything from phone sex to lewd pictures? – is a gaggle of females, many if not most of them perfectly willing to go along with the sleaze. They’re characterized in the media as “victims,” the watchword of modern-day America – everybody just has to be a victim of some kind – while poor Weiner is the only villain. Gimme a break!
I surfed onto Hannity the other evening (I’m not a Hannity type) and who was there all the way from Seattle or somewhere out west but the (gasp) college student victimized by Weiner, naturally just horrified – actually, amused – by the whole thing and obviously enjoying her 15 minutes of fame. She’s 26, a single mom (child’s father not mentioned) and a veteran of the U.S. Army, hardly a naïve college girl being seduced by a lecherous old congressman. She was as calm and collected as anyone could hope to be on Fox News, not the least bit upset. Even Barbara Walters or Diane Sawyer couldn’t have made her weep bitter tears of trauma, though they might talk her into suing Weiner. That would be a great story.
Well…the network girls have dragged out Sanford, Spitzer, Edwards and hammered them, the cads, with great fervor, but don’t mention the distaff operatives involved in their hanky-panky. They even dredged up poor old Gary Hart and resurrected him from the eighties, the better to make their case that men are animals while the women are poor things just USED – oh, mercy, bless them all – by the insensitive creatures. An errant Congressman is not to be tolerated while practitioners of the oldest profession are to be pitied and glorified for showing strength amidst catastrophe. Egad!
I surfed onto ABC the other morning (okay, just five minutes, admittedly) to discover Christiane Amanpour conducting a panel comprised of some of the highest-profile women to be found anywhere. I gathered in my short viewing that the girls agreed that women are team-oriented and get things done while men are competitive to the point of pushing themselves at the expense of everything and everybody else, the devil take the hindmost. Oh…those cro-magnon-types…keepers of the Glass Ceiling, the devils!
The cutest irony, though, concerns the cuties who do these shows – not all but many, especially news and commentary – and take the lead in crucifying poor Weiner. That infamous press conference of his is still playing, and the cuties, who make sure to exhibit the greatest possible cleavage and the most possible thigh-skin put the dagger in Weiner’s back while displaying the most amazing come-ons ever imagined by the girl-on-the-move, doncha know. They give a show-and-tell lesson about how Weiner got hooked…or “hookered.”
The cuties contrive to give learned opinions (oh, the legal eagles among them) and talk about tornadoes and murders and Middle-East blood-in-the-streets while being painted and primped to the penultimate like they just dropped in for less serious things while on their way to the nearest cocktail party. While their male counterparts are dressed to the nines head-to-foot, suit-and-tie, they come in dressed off-the-shoulder (or sometimes off of more) and, prim and proper with their legs crossed just so, seeming to tease the camera-man about a possible crotch-shot lapse.
Let’s face it. Weiner has had it. I don’t care if he resigns or not. After all, the people elected him, and Congress has featured, does feature, and will always feature strange people, so Weiner is not necessarily out of place. If Slick Willie, who makes Weiner look like a Boy Scout, could hold the presidency, Satan itself could hold a seat from New York. In both perverted behavior and consummate lying, Weiner could never hold a candle to Bubba, who actually discovered what “is” is, perhaps the greatest lesson learned from his peccadilloes. Maybe Weiner will discover what “are” is, or maybe that should be what “are” are. Who knows…or cares?
In the meantime, let’s hear it for the girls who do the necessary in order to seduce these weak legislators and then make hay of it (how smart they are!) and the girls in their iffy clothes (or non-clothes) who make the Tube even boober as they juice up the nightly news and the morning doldrums.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, June 06, 2011
Weiner Warped in the Whirlwind!
The fact that New York Congressman Weiner was messed up in some sort of sexual business, albeit, at least according to him, at a distance and not involving intimacies, is not exactly surprising since this kind of stuff has been going on with elected officials virtually since the birth of the nation. The fact that he lied through his teeth about his rather sordid behavior when caught also was not surprising. This seems to be the knee-jerk reaction of politicians – perhaps most folks…who knows – when they’re caught in some sort of skullduggery, so what else is new?
The fact that Weiner called a press conference – not in Washington but in New York – to apologize all around to everyone he hurt, especially his wife, and to call himself out as a liar was not surprising, either. After all, he was caught and had no other option short of emigrating to Borneo. The fact that he stated his intentions to make no response of any kind concerning the dirt that is sure to be coming along was not surprising since to do so would merely enhance his guilt. In any case, he’s assured of soft treatment by the so-called mainstream media because he’s a democrat and because he’s Obama’s man Friday.
Weiner made it plain in the press conference that he would not resign his seat, as a New York colleague, also caught recently in shady stuff, did, as have many others. After all, former New York attorney-general and governor Eliot Spitzer, caught in a sordid business with high-priced prostitutes, resigned and is now doing quite well at CNN, a mainstream outlet, conducting his own talk-show and probably making bigger bucks than he ever would have as governor, at least as far as salary and not kickbacks are concerned. Sleaziness as a silent part of a resume apparently speaks well for broadcasters at CNN, so if worse comes to worse and Weiner should be forced out he could figure on a plush job at CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS or maybe the New York Times, though he would probably favor TV, the better to show his anatomy.
The most disgusting thing about the affair, however, is the fact that a Congressman, supposedly a mature man who understands the seriousness connected to his job, could be caught up in the often, if not essentially, juvenile exercise of tweeting, texting, sexting or participating in Facebook or some other online silly bare-all vehicle, in which everything from the lurid to the totally inane, insane stuff is posted for all the world to see. Weiner made a laughingstock of his very position, one to which most folks – the voters – attach grave importance.
Weiner placed himself on the same level as a hormone-driven-high-school-sophomore boy, who’s likely to tweet before he thinks or place some ridiculous picture of some part of his physique on the internet, never realizing that it can be passed around the world in minutes, no matter how obnoxious or embarrassing to his family. Apparently, it never occurred to Weiner that all his tweeting and face-booking – even phone conversations…maybe phone sex a la Bill Clinton & Monica? – could come back to haunt him, even though after sitting through myriad hearings or congressional sessions he had to know how easy it is to surf the internet and find all kinds of incriminating stuff. Should one believe he was just plain stupid?
There’s a darker angle to this matter. On the basis of what Weiner did – with all other officials having the same online/electronic tools at their disposal – should one wonder how trustworthy these public servants are? Congressmen in both Houses have access to sensitive information, often delivered behind-closed-doors-only. How susceptible are they with respect to blackmail when to be embarrassed or – worse – lose their positions could be an outcome if they don’t “cooperate?” This makes Weiner’s utter lack of plain common sense all the more graphic.
In fact, his lack of plain common sense was vividly portrayed in that weird press conference that was actually co-opted for a while by his tormentor, Andrew Breitbart, when he said he would not resign – this despite the fact that he himself was in the process of destroying any credibility he might expect people to believe he had/has. One of his “ladies of interest” has indicated publicly that she talked on the phone with Weiner while he was in his office using a telephone, both provided as resources by the taxpayers. This is patently a no-no and will now be front-and-center in the House at the very time important matters are on the agenda. One suspects the democrats are hoping the problem will go away, meaning that Weiner will go away.
Oh…well…at least Weiner’s wife didn’t appear with him like a zombie standing by her man. Good for her!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The fact that Weiner called a press conference – not in Washington but in New York – to apologize all around to everyone he hurt, especially his wife, and to call himself out as a liar was not surprising, either. After all, he was caught and had no other option short of emigrating to Borneo. The fact that he stated his intentions to make no response of any kind concerning the dirt that is sure to be coming along was not surprising since to do so would merely enhance his guilt. In any case, he’s assured of soft treatment by the so-called mainstream media because he’s a democrat and because he’s Obama’s man Friday.
Weiner made it plain in the press conference that he would not resign his seat, as a New York colleague, also caught recently in shady stuff, did, as have many others. After all, former New York attorney-general and governor Eliot Spitzer, caught in a sordid business with high-priced prostitutes, resigned and is now doing quite well at CNN, a mainstream outlet, conducting his own talk-show and probably making bigger bucks than he ever would have as governor, at least as far as salary and not kickbacks are concerned. Sleaziness as a silent part of a resume apparently speaks well for broadcasters at CNN, so if worse comes to worse and Weiner should be forced out he could figure on a plush job at CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS or maybe the New York Times, though he would probably favor TV, the better to show his anatomy.
The most disgusting thing about the affair, however, is the fact that a Congressman, supposedly a mature man who understands the seriousness connected to his job, could be caught up in the often, if not essentially, juvenile exercise of tweeting, texting, sexting or participating in Facebook or some other online silly bare-all vehicle, in which everything from the lurid to the totally inane, insane stuff is posted for all the world to see. Weiner made a laughingstock of his very position, one to which most folks – the voters – attach grave importance.
Weiner placed himself on the same level as a hormone-driven-high-school-sophomore boy, who’s likely to tweet before he thinks or place some ridiculous picture of some part of his physique on the internet, never realizing that it can be passed around the world in minutes, no matter how obnoxious or embarrassing to his family. Apparently, it never occurred to Weiner that all his tweeting and face-booking – even phone conversations…maybe phone sex a la Bill Clinton & Monica? – could come back to haunt him, even though after sitting through myriad hearings or congressional sessions he had to know how easy it is to surf the internet and find all kinds of incriminating stuff. Should one believe he was just plain stupid?
There’s a darker angle to this matter. On the basis of what Weiner did – with all other officials having the same online/electronic tools at their disposal – should one wonder how trustworthy these public servants are? Congressmen in both Houses have access to sensitive information, often delivered behind-closed-doors-only. How susceptible are they with respect to blackmail when to be embarrassed or – worse – lose their positions could be an outcome if they don’t “cooperate?” This makes Weiner’s utter lack of plain common sense all the more graphic.
In fact, his lack of plain common sense was vividly portrayed in that weird press conference that was actually co-opted for a while by his tormentor, Andrew Breitbart, when he said he would not resign – this despite the fact that he himself was in the process of destroying any credibility he might expect people to believe he had/has. One of his “ladies of interest” has indicated publicly that she talked on the phone with Weiner while he was in his office using a telephone, both provided as resources by the taxpayers. This is patently a no-no and will now be front-and-center in the House at the very time important matters are on the agenda. One suspects the democrats are hoping the problem will go away, meaning that Weiner will go away.
Oh…well…at least Weiner’s wife didn’t appear with him like a zombie standing by her man. Good for her!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
U.N. Mandate Distorted by Obama
From the UN Security Council of 17 March:
SECURITY COUNCIL APPROVES ‘NO-FLY ZONE’ OVER LIBYA, AUTHORIZING ‘ALL NECESSARY MEASURES’ TO PROTECT CIVILIANS, BY VOTE OF 10 IN FAVOUR WITH 5 ABSTENTIONS
Demanding an immediate ceasefire in Libya, including an end to the current attacks against civilians, which it said might constitute “crimes against humanity”, the Security Council this evening imposed a ban on all flights in the country’s airspace — a no-fly zone — and tightened sanctions on the Qadhafi regime and its supporters.
Adopting resolution 1973 (2011) by a vote of 10 in favour to none against, with 5 abstentions (Brazil, China, Germany, India, Russian Federation), the Council authorized Member States, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, to take all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory — requesting them to immediately inform the Secretary-General of such measures.
What began as the establishment of a no-fly-zone (described by Defense Secretary Gates as an “on the fly” operation, translated unstructured) has become an all-out war, with the heaviest NATO bombing to date on Tuesday the 24th, a total of 2,500 air-strikes in the last two months. As far as is known, there is no exit plan/strategy, just continued bombing.
From the New York Times, May 22: “Samantha Power, a human rights crusader, is a member of the National Security Council, which advises President Obama on foreign policy. For nearly 20 years, since her days as a young war correspondent in Bosnia, Ms. Power has championed the idea that nations have a moral obligation to prevent genocide. From her perch on the council, she is in a position to make that case to the commander in chief — and to watch him translate her ideas into action.” Perhaps such as Libya? Disgusting!
It may be that the president fancies himself as a “humanitarian interventionist,” someone who takes a look at various parts of the world and decides that he’d better fix them, even if killing a bunch of innocent people is in the mix. His glorification of the current “Arab Spring” and consequent urging of young, inexperienced, unprepared Middle Easterners to take to the streets, a la community organizing mode, and turn themselves into cannon fodder in the process is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.
Continuing his Osama victory lap in Great Britain, the president described the action vis-à-vis Libya of this country and England, along with the rest of NATO, as the saving of lives. For more than two months the U.S. and NATO have been bombing Libya in order to save lives? For the first ten days of the rape of Libya, the U.S. was the main player, spending $55 million per day raining death and destruction on Libyans in order to save lives. Since then, the U.S. has been quite active in its role supporting militarily the intrusion into that civil war, no matter the president’s silly reference to non-kinetic participation, something he seems to define as absolving him of responsibility regarding the War Powers Act.
In March, Obama said regime change was not the aim of the U.S. in Libya; however, he and British Prime Minister Cameron, in their joint press conference, made it very plain that regime change is the goal, notwithstanding anything the Security Council mandated, none of which was to effect a regime change in Libya, also a member in good standing in the United Nations. England and France, oil customers of Libya and probably tired of having to deal with Qaddafi, who doubtlessly takes them to the cleaners in behalf of his own corruption, have a high-profile stake in Libya and probably laugh behind Obama’s back, thinking to use him.
This whole sorry episode is indicative of just how lightly the major nations, including the U.S., take the UN. Obama, in his humanitarian interventionist role got a mandate not from the U.S. Congress, which would have been the normal procedure, but from the UN Security Council, which held its collective nose and approved an invasion/attack on Libya to “save lives.” This resolution has been turned on its head by Obama, the UN be damned. He has used it to declare war on a sovereign nation that has never posed a threat to the United States, and especially not in any recent history, i.e., Obama’s lifetime.
Obama has done to Libya what the Japanese did to Pearl Harbor in December 1941 at the cost of 3,000 American lives. No one ever mentions how many Libyans have been killed by U.S. bombs and missiles. The Europeans don’t have many of these weapons, if any. It is known that Qaddafi’s son and three grandchildren were killed in a raid on their house in a residential neighborhood. The targets are supposed to be military in nature but that approach seems to have gone out the window.
In other words, the U.S. and NATO have assumed the posture of terrorists, the killing of women and children and one can only wonder how the people in uniform feel about this. The UN objective, no matter its illegitimacy, was accomplished long ago. Now, Libya is just a killing field.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
SECURITY COUNCIL APPROVES ‘NO-FLY ZONE’ OVER LIBYA, AUTHORIZING ‘ALL NECESSARY MEASURES’ TO PROTECT CIVILIANS, BY VOTE OF 10 IN FAVOUR WITH 5 ABSTENTIONS
Demanding an immediate ceasefire in Libya, including an end to the current attacks against civilians, which it said might constitute “crimes against humanity”, the Security Council this evening imposed a ban on all flights in the country’s airspace — a no-fly zone — and tightened sanctions on the Qadhafi regime and its supporters.
Adopting resolution 1973 (2011) by a vote of 10 in favour to none against, with 5 abstentions (Brazil, China, Germany, India, Russian Federation), the Council authorized Member States, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, to take all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory — requesting them to immediately inform the Secretary-General of such measures.
What began as the establishment of a no-fly-zone (described by Defense Secretary Gates as an “on the fly” operation, translated unstructured) has become an all-out war, with the heaviest NATO bombing to date on Tuesday the 24th, a total of 2,500 air-strikes in the last two months. As far as is known, there is no exit plan/strategy, just continued bombing.
From the New York Times, May 22: “Samantha Power, a human rights crusader, is a member of the National Security Council, which advises President Obama on foreign policy. For nearly 20 years, since her days as a young war correspondent in Bosnia, Ms. Power has championed the idea that nations have a moral obligation to prevent genocide. From her perch on the council, she is in a position to make that case to the commander in chief — and to watch him translate her ideas into action.” Perhaps such as Libya? Disgusting!
It may be that the president fancies himself as a “humanitarian interventionist,” someone who takes a look at various parts of the world and decides that he’d better fix them, even if killing a bunch of innocent people is in the mix. His glorification of the current “Arab Spring” and consequent urging of young, inexperienced, unprepared Middle Easterners to take to the streets, a la community organizing mode, and turn themselves into cannon fodder in the process is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.
Continuing his Osama victory lap in Great Britain, the president described the action vis-à-vis Libya of this country and England, along with the rest of NATO, as the saving of lives. For more than two months the U.S. and NATO have been bombing Libya in order to save lives? For the first ten days of the rape of Libya, the U.S. was the main player, spending $55 million per day raining death and destruction on Libyans in order to save lives. Since then, the U.S. has been quite active in its role supporting militarily the intrusion into that civil war, no matter the president’s silly reference to non-kinetic participation, something he seems to define as absolving him of responsibility regarding the War Powers Act.
In March, Obama said regime change was not the aim of the U.S. in Libya; however, he and British Prime Minister Cameron, in their joint press conference, made it very plain that regime change is the goal, notwithstanding anything the Security Council mandated, none of which was to effect a regime change in Libya, also a member in good standing in the United Nations. England and France, oil customers of Libya and probably tired of having to deal with Qaddafi, who doubtlessly takes them to the cleaners in behalf of his own corruption, have a high-profile stake in Libya and probably laugh behind Obama’s back, thinking to use him.
This whole sorry episode is indicative of just how lightly the major nations, including the U.S., take the UN. Obama, in his humanitarian interventionist role got a mandate not from the U.S. Congress, which would have been the normal procedure, but from the UN Security Council, which held its collective nose and approved an invasion/attack on Libya to “save lives.” This resolution has been turned on its head by Obama, the UN be damned. He has used it to declare war on a sovereign nation that has never posed a threat to the United States, and especially not in any recent history, i.e., Obama’s lifetime.
Obama has done to Libya what the Japanese did to Pearl Harbor in December 1941 at the cost of 3,000 American lives. No one ever mentions how many Libyans have been killed by U.S. bombs and missiles. The Europeans don’t have many of these weapons, if any. It is known that Qaddafi’s son and three grandchildren were killed in a raid on their house in a residential neighborhood. The targets are supposed to be military in nature but that approach seems to have gone out the window.
In other words, the U.S. and NATO have assumed the posture of terrorists, the killing of women and children and one can only wonder how the people in uniform feel about this. The UN objective, no matter its illegitimacy, was accomplished long ago. Now, Libya is just a killing field.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Obama & the War Powers Act
The profound contempt President Obama has for the U.S. Congress is seen in both his unilaterally going to war with Libya (actually no war at all, just a “turkey shoot”) without so much as a congressional by-your-leave and his failure to accede to the requirements of the War Powers Act of 1973 after having committed decent American troops to what amounts to monstrous atrocities, the murdering of women and children in the streets and in their homes. The president announced military action 19 March against Libya while in Brazil and did not return to Washington for some five days. The objective was to establish a no-fly zone over Libya.
By the end of five days, the no-fly zone, apparently only the ostensible (not actual) objective of the UN-Security-Council sanctioning (no Congressional sanctioning), had been firmly established. No Libyan planes or helicopters were flying then and haven’t been flying since. Instead of currently carrying out the no-fly-zone UN mandate, the president, using NATO now, has chosen sides in what amounts to a civil war in Libya and has chosen to kill his choice of Libyans, rather than allow Qaddafi to kill his choice in the process of maintaining the government.
Of course, Obama has said that Qaddafi must go and is now using what amounts to terrorist tactics – killing innocent civilians as per the 9/11 format – in order to avoid embarrassment. What other reason could he have? He has also suggested that Syrian strongman Bashar al Assad must go but, predictably, does not intend to make that stick, using military action. Indeed, neither the Congress nor the UN, both bodies too weak to be taken seriously anyway, would dare to approve another bloodletting such as Libya. In this regard, it’s important to note that neither Libya nor Syria has ever posed and does not now pose a threat to the U.S. or any other nation except perhaps Israel, which is an ongoing affair since 1948.
To see the degree of contempt mentioned above, one has only to remark this part of the War Powers Act: SEC. 5. (b) Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States. Such sixty-day period shall be extended for not more than an additional thirty days if the President determines and certifies to the Congress in writing that unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces requires the continued use of such armed forces in the course of bringing about a prompt removal of such forces.
The rape of Libya has gone on now well past the 60-day limit, with the president not acceding to its mandate and having no reason not to extract troops since the troops are not threatened by any military or other action. The weak excuse that…well…no president has taken the Act seriously doesn’t wash.
If American citizens had been under threat in Libya – okay, but the 60 days are up. Bush 41 did the Noriega thing in Panama in 1989, where there were 35,000 Americans who could have been in danger considering the political situation…or not. The mess was over in some two weeks. Reagan did the Grenada thing in 1983 where a few hundred American students might have been in danger. This affair was over in a few days, but, unfortunately, 19 Americans were killed. Reagan committed Marines to Lebanon later in 1983, with 241 being killed by a suicide bomber, the matter settled immediately, although all U.S. troops were not out until about three months later. In that case, there were hostilities, nothing like Libya.
Carter did the hostage thing in Iran in 1980 and that catastrophe was over in hours. Ford did the Mayaguez piracy-rescue in May 1975 and it was over in four days. Obama did the Osama assassination – or at least it’s officially reported that he gave the order – and it was over in a few hours. Since 1973, this resolution does not seem to have been violated even once. Obama has no intention of honoring this resolution because he considers Congress unimportant, beneath contempt, with using the Courts as his method of operation, if using anything legally at all.
From the New York Times, May 22: “Samantha Power, a human rights crusader, is a member of the National Security Council, which advises President Obama on foreign policy. For nearly 20 years, since her days as a young war correspondent in Bosnia, Ms. Power has championed the idea that nations have a moral obligation to prevent genocide. From her perch on the council, she is in a position to make that case to the commander in chief — and to watch him translate her ideas into action.” Perhaps such as Libya? Disgusting!
It may be that the president fancies himself as a “humanitarian interventionist,” someone who takes a look at various parts of the world and decides that he’d better fix them, even if killing a bunch of innocent people is in the mix. His glorification of the current “Arab Spring” and consequent urging of young, inexperienced, unprepared Middle Easterners to take to the streets, a la community organizing mode, and turn themselves into cannon fodder in the process is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
By the end of five days, the no-fly zone, apparently only the ostensible (not actual) objective of the UN-Security-Council sanctioning (no Congressional sanctioning), had been firmly established. No Libyan planes or helicopters were flying then and haven’t been flying since. Instead of currently carrying out the no-fly-zone UN mandate, the president, using NATO now, has chosen sides in what amounts to a civil war in Libya and has chosen to kill his choice of Libyans, rather than allow Qaddafi to kill his choice in the process of maintaining the government.
Of course, Obama has said that Qaddafi must go and is now using what amounts to terrorist tactics – killing innocent civilians as per the 9/11 format – in order to avoid embarrassment. What other reason could he have? He has also suggested that Syrian strongman Bashar al Assad must go but, predictably, does not intend to make that stick, using military action. Indeed, neither the Congress nor the UN, both bodies too weak to be taken seriously anyway, would dare to approve another bloodletting such as Libya. In this regard, it’s important to note that neither Libya nor Syria has ever posed and does not now pose a threat to the U.S. or any other nation except perhaps Israel, which is an ongoing affair since 1948.
To see the degree of contempt mentioned above, one has only to remark this part of the War Powers Act: SEC. 5. (b) Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States. Such sixty-day period shall be extended for not more than an additional thirty days if the President determines and certifies to the Congress in writing that unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces requires the continued use of such armed forces in the course of bringing about a prompt removal of such forces.
The rape of Libya has gone on now well past the 60-day limit, with the president not acceding to its mandate and having no reason not to extract troops since the troops are not threatened by any military or other action. The weak excuse that…well…no president has taken the Act seriously doesn’t wash.
If American citizens had been under threat in Libya – okay, but the 60 days are up. Bush 41 did the Noriega thing in Panama in 1989, where there were 35,000 Americans who could have been in danger considering the political situation…or not. The mess was over in some two weeks. Reagan did the Grenada thing in 1983 where a few hundred American students might have been in danger. This affair was over in a few days, but, unfortunately, 19 Americans were killed. Reagan committed Marines to Lebanon later in 1983, with 241 being killed by a suicide bomber, the matter settled immediately, although all U.S. troops were not out until about three months later. In that case, there were hostilities, nothing like Libya.
Carter did the hostage thing in Iran in 1980 and that catastrophe was over in hours. Ford did the Mayaguez piracy-rescue in May 1975 and it was over in four days. Obama did the Osama assassination – or at least it’s officially reported that he gave the order – and it was over in a few hours. Since 1973, this resolution does not seem to have been violated even once. Obama has no intention of honoring this resolution because he considers Congress unimportant, beneath contempt, with using the Courts as his method of operation, if using anything legally at all.
From the New York Times, May 22: “Samantha Power, a human rights crusader, is a member of the National Security Council, which advises President Obama on foreign policy. For nearly 20 years, since her days as a young war correspondent in Bosnia, Ms. Power has championed the idea that nations have a moral obligation to prevent genocide. From her perch on the council, she is in a position to make that case to the commander in chief — and to watch him translate her ideas into action.” Perhaps such as Libya? Disgusting!
It may be that the president fancies himself as a “humanitarian interventionist,” someone who takes a look at various parts of the world and decides that he’d better fix them, even if killing a bunch of innocent people is in the mix. His glorification of the current “Arab Spring” and consequent urging of young, inexperienced, unprepared Middle Easterners to take to the streets, a la community organizing mode, and turn themselves into cannon fodder in the process is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, May 13, 2011
DNC Memorandum #1
From the office of the ChairWOMAN, 12 May 2011
***Listen UP! I’m the first WOMAN ever to be elected to a complete term as DNC ChairWOMAN. I’m known as aggressive, opinionated, always right, and a slave-driver (not a politically incorrect term, since I say it isn’t) who expects undivided loyalty to the CAUSE, 99% of which is ME. Step out of line or, worse, don’t follow the line, and I’ll give you the “Trump Treatment.” For recent Harvard grads on staff, that means the “pink slip.” For recent Yale grads, that means “FIRED.” For everyone else, it means long days and nights on the job, no excuses, no refusals to watch Michael Moore movies (no matter how stupid), and a weekly essay of no less than 1,000 words on the accomplishments of the president. Anyone caught plagiarizing will be disciplined by listening to tapes of all the Biden speeches since 1988. In the meantime…hello there! My favorite food is cactus casserole; favorite pastime, exercising at my George Bush dartboard; favorite TV personality, Chris Matthews, with whom I share leg-tingling when POTUS teleprompts. DNC Memos are being renumbered, the last one being #22 in March – a brand new start is especially needed since the House was lost in November and POTUS polls are not good.
***There’s been talk, I understand, that I can’t be both DNC ChairWOMAN and a House member, along with the suggestion that I choose one or the other or at least forfeit the $200 thou this job pays. Be advised that I’m known as the bionic WOMAN and can function 24/7, be fully awake in three seconds flat at three a.m. (eat your heart out, Hillary – little joke there), and have better sense than to pass up a good thing. The former chairman, a mere man, was a governor when he took this job and nobody complained. Both jobs are fulltime requiring fulltime pay and I’ll be devoting at least 100 hours a week total to the efforts, especially since my vote in the House is worthless now anyway. Besides, Speaker Pelosi has approved of this arrangement, and the wag who suggested she did because she wanted me out of her hair will be disciplined when found.
***The president has directed that DNC Headquarters will be the greenest spot on earth. Either arrive at work by foot or on bicycles or in electric cars (not hybrids, for Princeton grads…they use gas). Those without funds for an electric car or fear that an encounter with an 18-wheeler in one would mean certain death are instructed to look for work elsewhere. Thermostats will be set at 60 degrees in cold weather and 81 degrees in warm weather, except for my office and adjacent kitchen and conference-room, which has to be used for consulting with people unused to the rigors of community-organizing and therefore susceptible to physical trauma. Only one panel of toilet paper per trip to the john is allowed and those who have a problem with that may shower on their breaks up to three times a day. Tires on vehicles will be checked weekly and staffers not obeying the PSI requirements will be docked $5.00 per tire. Lighting will be used only when speeches are being prepared. On cloudy days staffers may use flash-lights but only those with rechargeable batteries. Miners’ helmets are recommended but not required. I’m making a zone within five miles of Headquarters a smoke-free area, so be forewarned. Processed food or soft drinks may not be brought in lunches, and anyone smelling of a Big Mac when returning from lunch will attend nutrition conferences weekly for a year. This is just a heads-up…more rules will be forthcoming.
***The president has requested a red/yellow/black/white paper to be prepared detailing the reasons he decided to bomb Libya, felt it necessary to announce his decision in Brazil, then handed the matter off to NATO ten days later. Since his actions have caused sudden death and much other mangling to no telling how many Libyans, who have never posed a threat to this country, some callow Congressmen have wondered about a hearing on the matter since they were never consulted. The president would do this but he’s in campaign mode now and hasn’t the time. Besides, he knew there were good reasons but has forgotten them in the wake of handling all the world’s troubles from San Francisco eastward to San Francisco and single-handedly getting rid of Osama bin Laden in the process. Do NOT – repeat, DO NOT – mention that there’s oil in Libya or that al Qaeda is behind the uprising.
***As the campaign progresses, the theme is to be “Saving the Future,” especially important since the recent past has been so completely lost. Please note that in keeping with POTUS’s key position, George Bush is to be blamed for everything bad. Also note that POTUS is deep into prayer affairs now – Easter prayer, breakfast prayer, and the latest, Latino prayer this morning. He quoted Deuteronomy (not Geronimo for recent Wellesley grads) this morning: “Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” In case some of your Town Hall people view that as degrading to Jews, Egyptians, or both, make certain that POTUS didn’t mean either population is strange but deserves love anyway, the reasons for which are left up to you.
***The watchword for POTUS has become “gutsy” or “gutsier” or, depending on the crowd, “gutsiest.” This has arisen from the Osama-caper, but staffers are warned not to give any credit to CIA Director Panetta, who rumormongers insist had the whole thing planned out for a long time. It was POTUS’s call, the gutsiest one made since Lincoln sent Sherman through Georgia. The rumor that POTUS made the call while making a quadruple-bogey on a par-3 is untrue. It was only a triple-bogey.
***That wraps it up for now. For the next week at ten a.m., I Am Woman by Helen Reddy will be played over the intercom. I hope you will be standing, the same as if you were listening to America the Beautiful…you know, the national anthem.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
***Listen UP! I’m the first WOMAN ever to be elected to a complete term as DNC ChairWOMAN. I’m known as aggressive, opinionated, always right, and a slave-driver (not a politically incorrect term, since I say it isn’t) who expects undivided loyalty to the CAUSE, 99% of which is ME. Step out of line or, worse, don’t follow the line, and I’ll give you the “Trump Treatment.” For recent Harvard grads on staff, that means the “pink slip.” For recent Yale grads, that means “FIRED.” For everyone else, it means long days and nights on the job, no excuses, no refusals to watch Michael Moore movies (no matter how stupid), and a weekly essay of no less than 1,000 words on the accomplishments of the president. Anyone caught plagiarizing will be disciplined by listening to tapes of all the Biden speeches since 1988. In the meantime…hello there! My favorite food is cactus casserole; favorite pastime, exercising at my George Bush dartboard; favorite TV personality, Chris Matthews, with whom I share leg-tingling when POTUS teleprompts. DNC Memos are being renumbered, the last one being #22 in March – a brand new start is especially needed since the House was lost in November and POTUS polls are not good.
***There’s been talk, I understand, that I can’t be both DNC ChairWOMAN and a House member, along with the suggestion that I choose one or the other or at least forfeit the $200 thou this job pays. Be advised that I’m known as the bionic WOMAN and can function 24/7, be fully awake in three seconds flat at three a.m. (eat your heart out, Hillary – little joke there), and have better sense than to pass up a good thing. The former chairman, a mere man, was a governor when he took this job and nobody complained. Both jobs are fulltime requiring fulltime pay and I’ll be devoting at least 100 hours a week total to the efforts, especially since my vote in the House is worthless now anyway. Besides, Speaker Pelosi has approved of this arrangement, and the wag who suggested she did because she wanted me out of her hair will be disciplined when found.
***The president has directed that DNC Headquarters will be the greenest spot on earth. Either arrive at work by foot or on bicycles or in electric cars (not hybrids, for Princeton grads…they use gas). Those without funds for an electric car or fear that an encounter with an 18-wheeler in one would mean certain death are instructed to look for work elsewhere. Thermostats will be set at 60 degrees in cold weather and 81 degrees in warm weather, except for my office and adjacent kitchen and conference-room, which has to be used for consulting with people unused to the rigors of community-organizing and therefore susceptible to physical trauma. Only one panel of toilet paper per trip to the john is allowed and those who have a problem with that may shower on their breaks up to three times a day. Tires on vehicles will be checked weekly and staffers not obeying the PSI requirements will be docked $5.00 per tire. Lighting will be used only when speeches are being prepared. On cloudy days staffers may use flash-lights but only those with rechargeable batteries. Miners’ helmets are recommended but not required. I’m making a zone within five miles of Headquarters a smoke-free area, so be forewarned. Processed food or soft drinks may not be brought in lunches, and anyone smelling of a Big Mac when returning from lunch will attend nutrition conferences weekly for a year. This is just a heads-up…more rules will be forthcoming.
***The president has requested a red/yellow/black/white paper to be prepared detailing the reasons he decided to bomb Libya, felt it necessary to announce his decision in Brazil, then handed the matter off to NATO ten days later. Since his actions have caused sudden death and much other mangling to no telling how many Libyans, who have never posed a threat to this country, some callow Congressmen have wondered about a hearing on the matter since they were never consulted. The president would do this but he’s in campaign mode now and hasn’t the time. Besides, he knew there were good reasons but has forgotten them in the wake of handling all the world’s troubles from San Francisco eastward to San Francisco and single-handedly getting rid of Osama bin Laden in the process. Do NOT – repeat, DO NOT – mention that there’s oil in Libya or that al Qaeda is behind the uprising.
***As the campaign progresses, the theme is to be “Saving the Future,” especially important since the recent past has been so completely lost. Please note that in keeping with POTUS’s key position, George Bush is to be blamed for everything bad. Also note that POTUS is deep into prayer affairs now – Easter prayer, breakfast prayer, and the latest, Latino prayer this morning. He quoted Deuteronomy (not Geronimo for recent Wellesley grads) this morning: “Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” In case some of your Town Hall people view that as degrading to Jews, Egyptians, or both, make certain that POTUS didn’t mean either population is strange but deserves love anyway, the reasons for which are left up to you.
***The watchword for POTUS has become “gutsy” or “gutsier” or, depending on the crowd, “gutsiest.” This has arisen from the Osama-caper, but staffers are warned not to give any credit to CIA Director Panetta, who rumormongers insist had the whole thing planned out for a long time. It was POTUS’s call, the gutsiest one made since Lincoln sent Sherman through Georgia. The rumor that POTUS made the call while making a quadruple-bogey on a par-3 is untrue. It was only a triple-bogey.
***That wraps it up for now. For the next week at ten a.m., I Am Woman by Helen Reddy will be played over the intercom. I hope you will be standing, the same as if you were listening to America the Beautiful…you know, the national anthem.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, May 09, 2011
Correct Osama Pix
Irony with regard to the antics of President Obama just multiplies. At his direction, no pix of the dearly departed Osama in his shroud could be shown else there would be increased violence to the U.S. and the whole world by hordes of furious Muslim men standing in line to sign up for whatever jihad activity is available or designed by bin Laden before he was wasted. Nor is the irony lessened by the many conflicting reports by the administration that have been foisted on the public to the point of enhancing glazed eyes and jaws agape.
Instead, Obama is releasing pix designed, whether knowingly or not, to make Osama appear in a seedy bedroom to be everything from a hair-dyeing, narcissistic gigolo to a doddering old gray-bearded fool with an attention span so short that he operates his TV remote every two seconds to either change stations or just have fun pushing the little button. The jihad crowd might have appreciated fantasizing its leader cavorting with the 72 virgins in Paradise and, being all shot up, enhancing world opinion of Islam as bloody and fearless. The current effort insults and supposedly infuriates the jihadists more than ever.
Now, sadly, it develops that Osama didn’t even reach for his AK-47 to make the fight, thus automatically making himself ineligible for the virgin-scene. Obama apparently has not considered that making Osama go out as a woman (chattel) instead of a man indicates a putdown of the world’s most worshiped Muslim…enough to infuriate the jihadists into a hissy fit of screaming temper-tantrums and all-around ill humor profound enough to make them actually angry, not that it matters since they couldn’t hate this country any more than if Obama himself had done the chopper number.
Even worse, the only person in Obama’s bedroom to challenge the SEALs was a woman, who was shot in the leg for her trouble. Of course, there have been so many versions of the affair placed before the public by various administration officials that just the ambiguities are enough to make even the American public mad, to say nothing of the Muslims, who probably consider the whole pattern of contradictions done on purpose just to humiliate them all the more…Muslims not even being worth the trouble of truth-telling.
CIA Director Panetta reckoned publicly that the “death” pictures would be shown. Obama nixed that with the silly excuse noted. Americans had a right to see that account. State Secretary Clinton has praised the cooperation of Pakistan (whether for this caper or not unknown here). Panetta made it clear publicly that the Pakistanis knew nothing of the operation, which he apparently had planned and set up long before it was pulled off. Otherwise, it would have needed days or weeks to get up and running after a presidential okay was given. By that time, Osama could have been warned (maybe by a U.S. player).
This, of course, points to the claims/accounts that are all over the Internet of what actually happened and, if only partly true, indicate a virtually incomprehensible White House bizarreness that would lead one to consider the president as “leading from behind” (if at all), something of which the president is already accused in his “Libya Caper.” Plainly, he and his gang initiated that blood-letting affair and then just stepped away, virtually washing its collective hands of the whole mess.
One thing is certain, to wit, that every effort is being made to assure the public, regardless of the actual circumstances, that Obama was tough, rough and ready to do the necessaries. Obama has said publicly that there was only a 45-55% chance that Osama was in the raided compound. If that was the case, one can bet his military and intelligence advisers would have said the operation was too iffy to take a chance, especially in terms of the danger to the SEALs. It’s practically a lead-pipe-cinch that the CIA was virtually 100% sure that Osama was where he was apprehended. Does the White House believe the public is exponentially gullible?
If the public has been sold a bill of goods in the accounts furnished thus far, the truth will eventually come out. It might take a while, especially during the quadrennial electoral silly season, but, especially since someone might already be talking (and very convincingly), the truth will come out. If and when that happens, citizen-angst will build. It would be much better for the White House to handle this matter now, else a book next year like the one that helped sink John Kerry in 2004 could be devastating for Obama.
The wagons may have been circled but the proper attack could be calamitous. The supreme irony would have been seen in the capture of bin Laden. No enhanced interrogation now, so no info from him! Nowhere to put him except Guantanamo, which is not supposed to even exist now, by order of…yeah…Obama. Osama had to die.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Instead, Obama is releasing pix designed, whether knowingly or not, to make Osama appear in a seedy bedroom to be everything from a hair-dyeing, narcissistic gigolo to a doddering old gray-bearded fool with an attention span so short that he operates his TV remote every two seconds to either change stations or just have fun pushing the little button. The jihad crowd might have appreciated fantasizing its leader cavorting with the 72 virgins in Paradise and, being all shot up, enhancing world opinion of Islam as bloody and fearless. The current effort insults and supposedly infuriates the jihadists more than ever.
Now, sadly, it develops that Osama didn’t even reach for his AK-47 to make the fight, thus automatically making himself ineligible for the virgin-scene. Obama apparently has not considered that making Osama go out as a woman (chattel) instead of a man indicates a putdown of the world’s most worshiped Muslim…enough to infuriate the jihadists into a hissy fit of screaming temper-tantrums and all-around ill humor profound enough to make them actually angry, not that it matters since they couldn’t hate this country any more than if Obama himself had done the chopper number.
Even worse, the only person in Obama’s bedroom to challenge the SEALs was a woman, who was shot in the leg for her trouble. Of course, there have been so many versions of the affair placed before the public by various administration officials that just the ambiguities are enough to make even the American public mad, to say nothing of the Muslims, who probably consider the whole pattern of contradictions done on purpose just to humiliate them all the more…Muslims not even being worth the trouble of truth-telling.
CIA Director Panetta reckoned publicly that the “death” pictures would be shown. Obama nixed that with the silly excuse noted. Americans had a right to see that account. State Secretary Clinton has praised the cooperation of Pakistan (whether for this caper or not unknown here). Panetta made it clear publicly that the Pakistanis knew nothing of the operation, which he apparently had planned and set up long before it was pulled off. Otherwise, it would have needed days or weeks to get up and running after a presidential okay was given. By that time, Osama could have been warned (maybe by a U.S. player).
This, of course, points to the claims/accounts that are all over the Internet of what actually happened and, if only partly true, indicate a virtually incomprehensible White House bizarreness that would lead one to consider the president as “leading from behind” (if at all), something of which the president is already accused in his “Libya Caper.” Plainly, he and his gang initiated that blood-letting affair and then just stepped away, virtually washing its collective hands of the whole mess.
One thing is certain, to wit, that every effort is being made to assure the public, regardless of the actual circumstances, that Obama was tough, rough and ready to do the necessaries. Obama has said publicly that there was only a 45-55% chance that Osama was in the raided compound. If that was the case, one can bet his military and intelligence advisers would have said the operation was too iffy to take a chance, especially in terms of the danger to the SEALs. It’s practically a lead-pipe-cinch that the CIA was virtually 100% sure that Osama was where he was apprehended. Does the White House believe the public is exponentially gullible?
If the public has been sold a bill of goods in the accounts furnished thus far, the truth will eventually come out. It might take a while, especially during the quadrennial electoral silly season, but, especially since someone might already be talking (and very convincingly), the truth will come out. If and when that happens, citizen-angst will build. It would be much better for the White House to handle this matter now, else a book next year like the one that helped sink John Kerry in 2004 could be devastating for Obama.
The wagons may have been circled but the proper attack could be calamitous. The supreme irony would have been seen in the capture of bin Laden. No enhanced interrogation now, so no info from him! Nowhere to put him except Guantanamo, which is not supposed to even exist now, by order of…yeah…Obama. Osama had to die.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, May 05, 2011
No End-Zone Spike...No Pix!
One would like to think that the successful dispatching of Osama indicated to the world, especially Muslim nations, that this country will not stop responding when attacked until the attacker is either brought to justice or killed, sometimes the same thing. The president has expressed the fear that showing pictures of Osama at his bitter and much-sought-after end would inflame Muslims and make them try to “get us.”
The Muslims could not hate us more than they already do if we blew Afghanistan clear off the map, so showing Osama in his shroud would not change a thing. The jihadists already laughingly hold this nation hostage, what with their determining things such as how to get aboard a plane without losing all attempts at cool or looking both ways quickly and then running like mad when departing a subway train or wondering if that lady in the long dress and head scarf is actually a man (or woman) with TNT strapped about his midsection. Now they hold this nation hostage in the simple matter of what can be shown – or, in this case, not shown. Disgusting!
No…surely Obama is not so dumb that he can’t understand what everyone else knows, and that no pictures of anyone connected to the whole affair need be shown, thus bringing no one under threat of a fatwa that already exists against all infidels, in any case. Added to that, of course, is the inevitable growing of the feeling of the citizens that something is rotten in Denmark and that the president has an agenda.
But the prexy has said we simply can’t “spike the ball in the end zone” by showing Osama “at rest” (leaving one to wonder if a “slam dunk” might serve), the better not to appear to be gloating. Well…okay, but there’s a little problem with his decision, namely that gazillions of Muslims throughout the Arab world – if the news accounts are reliable – don’t believe the mighty Osama is dead, ergo, that the fight against the Great Satan must continue as he directs it. It’s barely possible that they might become believers if copies of the one-eyed corpse were distributed and actually decide that it’s just not worth it anymore.
Obama apparently has not objected to all the video seen 24/7 of the results of U.S. planes and those of other nations raining death upon innocent civilians in Libya (97% Muslim)…pictures of the bodies in the streets and the demolished buildings and the reporters oohing and aahing over the evil Qaddafi while standing in the rubble caused by Obama/NATO and reporting about such things as the murder of Qaddafi’s son and three grandchildren, all dangerous to the world. The wrecked house, in the middle of an ordinary neighborhood, was shown all over the Internet and TV, as has been the bloody picture of Osama’s son, killed in the SEAL attack.
So…what’s the agenda? Perhaps it’s simply that Obama has no stomach for exhibiting the pictures of a prominent Muslim…too insulting, even for the monster Osama. So…pictures of bloody-headed Libyans don’t merit protection from view, thus inciting more danger…but Osama does? One would think that the graphic picturing for some six weeks now of Libyan atrocities managed by Obama and NATO would inflame Muslims and, using the Obama take concerning safety, should be shut down, at least as far as all that are taken by the government.
It isn’t known here if Obama has precluded from view pictures taken by this government of the Libya carnage. Perhaps he has…but the horse is out of the barn anyway, courtesy of the media. And diligent Muslim operatives would have no trouble pinpointing the put-upon GIs and others responsible for carrying out the directive of the commander-in-chief, with respect to fatwas.
Obama’s perfidy in Libya has been in full view, with no doubt about his “gutsy” decision back in March to “establish a Libyan no-fly zone,” a feat that was accomplished in about four days or less, presumably with a minimum of lost lives, at least by Muslim standards. But the attacks by NATO at Obama’s behest have continued apace, so what is the reason for them now? There is no reason, of course, no exit strategy, no group with which to parley with reference to a new government. Actually, nobody in this White House seems to know much of anything except that Obama has told Qaddafi his time has come.
About those pictures of Osama vis-à-vis those of Libya? Maybe it’s simple (gasp) discrimination! How could a measly dead Libyan possibly be compared to the grand butcher of them all, someone too sacred to be shown with part of his head missing? In death, ironically, Osama has shared the plight of his partner in crime, Mullah Omar, head of the Taliban, who lost an eye in the Afghan-Soviet war of the 1980s. One wonders if Obama will send the SEALs after him, as well as Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama’s second-in-command.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The Muslims could not hate us more than they already do if we blew Afghanistan clear off the map, so showing Osama in his shroud would not change a thing. The jihadists already laughingly hold this nation hostage, what with their determining things such as how to get aboard a plane without losing all attempts at cool or looking both ways quickly and then running like mad when departing a subway train or wondering if that lady in the long dress and head scarf is actually a man (or woman) with TNT strapped about his midsection. Now they hold this nation hostage in the simple matter of what can be shown – or, in this case, not shown. Disgusting!
No…surely Obama is not so dumb that he can’t understand what everyone else knows, and that no pictures of anyone connected to the whole affair need be shown, thus bringing no one under threat of a fatwa that already exists against all infidels, in any case. Added to that, of course, is the inevitable growing of the feeling of the citizens that something is rotten in Denmark and that the president has an agenda.
But the prexy has said we simply can’t “spike the ball in the end zone” by showing Osama “at rest” (leaving one to wonder if a “slam dunk” might serve), the better not to appear to be gloating. Well…okay, but there’s a little problem with his decision, namely that gazillions of Muslims throughout the Arab world – if the news accounts are reliable – don’t believe the mighty Osama is dead, ergo, that the fight against the Great Satan must continue as he directs it. It’s barely possible that they might become believers if copies of the one-eyed corpse were distributed and actually decide that it’s just not worth it anymore.
Obama apparently has not objected to all the video seen 24/7 of the results of U.S. planes and those of other nations raining death upon innocent civilians in Libya (97% Muslim)…pictures of the bodies in the streets and the demolished buildings and the reporters oohing and aahing over the evil Qaddafi while standing in the rubble caused by Obama/NATO and reporting about such things as the murder of Qaddafi’s son and three grandchildren, all dangerous to the world. The wrecked house, in the middle of an ordinary neighborhood, was shown all over the Internet and TV, as has been the bloody picture of Osama’s son, killed in the SEAL attack.
So…what’s the agenda? Perhaps it’s simply that Obama has no stomach for exhibiting the pictures of a prominent Muslim…too insulting, even for the monster Osama. So…pictures of bloody-headed Libyans don’t merit protection from view, thus inciting more danger…but Osama does? One would think that the graphic picturing for some six weeks now of Libyan atrocities managed by Obama and NATO would inflame Muslims and, using the Obama take concerning safety, should be shut down, at least as far as all that are taken by the government.
It isn’t known here if Obama has precluded from view pictures taken by this government of the Libya carnage. Perhaps he has…but the horse is out of the barn anyway, courtesy of the media. And diligent Muslim operatives would have no trouble pinpointing the put-upon GIs and others responsible for carrying out the directive of the commander-in-chief, with respect to fatwas.
Obama’s perfidy in Libya has been in full view, with no doubt about his “gutsy” decision back in March to “establish a Libyan no-fly zone,” a feat that was accomplished in about four days or less, presumably with a minimum of lost lives, at least by Muslim standards. But the attacks by NATO at Obama’s behest have continued apace, so what is the reason for them now? There is no reason, of course, no exit strategy, no group with which to parley with reference to a new government. Actually, nobody in this White House seems to know much of anything except that Obama has told Qaddafi his time has come.
About those pictures of Osama vis-à-vis those of Libya? Maybe it’s simple (gasp) discrimination! How could a measly dead Libyan possibly be compared to the grand butcher of them all, someone too sacred to be shown with part of his head missing? In death, ironically, Osama has shared the plight of his partner in crime, Mullah Omar, head of the Taliban, who lost an eye in the Afghan-Soviet war of the 1980s. One wonders if Obama will send the SEALs after him, as well as Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama’s second-in-command.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
The "Most Gutsiest" Call
There was an interesting picture in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 03 May of the group in the White House watching the events of the Osama-caper including President Obama, members of the National Security Team and others, among whom were veep Biden, State Secretary Clinton, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen and Defense Secretary Gates. Counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan was also in the picture. Later, he would make that famous statement about the president: "one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory." One can just see the president climbing in a helicopter off to waste Osama in a blaze of glory…air-condioned helicopter, of course.
Brennan is the ultimate apparatchik and on the basis of that statement alone remarked himself as a hopeless sycophant…or at least someone with a terribly short memory. The president ordered up the wasting of one man – Osama. Just a few weeks ago, apparently beyond Brennan’s memory unless it’s quite selective, the president ordered up bombing and missile raids on a virtually defenseless country in the full knowledge (unless he’s a complete idiot) that not one but many Libyans were going to die as the result of his decision. Of course, those raids were not within Brennan’s purview since Libya didn’t/doesn’t pose a terrorism or any other kind of threat to this country. But Brennan would probably affirm that the Libya decision did not compare to "one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory."
Irony connected to that picture is so palpable it could be cut with a knife. Clinton appeared not in Congress but in the UN Security Council in March to successfully strongarm an approval resolution for establishing a no-fly-zone over Libya. The only reason was that Libyan strongman Qaddafi (like any other Middle East potentate worth his salt) was using planes in killing some of his people, who were attempting to overthrow the government. Obama gave the order (not a “gutsiest” one, of course) on 19 March. By 23 March, a British officer claimed that the Libyan Air Force no longer existed – destroyed on the ground, ergo, the need for the no-fly-zone had been nullified. End of story?
Well…no! It turns out apparently that neither Clinton nor Obama, presumably, actually meant that ploy as primary; rather, the Libyan people just had to be protected from their government, meaning that NATO, strongarmed by the Obama/Clinton team into taking over the killing as Obama withdrew from his “not-gutsiest” decision, would continue the bombing, finally managing on one sortie to hit a house in an entirely residential neighborhood ostensibly to kill Qaddafi, probably a “gutsy” but certainly not “gutsiest” move, of course, but only managed to kill Qaddafi’s son and three grandchildren, all unarmed but dangerous to Libya and the world.
More irony connected to that picture! Defense Secretary Gates and JCC Chairman Mullen had advised the president that his and Clinton’s scheme was not a good one, would cost Libyan lives (possibly those of U.S. GIs, too) and should not be inculcated. They each told of their advice on the various TV shows. Perhaps this irritated the president, who obviously wanted to prove he could tell Middle East dictators when they should get out of Dodge…and make it stick. In any case, he showed his disdain for the advice of actual military men with huge experience by heeding Clinton despite the fact that neither he nor she has any military experience whatever.
During her campaign against Obama in 2008, Clinton described her military experience by describing more than once in detail how she, a civilian, had macho-wise waded through sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996, apparantly forgetting that her visit in Bosnia was well-filmed and documented, showing her being welcomed with flowers by a pretty little girl standing next to both Bosnian and U.S. officials. For a lie of that magnitude, she was made State Secretary. Obama simply ignored his experts but makes no pretense to military expertise. After all, it’s been NATO’s problem ever since he handed it off about ten days and $550 million after he began the carnage.
With respect to Osama, the leader making the “most gutsiest” decision in Brennan’s memory got it right in his plush office in Washington and the SEALs did the dirty work. Since he can’t seem to get Qaddafi the old-fasioned way, i.e., by bombing neighborhoods 24/7 (whether by NATO or U.S. planes), one wonders if perhaps he’ll try the SEALs. Hopefully, they wouldn’t vomit.
And then, there’s Syria, Yemen, Jordan…and many more points east needing for dictators to get theirs. Only the “gutsiest” prevail. How “gutsy” a decision would it take, for instance, to grab Kim Jong Il – far, far east?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Brennan is the ultimate apparatchik and on the basis of that statement alone remarked himself as a hopeless sycophant…or at least someone with a terribly short memory. The president ordered up the wasting of one man – Osama. Just a few weeks ago, apparently beyond Brennan’s memory unless it’s quite selective, the president ordered up bombing and missile raids on a virtually defenseless country in the full knowledge (unless he’s a complete idiot) that not one but many Libyans were going to die as the result of his decision. Of course, those raids were not within Brennan’s purview since Libya didn’t/doesn’t pose a terrorism or any other kind of threat to this country. But Brennan would probably affirm that the Libya decision did not compare to "one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory."
Irony connected to that picture is so palpable it could be cut with a knife. Clinton appeared not in Congress but in the UN Security Council in March to successfully strongarm an approval resolution for establishing a no-fly-zone over Libya. The only reason was that Libyan strongman Qaddafi (like any other Middle East potentate worth his salt) was using planes in killing some of his people, who were attempting to overthrow the government. Obama gave the order (not a “gutsiest” one, of course) on 19 March. By 23 March, a British officer claimed that the Libyan Air Force no longer existed – destroyed on the ground, ergo, the need for the no-fly-zone had been nullified. End of story?
Well…no! It turns out apparently that neither Clinton nor Obama, presumably, actually meant that ploy as primary; rather, the Libyan people just had to be protected from their government, meaning that NATO, strongarmed by the Obama/Clinton team into taking over the killing as Obama withdrew from his “not-gutsiest” decision, would continue the bombing, finally managing on one sortie to hit a house in an entirely residential neighborhood ostensibly to kill Qaddafi, probably a “gutsy” but certainly not “gutsiest” move, of course, but only managed to kill Qaddafi’s son and three grandchildren, all unarmed but dangerous to Libya and the world.
More irony connected to that picture! Defense Secretary Gates and JCC Chairman Mullen had advised the president that his and Clinton’s scheme was not a good one, would cost Libyan lives (possibly those of U.S. GIs, too) and should not be inculcated. They each told of their advice on the various TV shows. Perhaps this irritated the president, who obviously wanted to prove he could tell Middle East dictators when they should get out of Dodge…and make it stick. In any case, he showed his disdain for the advice of actual military men with huge experience by heeding Clinton despite the fact that neither he nor she has any military experience whatever.
During her campaign against Obama in 2008, Clinton described her military experience by describing more than once in detail how she, a civilian, had macho-wise waded through sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996, apparantly forgetting that her visit in Bosnia was well-filmed and documented, showing her being welcomed with flowers by a pretty little girl standing next to both Bosnian and U.S. officials. For a lie of that magnitude, she was made State Secretary. Obama simply ignored his experts but makes no pretense to military expertise. After all, it’s been NATO’s problem ever since he handed it off about ten days and $550 million after he began the carnage.
With respect to Osama, the leader making the “most gutsiest” decision in Brennan’s memory got it right in his plush office in Washington and the SEALs did the dirty work. Since he can’t seem to get Qaddafi the old-fasioned way, i.e., by bombing neighborhoods 24/7 (whether by NATO or U.S. planes), one wonders if perhaps he’ll try the SEALs. Hopefully, they wouldn’t vomit.
And then, there’s Syria, Yemen, Jordan…and many more points east needing for dictators to get theirs. Only the “gutsiest” prevail. How “gutsy” a decision would it take, for instance, to grab Kim Jong Il – far, far east?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, April 29, 2011
Obama's Unspeakable Jihad & Fifth Column
Suppose George Bush, without any consultation with Congress, had simply ordered the U.S. military to rain bombs and missiles on Libya, or any other country. The leftist mainstream media would have called him everything from Hitler to Mao to Stalin to Pol Pot to Kim Jong il to Saddam to Hirohito to Genghis Khan and all other butchers in-between through all the ages. The media would have crucified him.
In addition, suppose that had happened despite the fact that Libya posed absolutely no threat to this or any other country, owned a population two million less than that of New York City, and had surrendered its weapons-of-mass-destruction establishment to this country years ago, when Bush actually was the president and when Libya’s Qaddafi probably looked at what was happening in Iraq and felt himself thus well-advised in doing so. The media would have insisted upon impeachment, conviction and expulsion from office, not to mention dragging Bush before some war-crimes court, here or elsewhere.
In addition, suppose Bush had presented a plan for obliterating Libya to the United Nations Security Council in order to gain some sort of approval for his bloodletting of Libyans, without mentioning, of course, that he was merely taking sides in a civil war, something any president worth the title would do. The media would have castigated him for surrendering U.S. sovereignty to a gaggle of freeloaders in New York City living the good life.
In addition, suppose Bush had instructed NATO to prepare to take over his murderous scheme because the U.S. was getting out, having started the bloody ball rolling for ten days at $55 million per day and figuring that was enough. The media would have accused him of pulling another Vietnam – lots of firepower and lives lost without any intention of seeing the little infamy through. The media would have accused him of being guilty of “crimes against humanity” and weakness.
Suppose Bush had flown to a resort in Brazil as the perfect location for announcing his “liberation of the Libyan people.” The media would have laughed him to scorn, accused him of being too cowardly to make the announcement at home and thus face the U.S. public, and suggested that he took too many vacations.
Suppose Bush, after cavorting in Brazil, had cruised Air Force One to visit other vacation spots for the next five or so days, living it up while his subordinates were left to handle his little war, answer to the press, and otherwise do all the dirty work attendant upon a dirty, underhanded operation. The media would have accused him of dereliction of duty and putting personal preferences before doing his job.
Suppose Bush had started the Libya operation, complete with numbers of attempts at assassinating Qaddafi (while denying that, of course), but insisted that Qaddafi was not a target and that Libyan regime-change was never a goal or even a consideration. The media would have accused him of subterfuge and perfidious conduct, as well as not being too bright, since the public could see right through such deceit.
Suppose Bush had given the Libyan rebels assurance, implied or otherwise, that he was solidly behind them and would furnish humanitarian help, translated by the rebels as arms and ammunition, but had refused to give them so much as a single m-16. The media would have flayed him for having dealt deceitfully with the “PEOPLE,” first abandoning the project to a reluctant NATO and then opting himself out of the whole mess.
Suppose, when Qadaffi had figured out how to thwart the air attacks by concealing light armaments/vehicles within the population, Bush had simply decided to bomb the military targets anyway, thus unfortunately killing all sorts of civilians – women, children, the old, etc. The media would have accused him of being heartless, insensitive…a murderer of the most vulnerable.
Yes…it’s easy to see where this is going. Two things stand out: (1) Obama, without even a minute’s worth of military experience, has instituted the calculated murder of civilians, an unwarranted attack on another nation, and a display of arrogance that’s unprecedented. (2) A subservient mainstream media has taken no notice of his perfidy on any bases, especially moral/ethical grounds. It’s as if to the media he has done no wrong, when it’s obvious to everyone else that he has waged and continues to wage a singularly gratuitous bloodletting that’s appalling, especially in current American history.
It was said that Reagan was the Teflon president. If that was so – and it wasn’t – Obama, as far as the media is concerned, is absolutely bulletproof. Morally, he is bankrupt, and that’s the worst sort of bankruptcy imaginable. In eloquence, he compares to Reagan like a clown, and his all too frequent speeches of high-flown rhetoric are as sounding brass, signifying nothing. Worse, he has caused honorable men in the military to commit murder on an unsuspecting nation. Intolerable!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
In addition, suppose that had happened despite the fact that Libya posed absolutely no threat to this or any other country, owned a population two million less than that of New York City, and had surrendered its weapons-of-mass-destruction establishment to this country years ago, when Bush actually was the president and when Libya’s Qaddafi probably looked at what was happening in Iraq and felt himself thus well-advised in doing so. The media would have insisted upon impeachment, conviction and expulsion from office, not to mention dragging Bush before some war-crimes court, here or elsewhere.
In addition, suppose Bush had presented a plan for obliterating Libya to the United Nations Security Council in order to gain some sort of approval for his bloodletting of Libyans, without mentioning, of course, that he was merely taking sides in a civil war, something any president worth the title would do. The media would have castigated him for surrendering U.S. sovereignty to a gaggle of freeloaders in New York City living the good life.
In addition, suppose Bush had instructed NATO to prepare to take over his murderous scheme because the U.S. was getting out, having started the bloody ball rolling for ten days at $55 million per day and figuring that was enough. The media would have accused him of pulling another Vietnam – lots of firepower and lives lost without any intention of seeing the little infamy through. The media would have accused him of being guilty of “crimes against humanity” and weakness.
Suppose Bush had flown to a resort in Brazil as the perfect location for announcing his “liberation of the Libyan people.” The media would have laughed him to scorn, accused him of being too cowardly to make the announcement at home and thus face the U.S. public, and suggested that he took too many vacations.
Suppose Bush, after cavorting in Brazil, had cruised Air Force One to visit other vacation spots for the next five or so days, living it up while his subordinates were left to handle his little war, answer to the press, and otherwise do all the dirty work attendant upon a dirty, underhanded operation. The media would have accused him of dereliction of duty and putting personal preferences before doing his job.
Suppose Bush had started the Libya operation, complete with numbers of attempts at assassinating Qaddafi (while denying that, of course), but insisted that Qaddafi was not a target and that Libyan regime-change was never a goal or even a consideration. The media would have accused him of subterfuge and perfidious conduct, as well as not being too bright, since the public could see right through such deceit.
Suppose Bush had given the Libyan rebels assurance, implied or otherwise, that he was solidly behind them and would furnish humanitarian help, translated by the rebels as arms and ammunition, but had refused to give them so much as a single m-16. The media would have flayed him for having dealt deceitfully with the “PEOPLE,” first abandoning the project to a reluctant NATO and then opting himself out of the whole mess.
Suppose, when Qadaffi had figured out how to thwart the air attacks by concealing light armaments/vehicles within the population, Bush had simply decided to bomb the military targets anyway, thus unfortunately killing all sorts of civilians – women, children, the old, etc. The media would have accused him of being heartless, insensitive…a murderer of the most vulnerable.
Yes…it’s easy to see where this is going. Two things stand out: (1) Obama, without even a minute’s worth of military experience, has instituted the calculated murder of civilians, an unwarranted attack on another nation, and a display of arrogance that’s unprecedented. (2) A subservient mainstream media has taken no notice of his perfidy on any bases, especially moral/ethical grounds. It’s as if to the media he has done no wrong, when it’s obvious to everyone else that he has waged and continues to wage a singularly gratuitous bloodletting that’s appalling, especially in current American history.
It was said that Reagan was the Teflon president. If that was so – and it wasn’t – Obama, as far as the media is concerned, is absolutely bulletproof. Morally, he is bankrupt, and that’s the worst sort of bankruptcy imaginable. In eloquence, he compares to Reagan like a clown, and his all too frequent speeches of high-flown rhetoric are as sounding brass, signifying nothing. Worse, he has caused honorable men in the military to commit murder on an unsuspecting nation. Intolerable!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Trump on the Stump?
On the morning of 27 April appeared some of the best entertainment imaginable. There was Donald Trump holding a press conference at the airport in Portsmouth New Hampshire and, among other things, boasting that he had forced President Obama to finally release a copy of his official birth certificate for all to see. This, said Trump, allowed the attention of the nation to be turned toward the actual problems the nation faces.
Trump is good at this sort of thing, much better than Obama, who drags out his a-a-n-n-d-d-s-s interminably while he dreams up an answer (actually a short speech) to a reporter’s question, realizing that the reporter these days is also a commentator and will embellish his reporting with the proper interpretation determined by his (the reporter’s) agenda or that of his establishment. Trump simply shoots from the lip and is not above dissing a reporter, as he showed when he asked one such if he was intelligent.
Apparently watching Trump’s TV extravaganza as he tore into the White House on Libya, economics, Obama’s school-records, Chinese hoodwinking of the administration, oil and how to get it or drive down its price, Obama appeared abruptly in the White House press room, thereby automatically commanding the TV apparatchiks to cut off Trump and put himself in the spotlight. This was so transparent that one still laughs. There’s nothing like one-ups-man-ship to put an agitator in his place.
The president gave a short speech and just as abruptly exited the Press Room, leaving the reporters’ dropped jaws to slam the floor together. He characterized Trump as a circus barker and his birth-exercise as a sideshow featuring silliness, then went on to state the usual/obvious boilerplate about people out of work and serious issues (serious stuff) needing to be addressed. He then cruised Air Force One to Chicago for more pressing matters – the serious “stuff” he mentioned being the taping of a show with Oprah Winfrey, and, of course, those fund-raising gigs.
Trump mentioned one aspect of the current presidency that rings a bell for its sheer truthfulness, i.e., that the mainstream media has protected Obama throughout his presidency…a sort of fifth column. One such instance pertains to Obama’s personal war on Libya, waged without even consulting Congress. He simply gave the order back in March to bomb the bejesus out of Qaddafi and then went off to Brazil to announce that he had instigated the war, spending some $55 million per day for ten days and then strong-arming the whole mess off onto NATO.
The mainstream media hasn’t called him on this. Obama has chosen his side and entered a civil war in another country, one that posed no threat to this country or any other country. The mainstream media hasn’t called him on this. At his command, Libyans have been slaughtered by U.S. missiles and bombs. The mainstream media hasn’t called him on this. Even Fox News seems to have given him something of a pass, notwithstanding that he has ordered the killing of civilians, since bombs and missiles just go where they’re aimed and don’t know one Libyan from another.
As a result of Obama’s personal war, blood has flowed in the streets in much greater quantity than would have been the case if he’d minded his own business, not to mention that a man who calls himself a Christian perpetrated it, not out of a defensive posture or because of an actual or perceived threat (Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively) but for reasons impossible of belief, namely, that Qaddafi was about to kill some of his people. Killing some of their people is what Arabic/Muslim leaders do as a matter of course…nothing new. The mainstream media don’t ask Obama how he feels about his gratuitous murdering of innocent people. That would be gauche. Anyhow, he may not have thought about that.
This gives the Muslims the perfect opportunity to claim that Christians and so-called Christian nations are no better than they and their nations in the business of spilling innocent blood whenever such action seems propitious. This stinks but the mainstream media have given Obama a pass on his causing this unwarranted vulnerability (and that of the U.S.) to being criticized as no different from Qaddafi, Assad, or the other Muslim butchers. Obama played God, deciding which Libyans would die and which would live. This is ungodly arrogance on a scale hard to imagine…but the mainstream media is not interested because the emperor (their darling) has no clothes.
Yeah…Trump might be right on. The political gurus said Reagan – a mere movie actor – couldn’t govern, but he was one of the best presidents ever. Trump – also an entertainer, among many other things – might be just the man for the job.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Trump is good at this sort of thing, much better than Obama, who drags out his a-a-n-n-d-d-s-s interminably while he dreams up an answer (actually a short speech) to a reporter’s question, realizing that the reporter these days is also a commentator and will embellish his reporting with the proper interpretation determined by his (the reporter’s) agenda or that of his establishment. Trump simply shoots from the lip and is not above dissing a reporter, as he showed when he asked one such if he was intelligent.
Apparently watching Trump’s TV extravaganza as he tore into the White House on Libya, economics, Obama’s school-records, Chinese hoodwinking of the administration, oil and how to get it or drive down its price, Obama appeared abruptly in the White House press room, thereby automatically commanding the TV apparatchiks to cut off Trump and put himself in the spotlight. This was so transparent that one still laughs. There’s nothing like one-ups-man-ship to put an agitator in his place.
The president gave a short speech and just as abruptly exited the Press Room, leaving the reporters’ dropped jaws to slam the floor together. He characterized Trump as a circus barker and his birth-exercise as a sideshow featuring silliness, then went on to state the usual/obvious boilerplate about people out of work and serious issues (serious stuff) needing to be addressed. He then cruised Air Force One to Chicago for more pressing matters – the serious “stuff” he mentioned being the taping of a show with Oprah Winfrey, and, of course, those fund-raising gigs.
Trump mentioned one aspect of the current presidency that rings a bell for its sheer truthfulness, i.e., that the mainstream media has protected Obama throughout his presidency…a sort of fifth column. One such instance pertains to Obama’s personal war on Libya, waged without even consulting Congress. He simply gave the order back in March to bomb the bejesus out of Qaddafi and then went off to Brazil to announce that he had instigated the war, spending some $55 million per day for ten days and then strong-arming the whole mess off onto NATO.
The mainstream media hasn’t called him on this. Obama has chosen his side and entered a civil war in another country, one that posed no threat to this country or any other country. The mainstream media hasn’t called him on this. At his command, Libyans have been slaughtered by U.S. missiles and bombs. The mainstream media hasn’t called him on this. Even Fox News seems to have given him something of a pass, notwithstanding that he has ordered the killing of civilians, since bombs and missiles just go where they’re aimed and don’t know one Libyan from another.
As a result of Obama’s personal war, blood has flowed in the streets in much greater quantity than would have been the case if he’d minded his own business, not to mention that a man who calls himself a Christian perpetrated it, not out of a defensive posture or because of an actual or perceived threat (Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively) but for reasons impossible of belief, namely, that Qaddafi was about to kill some of his people. Killing some of their people is what Arabic/Muslim leaders do as a matter of course…nothing new. The mainstream media don’t ask Obama how he feels about his gratuitous murdering of innocent people. That would be gauche. Anyhow, he may not have thought about that.
This gives the Muslims the perfect opportunity to claim that Christians and so-called Christian nations are no better than they and their nations in the business of spilling innocent blood whenever such action seems propitious. This stinks but the mainstream media have given Obama a pass on his causing this unwarranted vulnerability (and that of the U.S.) to being criticized as no different from Qaddafi, Assad, or the other Muslim butchers. Obama played God, deciding which Libyans would die and which would live. This is ungodly arrogance on a scale hard to imagine…but the mainstream media is not interested because the emperor (their darling) has no clothes.
Yeah…Trump might be right on. The political gurus said Reagan – a mere movie actor – couldn’t govern, but he was one of the best presidents ever. Trump – also an entertainer, among many other things – might be just the man for the job.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, April 25, 2011
The Senator Visits Libya!
Senator Lindsey Graham delivered himself of this profound statement to CNN’s State of the Union program 24 April: Qadaffi “needs to wake up every day wondering ‘Will this be my last?’” Senator John McCain intimated over the weekend, after a “fact-finding” trip to Libya, that President Obama should just get it over with in Libya, whatever that means. Most military gurus suggest that putting troops on the ground is the only way to just get it over with, but Obama has promised to not only not do that but that no arms to the Libyan insurgents would be forthcoming, either. Ditto for NATO, Obama’s current surrogate in war-making.
One would have hoped he would know better, but Obama has taken a tiger by the tail concerning Libya, whether by listening to these two arrogant senators or his mushy-headed Amazons, State Secretary Clinton, UN Ambassador Rice, and National Security Council honcho Samantha Power, whose shtick apparently is that revolutions can be started in small countries if big countries will stir up strife, as per Libya, the raison d’etra being that there are (gasp) oppressed people in those countries yearning to be free. Some folks believe Power pushes this agenda in order to somehow make it work against Israel, for which she apparently has no love.
It’s hard to imagine a U.S. senator saying what Graham did about a head of state, even though he has the right to hate Qaddafi with a purple passion. He proved that senators can wallow in stupidity and still get elected. Lots of folks do. It’s hard to imagine a U.S. senator spending a handful of hours on foreign soil and deciding publicly that the rebels are okay-guys deserving of U.S.-accomplished victory, but that’s what McCain did, having no way actually to know anything about these “good guys.” He then extended his Easter vacation to Cairo for reasons upon which one can only speculate.
In a recent hearing, the intelligence was delivered from a reliable source that elements of al Qaeda had been noticed in the rebel contingent, something Qaddafi had already determined and made known…pooh-poohed for his trouble by this government. This is no brief for Qaddafi, but to be bombarded by a country to which he poses absolutely no threat and see his own people slaughtered in the air attacks is something that shouldn’t happen, another way of saying that Obama must be easily influenced by people with agendas and no common sense, the latter which element he seems to share.
It must be galling to the president that the senator he defeated in the presidential election of 2008 has made it his business to decide when this country should jump a small country of 6.3 million population, determine how it should be done (but not with a handoff to NATO), go to the battlefield and from there tell the world how the current stalemated situation should be handled.
It must be galling to the president in light of this stalemate confirmed by his own top military advisers that he listened to his Amazons caterwaul about Qaddafi killing his own rebels and insist that he “just do something,” like the scared spouse screaming at her husband upon spotting a mouse in the house and heading for the stairs. “Just doing something” has amounted to wholesale slaughter but the girls apparently hadn’t thought of that…or maybe they cogitated that they and the UN should decide which set of Libyans should die, choosing the gang in Benghazi to live over Qaddafi and his loyalists. After all, don’t they all look alike?
The Yemenis are slowly but surely agitating their 32-year strongman Saleh out of office without any help from the U.S., though Saleh is this country’s only Arab ally anywhere. Al Qaeda and/or the Muslim Brotherhood, sworn enemies of this country, will be taking over Yemen, just as will be the case in Libya if Qaddafi goes. Obama should be hoping that both strongmen stay the course.
Then, of course, there’s Syria, where strongman Assad has his army shooting the agitators in the streets, something the Amazons apparently haven’t caterwauled about to the UN. Syria is now a Libya look-alike, but McCain had this to say on 25 April on NBC’s Today show: "I don't see a scenario right now or anytime in the near future where the injection of U.S. or NATO military action would in any way beneficially help the situation, I'm sorry to say." Wouldn’t help??? Is that the understatement of the year? If exactly the same thing being done to Libya wouldn’t help Syria, why keep on devastating Libya?
With a president declaring war no. #3 that a senator says is not being fought correctly, what’s a citizen to do? Add a deep recession to the mix with workers walking the streets and the dollar losing value exponentially…food and gasoline prices out the top…a Congress in constant civil war. Maybe Senator Graham had the grim answer: “Citizen needs to wake up every day wondering ‘Will this be my last?’”
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
One would have hoped he would know better, but Obama has taken a tiger by the tail concerning Libya, whether by listening to these two arrogant senators or his mushy-headed Amazons, State Secretary Clinton, UN Ambassador Rice, and National Security Council honcho Samantha Power, whose shtick apparently is that revolutions can be started in small countries if big countries will stir up strife, as per Libya, the raison d’etra being that there are (gasp) oppressed people in those countries yearning to be free. Some folks believe Power pushes this agenda in order to somehow make it work against Israel, for which she apparently has no love.
It’s hard to imagine a U.S. senator saying what Graham did about a head of state, even though he has the right to hate Qaddafi with a purple passion. He proved that senators can wallow in stupidity and still get elected. Lots of folks do. It’s hard to imagine a U.S. senator spending a handful of hours on foreign soil and deciding publicly that the rebels are okay-guys deserving of U.S.-accomplished victory, but that’s what McCain did, having no way actually to know anything about these “good guys.” He then extended his Easter vacation to Cairo for reasons upon which one can only speculate.
In a recent hearing, the intelligence was delivered from a reliable source that elements of al Qaeda had been noticed in the rebel contingent, something Qaddafi had already determined and made known…pooh-poohed for his trouble by this government. This is no brief for Qaddafi, but to be bombarded by a country to which he poses absolutely no threat and see his own people slaughtered in the air attacks is something that shouldn’t happen, another way of saying that Obama must be easily influenced by people with agendas and no common sense, the latter which element he seems to share.
It must be galling to the president that the senator he defeated in the presidential election of 2008 has made it his business to decide when this country should jump a small country of 6.3 million population, determine how it should be done (but not with a handoff to NATO), go to the battlefield and from there tell the world how the current stalemated situation should be handled.
It must be galling to the president in light of this stalemate confirmed by his own top military advisers that he listened to his Amazons caterwaul about Qaddafi killing his own rebels and insist that he “just do something,” like the scared spouse screaming at her husband upon spotting a mouse in the house and heading for the stairs. “Just doing something” has amounted to wholesale slaughter but the girls apparently hadn’t thought of that…or maybe they cogitated that they and the UN should decide which set of Libyans should die, choosing the gang in Benghazi to live over Qaddafi and his loyalists. After all, don’t they all look alike?
The Yemenis are slowly but surely agitating their 32-year strongman Saleh out of office without any help from the U.S., though Saleh is this country’s only Arab ally anywhere. Al Qaeda and/or the Muslim Brotherhood, sworn enemies of this country, will be taking over Yemen, just as will be the case in Libya if Qaddafi goes. Obama should be hoping that both strongmen stay the course.
Then, of course, there’s Syria, where strongman Assad has his army shooting the agitators in the streets, something the Amazons apparently haven’t caterwauled about to the UN. Syria is now a Libya look-alike, but McCain had this to say on 25 April on NBC’s Today show: "I don't see a scenario right now or anytime in the near future where the injection of U.S. or NATO military action would in any way beneficially help the situation, I'm sorry to say." Wouldn’t help??? Is that the understatement of the year? If exactly the same thing being done to Libya wouldn’t help Syria, why keep on devastating Libya?
With a president declaring war no. #3 that a senator says is not being fought correctly, what’s a citizen to do? Add a deep recession to the mix with workers walking the streets and the dollar losing value exponentially…food and gasoline prices out the top…a Congress in constant civil war. Maybe Senator Graham had the grim answer: “Citizen needs to wake up every day wondering ‘Will this be my last?’”
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, April 22, 2011
The Deadly Folly of Obama, McCain et al
Predictably, a U.S. senator has gone to Libya during the spring recess to “get the feeling on the ground,” the senator this time being McCain, not surprising since it was he, and senators Kerry, Lieberman and Graham (known as the “odd quartet”), who practically frothed at the mouth in urging President Obama to start wiping out Qaddafi and his squirrelly Libyan government back in March. Perhaps Minority House Speaker Pelosi and Senator Kerry will also visit in Benghazi, as they did not too long ago in Damascus to “consult” with Syrian strongman Assad, a chip off the old Assad block as he copies his dad in butchering Syrians in the streets.
Don’t look for McCain or the others to urge Obama to install over Syria a “no-fly zone,” otherwise known as entering into a nation’s civil war on the side of the “people” (75 killed on the latest “Great Friday”) who have about as much chance at toppling Assad as the Benghazi crowd has of toppling Qaddafi, at least until much later, after the U.S. has helped probably thousands to their deaths. The president has resorted now to the use of drones instead of planes on the bombing runs, the better to guarantee against an American’s being killed, something the American public wouldn’t appreciate in what is a non-war of Obama’s personal choice. One U.S. plane has already gone down, but the airmen were rescued by the “right” side. Had that not happened, they would be prisoners of war.
Defense Secretary Gates, while in Russia in March, indicated that the war was being conducted “on the fly,” another way of saying with no real plans, exit strategies or any cohesion with possible “friends,” the “people,” doncha know. He had already inveighed against it, as had Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen, who has just said in Baghdad that the whole affair will end in stalemate. McCain has looked the situation over now and demanded that Obama get on the ball and get the thing over with, as if Libyans loyal to Qaddafi don’t exist and are simply cannon fodder.
Qaddafi has already been told through the media worldwide that there will be no ground troops sent by NATO, now the manager of the non-war, and that arms will not be given to the fighters, so why should he just fold his tent and silently slip away? The drones are attacking targets in Misrata with alleged precision, though everyone knows that the missiles they fire can’t tell one Libyan from another. This is the kind of insulting propaganda that strips from Obama, McCain and all the rest any credibility.
The only things surpassing in intensity the sheer arrogance of Obama and McCain and his senate cronies are either ignorance of the Middle East or simply a vendetta for Qadaffi, whose nation the U.S. removed from the list of terrorist nations a while back, and who transported his entire nuclear program (if not his whole WMD capability) to the U.S. years ago. The arrogance of Obama in recently telling longtime government-heads, Egypt’s Mubarak, Yemen’s Saleh and Libya’s Qadaffi, that they must step down is virtually incomprehensible, sort of like campaigner Obama suggesting he would militarily intervene in Pakistan if that nation’s honchos didn’t get rid of the Pakistani/Afghani Taliban within its borders. He, of course, has proven that to be an empty threat.
As for ignorance, it should be clear by now that the U.S., no matter its good intentions, cannot effect Jeffersonian democracy (or any kind of democracy) in any Middle East country. Obama and his warmongering crowd apparently haven’t caught that. So far, they’ve had enough sense not to arm the Libyan rebels and for good reason. They have no idea who these people are. Qaddafi has said they’re the al Qaeda gang and he might be right. After all, he’s on the ground. Al Qaeda is definitely not welcome in Yemen or Saudi Arabia, both of which countries are constantly on the move in destroying it.
By gratuitously attacking Libya, a country that presents absolutely no threat of any kind to this country and in fact never has, Obama is alienating countries like Saudi Arabia, a vital component in this country’s oil-supply chain. The Saudis were happy for Bush 41 to neutralize Saddam in 1991 and thus save Saudi Arabia, Saddam’s actual goal. Ditto for Bush 43 vis-à-vis Iraq, thereby lessening the threat of Iran. But now, the U.S. is seen, justifiably in its Libya carnage, as having ulterior motives, and those motives might well have to do with the oil that Libya sells to France, Germany, Britain and Spain, the main players besides the U.S. in NATO and the current “no-fly” bomber-gang murdering Libyans on the ground.
The whole thing stinks, with probably the least capable president in all of history conducting what amounts to a war-crime regarding Libya.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Don’t look for McCain or the others to urge Obama to install over Syria a “no-fly zone,” otherwise known as entering into a nation’s civil war on the side of the “people” (75 killed on the latest “Great Friday”) who have about as much chance at toppling Assad as the Benghazi crowd has of toppling Qaddafi, at least until much later, after the U.S. has helped probably thousands to their deaths. The president has resorted now to the use of drones instead of planes on the bombing runs, the better to guarantee against an American’s being killed, something the American public wouldn’t appreciate in what is a non-war of Obama’s personal choice. One U.S. plane has already gone down, but the airmen were rescued by the “right” side. Had that not happened, they would be prisoners of war.
Defense Secretary Gates, while in Russia in March, indicated that the war was being conducted “on the fly,” another way of saying with no real plans, exit strategies or any cohesion with possible “friends,” the “people,” doncha know. He had already inveighed against it, as had Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen, who has just said in Baghdad that the whole affair will end in stalemate. McCain has looked the situation over now and demanded that Obama get on the ball and get the thing over with, as if Libyans loyal to Qaddafi don’t exist and are simply cannon fodder.
Qaddafi has already been told through the media worldwide that there will be no ground troops sent by NATO, now the manager of the non-war, and that arms will not be given to the fighters, so why should he just fold his tent and silently slip away? The drones are attacking targets in Misrata with alleged precision, though everyone knows that the missiles they fire can’t tell one Libyan from another. This is the kind of insulting propaganda that strips from Obama, McCain and all the rest any credibility.
The only things surpassing in intensity the sheer arrogance of Obama and McCain and his senate cronies are either ignorance of the Middle East or simply a vendetta for Qadaffi, whose nation the U.S. removed from the list of terrorist nations a while back, and who transported his entire nuclear program (if not his whole WMD capability) to the U.S. years ago. The arrogance of Obama in recently telling longtime government-heads, Egypt’s Mubarak, Yemen’s Saleh and Libya’s Qadaffi, that they must step down is virtually incomprehensible, sort of like campaigner Obama suggesting he would militarily intervene in Pakistan if that nation’s honchos didn’t get rid of the Pakistani/Afghani Taliban within its borders. He, of course, has proven that to be an empty threat.
As for ignorance, it should be clear by now that the U.S., no matter its good intentions, cannot effect Jeffersonian democracy (or any kind of democracy) in any Middle East country. Obama and his warmongering crowd apparently haven’t caught that. So far, they’ve had enough sense not to arm the Libyan rebels and for good reason. They have no idea who these people are. Qaddafi has said they’re the al Qaeda gang and he might be right. After all, he’s on the ground. Al Qaeda is definitely not welcome in Yemen or Saudi Arabia, both of which countries are constantly on the move in destroying it.
By gratuitously attacking Libya, a country that presents absolutely no threat of any kind to this country and in fact never has, Obama is alienating countries like Saudi Arabia, a vital component in this country’s oil-supply chain. The Saudis were happy for Bush 41 to neutralize Saddam in 1991 and thus save Saudi Arabia, Saddam’s actual goal. Ditto for Bush 43 vis-à-vis Iraq, thereby lessening the threat of Iran. But now, the U.S. is seen, justifiably in its Libya carnage, as having ulterior motives, and those motives might well have to do with the oil that Libya sells to France, Germany, Britain and Spain, the main players besides the U.S. in NATO and the current “no-fly” bomber-gang murdering Libyans on the ground.
The whole thing stinks, with probably the least capable president in all of history conducting what amounts to a war-crime regarding Libya.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Shoulder-to-Shoulder...a Farce
The problem with many church leaders in the U.S. is that they, regardless of what they might say, never actually understand the church-state juxtaposition, especially as applied constitutionally. They make high-flown pronouncements about the value of separation of church and state, essentially that neither may violate the responsibilities/positions of the other, but, in fact, meddle in the affairs of state all the time, though they bristle at the slightest suggestion that the state infringe upon their “freedom of religion.”
Recently, Congressman Peter King of New York, ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, held a hearing on 10 March regarding possible Muslim radicalism in this country, insisting that not to hold the controversial hearing would be a craven surrender to political correctness. King gave a number of examples of actual incidents and plots conceived by Muslim men, such as the failed Times Square bombing and the slaughter at Ft. Hood carried out by Major Hasan. King had in mind the home-grown terrorists such as those exposed recently in England or Netherlands or Denmark.
This apparently rankled some of the church leaders, who banded themselves together in something called the Shoulder-to-Shoulder Campaign, and delivered a strong statement against the hearings, also on 10 March. Here is a brief segment of its long statement: “Spiritual leaders have a moral responsibility and a sacred calling to categorically denounce derision, misinformation or outright bigotry directed against anyone, regardless of faith community.” The self-proclaimed “spiritual leaders,” representing millions of members of various faiths, missed the purpose of the hearing and essentially called King a misinformed bigot – a brotherly Judeo-Christian approach, of course!
One can’t know if President Obama was aware of the S-to-S statement but he showed his concern for Muslims nine days later when, without even consultation with Congress, he ordered an all-out air attack by U.S. planes and missiles, including long-range bombers, on Libya, a poor 97%-Muslim country of 6.3 million people, two million less than the population of New York City. The U.S. bombing went on for days (and still occurs “when needed”) until Obama passed the slaughter of Libyans off to NATO to continue his personal war. Was he also a misinformed bigot or are Muslims in other countries somehow different from those in the U.S., notwithstanding their shared belief in the Islamic holy book, the Koran?
Will S-to-S make a statement with regard to the president’s bombing of and otherwise assaulting Libya –a dreary land 92% desert or semi-desert which hasn’t since the day of Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates been a threat to this nation and even submitted its nuclear program to this country a while back? Did his action, involving the murders of many, not rise to the level of a Congressional hearing held in the interest of safety for citizens, which so lathered S-to-S recently? Apparently S-to-S believes it was not as serious even though Muslims have been slaughtered, since no statement has been forthcoming.
In thinking about the goals of Shoulder-to-Shoulder, one wonders if the organization plans to make a statement in support of the United Church of Christ and critical of the U.S. government vis-à-vis the country’s laws inveighing against that denomination’s official position, since 2005, that men may marry men and women marry women. Isn’t the Defense of Marriage Act passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in the 90s a violation of the UCC’s freedom of religion? The Rev. Geoffrey Black, S-to-S Steering Committee member and head honcho of UCC, surely would appreciate such a statement.
One should not hold his breath until Shoulder-to-Shoulder issues profound statements with respect to both of these subjects. In both matters, government or a government official arguably interferes with specific groups of people – Muslims (though in another country) and homosexuals in this country, not to mention an entire denomination, the United Church of Christ. Where is the outrage that S-to-S exhibited with King’s above-board, transparent and quite logically held hearing just to look into the matter of terrorism? Germany closed a mosque in Hamburg recently because terrorist plots were being hatched there. It’s been discovered that mosques form the breeding ground for terrorist activity elsewhere.
There’s nothing wrong with “doing good,” probably what the spiritual leaders thought they were doing. They couldn’t have been more wrong in slandering King and his hearing, his effort at “doing good” far outweighing theirs since it involved not perceived political incorrectness, but public safety. If the American Muslims feel insulted they should forswear their holy book that plainly doesn’t just approve of but demand “death to the infidel” whenever possible or made possible. Not even their “spiritual leaders” – or especially those leaders – have said this edict is not there. Evidence of it is seen throughout the world on a daily basis.
Shoulder-to-Shoulder is a farce and should be disbanded.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Recently, Congressman Peter King of New York, ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, held a hearing on 10 March regarding possible Muslim radicalism in this country, insisting that not to hold the controversial hearing would be a craven surrender to political correctness. King gave a number of examples of actual incidents and plots conceived by Muslim men, such as the failed Times Square bombing and the slaughter at Ft. Hood carried out by Major Hasan. King had in mind the home-grown terrorists such as those exposed recently in England or Netherlands or Denmark.
This apparently rankled some of the church leaders, who banded themselves together in something called the Shoulder-to-Shoulder Campaign, and delivered a strong statement against the hearings, also on 10 March. Here is a brief segment of its long statement: “Spiritual leaders have a moral responsibility and a sacred calling to categorically denounce derision, misinformation or outright bigotry directed against anyone, regardless of faith community.” The self-proclaimed “spiritual leaders,” representing millions of members of various faiths, missed the purpose of the hearing and essentially called King a misinformed bigot – a brotherly Judeo-Christian approach, of course!
One can’t know if President Obama was aware of the S-to-S statement but he showed his concern for Muslims nine days later when, without even consultation with Congress, he ordered an all-out air attack by U.S. planes and missiles, including long-range bombers, on Libya, a poor 97%-Muslim country of 6.3 million people, two million less than the population of New York City. The U.S. bombing went on for days (and still occurs “when needed”) until Obama passed the slaughter of Libyans off to NATO to continue his personal war. Was he also a misinformed bigot or are Muslims in other countries somehow different from those in the U.S., notwithstanding their shared belief in the Islamic holy book, the Koran?
Will S-to-S make a statement with regard to the president’s bombing of and otherwise assaulting Libya –a dreary land 92% desert or semi-desert which hasn’t since the day of Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates been a threat to this nation and even submitted its nuclear program to this country a while back? Did his action, involving the murders of many, not rise to the level of a Congressional hearing held in the interest of safety for citizens, which so lathered S-to-S recently? Apparently S-to-S believes it was not as serious even though Muslims have been slaughtered, since no statement has been forthcoming.
In thinking about the goals of Shoulder-to-Shoulder, one wonders if the organization plans to make a statement in support of the United Church of Christ and critical of the U.S. government vis-à-vis the country’s laws inveighing against that denomination’s official position, since 2005, that men may marry men and women marry women. Isn’t the Defense of Marriage Act passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in the 90s a violation of the UCC’s freedom of religion? The Rev. Geoffrey Black, S-to-S Steering Committee member and head honcho of UCC, surely would appreciate such a statement.
One should not hold his breath until Shoulder-to-Shoulder issues profound statements with respect to both of these subjects. In both matters, government or a government official arguably interferes with specific groups of people – Muslims (though in another country) and homosexuals in this country, not to mention an entire denomination, the United Church of Christ. Where is the outrage that S-to-S exhibited with King’s above-board, transparent and quite logically held hearing just to look into the matter of terrorism? Germany closed a mosque in Hamburg recently because terrorist plots were being hatched there. It’s been discovered that mosques form the breeding ground for terrorist activity elsewhere.
There’s nothing wrong with “doing good,” probably what the spiritual leaders thought they were doing. They couldn’t have been more wrong in slandering King and his hearing, his effort at “doing good” far outweighing theirs since it involved not perceived political incorrectness, but public safety. If the American Muslims feel insulted they should forswear their holy book that plainly doesn’t just approve of but demand “death to the infidel” whenever possible or made possible. Not even their “spiritual leaders” – or especially those leaders – have said this edict is not there. Evidence of it is seen throughout the world on a daily basis.
Shoulder-to-Shoulder is a farce and should be disbanded.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, April 18, 2011
Obama's Bay of Pigs
In the year of President Obama’s birth in August, the most disgraceful military episode of probably all U.S. history, known as the Bay of Pigs, took place in April in Cuba. Obama has just totally duplicated the Bay of Pigs disaster in Libya, an episode just as disgraceful as that of 1961.
One wonders if the president has any sense of history. In the Bay of Pigs event, the CIA had trained a small army of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba with the intention of wrestling the country from Fidel Castro, who had become its communist dictator. The critical ingredient to success lay in the support of the U.S. Air Force, as promised, to supply the vital air cover for the men storming the beach. That support was withheld by President Kennedy and the effort was crushed. The result remains obvious.
Flash forward to April 2011. In the preceding month, President Obama declared his personal war on Libya, particularly its strongman ruler, Muammar Qaddafi, without bothering to consult Congress. Instead, he sent State Secretary Clinton and U.S. UN Ambassador Rice to the UN Security Council to get approval of his war. Reluctantly, the approval was granted by a slim margin, a number of states choosing not to vote.
The vague UN resolution was about establishing a no-fly zone and protecting the people, whatever that meant. The U.S. was the heavy hitter as the assault started on Libyans, notwithstanding that they, instead of being protected vis-à-vis the resolution, were being killed. It was sort of killing one set of Libyans to protect another set of Libyans, which, of course, makes no sense. The objective was to take out military installations, but bombs and missiles just kill anyone who happens to be hanging out at the wrong place.
Establishing the no-fly zone was a piece of cake, but that was never the actual objective, which was to get Qaddafi out of Libya, whether or not with his toes turned up, but with the latter as the best choice. Naturally, there had to be somebody to take charge when Qaddafi was hammered but nobody seemed to have thought of that. The “people” to be protected seemed to be those in Benghazi, but there was no leader and only a ragtag collection of militants who celebrated everything from a birth to a wedding by firing their guns in the air.
The action was essentially a unilateral one cooked up by the U.S. but could not appear to be such since that wouldn’t set well with the citizens, who understood that the U.S. was already up to its ears in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. UN-approval didn’t set well, either, since Obama had supplanted his own Congress with that collection of mostly U.S.-haters.
What to do? Shove the whole thing off on NATO, thus relieving Obama of the unilateral criticism, actually an empty gesture since the U.S. is the major player in NATO. Obama took care of that problem by withdrawing U.S. air support shortly after the bombardments had started, with the promise of more help if needed and air support such as furnishing refueling tankers for the planes of England, France and anybody else’s that wanted to pound Libyans to death in order to save the “people.”
Sound familiar? Withdrawn U.S. air-capability spelled doom for the Cuban exiles. Withdrawn U.S. air-capability regarding Libya set the NATO nations to arguing, some of them refusing to drop bombs on Libya and all of them refusing to put boots on the ground. This left the “people” (whoever they are) without the air support necessary to fighting Qaddafi, who in the meantime replaced his tanks and other exposed armaments with light armaments such as guns on pickups and, of course, parked them conveniently in towns, the natural result being NATO killing civilians in order to protect the “people.”
The U.S. pullout, planned though it was, amounts to a Bay of Pigs move, the “people’s” army being left with some light armament sent by Qatar, for instance, but unable to dislodge Qaddafi with it and fighting with undisciplined ragtag gunmen shooting in the air for most any reason and castigating NATO for not bailing them out. As for the weapons, no one knows who’s using them, probably al Qaeda or the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood gang. As for NATO, it has no stomach for the mess but will still keep flying and bombing…to save the “people.” The “people” are now stranded…like the Cuban exiles of 1961.
Did Obama think he needed his own war in preparation for the election in 2012? Bush started two, after all, and got reelected; however, neither would have happened without Congressional approval. Ah well…Libya – just 6.3 million population and with 92% of its land desert or semi-desert – was a nice place to start a war. Wonder what Obama’s exit strategy is? Only the Shadow knows.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
One wonders if the president has any sense of history. In the Bay of Pigs event, the CIA had trained a small army of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba with the intention of wrestling the country from Fidel Castro, who had become its communist dictator. The critical ingredient to success lay in the support of the U.S. Air Force, as promised, to supply the vital air cover for the men storming the beach. That support was withheld by President Kennedy and the effort was crushed. The result remains obvious.
Flash forward to April 2011. In the preceding month, President Obama declared his personal war on Libya, particularly its strongman ruler, Muammar Qaddafi, without bothering to consult Congress. Instead, he sent State Secretary Clinton and U.S. UN Ambassador Rice to the UN Security Council to get approval of his war. Reluctantly, the approval was granted by a slim margin, a number of states choosing not to vote.
The vague UN resolution was about establishing a no-fly zone and protecting the people, whatever that meant. The U.S. was the heavy hitter as the assault started on Libyans, notwithstanding that they, instead of being protected vis-à-vis the resolution, were being killed. It was sort of killing one set of Libyans to protect another set of Libyans, which, of course, makes no sense. The objective was to take out military installations, but bombs and missiles just kill anyone who happens to be hanging out at the wrong place.
Establishing the no-fly zone was a piece of cake, but that was never the actual objective, which was to get Qaddafi out of Libya, whether or not with his toes turned up, but with the latter as the best choice. Naturally, there had to be somebody to take charge when Qaddafi was hammered but nobody seemed to have thought of that. The “people” to be protected seemed to be those in Benghazi, but there was no leader and only a ragtag collection of militants who celebrated everything from a birth to a wedding by firing their guns in the air.
The action was essentially a unilateral one cooked up by the U.S. but could not appear to be such since that wouldn’t set well with the citizens, who understood that the U.S. was already up to its ears in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. UN-approval didn’t set well, either, since Obama had supplanted his own Congress with that collection of mostly U.S.-haters.
What to do? Shove the whole thing off on NATO, thus relieving Obama of the unilateral criticism, actually an empty gesture since the U.S. is the major player in NATO. Obama took care of that problem by withdrawing U.S. air support shortly after the bombardments had started, with the promise of more help if needed and air support such as furnishing refueling tankers for the planes of England, France and anybody else’s that wanted to pound Libyans to death in order to save the “people.”
Sound familiar? Withdrawn U.S. air-capability spelled doom for the Cuban exiles. Withdrawn U.S. air-capability regarding Libya set the NATO nations to arguing, some of them refusing to drop bombs on Libya and all of them refusing to put boots on the ground. This left the “people” (whoever they are) without the air support necessary to fighting Qaddafi, who in the meantime replaced his tanks and other exposed armaments with light armaments such as guns on pickups and, of course, parked them conveniently in towns, the natural result being NATO killing civilians in order to protect the “people.”
The U.S. pullout, planned though it was, amounts to a Bay of Pigs move, the “people’s” army being left with some light armament sent by Qatar, for instance, but unable to dislodge Qaddafi with it and fighting with undisciplined ragtag gunmen shooting in the air for most any reason and castigating NATO for not bailing them out. As for the weapons, no one knows who’s using them, probably al Qaeda or the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood gang. As for NATO, it has no stomach for the mess but will still keep flying and bombing…to save the “people.” The “people” are now stranded…like the Cuban exiles of 1961.
Did Obama think he needed his own war in preparation for the election in 2012? Bush started two, after all, and got reelected; however, neither would have happened without Congressional approval. Ah well…Libya – just 6.3 million population and with 92% of its land desert or semi-desert – was a nice place to start a war. Wonder what Obama’s exit strategy is? Only the Shadow knows.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Under-the-Bus Gang Rides Again!
It's mid-afternoon in a room over the Anything Goes Bar on a busy street in South Chicago. In attendance are university professors William Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and presidential adviser Robert Gibbs, hereinafter referenced as A, D, W and G, respectively.
**W: Welcome, Mr. Gibbs, to the Union to Negate Demeaning of Erudite Realists, Theologians and Honest Educators Basic to the United States.
**G: The what?
**W: You mean you don’t know what the…in fact, I figured you’re here to join, now that you ain’t in that Washington nuthouse anymore.
**A: Maybe you’ve heard of it by its Acronym, Gibbs, Under the Bus. It’s made up of the people who’ve been…
**W: kicked off the team because they stand up for…
**D: Oh…don’t be so whiny, Rev. Just because Barry had to disown you after that awful performance at the National Press Club…after all, you got your reparations in the 1960s and…
**W: We ain’t got no reparations yet Bernardine, and I’ll thank you to call me Doctor, not Rev.
**G: Could we just get down to business here, folks? I’m on a tight schedule as an adviser to Commander-in-Chief Obama and…
**A: What’s with the C-in-C stuff, Gibbs? Can’t you just say…
**G: Oh…sorry about that. The comman…er…Barry required all the staff to address him as Commander-in-Chief at all times except in public and…well, the habit’s hard to break. Anyway, Barry asked me to consult with you guys concerning the current campaign so…
**W: I suspect he also told you to make sure nobody saw you consulting so that’s why we’re in this fleabag bar and probably house of the risin’ sun on these other floors. (starts singing) There is a house in New Orleans…
**D: That’s not exactly a hymn Dr. Wright.
**W: I know, I know, but I like the tune. You oughtta hear Louie play it on the violin…gives it real passion…risin’ sun passion…no burkas there…no nothin’ there…talk about passion…hoo-hah!
**G: Louie? Who’s Louie?
**A: Louis Farrakhan, of course…surely you’ve heard of Calypso Louie, sometimes called the enforcer and head of the Nation of…
**D: Islam…right in these United States. (laughs maniacally) You know…Malcolm X is in his grave/Wrong, of course, but oh so brave! Ah…gunfire in the night…GLORIOUS…although I would have preferred a knife in the ribs…no fun at such a distance. Charles Manson would have been much more creative and…
**A: Yeeeaaahhh…maybe thrown a grenade down his skivvies like that plane-bomber last Christmas…like we threw in the Pentagon back in the day…ah, we didn’t do enough…that’s what I told them after 9/11…shoulda gone for old Tricky or Lyndon…whoever…
**G: Look…like I said…I’m on a tight schedule. You can reminisce after I leave. I WILL leave before you do since Barry said for me not…
**W: to be seen with the Under-the-Bus crowd. Yeah…that might look bad, what with these Pentagon-bombers runnin’ loose and teachin’ all those kids here how to hate America.
**D: Oh yeah, Jeremiah…oh yeah! You’re a fine one to say that after your God-damn-America sermons
(laughs hysterically) and blaming Uncle Sugar for clobbering the black folk with AIDS…AIDS, for Satan’s sake. What a miserable death…COOL.
**G: Back to the subject! Look, the comman…er, Barry…is getting a lot of questions on Libya so he told me to ask you specifically about that issue and…
**A: ISSUE? That’s no issue…that’s a genuine problem…whether to go on killing Libyans to keep Libyans from killing Libyans or just let them kill each other without blowing all that cash on bombers and missiles and all the time telling the Frenchies to get their act together and be our proxies in the killing.
**D: I’m for landing the troops and arming them with machetes because that’s so…well, AFRICAN. (laughs uproariously) Chopping off hands and arms and legs and a head once in a while…SO African…all that blood in the streets…WHOOPEE!
**A: Yeeaahh…so MUSLIM, too. I understand Barry’s deep into Islam anyway and a few beheadings on TV might just do the job…scare old devil Muammar out of his skull and right into…hey…Gitmo! Let’s hear it for Guantanamo! (clapping by A, D and W)
**W: Throw a little AIDS his way, too. That’ll get his attention…there is a house…h-m-m-m-ms…
**G: Look, I’m serious about this.
**A: We are, too. Barry’s way too soft…sent those three girls off to the UN to tell that sob story about something that hadn’t even happened…got nine votes…or was it eight…to just bomb the Libyans right back into Mohammad’s seventh century.
**G: He’s got nothing against the Libyans…just Qaddafi!
**D: What’s one Libyan over another? That’s discrimination…huh, Jeremiah?
**W: Well…yeah…I guess. Anyway, the seat of civilization was down there around the Congo anyway, so one Muslim’s the same as any other…or maybe I better talk to Louie about that and get back to you, Glibs…er…Gibbs, I guess it is. I always thought you were kinda glib except when you said uh, which was about fourteen times a sentence. Carney started off about the same way but maybe he’ll…
**G: Oh yeah…oh yeah! You got any idea how hard it is to stay one step ahead of those media nutcases? I used that uh to give me time to think. One wrong word and the comman…er…Barry would look bad and sic Biden on me…wake him right up and tell him to give me what-for. (hesitates) Guess you guys are telling me that you think Barry should send in the troops…is that it?
**W: Well…he started it, didn’t he, and then invited NATO to take over and called off the troops? Now the chickens have come to roost…just like Hiroshima and…
**A: Right sermon, wrong war, Jeremiah. But, yeah, Glibs, just tell Barry we’re taking up money for him down here and to send in the clowns…no wait…send in the troops. The clowns are all in Washington.
**G: Right! Got it! Thanks…now just give me five minutes start.
**A, D, W: a-a-r-r-g-g-h-h-A-A-R-R-G-G-H-H-A-A-R-R-G-G-H-H!!!!!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
**W: Welcome, Mr. Gibbs, to the Union to Negate Demeaning of Erudite Realists, Theologians and Honest Educators Basic to the United States.
**G: The what?
**W: You mean you don’t know what the…in fact, I figured you’re here to join, now that you ain’t in that Washington nuthouse anymore.
**A: Maybe you’ve heard of it by its Acronym, Gibbs, Under the Bus. It’s made up of the people who’ve been…
**W: kicked off the team because they stand up for…
**D: Oh…don’t be so whiny, Rev. Just because Barry had to disown you after that awful performance at the National Press Club…after all, you got your reparations in the 1960s and…
**W: We ain’t got no reparations yet Bernardine, and I’ll thank you to call me Doctor, not Rev.
**G: Could we just get down to business here, folks? I’m on a tight schedule as an adviser to Commander-in-Chief Obama and…
**A: What’s with the C-in-C stuff, Gibbs? Can’t you just say…
**G: Oh…sorry about that. The comman…er…Barry required all the staff to address him as Commander-in-Chief at all times except in public and…well, the habit’s hard to break. Anyway, Barry asked me to consult with you guys concerning the current campaign so…
**W: I suspect he also told you to make sure nobody saw you consulting so that’s why we’re in this fleabag bar and probably house of the risin’ sun on these other floors. (starts singing) There is a house in New Orleans…
**D: That’s not exactly a hymn Dr. Wright.
**W: I know, I know, but I like the tune. You oughtta hear Louie play it on the violin…gives it real passion…risin’ sun passion…no burkas there…no nothin’ there…talk about passion…hoo-hah!
**G: Louie? Who’s Louie?
**A: Louis Farrakhan, of course…surely you’ve heard of Calypso Louie, sometimes called the enforcer and head of the Nation of…
**D: Islam…right in these United States. (laughs maniacally) You know…Malcolm X is in his grave/Wrong, of course, but oh so brave! Ah…gunfire in the night…GLORIOUS…although I would have preferred a knife in the ribs…no fun at such a distance. Charles Manson would have been much more creative and…
**A: Yeeeaaahhh…maybe thrown a grenade down his skivvies like that plane-bomber last Christmas…like we threw in the Pentagon back in the day…ah, we didn’t do enough…that’s what I told them after 9/11…shoulda gone for old Tricky or Lyndon…whoever…
**G: Look…like I said…I’m on a tight schedule. You can reminisce after I leave. I WILL leave before you do since Barry said for me not…
**W: to be seen with the Under-the-Bus crowd. Yeah…that might look bad, what with these Pentagon-bombers runnin’ loose and teachin’ all those kids here how to hate America.
**D: Oh yeah, Jeremiah…oh yeah! You’re a fine one to say that after your God-damn-America sermons
(laughs hysterically) and blaming Uncle Sugar for clobbering the black folk with AIDS…AIDS, for Satan’s sake. What a miserable death…COOL.
**G: Back to the subject! Look, the comman…er, Barry…is getting a lot of questions on Libya so he told me to ask you specifically about that issue and…
**A: ISSUE? That’s no issue…that’s a genuine problem…whether to go on killing Libyans to keep Libyans from killing Libyans or just let them kill each other without blowing all that cash on bombers and missiles and all the time telling the Frenchies to get their act together and be our proxies in the killing.
**D: I’m for landing the troops and arming them with machetes because that’s so…well, AFRICAN. (laughs uproariously) Chopping off hands and arms and legs and a head once in a while…SO African…all that blood in the streets…WHOOPEE!
**A: Yeeaahh…so MUSLIM, too. I understand Barry’s deep into Islam anyway and a few beheadings on TV might just do the job…scare old devil Muammar out of his skull and right into…hey…Gitmo! Let’s hear it for Guantanamo! (clapping by A, D and W)
**W: Throw a little AIDS his way, too. That’ll get his attention…there is a house…h-m-m-m-ms…
**G: Look, I’m serious about this.
**A: We are, too. Barry’s way too soft…sent those three girls off to the UN to tell that sob story about something that hadn’t even happened…got nine votes…or was it eight…to just bomb the Libyans right back into Mohammad’s seventh century.
**G: He’s got nothing against the Libyans…just Qaddafi!
**D: What’s one Libyan over another? That’s discrimination…huh, Jeremiah?
**W: Well…yeah…I guess. Anyway, the seat of civilization was down there around the Congo anyway, so one Muslim’s the same as any other…or maybe I better talk to Louie about that and get back to you, Glibs…er…Gibbs, I guess it is. I always thought you were kinda glib except when you said uh, which was about fourteen times a sentence. Carney started off about the same way but maybe he’ll…
**G: Oh yeah…oh yeah! You got any idea how hard it is to stay one step ahead of those media nutcases? I used that uh to give me time to think. One wrong word and the comman…er…Barry would look bad and sic Biden on me…wake him right up and tell him to give me what-for. (hesitates) Guess you guys are telling me that you think Barry should send in the troops…is that it?
**W: Well…he started it, didn’t he, and then invited NATO to take over and called off the troops? Now the chickens have come to roost…just like Hiroshima and…
**A: Right sermon, wrong war, Jeremiah. But, yeah, Glibs, just tell Barry we’re taking up money for him down here and to send in the clowns…no wait…send in the troops. The clowns are all in Washington.
**G: Right! Got it! Thanks…now just give me five minutes start.
**A, D, W: a-a-r-r-g-g-h-h-A-A-R-R-G-G-H-H-A-A-R-R-G-G-H-H!!!!!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, April 11, 2011
Obama's War...Personal & Disgraceful
At the end of his inaugural speech in March 1861, Abraham Lincoln said this: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it.”
At that time, a provisional constitution providing for secession had already been approved by six states and only a few days after Lincoln’s speech a permanent constitution was approved, with Jefferson Davis elected as president. Other states would follow suit in the South but, of course, neither Lincoln nor the U.S. Congress recognized the new pseudo-nation. Earlier in his speech, Lincoln had mentioned that two things could happen vis-à-vis governance – amend the Constitution or rise in revolution. The rest is history as revolution was engaged by the Confederacy.
On 12 April 1861, Jefferson Davis ordered the shelling of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, S.C., by confederate forces, beginning the four worst years in U.S. history, by the end of which the combined count of dead soldiers of both sides would be 625,000, or an average of an unbelievable 435 per day. The document ending the war was signed by southern General Lee and northern General Grant on 09 April 1865.
Lincoln’s duty – preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution – was codified in Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution. As commander-in-chief (Article II, Section II), it was his job to actually raise and use a military force sufficient to put down a rebellion. Since the CSA was not an actual government, the seceding states were in a state of rebellion and the Congress had no state/nation against which to declare war, its responsibility under the Constitution. It was Lincoln’s war. He could either fight it or cave.
Presidents have gone to the Congress for declarations of war on a number of occasions. Congress declared war on Mexico in May 1846. War was declared by Congress on Germany in April 1917. Declarations of war took place by this country in 1941 against the Axis nations.
However, when significant military force is seen to be needed with no state/nation against which to declare war, presidents consult Congress and get its approval, such as against the Viet Cong (1960s) and the Taliban in 2001. Or, when a group of nations, including the U.S., agree that significant military action is necessary against a threatening entity, the president will consult the Congress, such as regarding Kuwait in 1991 (UN) and Iraq in 2002-3 (coalition). In these cases, a clear and imminent threat to the interests of the U.S. was involved but Congress participated formally in the process.
There has to be a reason for a president to act in what amounts to a police action such as President Reagan’s brief aerial assault on Libyan strongman Qaddafi in 1986, probably the first attempt against international terrorism. Intelligence had indicated that Qaddafi had at least harbored, if not ordered, terrorists to kill Americans in Berlin. There’s never a reason for this or any other nation to assault another nation or other entity without cause, i.e., a definite and imminent threat to a nation’s security.
President Obama has recently made a practice of arrogantly informing long-time heads of other governments that they should step down, in the process encouraging if not inciting their constituencies to take to the streets in rebellion. Think Egypt’s Mubarak, Yemen’s Saleh and Libya’s Qaddafi. Mubarak did step down and the resulting military government has lately killed citizens in downtown Cairo. Saleh and Qaddafi have paid Obama no mind and are doing what Lincoln did.
The actual disgrace to the office of U.S. president happened, however, when Obama, without consultation with Congress and in the face of absolutely no threat from Libya, perhaps one of the weakest nations in the world with a population of only 6.3 million, simply ordered U.S. forces to bomb and rain down missiles on that nation for days in March, even though his own Defense Department warned against it. Obama had told Qaddafi to step down. Qaddafi demurred, ergo, bomb him out…for the innocent victims, just too bad. That’s personal. Americans are still helping NATO (with the Congress not consulted) kill Libyans.
Newsweek called it “Hillary’s [State Secretary Clinton’s] War.” No…it’s Obama’s personal war. His military would have been justified in refusing the order to attack a virtually defenseless nation, at least compared to the mightiest military in the world. His action, especially without even a hearing in Congress, was reprehensible, sanguinary, and an act deserving of impeachment. Could it be a war-crime, as well?
What would Lincoln think?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
At that time, a provisional constitution providing for secession had already been approved by six states and only a few days after Lincoln’s speech a permanent constitution was approved, with Jefferson Davis elected as president. Other states would follow suit in the South but, of course, neither Lincoln nor the U.S. Congress recognized the new pseudo-nation. Earlier in his speech, Lincoln had mentioned that two things could happen vis-à-vis governance – amend the Constitution or rise in revolution. The rest is history as revolution was engaged by the Confederacy.
On 12 April 1861, Jefferson Davis ordered the shelling of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, S.C., by confederate forces, beginning the four worst years in U.S. history, by the end of which the combined count of dead soldiers of both sides would be 625,000, or an average of an unbelievable 435 per day. The document ending the war was signed by southern General Lee and northern General Grant on 09 April 1865.
Lincoln’s duty – preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution – was codified in Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution. As commander-in-chief (Article II, Section II), it was his job to actually raise and use a military force sufficient to put down a rebellion. Since the CSA was not an actual government, the seceding states were in a state of rebellion and the Congress had no state/nation against which to declare war, its responsibility under the Constitution. It was Lincoln’s war. He could either fight it or cave.
Presidents have gone to the Congress for declarations of war on a number of occasions. Congress declared war on Mexico in May 1846. War was declared by Congress on Germany in April 1917. Declarations of war took place by this country in 1941 against the Axis nations.
However, when significant military force is seen to be needed with no state/nation against which to declare war, presidents consult Congress and get its approval, such as against the Viet Cong (1960s) and the Taliban in 2001. Or, when a group of nations, including the U.S., agree that significant military action is necessary against a threatening entity, the president will consult the Congress, such as regarding Kuwait in 1991 (UN) and Iraq in 2002-3 (coalition). In these cases, a clear and imminent threat to the interests of the U.S. was involved but Congress participated formally in the process.
There has to be a reason for a president to act in what amounts to a police action such as President Reagan’s brief aerial assault on Libyan strongman Qaddafi in 1986, probably the first attempt against international terrorism. Intelligence had indicated that Qaddafi had at least harbored, if not ordered, terrorists to kill Americans in Berlin. There’s never a reason for this or any other nation to assault another nation or other entity without cause, i.e., a definite and imminent threat to a nation’s security.
President Obama has recently made a practice of arrogantly informing long-time heads of other governments that they should step down, in the process encouraging if not inciting their constituencies to take to the streets in rebellion. Think Egypt’s Mubarak, Yemen’s Saleh and Libya’s Qaddafi. Mubarak did step down and the resulting military government has lately killed citizens in downtown Cairo. Saleh and Qaddafi have paid Obama no mind and are doing what Lincoln did.
The actual disgrace to the office of U.S. president happened, however, when Obama, without consultation with Congress and in the face of absolutely no threat from Libya, perhaps one of the weakest nations in the world with a population of only 6.3 million, simply ordered U.S. forces to bomb and rain down missiles on that nation for days in March, even though his own Defense Department warned against it. Obama had told Qaddafi to step down. Qaddafi demurred, ergo, bomb him out…for the innocent victims, just too bad. That’s personal. Americans are still helping NATO (with the Congress not consulted) kill Libyans.
Newsweek called it “Hillary’s [State Secretary Clinton’s] War.” No…it’s Obama’s personal war. His military would have been justified in refusing the order to attack a virtually defenseless nation, at least compared to the mightiest military in the world. His action, especially without even a hearing in Congress, was reprehensible, sanguinary, and an act deserving of impeachment. Could it be a war-crime, as well?
What would Lincoln think?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Obama's War - WHY?
The treachery of President Obama is becoming clearer each day as the so-called Libyan “protesters” and NATO, now supposedly without the “combative” help of the U.S., duke it out in the sand with Qaddafi. For no apparent reason under the well-known sun, Obama simply declared his own personal war on Libyan strongman Qaddafi, sent his minions to the UN to somehow gain the Security Council’s imprimatur for his action, and then set about bombing the bejesus out of Libyans, military and otherwise, letting the blood flow freely.
The president’s military establishment advised against the action for reasons that any John Doe can understand but that were apparently beyond the president’s pay-grade…or were they, i.e., do military considerations per se have anything to do with the president’s agenda? With absolutely no military experience at all, he proceeded to overrule people who understand quite well the ramifications of war.
Nor did the president go to Congress, even though he had a month to do so. The “protesting” in Libya started on 15 February and the UN vote was taken on 17 March. With over a month to appear before Congress to lay out his plan, which involved making war just as in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, the president took a pass, never mind the seriousness of the issue. Why? Because he knew the Congress would not approve.
So…after sitting on his hands for a month, Obama recognized that all of a sudden there was an emergency with no time to waste and sent the gals off to the UN to push the Security Council panic-button, with enough states not voting to deliver an edict by the barest margin…and the bombs and missiles started raining down on the Libyans, a sort of genocide with Obama instead of Qaddafi killing Libyans, military and otherwise. After all, bombs and missiles are not choosy about whose body parts get spread here and there.
The “no-fly zone” was a red herring for the obvious reason that Qaddafi would put no planes in the air and every responsible person knew that to be the case. The Libyan plane destroyed by the French was a trainer and it was on the ground. The other part of the UN resolution having to do with “protecting Libyan citizens” meant that the action could be what anyone said it was.
So…that second part became the operative strategy and the “protection” amounted to taking the side of the “protesters” in an actual military operation against the government, notwithstanding that no one knew exactly who the protesters were, what entity(ies) was supporting them, or who their leader was, assuming they had one. The Frenchies recognized some entity as perhaps a government-in-waiting, but that was worth nothing. Obama announced his action in far-off Brazil and didn’t make it home to conduct the war for some five or so days.
No head-of-state in his right mind would undertake a hazy operation such as this, especially just on the say-so of some totally non-military advisers – in this case, apparently, State Secretary Clinton, UN Ambassador Rice, and Obama insider Power – who claimed that Qaddafi was ABOUT to commit genocide on his people. He hadn’t done it but they said Qaddafi would – on the basis of something he said – which most folks would have questioned as simply propaganda.
There had been no mass murders though Qaddafi obviously planned to put down what he considered a rebellion, just as did Lincoln in 1861. The ladies provided the perfect excuse for attacking Qaddafi…to save lives, even though lives had been lost for months in Cote d-Ivoire, with Obama doing nothing, despite the ease of intervening in that African coastal nation.
None of this makes sense, especially since the lives of American GIs were involved and Libya posed absolutely no threat to this country, so the obvious question becomes…why? The population of Libya is 6.3 million, two million less than that of New York City. Part of the answer can be seen in the constant spiking of gasoline prices. Obama had to know this would happen when he invaded an oil-producing country, if only by air. He also had to know that Qaddafi, if pushed to the wall, would probably destroy the oil facilities, thus keeping gas prices on the rise.
This makes one remember Obama’s claim during his campaign that he would make electricity prices skyrocket, largely by penalizing the coal industry and thus shutting down much of manufacturing as well as depleting personal incomes. The Libyan thing is a sort of godsend, allowing him to make war to further destroy small entrepreneurs’ ability to stay in business by pricing gas/oil out of their budgets and further eroding Americans’ earnings by robbing them at the gas-pump. Conclusion: Socialism!
Too big a stretch? Too tough on the president? Already fighting two wars for which there had always been a reason, why would he get into another for absolutely no reason and then get right out, which he did? All that was needed was the dustup and oil prices would “skyrocket.” By getting out and leaving NATO holding the bag, he removed potential criticism for the possible loss of American lives, such as could have happened if the American airmen in that jet that crashed had wound up in Qaddafi’s hands instead of those of the insurgents.
One hopes that such is not the case. One wonders, also, if Libya will be Obama’s “Bay of Pigs” - attack the enemy and then desert the ally!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The president’s military establishment advised against the action for reasons that any John Doe can understand but that were apparently beyond the president’s pay-grade…or were they, i.e., do military considerations per se have anything to do with the president’s agenda? With absolutely no military experience at all, he proceeded to overrule people who understand quite well the ramifications of war.
Nor did the president go to Congress, even though he had a month to do so. The “protesting” in Libya started on 15 February and the UN vote was taken on 17 March. With over a month to appear before Congress to lay out his plan, which involved making war just as in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, the president took a pass, never mind the seriousness of the issue. Why? Because he knew the Congress would not approve.
So…after sitting on his hands for a month, Obama recognized that all of a sudden there was an emergency with no time to waste and sent the gals off to the UN to push the Security Council panic-button, with enough states not voting to deliver an edict by the barest margin…and the bombs and missiles started raining down on the Libyans, a sort of genocide with Obama instead of Qaddafi killing Libyans, military and otherwise. After all, bombs and missiles are not choosy about whose body parts get spread here and there.
The “no-fly zone” was a red herring for the obvious reason that Qaddafi would put no planes in the air and every responsible person knew that to be the case. The Libyan plane destroyed by the French was a trainer and it was on the ground. The other part of the UN resolution having to do with “protecting Libyan citizens” meant that the action could be what anyone said it was.
So…that second part became the operative strategy and the “protection” amounted to taking the side of the “protesters” in an actual military operation against the government, notwithstanding that no one knew exactly who the protesters were, what entity(ies) was supporting them, or who their leader was, assuming they had one. The Frenchies recognized some entity as perhaps a government-in-waiting, but that was worth nothing. Obama announced his action in far-off Brazil and didn’t make it home to conduct the war for some five or so days.
No head-of-state in his right mind would undertake a hazy operation such as this, especially just on the say-so of some totally non-military advisers – in this case, apparently, State Secretary Clinton, UN Ambassador Rice, and Obama insider Power – who claimed that Qaddafi was ABOUT to commit genocide on his people. He hadn’t done it but they said Qaddafi would – on the basis of something he said – which most folks would have questioned as simply propaganda.
There had been no mass murders though Qaddafi obviously planned to put down what he considered a rebellion, just as did Lincoln in 1861. The ladies provided the perfect excuse for attacking Qaddafi…to save lives, even though lives had been lost for months in Cote d-Ivoire, with Obama doing nothing, despite the ease of intervening in that African coastal nation.
None of this makes sense, especially since the lives of American GIs were involved and Libya posed absolutely no threat to this country, so the obvious question becomes…why? The population of Libya is 6.3 million, two million less than that of New York City. Part of the answer can be seen in the constant spiking of gasoline prices. Obama had to know this would happen when he invaded an oil-producing country, if only by air. He also had to know that Qaddafi, if pushed to the wall, would probably destroy the oil facilities, thus keeping gas prices on the rise.
This makes one remember Obama’s claim during his campaign that he would make electricity prices skyrocket, largely by penalizing the coal industry and thus shutting down much of manufacturing as well as depleting personal incomes. The Libyan thing is a sort of godsend, allowing him to make war to further destroy small entrepreneurs’ ability to stay in business by pricing gas/oil out of their budgets and further eroding Americans’ earnings by robbing them at the gas-pump. Conclusion: Socialism!
Too big a stretch? Too tough on the president? Already fighting two wars for which there had always been a reason, why would he get into another for absolutely no reason and then get right out, which he did? All that was needed was the dustup and oil prices would “skyrocket.” By getting out and leaving NATO holding the bag, he removed potential criticism for the possible loss of American lives, such as could have happened if the American airmen in that jet that crashed had wound up in Qaddafi’s hands instead of those of the insurgents.
One hopes that such is not the case. One wonders, also, if Libya will be Obama’s “Bay of Pigs” - attack the enemy and then desert the ally!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, April 04, 2011
Obama, the Constitution & War
Despite his obvious efforts to separate his approach to matters regarding world affairs from that of former president George W. Bush, President Obama has actually been emulating Mr. Bush, angering and bewildering Obama supporters. His flip-flop on Guantanamo and the Patriot Act are examples. He has decided now publicly that U.S.-ally Yemeni President Saleh has to go under the bus, just as he’s decided lately that the Egyptian and Libyan presidents had to go.
There’s reason to be concerned about his Yemen announcement in light of his actions pursuant to his Libyan announcement last month, i.e., his subsequent making of war on Libya and announcing that NATO would continue the war as the U.S. pulled out of all but a “support” role and after spending probably $650 million or so in the process. The president’s arrogance has no limit.
The obvious question has to do with what the president intends to do since “citizens” protesting in Yemen have been killed just as was the case in Libya, with Obama ginning up his war on Libya ostensibly to protect them from Qaddafi, who continues to insist that he has a right to put down a rebellion, as does Saleh. Does Obama intend to “protect” Yemenis by making war on Yemen, then maybe passing it off to NATO or the EU or some other body? Who knows?
This brings up the matter of presidential responsibilities vis-a-vis the requirements/allowances of the U.S. Constitution. Did the prexy have the right to attack Libya and does he have the right to do the same regarding Yemen or any other country whose head-of-state he decides should get out of Dodge? Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution:“The Congress shall have power…to declare war…to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.”
Article 2, Section 2: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and of the Militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States,…” The president is given the specific power to conduct the military operation if Congress declares or otherwise (under the laws) mandates military action.
It seems clear enough constitutionally that the president carries out the enactments/resolutions of the Congress but does not make policy decisions regarding armed conflict and certainly does not make war as his prerogative, which is precisely what Obama did regarding Libya. Indeed, if insurrections and invasions were to be included as those happening in other nations (Libya, for instance), according to the constitution he would have been required to act in behalf of Qaddafi, not against him.
This military meddling in other nations’ affairs is not the requirement or allowance of the Constitution, of course, but does emphasize when the Congress/president can instigate or carry out military action regarding this nation, i.e., to put down insurrections and/or invasions, as, for instance, in the case of the Confederacy in 1861 or the Barbary pirates off the coast of Libya in the early 1800s, when the buccaneers “invaded” American ships.
Libya obviously did not invade or otherwise violate this country last month; therefore, according to the Constitution, neither the Congress nor the president had any right to bomb sovereign territory and murder Libyans, an absolute act of war, exactly like the action of the Japanese on 07 December 1941 at Pearl Harbor, which did result in war being declared by the Congress, not the president, who then conducted the war. In his action, Obama became a Hirohito, not a Roosevelt, not an attractive comparison.
If the main premise for Obama’s virtually unilateral action has to do with humanitarian considerations, as seems to be the case, this country/president, even if constitutionally allowed, would need a military of many millions to handle the whole world, especially the Middle East and Africa (particularly in Muslim-controlled countries), in order to protect the many populations affected.
Many governments are changed on the point of the sword and blood routinely runs in the streets (think Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Ivory Coast, and many others besides Libya currently), with outcomes that are unpredictable and consequent conditions not necessarily being improved as the result of either in-state actions or interventions by other countries. How many governments does Obama intend to attack?
In any case, the president did not act within his constitutional authority; rather, he acted quite outside it.
He compounded his unconstitutional approach by also deciding when the U.S. would essentially withdraw from the action he initiated, something that should have been decided by Congress if he had wisely approached the lawmakers in the first place, thus initiating and ending his own war. The “no-fly zone” and “citizen protection” elements of the UN resolution have actually become a ground war, a killing-field the Security Council may not have envisioned.
Since the actions by Bush and Obama vis-à-vis congressional oversight/declarations and on-the-ground situations were distinctly different, no comparison can be made concerning their actions. Bush gained approval from Congress. Obama gained approval from the UN. His responsibility was to the people of the U.S. through their elected representatives, not the UN or Arab League. Actually, Obama should have listened to his Defense Secretary and Joint-Chiefs Chairman, who warned against his action.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
There’s reason to be concerned about his Yemen announcement in light of his actions pursuant to his Libyan announcement last month, i.e., his subsequent making of war on Libya and announcing that NATO would continue the war as the U.S. pulled out of all but a “support” role and after spending probably $650 million or so in the process. The president’s arrogance has no limit.
The obvious question has to do with what the president intends to do since “citizens” protesting in Yemen have been killed just as was the case in Libya, with Obama ginning up his war on Libya ostensibly to protect them from Qaddafi, who continues to insist that he has a right to put down a rebellion, as does Saleh. Does Obama intend to “protect” Yemenis by making war on Yemen, then maybe passing it off to NATO or the EU or some other body? Who knows?
This brings up the matter of presidential responsibilities vis-a-vis the requirements/allowances of the U.S. Constitution. Did the prexy have the right to attack Libya and does he have the right to do the same regarding Yemen or any other country whose head-of-state he decides should get out of Dodge? Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution:“The Congress shall have power…to declare war…to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.”
Article 2, Section 2: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and of the Militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States,…” The president is given the specific power to conduct the military operation if Congress declares or otherwise (under the laws) mandates military action.
It seems clear enough constitutionally that the president carries out the enactments/resolutions of the Congress but does not make policy decisions regarding armed conflict and certainly does not make war as his prerogative, which is precisely what Obama did regarding Libya. Indeed, if insurrections and invasions were to be included as those happening in other nations (Libya, for instance), according to the constitution he would have been required to act in behalf of Qaddafi, not against him.
This military meddling in other nations’ affairs is not the requirement or allowance of the Constitution, of course, but does emphasize when the Congress/president can instigate or carry out military action regarding this nation, i.e., to put down insurrections and/or invasions, as, for instance, in the case of the Confederacy in 1861 or the Barbary pirates off the coast of Libya in the early 1800s, when the buccaneers “invaded” American ships.
Libya obviously did not invade or otherwise violate this country last month; therefore, according to the Constitution, neither the Congress nor the president had any right to bomb sovereign territory and murder Libyans, an absolute act of war, exactly like the action of the Japanese on 07 December 1941 at Pearl Harbor, which did result in war being declared by the Congress, not the president, who then conducted the war. In his action, Obama became a Hirohito, not a Roosevelt, not an attractive comparison.
If the main premise for Obama’s virtually unilateral action has to do with humanitarian considerations, as seems to be the case, this country/president, even if constitutionally allowed, would need a military of many millions to handle the whole world, especially the Middle East and Africa (particularly in Muslim-controlled countries), in order to protect the many populations affected.
Many governments are changed on the point of the sword and blood routinely runs in the streets (think Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Ivory Coast, and many others besides Libya currently), with outcomes that are unpredictable and consequent conditions not necessarily being improved as the result of either in-state actions or interventions by other countries. How many governments does Obama intend to attack?
In any case, the president did not act within his constitutional authority; rather, he acted quite outside it.
He compounded his unconstitutional approach by also deciding when the U.S. would essentially withdraw from the action he initiated, something that should have been decided by Congress if he had wisely approached the lawmakers in the first place, thus initiating and ending his own war. The “no-fly zone” and “citizen protection” elements of the UN resolution have actually become a ground war, a killing-field the Security Council may not have envisioned.
Since the actions by Bush and Obama vis-à-vis congressional oversight/declarations and on-the-ground situations were distinctly different, no comparison can be made concerning their actions. Bush gained approval from Congress. Obama gained approval from the UN. His responsibility was to the people of the U.S. through their elected representatives, not the UN or Arab League. Actually, Obama should have listened to his Defense Secretary and Joint-Chiefs Chairman, who warned against his action.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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