It is not clear what the President meant when he said, “Ending the war was in our interest.” First, wars just don’t end. They are a win, a loss, or a draw. By implying that he simply “ended” the war by just following a plan – as if he were imposing a managerial solution over a public policy problem – Obama gave the American people a very a simplistic and wrongheaded notion of war. No plan survives contact with the enemy. Obama ought to understand this better than anyone. After …
“Operation Iraqi Freedom ends on your watch!” exclaimed Col. John Norris of the the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, as the final U.S. combat brigade crossed into Kuwait from Iraq early this morning. “Hooah!” his soldiers roared back. Norris later told The Washington Post: “They’re leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their hearts.” By the end of August the United States will still have about 50,000 troops in six brigades in Iraq. These “advise and assist brigades” will be primarily tasked with training …
Yesterday, on Larry King Live, Vice President Joe Biden stated that the Iraq war could be one of the greatest successes of the Obama Administration. That is quite a shift of opinion. Considering that the success of Iraq is largely due to the “surge” that was ordered by President Bush and President Barack Obama and Biden have been the chief critics of the surge. In 2007 then Senator Barack Obama said that the surge would not work. In fact, he stated in an MSNBC interview that the surge would actually …
When President George Bush made the case for the surge in Iraq in January 2007, he made it clear to the Iraqi people and our allies abroad that he would not bow to domestic political pressures by setting a date for troop withdrawal. President Barack Obama has chosen a different path, explicitly naming a July 2011 retreat date in the sentence immediately following his troop increase announcement. So how does Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spin this pre-retreat to our allies: It should be clear to everyone that — unlike …
On March 27th, President Barack Obama followed through on one of his core campaign promises and announced a New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that included sending an additional 21,000 troops to the region. Speaking from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Obama explained: “Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the United States homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban — or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged — that country will again be a …
Yesterday Iraqis celebrated a new national holiday, National Sovereignty Day, which marked the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities. This partial pullback, which is a vindication of the Bush Administration’s surge strategy, has gone relatively unnoticed in Washington, perhaps because many members of the Obama Administration opposed the surge and remain ambivalent about progress in Iraq. Thanks to Bush’s surge, which enabled an Iraqi surge, violence in Iraq is down by 90 percent from its peak in 2007. Iraqi security forces have made great strides in improving their …
Gen. David Petraeus, former commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq and soon-to-be commander of U.S. Central Command, spoke at Heritage this morning. The full video of his presentation is available below. Live Videos by Ustream UPDATE — Oct. 9, 2:25 p.m. For those of you who had a hard time reading the PowerPoint presentation on the screen, we’ve embedded it below. Gen. David Petraeus Presentation At Heritage View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: military surge)
Yesterday the Pentagon released a mandated report to Congress titles: “Measuring Security And Stability In Iraq.” According to the report: “Security incidents are now at the lowest levels in over four-and-a-half years, instilling in the Iraqi people a sense of normalcy that permits them to engage in personal, religious, and civic life without an inordinate threat of violence.” The American people have begun to notice that we are winning in Iraq. While the report also stresses, the military’s gains in Iraq are “reversible and uneven.” Nevertheless, according to Rasmussen Reports …
The Senate today is slated to consider the 2009 Defense Authorization bill, S-3001, a $612.5 billion measure that would authorize spending for national security programs in the Defense and Energy departments. The legislation authorizes the Pentagon to spend $70 billion to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 and would authorize a 3.9 percent pay raise for military personnel, in addition to funding other programs. One of the proposed 250 amendments to the bill, authored by Senator Joseph Lieberman, is likely to be …
Here is what’s happening this week in Washington: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBO_SV-cgF0 [/youtube] Sixteen months ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the surge in Iraq “is not accomplishing anything.” Today there is almost unanimous agreement that the surge has been a tremendous success. Ben Lieberman and Nick Loris wrote this week that Congress should not repeat the mistakes of the 1970s in energy policy. There are many energy bills currently pending before Congress, and they fall into two general categories: Those that seek to increase domestic energy supplies. Those that seek scapegoats …
