The Marxist Brother

Editorial by Burt Prelutsky.

I must confess that I am spending an awful lot of time thinking about Barack Obama. I hasten to add that it’s not, as is the case with Chris Matthews, because the senator sends shivers up my leg. Rather, it’s because I simply can’t figure out how he’s managed to convince so many people that he should be the president of the United States. It’s a lot like trying to figure out how Las Vegas magicians make lions and tigers disappear.

To be perfectly honest, I invariably feel that way about the candidates the Democrats try to foist off on us. But, as a rule, guys like Dukakis, Gore and Kerry, are just typical party hacks. But at least none of them attended a racist church, they didn’t associate with known terrorists and they usually didn’t display their contempt for national symbols and the U.S. military quite so blatantly.

Liberals have tried to convince me that Obama is brilliant. I find that odd because he has said that there are 57 states, that JFK got the Russians to remove their missiles from Cuba by sitting down and chatting with Khrushchev, and that Iran doesn’t really constitute an actual threat because they don’t spend as much money on weaponry as we do. Funny, but “brilliant” isn’t the first word that comes to mind. But what do liberals know? They were also convinced that Jimmy Carter was intelligent.

As if Obama’s lack of smarts weren’t bad enough, he compounds the problem with his arrogance. The way he’s forever tilting his head as if he were posing for a statue and employing the royal “we,” I’m never sure if he thinks he’s campaigning to be president of the United States or the queen of England.

Frankly, I’m always surprised when, every four years, the candidate with the (D) after his name is able to muster tens of millions of votes. When you realize that the party has become increasingly Marxist, I find it mind-boggling that the Democrats can consistently fare better than the Greens or the Libertarians in a national election.

If you listen to Obama, you’d get the idea that we’re a third world nation, tottering on the edge of poverty. Every word out of his mouth suggests that America is being ground down by corporations when every sane member of the middle class is well aware that the Democrats, who have never met a tax increase they didn’t love or an illegal alien they didn’t see as a potential vote, and who promote class and race warfare as party policy, pose more of a threat to this country than the Soviet Union ever did.

Obama and his fellow left-wingers keep parroting the line that all the other nations of the world hate us, but I’ve noticed that they never name names. And who can blame them? They’re not likely to mention that they’re referring to the likes of Iran, China, Yemen, Venezuela, Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and North Korea, just as they’re not likely to mention that England, France, Germany and Italy, have all elected conservative leaders in the past few years, while dumping the leftist likes of Chirac and Schroder along the way.

Because the MSM adores Obama, they continue to promote the notion of Obama as a great orator, but he is actually no more silver-tongued than your average radio announcer reading ad copy for baby wipes. The fact is that when asked a direct question, the man turns into a blithering idiot, even though you would imagine that by this late date he would have memorized the appropriate lines. Perhaps the problem is that this new style politician is so driven by polls that from moment to moment he’s not sure exactly how he feels about the 16-month deadline in Iraq, the surge, offshore drilling for oil, election financing or dividing the city of Jerusalem. Heck, he even changed his opinion about Reverend Wright overnight. On one notable occasion, during the primaries, he was heard to ask if he could just have a moment to finish his waffle. We all thought he was referring to his breakfast. But apparently that wasn’t the case because the man hasn’t stopped waffling yet.

Even after all this time on the stump, I have yet to hear what he would have done about Saddam Hussein if he’d been president. After all, his liberal colleagues had spent much of the 1990s insisting that there had to be a regime change in Iraq. And as Georges Sada, Hussein’s air vice-marshal, has stated in his 2006 book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” Hussein had all the WMD that Kerry, Kennedy and the Clintons thought he had, but had his chemical arsenal airlifted to Syria after the allied invasion began, in the hope of convincing the world that he was the innocent victim of American aggression.

Knowing Obama as we do, we can only assume that if he’d been occupying the Oval Office he would have sat down with Hussein, and through the sheer power of his personality and his white teeth -- or do I repeat myself? -- would have convinced the Butcher of Baghdad that while it’s nice to be important, it’s more important to be nice.

Blind To Reality

This article written by Iraq War veterans Pete Hegseth, David Bellavia, Joel Arends, Erik Swabb, Kate Norley, Shawn Bryan, Daniel Bell, Ben Hayden.

In May, our organization - the largest group of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in America - urged Sen. Barack Obama to visit Iraq. Our argument was simple. The presumptive Democratic nominee had only taken the time to visit the war zone once since coming to the Senate - more than two years ago and before the appointment of Gen. David Petraeus as commander there and the shift in strategy known as the surge.

Our hope, as veterans, was that Mr. Obama would take the time to listen to our commanders and our fellow troops on the ground, to see firsthand the hard-won gains they have achieved, and then consider how he might revise or refine his approach to the war and close the gap between his rhetoric and reality on the ground.

To his credit, Mr. Obama initially suggested that he would do exactly this. Unfortunately, he was immediately and furiously attacked for doing so by anti-war groups like Moveon.org that fueled his campaign's rise. Rather than showing the political courage to stand up to his base, Mr. Obama instead quickly appeased them.

As a result, rather than going to Iraq, talking to Gen. Petraeus, assessing the facts on the ground and then announcing his new strategy, Mr. Obama instead delivered a high-profile speech before he left for Iraq, in which he announced what his conclusions would be.

Mr. Obama's increasingly evasive statements about Iraq, both pre- and post-trip, raise far more questions than they answer, including his ability to lead our nation forward as commander-in-chief and bring this war to a successful conclusion.

After months of furiously denying that security was improving in Iraq, Mr. Obama now acknowledges that a remarkable turnaround took place under the surge - and yet bizarrely, he continues to insist that he was right to oppose the surge and that, if given the chance, he would do so again.

Mr. Obama likewise at last acknowledges that our military commanders on the ground in Iraq oppose the fixed and arbitrary timeline for withdrawal he wants to impose and they say doing so would be "extremely dangerous" - and yet he continues to insist that he will impose it on them anyway.

Most frustrating of all, Mr. Obama says that he thinks our troops have performed admirably in Iraq - and yet he and his surrogates continue to downplay their sacrifices by suggesting at every opportunity that the hard-won gains we see in Iraq are not due to their efforts, and indeed, would have materialized in their absence.

What are we to make of this? For starters, whatever Mr. Obama did during his brief visit to Iraq, "fact finding" was scarcely part of it. It appears that his stage-managed trip was, in many respects, the Democratic equivalent to President Bush's choreographed landing on an aircraft carrier five years ago.

Indeed, when Mr. Obama had the opportunity to visit our troops stationed in Germany, he declined to do so, saying it would be "inappropriate." The only difference? At the U.S. bases in Germany, he couldn't bring the TV cameras along.

Whatever Mr. Obama's conduct, it in no way diminishes Americans' right to know more about the facts in Iraq. And in the absence of an honest assessment from the Democratic front-runner, we'll do it ourselves.

To that end, the undersigned eight Iraq war veterans will be returning to Iraq next week to assess the situation on the ground, top to bottom. We will each return to the cities where we served previously, providing a direct before-and-after assessment from the ground. Places like Ramadi, Baqubah, Samarra, and Baghdad, last experienced at the height of violence, will get a fresh look from experienced eyes.

We will assess the depths and sustainability of recent gains, and plan to objectively ask the tough questions - of Americans and Iraqis alike - about the future of America's involvement in Iraq. Questions will include: What would happen if American forces were ordered to withdraw from Iraq on a fixed, 16-month timeline, as Mr. Obama has proposed? How do Iraqis view the upcoming provincial elections? And what is required of the United States to ensure that these elections are a success? In neighborhoods devastated by sectarian warfare, are displaced people returning and is reconstruction under way? Is the Iraqi government stepping up to take responsibility for the rebuilding of the country? Are we confident that the blows we have inflicted against al Qaeda and Iranian-proxies are irreversible? What do ordinary Iraqis say about the future of these dangerous groups? And most important of all: Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that he wants to "end" the war in Iraq, but he refuses to say whether he thinks we can achieve the goal that our troops have been so doggedly fighting for - namely, winning the war. Can we now speak in terms of victory and if so, what does it mean?

America's veterans, their families and those still serving deserve honest answers to these difficult and complex questions. We intend to do our utmost to provide them.

Pete Hegseth, David Bellavia, Joel Arends, Erik Swabb, Kate Norley, Shawn Bryan, Daniel Bell, and Ben Hayden are veterans of the Iraq war and members of Vets for Freedom.

Pledged

The author of this article Erik Swabb served in Anbar, Iraq as a Marine infantry officer from September 2004 to March 2005. He is a member of Veterans for Freedom.

Pledged-Obama and Iraq

Those expecting Sen. Barack Obama to get the United States out of Iraq would be wise to look closely at his plan: Not only would it fail to “end the war,” it would replace Gen. David Petraeus’s successful strategy with an approach that was previously tried unsuccessfully. Obama’s plan presents the worst possible scenario: the loss of U.S. lives for the wrong strategy. For those of us who served in Iraq when this tragedy occurred earlier in the war, it is a prospect too disturbing to contemplate.

Although Obama has promised a 16-month timetable to withdraw U.S. troops, two aspects of his plan put this promise in doubt. First, he has only called for removing all “combat brigades.” This does not include support troops, special-operations forces, and trainers, even though these soldiers can see just as much combat. Consequently, Obama could leave a substantial number of troops in Iraq without breaking his pledge.

Second, Obama has proposed enduring missions for a “residual force” that require numerous service members to remain in Iraq. After the withdrawal of the combat brigades, U.S. forces would continue to conduct three tasks: striking al-Qaeda in Iraq, protecting U.S. personnel, and training the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), as long as Iraqis make political progress. Obama’s own adviser on Iraq estimates that the remaining troops could total 80,000. Obama has declared that the residual force would be “entirely conditions-based,” so the number could be even higher. Unlike the combat brigades, this force would have no timetable for withdrawal.

Moreover, the troops that stay behind would continue to suffer casualties if they vigorously pursue the missions that Obama has given them. Operations against hard-core terrorists in urban areas are risky by their nature. They require armored forces as backup to avoid tragedies similar to the “Black Hawk down” incident in Somalia; as these combat brigades withdraw from Iraq, special-operations units would be more vulnerable.

Training the ISF would also entail casualties. The critical role that U.S. advisers play is not running boot camps on secure bases, which Iraqis are increasingly capable of doing. The most effective training occurs when advisers are embedded with Iraqi units in the field. These advisers mentor inexperienced Iraqi leaders, foster a non-sectarian mindset, and provide logistical and air support that the ISF lacks. Since Iraqi forces are a prime target for insurgents, these trainers are at significant risk.

Finally, the mission to protect U.S. personnel, such as the staff at the U.S. Embassy, civilian contractors, and support units, may produce the opposite result. One feature of counterinsurgency is that sometimes the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be. Without combat brigades living among the populace, the residual force would lose both valuable intelligence and the ability to disrupt insurgent operations. Supply convoys that must sustain the large residual force could see a resurgence of roadside bombs. The U.S. Embassy could come under siege from rocket attacks.

Obama’s plan ignores the central goal of counterinsurgency: winning the support of the populace. The removal of combat brigades from towns and cities, regardless of whether there is security, means that protecting the people is no longer the priority. Instead, the goal is to turn over the fight to the Iraqis, whether they are ready or not.

U.S. forces tried this strategy before, and it failed miserably. During 2006, top commanders were focused on replacing U.S. units with Iraqi forces in order to reduce troop levels. However, the ISF proved incapable of providing security, and sectarian violence consumed Baghdad, bringing the country close to civil war.

With Petraeus’s appointment in early 2007, coalition forces began implementing the counterinsurgency strategy in the capital and other neglected areas. The results of this “surge” are now well known. U.S. and Iraqi units partnered together and moved into residential areas to protect the people, resulting in a sharp decline in violence. This strategy emboldened the Iraqi government to target both Sunni and Shia extremists, increasing its legitimacy and furthering political reconciliation.

Obama might claim that while such an approach was premature in 2006, Iraqi forces are now proficient enough that combat brigades may safely withdraw. Ultimately, he could be right. However, his repudiation of the current, conditions-based strategy is an unnecessary and dangerous gamble. If the ISF is as capable as he thinks it is, his timeline can be followed. If the ISF is not ready in 16 months, though, it would be a disaster to have a residual force large enough to be a huge target, but too small to maintain security. If that occurred, there is a real possibility that U.S. casualties would be higher with Obama’s plan even if there were half as many troops in Iraq.

The far Left would argue that the solution is to pull every single U.S. service member out of Iraq. Fortunately, Obama understands that the United States needs a stable Iraq, as reflected in his call for a residual force. If Obama truly wants to “end the war” in a way that protects U.S. interests, however, he should continue the current counterinsurgency strategy and base troop withdrawals on the conditions in Iraq.