Obama's "Libya: Days Not Weeks" Anniversary

The five month anniversary of Obama's first "Days Not Weeks" speech was last Thursday.



Sorry I missed it!



Cross posted at Say Anything

"Cost of War in Afghanistan will be Major Factor in Troop-Reduction Talks"

Obama's Proposed Afghan Air Force

This is your post Memorial Day "Oh, crap!" moment, brought to you by the Obama administration!

Of all the statistics that President Obama’s national security team will consider when it debates the size of forthcoming troop reductions in Afghanistan, the most influential number probably will not be how many insurgents have been killed or the amount of territory wrested from the Taliban, according to aides to those who will participate.

It will be the cost of the war.

Someone should tell the Commander in Chief, that when you have men and women on the battlefield, some dying for their country, this is not the time to "go cheap".

Military and civilian officials agree that the cost of the Afghan mission is staggering. The amount per deployed service member in Afghanistan, which the administration estimates at $1 million per year, is significantly higher than it was in Iraq because fuel and other supplies must be trucked into the landlocked nation, often through circuitous routes. Bases, meanwhile, have to be built from scratch.

Here's a clue for the Obama people:
A) Figure out what your objective is.
B) Figure out how you will accomplish your objective
C) Budget for that

Anything else will be like those commercials where the guy only buys part of a car, or a car without wheels because "it was all he could afford".

I have the feeling that this country in general and the military in particular "can't afford" this president.

H/T Memeorandum

Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

Casualties in Aghanistan Under Obama Exceed Those Under Eight Years of Bush

via Gateway Pundit

As was pointed out a little over a month ago (Staff Sgt.Brian Piercy Laid to Rest),July set a record for the most US casualties in Afghanistan in a single month, breaking the previous record that was set the month before in June, yet the MSM was for the most part conspicuous in their silence on the matter.

What a difference two years makes! A couple of years ago, every casualty in Iraq was front page news. Tallies of casualties could be seen on the front pages of newspapers, commentators would slowly recite the names of the fallen, even Doonesbury would print a list in the Sunday comics. It was Bush's war then, and people needed to see just how heartless he was wasting the precious lives of our service men and women over there!

Where is Code Pink? Where are the Cindy Sheehans of the Left? Why is no one camped out on the road to Martha's Vineyard, or his Hawaiian vacation villa, or the many golf courses he frequents? Is it that there are just too many of them? Or was it never really about the deaths of soldiers for the Left? Was it all just a crass excuse to try to gain and retain political power for themselves and their cronies by playing on our sympathies?

And now, that there have been more casualties in the last twenty months than were seen in eight years of George W. Bush, one would think that the same players, if their protests were genuine and sincere, would be every bit as vociferous against the current president as they were against the last president, wouldn't you?

As I stated in the post "Obama Has His Own Halliburton":

It was always my contention that nearly every criticism of Bush during the Iraqi war could have been leveled at Clinton in the Balkans but wasn't. Expect the same deafening silence from those who did not criticize Halliburton under Clinton, criticized it under Bush and will fall silent once again for this Democrat President under the sheer weight of their own hypocrisy!

I haven't heard a snarky reference to Halliburton and Bush in...nearly minutes!
War involves casualties. Each and every loss of American service men or innocent civilians is a tragedy in its own right. But, in the interest of honesty, isn't this hypocrisy writ large when the so called "anti-war" movement is absent under Clinton, vociferous under Bush and silent again under Obama?

Cross posted at: Lady Cincinnatus, Left Coast Rebel, Say Anything

H/T Rob Port

Staff Sgt. Brian Piercy Laid to Rest

Rest in Peace

Staff Sgt. Brian Piercy was killed by an IED, just one month shy of the end of his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. He was laid to rest yesterday in his hometown of Clovis.

I first became aware of the story driving down to Fresno, when I started hearing about Sgt. Piercy's funeral on a local Fresno station. Sgt. Piercy was the ninth soldier from the small town of Clovis, California to give his life in either Iraq or Afghanistan. From Buchanan High School, where he graduated, three of his classmate from the class of 2001 suffered a similar fate. Seven in all from the same school.

From the Fresno Bee:

A soldier from Clovis who was within a month of completing his Army service was killed in Afghanistan on Monday, his brother said Tuesday.

Staff Sgt. Brian Piercy, 27, was killed during a foot patrol north of Kandahar when an improvised explosive device detonated, said his brother, David Piercy.

The Clovis solider, a 2001 Buchanan High School graduate, would have completed his second tour of Afghanistan in about 30 days and was planning to move back to California from North Carolina with his wife, Christina,

Fresno and Clovis are what some might consider "flyover country" between Sacramento and L.A. What is it about small towns in flyover country that instills a sense of honor and duty among its citizens?

"He believed in the values of the Army and in the mission of what he was doing in Afghanistan," -David Piercy, 35

A hushed silence filled Peoples Church on Friday as the montage of photographs traced Brian Piercy's life -- on Christmas Day, at the piano, with his brothers, in his Buchanan High School letterman's jacket, on his wedding day, in the military.

At each step in his short life, Piercy won friends and influenced people, those closest to him recounted.

A loyal friend and gifted musician who grew into a leader, Piercy was laid to rest in a quiet spot along an American flag-lined drive at the back of the Clovis Cemetery following his funeral at Peoples Church.

Piercy, a 27-year-old Army staff sergeant who served in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, died July 19 of injuries from an improvised explosive device set off in Afghanistan's Arghandab River Valley

And not to take away from the ultimate sacrifice that Brian Piercy made, but I learned another thing from the Fresno radio coverage: July set a record for the most US casualties in a single month, breaking the previous record that was set...last month. Let me ask you, those who look to the MSM for their news coverage: Did you know that June had set a record for the number of US casualties in Afghanistan? Neither did I. Look for equal coverage of the new record set back to back with the old one. To NPR's credit, they did post this:

In a summer of suffering, America's military death toll in Afghanistan is rising, with back-to-back record months for U.S. losses in the grinding conflict. All signs point to more bloodshed in the months ahead, straining the already shaky international support for the war.

Six more Americans were reported killed in fighting in the south — three Thursday and three Friday — pushing the U.S. death toll for July to a record 66 and surpassing June as the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the nearly nine-year war.

But, has this message permeated the MSM, or do you have to go searching for it to ferret it out?

What a difference two years makes! A couple of years ago, every casualty in Iraq was front page news. Tallies of casualties could be seen on the front pages of newspapers, commentators would slowly recite the names of the fallen, even Doonesbury would print a list in the Sunday comics. It was Bush's war then, and people needed to see just how heartless he was wasting the precious lives of our service men and women over there!

Where is Code Pink? Where are the Cindy Sheehans of the Left? Why is no one camped out on the road to Martha's Vineyard, or his Hawaiian vacation villa, or the many golf courses he frequents? Is it that there are just too many of them? Or was it never really about the deaths of soldiers for the Left? Was it all just a crass excuse to try to gain and retain political power for themselves and their cronies by playing on our sympathies?

Take a moment today to remember Staff Sgt. Brian Piercy and his family. They deserve the honor, the respect and the thanks of our country. And then, take a moment to ask yourself, if George Bush were still in the White House, do you think that record numbers of our soldiers dying in Afghanistan might have commanded a bit more attention than the subject is garnering under Barack H. Obama?

Wonder why that is?

Cross posted at Left Coast Rebel, Say Anything, Lady Cincinnatus

General Petraeus Rallies the Troops

"Protecting those we are here to help nonetheless does require killing, capturing or turning the insurgents. We will not shrink from that."

-General David Petraeus to the troops in Afghanistan.

KABUL, Afghanistan – "We are in this to win," Gen. David Petraeus said Sunday as he took the reins of an Afghan war effort troubled by waning support, an emboldened enemy, government corruption and a looming commitment to withdraw troops even with no sign of violence easing.

Petraeus, who pioneered the counterinsurgency strategy he now oversees in Afghanistan, has just months to show progress in turning back insurgents and convince both the Afghan people and neighboring countries that the U.S. is committed to preventing the country from again becoming a haven for al-Qaida and its terrorist allies.

"We are in this to win." Despite the carping of the Mooove On dot Org types, who called him "General Betray Us", Obama's tapping of someone who actually has the expertise to make that win happen, if he is not hamstrung from the top, may yet disappoint that far left wing of Obama's base that wants to see the American military suffer defeat.

Good for him.

Cross posted at Left Coast Rebel, Say Anything

Ronald Reagan on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day

A stirring tribute to the heroes of D-Day. Maybe the best thirteen minutes you'll spend all day!

H/T Weasel Zippers
Cross posted at Lady Cincinnatus, Left Coast Rebel, Say Anything

Remembering D-Day June 6, 1944

Sixty six years ago today, an amphibious invasion of over 160,000 troops took place at Normandy. The beaches, the skies and the countryside ran red with blood.
Over 425,000 men between the Allies and the Germans were either killed, wounded or were M.I.A.
It is said that war is diplomacy by other means. Let us pray that our diplomats have learned the lesson that tyranny cannot be appeased!

Cross posted at Lady Cincinnatus, Left Coast Rebel, Say Anything

Ron Paul, On Why he Should Never be President

Coincidentally, today seems to be "pick on Ron Paul day". It was not intentional.



Here we have the blind leading the blind! Don Imus calls the Israeli interdiction a "botched raid"*. Botched in what way? The ship was stopped, its murderous crew killed or captured, and the weapons cache, meager as it was (it could have been missiles) was kept out of the hands of individuals who would use them on Israeli civilians. I do not see how anything was "botched", other than the fact that the Israelis would have been justified in sinking the ship with all hands on board, risking no harm to their own men, but chose rather to let many of them live. (It would have been all of them, except for the armed resistance they met!)

In one breath, Paul calls himself a "non interventionist" (read: isolationist), who believes we should mind our own business and "worry about our borders."

In another breath, he says what Israel is doing is very much our business. He gets his facts wrong about an embargo on "food and medicine". The Israelis are allowing food and medicine. They just aren't allowing uninspected ships to to come and go, with possible cargoes of weapons of war.

He calls the blockade "atrocious", "an act of war". What? 4000 missiles fired into Israeli wasn't??? What planet has this guy been on lately?

"People are starving...almost like in concentration camps..." Why do I feel that Paul is pandering to his white supremacist friends here? Ron Paul is a champion for the constitution and has an impeccable record on all things domestic, but here he sounds like a member of the radical Left, comparing Jews to Nazis.

Imus gets it right. People are not "starving" because they did not receive the sling shots, or clubs or gas masks on the "humanitarian aid" ships.

Paul equivocates over Hamas being an "elected government". Well since you brought up the Nazis, Dr. Paul, I believe Hitler was elected, too! Does that mean that we should not have engaged them because they were a legitimately elected government? Please!

And for the CIA "rigging" elections...any thing in particular you'd like to share there, Dr. Paul?

I wonder if he sees any irony in saying that we should "worry about our borders", but object when Israel worries about theirs!

Additional irony: This video is posted on You Tube by someone who thinks Ron Paul should be President!

H/T Gateway Pundit

Cross posted at Left Coast Rebel, Say Anything

*Update: Jonah Goldberg referred to the action as "Israel’s botched raid of six “humanitarian” ships bound for Gaza". I personally don't see it, but maybe there's something I'm missing.

Update II:Saberpoint had this picture of a marketplace in Gaza from last December, that illustrates Dr. Paul's assertion that Gaza is like a "concentration camp".

Happy V-E Day!

Sixty five years ago in 1945, on this day, the Allies accepted the formal surrender of Germany's Third Reich.
If you know a WWII vet, thank him today!