Tag Archives: war on terror

International news, military news

Will the president recognize his Afghan reversal?

Donald John Trump is preparing to speak to the nation tonight about Afghanistan. The word that’s being reported is that the president is planning to announce the addition of several thousand more troops to the conflict that’s been raging for the past 16 years.

The president is getting high marks for recognizing the difference between campaigning and governing. Indeed, President Barack Obama campaigned for office pledging to close the terrorist internment camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the camp is still open.

Trump has been a huuuuge critic of the Afghan War. He tweeted repeatedly prior to and during his presidential campaign that the war is a lost cause, that we shouldn’t shed any more American blood in Afghanistan.

Now he’s the commander in chief. He’s expected now to say something quite different from what he said while campaigning for the job.

Will the president take a moment tonight to acknowledge that maybe — just maybe — he might have been incorrect in his prior world view? Might he concede finally that he didn’t see the picture as completely as he does now?

That’s what grownups do. They atone for previous statements.

What’s more, my hope — if not my expectation — is that the president will accept responsibility for any potential setbacks that occur once the troops are deployed to Afghanistan. Will he, as commander in chief, realize that he is ultimately responsible for any result stemming from the decisions he makes — be they good or bad?

The record to this point doesn’t portend much maturity coming from the president.

I hope I am wrong.

International news

Good vs. evil ‘has nothing to do with religion’

Great day in the morning! Could it be that the Trump administration finally is awakening to the reality of what this “global war on terrorism” is all about?

Donald J. Trump stood before a large room full of Muslim heads of state, potentates, kings and crown princes and spoke for 35 minutes without uttering the words “radical Islamic terrorism.”

Instead, he framed the fight against international terror in much the same language used by his two immediate predecessors — Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack H. Obama — as a war of “good vs. evil.”

Then up stepped Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to say that the conflict between our side and the other side “has nothing to do with religion.”

Really! He said that. He echoed the long-awaited and much-belated message the president delivered.

I hope hell hasn’t frozen over. I hope Earth will continue to spin on its axis. I trust the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning — and beyond.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/334474-tillerson-in-saudi-arabia-this-is-a-fight-of-good-against-evil

“And I think the context of all of this where the President begins his journey here at the home of the Muslim faith under the leadership of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosque – this great faith, the Muslims – then to travel to the home of Judaism and then to the great leader of Christianity, that the President is clearly indicating that this fight of good against evil has nothing to do with religion,” Tillerson said in a press conference after the president’s speech.

Trump and his team have sounded alarmingly bellicose ever since the billionaire business mogul entered politics by running for the presidency. He once pledged to ban “all Muslims” from entering the United States. While running for office, Trump said “Islam hates America.” Once elected, he sought to impose a travel ban on refugees fleeing certain Muslim countries; that effort is tied up in the federal court system that has ruled it unconstitutional.

Today, the president sounded quite different as it regards this war against terror.

The religious perversion that has overcome the monsters who purport to be Muslim too often gets lost in the United States. Too many Americans have taken the bait that “Islam” is the enemy. It is no such thing. The enemy are those who commit these heinous acts around the world — mostly against Muslims — in the name of a great religion.

President Bush made that point immediately after 9/11. President Obama continued to recite that mantra, often to criticism that he was a “Muslim terrorist sympathizer.”

I doubt we’ll hear any such fecal matter coming from those who continue to support Donald John Trump. Nor should we ever have heard it.

International news, political news

French fight back against fear

Is there a lesson to be learned from the French presidential election?

Oui!

It is that terror need not sway an informed electorate.

Moderate centrist Emmanuel Macron today became the youngest person ever elected president of France, defeating far-right extremist Marine Le Pen. It was Le Pen who sought to parlay certain elements of fright into an electoral victory. The source of that fear and loathing was the spasm of terrorist violence that has befallen France since 9/11.

France answers the call

Macron sought a different course for France. He wants to keep his country involved with the rest of Europe and the world, unlike Le Pen, who sought to retreat into a “France-first” dogma that mirrors much of what helped propel Donald J. Trump to victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Trump called for a ban on Muslims seeking to enter the United States; he wants to build that wall along our southern border; he is seeking to restrict travel of refugees fleeing several majority-Muslim countries. Why? Because he wants Americans to live in fear of further terrorist attacks.

The French know all about the horror of radical Islamic terrorism. Yet they rejected Le Pen’s platform of retreat.

And if you think about it, France’s decision to go with Macron mirrors earlier presidential elections in The Netherlands and Austria, where voters turned back isolationist presidential candidacies in favor of continued engagement.

I wrote in an earlier blog about how the paltry voter turnout in Amarillo shouldn’t be interpreted as a “mandate” for sweeping change at City Hall.

Get a load of this: Seventy-four percent of France’s registered voters turned out to give Macron a 30-percentage-point victory over Le Pen.

I would call that a mandate.

International news, military news, national news, political news

One person’s ‘serious mistake’ is OK; another deserves to be ‘locked up’

petraeus

I’m trying to keep all this straight. Man, it’s a struggle.

David Petraeus, a retired U.S. Army general and former head of the CIA, admitted to sharing classified information with his mistress. He paid a hefty price politically for it; he resigned as the nation’s top spook.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, while serving as secretary of state, used a personal e-mail server. She was accused by her political foes of letting classified information get out where it shouldn’t belong. She lost the presidential election amid calls from Donald J. Trump, the man who defeated her, that she should be jailed for unspecified and unproven allegations of wrongdoing.

Petraeus, though, is now being considered for secretary of state by the very same man — Donald Trump — who said Clinton needed to be tossed into the slammer.

What gives?

I don’t doubt Petraeus’s tremendous service to the country while he wore the Army uniform. He commanded our fighting personnel in this difficult struggle against international terror organizations.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/petraeus-mishandling-classified-information-i-made-serious-mistake-n691721

I am just having difficulty processing how one person can admit to doing something illegal but still be considered for high office and other one can be only accused by her political opponents of breaking the law and be scorned.

International news, military news, national news

Say it again, Trump: ISIS is ‘winning’ … seriously?

adnani

Abu Muhammad al-Adnani is dead — reportedly.

Who is this guy, Adnani? Oh, he’s the No. 2 man in the Islamic State hierarchy. He’s one of the founders of ISIS. He’s believed to be the mastermind behind the recent terrorist attack in Paris.

Adnani apparently bought it in Aleppo, Syria, according to ISIS’s media arm.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/world/middleeast/al-adnani-islamic-state-isis-syria.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

This is a big deal, man. A real big deal, in fact.

It’s not clear yet how Adnani was killed. Was it an air strike by a manned jet fighter with an American or allied pilot at the stick? Was it by a drone strike?

Does this mean the end of the Islamic State? No.

However, it suggests — presuming Adnani’s death can be confirmed — that ISIS is in serious trouble.

Why mention this today? Well, we keep hearing from Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, that ISIS is “winning,” that U.S. forces can’t defeat this Islamic terrorist organization because the commander in chief, Barack Obama, refuses to link the terror organization to the religion it purports to represent.

Let’s review for a brief moment.

Osama bin Laden is dead; drone strikes have taken out al-Qaeda and ISIS leaders throughout the Middle East; our special operations forces — Navy SEALs, Army Delta Force commandos and CIA operatives — are on the hunt constantly for the terrorist monsters.

We’re killing bad guys almost daily.

When we take out leaders of the Islamic State brain trust — such as Abu Muhammad al-Adnani — that’s a really big deal.

The fight will go on. Can we declare victory yet? Of course not. It is my sense, though, that we’re a lot closer to that moment than we were on 9/11.

International news, military news

Newt proposes going to war against Islam

the_crux_of_our_endless_war_on_terror

President George W. Bush stood firm and resolute in the days after 9/11 and declared — without equivocation — that America would not go to war “against Islam.”

Our enemy, he told a grief-stricken nation, are the religious perverts who acted in the name of a mainstream religion.

Then we went to war against terrorists.

President Barack Obama came into office eight years later and said the same thing. He has followed through on President Bush’s declaration. Yet those who condemn Barack Obama’s strategy choose to ignore the war policies enacted by his immediate predecessor in the White House.

So, what does a one-time congressional leader and former candidate for president of the United States want to do? He wants to go to war against Islam. Newt Gingrich said last night the nation needs to apply “tests” to Muslims to determine if they believe in Sharia law, which he said is incompatible with “western civilization.”

The former speaker of the House has given the radical Islamists a lead-pipe-cinch recruitment tool. He has just delivered to them all the evidence many of the terrorists need to justify their jihad against the United States and our many allies around the world.

Two presidents — one Republican and one Democrat — who’ve been up to their armpits in this on-going war against radical Islamic terrorists have laid down an important marker that Newt Gingrich has declared no longer matters.

Suffice to say, at least, that Newt no longer is in a position to turn his shrill rhetoric into public policy.

Thank goodness, at least, for that reality.

International news

Terrorist tragedy hits France yet again

BBulElR

France and its heroic citizens are grieving yet again.

This time the terrorist — or terrorists — employed a new and ghastly method of delivering death and destruction.

It came tonight in the form of a truck that plowed into a crowd of revelers celebrating Bastille Day, which is France’s independence day.

As I am writing this brief blog post, the death count stands at 80. Officials, though, think that number will increase.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/truck-attacker-kills-up-to-80-in-nice-bastille-day-crowd/ar-BBulpVJ?li=BBnb7Kz

The world is shocked and in grief over the tragedy that struck in Nice.

World leaders are issuing the appropriate expressions of condemnation.

What now?

It’s not yet clear whether the driver of the truck was from the Islamic State or al-Qaeda. Officials can’t ask him, because French police opened fire on the vehicle and killed the driver in the hail of bullets.

My sense is that we’ll know pretty damn soon just who this guy was and for which organization he was working — if it turns out he was a terrorist agent.

U.S. officials earlier today confirmed that Omar the Chechen indeed was killed this past spring in a U.S.-led attack on ISIS forces in Iraq. No one, quite naturally, believes Omar the Chechen’s death spells the end of ISIS, given that he was a top-tier commander of the terrorist organization.

This is the kind of “war” the world is fighting against these radical Islamist monsters. They attack so-called “soft targets,” causing uncontrollable fear among their victims. Is it at all possible to detect every single attack before it occurs?

As we’ve learned to our horror once again, the world is fighting a cunning and ruthless enemy.

What’s more, the world has received yet another stern lesson on the need to hit the terrorists hard — and keep hitting them hard for as long as it takes.

International news, military news, national news

So long, Omar the Chechen

th

Omar the Chechen is dead.

It took a while to confirm that the Islamic State leader had bought it in a U.S.-led attack, but the terrorist group has confirmed The Chechen’s death.

So, what does this mean?

To me, it means a couple of things.

First, it signals that our efforts to eliminate terrorist leaders is gaining ground. The U.S. military — the one that some politicians keep saying is “losing” — is showing that it remains quite a capable fighting force.

Second, The Chechen’s death should not be seen as a final “victory” in this ongoing war against the despicable terrorist organization. It only means that we must keep up the fight and must pursue the enemy — in the worlds of one-time GOP presidential nominee John McCain — “to the gates of hell” if need be.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/islamic-state-says-senior-commander-killed-in-iraq/

Omar al-Shishani was born in what was once known as the Soviet Union. He was just 30 years of age.

The fight must go on. There likely will be another madman who’ll step into Omar the Chechen’s shoes.

His death, though, does suggest that ISIS has suffered yet another in a lengthening string of key tactical defeats.

Let there be many more of them.

International news, military news

U.S. redoubles efforts to protect civilian lives

drone strikes

U.S. drone strikes have killed perhaps as many as 116 civilians since 2009, according to the White House.

What, then, is the response from the commander in chief, Barack Obama? He issued an executive order today that redoubles our military’s efforts to avoid killing civilians in future drone strikes.

I can hear it now from critics of the president.

* He’s soft on terrorists.

* Obama isn’t really committed to killing Islamic killers.

* We’re trying to conduct a “politically correct” air war against these monsters.

It’s all crap!

What the executive order signifies to me is that we’re better than the bad guys, who actually target civilians. They seek to go after so-called “soft targets” at airport terminals, train stations, shopping malls, schools, residential neighborhoods.

Our aim in launching these manned and unmanned air strikes has been to take out military targets — which we are doing with considerable effectiveness.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/white-house-at-least-64-to-116-civilians-killed-in-drone-strikes-since-2009/ar-AAhRCSZ

The White House figures are at odds with some independent estimates of civilian deaths, which place the number a good bit greater.

However, let us not give short shrift to U.S. military policy that seeks to minimize these deaths.

Sure, we didn’t always follow that doctrine. U.S. aerial bombardments during World War II targeted civilian population centers specifically. But that was then.

We are able in this modern age to launch air strikes with remarkable precision and accuracy. Are they always successful? Are we able to carry these strikes without inflicting death and injury on civilians? Of course not.

We shouldn’t change our standards to match the barbarism committed by our enemies.

International news

Turks now feel brunt of ISIS’s monstrous wrath

AAhKMUE

Horror has struck again at a major international air terminal.

This time it’s in Istanbul, Turkey, home of the third-busiest airport in Europe, where 41 people were killed when Islamic State suicide terrorists opened fire and detonated explosives.

With each attack against a nation either in the Middle East or on its fringes — as Turkey is — the roster of nations aggrieved by ISIS grows.

The Turks have been on the front row of this fight since ISIS first surfaced in neighboring Syria. They’ve been a valuable ally of the United States in our own effort to eradicate the monstrous Islamic cult that has brought so much misery to the region and the world.

With each of these attacks, we see a redoubling of commitment by the nations that have been struck to do more to wage war against ISIS.

Jordanian citizens were killed by ISIS, so King Abdullah ordered a ratcheting up of air strikes by his country’s air force. Saudi Arabia has joined the fight as well. Russia witnessed one of its jetliners blown out of the sky and it, too, launched air strikes — ostensibly against ISIS targets in Syria.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/islamic-state-prime-suspect-after-suicide-bombers-kill-41-at-istanbul-airport/ar-AAhJukV?li=BBnb7Kz

This attack on Turkey ought to bring a fearsome and formidable new ally into a ramped-up effort against the terror cult.

Those of us on the fringes of this fight cannot know for certain what the Turks have done already to strike back against ISIS.

Many more families now are grieving the loss of loved ones because of these monsters.

A glimmer of hope, though, does shine through with the anticipation of yet another critical and powerful ally getting even more serious in this on-going battle to eradicate this hideous international menace.