Obama Still Doesn't Understand the War on Terror!

In a widely discussed op-ed article published in the The New York Times (Published: July 14, 2008), the junior Senator from Illinois and Presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama outlined his plan for the Iraq war and the war on terror. Here are the relevant quotes:

...That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war. As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.
We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees. Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. ...Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face.

On careful inspection, this is not a plan for Iraq. Nor is it a suitable strategy to win the war on terror.

The essence of Obama's "Plan for Iraq" is withdrawal followed by negotiation. If most people took the time to assess this plan, they would be mystified at how any credible candidate for national office could support it. The basic idea, which is captured in Obama's article is that Iraq's political situation and self-defense capability are not proceeding as quickly as he (Actually the entire leadership of the Democratic Party since Obama is just a Parrot on this issue) would like. The Solution? Point a gun at their head. Get moving or we are gone. Your protection from al-Qaeda gone, your protection from Iran gone, Protection of the various factions from each other gone. This isn't diplomacy, it's extortion with malice aforethought.

Obama's legitimizing rationale: 1) the war was a mistake to begin with and 2) the real terrorist war is chasing UBL around Waziristan. But this is not a legitimate view of the war on terror. As this Blog has long maintained, wars are fought between nations not between nations and mobs.

On the morning of September 11th, I awoke and fipped on the TV. Thanks to my satellite dish and Monday Night Football, I was tuned to the New York ABC affililate. They had just picked up coverage of a plane impacting one the Towers. At that early hour the reports suggested the plane was a light plane like a Cessna. It was clear from the smoke and damage that no Cessna did that. I sat with my wife, then 6 months pregnant, and watched the terrible events of that day. I clearly recall the thoughts expressed by friends, family, co-workers, and yes even the media that the World had fundamentally changed. The question today is how did it change?

In a post 9/11 World, the real change must be that state sponsorship of terror is no longer a tolerable or endurable element of state craft. The real war on terror involves ending state sponsorship of terror. Agree with the Iraq invasion or not, the current government of Iraq is not a state sponsor. The government of Afghanistan is also not a state sponsor. Sadly, the two remaining state sponsors, Iran and Syria, still operate their terror networks to the detriment of the civilized world.

As it happens we have sophisticated elements of the finest fighting force in the World on the Eastern and Western borders of Iran and on the Eastern border and Western seacoast of Syria. Add in our Naval presence to Iran's south in the Indian Ocean and we have a formidable deterrent to Iranian and Syrian mischief. A deterrent that would-be President Obama would throw away prior to entering negotiations with these notorious state sponsors. This is backwards thinking. Negotiate first, then withdraw.

The only way to end the war is through victory. Victory only occurs when Iran and Syria are no longer state sponsors of terror.

WALL-E: Is consumption bad for you?

After reading and hearing some of things said about the new Disney/Pixar Studios movie WALL-E, I almost refused to take my 6 year old daughter to the film. My spouse did refuse to go. Here are a couple of anecdotes that illustrate the conventional wisdom about this film:

The new Pixar feature "WALL-E" is an environmental cautionary tale, as well as a story of budding love between two robots. And for its first half-hour or so, it's possibly the most melancholy cartoon ever made: Even the color palette of that early section, a mosaic of brownish grays brushed with dusty sunlight, speaks of loneliness, and of desperate cheerfulness in the face of a blank future. In the second half, "WALL-E" becomes less lyrical and more satirical, although even then, its bite is surprisingly sharp. But by the end, "WALL-E" has turned into something else again, a picture that's so adamant about ending on a feel-good note (or at least a feel-OK note) that it betrays the sad, subtle beauty of those early scenes. It must be that director Andrew Stanton -- the man behind the enormously successful "Finding Nemo" -- didn't want to make too much of a downer: Can't be sending all those tots home with the blues, can we? But the picture feels weirdly, and disappointingly, disjointed, something that starts out as poetry and ends as product. by Stephanie Zacharek on Salon.com June 27, 2008 |

and

The critics love WALL*E. So much so that there’s now a backlash, much of it from conservative and right-libertarian corners. The cartoon is anti-progress, they say. It’s anti-business. It’s anti-consumer. Its environmentalism is hogwash. It will only further brainwash children into the Al Gore camp. All those charges may be true. from wconger.blogspot.com

I am glad that I watched WALL-E. I am glad that my daughter saw it as well.

Those who on the right who criticize this movie as being another piece of Hollywood liberal doctrinaire, as well as those on the left who celebrate their anti-consumption interpretation of the film are simpletons who did not understand this film. Principle and policy saw the film in starkly different terms.

While it is true that the movie depicts a future earth that has been literally trashed. It is not true that the film argues that consumption is to blame. In fact, quite the opposite is true. In this film, the humans of the future are trapped in a virtual world. They in live in floating chairs, they experience only through virtual reality, they only consume some sort of nutritional beverage, and they are numb to physical environment they inhabit. The people are confined to a space ship floating aimlessly around the galaxy. In short, they have stopped consuming and stopped living.

The robot, WALL-E, and his pet cockroach are the only apparent inhabitants of planet Earth. WALL-E though has learned to consume and to Live. He finds and collect treasures from the garbage he is programmed to incessantly compact. He turned his support vehicle into a home. He has a collection of Zippo lighters, lights, a VHS tape of Hello Dolly he watches. Through this consumption WALL-E learns what it is to dance, sing, and love. In short, WALL-E is essentially a child that is curious about his world and enamored with the simple joys of it. When the humans send another robot to check on the situation back on the home world, WALL-E finds a friend, a companion, and eventually a mate. He shares with EVE his curiosity and the joy of his treasures.

The simple, truthful message of WALL-E is this: don't get so busy surviving that you forget to live.

This is a message that people of all political stripes should wrap their arms around.