George Rebane
It is hard to believe that someone can be elected to the highest office in the world, spend six years in the most expensive learn-while-you-earn educational program, and come out a reprobate dunce. The man has the consistent counsel of countless advisers ranging from lackeys to bureau heads, department secretaries, and the Pentagon’s military braintrust. They all tell him that ISIS is now subsuming Al Qaeda, and will most certainly deliver on its promise to launch attacks on our homeland.
ISIS is no longer simply a ‘terror organization’. It rules a large multi-national territory, is rapidly enlarging its army of fighters, has acquired modern arms, money, fungible natural resources, allies, and religious zeal second to none. ISIS, now calling itself the Islamic State or simply The Caliphate, has laid out its objectives and strategy the achievement and terrible execution of which it has and continues to demonstrate in the field.
As all this unfolds, America has the moral equivalent of Stalin huddling under a coffee table during the week after Hitler’s launch of Operation Barbarossa in 1941. We also have two so-called allies in the region – one feckless (Maliki’s Iraq) and one we’ve f@^ked over (the Kurdish Peshmerga) but still eager to fight – allies who today will not or cannot stop ISIS. Our president dithers in arming the Peshmerga while waiting for Maliki to put together an appropriately “inclusive government” in Baghdad, which BTW is now surrounded by ISIS – the Iraqi government’s influence ends at Baghdad’s city limits.
So here we prevaricate, monitor opinion polls, and tremble while the broader war between Islam and the west takes on a new and terrible dimension. And our leader, who has sworn to defend America, cannot muster the will to launch a full scale attack on ISIS, and demonstrate that if you promise to kill us in our country and are gathering the wherewithal to carry out your promise, then we will do our best to visibly destroy you with all the means at our disposal. What happened to JFK’s “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge—and more.”?
For our survival we don’t wait for permission from foreign rulers, we don’t wait until “inclusive governments” are formed according to some arbitrary notions, and we don’t wait for favorable polls from an electorate that knows little of what is happening where. That is why we were given a Constitution and a republican government.
I believe I’m not the only one in America who wants the president to act forcefully against an enemy that is the modern equivalent of the Mongol hordes in its ferocity, terror, and determination – an enemy that shares not a shred of our values. However, if any deem me to be some lonely outlier (a constant theme among our lightely read progressive brethren), then I’ll gladly wear the mantle with the embroidered ‘Rebane Doctrine’ on its back.
[11aug14 update] It’s as if someone at the WSJ has been reading RR ;-) Today the paper points out that three prominent Democrats – “James Steinberg, formerly the President's Deputy Secretary of State, and Robert Ford, formerly his Ambassador to Syria, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, formerly his loyal Secretary of State” – have taken Obama’s foreign policy to task. It’s interesting to note that all three were instrumental in executing the Obama Doctrine before leaving the administration (more here).
But the real scary read is the recent report by the National Defense Panel co-chaired by William Perry (Clinton’s SecDef) and Gen John Abizaid (CENTCOM commander 2003-07). They calmly conclude that the defense budget cuts under Obama have essentially left the nation naked against fulfilling its overseas military commitments to allies, and more importantly to defend ourselves against a spectrum of likely foes ranging from ragheads to Russians. You can read for yourself the scope of the damage done by this president (here).
And finally I want to remind you again that America’s progressives continue believing that the US and the free world had nothing to fear from international communism, and the Cold War was all a ruse carefully concocted to transfer wealth from America’s middle class to the military-industrial complex during those decades. They are advising us that the same thing is now taking place with the false hyping of the danger presented by the growth of radical Islam.
[13aug14 update] Schadenfreude! Isn't it delightful to see the Dems, led by Hillary, landing direct hits on the CCO's foreign policy, and then getting their accuracy confirmed by supporting columns in the Washington Post and NYT along with desperate counters coming from the likes of David Axelrod?
rebanesruminations.com 
Leave a comment