I fully support President Obama in his drone campaign... And I have to be honest and say that Trump's hyperbole does leave me a bit uneasy...

But A-the point is not Obama's actions but rather why the Left Wingery in general supports (by their silence) those actions and 2- Trump's hyperbole is just that.. Campaign hyperbole.. Like Obama's knife/gun campaign hyperbole in the 2008 POTUS-ential elections...

Michale

From a previous commentary..

"The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families"

someone said something about gestapo tactics?

You mean like Obama's drone strikes that kill THOUSANDS of innocents just to get at one terrorist???

How is that any different than what Trump is proposing??

Michale

Michale

there you go...

sorry for the delay...

-CW

Tanks.... And planes!!! :D

Michale

US Navy Ship Encounters Aggressive Russian Aircraft in Baltic Sea
http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=94170

Russia is being a bully...

The ONLY way to respond to a bully is to bloody his nose...

Splash the bandits!! THAT will teach the necessary lesson..

Obama's response??

U.S. officials are using existing diplomatic channels to address the interactions while the incidents are also being reviewed through U.S. Navy channels.

Whine and cry and stamp his feet like an impotent coward...

That's our leader!! :^/

No wonder his approval is heading down...

Michale

Situation normal...Deal with it.

Yer preachin' to the choir, big guy... :D

I am a BIG fan of coming up with a good plan, executing a plan and let the chips fall where they may..

"If we are to be damned, let us be damned for what we really are..."
-Captain Jean Luc Picard, STAR TREK TNG, Encounter At Farpoint

:D

Russia “an existential threat to the United States, and to our European allies and partners.”

Who'd of thunk it? Is there a medal for spotting the obvious?

Apparently it wasn't so "obvious" in the 2012 Election.. I seem ta recall ya'all and Obama ridiculing Romney resoundingly (say THAT three times fast! :D ) for making that exact claim...

So, NOW you admit that Romney was right.... Right?? :D

Michale

Who'd of thunk it? Is there a medal for spotting the obvious? Isn't that we have a military?

In short, the actual facts can be spin'ed to castigate and denigrate anyone's ideas...

Situation normal...Deal with it.

Just a guess, mind you.. But I am guessing it's because there is enough feces amongst the analysis that ANY faction can use to call all the other factions' ideas into question..

In short, the actual facts can be spin'ed to castigate and denigrate anyone's ideas...

That's my guess, cynical though it may be...

Michale

The Iraqi army is moving up the Tigris Watershed. The watershed determines where urban areas and roads are. It's beads on a string. The Iraqi army is basically a road bound army. The 4 beads mentioned above are all ethnically Sunni. An occupation force does not change this demography. Sunni resistance is not entirely gone, it has simply gone to ground where it lives and blends. It can be revived, quite unexpectedly, as happened in the wake of the US occupation and again when the "Islamic State" popped up seemingly out of nowhere. Saudi Arabia has it's clients, so does Iran, so does Turkey.

"Islamic State fighters will need to rely on lengthier and potentially riskier routes to transport their troops, cash and weapons."

Quite so, but the same can be said of the Iraqi government forces now occupying the beads. The Iraqi army is mechanized, but it's not genuinely air mechanized. Caravan raids are a traditional form warfare in the desert. Where does the Iraqi (Baghdad) Govt. go from here? How do you stabilize gains over the long haul outside Shiite territory? What kind of map is United States policy hoping to see? The old map of a a unified Iraq, or something else?

That is a Grand Strategy question, and the US answer remains vague. Iraqi Govt. military capability remains questionable.

Ethnic composition
Who controls what territory
Watersheds
Roads and urban centers
Oil fields pipelines and terminals

This problem could be solved with an ArcInfo workstation and an unpaid intern working on his/her M.S. degree. I am at a loss for why this seems to have not happened.

But there are new dimensions to this old equation that make the challenge especially difficult. One relates to growing doubts over U.S. credibility in the world and the U.S. commitment to Europe in particular—anxieties that Putin readily exploits. {emphasis mine} The other new dimension is Putin himself, in particular the perception that he is more opportunistic, and perhaps reckless, than any Russian or Soviet leader since Khrushchev. Given his now demonstrated record of aggression in Georgia and Ukraine, and the sheer brutality of his military campaigns in Chechnya and Syria, it is clear that the most important step the U.S. can take to maintain security in Europe is to fortify and reassure any NATO member states potentially subject to Russian pressure. Standing with our allies is the surest way to deter aggression and secure peace. It is a lesson from the Cold War we should never forget.
http://time.com/4276525/vladimir-putin-nato/

This is exactly what I am talking about.. Hussein Obama has so degraded our fighting capability and has made the US's "military might" the butt of jokes the world over.

Our allies are rolling their eyes and our enemies are laughing with glee..

This is the legacy of Hussein Obama...

Michale

Let me get one thing off my chest first.

YYEEEAAAAA!!!!! OBAMA IS BACK UNDERWATER!!!!!

Everything is good and right with the world once more!!! :D

OK, that's taken care of.. :D

OK, to war..

But, it's NOT a war.. All we're doing is dropping bombs and killing innocents as collateral damage by the thousands... Which is obviously a bad thing (at least it is when a POTUS with an '-R' after his name does it) but it's a necessary evil...

The problem is.... and this leads into more of what Liz wrote than the actual commentary.... is by prosecuting this action in this manner, Obama is PROLONGING the suffering and the death and destruction..

Now, I grant you.. A logical case can be made for NOT putting hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground. The BEST argument against said boots is that Obama has so decimated and demoralized our fighting forces that we don't HAVE the hundreds of thousands of troops to send in..

So, no matter how you slice it, this "war" is solely and completely the property of Hussein Obama.. And ALL the death and destruction can be laid at his feet...

Which is WHY he is back underwater in his approval ratings!! :D Like the way I tied that in?? :D

Michale

"Because there are no official American troops on the front lines"

Sheesh man.
California still hasn't sunk in?

That qualifier before "American troops" is straight out of the mouth of a Washingtonian... I mean... unofficially of course.

The Iraqis having to win back their country's territory will always be a black mark on America.
So, I would recommend keeping the cheerleading for these "victories" to a minimum.

The rubble that was formerly cities and the looted ancient cultural sites only pale in comparison to the family trees missing whole branches.

Maybe a running tally of the American and Iraqi expenditures on this war would help... but then, maybe not.

A

Most critics of President Obama's foreign policy, particularly with respect to the Middle East and the Islamic State, fail to take into account the inherent complexity of the challenges he is dealing with and the benefits of approaching them with a certain degree of deliberation and persistence.

While there are valid points to be made about the slowness and weakness of Obama's action against IS, there are also strong arguments to be made against precipitous US action in the Middle East and all of the unintended consequences that we know can flow from that.

The evolution of IS has been a very long process with much of it aided by ill-informed US action and reaction in the region. We have to accept that defeating this group of violent Islamist extremists will take time and steady leadership from all corners.