Afghanistan/Pakistan

You Really Want to Remind Us of That, John Kerry?

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In an Afghanistan policy speech, [h/t Instapundit] John Kerry evokes a famous phrase from his infamous testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971.

David Sanger mentioned that in 1971 I asked the Foreign Relations Committee “how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

I think it relevant to the contemporary debate to recall what else he said in that testimony:

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.
 

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
 
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.[emp added]

Just to be clear, the Winter Soldier “investigation” was shortly proven to be wholly fraudulent.

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Stop Obama’s Wars of Imperialist Aggression!

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I don’t typically wade into politics with my posts, but I just can’t help myself. The other day I was driving around in a town to be unnamed and stumbled upon the building you see in the picture below.

sooper seekrit warehouse

It looks like a typical warehouse that you would find in any of a million industrial parks in the United States.

But upon further investigation I found something quite different. This is the warehouse that the left uses to store it’s papier mache heads, sign making materials and other props for protest marches. Upon sniffing around it for a bit, I noticed that is was packed to the brim. It looked to me as they had contracted with a local lumberyard to supply the wood for their signage.

All humor aside, does the left not think that we haven’t noticed a certain…well…silence over Obama’s policies? It is OK for Obama to not only not decrease troop levels, but increase them as he is doing in Afghanistan? Why isn’t Gitmo closed? What the hell, even Iraq even has troops there that represent the Great Satan ™ as of now. I know because I am still sending care packages to them (unlike ANY of the protesters who claim they support the troops).

So just exactly what am I to think of the left? That these wars are OK as long as the President and Congress have a D by their names? Puhleeeze.

Resist Retreat

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“There are things to be done. Resist retreat as a matter of strategy and principle. And provide the means to continue our dominant role in the world by keeping our economic house in order.” Krauthammer

I’ve long acknowledged the powerful pull of tribalism. And time has only increased my nostalgia for those great flat plains. Still, you know, I would pause before voting for Bob Kerrey: that he couldn’t see the reflexive anti-Americanism in Obama (one I doubt he feels) is a problem. Of course, it is easy to understand Winger’s attraction and he was much younger; still watching her description of Polanski as victim made me wonder again at his judgment in the personal. And, sure, Krauthammer is more cogent. Still, Kerrey can be and has been heroic; he remains a Nebraskan and remains more right (and more honest) than most Democrats:

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Quote of the Day

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One factor complicating a nuclear terrorist attack is the need for the aggressor to maintain command and control over their weapon at all times. Letting a nuke out of sight of a terrorist leadership cell is the supreme act of faith in the attacking cell. The nuke can be turned against them in a leadership struggle; diverted for sale or used to extort vast amounts of money. Fanatics can seize them to use against another faction. Much terrorist violence in the world is faction-on-faction. They can even be intercepted and made to blow up in their own faces. Unless used immediately nukes must be secured in a heavily guarded, hard to conceal place. If used immediately they cannot be stockpiled into a decisive amount. Missile delivery systems were ideal solutions to all the problems of command and control problem. That is why North Korea and Iran sought a missile capability immediately. Anti missiles defenses were therefore an immense discouragement against nuclear terrorism in their own right.
 
The most likely reason for Russia’s objections to US missile defense is not that it degrades their vast and unstoppable arsenal, which remains effective in any case, but it reduces the effectiveness of sock puppet proxies who threaten the US. Russia is not about to threaten the US directly. But wouldn’t it be convenient if others would? And wouldn’t it be even more convenient if the US could not defend against them.

–Richard Fernandez