Hey,
Previously I gave my thoughts about what impacts the new administration would have on our involvement here. I said that militarily things would not change that much but I was mainly worried about the negative impacts of his socialist policies. Here is my latest view point.
Here in Iraq we are starting to feel the effects of going from the main effort (top priority) to third (behind the economy and Afghanistan). I understand shifting priorities and am OK with that. Things here are much better than they were over the last few years.
The main concern I have militarily is the political stand of trying to look like the “good guy” by blaming the military or “taking responsibility” for what goes wrong and then later restricting military action thereby making us ineffective. In Vietnam there were times when our guys were not allowed to shoot back at the enemy. It is proper to be responsible for our actions as well as avoid hurting civilians. However, we in the military cannot accomplish missions if we are held to impossible standards and sold out for short term political gains.
Below are two articles, one from the New York Post and the other from the Wall Street Journal. These are examples of what I am worried about. Of course I am just saying this as a concerned citizen and not as an Army Officer. Officially I support the administration and will do my best to carry out my duties in accordance with the guidance I have been given.
A High-Ranking Army Officer (Name Withheld)
New York Post
May 8, 2009
The Casualty Con
Bam Falling For Taliban Tricks
By Ralph Peters
THE most effective weapon terrorists have found to wield against us isn't the headline-grabbing suicide bomber or even the deadly roadside bomb, the IED.
Such weapons can harm us, but they can't stop us. Terror's super-weapon is the lie.
Lying about civilian casualties is the one sure way to impede or even halt US (or Israeli) operations, to force such tight restrictions on our troops that they can't win.
The casualty con's so effective as both propaganda and tactic that terrorists everywhere have adopted the technique. It's been so successful that our enemies long ago transitioned to the next phase: creating civilian casualties and blaming us.
It works. The media love the charge. Our troops and pilots are always guilty -- even if proven innocent. Because so many on the left want us to be guilty.
Few journalists bother to investigate. If the Taliban, al Qaeda, Hezbollah or Hamas says it, it must be so. In Media Wonderland, terrorists never lie. Now every successful strike on a Taliban target generates the instant claim that the dead were all civilians.
And it isn't just the media who back the Taliban. The Obama administration -- a case study in instant foreign-policy ineptitude -- signs up, too.
This week, Taliban terrorists publicly beheaded three civilians in Afghanistan's Farah province, then herded women and children into compounds from which they fought government forces and US advisers.
With a vicious ground battle under way, the Talibs knew attack aircraft would appear. According to military sources, they set up the target. And, just in case, they slaughtered those women and children with grenades before any aircraft appeared. The entire massacre was a planned media event.
And who gets blamed? Not the Taliban. Before the smoke cleared, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was apologizing. (Apologizing is one thing this administration does with real enthusiasm.)
Our SecState played right into the Taliban's hands. It was instinctive on her part. Clinton and her new Cabinet peers know that our military's evil. No need to say a single word about the Taliban's atrocity.
A few hours later, President Obama stepped up to his mike and read a prewritten statement about his meeting with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan's bookie-in-chief, President Asif Ali Zardari.
We'd need to comb the historical records, but it's just possible that no American president ever read a statement so out of touch with on-the-ground reality. The platitudes were thick, the substance was thin and the vision was pure fantasy.
No criticism of Karzai for consistently playing the populist card and backing Taliban claims. No criticism of Zardari for cowering while the Taliban overruns his country and its huge military twiddles its thumbs, dreaming of a war with India.
No, our president announced that he's going to bring civilian resources to bear now, sending $1.5 billion a year to Pakistan. Yet self-impoverished Pakistan has more than 170 million angry Muslims. Our president's going to make them our pals for an annual nine bucks a head?
It wouldn't matter if we poured in $90K for every Pak. Multi-year development projects are useless against an insurgency that's 60 miles from the capital. We're turning a home fire extinguisher on an inferno.
The Pakistanis have to fight. If they're not willing to fight to save their own country, there's nothing we can do.
Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan, the Taliban strategy of creating civilian casualties -- and lying about who the casualties are -- is undercutting any potential effectiveness of the 21,000 more troops we're sending to that worthless, hopeless country.
At the end of the day, the Taliban strategy works because our own government sides with the terrorists against our troops.
Instead of begging for forgiveness, Clinton needed to take a firm position. She should have said: "The deaths in Farah province were entirely the fault of the Taliban. To punish these terrorists and better protect Afghan civilians, we're loosening our rules of engagement. We will not tolerate this cynical use of women and children as unwilling weapons of war. These war criminals will be hunted down and killed."
Instead, Hillary blamed our military. Again.
This is war, Madame Secretary. Tragic mistakes happen, but the incident in Farah province wasn't an error -- it was a brutal, cynical set-up. And you stabbed our troops in the back. Again.
If the Obama administration doesn't want to fight, it should bring our troops home now. And let's see how much good those civilian-aid workers do.
Ralph Peters is Fox News' strategic analyst and the author of "Looking for Trouble."
Wall Street Journal
May 8, 2009
Pg. 11
Photos That Could Cost Lives
There is nothing to be learned from more images of detainee abuse.
By David K. Rebhein
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but is it worth the death of a single American soldier? Is any photograph worth the life of your Marine Corps daughter? Or your neighbor's deployed husband?
I would like to concede that these are tough questions, but they are really quite simple. The answer is a resounding "No." Releasing photographs of alleged or actual detainee abuse in the War on Terrorism is not worth the life of a single American. Of course, as some have noted, the incidents at Abu Ghraib have already endangered our troops. So did any orders and policies that may have led to those incidents. But what is to be accomplished by continuing to provide ammunition and provocation to the enemy?
At issue is the Pentagon's decision -- in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) -- to release a "substantial number" of images depicting the treatment of detainees by May 28 after being ordered by a judge on the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to do so. But given the riots that occurred after the release of the first round of Abu Ghraib photos and the enemy's penchant for using such images for propaganda and recruiting purposes, the Defense Department owes it to the soldiers to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to block the release of these photos.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, voiced his concern about the dangers of releasing photos in 2005. "It is probable that al Qaeda and other groups will seize upon these images and videos as grist for their propaganda mill, which will result in, besides violent attacks, increased terrorist recruitment, continued financial support and exacerbation of tensions between Iraqi and Afghani populaces and U.S. and coalition forces," he said in a statement in support of the Pentagon's efforts to oppose the ACLU's request. He added, "riots, violence and attacks by insurgents will result."
I was deeply disturbed by the images of Abu Ghraib. The military, however, has investigated the abuses and punished those involved. Moreover, the photographs that are now about to be released are already being used for investigative purposes. Other than self-flagellation by certain Americans, riots and future terrorist acts, what else do people expect will come from the release of these photographs?
This is not so much a matter of "the people's right to know" as it is a matter of needlessly endangering the lives of our brave troops -- 99% of whom have had no role in any interrogations or allegations of detainee abuse.
As commander of the nation's largest veterans service organization, I have had the honor to present Blue Star Banners to military families, with the Blue Star signifying the deployment of a service member. It is always a moving experience. But it is the Gold Star Banner, the star that signifies the death of a service member in war, that I never hope to present. I fear that there will be many Gold Stars as a result of this misbegotten policy.
Mr. Rehbein is national commander of the American Legion.
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