Tag Archives: Iraq War

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'Bipartisan foreign policy' must return

Holy cow! Texas Gov. Rick Perry is making some sense as it regards U.S. foreign policy.

Perry has penned an essay for Politico Magazine in which he says the following about the growing conflict in Iraq between the Iraqi government and the ISIS terrorists seeking to take control of the country: “The danger for the United States and other Western nations may still seem remote. And for many Americans, understandably, just about the last thing we want to think about is more conflict in Iraq and what it might require of our country. But we cannot ignore reality. We have come to a seminal moment when America’s action or inaction could be equally consequential. If anything is left of the old bipartisan tradition in American foreign policy – that basic willingness to unite in fundamental matters of security – we need to draw on that spirit now in a big way.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/rick-perry-op-ed-iraq-110088.html#ixzz3Ahd3u8t8

I’ll repeat part of it. “If anything is left of the old bipartisan tradition in American foreign policy … we need to draw on that spirit now in a big way.”

Amen to that, Gov. Perry.

I’ve long lamented the sniping and bickering regarding foreign policy that in its way gives aid and comfort to our enemies. Democrats did it to Republican presidents, and Republicans are now doing it to a Democratic president. The great Republican U.S. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan used to say that partisanship “stops at the water’s edge.” It now splashes into the water and the waves ripple far and wide.

Perry, of course, said much more in his Politico essay. He argues that U.S. air strikes must save Irbil from ISIS terrorists, as it is home to a U.S. consulate in Iraq.

The governor argues against “rehashing the causes of today’s crisis” and says it’s now time to look forward to what we can do to bring it to an end. The targeted air strikes against military targets in parts of Iraq appear to be working. I am concerned about the so-called “slippery slope,” and whether we’re going to re-engage in a ground war — something that Gov. Perry actually called for as he ran for president briefly in 2012.

He seems to have backed away from that notion and is preaching a more bipartisan approach to solving a foreign-policy crisis.

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V-22 Osprey earning its wings

Here is some news that is going to cheer up the good folks assembling a state-of-the-art airship next door to Amarillo’s international airport.

A law student and former Marine who’s studied the bird says the V-22 Osprey is good ship.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/actually-the-v-22-aint-half-bad-25a39df9a336

It’s shown some weakness, some vulnerability and certainly been through some controversy, but it is superior to the aircraft it was designed to “displace,” the CH-46 twin-rotor helicopter.

It flies much faster and delivers troops and supplies in far less time.

The V-22 has had a rocky ride to be sure. You’ll recall the ship that crashed in Arizona, killing 19 Marines on board. Development and assembly was stopped in Amarillo. Critics began yammering about how dangerous the bird could be to fly.

The Marine Corps and Bell/Textron engineers fixed what was wrong and the aircraft has performed well on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Every leading-edge aircraft has gone through difficulty. The V-22 is really no different in that regard. Its bugs have been troublesome and, yes, have produced some tragic consequences. I ask, though, isn’t that the norm when introducing aircraft with technology never before used?

It takes off like a helicopter, tilts its rotors forward and flies like an airplane. It’s a difficult ship to learn to fly, but as a Marine Corps test pilot told me once years ago, once you learn how to fly the Osprey “it’s a joy to operate.”

I’ll take him at his word.

The Osprey isn’t perfect, as the essay attached to this blog notes. It still costs a lot of money to manufacture and its capabilities have limits.

But it plays a key role in our nation’s defense and our neighbors at the assembly plant in Amarillo deserve high praise for the role they play in that effort.

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That slope is slippery, Mr. President

The Vietnam Generation remembers a time when U.S. military assistance overseas went from “advisory” to engaging in bloody combat. It didn’t take terribly long for our role to change in Vietnam.

It is that memory that’s been stirred in recent days as President Obama has announced the return of U.S. advisers to Iraq to aid the Iraqi military in its fight against Sunni insurgents seeking to take back the government Americans overthrew when it went to war there in March 2003.

http://time.com/2901449/obama-iraq-isis-troops/

The president has declared categorically that the United States will not send combat troops back into Iraq. I and no doubt million of other Americans will hold him to his word on that.

I just watched an interesting segment from CNN’s series “The Sixties” that dealt with the Vietnam War. President Kennedy was killed in November 1963 and by then our advisory role in ‘Nam had grown to several thousand troops. President Johnson fairly quickly granted military requests for more troops, ratcheting up our involvement to a level where Americans were shouldering the bulk of the combat operations against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army.

By the time I arrived at Marble Mountain, just south of Da Nang, South Vietnam, in March 1969, American troops strength was at its absolute peak: 543,000 of us were deployed there. But soon the drawdown began as President Nixon implemented his “Vietnamization” program of turning the combat responsibility over to those who had the most skin in the game.

Surely, the wise men and women at the White House and perhaps even at the Pentagon will remind the current president — who was not quite 8 years old when I arrived in ‘Nam way back when — of the folly of resuming a ground combat role in Iraq.

Listen to them, Mr. President. Please.

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'Take the fight to terrorists'

Bet on this: President Obama’s critics will say his statement today about how the United States plans to aid Iraq in its fight against Sunni insurgents is insufficient.

They know this, how?

I’m willing to give this strategy a try.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/obama-u-s-prepared-take-targeted-action-iraq-n135621

The president today announced the deployment of 300 military advisers who will guide the Iraqi armed forces on using the weapons we’ve given them to defend their country against the insurgency that has erupted.

The United States, Obama said, is ready to launch “targeted” attacks against Sunni military positions. When those attacks occur no doubt will be kept secret.

It’s fair to ask: What in the world is the political and/or military gain sending ground troops back to Iraq? The president believes we have nothing to gain by re-entering the battlefield. Sure, we could whip the Sunnis, force them to retreat, perhaps surrender … and then what? We’d leave yet again and the Sunni fighters would emerge from their hiding places to resume the fight.

Do we want to keep a residual force there — a la South Korea and Europe? What happens when the insurgents start targeting Americans? Do we start shooting again, thus reigniting a war we thought was over?

It’s been said time and again: This crisis requires a political solution, not a military one. The war we’ve been fighting since 9/11 is as unconventional as it gets. It’s a war against terrorists who know zero boundaries. We need to employ counter-terrorism measures, which we’ve been doing with considerable effectiveness.

While we’re on this subject, allow me this additional statement about the nation’s security.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others have been yammering about the alleged “surrender” of American security to the bad guys. Have we been attacked the way we were on Sept. 11, 2001? No. Have our forces been killing and capturing terrorists? Yes. Did we exterminate the 9/11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden? Yes again.

Will this country be any safer if we send thousands of troops back into Iraq? I think not.

It’s time to force Iraqi political and military leaders to step up the fight and defend their country against those who seek to topple them. It’s their fight in their country. We can lend a hand. Our battlefield job is finished.

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Liberals were right about Iraq?

Talk radio is big around here, the Texas Panhandle, that is.

It’s big everywhere it seems. Conservatives rule the air waves these days. They’ve got their devotees who hang on their every word.

The Big Two seem to be Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Throw in some others, maybe Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved and Mark Levin, mix ’em up, and they’re pretty big as well.

Thus, it was with some interest that I read an interesting admission from Beck the other day.

He said liberals were right about the Iraq War and that he — and other conservatives — were wrong.

http://www.newsweek.com/glenn-beck-admits-liberals-were-right-iraq-war-255341

I couldn’t help but think of “Happy Days” character Arthur Fonzarelli, who just couldn’t ever admit to being wr —-, wr —- about anything. Ever. He couldn’t say the word, for crying out loud.

Beck ain’t Fonzie, apparently. He was able to admit it.

“You cannot force democracy on the Iraqis or anybody else, it doesn’t work. They don’t understand it or even really want it,” Beck said on his radio show this week.

Newsweek.com had an interesting take on Beck’s admission: “This is a major turnaround for the famously right-wing pundit who in 2009 said, ‘The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be president would be ‘What the hell you mean we’re out of missiles?”’

In a perfect world, it shouldn’t really matter what an entertainer thinks about such matters. This world isn’t perfect, quite obviously. So I guess it does matter that a talk-show personality who purports to speak for millions of listeners is willing to do an about-face on one of the more contentious issues of our time.

Who’s next? Rush?

Don’t bet the farm on that one.

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Kettle, meet pot

Dick Cheney’s latest rant against President Barack Obama’s foreign policy brings to mind a not-too-distant past debate about another president’s foreign policy.

The former vice president’s recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal reminds me of what Republicans said about what Democrats said about President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/dick-cheney-and-liz-cheney-the-collapsing-obama-doctrine-1403046522

Remember those bad old days?

President Bush — and, yes, Vice President Cheney — argued that the United States needed to topple Saddam Hussein. Their campaign to win congressional approval of their plan was based on a series of untruths, such as Saddam’s supposed involvement with the 9/11 attacks.

Well, some Democrats objected to us going to war in Iraq. Do you remember the Republican response? Why, if you criticize a president’s foreign policy, particularly when it involves war or potential war, you embolden the enemy, the GOP said. We must speak with one voice. Partisanship ends at the water’s edge, yes?

Yes, many Democrats were indelicate in their criticism at the time. In fact, many Republicans spoke reasonably in trying to tamp down the dissension here at home as we prepared to go to war.

Now the shoe is on the other proverbial foot. President Obama has withdrawn our troops from Iraq and is preparing to do the same in Afghanistan. Iraq is erupting into sectarian violence.

Who’s leading the criticism of a Democratic president? None other than the former Republican vice president, Richard Bruce Cheney.

His absolute lack of self-awareness, his complete amnesia on what he and other Republicans said a decade ago to similar criticism and his nonsensical defense of a policy that killed more than 4,000 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqis is simply stunning.

I hate to think Dick Cheney has lost his mind.

However …

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Cheney's hubris is astounding

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Listening to former Vice President Dick Cheney blast President Obama over his Iraq policy is like listening to — and I’ll have to give credit to a former editor of mine for this one — Xaviera “Happy Hooker” Hollander lecture us on chastity.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/obama-briefs-top-lawmakers-options-iraq-n134626

Cheney co-wrote with his daughter Liz an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he blamed Obama for the mess that has erupted in Iraq.

This man continues to spew nonsense with absolutely zero trace of self-awareness of his own role in creating the monster that is now roaring loudly across Iraq.

It was Cheney and President Bush who sold the world a bill of goods on Saddam Hussein’s bogus role in the 9/11 attacks; on his goal of developing nuclear weapons; of his possession of “weapons of mass destruction”; of how Iraqis would greet U.S. forces as “liberators” after they breezed into Baghdad.

Yet the former VP fails to recognize any complicity in the turmoil that has erupted in the country we occupied for nearly a decade.

And what did Republicans say in 2003 when Democrats criticized President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq? Oh, yes. They said such criticism gave aid and comfort to the enemy. Hmmm. Is that notion now off the table?

What in the world does it take to persuade this chicken hawk to shut his pie hole and follow the lead of the president he served for eight years? George W. Bush — following the lead of his own father, George H.W. Bush — has taken a vow of silence on the policies of his successor. I am quite certain “W” has plenty of thoughts on where he believes President Obama has gone wrong. That’s fine. He’s entitled.

However, President Bush recognizes we have one commander in chief at a time. If only the vice president who called so many of the shots in his own administration would come to the same recognition.

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Working with an enemy … or a friend?

Good grief. My head is spinning over this bit of news out of the Middle East.

Iraq’s crisis — with Sunni Muslims seeking to overthrow the Shiite government in Baghdad — has prompted the possibility of the United States working (get ready for this one!) the Islamic Republic of Iran to find a possible diplomatic solution.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/209560-should-us-work-with-iran

How does that saying go, the one about “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”?

The Sunnis want their country back. They ran Iraq for decades under the ham-handed rule of Saddam Hussein. The United States invaded in March 2003, overthrew Saddam, who then was hanged.

Iraq then elected a Shiite government, friendlier to next-door neighbor Iran.

The Sunnis now have erupted, vowing to retake Iraq. Iran doesn’t want that, of course. It fought a bloody war to a stalemate against Saddam Hussein’s forces in the 1980s. The Shiites in Tehran oppose vigorously any idea that the Sunnis would take control in Baghdad.

Oh, and then there’s little issue of Iran despising the “Great Satan,” which in Tehran is also known as the United States of America. We’ve had no bilateral relations with Iran since those “students” overran our embassy in November 1979 and held those Americans captive for 444 days.

But in this instance, there might be some mutual advantage in seeking to stop the Sunni advance in Iraq. The Iranians want the Sunnis to fail, as does the United States, which has a serious stake in preserving the government it helped form in Iraq.

Should the United States reach out to its current enemy, Iran, in trying to broker a deal that ends the crisis in Iraq?

Yes, but only if the Iranians can be held to the tightest terms possible to ensure that they deal in good faith. Is that possible? Give it a try to make that call.

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Let's avoid the 'vain' epithet

There’s a phrase that sends me into orbit every time I hear it.

It comes from those who don’t know better, often from those who’ve never answered their nation’s call to place themselves in harm’s way.

The phrase is likely to resurface in the weeks or months ahead if the situation in Iraq goes completely south and the Sunni insurgents take control of the country.

It will come out like this: “All those servicemen and women we lost in Iraq will have died in vain.”

That is the most preposterous, insulting, degrading and unpatriotic thing one can say about a fallen warrior.

Whatever happens in the conflict that has erupted in Iraq, none of those nearly 4,500 brave Americans lost during the Iraq War will have died in vain.

When someone wears their uniform and receives a lawful order to go into battle, he or she is acting on behalf of the rest of us back home. That individual is conducting himself or herself as honorably as is humanly possible.

To suggest that an individual dies “in vain” because of a failed strategy, or set of policies or even a battlefield tactic demeans the service they performed.

The Vietnam War produced a lot of that kind of empty rhetoric. It’s been said many times over many decades now that the 58,000 individuals who gave their all in Vietnam died “in vain.” They did not. They died in service to their country.

I’m quite sure some folks will quibble with what “dying in vain” really means. They’ll seek to parse the language and suggest they mean no disrespect to the fallen when they say such things.

Me? I take it as an insult in the extreme.

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No troops to Iraq? Good news

Imagine for a moment a situation in the White House, around April 1975.

North Vietnam is sending thousands of troops into South Vietnam. The United States has ended its role in that country by pulling its troops out. The South Vietnamese are left to defend themselves. They’re doing a lousy job of it.

NVA forces are storming toward Saigon and other key cities in the south. Gerald Ford’s national security team comes to him and says, “Mr. President, we have to send our troops back into South Vietnam to save that country from being conquered by the North. What’s your call, sir?”

Do you think the president ever would have given a moment of serious thought to such an idea? Hardly. President Ford didn’t do any of that. Heck, I seriously doubt that option ever was on the table.

It shouldn’t be now as Iraq fights to preserve its hard-won transition from ham-handed dictatorship to some form of democratic rule.

And that is why President Obama is correct to assert that our future involvement will not involve sending troops back to the battlefield.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/obama-we-will-do-our-part-iraq-wont-send-troops-n130536

The president today laid down an important marker for Iraq. “Over the past decade, American troops have made extraordinary sacrifices,” he said. “Any actions that we may take to provide assistance to Iraqi security forces have to be joined by a serious and sincere effort by Iraq.

The chaos “should be a wakeup call to Iraq’s leaders,” he said, and “could pose a threat eventually to American interests as well.”

Are there some military options available? Perhaps, but they should involve air power only and perhaps only in the form of unmanned aircraft, drones, that could be deployed to fire heavy ordnance at the bad guys who are seeking to take control of the country.

Americans’ “extraordinary sacrifices” included thousands of dead and wounded. The country has no appetite for more war. However, we must do “our part,” as the president said, in trying to secure a country that may be headed for the brink.