His arrogance seems boundless. He is so convinced that we are stuck with him that he feels emboldened to threaten to join the Taliban himself. Our actions are partly to blame. Rather than provide our aid through his central government, such as it is, we have to start making end runs around Karzai and deal directly with the tribal leaders at the district and provincial levels. To the extent that we cut him out of the deal, we can prove to the Afghan people that we"re not his "enablers." We can offer a "third way," a practical alternative between the Karzai regime"s greed and corruption and the Taliban"s oppressive medieval rule. With cooperation at the local level, we might be able to bring about a peaceful, smoothly functioning society in which music is allowed, girls can go to school, and towns have clean water and electricity.
Meanwhile, relations with Pakistan, though frequently challenged from different quarters, are better now than at any other time since the low point of September 12, 2001. That"s when Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage threatened to bomb the country back to the Stone Age if it didn"t help us by turning against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Officially, the Pakistanis did indeed join our side; secretly, they continued to play both ends against the middle, especially through their intelligence agency, the ISI. When we invaded Afghanistan, the Pakistanis provided safe haven to terrorists who fled. There were two reasons for this behavior. First, preparing for when we would eventually leave Afghanistan, they wanted to stay on good terms with the Taliban; that would give them a friendly neighbor to their west, balanced against their dismal relationship with India to the east. Second, they needed the terrorists to become involved in their proxy war with India, especially in Kashmir.
But the monster has turned against its master. Our relations with the Pakistanis have been improving-not because of anything the Obama administration has done but because they"ve finally acknowledged that they have no control over the Pakistani Taliban. At last, they"ve seen the light: The most significant danger to the survival of their government and the security of their nuclear weapons is not India, the external threat, but the Pakistani Taliban, the threat right at home.
To be fair, the administration has certainly taken advantage of the Pakistanis" awakening and willingness to work more closely and effectively with America. It is often thanks to good intelligence from Pakistan that our drone strikes are so effective. Currently, we have several hundred Special Operations forces in the country working as advisers and trainers with the Pakistani army. We need more, if the Taliban is to be defeated, but progress is being made.
And there are still gaps in the increasing cooperation. In December 2009, seven of our CIA officers were killed in Khost, Afghanistan, by terrorists in the Haqqani network, which is based in North Waziristan, Pakistan. It was also in North Waziristan that Faisal Shahzad trained with the Pakistani Taliban. It gets more complicated. The Haqqani network is loyal to Mullah Omar, head of the Afghan Taliban. Should not our allies join with us in getting some payback in Waziristan for both the CIA murders and the Times Square attempt? They will not go after the Haqqani network for the simple reason that when we leave Afghanistan, they hope that the Afghan Taliban will return home and oppose Indian influence there. Obama"s announcement of a withdrawal date only encourages this kind of thinking. So our former fault lines with Pakistan may be opening again.
Moreover, even as we"ve been cooperating more with the country in many ways, the various terror groups, unfortunately, have also been cooperating more with one another, sharing resources and capabilities. Greater numbers of them are engaging in attacks beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. This greatly troubles Bruce Riedel, who helped formulate President Obama"s AfPak strategy and is now a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy: The ideology of global jihad has been bought into by more and more militants, even guys who never thought much about the broader world. And this is disturbing because it is a force multiplier for Al Qaeda.
In other words, even as we seem to be getting more help and cooperation from the Pakistani government, we face an increasingly complex challenge.
The Price of Freedom So based upon what we know, or think we know, what would I say to Rick Rescorla about our handling of the war on terror? That"s a conversation that, frankly, I wouldn"t want to have right now. I would be ashamed to admit the truth to a man who gave his life protecting those in his care. And that truth is that our government has acted with neither his resolve nor his focus on the task at hand. Our leaders have overestimated the value of political correctness just as they continue to underestimate the nature, motives, tenacity, and capabilities of the enemy. The two misevaluations, I believe, are closely related. At times, it seems that our strongest, most effective defense has been the frequent inept.i.tude of our enemy. The clock"s running out on that strategy.
Remember, the 1993 truck bombing in the World Trade Center was widely derided as an amateurish failure, even though six people were killed. After all, the two towers still stood proud. Rick Rescorla drew a different lesson, and we are in great peril if we cannot follow his example. He redoubled his efforts because he recognized that this was not the end of it but the beginning. Because of his clarity of vision, many families of Morgan Stanley employees were spared the pain of losing a loved one. Will the same be said of the intelligence operatives and other security officials who have been given a lesson, and some valuable breathing room, by the three lone terrorists we"ve seen in this chapter?
Nearly a decade has gone by since Rick"s pa.s.sing, but the lesson he taught us-and that is still an invaluable teaching tool, if we pay heed-is as important right this moment, as you read, as it was on September 11, 2001. Vigilance is indeed the price of freedom. Preparation is the guarantee of survival.
CHAPTER TEN.
When the Bullets Are Real, There Aren"t Any Toy Soldiers We Need an Effective Military Policy and Strategy
In early February of 2008, I was in the heat of the presidential campaign as one of the few remaining Republicans still in the hunt for the nomination. I had received word from a former cabinet member and staff member that his son, who was a captain in the U.S. Army, had just arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington having been severely wounded in Iraq by an improvised explosive device (IED) and had in fact lost an arm and suffered other serious injuries. I was scheduled to be in Washington a few days later and arranged to visit Captain David Underwood at Walter Reed. I wanted the visit to be personal and private, with no press tagging along or even knowing that I was going. This visit was not a political photo op. It was an opportunity to pay respect and check on the son of a dear friend and colleague, and I hoped to bring some encouragement and appreciation to a true American hero.
As I visited with David that afternoon and watched his wife and children fill his room with their presence and love, I was reminded of the enormous sacrifice our men and women in uniform make on behalf of the rest of us. Though David had lost an arm and would carry shrapnel from a bomb in his legs and body for the rest of his life, here was a soldier who didn"t complain of his loss but expressed his grat.i.tude that none of his men had been killed while under his command. These are the men and women who make our country and our world safe and free. We can"t do enough for them.
Over two million men and women have served in our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11. And despite what some on the left might say, they haven"t been sent there to fight "culture wars." These are wars fought with real bullets and real bombs. Death, disfigurement, and lifelong disabilities are among the heavy prices paid in the struggle. With so much at stake-and with additional threats no doubt looming around the globe-our soldiers can prevail and survive only by staying focused on their core mission. They should not be relegated to the status of advanced social workers. Those in our military are, of necessity, trained primarily to "kill people and break things"; that"s the plan. "Winning hearts and minds," though they can do it well, is a luxury when people are trying to kill them; making friends among the local population is not the main thing when the enemy is paying no attention whatsoever to the traditional rules of engagement or the Geneva Conventions.
Giving Back to Our Veterans To make their jobs even more difficult, we"ve stretched our military-both as individuals and as a united fighting force-almost to the breaking point. It is common for a soldier to be a.s.signed two or three tours on the battlefield; four and even five total tours are not all that unusual. Fortunately, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has promised a much-deserved (and saner) new protocol: Soon, our troops will enjoy two years at home for every year served overseas.
Thankfully, he has also addressed the military"s past shortcomings in dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health issues caused or exacerbated by war experiences. "This is a debt the country owes them for their service," he has said. "It needs to be the first check we write."
Amen to that! A RAND study in 2008 found that about 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan vets suffer from either PTSD or depression; worse, a later Stanford University study concluded it was likely closer to 35 percent. Soldiers serving the multiple deployments I mentioned are, according to the American Journal for Public Health American Journal for Public Health, three times more likely to suffer from PTSD and depression than those on their first deployment. As I write, the Department of Defense (DOD) is officially listing 35,000 as wounded in action. Add those who suffer mental health problems, however, and the total wounded increases by hundreds of thousands. Almost 20 percent are affected by a traumatic brain injury (TBI) caused by proximity to an explosion. Mental health problems of one sort or another, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, have been diagnosed in almost 250,000 veterans of the two operations in the Middle East. Of these, tens of thousands have both both PTSD and TBI. PTSD and TBI.
These statistics, alarming as they are, leave out part of the harsh truth: To this day, despite all of the information available to the public, the stigma of mental health problems is still with us. One result is that too many servicemen and -women are afraid to seek help or talk honestly about their issues; such openness, they fear, will hurt their chances for career advancement inside or outside the military. Perhaps this kind of fear is often justified. All of the press about veterans" mental health issues is a double-edged sword: Important as it is for these problems to be brought to light, wary civilian employers may hesitate to hire the soldiers who are victims. (Vietnam vets had much the same problem after that war, when seemingly every hourlong TV drama and many major high-profile movies featured a soldier home from Nam who, unable to cope with civilian life, eventually went ballistic.) The military, at least, is trying to avoid the stereotyping within the ranks. The DOD has updated its security clearance application, no longer asking a veteran whether he or she has been treated for mental health issues in the preceding seven years. It"s a start.
Homeless Veterans Not everyone, however, can benefit from such an enlightened approach. For veterans who remain deeply affected, and for their families, the damage caused by severe mental problems can be even more troubling. Mental and neurological problems can result in spousal abuse, divorce, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness, and suicide. For those reasons, as mandated by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2010, the military now requires confidential, in-person mental health screenings of all troops when they return home. Even so, the military does not have nearly enough medical personnel to provide the necessary mental health treatment, especially for veterans who don"t live in or near urban areas.
Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are at especially high risk for homelessness. Some have portrayed homeless veterans as very likely to have a drug or alcohol problem. In fact, that is often an incorrect stereotype. While some vets are indeed homeless because of service-related mental health issues, including addiction, others are servicewomen who, with their children, have been victimized by foreclosures. Because subprime loans were heavily marketed to military families, the rate of foreclosure in military neighborhoods rose four times faster than the U.S. average rate in 2008. Veterans" advocates are calling for a one-year moratorium before the home of a veteran returning from combat can be put into foreclosure. I think this is a great idea; in fact, it"s the least we can do for people who have sacrificed and risked so much for the rest of us.
But not everyone, it seems, is grateful. Sometimes the homes of troops serving abroad have been seized because they were not in residence to comply with the rigid rules of homeowners" a.s.sociations. If such wrongheaded groups cannot respect the debt they owe to their neighbors in the military, who are protecting their lives, perhaps laws should be enacted to protect their absent neighbors" property rights.
In 2009 the military vowed to end homelessness for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. As I write, it is estimated that about 130,000 of these men and women remain homeless every night. We definitely have a long way to go.
The System Is a Mess If you think the government bureaucracy will do a good job of handling your health care (that would be ObamaCare), one look at the VA system will change your mind. The existing system is both extremely frustrating and flagrantly wasteful, as you may know from your own experience or the challenges faced by family and friends. Good care is available, but only after waiting up to six months for the first appointment. Often, veterans must travel great distances to get care. The situation is worse for women than for men; as more women have joined the ranks, the system has not kept up with their needs. In general, processing of claims takes between four months and a year, while appeals of claims take, on average, two years. In the meantime, some vets are so badly injured that they can"t work and have no income.
Incredibly, the DOD"s and VA"s separate systems for health records are not yet fully compatible. Files are lost as veterans move from the DOD system into the VA. The DOD does not even keep electronic records, now considered an essential component of health records. To fix this mess, all patient records should be electronic and easily transferable between the two departments.
A further complication is that there are two parallel disability benefits systems, each with its own medical examinations and rates of compensation based upon disability ratings. There is a pilot program in place to create a single system, but it has to be expanded nationwide in order to cover all veterans.
Speaking of disability, let"s examine the effectiveness of the VA itself. Officials readily admit that almost 20 percent of its disability ratings are wrong wrong. It"s also true that the outcome of a claim depends heavily on the region where the claim is decided. Believe it or not (considering the time it typically takes to process claims), the VA evaluates claims processors by how quickly they process the paperwork, not not by the correctness of their decisions. Obviously, claims processors need better training. The VA needs to create a system that values accuracy above all, no matter where the claimant lives. by the correctness of their decisions. Obviously, claims processors need better training. The VA needs to create a system that values accuracy above all, no matter where the claimant lives.
Not everything is grim for veterans, however. Just as NASA"s "race for s.p.a.ce" led to the development of our modern world of computer technology, satellite communications, and so much more that we now take for granted, the long recoveries endured by our injured veterans have led to amazing advances in trauma care, burn treatment, and prosthetics. It is never less than heartbreaking to see the injuries of a soldier wounded in ambush or battle. Yet centers like the facial prosthetics lab at Lackland Air Force Base are developing remarkable techniques to ease the wounded patients" transition back to normal life, when possible. "Our goal is to give them the best of the best," says lab director Dr. Joe Villalobos. "We"re going to give them the ideal treatment." Our veterans deserve nothing less.
Coming Home: Education and Employment The t.i.tle of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, pa.s.sed in 2008, suggests a creditable program. In fact, an expansion is in order. On the one hand, the benefits to pay for veterans to go to college are excellent, but these checks often arrive very late, leaving the beneficiaries scrambling to pay for tuition, food, and housing. There"s just no excuse for that. Also, other worthwhile forms of education, such as vocational schools and Internet-based learning, still aren"t covered. They should be.
As for employment, it"s proved very tough for veterans to come home from overseas and find themselves smack in the middle of the Great Recession. During 2009, the unemployment rate for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans almost doubled. Let us recognize and praise companies that do the right thing for our veterans by giving them opportunities for employment. And let"s offer them tax credits in return, so that other potential employers will be motivated to join in. Congress should be amenable to this idea, since it has already pa.s.sed the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act, giving veterans preference in hiring for government jobs. Of course (and I hope you"re not surprised), it exempted congressional staff jobs-an act so shameful I hope it"s been rectified by the time this book reaches print.
Where employment is concerned, too many servicemen and -women don"t know their rights, and too many businesses don"t understand their obligations under law. The situation is most complicated for National Guardsmen and reservists: According to the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, businesses are required to take them back when they return home from a tour of duty, but many employers aren"t complying. Some companies refuse to hire them, period, because they don"t want the ha.s.sle of replacing them if there"s another deployment.
A veteran can pursue an employment claim based upon the law, but the burden is on him to prove that he lost the job because of his service. This is backward. The burden should be on the employer to establish a legitimate reason for not taking him back. Yet there"s another factor that discourages veterans from making a claim: Incredibly, it can take two years for such employment claims to be resolved.
National Guard and Reserves In addition to the daunting employment picture for the National Guard and reserves, their overuse in Iraq and Afghanistan has been a tremendous drain on them and their families, their communities, and businesses that would have liked to put them to work. In their civilian lives, a great number of them protect us as our police, firefighters, and paramedics. But since 9/11, as you may be amazed to read, there have been times when almost half of our combat troops in Iraq and more than half of those in Afghanistan have been either National Guard or reserves.
I saw this firsthand during my ten-and-a-half-year tenure as a governor, which included serving as commander in chief of our eleven thousand men and women of the Army and Air Force National Guard. Repeated deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and domestic duty, such as helping out in the aftermath of Katrina, wore heavily not only on the guard personnel but also on their families and employers.
Forgive me for bragging here about my guardsmen, but I"m going to anyway. The 39th Brigade of the Arkansas Guard were actually the first National Guard troops to make it to New Orleans from outside Louisiana. Later, when General Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, and I were on a flight to Iraq, he told me a terrific story about the timing of their arrival. He was being quizzed by President Bush at the Katrina national command center in Texas as to when the guard would get to New Orleans. Then, at that very moment, the TV screen showed the 39th rolling into town. "There they are, Mr. President!" the relieved general shouted. When he told me the story, he said, "I will always love your guys from the 39th!"
As that event proved, we need our National Guard at home for emergencies. Did you know that at the time of Hurricane Katrina a third of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard were serving in Iraq or Afghanistan? This is insane, since they"re the go-to guys when disaster strikes: hurricanes, floods, wildfires, tornadoes, ice storms, earthquakes, and man-made catastrophes like the horrendous BP oil deluge. Naturally, when large numbers of the guard are overseas, our governors are less able to respond to a crisis quickly and effectively. Getting help from other states eats up precious time and requires lots of red tape. (Oh, I forgot. . . . There"s always the White House to provide a timely and worthwhile response!) Yet thank the Lord, there does exist an avenue that most people are not aware of: a very useful, efficient system known as the Emergency Management a.s.sistance Compact (EMAC). EMAC allows governors to share a.s.sets with other states on a moment"s notice without the endless, time-consuming nonsense that so often slows things down when the federal bureaucracy is involved. Governors know that EMAC, though almost never mentioned in the media, is effective, quick, and responsive. It can make the difference between life-saving response and failure.
By the way, when our guardsmen are deployed overseas, their equipment goes with them. Much of it-including items you"d think we just might need sometime back home, such as helicopters and trucks-somehow gets left over there. So these tours of duty deprive states of both the personnel and the equipment required for emergencies. And without the latter, we can"t even train new recruits.
Finally, there"s one more reason to keep our National Guard here, and that"s law enforcement, particularly along our troubled border with Mexico. It is the law, by the way, that our active-duty military and our reserves cannot partic.i.p.ate in actions there.
What Is Our Mission?
"We"ll know it when we see it" may work as a definition of p.o.r.nography, as a Supreme Court justice once suggested, but not as a definition of victory in a war. And if we don"t know the precise end our military is trying to achieve, we can"t focus on the means to achieve it.
For example, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we"ve been following the strategy of "clear, hold, and build." In other words, we do it all! That is a dangerous lack of focus. Instead, the goal given to our troops should be to clear the enemy from targeted territory-just that alone. Next, the host country"s troops and police should hold that cleared territory while civilians build, or rebuild, its infrastructure and inst.i.tutions. To put it bluntly, we"ve had too many of our troops spending too much of their time painting schools and digging wells. They should be allowed to focus on killing Islamic extremists who want us all to die.
Because of this scattershot, imprecise mission, a small group of Americans has borne the brunt of these wars by deploying again and again. The problem is that the DOD is calling on them to do tasks that should instead be undertaken by U.S. civilian agencies and our NATO allies.
As the former top commander of our forces in Afghanistan and a retired army general, Amba.s.sador Eikenberry is in a unique position to know exactly what our military should and should not be doing. For that reason, he"s asked for more civilian personnel so that our troops can concentrate on their military mission, but he"s so far received only about one civilian expert for every hundred troops-nowhere near what he needs. To carry out the many nonmilitary goals of the war in Afghanistan, the DOD needs more support from the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Agriculture, the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security.
We could also use much more military support from our NATO allies, but most have shown an aversion to combat. Most of the fighting is in southern Afghanistan, but both France and Germany have been unwilling to go there. (Think there"s a connection? Oui, oui!) Okay, if NATO won"t send or effectively deploy combat troops, let it contribute to stabilizing the country by at least sending more personnel to help with training the police, building infrastructure, and establishing civilian inst.i.tutions. Then we can get back to the dirty work of fighting and defeating terrorists.
Don"t Ask, Don"t Tell . . . Don"t Serve Under the Obama administration, the question of whether or not openly gay men and women should be able to serve in the military has become one of the hot topics of the day. I have asked numerous military men and women ranging in rank from generals to fresh recruits what they thought about this very controversial and divisive issue, but the real question to be answered is what"s in the best interest of the military mission. The military is not about individual preferences but about cohesion of the unit. Let me attempt to address this controversy and shed some light on the likely impact of any policy change.
In 1993 Congress affirmed that the unit comes before the individual, pa.s.sing legislation that argued "[since] military life is fundamentally different from civilian life" and imposes "little or no privacy," h.o.m.os.e.xuals cannot be allowed to serve. If they were, they would create "an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability."
But President Clinton contradicted that law by introducing the absurd concept of "Don"t Ask, Don"t Tell" (DADT), which President Obama now wants to rescind. Before you applaud, understand that he does not intend to overturn a policy that allows for the recruitment of h.o.m.os.e.xual soldiers but rather to let them serve openly rather than (as now) discreetly. His aim cannot possibly be to strengthen our military, because it would do just the opposite: create unnecessary tensions, divisions, and stress among men and women who must depend on one another in order to survive. His motivation is purely political, a ploy to strengthen his support from the left. This is the liberal "core" that has been disappointed with him because they expected him to cut and run from Iraq and Afghanistan and close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo. In other words, he is using our servicemen and servicewomen as p.a.w.ns in shoring up his political base.
In a 2008 Military Times Military Times poll of active-duty servicemen and women, 10 percent said they would leave the military if h.o.m.os.e.xuals were allowed to serve openly; an additional 14 percent said they would consider doing so. That adds up to a quarter of our military forces! One recently retired general has said, "I joined the military when h.o.m.os.e.xuality was illegal, I served when it was allowed, and I have decided to retire before it was required." If a wave of resignations. .h.i.t a private company, if middle and senior managers left in a body, the solution would be to recruit from other companies. But if our career officers and enlisted men walked away, where would we find their replacements? Would the liberal cast of characters in Washington who support this change rush right down to the recruitment office? I don"t think so! poll of active-duty servicemen and women, 10 percent said they would leave the military if h.o.m.os.e.xuals were allowed to serve openly; an additional 14 percent said they would consider doing so. That adds up to a quarter of our military forces! One recently retired general has said, "I joined the military when h.o.m.os.e.xuality was illegal, I served when it was allowed, and I have decided to retire before it was required." If a wave of resignations. .h.i.t a private company, if middle and senior managers left in a body, the solution would be to recruit from other companies. But if our career officers and enlisted men walked away, where would we find their replacements? Would the liberal cast of characters in Washington who support this change rush right down to the recruitment office? I don"t think so!
Not surprisingly, conservatives are considerably more likely to join the military than liberals are. In other words, liberal elitists are seeking to impose their will and values upon an inst.i.tution their like seldom choose as a career and thus don"t really understand. This is dangerous arrogance. It would threaten the very existence of our volunteer military if they succeed in creating conditions that discourage social conservatives from volunteering, since such conservatives are more likely than liberals to object to serving alongside soldiers who are openly h.o.m.os.e.xual. Those who advocate the same-s.e.x agenda should consider the many potential costs, including the possible need to reinstate the draft.
Lest you think I"m stereotyping conservative views, a June 2010 USA Today USA Today/Gallup poll found that 48 percent of conservatives describe themselves as "extremely patriotic," compared to only 19 percent of liberals and 22 percent of Americans ages eighteen to twenty-nine. If about 80 percent of liberals in general and young people in particular aren"t patriotic enough to volunteer for the military, then good luck replacing all those conservatives leaving the ranks.
In contrast with the likelihood of resignations if the current policy is overturned, note that over the past decades, discharges for h.o.m.os.e.xuality have been less than one-half of 1 percent of all discharges. Furthermore, many of these have been for actual s.e.xual a.s.saults, not for just "telling." This pattern has not been a significant loss compared with the sweeping losses that would result from changing the policy.
Jumping the Gun As we"ve seen before, this administration sure seems to enjoy taking action before all the facts are in! Like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland Alice in Wonderland , who said, "Sentence first, verdict afterward!" they do things backward. (The operative motto of Congress is only slightly different: "Pa.s.s first, read afterward!") In this case, it was wrong of the House to vote to repeal DADT-a major policy change by any standards-before the military finished its own internal review. Admiral Mullen publicly made just that point. Moreover, the House vote, as a done deal, is likely to discourage honest input from the ranks. , who said, "Sentence first, verdict afterward!" they do things backward. (The operative motto of Congress is only slightly different: "Pa.s.s first, read afterward!") In this case, it was wrong of the House to vote to repeal DADT-a major policy change by any standards-before the military finished its own internal review. Admiral Mullen publicly made just that point. Moreover, the House vote, as a done deal, is likely to discourage honest input from the ranks.
Most important, the final decision isn"t even Congress"s to make. President Obama gets the last word (yes, yes, I know), in consultation with Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen. When the decision is made, I can only hope that our commander in chief will step back from the front lines of his ongoing "culture war" and instead dedicate himself to the task of ensuring that our armed forces are as strong and united as possible. Essential to that job is keeping our servicemen and servicewomen as safe as they can be, without the distractions to unit cohesion that can be caused by a leftist political agenda.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
With Enemies Like This, Who Needs Friends?
We Need to Strengthen America"s Position on the World Stage
I"ve spent most of this book discussing the problems we face at home, but I want to take a moment to say that in order for America to be as great as it possibly can be, we must remember our place in the world. Most of us live our lives not thinking about what"s going on in some other country. Trying to cover the cost of rent, groceries, and gas for the car doesn"t afford us the luxury of spending much time pondering what they are thinking in Pakistan. But dealing with friends and enemies in the world community is important, and much of our own national security is at stake.
Nothing presents a more tangled Gordian knot for a new president than foreign policy. Indeed, much of Barack Obama"s case for electing him hinged on convincing voters that President Bush"s approach of staunchly standing by our allies and standing up to our enemies was too simplistic and that a sophisticated, "nuanced" approach to dealing with the world would make nations that dreamed of killing us suddenly love us enough to want to take us to the prom. The Left even gave this approach an appropriately egotistical name: "smart diplomacy." As if the only reason there were intractable problems in the world was that the diplomats who had dealt with them through the previous decades were morons compared to Obama"s Ivy League brain trust. It"s like the kid in school who waves his A A test score in front of the entire cla.s.s but never gets picked to play baseball. He"s an arrogant nerd, and no matter how smart he is, he can"t hit, he can"t throw, and he can"t run. test score in front of the entire cla.s.s but never gets picked to play baseball. He"s an arrogant nerd, and no matter how smart he is, he can"t hit, he can"t throw, and he can"t run.
As of this writing, the nuance brigade have been applying their superior intellects to American foreign policy for approximately eighteen months, and there"s no question that they"ve had a major impact on our standing in the world. Tin-pot dictators from the Middle East to Latin American to North Korea still hate us; only now they openly mock us as well, defying American threats like a spoiled child who knows that no matter how much his parents threaten, they"ll never really spank him. British leaders question whether our two nations" time-tested "special relationship" has been irreparably shredded. Some of our bravest allies in Eastern Europe feel betrayed at seeing the promise of an American missile shield blithely broken to appease Russian hardliners. And the war in Afghanistan has been simultaneously escalated and muddled. The administration attempted to cover every bet by increasing troop levels while announcing its timetable for leaving. There"s no greater gift to an enemy in wartime than to reveal when you plan to stop fighting. The result: more combat-related deaths in the first eighteen months of Obama"s tenure than in the previous nine years of war. Obama"s handpicked commander was even forced to resign after a Rolling Stone Rolling Stone writer quoted him openly disparaging the competence of his superiors. writer quoted him openly disparaging the competence of his superiors.
The one bright spot: Among nations that are traditionally anti-American, President Obama still enjoys high approval ratings. Why am I not surprised?
We Must Remember Our History to Improve Our Future One of the first things President Obama did upon a.s.suming office was to return the bust of Winston Churchill that the British government had presented to President Bush right after 9/11, on indefinite loan from their national art collection. This didn"t just insult our closest ally; it insulted all Americans. We like Winston Churchill and were proud to have that bust in the Oval Office as a reminder of British solidarity with us, from the First and Second World Wars through the war on terror. Obama"s action wasn"t just boorish; it set an ominous tone for what was to come. What else was going to be tossed out that we liked and believed in but that this new president didn"t?
The British newspaper the Daily Telegraph Daily Telegraph explained Obama"s strange behavior: "Churchill has less happy connotations for Mr. Obama than for those American politicians who celebrate his wartime leadership. It was during Churchill"s second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya"s Mau Mau rebellion. . . . Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President"s grandfather." explained Obama"s strange behavior: "Churchill has less happy connotations for Mr. Obama than for those American politicians who celebrate his wartime leadership. It was during Churchill"s second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya"s Mau Mau rebellion. . . . Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President"s grandfather."
Every president is the keeper of our American narrative, "our story." He is the commander in chief, yes, but he is also commemorator in chief. Our wartime partnership with Winston Churchill and the British people is part of our story; the Mau Mau rebellion is not. When we elect a president, we entrust to him not just our security but also our story. The two are inseparable because our security depends on the story that we believe in, that inspires us, that we teach our children, and that we, as a nation, are willing to fight for.
President Obama"s emphasis on his his story rather than story rather than history history has become symptomatic of his tenure. He is going to impose his agenda on Americans, and he doesn"t care if we don"t share it, don"t believe in it, or don"t want it. has become symptomatic of his tenure. He is going to impose his agenda on Americans, and he doesn"t care if we don"t share it, don"t believe in it, or don"t want it.
In his Cairo address of June 2009, President Obama declared, "Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail." He used very similar language before the UN General a.s.sembly in September 2009: "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed."
This is a startling and disturbing view of America. Here again, he rejects a vital part of our story: our shared belief in American exceptionalism. By the time the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville coined that phrase in 1831, it had already been part of our national psyche for two hundred years, going all the way back to John Winthrop"s 1630 speech to the Puritans he led: For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our G.o.d in the work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.
For almost four hundred years now, Americans have understood that we have been chosen for greatness but have heavy responsibilities. Yet President Obama takes what we regard as a solemn covenant and reduces it to silly chauvinism, as he did in an interview in Strasbourg in April 2009: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." So according to him, America is just one nation among many, and we haven"t achieved and don"t stand for anything special. Then why is America the only nation with such a staggering illegal immigration problem? When other nations put walls and guards on their borders, it"s to keep people from leaving; when we do so, it"s to keep them from flooding in.
In May 2010, the president presented his first National Security Strategy (NSS), a doc.u.ment the president is required to send Congress every four years. President Obama"s introductory letter doesn"t sound as if it comes from the leader of the world"s only superpower. "Our long-term security will come not from our ability to instill fear in other peoples." Since when? Since when? If that"s true, why bother spending seven hundred billion dollars a year on our military? Theodore Roosevelt believed that the way to command the world"s respect was to "speak softly and carry a big stick." Other presidents have chosen to speak loudly and carry a big stick. But this is the first president who believes you can command the respect of rogue nations by apologizing and throwing away the stick. If that"s true, why bother spending seven hundred billion dollars a year on our military? Theodore Roosevelt believed that the way to command the world"s respect was to "speak softly and carry a big stick." Other presidents have chosen to speak loudly and carry a big stick. But this is the first president who believes you can command the respect of rogue nations by apologizing and throwing away the stick.
With respect to Iran, the NSS is truly pathetic: "Yet if the Iranian Government continues to refuse to live up to its international obligations, it will face greater isolation." You can almost hear the laughter all the way from Tehran. Isolation? That"s our threat? "Do as we say, or we"ll make you unpopular?" Well, it"s certainly consistent with not wanting to instill fear in anyone. And just look at how well it"s worked on North Korea.
The Obama NSS backs away from the Bush doctrine"s post-9/11 a.s.sertion of our right to wage a preemptive war in our defense. Instead, it is big on multilateral pie in the sky: "We must focus American engagement on strengthening international inst.i.tutions and galvanizing the collective action that can serve common interests." And because we all know what a ringing success the UN has been, "we are enhancing our coordination with the U.N. and its agencies." In other words, we are going to waste a lot of time and money and get nothing in return that enhances our security.
Obama is naive both in what he thinks he can accomplish and in where he believes our interests lie, and he harbors far too much faith in the power of his own personality to change the tides of history, just as he once promised that it would lower the tides of the oceans. For instance, he a.s.serts that his "biography" gives him credibility in the Muslim world. But from their point of view, he is someone who was born Muslim through his father and converted to Christianity. Abandoning your faith doesn"t win you the "Mr. Popularity" t.i.tle in the Muslim world.
Israel: Our Ally in a Sea of Enemies President Obama has suggested that Israelis are suspicious of him because his middle name is Hussein. Yes, I"m sure that"s it. The fact that he has abandoned decades of bipartisan U.S. policy toward Israel has nothing to do with it! In June 2010, the Israeli amba.s.sador to the United States, Michael Oren, lamented Obama"s stunning policy shifts as "a tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart." These shifts are not just strategically wrongheaded; they are morally repugnant.
President Obama views Israel not as the partner and ally in the war on terror that she is, but as part of the problem, if not the root of it. The truth is that radical Islam is the problem, and Obama"s consistent refusal to call that evil by its true name will never change that fact.
In his Cairo address of June 2009, President Obama said, "Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism-it is an important part of promoting peace." Then why don"t moderate Muslims rise up and do more to defeat the radicals among them? The extremists get much of their funding and other support with a wink and nod from those who claim to be moderates. Besides all the self-proclaimed wolves in the Muslim world, there are far too many wolves in sheep"s clothing, saying one thing and doing another. The president doesn"t see our allies and our enemies clearly because he doesn"t see the world clearly. Again, the haze of nuance obscures the simple truth.
Terrorists like Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and state sponsors of terror like Iran, aren"t just against the Jews. They are against everyone who doesn"t subscribe to their own narrow, extremist version of Islam-Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, even all other Muslims. The Muslim world must deal with its repressive, corrupt regimes; its failed states that can"t provide the most basic services to their people; its systemic culture of poverty, illiteracy, and injustice; and all its tribal, ethnic, and religious rivalries. Israel has nothing to do with any of this.
If Israel didn"t exist, would India and Pakistan suddenly be friends? Would the Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Uzbeks in Afghanistan get along? Would the Sunni Arab states not feel threatened by the non-Arab Persian Shiites of Iran; would the Salafi and Zaydi sects in Yemen suddenly agree on religious doctrine? Would all the ancient and endless Hatfield-and-McCoy tribal disputes that define that part of the world end? Of course not. Osama bin Laden would still want to destroy us and our way of life, would still want to establish a worldwide caliphate taking us back to the "good old days" of 1,400 years ago.
President Obama has declared that achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians is a vital national-security interest of the United States. I believe we best pursue our national security by staying out of it, other than to provide Israel all the moral and military support she needs and deserves. Quite frankly, until Hamas recognizes Israel"s right to exist, renounces violence, and accepts previous agreements, there"s really nothing that can be done and no point in pressuring Israel to do it anyway.
Our national-security interest lies in standing with our friends in the fight against Islamic terror. Distancing ourselves from Israel contradicts that interest, emboldening our mutual enemies, making Israel feel even more threatened and isolated, and causing our other friends to wonder who will be thrown under the bus next. To the Arab/Muslim world, such distancing is a sign of American weakness and Israeli vulnerability that only encourages them to double down on their genocidal plans for Israel.
Both European and Muslim countries look to us to see how far they can take their Israel bashing. President Obama has sent out signals-very dangerous signals-that say, "Go ahead and bash Israel all you want, literally and figuratively, fine with us."
As a candidate, President Obama never told the American people that he would order a draconian freeze on all Israeli settlement activity, with no exceptions. He never told us that he would repudiate the understanding by Presidents Clinton and Bush that Israel would never give up all settlements but would keep some close to the 1949 armistice line by swapping land. In fact, his call for a complete freeze contradicted the policy of all U. S. presidents since Israel"s victory in the 1967 war. How absurd is it for the U.S. government to tell an Israeli family that they can"t add a nursery to their home to welcome a new baby or tell an Israeli village that they can"t add a cla.s.sroom to their schoolhouse?
But after his first meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May 2009, President Obama announced, "Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward." With whom were the Israelis supposed to move forward? With the Hamas terrorists of the Gaza Strip? With Fatah"s Mahmoud Abbas, who barely controls the sidewalk in front of his office in the West Bank? Yet Obama took the ball out of the Palestinians" court and said that it wasn"t their wanton destruction destruction of life and property that was holding back the peace process. No, it was Israeli of life and property that was holding back the peace process. No, it was Israeli construction construction.
Moreover, when President Obama announced his new settlement policy, he coupled it with an implied threat that unless the Israelis capitulated, he might retaliate by not doing as much as he could to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. He sounded ominously like Tony Soprano.
President Obama used identical "blame the victim" language in both his Cairo address of June 2009 and his address to the UN General a.s.sembly in September 2009, saying that the United States "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." Legitimacy Legitimacy was an odd choice of words, considering how few people in his audience even accepted the legitimacy of Israel"s existence. was an odd choice of words, considering how few people in his audience even accepted the legitimacy of Israel"s existence.
In March 2010, while Vice President Biden was visiting Israel, President Obama found the flimsy pretext he had been looking for to show the world how tough he could be on Israel without any justification or provocation by the Israelis other than doing what any sovereign country could be expected to do.
What was the terrible outrage that occurred during that visit? Brace yourself. A midlevel bureaucrat moved along the approval process for some apartments in an existing Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem. It obviously had nothing to do with Israel"s honoring of its construction freeze in the West Bank and was in keeping with Israeli policies under every prime minister since the reunification of Jerusalem after Israel"s neighbors attacked her in 1967. Those policies had not deterred the Egyptians and Jordanians from signing peace treaties with Israel.
But later that month, President Obama inflated that incident into an excuse to humiliate Prime Minister Netanyahu on his visit to the White House, refusing to be photographed with him or hold a joint press conference or issue a joint statement. Obama even scheduled the meeting to run until dinnertime and then ostentatiously announced he was going to eat without inviting his guest to join him. No soup for you!
Skip forward to May 2010: At the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT) conference, the United States for the first time caved in to an Arab demand that Israel be singled out for not signing the NPT. The whole world knows that Israel has nuclear weapons, so this posturing was pure political theater. The final resolution didn"t mention either Pakistan or India, which also have nuclear weapons and haven"t signed the NPT, or Iran, which has signed but whose nuclear program is in defiance of the treaty.
Preventing specific mention of Israel had been official U.S. policy since 1969. In fact, it had been President Obama"s policy in his September 2009 address to the UN General a.s.sembly, where he said regarding the NPT, "Let me be clear, this is not about singling out individual nations." So he didn"t just go back on the word of previous American presidents; he went back on his own word given before the whole world.
Having signed this doc.u.ment, the Obama administration then issued a statement that it "deplores the decision to single out Israel." Why on earth would we ever ever sign a doc.u.ment that we deplore? What sort of amateur, incoherent policy is this? sign a doc.u.ment that we deplore? What sort of amateur, incoherent policy is this?
On May 31, 2010, a flotilla of troublemakers with terrorist links set out from Turkey to break Israel"s naval blockade of Gaza. The blockade is entirely legal and enforceable under international law. Since Israel"s withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas has fired over four thousand rockets at Israeli civilians. Allowing weapons deliveries to Hamas via ship would make ma.s.s murder as convenient as buying DVDs on Amazon.com. This is why Israel was completely justified in taking action to stop the deliberate violation of the blockade.
After that deadly incident, the United States approved a statement by the president of the UN Security Council that, predictably, criticized Israel for defending herself. Such a statement must be unanimous, so the United States could have easily stopped it but didn"t. Yet if it weren"t for President Obama"s policy reversals, which encouraged the provocateurs to challenge the blockade, the incident probably never would have happened.
Elliott Abrams, who held senior foreign-policy positions under Presidents Reagan and Bush 43, wrote that President Obama "abandoned Israel in the U.N. and in the NPT conference in the course of one week. . . . The White House does not wish to stand with Israel against the mob because it does not have a policy of solidarity with Israel. Rather, its policy is one of distancing and pressure."