<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Alan W. Dowd</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/author/alan-w-dowd/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 07:56:08 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>Secretary of War</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/secretary-of-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=secretary-of-war</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/secretary-of-war/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Jun 2013 04:37:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Assad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=194114</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The bizarre possibility that John Kerry is the most hawkish member of the president’s cabinet.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/kerry.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-194162" alt="kerry" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/kerry-450x243.jpg" width="315" height="170" /></a>Here’s a sobering thought: A <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-18/pentagon-shoots-down-kerry-s-syria-airstrike-plan.html">story</a> filed by Jeffrey Goldberg offering a behind-the-curtain peek at administration deliberations over Syria suggests that Secretary of State John Kerry is the most hawkish member of the president’s cabinet.</p>
<p>According to Goldberg’s sources, Kerry argued “vociferously” for airstrikes against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s airfields, as a minimum response to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons.</p>
<p>The reaction from the Pentagon was a stone wall of negatives—and understandably so. Not only is the Pentagon stretched by global commitments and pinched by sequestration cuts; intervening in Syria’s civil war is fraught with risk. Indeed, reasonable people can and do disagree about the merits, wisdom and necessity of getting directly involved in what opponents of intervention see as a war between Hezbollah and al Qaeda—one recalls what then-Senator Harry <a href="http://tinyurl.com/maagoa4">Truman</a> said as Stalin’s Soviets and Hitler’s Nazis slugged it out—and what advocates of intervention see as an Iranian proxy war, a preventable Bosnia-style bloodletting, a struggle for freedom, a test of U.S. leadership.</p>
<p>The purpose here is not to open a new front in that debate, but rather to contemplate what it says about an administration to have John Kerry as its main—lone?—cabinet-level hawk.</p>
<p>Recall that Senator John Kerry opposed virtually every key weapons program Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush requested or deployed. Peter Huessy of GeoStrategic Analysis <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/sep/20/20040920-091120-6895r/">noted</a> during Kerry’s presidential run that in his 1984 campaign against Paul Tsongas, Kerry “proposed that the United States cancel or cut back the F-15 [and] F-14 tactical fighter planes; the B-1 and B-2 bombers; the Peacekeeper missile; the Trident submarine; the Aegis cruiser; the Abrams tank, the Apache helicopter, and the Tomahawk cruise missile.”</p>
<p>In 1990, Kerry voted against the M-1 Abrams battle tank, which liberated Kuwait a year later and liberated Iraq 13 years later. He voted to kill the B-2 bomber, which reversed Milosevic’s pogrom in Kosovo and then helped liberate Afghanistan and Iraq. And he opposed spending on ballistic missile defenses.</p>
<p>According to Huessy, Kerry “voted 34 times against higher defense spending” and in 1995 “supported cutting some $34 billion from defense…while calling for a freeze for the next seven years.”</p>
<p>Speaking of freezes, in the 1980s, Kerry supported the nuclear freeze movement; today, he embraces the Global Zero movement’s goal of worldwide nuclear disarmament, with America jumping first into the nuclear-deterrent-free unknown.</p>
<p>In his 2004 presidential campaign, Kerry was deeply critical of the war in Iraq. At one point he even voted against an $87-billion spending measure for troops deployed in combat, though he was quick to point out, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”</p>
<p>His strongest line of criticism centered on the younger Bush’s failure to gain UN permission for the war. He often talked about the importance of employing “the remedies of the United Nations and go[ing] through that full process.”</p>
<p>“What we need now,” Candidate Kerry declared, “is a president who understands how to bring these other countries together to recognize their stakes in this.”</p>
<p>Of course, it pays to recall that when the elder Bush asked for congressional authorization to liberate Kuwait on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War—a war approved by the UN, a diplomatic effort that brought all the key countries together—Kerry’s answer was “no.”</p>
<p>And this is the closest thing to a hawk on President Barack Obama’s cabinet. It’s a dramatic change from the first term, during which the hard-nosed Robert Gates—who held key defense and intelligence posts for Reagan and in both Bush administrations—served as defense secretary; Leon Panetta—who bluntly and unapologetically said of the struggle against jihadism, “There’s no question this is a war”—served as CIA director and defense secretary; the hawkish Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state; and Gen. David Petraeus—architect of the surge that salvaged America’s mission in Iraq—served as CIA director.</p>
<p>Even so, the signs were always there—even during the first term—that the president was not comfortable with the hawks and their 9/11 mentality:</p>
<p>Long before his new peacetime cabinet was in place, the president tortuously declared “it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan” before vowing—in the very same <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan">breath</a>—that “after 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.” In other words, America’s vital interests in 2009 had an expiration date.</p>
<p>Speaking of expiration dates, when the White House grudgingly agreed to extend operations early in NATO’s 2011 air war over Libya (after an urgent request from France and Britain), a NATO official took pains to emphasize that the extension of U.S. air power “expires on Monday.”</p>
<p>The president—in the middle of a hot war—<a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/obama-wants-defense-review-400-billion-in-cuts-119802529/137962.html">slashed defense spending</a>, even as spending on virtually every other government program ballooned. He talked about focusing on “nation-building here at home”; tried to convince the American people and their allies that America could “lead from behind”; <a href="http://www.criticalthreats.org/other/kagan-president-generals-afghanistan-december-12-2011">ignored the advice</a> of his own generals and withdrew a just-in-case residual force from Iraq; whittled America’s post-9/11 approach to security from an all-encompassing “global war on terror” to a series remote-control raids micro-targeting individuals in Yemen and Pakistan; and repeatedly insisted that the “tide of war is receding.”</p>
<p>Secretary Kerry would seem to disagree.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.</strong><br />
<em></em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/secretary-of-war/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama&#8217;s Renewed War on Guantanamo</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/obamas-renewed-war-on-guantanamo/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-renewed-war-on-guantanamo</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/obamas-renewed-war-on-guantanamo/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Jun 2013 04:45:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[close]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[detention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guantanamo Bay]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hunger strike]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=192389</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Drone strikes and hunger strikes weigh in the balance.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/guan.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-192433" alt="guan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/guan.jpg" width="299" height="168" /></a>President Barack Obama, quite out of the blue, has renewed his long-dormant effort to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. “I continue to believe that we&#8217;ve got to close Guantanamo,” he <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/04/30/news-conference-president">said</a> in April. “Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe. It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing…It needs to be closed.” Just a few days ago, he <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/23/remarks-president-national-defense-university">added</a>, “GTMO has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law.”</p>
<p>If that’s the case, then the president can count himself among the guilty. After all, the president has had four years and five months to close the terrorist penal colony at Guantanamo. Indeed, two days into his presidency, he directed the Pentagon to shutter the detention facilities “no later than one year from the date of this order,” vowing to return America to the &#8220;moral high ground.”</p>
<p>Suffice it to say that when Obama and his lieutenants want to do something, they do it, as they have proven with scores of questionable executive actions. (See the administration’s extra-constitutional appointments, regulations flouting the letter and spirit of federal statutes, intervention in Libya, use of HHS to shake down the healthcare industry, and the many examples of abuse of power: Solyndra, bugging the AP, using the IRS to micro-target Tea Party groups and “<a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/11/obama-i-shouldnt-have-used-the-word-enemies/1#.Ua9fuUBlmPw">punish</a> our enemies,” purposely misleading and airbrushing facts out of Benghazi to preserve the 2012 campaign’s fatuous “tide of war is receding” narrative.) When the president wants a cause, on the other hand, he pretends his hands are tied, as in the case of Guantanamo.</p>
<p>Reasonable people can and do disagree about the terrorist detention facility. One group says the prison is “contrary to who we are” and “contrary to our interests,” as the president puts it. The other group contends it’s an imperfect solution to a very difficult problem—the least bad option in this post-9/11 world. Count me among the latter group.</p>
<p>It’s the least bad option because the other alternatives—sending detainees back to their home countries or transferring them into the United States—are not viable.</p>
<p>Sending detainees back to their countries of origin is, quite simply, self-defeating. A 2012 <a href="http://tinyurl.com/8l3dt96">report</a> produced by the intelligence community concluded that almost 16 percent of the 602 detainees that have cycled through Guantanamo returned to terrorism, and another 12 percent are suspected of doing so. That’s a recidivism rate of about 28 percent—uncomfortably high when it comes to people willing to turn themselves into guided missiles.</p>
<p>Moreover, concerns about host-country security make transfer a risky proposition. In 2010, for instance, the president ordered a full-stop on transfers to Yemen after it was discovered that al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch (AQAP) was planning to blow up a U.S.-bound flight. However, last month, he lifted that ban.</p>
<p>The Yemeni government is building a “rehabilitation” facility expressly for the 56 Yemenis held at Guantanamo. But given that AQAP orchestrated prison breaks in 2003, 2006 and 2011, Yemen’s capacity to hold Guantanamo parolees is very much in doubt, as is the efficacy of terrorist-rehab programs. A Saudi <a href="http://tinyurl.com/38eexhd">program</a>—with far more lavish spending and incentives than Yemen could ever provide—dubiously claims a reintegration rate of 80 percent.</p>
<p>As to transferring the detainees to stateside prisons, bipartisan majorities in Congress have repeatedly made clear—most recently in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act—that Guantanamo detainees may not be transferred into the United States. A <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/06/03/rejecting-obama-plea-house-gop-defense-bill-keeps-guantanamo-open-restricts/">bill</a> currently being marked up would block the administration from transferring remaining detainees to the U.S. or to undependable foreign governments like Yemen.</p>
<p>A hundred Guantanamo detainees are currently on a hunger strike, protesting alleged mishandling of their Korans, which the U.S. military denies. It’s important to note that such tactics and claims are standard operating procedure for al Qaeda and its partners. An al-Qaeda training manual offers jihadists clear <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/network/alqaeda/manual.html">guidelines</a> for using our justice system—premised on the twin notions that the accused is innocent until proven guilty and that the state’s power should be checked—against us. Among the instructions:</p>
<p>• “Resort to a hunger strike.”</p>
<p>• “Insist on proving that torture was inflicted.”</p>
<p>• “Complain of mistreatment while in prison.”</p>
<p>• “Take advantage of visits to communicate with brothers outside prison.”</p>
<p>• “Create an Islamic program for [brothers] inside the prison.”</p>
<p>That last piece of advice helps explain why Guantanamo detainees shouldn’t be transferred to stateside prisons. The president points to “a whole bunch of individuals who have been tried who are currently in maximum security prisons around the country…the individual who attempted to bomb Times Square…the individual who tried to bomb a plane in Detroit…a Somali who was part of Al-Shabaab” as proof that Guantanamo’s jihadists can be moved stateside without risk. But that’s not what worries opponents of stateside transfer. What’s worrisome is that once mainstreamed into the U.S. prison system, Guantanamo’s lifers would recruit other inmates to their jihadist cause and radicalize individuals who might one day be released—something they cannot do from inside the Guantanamo penal colony.</p>
<p>Even Janet Napolitano’s<b> </b>Department of Homeland Security—the people who replaced “terrorism” with the Orwellian term “man-caused disasters”—recognizes radicalization as a real problem, <a href="http://homeland.house.gov/sites/homeland.house.gov/files/King%20opening%20statement%2006-15-11.pdf">announcing in 2011</a> a federal-state effort “to develop a mitigation strategy for terrorist use of prisons for radicalization and recruitment.” <a href="http://homeland.house.gov/sites/homeland.house.gov/files/Testimony%20Downing.pdf">Testimony</a> before House and Senate committees reveals that<b> </b>“up to three dozen Americans who converted to Islam in prison have travelled to Yemen to train with al-Qaeda.” High-profile terrorists like Jose Padilla, Richard Reid and Michael Finton converted to jihadism in prison.</p>
<p>Media mantras notwithstanding, the Bush administration—just like the Obama administration—<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5102528.stm">wanted to close</a> the prison facility at Guantanamo. But the Bush administration concluded that the alternatives—letting sworn enemies of the United States loose or summarily executing them on the battlefield or shipping them back to untrustworthy regimes—were worse.</p>
<p>The Obama administration has found a way around this conundrum: an unrelenting barrage of drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan and other fronts in what used to be called the “global war on terror.” The results are not for the squeamish.</p>
<p>• The <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Programs/foreign%20policy/afghanistan%20index/index20130426.pdf">Brookings Institution</a> estimates that, along with the 3,300-plus militants killed by drones in Pakistan, nearly 600 non-militants may have been killed.</p>
<p>• The Washington Post reports that a <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-06-02/world/35459487_1_al-awlaki-yemen-affiliate-qaeda">growing number of drone strikes</a> in Yemen target individuals merely “suspected” of having links to terrorism.</p>
<p>• According to a New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all">portrait</a> of the inner workings of the drone war, the White House has embraced a controversial method for determining civilian casualties that “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants…unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” The report describes the president as “at the helm of a top-secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical.” He studies “mug shots and brief biographies” of possible targets, approves “every new name on an expanding ‘kill list,’” “signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia and also on the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan,” and often decides “personally whether to go ahead” with a drone strike.</p>
<p>If that sounds like a commander-in-chief fulfilling his primary responsibility of protecting the nation from its enemies, then so does the Bush administration’s decision to open a makeshift detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. President George W. Bush’s motives in shipping enemy combatants to Guantanamo was to protect the country. Of course, motives mean nothing to Bush’s critics.</p>
<p>Bush’s successor is learning that motives don’t matter to critics of the drone war, either, which means Nobel Peace Prize holder Barack Obama finds himself on the wrong side of global opinion—exactly where Bush spent his presidency. According to a <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/13/global-opinion-of-obama-slips-international-policies-faulted/">Pew survey</a>, the drone war feeds “a widespread perception that the U.S. acts unilaterally and does not consider the interests of other countries.” Indeed, what looks like a successful counterterrorism campaign to Americans, looks very different to international observers. “In 17 of 20 countries,” Pew found, “more than half disapprove of U.S. drone attacks targeting extremist leaders and groups in nations such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.” Moreover, the UN has formed “an investigation unit” within the Human Rights Council to “inquire into individual drone attacks…in which it has been alleged that civilian casualties have been inflicted.”</p>
<p>“Reliance on drone strikes allows our opponents to cast our country as a distant, high-tech, amoral purveyor of death,” argues Kurt Volker, former U.S. ambassador to NATO. “It builds resentment, facilitates terrorist recruitment and alienates those we should seek to inspire.”</p>
<p>To borrow a phrase, it seems the drone war hurts our international standing.</p>
<p>This is not an argument in defense of international watchdogs tying America down. The UN secretariat may refuse to recognize America’s special role, but by turning to Washington whenever civil war breaks out, nuclear weapons sprout up, terrorists strike, sea lanes are threatened, natural disasters wreak havoc, or genocide is let loose, it is tacitly conceding that the United States is, well, special. Washington has every right to kill those who are trying to kill Americans. However, the international backlash against the drone war reminds us there is virtually always a downside to U.S. national-security decisions.</p>
<p>When placed side by side, the Guantanamo hunger strikes and the president’s drone strikes leave us with a hard question amidst a hard war: Which is more effective, more humane, more ethical, less damaging to our international standing—to imprison known and suspected enemies of the United States without parole, or to execute known and suspected enemies of the United States without trial?</p>
<p>The moral high ground is a very tiny patch of territory.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/obamas-renewed-war-on-guantanamo/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama Surrenders the War on Terror</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/obama-surrenders-the-war-on-terror/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-surrenders-the-war-on-terror</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/obama-surrenders-the-war-on-terror/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 May 2013 04:31:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National Defense University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War on Terror]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[white flag]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=191124</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Correcting the lies in the president's surreal speech on the "end" of Islamic terrorism. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/president-obama-at-the-national-defense-university-in-washington-dc.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-191136" alt="president-obama-at-the-national-defense-university-in-washington-dc" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/president-obama-at-the-national-defense-university-in-washington-dc-446x350.jpg" width="268" height="210" /></a>“Don’t be afraid to see what you see,” President Reagan counseled in his farewell address. We would do well to heed his advice as President Obama attempts to lead America backwards, to September 10. Make no mistake: That was the not-so-subtle message he sent last week during his <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/23/remarks-president-national-defense-university">speech</a> at the National Defense University—a speech that was so full of inaccuracies that one is left to conclude the president is either living in an alternate universe or willfully disregarding the facts. Just consider some of the statements he made.</p>
<p>1. “There have been no large-scale attacks on the United States, and our homeland is more secure.”</p>
<p>In fact, Nidal Hasan killed 13 people and injured 32 others during his shooting rampage at Ft. Hood in November 2009—an attack authorized by al Qaeda’s franchise in Yemen (AQAP). Since the U.S. Army—no doubt following orders far up the chain of command—refuses to classify the Ft. Hood shooting as a terrorist attack, the survivors’ injuries and acts of bravery cannot be categorized as “combat related.”</p>
<p>In addition, the Boston Marathon bombing was a large-scale attack carried out by individuals who were radicalized to jihad and trained by jihadist elements in Russia.</p>
<p>Moreover, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, inspired and trained by AQAP, almost took down a passenger plane in December 2009; and Faisal Shahzad, trained by jihadists in Pakistan, deployed an IED in Times Square in 2010. Just as catching a thief in the act doesn’t mean he hasn’t committed a crime, the fact that these attacks failed does not mean they were not attacks.</p>
<p>2. “The core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the path to defeat…They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston.”</p>
<p>Like a five-year-old, the president seems to believe that if he says something often enough and loud enough, it will become true. In fact, al Qaeda affiliates did carry out the attacks on Benghazi. No matter what the final draft of those infamous talking points said, several of the attackers were <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/02/world/africa/us-libya-benghazi-suspects">al Qaeda operatives</a>.</p>
<p>3. “Unrest in the Arab world has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria.”</p>
<p>In fact, American acquiescence and aloofness have allowed extremists to gain a foothold in these places.</p>
<p>4. “In the 1980s, we lost Americans to terrorism at our Embassy in Beirut; at our Marine Barracks in Lebanon; on a cruise ship at sea; at a disco in Berlin; and on a Pan Am flight—Flight 103—over Lockerbie. In the 1990s, we lost Americans to terrorism at the World Trade Center; at our military facilities in Saudi Arabia; and at our Embassy in Kenya. These attacks were all brutal; they were all deadly; and we learned that left unchecked, these threats can grow. But if dealt with smartly and proportionally, these threats need not rise to the level that we saw on the eve of 9/11.”</p>
<p>In fact, President Reagan in the 1980s and President Clinton in the 1990s thought they were dealing with global terrorism smartly and proportionally. For Reagan, it was bombing command-and-control centers in Libya, deploying peacekeepers to Lebanon and hitting terrorist camps with air strikes and artillery. For Clinton, the “smart and proportional” policy included cruise missiles and indictments. But both approaches failed.</p>
<p>In fact, General Tommy Franks, former CENTCOM commander, traces a line from Beirut to 9/11.</p>
<p>“What did we see happen in 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon? We saw the interests of the United States of America attacked by terrorists,” he observed in 2007, pointing to a long list of attacks after Beirut that went largely unanswered. “I do believe there is a connection,” he said, “an indication served up to terrorists over the course of almost two decades that says it is okay to attack the interests of the United States of America without fear of serious retribution.”</p>
<p>5. After blaming just about every terrorist attack against the U.S. before and after 9/11 itself on “unrest in the Arab world” or “regional networks” or “radicalized individuals here in the United States”—and dismissing any connective tissue between them—Obama then declares, “Most, though not all, of the terrorism we faced is fueled by a common ideology.”</p>
<p>Which one is it? Are our terrorist enemies lone wolves, self-radicalized killers, independent nut-jobs, or are they motivated by a common ideology?</p>
<p>6. Obama re-re-reminded us that “Osama bin Laden is dead.” (Who knew?)</p>
<p>What the president fails to grasp is that “bin Ladenism” is anything but dead. The struggle against jihadism is a generational struggle that will be measured in decades, not presidencies. Don’t take my word for it. “The cancer has metastasized to other parts of the global body,” as then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta <a href="http://e-ring.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/20/no_turkey_panetta_braces_us_for_long_counterterrorism_war">explained</a> in 2012. Those inspired by bin Laden, as the 9/11 Commission warned in 2004, “will menace Americans and American interests long after Osama bin Laden and his cohorts are killed or captured.”</p>
<p>7. “America’s actions are legal. We were attacked on 9/11…Under domestic law, and international law, the United States is at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban and their associated forces.”</p>
<p>In fact, although the U.S. government contends that a state of war has existed since September 11, 2001—a reasonable and defensible contention—the UN Human Right Council argues that it is “problematic” for the U.S. to show “it is in a transnational non-international armed conflict” beyond Afghanistan. Moreover, the UN recently announced plans to create “an investigation unit” within the Human Rights Council to “inquire into individual drone attacks…in which it has been alleged that civilian casualties have been inflicted.” This is not suggest that the UN is correct in these conclusions, but rather to underscore that just because the White House says something is legal does not necessarily make it legal.</p>
<p>8. “America does not take strikes to punish individuals; we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people.”</p>
<p>In fact, according to The New York Times portrait of the inner workings of the drone war, the Obama Administration has embraced a controversial method for determining civilian casualties that “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants…unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” And The Washington Post has reported that a growing number of drone strikes in Yemen have targeted “lower-level figures who are <i>suspected</i> of having links to terrorism operatives but are seen mainly as leaders of factions focused on gaining territory in Yemen’s internal struggle.” (Italics added.)</p>
<p>9. “To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties—not just in our cities at home and our facilities abroad, but also in the very places like Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu where terrorists seek a foothold.”</p>
<p>This is the essence of Bush’s post-9/11 doctrine: take the fight to the enemy relentlessly—wherever he may be—in order to deny him the tools, wherewithal, territory and means to strike the U.S. homeland. Yet the thrust of this speech by Obama—and indeed Obama’s entire approach to the jihadist threat—is to do less, in fewer places, less often.</p>
<p>10. Obama warns that policymakers should not “view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism.”</p>
<p>Yet as Panetta famously put it, drones are “the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership.” Moreover, Obama’s withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his cuts to the defense budget, make reliance on armed drones inevitable.</p>
<p>11. “Success on all these fronts requires sustained engagement.”</p>
<p>Yet the president has sounded a general retreat from every battlefield.</p>
<p>12. “The best way to prevent violent extremism inspired by violent jihadists is to work with the Muslim American community.”</p>
<p>This is not true. The best way to accomplish this goal is to defeat the enemy at its source, to be “the strongest tribe,” as Bing West has written, to never wave the white flag—whether in Beirut in 1983 or Mogadishu in 1993 or the AfPak theater in 2013. As bin Laden once explained, seeing America “defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut, Aden and Mogadishu” fueled his global guerilla war.</p>
<p>13. “As a matter of policy, the preference of the United States is to capture terrorist suspects.”</p>
<p>In fact, The New York Times overview of the drone war describes President Obama as “at the helm of a top secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical.”</p>
<p>14. “There is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should have never have been opened.”</p>
<p>This is one of Obama’s favorite memes—that opposition to his view is always political, never based on conviction. In fact, there are many justifications for not closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo. Obama’s first secretary of defense—Robert Gates—called on Congress to pass legislation to prevent <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN18417475">Gitmo</a> detainees from being transferred into the United States. Bipartisan majorities in Congress have repeatedly made it clear—most recently in the 2013 National Defense Authorization <a href="http://www.legion.org/dispatch/213385/defense-authorization-measures-enacted">Act</a>—that Guantanamo detainees may not be transferred into the United States because they worry about escapes; they don’t believe host countries have the will or capacity to keep these men locked up; and perhaps most of all, they are concerned that if these terrorists are sent to stateside prisons, Guantanamo’s lifers would recruit other inmates to their jihadist cause and radicalize individuals who might be released. That’s something they cannot do from Guantanamo. Radicalization is a serious enough problem that the Department of Homeland Security announced in <a href="http://tinyurl.com/q7cmo4y">2011</a> a federal-state effort to thwart “terrorist use of prisons for radicalization and recruitment.” Congressional <a href="http://tinyurl.com/olxhwoa">testimony</a> reveals that dozens of Americans who were radicalized to jihadism while in U.S. prisons “have travelled to Yemen to train with al Qaeda.”</p>
<p>15. “I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the [post-9/11] Authorization for the Use of Military Force&#8230;I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further…this war, like all wars, must end.”</p>
<p>This would be akin to President Eisenhower letting Congress (and the Soviets) know in, say, 1957, that he was ready to repeal the National Security Act of 1947 and shred NSC-68. The former retooled and revamped America’s military and intelligence machinery to wage the Cold War. The latter provided a roadmap for the long, twilight struggle against the Soviet ideology. Like the war on terror today, the Cold War was far from over in 1957.</p>
<p>Regardless of whether President Obama is tired of being commander-in-chief, tired waging a war of unknown duration, tired of Guantanamo and drones and flag-draped coffins, one thing is beyond debate: The enemy is not tired and is still very much at war with us.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/obama-surrenders-the-war-on-terror/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>220</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Syria Calls Obama&#8217;s Chemical Weapons Bluff</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/chemical-weapons-in-syria-obamas-red-line-bluff-exposed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chemical-weapons-in-syria-obamas-red-line-bluff-exposed</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/chemical-weapons-in-syria-obamas-red-line-bluff-exposed/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Apr 2013 04:57:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[civil war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[red line]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=186929</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president reassures America's enemies that there is no bite to his bark. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Assad-burning-FOR-WEB-580.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-187173 alignleft" alt="Assad-burning-FOR-WEB-580" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Assad-burning-FOR-WEB-580-450x334.jpg" width="315" height="234" /></a>So, we now have three trusted intelligence agencies—<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-23/israeli-intelligence-says-syria-using-chemical-weapons.html">Israel’s</a>, <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-18/world/38639759_1_chemical-weapons-aleppo-syrian-government">Britain’s and France’s</a>—declaring that a number of chemical agents have been deployed in the Syrian civil war. Arriving late—too late—at the same obvious conclusion, the United States has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/hagel-white-house-has-told-congress-that-syrian-regime-has-likely-used-sarin-gas-as-weapon/2013/04/25/26deaa2e-adbd-11e2-b240-9ef3a72c67cc_story.html?hpid=z1">finally agreed</a> with its allies.</p>
<p>The Brits and French base their assessment on soil samples and interviews, and report that chemical weapons have been used in Aleppo, Homs and perhaps Damascus. U.S. and British intelligence agencies conclude that sarin was used. Both Britain and France doubt that rebel forces have access to chemical weaponry. An Israeli general reports that “the regime used chemical weapons against fighters in a series of incidents in recent months…apparently sarin.” A <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/evidence-nerve-gas-aleppo-deaths/story?id=18977091&amp;page=2#.UXbQ6rVlmPw">chlorine-type gas</a> known as “CL 17” may also have been used. ABC News reports, “hyper-salivation…eye pain…seizures…loss of consciousness” among victims in Aleppo. In nearby Aftrin, survivors report “a sharp, bitter odor that stung their eyes,” according to ABC. Doctors in Aleppo administered as much atropine as they had on hand—too bad that wasn’t included in Secretary of State John Kerry’s “nonlethal” aid package—and sure enough, it helped victims survive. Importantly, atropine is used as an antidote to nerve agent.</p>
<p>What’s happening in Syria and what’s not happening in Washington is important—and not just for strategic reasons (the ouster of Bashar Assad would strike a blow against Iran and limit Iran’s reach) or humanitarian reasons (some 70,000 people have died in a war that, like Libya in 2011 and Bosnia in the 1990s, could be ended by the application of U.S. power). The unanswered, unpunished use of chemical weapons in Syria is important because of what President Barack Obama said last year.</p>
<p>Last August, in full-fledged campaign dudgeon, the president <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-08-21/world/35492894_1_chemical-weapons-syrian-stockpiles-assad">warned</a> that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line” for his administration. “A whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” he said, with his stentorian self-assurance, “would change my calculus.” Chemical weapons, he warned, would be “a game-changer.”</p>
<p>Not exactly. Chemical weapons are being used, and nothing is changing in the Oval Office. It pays to recall that this under-the-radar chemical war is anything but unexpected. We always knew that Assad possessed one of the largest chemical-weapons programs on earth, including mustard gas, sarin and VX nerve agent. We always knew Syria had mated these weapons with artillery shells and missilery. We always knew that Syria had five major chemical-manufacturing facilities and some 45 chemical-weapons storage facilities. We have always worried—at least since 9/11—about jihadist groups gaining access to someone’s unguarded WMDs. And we know from history—Saddam Hussein in Iraqi Kurdistan, Assad’s father in Hama—that dictators pushed into a corner will do about anything to survive.</p>
<p>Moreover, outside observers <a href="http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/8021/gadhafis-chemical-weapons-a-nightmare-scenario-in-libya">warned</a> and worried about loose chemical weapons during Libya’s civil war in 2011. And the warnings continued to sound as the anti-autocracy rebellion swept into Syria. In fact, in this space last July, I <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/the-unthinkable-in-syria/">concluded</a> that “the notion that Barack Obama—the anti-Bush—would launch attacks against Syria in order to preempt the use or transfer of WMDs is as unthinkable as, well, what might happen with those WMDs.”</p>
<p>And here we are.</p>
<p>This sort of inaction is easy to criticize. But Obama’s inaction in the face of Assad’s crimes is especially glaring in light of Obama’s intervention in Libya. Recall that in announcing his decision to attack Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, Obama <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/20/remarks-president-libya-today-we-are-part-broad-coalition-we-are-answering-calls-thr">declared</a> , “We cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy…where innocent men and women face brutality and death at the hands of their own government.”</p>
<p>If that sounds like today’s Syria—and it does—Obama’s inaction looks like yesterday’s response to the mangling of Bosnia. Now, as in Bosnia circa 1993, a well-armed regime is warring against an under-equipped and sometimes-unsavory rebel force. Now, as then, a dictator is winning by default, because Washington is unwilling to answer the call for help. Now, as then, the United States refuses to act, and the world follows suit.</p>
<p>Yet the president’s greatest failure in Syria is not in refusing to intervene—indeed, a case can be made on cold, calculating, Kissingerian grounds that America should stay the hell out of Assad’s sandbox—but rather in threatening to intervene in the event of a chemical-weapons attack and then failing to follow through.</p>
<p>Whether democracy in Damascus is worth risking American blood is open to debate—whether democracy will even take root in Damascus is open to debate—but the importance of American credibility is not. Maintaining the global taboo against using these weapons is not. As Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel observes, “it violates every convention of warfare.” The president fails to grasp these truths. And placing far too much trust in the power of his own words, he fails to understand that actions always speak louder than words. By averting his gaze from Syria’s chemical-laced civil war, he has sent a message around the world that can be understood in every language: Push the envelope as far as you want. Commit any outrage you want. Use any weapon at your disposal. Washington’s words are empty.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/chemical-weapons-in-syria-obamas-red-line-bluff-exposed/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>59</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Iraq, Ten Years Later</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/iraq-ten-years-later/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iraq-ten-years-later</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/iraq-ten-years-later/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:55:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[10 years]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anniversary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[decade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saddam Hussein]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=180966</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[After a decade, removing Saddam Hussein's terror regime was still the right thing to do. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/iraq-ten-years-later/iraq-1109-13-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-180970"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-180970" title="iraq-1109-13" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/iraq-1109-131-450x323.jpg" alt="" width="252" height="181" /></a>As we arrive at the tenth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom, several things are apparent today that were not so clear a decade ago—and a few things are actually less clear today than they were back then.</p>
<p>Among the things that have come into focus:</p>
<p><em>Iraq was broken long before March 19, 2003.</em></p>
<p>Those who say the U.S. “broke Iraq” and pushed it into failed-state status by intervening in 2003 fail to recognize that Iraq was a failed state long before Operation Iraqi Freedom. As the Hoover Institution’s Fouad Ajami has observed, when the coalition entered Iraq, they found “a country wrecked and poisoned.” Gen. Ray Odierno adds, “What I underestimated when I got there was the societal devastation that was occurring in Iraq—the fact that education really had stopped for about 20 years, the fact that investment had stopped, the fact that people were being brutalized.” In short, Iraq was not broken because outside powers intervened. Rather, outside powers intervened because Iraq was broken.</p>
<p><em>Iraq really was part of a wider war on terror.</em></p>
<p>With tentacles stretching out to the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, Abu Nidal and Palestinian suicide bombers, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was part of a constellation of nation-states, transnational groups and individuals that view terrorism as a normalized, legitimate tool for achieving political ends. Moreover, although Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was not connected to al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was connected to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al Qaeda lieutenant who ignited Iraq’s postwar civil war. As Tony Blair revealed in his memoir, Zarqawi traveled to Iraq in May 2002, met “senior Iraqis” and established a presence in Iraq six months before the U.S.-led invasion.</p>
<p>What Saddam Hussein failed to grasp in such risky dealings was that 9/11 had changed the very DNA of U.S. national-security policy. “Any administration in such a crisis,” as historian John Lewis Gaddis concludes, “would have had to rethink what it thought it knew about security.” Was deterrence possible? Was containment viable? Was giving Baghdad the benefit of the doubt responsible? The Bush administration’s answer to each question was “no,” which led to war.</p>
<p>Finally, as historian Paul Johnson observed, by overthrowing the terror regime of Saddam Hussein, “America obliged the leaders of international terrorism to concentrate all their efforts on preventing democracy from emerging in Iraq.” Fighters from al Qaeda’s ranks were drawn to Iraq like moths to light. Indeed, Iraq would prove to be a key battlefield in the wider war. By all accounts—including al Qaeda’s—the U.S. surge dealt bin Laden’s terror enterprise a significant strategic defeat in Iraq.</p>
<p><em>Operation Iraqi Freedom lived up to its name.</em></p>
<p>The war liberated 24 million Iraqis. Iraq is anything but perfect today, but its people are free—free from tyranny, free from being required to pledge their “souls and blood…for Saddam,” free from the vast torture chamber Saddam turned Iraq into, free from his omnipresent terrors. As Odierno recently <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2013/2/15%20odierno/20130215_odierno_army_transcript.pdf">reflected</a>, “It’s hard to describe to somebody what an awful dictator Saddam Hussein was unless you were there in Iraq.” Iraqis held their first post-Saddam election in 2005, when 75 percent of eligible voters walked, marched, limped and ran to the polls to prove they belong in the democratic family.</p>
<p><em>The world is better—and America more secure—without Saddam Hussein.</em></p>
<p>“If nothing else, Iraq is not a destabilizing factor,” Odierno observes. It pays to recall that during Saddam’s reign, which began in 1979, Iraq made war against virtually all of its neighbors: Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Saddam used <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/18/world/officers-say-us-aided-iraq-in-war-despite-use-of-gas.html?pagewanted=all&amp;src=pm">chemical weapons</a> against his own people and against Iran. Long before Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, he was racing to join the nuclear club. After Desert Storm, the U.S. tried to contain Saddam by enforcing no-fly zones—at an annual cost $13 billion—and by garrisoning troops in Saudi Arabia. The presence of foreign troops in the Muslim holy land incensed Osama bin Laden, who set about the task of expelling the Americans from the “land of the two holy places.” Thus was born a fringe terror group known as al Qaeda, which launched a global guerilla war against America, which triggered America’s global war on terror, which led, inevitably, back to Iraq.</p>
<p>It was inevitable because Saddam Hussein’s associations, behavior and record with weapons of mass destruction fueled a presumption of guilt that, when mixed with America’s profound sense of vulnerability after 9/11, created a deadly combination. This is perhaps the most fundamental way 9/11 is linked to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq: The latter did not perpetrate the former, but the former taught Washington a lesson about the danger of failing to confront threats before they are fully formed. In the same way, the appeasement of Hitler at once had nothing and yet everything to do with how America waged the Cold War against Moscow.</p>
<p><em>President Bush did make mistakes.</em></p>
<p>All wartime presidents make mistakes. The major mistake President Bush made was not in going to war, but in how he went to war. By not going heavy into Iraq and by disbanding the Iraqi military, a postwar insurgency became inevitable. The Bush administration’s rationale that a lighter footprint would be better suited to a limited war focused on regime change may have made sense on paper. But a force built to move fast across the desert proved insufficient for occupation and rehabilitation of Iraq’s poisoned politics. The result: a costly postwar war.</p>
<p>That brings us to the things that remain hazy, even a decade after the beginning of the Iraq War:</p>
<p><em>Was it worth it?</em></p>
<p>Like a Rorschach inkblot, to some Americans, the Iraq War looks like a necessary but costly effort to protect U.S. interests—and to others, like a fiasco. The war’s critics cannot overlook the costs: 4,500 Americans killed and $880 billion spent. The defenders of the war counter that the success or failure of America’s wars is not determined by <a href="http://www.legion.org/landingzone/7066/casualties-count">casualty counts</a>.</p>
<p>Interestingly, a decade after the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, America’s opinion of the controversial war is starting to coalesce around a surprising consensus: Today, 55 percent say the war was “very successful” or “somewhat successful,” up from 43 percent in 2008, according to an NBC News/<em>Wall Street Journal</em> poll.</p>
<p><em>What about those WMDs?</em></p>
<p>President Bush’s decision to launch a preventive war in Iraq was primarily based on worries that Baghdad would use or lose its WMDs. But the invasion revealed only the skeleton of a WMD program.</p>
<p>Some observers—including President Obama’s director of national intelligence, <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-10-29/news/0310290219_1_illicit-weapons-clapper-weapons-inspector">James Clapper</a>—contend that Saddam spirited his WMDs off to Syria for safe keeping. Clapper was head of the National Imagery and Mapping <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-10-29/news/0310290219_1_illicit-weapons-clapper-weapons-inspector">Agency</a> during the Iraq War and concluded that Saddam had “unquestionably” moved his WMDs into Syria, using converted civilian airliners and truck convoys to haul the contraband out of Iraq in late 2002 and early 2003. Those assessments are being <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/19/syria-s-next-act.html">revisited today</a> in the <a href="http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/the-unresolved-mystery-of-syrias-iraqi-chemical-weapons/">mainstream press</a> and in <a href="http://blog.usni.org/2012/07/20/iraq-chemical-weapons-moved-to-syria-before-2003-invasion">military circles</a>, as Syria implodes and the world wonders if Bashar Assad will turn his WMD arsenal on his own people. If /when Assad falls or flees, lots of people will be scouring Syria’s WMD stocks for Iraqi markings.</p>
<p>The irony is that President Obama, intent on avoiding another Iraq, has stayed out of Syria, which has increased the likelihood that Damascus might use or lose its WMDs.</p>
<p><em>What lies ahead?</em></p>
<p>As Frederick Kagan, one of the architects of the surge, <a href="http://www.criticalthreats.org/other/kagan-president-generals-afghanistan-december-12-2011">explained</a> in late 2011, President Obama’s own military officials wanted to keep more than 20,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. But President Obama undercut the delicate negotiations with Baghdad and proposed a force so small that it would be unable even to protect itself. When Baghdad balked, as Kagan reported, the White House “decided instead to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq…despite the fact that no military commander supported the notion that such a course of action could secure U.S. interests.” The result: Washington has no leverage with Baghdad; Iraq is scarred by renewed <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/28/us-iraq-violence-idUSBRE8AQ0ZL20121128">sectarian war</a>; Iran is moving arms and fighters into Syria <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/19/us-syria-crisis-iran-iraq-idUSBRE88I17B20120919">via Iraq</a>; and al Qaeda is making a comeback in Iraq.</p>
<p>Just as President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq opened the door to uncounted unknowns, so did President Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/iraq-ten-years-later/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>716</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Childish Defense of Bradley Manning</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/the-childish-defense-of-bradley-manning/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-childish-defense-of-bradley-manning</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/the-childish-defense-of-bradley-manning/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Mar 2013 04:18:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arrest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bradley Manning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Court]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[leak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secrets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wikileaks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=179743</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why "anti-secrecy" activists only cause war and conflict, not peace. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/the-childish-defense-of-bradley-manning/gty_bradley_manning_dm_121108_wg/" rel="attachment wp-att-179745"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-179745" title="gty_bradley_manning_dm_121108_wg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/gty_bradley_manning_dm_121108_wg-450x340.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="204" /></a>Army Pfc. Bradley Manning has confessed to providing military and diplomatic secrets to WikiLeaks, pleading guilty to 10 criminal counts for what he once braggingly—and erroneously—called “the largest data spillage in American history.” In fact, what Manning perpetrated was the purposeful, premeditated and arguably treasonous publication of stolen national-security secrets. This was not a leak or a spill.</p>
<p>It pays to recall that this poster-child hero of the anti-war left gave U.S. military and diplomatic secrets to an anarchist group. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange openly admits that he wants to “bring down many administrations that rely on concealing reality—including the U.S. administration.” Likewise, Manning once <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/how-us-embassy-cables-leaked">boasted</a> about “worldwide anarchy in CSV format,” a reference to the kind of files he surrendered to Assange.</p>
<p>Over the years, Assange and his anarchists have published operations manuals for the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay; classified reports on the Battle of Fallujah; detailed information on U.S. military equipment, by unit, in Iraq; gun-camera footage of a U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad; a U.S. Special Forces manual for bolstering allied governments; CIA strategies to shore up public support among allied populations for the war in Afghanistan; Social Security numbers of U.S. military personnel; and private diplomatic exchanges.</p>
<p>In addition, as <em>USAToday</em> reports, WikiLeaks has exposed U.S. efforts to remove nuclear materials from Pakistan, State Department plans to use diplomatic personnel as spies, quid-pro-quos offered by the Obama administration to persuade foreign governments to take on Gitmo detainees, cover-ups of missile attacks in Yemen, and support among Arab leaders to strike Iran.</p>
<p>While serving in Iraq, Manning downloaded classified videos, thousands of battlefield reports and 251,287 diplomatic cables. “I listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga,” he bragged in a text exchange, “while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history.”</p>
<p>Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called WikiLeaks’ publication of secret diplomatic cables “an attack on America’s foreign policy interests.” According to Clinton, Manning’s WikiLeaks time bomb “puts people’s lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.”</p>
<p>Manning <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/us/bradley-manning-admits-giving-trove-of-military-data-to-wikileaks.html?pagewanted=all">says</a> he stole and transferred the data to illustrate “how the world would be a better place if states would not make secret deals with each other.”</p>
<p>What a silly, childish notion.</p>
<p>In fact, we all know from personal experience that secrecy often serves an important purpose. For instance, if Assange and Manning—both in serious legal trouble—really believed secrecy was so bad, why wouldn’t they post their consultations with counsel on YouTube or share their defense strategies with the world on WikiLeaks?</p>
<p>The answer is the very same reason why nation-states keep some things secret. Indeed, it is often secrecy—not transparency—that keeps the world from spinning out of control.</p>
<p>The Assanges and Mannings of the world will never accept it, but shadows and secrets are necessary to conduct diplomacy and carry out the sort of national-security strategy that deters and ends wars.</p>
<p>That’s one of the sad ironies of Assange’s WikiLeaks. By exposing secret decisions and actions that relate to foreign policy and national security, he thinks he is promoting peace. But in truth, his handiwork is doing the very opposite: It has a chilling effect on the very sorts of exchanges that avert war or limit its effects, thus increasing isolation—and decreasing understanding—between governments.</p>
<p>History shows us the benefit of shadows.</p>
<p>Working in the shadows, TR prevented a war over Venezuela and ended a war between Russia and Japan.</p>
<p>The Allies used shadows to orchestrate their deception before D Day.</p>
<p>Thanks to the shadow of secrecy, FDR launched the Manhattan Project, and Truman used its fruits to end World War II.</p>
<p>Quoting Gen. Stonewall Jackson, Ike once advised, “Always surprise, mystify and mislead the enemy.” He employed this formula to end the Korean War and prevent a war over Taiwan.</p>
<p>JFK and Khrushchev negotiated a way around World War III, thanks to shadows and back-channel diplomacy.</p>
<p>Reagan won the Cold War by waging an economic, intelligence, technological and propaganda war against the Soviet state—largely in the shadows.</p>
<p>To be sure, we know about these episodes today—and can learn from them—because secret records, cables and diaries have been declassified. But if they had been revealed in real-time—or if the principals thought what they were saying, doing and promising would be exposed in short order—history would be very different.</p>
<p>In short, some things need to be classified. And it’s not Bradley Manning’s or Julian Assange’s responsibility or right to determine what to declassify.</p>
<p>Tellingly, this war on secrecy waged by Manning, Assange and WikiLeaks is one-sided. They’ve aired the military strategy, diplomatic planning and dirty laundry of America and its allies—but not that of America’s enemies. There is no Iranian, North Korean, Taliban or al Qaeda equivalent to WikiLeaks. And whereas much of the Western world tolerates and some even applaud people like Assange and Manning, the Russian and Chinese governments simply erase people who expose their secrets.</p>
<p>In other words, WikiLeaks, whether unintentionally or purposely, puts the United States and its allies at a disadvantage. Some will say this has always been true of democratic governments vis-à-vis their dictatorial foes. But timing is everything. And WikiLeaks is shrinking the amount of time between policy formation, policy execution and public airing—and thus shrinking the shadows where American foreign and defense policy can work.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/the-childish-defense-of-bradley-manning/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>70</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Peace in His Mind</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/peace-in-his-mind/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=peace-in-his-mind</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/peace-in-his-mind/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Feb 2013 04:55:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=177880</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama slashes the military in the face of a hostile and violent world.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/peace-in-his-mind/obama55-3/" rel="attachment wp-att-178020"><img class="wp-image-178020 alignleft" title="obama55" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/obama55-450x342.jpg" alt="" width="315" height="239" /></a>President Obama, as is proven after every major speech he delivers, is a Rorschach inkblot: Those on whom he has a mesmeric hold, see the silhouette of a leader worthy of placement on Mount Rushmore. To them, he can say or do no wrong. Those of us who are not so captivated by his words see a very different image and hear a very different message when he speaks. Consider his two major speeches so far this year: the Inaugural Address and the State of the Union.</p>
<p>In the State of the Union, the president repeated his tired and flatly-wrong reference to “the tide of war receding,” promised “a new defense strategy that ensures we maintain the finest military in the world” and pointed to a looming payroll-tax increase as “our most immediate priority.” Of course, what should be the “most immediate priority” for him and Congress is a problem of his own making: the sequestration guillotine hanging over the military.</p>
<p>The president innocently noted that “Congress passed a law” requiring a trillion dollars in automatic spending cuts in the event that the deficit cannot be reduced through the normal policymaking process. He derided the sequestration cuts as “sudden, harsh, arbitrary” and noted that lots of people have called sequestration “a really bad idea.” (Indeed, it would trigger spending cuts to the U.S. military of $500 billion.) But although he repeatedly demanded that Congress “send me a bill”—to reform immigration, to punish outsourcing, to reform the tax code, to change mortgage-lending rules, to “limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact” (now there’s an enforceable law)—there were no solutions about sequestration, no responsibility for its existence.</p>
<p>The fact is that his White House came up with the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-fanciful-claim-that-congress-proposed-the-sequester/2012/10/25/8651dc6a-1eed-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_blog.html">sequestration idea</a> and yet he didn’t offer alternatives to what his outgoing defense secretary <a href="http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123279496">describes</a> as “shooting ourselves in the head.”</p>
<p>Already, while entitlement spending mushrooms, the Pentagon has coughed up $487 billion at the president’s direction. The Navy has been ordered to cut the number of surface combatants from 85 ships to 78, stretch the “build time” of new aircraft carriers from five to seven years, and had to seek a special congressional <a href="http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/01/ap-navy-enterprise-leon-panetta-says-us-keeping-11-carriers-012212/">waiver</a> to deploy just 10 carriers (rather than the legally-mandated 11) while the USS <em>Gerald Ford</em> is built. The Air Force has announced plans to reduce its fleet by 286 planes. The active-duty Army will be cut from 570,000 soldiers to 490,000; the Marines from 202,000 to 182,000. And there’s virtually no investment in modernization. Although the defense budget grew by $300 billion in the decade after 9/11, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) notes that just 16 percent of that increase was earmarked for modernization and new weapons systems. However, <a href="http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2011/07/analysis-of-the-fy2012-defense-budget/">CSBA</a> points out a dozen new weapons systems were terminated and many systems had their numbers cut below end-strength goals (e.g., the F-22). “The aggregate effect is that a significant portion of DOD’s investment in modernization over the past decade did not result in force modernization.”</p>
<p>To get a sense of the modernization crisis, consider that the Air Force now plans to keep flying B-52 bombers through 2040. The first B-52 took to the skies in 1954. The Air Force is relying on reconnaissance airframes built in 1955, tankers built in 1956, fighter-bombers built in 1974 and stealth bombers (there are only 20 of them) built in 1989.</p>
<p>Sequestration will only exacerbate these issues: less modernization, older equipment, fewer troops, more cuts.</p>
<p>These cuts might make sense if peace were breaking out all around the world. But despite what President Obama keeps saying, we know the very opposite to be true. As Reagan counseled, “Don’t be afraid to see what you see.” America is still at war in Afghanistan. Terrorist networks like al-Qaeda still have the ability to strike and are increasing their influence in North Africa, Yemen, Iraq and Syria. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is less stable and more paranoid than ever, as is nuclear-armed North Korea, which just tested another nuke. Iran is racing ahead with its own nuclear-weapons program. Syria is on fire. The Arab Spring revolution is upending the Middle East. And these, it could be argued, are not even our principal worries. As the U.S. declaws itself, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/04/us-china-defence-idUSTRE82302O20120304">China</a>’s military spending has skyrocketed from $20 billion in 2002 to some $180 billion a decade later—an unparalleled jump in military spending on a percentage basis. The resulting arms buildup has empowered Beijing to bully its neighbors; launch cyber-attacks against the United States; conduct provocative military operations in space; and deploy a swelling arsenal of missiles, submarines and warplanes aimed at countering U.S. Naval power.</p>
<p>Does the president’s silence on sequestration mean he wants the Pentagon’s budget to be cut by another $500 billion—or put another way, to shrink over the next decade by nearly $1 trillion? Before scoffing at that question, recall that the Pentagon was the first place <a href="http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Obama-Wants-Defense-Review-400-Billion-in-Cuts-119802529.html">President Obama turned</a> when the debt crisis emerged as a political issue. “We need to not only eliminate waste and improve efficiency and effectiveness, but conduct a fundamental review of America’s missions, capabilities and our role in a changing world,” Obama said in 2011.</p>
<p>Read that again: <em>a fundamental review of America’s missions, capabilities and role in the world</em>. It seems a smaller military could serve a larger objective for the president—an America less able to act independently; an America that is less assertive; an America with fewer military resources, a shorter reach, slower reflexes and a smaller global role. After the sequestration guillotine falls, as Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey concludes, “We wouldn’t be the global power that we know ourselves to be today.”</p>
<p>That brings us back to the president’s Inaugural Address, which subtly underscored this shrinking global role and reminded us that this president is not particularly interested in the things other presidents addressed in their inaugurals: facing global “responsibility and danger” (TR); committing to “strengthen freedom-loving nations against the dangers of aggression” (Truman); vowing to “bear any burden…to assure the survival and the success of liberty” (JFK);  building “a security shield that would destroy nuclear missiles before they reach their target” (Reagan); “ending tyranny in our world” (Bush 43).</p>
<p>Instead, after a campaign that promised to “focus on nation-building here at home,” President Obama asked America to avert its gaze from North Korean nukes and Iranian centrifuges and Syrian chemical weapons, to ignore a Middle East aflame, to look away from a metastasizing terror threat in Pakistan and Yemen and North Africa, to stop worrying about Beijing’s buildup and bullying. All of that is unimportant or unreal, his soothing words suggested, because a “decade of war is now ending.”</p>
<p>Sure, he made some stock references about “our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle.” But that was a tee-up line for his real message: that we are “heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends,” that “we will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully,” that “engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear.”</p>
<p>The president’s implication, though larded with faux JFK-isms, is that war is the easy choice, peace is hard; defense and deterrence are easy, diplomacy is hard; fighting wars is what brutes do, making peace is what statesmen like him do.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with applauding peacemakers and engaging other nation-states to find common ground. But there is something fundamentally wrong with suggesting that diplomatic engagement is somehow more courageous than deterrence or what Churchill called “decisive blows,” with using rhetorical misdirection to conceal our massive military retrenchment, with not understanding that those Americans who “won the peace” first defeated our enemies:</p>
<ul>
<li>Yes, President Truman and Secretary of State Marshall conceived a plan to rebuild Western Europe, secure new friends and allies, and prevent a continent from sliding back into war or tyranny. But before that, Gen. Marshall commanded the U.S. Armed Forces in World War II. And Truman, as commander-in-chief, unleashed the most powerful weapon known to man; poured unheard-of sums into a standing peacetime army to deter our enemies; vanquished two appalling regimes; and waged proxy wars against another (Stalin’s Soviet Union).</li>
<li>Before he wrote a constitution for Japan—guaranteeing equal rights, education reform, free speech, labor rights, and religious liberty—before he turned Japan from a militarist society ruled by a god-king into a nation with enduring levels of individual freedom, Gen. MacArthur waged and won a just war against Japan’s armies.</li>
<li>Before he shepherded Germany back into the family of nations, before he presided over a partnership enfolding the Americas and Europe, before he built Obama’s beloved interstate highway system, Gen. Eisenhower breached Hitler’s Fortress Europe and led an army of armies into the heart of Germany to crush our enemy.</li>
<li>Before men with names like Clay and LeMay rescued West Berlin with an armada of food- and coal-laden planes, they were killing Nazis.</li>
<li>Before TR won a Nobel Peace Prize, he built up America’s military strength and wielded it to deter America’s enemies in the Caribbean, Mediterranean and Pacific.</li>
<li>Likewise, before Reagan called Gorbachev a “<a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/reagan-gorbachev/">friend</a>,” he revitalized America’s deterrent strength, launched brutal proxy wars against Gorbachev’s empire, waged economic warfare against the Soviet state and won the Cold War.</li>
</ul>
<p>In short, our history shows that winning the peace comes only after securing victory. But history is not that important to this president. How could it be? After all, it has to do with what happened before he came on the scene—and that’s just prologue for him. If that sounds too harsh, remember this is the man who said his presidency would mark the moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…when we came together to remake this great nation.”</p>
<p>But contempt for history can be a liability. The president’s wise men allowed the phrase “peace in our time” to be included in his <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres69.html">Inaugural Address</a> last month. It’s difficult to understand how a phrase so fraught and freighted could slip by all the reviews and rewrites—unless the president and his wise men simply don’t know about or care about the history of this phrase.</p>
<p>This phrase, it pays to recall, is what Neville Chamberlain uttered as he returned from a peace conference with Hitler in September 1938. Waving a piece of paper that expressed the commitment of Germany and Britain “never to go to war with one another again,” the well-meaning British leader <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/lesson31.htm">declared</a>, “I believe it is peace in our time.” Hitler ignited World War II less than 12 months later.</p>
<p>Chamberlain said something else that day, a line that has been forgotten but may be just as relevant to us: “Go home and get a nice quiet sleep,” he soothingly reassured his countrymen.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/alan-w-dowd/peace-in-his-mind/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>42</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Big Issues and Fine Print</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/big-issues-and-fine-print/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=big-issues-and-fine-print</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/big-issues-and-fine-print/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Dec 2012 04:40:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blame]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Deficit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=169854</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How our fiscal woes are independent of Bush's national-security policies.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/big-issues-and-fine-print/ob33/" rel="attachment wp-att-169902"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-169902" title="ob33" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ob33.jpg" alt="" width="252" height="167" /></a>Last week’s edition of <em>The Washington Post</em>’s “Fine Print” <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lessons-from-1917/2012/12/10/88632c94-3fbc-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_print.html">column</a> used the fiscal-cliff crisis and related debt debate to launch fresh attacks on the Bush administration, specifically that “borrowing to pay for the war helped lead to the current fiscal crisis.” The piece noted that the debt-limit statute was “born out of the need to pay for government spending from our entrance into World War I” and that “George W. Bush’s White House didn’t consider such an issue when it launched its war on terrorism…or undertook the more costly invasion of Iraq in 2003.” The piece went on to detail war-related tax increases under Wilson, FDR, Truman and LBJ.</p>
<p>Although the piece has a point—shared contributions and shared sacrifice in a time of war make political and fiscal sense—it misjudges certain issues related to waging war and raising revenue, leaves out some important items about America’s post-World War I finances and is flat wrong on some specifics.</p>
<p>To be sure, Bush made mistakes in prosecuting the war. All wartime presidents do. That includes Madison’s entry into, and prosecution of, an arguably-unnecessary war with the British Empire in 1812; Lincoln’s choice of commanders in the early phases of the Civil War; McKinley’s occupation of the Philippines; Wilson’s foolish attempt to keep up the pretense of being neutral while bankrolling the belligerents; FDR’s naiveté with Tokyo before the war and with Moscow during the war; the Truman administration’s disastrous “defense perimeter” green light before the communists crossed the 38<sup>th</sup> Parallel and decision to wage a “police action” after the communists came across; LBJ’s doomed incrementalism in, and micromanagement of, Vietnam; Nixon’s pursuit not of victory but of “peace with honor”; and the elder Bush’s decision to cut short the ground war against Saddam Hussein.</p>
<p>For his part, the younger Bush made at least three war-related missteps:</p>
<p>First, by not asking for a full-fledged declaration of war against nations that harbor or fund terrorist groups with a record of attacking U.S. targets, he limited his freedom of action. Such a declaration would have enfolded the major sources of global terrorism (e.g. Taliban Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria); put others that dealt in the terror trade on notice (e.g. Libya, Pakistan, North Korea); and framed the war very clearly as a campaign of campaigns against terrorists with a global presence, rather than separate conflicts, each needing its own justification.</p>
<p>Second, by not going heavy into Iraq, a postwar insurgency became more likely. The rationale that a lighter footprint would be better suited to a limited war focused on regime change may have made sense on paper. But a force built to move fast proved insufficient for occupation and reconstruction. Prewar assessments about the need for a large force for postwar stabilization made good sense, were based on lessons learned from the Gulf War and other post-Vietnam interventions, and would have given theater commanders an array of tools to smother what eventually became a bloody and costly postwar war.</p>
<p>Third, by not finding a funding mechanism for the war—whether special war bonds or a special war tax—Bush exposed himself to political attack and the country to fiscal dangers. Indeed, many observers worried at the onset of hostilities about the prudence of waging war with a credit card. In October 2001, for example, I <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2001/nov/9/20011109-031000-9111r/print/">noted</a>, quizzically, that “Uncle Sam doesn’t want us to conserve and save, but to consume and spend. The president urges us to ‘visit Disney World and America’s other vacation spots.’ An array of wartime tax cuts is in the works to prime the pump of American consumerism…it seems there’s very little the average American can do or sacrifice to help Uncle Sam ‘Beat bin Laden’ or ‘Tame the Taliban,’ to borrow the lingo of WWII.”</p>
<p>All that said, Bush deserves credit for recognizing something that so many people, even more than a decade later, fail to grasp, namely, that 9/11 altered the very DNA of American national-security strategy. Accordingly, his post-9/11 policies put America on the offensive and the enemy on its heels, shifted the battle-front back to foreign shores, and protected our country from follow-on attacks.</p>
<p>The operative phrase in that last sentence is “our country.” The “Fine Print” column’s comment about “George W. Bush’s White House” and “<em>its</em> war on terrorism” reflects a sad and cynical view we’ve become accustomed to in the past decade. In truth, this wasn’t Bush’s war—just as Yemen and Pakistan aren’t Obama’s war, Vietnam wasn’t LBJ’s, and Korea wasn’t Truman’s. These are America’s wars. America was attacked on 9/11. And the war that ensued was then—and remains now—America’s to wage.</p>
<p>As to places where the “Fine Print” column is deliberately vague or flat-out wrong: First, it fails to a note that although Wilson may have tried to pay for the Great War with taxes and bonds, the war still left behind a fiscal mess. Upon entering office, President Harding lamented the war’s “delirium of expenditure” and “unspeakable waste.” In other words, wars are always costly, destructive and wasteful. The costliness of war is one reason why it is to be prevented, if at all possible. (The best way to do that is through overwhelming deterrent strength—something U.S. policymakers have forgotten in recent years. But that’s a subject for another essay.) Rare is a conflict like the Persian Gulf War, which was largely <a href="http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat7/145082.pdf">bankrolled by global funders</a>.</p>
<p>That brings us to a second problem. The column suggests that George H.W. Bush’s decision to raise taxes (which came in June 1990) was somehow related to the need for revenue for Operation Desert Storm (which began in January 1991).</p>
<p>And third, the column notes that the younger Bush was “supported by a GOP-led House and Senate from 2001 through 2006.” In fact, the Democrats controlled the Senate from mid-2001 until January 3, 2003. In other words, all fiscal decisions during that period were, by definition, bipartisan.</p>
<p>Speaking of fiscal decisions, the column’s implication that the fiscal woes we face are due to the $1.3-trillion spent on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond ignores common sense and simple arithmetic. If we had never gone to war after 9/11, we would still have about $15 trillion in debt today—rather than about $16 trillion—thanks largely to unchecked entitlement spending, as well as an $800-billion stimulus and a $1-trillion takeover of health care.</p>
<p>Just like the war, by the way, all of these items are being charged to the nation’s credit card.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/big-issues-and-fine-print/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>12</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Second Term Headaches</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/second-term-headaches/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=second-term-headaches</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/second-term-headaches/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Dec 2012 04:35:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[GM]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[osama bin laden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[re-election]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=168904</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lingering problems catch up to a president.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/second-term-headaches/110211_obama_egypt_reaction_ap_283_regular/" rel="attachment wp-att-168905"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-168905" title="110211_obama_egypt_reaction_ap_283_regular" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/110211_obama_egypt_reaction_ap_283_regular.jpg" alt="" width="261" height="194" /></a>As President Barack Obama prepares for his second term, he is facing a number of lingering problems overseas—problems that, despite his campaign claims, were not solved in his first term.</p>
<p>Let’s begin where the president achieved his greatest foreign-policy triumph: the strike on Osama bin Laden. If the 2012 campaign narrative was any indication, the president believes the killing of bin Laden marked the beginning of the end, if not the end, of the fight against al Qaeda and its kindred movements. After all, the president has repeatedly said, “the tide of war is receding” and “al Qaeda is on the run.”</p>
<p>Neither assertion is true. Just as the death of Stalin didn’t end the Cold War, the death of bin Laden didn’t end what used to be called the war on terror. That should be abundantly clear from what’s happening in Mali, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Iraq. Yes, “bin Laden is dead and GM is alive,” as the vice president repeatedly reminded America during the campaign. But “bin Ladenism”—the movement inspired by the author of 9/11—is anything but dead. Don’t take my word for it. “The cancer has metastasized to other parts of the global body,” as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta <a href="http://e-ring.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/20/no_turkey_panetta_braces_us_for_long_counterterrorism_war">explains</a>. “If we turn away from these critical regions of the world, we risk undoing the significant gains [we] have made.”</p>
<p>The struggle against jihadism is a generational struggle that will be measured in decades, not election cycles. And clever bumper stickers will not win this war.</p>
<p>One of the go-to tools the president is using to wage this war is America’s fleet of combat drones. To be sure, the president’s celebrated drone war has scored important successes, including taking out al Qaeda’s Abu Yahya al-Libi and Anwar al-Awlaki as well as striking Haqqani and Taliban militants in the field. However, the drone war promises to cause second-term headaches.</p>
<p>First, it’s a tactic masquerading as a strategy, and at some point the Obama White House will have to recognize this. As Mitt Romney observed, in an implicit critiqued of the Obama administration’s overreliance on drone strikes, “We can’t kill our way out of this mess.”</p>
<p>Romney was right about this, but this is not the only drawback to the drone war: it is ethically problematic to rely on <a href="http://www.legion.org/landingzone/192838/unmanned-air-force">robots</a> to wage war; there are constitutional and legal <a href="http://www.legion.org/landingzone/3039/uavs-are-changing-way-we-wage-war">ramifications</a> to an unmanned air force; and the proliferation of combat drones is opening the door to an era of <a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1301">accidental wars</a>.</p>
<p>On top of all that, it exposes the U.S. to significant challenges from overseas. What looks like an essential national-security tool to Americans appears very different to international observers. “In 17 of 20 countries,” a recent <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/13/global-opinion-of-obama-slips-international-policies-faulted/">Pew survey</a> found, “more than half disapprove of U.S. drone attacks targeting extremist leaders and groups.” According to Pew, the drone war feeds “a widespread perception that the U.S. acts unilaterally and does not consider the interests of other countries.” Thus, the drone war has reinforced the very image Obama promised to erase.</p>
<p>Moreover, a UN official recently announced <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/un-to-probe-drone-attacks-by-us-others-resulting-in-civilian-deaths/2012/10/25/3c4f454e-1ee8-11e2-9cd5-b55c38388962_story.html">plans</a> to create an investigation unit within the Human Rights Council to look at drone-related civilian casualties. The <a href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/14session/A.HRC.14.24.Add6.pdf">council</a> has warned that “targeted killing is only lawful when the target is a ‘combatant’ or ‘fighter.’” Critics of the drone war would argue that it has not always met that standard. The use of drones to cripple al-Awlaki’s branch of al-Qaeda in Yemen, for instance, killed dozens of people apparently not affiliated with al Qaeda. The Brookings Institution <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/about/programs/foreign-policy/afghanistan-index">estimates</a> that, along with the militants killed by drone strikes in Pakistan, some 450 nonmilitants may have been killed.</p>
<p>Now, consider the above paragraph in the context of the administration’s drone-related leaks. According to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all"><em>The New York Times</em></a>, the Obama administration embraced a highly controversial method for determining civilian casualties that “in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants …unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” The president is described as being “at the helm” of a “nominations process” for a drone “kill list,” on which he insists on “approving every new name.” In addition, he “signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia and also on the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan,” and often decides “personally whether to go ahead” with a drone strike.</p>
<p>Again, for many Americans, that sounds like a commander-in-chief fulfilling his primary responsibility, albeit a bit more hands-on than we might expect. But international observers could see something far more menacing in these reports. For instance, the Rome <a href="http://untreaty.un.org/cod/icc/statute/romefra.htm">Statute</a>, which spawned the International Criminal Court (ICC), considers launching an attack “in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians” to be a war crime and defines “systematic attack directed against any civilian population” as a crime against humanity. The U.S. never signed on to the ICC treaty, which is supposed to mean the U.S. is not subject to the court’s jurisdiction. However, that isn’t stopping the ICC from conducting what <em>The Wall Street Journal </em>calls a “preliminary examination into whether NATO troops, including American soldiers, fighting the Taliban may have to be put in the dock.” It’s not a stretch to think some ICC lawyer will make a similar lunge at those who are waging the drone war.</p>
<p>This is not an argument for international watchdogs tying America down. Washington has every right to target those who are trying to kill Americans. But the brewing international backlash against the drone war reminds us that means and methods matter as much as ends.</p>
<p>The Obama administration was overly mindful of this means-and-ends balancing act during the NATO operation in Libya. It even came up with a clever way of describing America’s new approach to intervening in international hot spots. But as it worked out in practice, “leading from behind” left much to be desired. For instance, when NATO asked Washington to extend air operations at one critical point in the mission, the <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2011-04-04/world/libya.war_1_forces-rebels-opposition-fighters/2?_s=PM:WORLD">response</a> emphasized that the extension of U.S. air power, incredibly, “expires on Monday.” As a result of Washington’s lead-from-behind approach, NATO frayed and almost failed, with Britain and France straining to do what the United States once did effortlessly. NATO’s after-action reports indicate that the alliance was lacking in munitions, targeting and jamming capabilities, mid-air refueling planes, reconnaissance platforms, and command-and-control assets—just about everything needed to conduct a 21<sup>st</sup>-century air war.</p>
<p>To be sure, Qaddafi is gone, but Libya is a mess, as evidenced by the deadly attacks on the U.S. ambassador, the transitional government’s inability to rein in militias and <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2108425,00.html">plans</a> in Benghazi to create an autonomous region with a separate parliament, police force and court system.</p>
<p>Speaking of messes, Syria is on fire. The world is waiting on Washington to lead in some direction. Without American leadership, Syria may become this president’s Rwanda. After 21 months of inaction, it’s already his Bosnia. And as Assad un-sheaths his chemical arsenal, it could become the world’s nightmare.</p>
<p>Following Washington’s lead, members of the nation-building coalition in Afghanistan are heading for the exits. If the administration sticks to its campaign pledge to withdraw in 2014 and focus on “nation-building here at home,” Kabul will not be able to hold back a resurgent Taliban.</p>
<p>Iraq offers a grim preview of what awaits Afghanistan. Before the abrupt departure of U.S. forces in December 2011, al Qaeda’s branch in Iraq (AQI) had been decimated. Today, AQI numbers 2,500 fighters, operates training camps in western Iraq and is carrying out 140 attacks per week in Iraq. As an Iraqi counterterror official puts it, “The Iraqi efforts to combat terrorist groups have been negatively affected by the U.S. pullout.” This was avoidable and predictable. Frederick Kagan, one of the architects of the surge, explains that Obama’s own Pentagon and State Department officials wanted to keep 20,000 U.S. troops in Iraq after 2011, as backstop against the very threats that are now emerging. But the White House proposed a force of just 3,000. When Baghdad balked, as Kagan reports, the White House “decided instead to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq…despite the fact that no military commander supported the notion that such a course of action could secure U.S. interests.”</p>
<p>The result: Parts of Iraq are safe havens for al Qaeda fighters; Iraq is scarred by renewed <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/28/us-iraq-violence-idUSBRE8AQ0ZL20121128">sectarian war</a>; Washington has little leverage with Baghdad; and Iran is using Iraq to move assets into Syria.</p>
<p>To his credit, the president built an impressive sanctions coalition to force Iran to give up its nuclear-weapons program. However, that’s only part of the story. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concludes that “The principal objective of international sanctions—to compel Iran to verifiably confine its nuclear program to purely peaceful uses—has not been achieved.”</p>
<p>To be successful, sanctions against Iran must be a means to an end—not an end in and of themselves.</p>
<p>Similarly, the president must recognize in the second term that summits are not an end in and of themselves—and that a successful Russia policy has to deliver more than slogans. The payoff of the administration’s “Russia Reset,” after all, has been an emboldened Vladimir Putin, who has withdrawn from the Nunn-Lugar nuclear threat reduction program; unveiled <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/as-russias-presidential-vote-nears-putin-vows-big-military-spending-hike-140297933/152437.html">plans</a> to deploy 2,300 new tanks, 600 new warplanes, 400 new ICBMs and 28 new subs; launched the largest nuclear <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/20/us-russia-nuclear-putin-idUSBRE89J0EJ20121020">war games</a> since the collapse of the Soviet Union; and blocked international action in Syria.</p>
<p>Finally, in 2009, Obama insisted that “the United States does not seek to contain China.” By 2011, he was unveiling his “Pacific Pivot” aimed at containing China. Although a renewed focus on security in the Asia-Pacific region is needed, one wonders how effective the “Pacific Pivot” will be given the administration’s defense cuts. Recall that the president has trimmed $487 billion from the Pentagon, including cuts in the number of planes, warships and troops, as well as cuts in <a href="http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2013/FY2013_Weapons.pdf">resources</a> earmarked for F-35s, refueling planes, missile defenses, carriers and submarines. All of these cuts come <em>before</em> sequestration. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/04/us-china-defence-idUSTRE82302O20120304">China</a>, on the other hand, is not cutting anything from its armed forces. Beijing boosted military spending by 11 percent in 2012, capping double-digit increases in nine of the past 10 years. According to the Pentagon’s latest <a href="http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/2012_CMPR_Final.pdf">report on China’s military power</a>, Beijing is pouring increasing sums into cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, counter-space weapons, bombers and submarines—assets focused on countering American power.</p>
<p>The “receding tide of war,” “leading from behind,” “nation-building at home,” the “Russia Reset,” the “Pacific Pivot”—these words may make for compelling rhetoric, but they haven’t secured U.S. interests or promoted international stability.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/second-term-headaches/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>10</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Consequences of the Petraeus Scandal</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/the-consequences-of-the-petraeus-scandal/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-consequences-of-the-petraeus-scandal</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/the-consequences-of-the-petraeus-scandal/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Nov 2012 04:45:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[affair]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paula Broadwell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Petraeus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[resignation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scandal]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=165262</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The political and -- geopolitical -- ramifications. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/the-consequences-of-the-petraeus-scandal/davidpetraeus_affair_1280_110119340_1_480x360/" rel="attachment wp-att-165286"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-165286" title="DavidPetraeus_Affair_1280_110119340_1_480x360" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/DavidPetraeus_Affair_1280_110119340_1_480x360-450x337.jpg" alt="" width="315" height="236" /></a>The unfolding scandal surrounding former CIA Director David Petraeus has many layers, far more than we can see today. But even at this early hour, some things are clear. For ease of discussion, let’s put these things—“known knowns” as Don Rumsfeld would call them—under four broad headings: the human, the military, the political and the geopolitical dimensions of the Petraeus scandal.</p>
<p><em>Human</em></p>
<p>A month ago, putting those last two words—“Petraeus” and “scandal”—next to each other or even in the same sentence or article would have been unthinkable. Such was his stature and public image. But this sad story is yet another reminder that all of us have feet of clay; all of us are capable of doing great and inspiring things as well as dumb and ugly things. Our reputations are only as good as the depth of our next mistake. And as Petraeus now knows, the bigger the reputation, the bigger the fall.</p>
<p>To be sure, a key contributing factor in Petraeus’s outsized reputation was his impressive record, which we will discuss in a moment. But another contributing factor was the notoriety and even celebrity that blossomed around him, which he appears to have cultivated in some ways. (Just consider the book written by Ms. Broadwell.) This “celebrification” of military and political leaders is not new, but it is reaching epidemic levels. And it’s unhealthy for the republic, especially in relation to military leaders.</p>
<p>It doesn’t have to be this way. As Derek Leebaert reminds us in his essential history of the Cold War, <em>The Fifty Year Wound</em>, after Gen. George Marshall ended his career of military and public service, he “joined no corporate board…gave no paid speeches” and refused a million-dollar book deal, “at least the equivalent of a $7-million book deal today.” Marshall’s answer to the offer: “The people of the United States have paid me for my services.”</p>
<p>Douglas MacArthur, who was indeed a celebrity general, counseled that America’s military should stand “serene, calm, aloof,” always guided by “those magic words: duty, honor, country.”</p>
<p>Fueled by that very-human flaw known as pride, celebrity poisons that formula of effective command, as MacArthur and Petraeus learned in different ways.</p>
<p><em>Military</em></p>
<p>By resigning and taking responsibility for his lapse in judgment, Petraeus did the right thing. But by doing the wrong thing, he jeopardized his reputation and capsized his career—a career that was far from over.</p>
<p>Petraeus came into the public’s field of vision at a time when nothing was going right in Iraq—and virtually no one thought the Iraq project could be salvaged. But that’s exactly what Petraeus did. After rewriting the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency manual, he put it to the test in Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi; altered the course of the war; saved Iraq from itself; and rescued America from defeat. President Obama then asked Petraeus to make lightning strike twice by repeating in Afghanistan what he accomplished in Iraq. And then, the president tapped Petraeus to work his counter-insurgency and counter-terror magic at the CIA.</p>
<p>Petraeus was remarkably suited for the post-9/11 campaign of campaigns, able to fuse together intelligence, diplomacy, counterinsurgency and kinetic operations to wage a fusion war. Before Petraeus took his CIA post, a veterans group was even pushing the President to award Petraeus a fifth star for his exceptional command and leadership during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>At barely 60 years old, Petraeus had fought and vanquished America’s enemies on several fronts. No one will ever know what this outstanding general officer might have done had his career not been cut short by his misconduct.</p>
<p>This isn’t to say that people don’t deserve second chances, but after falling from such a high perch, it seems unlikely that Petraeus will ask for a second chance to lead in a public way.</p>
<p><em>Political</em></p>
<p>That brings us to some of the political dimensions of this scandal. A Petraeus run for the presidency or pick as vice president seems remote now, as does a role for Petraeus as defense secretary or Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman. Fair or not, his indiscretion, in effect, disqualifies him from consideration for these roles because it could have compromised issues related to intelligence, national security, etc.</p>
<p>This invites comparison to the Clinton scandal, of course. Perhaps the most that can be said in this regard is that after he recognized his failing, Petraeus had a sense of honor and resigned for the good of his family and country.</p>
<p>The other political dimension at play here is far more important to the nation. After all, this is a scandal within a scandal. It pays to recall that Petraeus knew a great deal about the Benghazi scandal. Petraeus made it clear that his agency did not cover its ears when Americans under fire called out for help. “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate,” a CIA official <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/">declared</a> as the White House began to search for a scapegoat. Doubtless, that statement was released with Petraeus’s assent.</p>
<p><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/petraeus-personally-investigated-benghazi-attack-libya/story?id=17706615#.UKOYi4fXaHy">ABC</a> News reports that “Petraeus traveled to Libya to conduct his own review of the Benghazi attack…While in Tripoli, he personally questioned the CIA station chief and other CIA personnel who were in Benghazi on Sept. 11.” This was just weeks before the sex-scandal story broke—conveniently two days after the presidential election.</p>
<p>Some, like Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (USA RET), think Petraeus knew so much that the scandal was used to keep him quiet. “The timing is just too perfect for the Obama administration,” Peters recently said in an <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/11/09/lt_col_ralph_peters_on_petraeus_timing_is_just_too_perfect.html">interview</a>. “Just as the administration claimed it was purely coincidence that our Benghazi consulate was attacked on the anniversary of September 11th. Now it’s purely coincidence that this affair—extra-marital affair—surfaces right after the election, not before, but right after, but before the intelligence chiefs go to Capitol Hill to get grilled. As an old intelligence analyst…the way I read this—I could be totally wrong, this is my interpretation—is that the administration was unhappy with Petraeus not playing ball 100 percent on their party-line story…I don&#8217;t like conspiracy theories, I may be totally wrong, but the timing of this, again, right after the election and right before Petraeus is supposed to get grilled on Capitol Hill, it really smells.”</p>
<p>In fact, ABC reports that “Petraeus is telling friends he does not think he should testify.”</p>
<p><em>Geopolitical</em></p>
<p>Finally, there is the geopolitical dimension. Considered alongside the Secret Service sex scandals and a number of general officers being relieved of command for various indiscretions, the unfolding and widening Petraeus scandal conveys a lack of seriousness, lack of judgment, lack of restraint and lack of propriety among people in key leadership positions—people who should possess all of these traits. It sends a terrible message to the world. Friends will wonder about decision making and stability in Washington, and foes could try to exploit the distractions, disorder and discontinuity.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/the-consequences-of-the-petraeus-scandal/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>35</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Predicting the Next Horse Race</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/predicting-the-next-horse-race/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=predicting-the-next-horse-race</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/predicting-the-next-horse-race/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Nov 2012 04:45:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=164443</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The top contenders for 2016 on the Right and the Left. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/predicting-the-next-horse-race/ryanbiden-ct/" rel="attachment wp-att-164463"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-164463" title="ryanbiden.CT" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ryanbiden.CT_.gif" alt="" width="315" height="228" /></a>With the president winning a second term, what many Americans hoped was just a brief detour into European-style statism turns out to be the opening chapter of a new era. Like other transformative presidents, President Barack Obama will, in effect, shape a decade of American politics and leave a lasting legacy on our nation. In concrete terms, we can expect the federal government to consume not the historical average of 20 percent of GDP, but rather the Obama average of 24 percent or more of GDP—permanently; we can expect the debt to grow and to eclipse the GDP; we can expect individual freedom to be more limited while government becomes less limited; we can expect the military to have fewer resources, a smaller reach and a lesser role overseas; and we can expect more Americans to expect more from the government and less of themselves. These are the consequences of the 2012 status quo election, as a schizophrenic America reelects a president with a gaudy record of serial spending, reelects a House with a mandate to stop the spending free-for-all and reelects a Senate too dysfunctional to do much of anything. There was no breakthrough, no mandate, no message—except to continue an unsustainable status quo.</p>
<p>Fatigued by nearly two years of presidential campaigning, the electorate may not want to start thinking about 2016. But this status quo election virtually forces us to look ahead.</p>
<p>First things first: Mitt Romney was an imperfect candidate, but he didn’t lead the GOP into oblivion. Parties have been written off into “permanent minority status” too many times to count. Things like this were said of the GOP after FDR’s landslide and LBJ’s landslide, after the post-Watergate elections and after Obama’s 2008 victory. And things like this have been said of the Democratic Party, too. After all, it won just two presidential elections between 1860 and 1908. In fact, just two Democrats were elected president <a href="http://www.270towin.com/1912_Election/">between 1860 and 1932</a>. After 1994 and 2004, the party pondered whether it had lost the country.</p>
<p>The coming years will bring new challenges (see above). And a number of governors, lawmakers and political veterans from both parties will answer these challenges with new solutions and new ideas. In no particular order, here are some names to keep in mind.</p>
<p>• Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said 2012 “was probably my time,” adding, “There’s a window of opportunity in life.” But the popular governor is still young, is known as a reformer and is widely respected by people within and outside his party. He would appeal to independents and Hispanics. The drawback of his last name—his brother remains deeply unpopular in polling surveys—will become less of a drag as time passes. It pays to recall that when Truman left the White House, he was considered neither successful nor popular. His approval rating was 26 percent at the end of his presidency, owing to the unpopular Korean War. But history’s <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/039ecoyn.asp?page=2">verdict</a> is much different today. George W. Bush, like Truman, made hard decisions and chose the hard path. Only time can validate those decisions and that path.</p>
<p>• Senator Marco Rubio, a fellow Floridian, is on everyone’s short list. To see why conservatives like Rubio, read his <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/08/marco-rubio-reagan-library-republican-ticket.html">speech at the Reagan Library</a>, in which he talks about the proper role of government, a vibrant civil society, a reformed entitlement system and American exceptionalism. The son of immigrants, Rubio offers a message of upward mobility, free enterprise and core values of faith and family that would appeal to many inside and outside the GOP—and especially to the growing Hispanic and Latino populations, who are playing a growing role in American politics.</p>
<p>• Gen. David Petraeus saved Iraq—and American honor—with his surge plan in 2007-09; led CENTCOM through some of its toughest years; took over command in Afghanistan at the eleventh hour; and has steered America’s military and intelligence machinery through the entire war on terror. He’s a fixer and a consummate man of duty in a country with lots of problems to fix and too few people willing to do their duty. Of course, the Benghazi debacle, which promises to haunt and hound the Obama administration through 2013, could impact the CIA. To his credit, Petraeus has made it clear that his agency did not cover its ears when Americans under fire called out for help. “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate,” a CIA official <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/">declared</a> as the White House began to search for a scapegoat.</p>
<p>• Although she is a natural name for 2016, no one seems as damaged by the Benghazi debacle as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Moreover, she will be almost 70 by the time the next election rolls around. To be sure, that’s not too old to serve. After all, Reagan was 69 when he was elected, and Clinton’s generation of Baby Boomers will remain a key chunk of the electorate. But it is rare for the electorate to go back a generation. Obama, it pays to recall, was born at end of the postwar Baby Boom and/or the beginning of the post-Boom generation.</p>
<p>• The age problem also faces Vice President Joe <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/let-2016-begin-joe-biden-says-not-last-time-voting-for-himself/">Biden</a>, who is even older than Clinton. Still, he has openly talked about a 2016 run.</p>
<p>• Other Democrats to watch for include the two Virginia senators—Mark Warner and Tim Kaine—and governors Deval Patrick and Andrew Cuomo.</p>
<p>• Soon-to-be-former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was recruited heavily in 2011-12 but said no. The likelihood that he will say yes in 2015-16 seems low, given his new <a href="http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/daniels-quitting-politics-may-leave-republicans-in-lurch/article_d7919172-9313-58f7-8b04-686ce891ed7c.html">apolitical role</a> as president of Purdue University.</p>
<p>• A more-likely Hoosier to run for president is the governor-elect, Mike Pence. First elected to Congress in 2000, Pence is a small-government conservative committed to a strong defense and traditional values—firmly in the Reagan tradition.</p>
<p>• Sen. John Thune, the plain-spoken, tough-minded conservative from South Dakota, has hinted that he <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/eye-on-2012/john-thune-wont-run-for-presid.html">might</a> run. Although he doesn’t have a big-state base, he has all the positions and traits of a solid candidate.</p>
<p>• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie could be a factor in the next cycle. He contemplated a run in 2012. His 2016 hopes may be impacted by frustrations some in the GOP expressed in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, when he praised Obama’s help in dealing with the effects of the killer storm. But that could just as easily be spun as evidence of Christie’s ability to put partisanship aside.</p>
<p>• Rep. Paul Ryan was catapulted into the national consciousness and conversation when Romney asked him to join the ticket. The coming two years promise to position Ryan at the very center of the debate over the size and scope of government, which will only elevate him nationally. Indeed, Ryan, who <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/11/06/paul-ryan-had-the-least-to-lose-on-election-night/1687899/">retained his House seat</a>, could arguably play a larger role in the looming fiscal fights as chairman of the House Budget Committee than as vice president—a post John Adams dismissed as “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/predicting-the-next-horse-race/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>30</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama&#8217;s Decidedly Unclear Foreign Policy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/obamas-decidedly-unclear-foreign-policy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-decidedly-unclear-foreign-policy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/obamas-decidedly-unclear-foreign-policy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Oct 2012 04:50:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nation building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Romney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=149530</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president has rarely failed to waffle on an issue of international significance. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/obamas-decidedly-unclear-foreign-policy/obamadebate/" rel="attachment wp-att-149535"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-149535" title="ObamaDebate" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/ObamaDebate.gif" alt="" width="315" height="223" /></a>President Barack Obama came out swinging at last night’s debate, repeatedly calling Governor Mitt Romney “reckless and wrong” on a range of foreign policy issues. But to extend the over-used boxing metaphor, Romney deflected many of Obama’s attacks, didn’t get caught in the corners, counterpunched often enough and relentlessly pivoted to the economy. Indeed, Romney acted, looked and sounded more measured and reserved overall. But let’s look at some of those punches and counterpunches, hits and misses.</p>
<p>Romney began the evening by noting that “we can’t kill our way out of this mess”—an implicit critique of Obama’s drone war, which is a tactic dressed up as a strategy—and that “al Qaeda is not on the run”—an implicit critique of Obama’s post-bin Laden narrative. Romney pointed to Mali and Libya. We can add to Iraq to this list. Al Qaeda’s franchise in Iraq (AQI) had been decimated and effectively destroyed before Obama’s abrupt withdrawal of American forces. But a year later, AQI numbers some 2,500 fighters and “is carrying out an average of 140 attacks each week across Iraq,” AP reports. “The Iraqi efforts to combat terrorist groups have been negatively affected by the U.S. pullout,” said an Iraqi military spokesman.</p>
<p>Obama brandished his “leadership in organizing an international coalition” in Libya. In truth, he famously “led from behind” (which is not leadership). As Britain and France strained to try to do what the United States used to do effortlessly, the White House talked about a “time-limited, scope-limited” mission; the president promised that America’s military would play a “supporting role”; and incredibly—laughably, if it were not a matter of life and death—when NATO asked Washington to extend air operations at one critical point in the mission, a <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2011-04-04/world/libya.war_1_forces-rebels-opposition-fighters/2?_s=PM:WORLD">NATO official </a>took pains to emphasize that the extension of U.S. air power “expires on Monday.” Now that’s leadership.</p>
<p>On pure debating points, Obama “scored” when he mocked Romney’s concerns about Putin’s Russia by saying, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” But it probably came across as smart-aleck to many voters. And the more thoughtful ones—the ones who have read about Putin’s massive nuclear war games, his recent decision to end the Nunn-Lugar threat reduction program, his <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/as-russias-presidential-vote-nears-putin-vows-big-military-spending-hike-140297933/152437.html">plans</a> to deploy 2,300 new tanks, 600 new warplanes, 400 new ICBMs and 28 new subs in the next 10 years, his grim vision for military expansion into the Arctic—may conclude that Romney has a point.</p>
<p>Romney counterpunched effectively by turning to Obama and saying he would never ask for—or promise—Putin more “flexibility.”</p>
<p>Obama repeatedly talked about his steadiness and clarity in an attempt to paint Romney as unsteady and “all over the map.”  “As commander-in-chief,” he intoned, seemingly reassuring himself with the practiced words, “I’ve learned you’ve got to be clear.”</p>
<p>Well, where to begin?</p>
<p>Was Obama clear when he initially defended Hosni Mubarak—as some in his administration openly called Mubarak America’s friend—and then tossed Mubarak aside when the crowds got too loud in Cairo? What kind of message did that form of clarity send to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and America’s other Arab allies?</p>
<p>Was he clear with America’s NATO allies on Libya (see above)?</p>
<p>Was he clear on Syria? Recall that in announcing his decision to attack Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in Libya, Obama <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/20/remarks-president-libya-today-we-are-part-broad-coalition-we-are-answering-calls-thr">declared</a>, “We cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy…where innocent men and women face brutality and death at the hands of their own government.” That sounds like a fairly accurate description of what has transpired in Syria. And yet Libya’s rebels got Obama’s help, albeit halfhearted, while Syria’s rebels got the back of Obama’s hand. “Imagine if we had pulled out of Libya,” Obama said during the debate, referencing Romney’s reticence about toppling Gadhafi. We don’t have to imagine that, because we can see what staying out of Syria has yielded.</p>
<p>Was he clear in Iran? As the Iranian people rose up against a sham election and as Ahmadinejad’s henchmen crushed the popular revolt in 2009, Obama sat silent. “When the students took to the streets in Tehran and the people there protested,” Romney recalled, “for the president to be silent I thought was an enormous mistake.” The sad irony of the president’s silence as democracy died in Tehran in 2009 was that it answered his own rhetorical <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/us/politics/24text-obama.html?pagewanted=all">question</a> of a year before, albeit in a manner his supporters would never have imagined. “Will we stand for the human rights of…the blogger in Iran?” he asked during his 2008 rock-concert speech in Berlin. Now we know the answer—and so do the friendless Iranians. They expected more from America.</p>
<p>Was he clear on China? In 2009, Obama envisioned “spheres of cooperation” between China and America, and insisted that “the United States does not seek to contain China.” By 2011, he was proudly unveiling his “Pacific pivot” aimed at, well, containing China. Whether China should be contained (<a href="http://67.199.60.145/Articles.aspx?ArticleId=692">it should</a>) is not the point here; it’s whether Obama’s message “as commander-in-chief” has been clear (it has not).</p>
<p>Was he clear about America standing up for freedom and democracy? In 2009 Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, announced, “The foreign policy of the United States is built on the three Ds: defense, diplomacy and development.” Noticeably, strikingly, jarringly absent was something every administration since Woodrow Wilson has, at least rhetorically, promoted: democracy.</p>
<p>Was he clear about America’s mission in Afghanistan? Obama famously concluded in 2009 that “it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan,” before <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/12/01/new-way-forward-presidents-address">promising</a> that “after 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.” Setting aside the bizarre notion that “our vital national interest” has an expiration date, his tacit message to Hamid Karzai and the ever-dwindling number of Afghan troops willing to fight the Taliban was: Don’t count on us for the long haul. Doubtless, that message was amplified by the president’s hasty pullout from Iraq.</p>
<p>Speaking of Iraq, Romney tried to remind viewers that Obama at least pretended to support keeping a residual force of several thousand troops in Iraq. In a not-so-clever sleight of hand, Obama kept repeating Romney’s call to keep troops in Iraq (which was accurate) without conceding the point Romney was making (which was also accurate). In fact, Obama’s commanders and Obama’s own vice president—“ I’ll bet you my vice presidency Maliki will extend the SOFA,” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/world/middleeast/failed-efforts-of-americas-last-months-in-iraq.html?pagewanted=all">Vice President Joe Biden said</a> in 2011, referring to a status of forces of agreement to cover a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq—as well Iraqi military commanders and State Department officials, counted on a force of perhaps 20,000 to help provide security and training. As Frederick Kagan, one of the architects of the surge, <a href="http://www.criticalthreats.org/other/kagan-president-generals-afghanistan-december-12-2011">explained</a>, “Painstaking staff work in Iraq led Gen. Lloyd Austin to recommend trying to keep more than 20,000 troops in Iraq after the end of 2011.” But Obama, no doubt with an eye on the U.S. political calendar, offered a residual force of just 3,000 troops—a force not even large enough to protect itself. When Baghdad balked, as Kagan reports, “The White House then dropped the matter entirely and decided instead to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year, despite the fact that no military commander supported the notion that such a course of action could secure U.S. interests.” That’s worth repeating: “no military commander supported” a complete withdrawal.</p>
<p>When asked about America’s role in the world, Romney talked about defending freedom, leading, standing by our allies (noting Obama’s sad <a href="http://67.199.60.145/Articles.aspx?ArticleId=729">record in Poland and Israel</a>) and standing by our principles (noting the missed opportunity in Iran).</p>
<p>Obama answered by retreating into a litany of poll-tested talking points for his inward-looking base, mentioning “nation-building here at home,” declaring that “our alliances have never been stronger” and promising to “hire more teachers.” (Even Bob Bob Schieffer had to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/politics/transcript-of-the-third-presidential-debate-in-boca-raton-fla.html?_r=0&amp;pagewanted=all">interject</a>, “Let me get back to foreign policy.”)</p>
<p>But Obama would not be deterred. He said he would “put Americans back to work, especially our veterans, rebuilding our roads, our bridges.” What a patronizing, small thing to say. There is no dishonor in building bridges or roads or doing any kind of work that is ethical. But to say that his plan for veterans—the avengers of 9/11, the liberators of Iraq and Afghanistan, the hunters of bin Laden and Zarqawi, the defenders of our homeland, the protectors of the global commons—is to have them build bridges reveals what he thinks of these men and women. They have done everything their country has asked of them. They are the strongest, smartest, most lethal and yet most restrained military in history. And their commander-in-chief wants them to fill potholes.</p>
<p>When asked about defense spending and defense cuts, Romney answered with a thoughtful statement of the federal government’s main responsibility, explaining that he would “get rid” of programs “we don’t absolutely have to have” so that we can put resources into programs that we absolutely need—namely, national defense. After all, the Constitution calls on the government to “provide for the common defense” in the very first sentence; then grants Congress the power to declare war, “raise and support armies…provide and maintain a navy…make rules for calling forth the militia…provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia”; authorizes the president to serve as commander-in-chief; and discusses war, treason and America’s enemies in Article III. On the other hand, the Constitution says nothing about retirement pensions, social safety nets, stimulus programs, health care or education.</p>
<p>Romney expressed concerns about the Navy shrinking down to its smallest size since 1917, the Air Force growing older and smaller, the two-war strategy being jettisoned by Obama—and was right to do so: According to Air Force Magazine, the average age of the active-duty air fleet is 20.4 years; the average age of the bomber fleet is 30.3 years. Right now, the Navy is trying to stretch a 10-carrier fleet to do the work of 12 carriers. And as The New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/us/obama-at-pentagon-to-outline-cuts-and-strategic-shifts.html?_r=2&amp;hp">reports</a>, rather than being able to fight and win two wars in different regions, Obama’s plan for a military with fewer resources and a smaller reach calls on the Pentagon only to be capable of “denying the objectives of—or imposing unacceptable costs on—an opportunistic aggressor in a second region.” That’s not an insignificant difference.</p>
<p>What Obama fails to understand is that the two-war strategy gave the military resources to carry out other important missions—missions that are less intensive than full-blown conflicts against nation-state rivals: counterterrorism ops in the Philippines and Abbottabad and Somalia, air wars in Libya and Kosovo, counter-piracy off the Horn of Africa, freedom-of-navigation maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz and South China Sea, humanitarian rescues in Japan and Haiti. In other words, the two-war strategy gave the Pentagon and the commander-in-chief a tool box full of resources that could be used in several ways. As the number of tools in the toolbox diminishes, the number of missions the Pentagon can perform will as well.</p>
<p>Revealing the worldview of poli-sci professor, Obama explained that “We spend more on the military than the next 10 countries combined.” Of course, the next 10 countries don’t ask their militaries to do what ours does. But Obama didn’t stop there. He offered a pedantic, petty comment about the military having fewer “horses and bayonets” than in 1917. “We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them,” he sneered. “We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships. It’s what are our capabilities?”</p>
<p>Again, his smart-aleck comment is better suited for a college debate class than a commander-in-chief. By the way, numbers do matter. Just ask CENTCOM Commander Gen. James Mattis, who requested an <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/21/as-obama-preaches-patience-mattis-prepares-for-war-with-iran.html">extra aircraft carrier</a> to send a deterrent message after Tehran had threatened to attack U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz. That request was denied because the extra carrier was needed in the Pacific. There weren’t enough ships.</p>
<p>In his offensive against defense spending, Obama even declared, “We need to be thinking about space.” This is the same man who canceled the space shuttle’s successor program—a program that was endorsed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and presidents from both parties—and flat-lined NASA spending.</p>
<p>That takes a lot of chutzpah, but Obama had plenty last night. In his priceless closing statement, Obama criticized the “record deficits” of the previous administration and promised to reduce the deficit, pursue energy independence and cut spending. Again, this is the same man who added $5.3 trillion to the national debt in less than four years, regulated coal to death, blocked oil drilling permits and the Keystone XL pipeline, and ballooned federal outlays with $1.8 trillion in new stimulus and ObamaCare spending.</p>
<p>On Iran, Obama boasted about his success in building an international sanctions coalition. “We made sure all countries participated,” he intoned, applauding himself for “painstaking” work. In fact, “all countries” are not participating. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/20/us-oil-japan-iran-idUSBRE85J09Y20120620">Japan</a>, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/south-korea-to-restart-iranian-oil-imports/2012/08/08/ebf3fad6-e193-11e1-ae7f-d2a13e249eb2_story.html">South Korea</a>, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/05/us-china-iran-crude-idUSBRE8840JU20120905">China</a> and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/iran-india-oil-idUSL5E8LM1KZ20121022">India</a>—some fairly important countries—are all still receiving oil from Iran.</p>
<p>Obama suggested that his intelligence agencies would “give us a sense of when [Iran] would get breakout capacity.” So, the same intelligence community he is scapegoating for Benghazi, the same intelligence community that failed on North Korea’s nuclear detonation and the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein’s WMDs is going to be able to tell us when the mullahs are on the verge of nuclear capability?</p>
<p>During his flurry on Iran, Obama also hit hard—and low—on Romney’s visit to Israel, wrapping himself in the Holocaust and declaring, “I didn’t take donors, I didn’t attend fundraisers” while touring Israel.</p>
<p>If Romney wanted to score a cheap point, he would have hit back at Obama with something like, “No, Mr. President you only attend fundraisers after deadly attacks on our diplomats.” But Romney wasn’t out to score cheap points. He wanted to show the center of the country that he was up to the task of being commander-in-chief. We will soon see if he succeeded in this goal.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/obamas-decidedly-unclear-foreign-policy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>26</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Another Peace Prize Surprise</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/another-peace-prize-surprise/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=another-peace-prize-surprise</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/another-peace-prize-surprise/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Oct 2012 04:40:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=148223</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The people who gave a peace prize to Obama continue in their twisted illusions.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/another-peace-prize-surprise/belgium-eu-nobel-peace-prize/" rel="attachment wp-att-148542"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-148542" title="Belgium EU Nobel Peace Prize" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/eu-450x337.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="202" /></a>So, the people that gave a peace prize to President Barack Obama (self-styled slayer of Osama bin Laden, conqueror of al Qaeda, drone-warrior of Pakistan and liberator of Libya) “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy”—eight months into his presidency, no less—have decided to confer the same honor on the European Union. Praising the EU for transforming Europe “from a continent of wars to a continent of peace,” Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland says, “The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” If the Obama pick was—ahem—premature, the EU pick seems too late.</p>
<p>The EU, after all, appears to be falling apart. Greece is ready to quit the Eurozone—if it’s not expelled first. Half of the EU resents Germany’s heavy-handedness, while Germans resent bailing out countries that don’t require their citizens to work for a living. Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy are increasingly seen as dead weight by the EU’s powerbrokers, as those four play the role of entitled college grad living off mom and dad’s checking account.</p>
<p>No longer bragging that the euro will replace the dollar, eurocrats are now scrambling simply to prevent the collapse of their beloved euro. In fact, there is open talk of certain countries seceding from the EU—or at least taking the path Britain took and returning to a national currency. (The Brits, wisely, never traded in their pounds for euros.) Financial experts have already dubbed a post-euro German monetary unit the “neo-Mark.”</p>
<p>But the silliness of the Nobel Committee’s choice of the EU for the 2012 peace prize goes beyond the possibility that the EU as we know it may not even be here this time next year.</p>
<p>Simply put, the EU isn’t the reason Europe was transformed “from a continent of wars to a continent of peace.” Rather, the EU is a byproduct of that transformation—a transformation largely brought about by American statesmanship and leadership.</p>
<p>To be sure, Europe had its share of forward-looking leaders after World War II. But Western Europe would not have had the space, time and resources to stand on its own and create the Coal and Steel Community, and then the European Community and then the EU were it not for America’s willingness to protect it from the Soviet army. After the briefest of flirtations with abandoning Europe, the U.S. decided to stick around and stick it out, rescuing Berlin from Stalin’s blockade, opening spigots of aid and trade, forging NATO, holding back the Iron Curtain, mentoring Europe in the ways of pluralism and providing a security umbrella that allowed Germans and Italians, Danes and Dutch, Belgians and French, to develop a European identity.</p>
<p>That’s what transformed Europe from an incubator of world wars into a community of free nations and a continent of peace.</p>
<p>It’s no coincidence that the EU’s membership roster virtually mirrors NATO’s. In fact, the Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Balts and the rest of the orphans left behind by the Cold War did not clamor for EU membership out of a desire to attend conferences in Belgium. Rather, they joined to be anchored to that community of free nations—a community that extends across the Atlantic and is protected by the U.S. security guarantee. Without that guarantee, there is no security in Europe and no peace in Europe, as history has a way of reminding those on the outside looking in, from postwar Poland to Cold War Hungary to post-Cold War Georgia.</p>
<p>Moreover, the EU has proven time and again that it cannot keep the peace without U.S. guidance.</p>
<p>For instance, when Yugoslavia began to descend into civil war in 1992, Western Europe seized upon the crisis as an opportunity to prove it was ready to keep the peace. It was, as one European diplomat famously declared, “the hour of Europe.” Washington took the hint and stepped aside. It would be a fateful decision. As historian William Pfaff argues in “The Wrath of Nations,” the European Community (forerunner to the EU) “proved an obstacle to action, by inhibiting individual national action and rationalizing the refusal to act nationally.”</p>
<p>The result: some 200,000 dead and millions of refugees. Only after the U.S. reasserted itself as Europe’s leader did the war in Bosnia come to a rapid end.</p>
<p>In Kosovo, Europe’s spirit was willing but its flesh was weak. The U.S. had to lead the air war because only 10 percent of Europe’s combat aircraft were capable of precision bombing.</p>
<p>By the time Libya called for help in 2011, this asymmetry in military power was even more dramatic, as Europe’s disappearing militaries turned to the Americans for targeting and jamming capabilities, mid-air refueling planes, reconnaissance platforms, drones, and command-and-control assets—just about everything needed to conduct a 21st-century air war.</p>
<p>Even when it has the assets to deal with security challenges, as in the multinational counter-piracy effort off the Horn of Africa, the EU is crippled by a postmodern view of force. According to a Reuters report, the EU’s naval flotilla confiscates the pirates’ weapons and the ladders they use to board ships, “leaving them with only enough petrol to get back to shore.” (That’ll show them.) In a similar vein, until recently, German troops operating in Afghanistan were required to shout warnings to enemy forces—in three languages—before opening fire. Equally troubling, Italy didn’t permit its fighter-bombers in Afghanistan to carry bombs.</p>
<p>One thing’s for certain: The Europe of 2012 is anything but “a continent of wars.”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/another-peace-prize-surprise/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>9</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>On Benghazi Criticism, Mitt Was Right</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/on-benghazi-criticism-mitt-was-right/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=on-benghazi-criticism-mitt-was-right</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/on-benghazi-criticism-mitt-was-right/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 04:40:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benghazi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cover-up]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[criticism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gaffe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mitt romney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scandal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Susan Rice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[terrorist attack]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=147991</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A political gaffe turns into a gutsy judgment call. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/on-benghazi-criticism-mitt-was-right/1001-romney-damage-obama-benghazi-attack_full_600/" rel="attachment wp-att-147996"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-147996" title="1001-romney-damage-obama-benghazi-attack_full_600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/1001-romney-damage-obama-benghazi-attack_full_600.gif" alt="" width="315" height="239" /></a>With the Obama administration’s handling of the deadly attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi sliding from the realm of tragedy to farce and now to full-blown scandal, many truths are coming to light. First, administration officials tried to sell the American people an implausible story that a protest organically turned into a coordinated commando-style assault on the U.S. diplomatic compound. Second, this was done to protect the president from political damage by the reemergence of al Qaeda or al Qaeda-affiliated terror groups. After all those speeches about “the tide of war receding,” after all those reminders that “bin Laden is dead and GM is alive,” after all those leaks to The New York Times detailing the president’s hands-on role planning the bin Laden raid, authorizing drone strikes and launching cyber-attacks, the narrative could not become that the jihadists are still active, still capable of killing Americans, still waging war. And third, perhaps just as important, at least in terms of the future conduct of American foreign and defense policy, the administration’s Benghazi scandal has revealed that Mitt Romney was right.</p>
<p>Let’s begin the story on September 11, 2012. As that infamous YouTube video began to hit the public consciousness, the U.S. embassy in Cairo decided to release this statement: “The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”</p>
<p>That didn’t calm the anger of those outside the embassy, and protests turned into a full-blown riot in Cairo, prompting the embassy to declare, “This morning’s condemnation (issued before protest began) still stands.”</p>
<p>That angered Romney, who saw the episode in terms of American values—especially freedom of speech—and he believes that American embassies should always be exponents of those values. “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks,” he said, concluding, rightly, that a) the embassy is part of the administration and b) embassy officials had taken a blame-America position.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the administration also quickly disavowed the embassy’s statement: “No one in Washington approved that statement before it was released and it doesn’t reflect the views of the U.S. government.”</p>
<p>Soon, we were told, the rioting had spread to Benghazi and then turned deadly, as Ambassador Stevens and three in his staff were killed by an angry mob.</p>
<p>The Obama team then tried to turn its own botched handling of Benghazi into a Romney problem. “We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack,” the Obama campaign said.</p>
<p>President Obama added, “Gov. Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later. And as president, one of the things I&#8217;ve learned is you can&#8217;t do that.”</p>
<p>The president’s surrogates and his dutiful press pounced, concluding the episode revealed that Romney lacked the temperament to be commander-in-chief. Some called him “rash,” “irresponsible” and “craven.” Others dismissed his statements as “disgraceful,” “ill-timed” and “appalling.”</p>
<p>But Romney, to his credit, did not back down. “I think it’s a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values, that instead when our grounds are being attacked and being breached, that the first response of the United States must be outrage at the breach of the sovereignty of our nation…An apology for America’s values is never the right course.”</p>
<p>He thoughtfully and calmly criticized the president for sending “mixed messages,” adding, “The statement that came from the administration—and the embassy is the administration…was a statement which is akin to apology and I think was a severe miscalculation.”</p>
<p>When the weekend rolled around, Ambassador Susan Rice led the charge to minimize the terrorist angle. “What our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy—sparked by this hateful video,” Rice said on several TV interviews. “But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in.” (The ludicrous notion that an offensive <a href="http://www.alanwdowd.com/Articles.aspx?ArticleId=31">video</a> or <a href="http://www.alanwdowd.com/Articles.aspx?ArticleId=36">cartoon</a> can somehow justify violence, riots or murder is a subject for another essay.)</p>
<p>Others in the administration spun the same tale, straining to conflate the YouTube video, the protests and the deadly attacks. “I think it’s important to note with regards to that protest that there are protests taking place in different countries across the world that are responding to the movie that has circulated on the Internet,” White House spokesman Jay Carney explained.</p>
<p>Even the president tried to sell the fiction. “What we’ve seen over the last week, week and a half, is something that actually we&#8217;ve seen in the past, where there is an offensive video or cartoon directed at the prophet Muhammad…What we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists.”</p>
<p>Of course that is untrue, and was known to be untrue at the time. The Heritage Foundation’s <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/08/an-incriminating-timeline-the-obama-administration-and-libya/">helpful timeline</a> notes that Libyan President Mohamed Magarief concluded, “no doubt that this [attack] was preplanned, predetermined.”</p>
<p>As the redoubtable Eli <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/26/u-s-officials-knew-libya-attacks-were-work-of-al-qaeda-affiliates.html">Lake</a> has reported, citing “three separate U.S. intelligence officials,” “Within 24 hours of the 9-11 anniversary attack on the United States consulate in Benghazi, U.S. intelligence agencies had strong indications al Qaeda-affiliated operatives were behind the attack.”</p>
<p>And by October 9, the <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/terrorism/261143-state-dept-officials-refute-administration-claims-on-libya-attack">State Department</a> had totally torpedoed the Obama-Rice story. When asked if the attacks were an outgrowth of some spontaneous riot, State Department officials said, “That was not our conclusion,” devastatingly adding, there wasn’t even a demonstration against the YouTube clip. “There had been nothing unusual during the day outside,” they said, noting that it wasn’t until late in the evening that they “saw on the security cameras that there were armed men invading the compound.”</p>
<p>Far from revealing that Romney lacks the temperament to be president, the Obama administration’s Benghazi scandal shows that Romney has the guts to stand up for America and her values—even in the face of withering political attacks—and the gut instinct to recognize a cover-up in the making.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/on-benghazi-criticism-mitt-was-right/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>All the President’s Press</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/all-the-president%e2%80%99s-press/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=all-the-president%25e2%2580%2599s-press</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/all-the-president%e2%80%99s-press/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Sep 2012 04:39:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Embassy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Press]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Romney]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=144473</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why Romney was right to weigh in on Mideast unrest. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/pcflag1.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-144483" title="pcflag1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/pcflag1.gif" alt="" width="375" height="239" /></a>Reading from the same script, the president’s many friends in the media spent last week pounding Gov. Mitt Romney for daring to turn a U.S. foreign policy problem into a political issue. They called the GOP nominee “irresponsible” and “craven” and “disgraceful.” One media mouthpiece gasped that Romney had “launched a political attack even before acts of embassy violence were known.” For his part, President Barack Obama dismissed Romney for “shooting before aiming,” and then promptly declared that Egypt was neither an ally nor an enemy—something that came as news to the State Department and to Egypt. (Sadly but not surprisingly, this enormous diplomatic gaffe/blunder was not newsworthy to the president’s press.) Media mantras notwithstanding, not only was Romney right on the merits—America’s embassies should never <a href="http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/09/white-house-disavows-cairo-apology-135247.html">apologize</a> for America’s values—he did nothing outside the American political tradition when he criticized U.S. foreign policy during a political campaign. Foreign policy failures are fair game in presidential politics—and have been ever since America emerged as a global power.</p>
<p>Three months into the Great War—to that point, the most dire and dangerous foreign policy crisis in American history—TR lambasted Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy. “The course of the present administration in foreign affairs,” he wrote in a scathing op-ed, “has combined officiously offensive action toward foreign powers with tame submission to wrongdoing by foreign powers.” The former president openly criticized Wilson for leaving America unprepared for war. “When, early in 1909, our battle fleet returned from its sixteen months&#8217; voyage the world, there was no navy in the world which, size for size, ship for ship and squadron for squadron, stood at a higher pitch of efficiency. We blind ourselves to the truth if we believe that the same is true now…At present our navy is lamentably short in many different material directions. There is actually but one torpedo for each torpedo tube. It seems incredible that such can be the case; yet it is the case. We are many thousands of men short in our enlistments.”</p>
<p>In the autumn of 1952, Ike called Korea a “tragedy,” “the burial ground for 20,000 American dead,” and “a damning measure of the quality of leadership we have been given.” The general-turned-candidate blamed the outgoing Truman administration for a “record of failure.” Conveying the exasperation of an entire nation, he asked, “Is there an end?” And he warned that “neither glib promises nor glib excuses” would suffice in answering that question.</p>
<p>Running for president in 1960, JFK pointed to a supposed “missile gap” with the Soviet Union as evidence of America’s weakening defenses. “We are facing a gap on which we are gambling with our survival,” JFK warned. “This year’s defense budget is our last chance to do something about it,” he added for dramatic effect. But as historian Richard Reeves later <a href="http://100days.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/missile-gaps-and-other-broken-promises/">wrote</a>, “He was lying.” In truth, the only missile gap was the vast chasm between Moscow’s three—three—ICBMs and America’s atomic arsenal of Polaris-equipped submarines, 108 ICBMs and 600 nuclear bombers. CIA briefers even informed the Kennedy campaign of this, but the attacks continued. Reeves notes that the day before JFK’s inauguration, Ike made it clear to his young successor that the “missile gap” was myth—something the Kennedy administration admitted less than a month later.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/all-the-president%e2%80%99s-press/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>15</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>New York Times Re-Writes 9/11 History</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/new-york-times-re-writes-911-history/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=new-york-times-re-writes-911-history</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/new-york-times-re-writes-911-history/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Sep 2012 04:35:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[9/11]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bob Kerrey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Commission]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kurt Eichenwald]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[osama bin laden]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=143787</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Papering over Clinton's eight years of counter-terrorism failure. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/gty_new_york_times_dm_120320_main.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-143869" title="gty_new_york_times_dm_120320_main" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/gty_new_york_times_dm_120320_main.gif" alt="" width="375" height="252" /></a>Vanity Fair’s Kurt Eichenwald used the opinion <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?_r=2">page</a> of The New York Times to revive the left’s tired attack that the Bush administration failed to do enough to prevent 9/11. “Deafness before the Storm” is how the Times headlined Eichenwald’s pathetic piece, which re-accuses and re-indicts the Bush administration for “significantly more negligence than has been disclosed” with regard to intelligence briefings and activities in the months leading up to 9/11. Eichenwald’s piece (and companion book) does little to move the nation forward or enhance the historical record. Indeed, this sort of 20-20 hindsight critique is not a very productive exercise. But since Eichenwald started down this backwards path, let’s walk a little further. To borrow the Times’ imagery, if the Bush administration was “deaf before the storm,” the Clinton administration was blind, deaf and dumb as bin Laden launched his global guerilla war against the United States.</p>
<p>Eichenwald reports that “The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001.” Fair enough. The direct warnings to Mr. Clinton came in two forms: First, in February 1993, Ramzi Yousef tried to topple the World Trade Center with a bomb-laden truck. Yousef had <a href="http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/03/gannett-philippines-a-model-for-counterinsurgency-033011/">worked closely</a> with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In fact, the two lived together in the Philippines and hammered out a plan to attack airliners over the Pacific. The second direct warning during the Clinton administration came in 1996, when Osama bin Laden issued what can only be described as a <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html">declaration of war</a> against America. He condemned the “occupation of the land of the two Holy Places” as the “latest and the greatest of…aggressions,” promised “to initiate a guerrilla warfare” against the United States and its allies, called on his followers to focus “on destroying, fighting and killing the enemy until, by the grace of Allah, it is completely defeated,” and vowed to carry his “jihad against the kuffar (those who refuse to submit to Allah) in every part of the world.”</p>
<p>So, since Eichenwald is keeping score, the Bush administration had seven months and 20 days to deal with bin Laden. The Clinton administration had seven years and 11 months.</p>
<p>In those seven-plus years, as the 9/11 Commission reported, U.S. intelligence assets had bin Laden in their sights on <a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf">at least three occasions</a> but were prevented from acting by higher-ups. In 1999, U.S. teams were actually ordered to hold their fire because administration officials worried that an Arab dignitary on a hunting trip in the vicinity of bin Laden might be harmed. According to 9/11 Commission staff, CIA officials still call this the “lost opportunity to kill bin Laden before 9/11.” Justifying the inaction, Mr. Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright explained to the 9/11 Commission that “to bomb at random or use military force would have made our lives more difficult inside the Islamic world.” Of course, the decision not to bomb made quite an impact inside our own world.</p>
<p>Referring to the failure to attack bin Laden at his hunting lodge, 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey famously declared, “We had a round in our chamber and we didn’t use it.”</p>
<p>Of course, that sounds a lot like preemption—a dirty word nowadays. If preemption would have been appropriate to forestall bin Laden’s 9/11 massacres, why was it not appropriate to prevent Saddam Hussein from trying to top bin Laden somewhere down the road? (We’ll return to that in a moment.)</p>
<p>Eichenwald reports that “Operatives connected to bin Laden…expected the planned near-term attacks to have ‘dramatic consequences,’ including major casualties…Yet, the White House failed to take significant action.”</p>
<p>If the Bush White House failed to take any significant action that summer, what action did the Clinton White House take the previous summers, autumns, winters and springs? Very little, as it turns out.</p>
<p>After the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, which killed six Americans and injured 1,000, the Clinton White House responded with indictments.</p>
<p>In 1996, a truck bomb in Saudi Arabia claimed 19 U.S. airmen and injured 200. The Clinton White House responded with indictments.</p>
<p>In 1998, al Qaeda terrorists bombed a pair of American embassies in East Africa, murdering 224 civilians and injuring more than 5,000. The Clinton White House responded with an impotent volley of cruise missiles and an indictment.</p>
<p>Finally, in October 2000, al Qaeda used a rubber boat to blast a hole in the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors. The Clinton White House responded by sending FBI agents (not troops) to Yemen.</p>
<p>As former U.S. attorney Mary Jo White put it, “Criminal prosecutions are simply not a sufficient response to international terrorism.” In the words of Commissioner Kerrey, al Qaeda “knew—beginning in 1993, it seems to me—that there was going to be limited, if any, use of the military and that they were relatively free to do whatever they wanted.”</p>
<p>That didn’t change until, well, the Bush administration. In fact, 9/11 was the high-water mark for al Qaeda not because bin Laden was content with his handiwork, but because the U.S. finally dealt with al Qaeda as a military threat—not a law-enforcement matter.</p>
<p>Eichenwald asks, “Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs?” Given the above litany, it seems fair to respond with a parallel question: Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped had the Clinton team killed bin Laden when they had him in their sights, or had the Clinton team traced Yousef’s links back to their source, or had the Clinton team waged a bona fide war on terror? Commissioner Kerrey seemed to think so. “Better to have tried and failed than to have not tried at all,” he huffed during the hearings.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/new-york-times-re-writes-911-history/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama’s World, A World Without Friends</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/obama%e2%80%99s-world-a-world-without-friends/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama%25e2%2580%2599s-world-a-world-without-friends</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/obama%e2%80%99s-world-a-world-without-friends/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2012 04:32:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=139030</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the president has slighted each and every one of the important allies Mitt Romney has visited this week.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Obama_US_Israel_07fa0.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-139052" title="Obama_US_Israel_07fa0" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Obama_US_Israel_07fa0.gif" alt="" width="375" height="259" /></a>Gov. Mitt Romney finishes up his overseas trip to Britain, Israel and Poland this week. The trip began inauspiciously, due to what some called Romney’s “gaffe” about the London Olympic Games. “There are a few things that were disconcerting,” said Romney, who organized the Salt Lake Games in 2002, when asked about London’s preparations. That rather bland remark—which turned out to be at least partly accurate, as ticket and transportation problems have plagued the Games—became the narrative for most major media outlets. But if anyone cares to know what a gaffe really looks and sounds like, consider President Barack Obama’s treatment of the very allies Romney visited.</p>
<p><em>Britain</em></p>
<p>It pays to recall that Obama began his presidency with a series of major gaffes and outright insults to America’s closest ally.</p>
<p>With little fanfare—in fact, it was kept quiet for many weeks—Obama discreetly returned a bust of Winston Churchill to the British government soon after his inauguration. During his predecessor’s administration, the statue rested in an honored place near the president’s desk—an unmistakable symbol of the special relationship between these two great, liberal democracies. When the Obama administration dismissed reports that Sir Winston’s likeness had been tossed out like so much remodeling debris—employing its trademark self-righteous rhetoric by calling those reports “100 percent false”—it was discovered that the denials were false. As the British Embassy in Washington <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/is-the-churchill-bust-controversy-a-total-bust/">reported</a>, the bust was loaned to the White House “in the wake of 9/11 as a signal of the strong transatlantic relationship…The new president has decided not to continue this loan and the bust has now been returned. It is on display at the ambassador’s residence.”</p>
<p>Obama White House officials vainly explained that they were talking about a different Churchill bust—one was given in the 1960s, another after 9/11—but the damage was already done. “Barack Obama Sends Bust of Winston Churchill on its Way Back to Britain,” blasted a London Telegraph headline from February 2009.</p>
<p>Sadly, that would be the first of many slights and gaffes Obama directed Britain’s way. In a terrible breach of protocol, Obama met with Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain, before meeting with then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Worse, Obama cut short a meeting with Brown to visit with the Boy Scouts. British media described Brown as humiliated by the snub. Even worse, when the two leaders met and engaged in the customary exchange of gifts, Obama gave Brown 25 DVD movies. “The Prime Minister gave Mr. Obama an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet…a framed commission for HMS Resolute and a first edition of the seven-volume biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert,” the Daily Mail reported. (“Rudeness personified towards Britain,” howled The Daily Telegraph.) And worst of all, the Obama administration offloaded a handful of GITMO detainees onto the British colony of Bermuda—without consulting Britain. “This is not the kind of behavior one expects from an ally,” a British official <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/americas-bermuda-solution-angers-britain-1704147.html">declared</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, in areas of shared interest, like NATO military operations, Obama deeply disappointed Britain. Early on in Libya, the White House talked about a “time-limited, scope-limited” mission. In fact, the U.S. was so eager to step back from the lead role it played in the first week of Libya operations that Britain and France had to request assistance from U.S. aircraft before they could be deployed on strike missions. William Hague, Britain’s foreign minister, urged allied nations to “expand” their efforts, pointedly adding, “That is why the United Kingdom in the last weeks supplied additional aircraft capable of striking ground targets that threaten the civilian population. Of course, it would be welcome if other countries did the same.” Hague was politely directing his message at Washington. The U.S. accounted for 90 of the 206 NATO planes initially deployed in support of Unified Protector, and an even higher percentage of the planes capable of carrying out precision ground-attack missions. However, the U.S. contribution plummeted to a tiny handful of planes after the first two weeks. As a result, Britain and France were left straining to play a lead role in NATO—a role they are simply not equipped to play.</p>
<p><em>Poland</em></p>
<p>Poland, too, knows how it feels to get the Obama treatment.</p>
<p>Obama pulled the rug out from under Poland (and the Czech Republic) in order to ink a bad arms control treaty with Russia. Worried about Iran’s nukes and missiles, Europe had agreed to a NATO-wide missile defense system during the Bush administration. It was a courageous decision on Poland’s part (Warsaw was exposing itself to Russian ire by agreeing to allow permanent U.S. missile-defense bases on its soil) and an impressive diplomatic feat on the Bush administration’s part (most of NATO had taken an agnostic stand on missile defense for decades).</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/obama%e2%80%99s-world-a-world-without-friends/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>102</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Unthinkable in Syria</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/the-unthinkable-in-syria/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-unthinkable-in-syria</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/the-unthinkable-in-syria/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jul 2012 04:40:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Assad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weapons of mass destruction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WMD]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138694</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Worries rise over the regime's WMD arsenal in the event of Assad's fall. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/missile.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-138727" title="missile" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/missile.gif" alt="" width="375" height="255" /></a>So far, only the Syrian people have borne the costs of the Obama administration’s do-nothing approach to Syria, but the United States and its allies in Israel, Turkey and Jordan may soon pay dearly for the administration’s disinterested, detached approach to Syria’s civil war. And I’m not talking about the assault on conscience that Assad has perpetrated or the humanitarian dimensions of the Syrian regime’s war on its subjects (though a case can be made that America should intervene on these grounds). The focus here is the national security threat represented by Syria’s WMD arsenal.</p>
<p>Bashar Assad’s crumbling regime fields one of the largest chemical-weapons programs on earth, including mustard gas, sarin and VX nerve agent. Syria has mated these weapons with artillery shells and missilery. Open-source materials indicate that Syria has five major chemical-manufacturing facilities in and around the cities of Hama, Homs and Al-Safira, along with 45 chemical-weapons storage facilities. Unnamed Pentagon officials say <a href="http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/22/military-thousands-of-troops-needed-to-secure-syrian-chemical-sites/">75,000 troops</a>would be required to secure Syria’s vast WMD arsenal. As Assad and his loyalists focus on survival, as the Syrian military splinters and as the country disintegrates, these stockpiles are growing increasingly vulnerable—indeed, some have been moved in recent weeks—and could fall into even less responsible hands. The candidates include: Hezbollah, which has strong ties to Assad’s Syria; al-Qaeda, which is involved in the fighting; a rogue military faction bent on revenge; or a post-Assad regime controlled by jihadists. Any of these scenarios would pose a significant threat to U.S. interests, to regional stability and to the security of allies in Israel, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Making sure none of them transpire must be a priority as events unfold.</p>
<p>This is easier said than done, of course. First, unlike the civil war in Libya, where Russia stood aside as NATO intervened to prevent a bloodbath, Moscow is deeply enmeshed in Syria. Russia maintains a naval base in Syria and has provided Assad with military supplies and diplomatic cover at the UN. Hence, the U.S. and other power-projecting states simply do not have the freedom of action in dealing with Syria and its chemical-weapons arsenal that they had in dealing with Gaddafi’s Libya—especially given the fact that the White House has handcuffed its Syria policy to the UN’s lowest-common-denominator approach, as determined by Russia.</p>
<p>Second, unlike the revolution in Egypt, the U.S. does not have the same sort of military-to-military contacts in Syria. Moreover, Assad is no Hosni Mubarak. To be sure, Mubarak attempted to crack down on protests in the early days of the Egyptian revolution, but he chose to step aside rather than massacre his countrymen, partly because of back-channel pressure from U.S. political and military leaders.</p>
<p>The hard truth is that events may force the Obama administration to act—with or without any cooperation on the ground in Damascus, with or without any help from Russia at the UN.</p>
<p>The Pentagon has reportedly intensified discussions about Syria’s WMD threat with Israel, Turkey, Britain and France. The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. and Jordan—which is deeply concerned about chemical weapons falling into al Qaeda’s hands—are co-developing plans to secure Syria’s WMD arsenal, in the event of regime collapse or some other triggering incident. In fact, “a high-level delegation of Jordanian defense officials” traveled to the Pentagon this spring to map out possible operations to locate and secure Assad’s WMDs, according to the paper. “One plan would call for Jordanian special operations units, acting as part of any broader Arab League peacekeeping mission, to go into Syria to secure nearly a dozen sites,” the Journal reports.</p>
<p>“If left unsecured,” Adm. William McRaven said during a congressional hearing, “it would be, potentially, a very serious threat in the hands of…Lebanese Hezbollah.”</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/the-unthinkable-in-syria/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>28</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>A Smaller Defense by Design</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/a-smaller-defense-by-design/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-smaller-defense-by-design</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/a-smaller-defense-by-design/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jul 2012 04:23:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Defense]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[global role]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138079</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How an America with fewer military resources serves a larger objective for the U.S. president.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/defense.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-138290" title="defense" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/defense.jpg" alt="" width="390" height="220" /></a>As the sequestration guillotine hangs over the Pentagon, <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/238713-house-passes-bill-demanding-sequester-details-from-obama">Congress</a> wants to know what the administration’s plan is in the event that a deal isn’t struck to avert a staggering $500 billion in automatic spending cuts to the U.S. military. These cuts, it pays to recall, would come in addition to the $487 billion the Pentagon has already carved from its spending plans over the next 10 years. The cuts would be disastrous, and making such cuts without any sort of plan or roadmap would compound disaster with irresponsibility. Could it be that the president may actually want the Pentagon’s budget to be cut by another $500 billion—or put another way, to shrink over the next decade by nearly $1 trillion?</p>
<p>Before scoffing at that possibility, recall that the Pentagon was the first place <a href="http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Obama-Wants-Defense-Review-400-Billion-in-Cuts-119802529.html">President Obama turned</a> when the debt crisis emerged as a political issue. “We need to not only eliminate waste and improve efficiency and effectiveness, but conduct a fundamental review of America’s missions, capabilities and our role in a changing world,” Obama said in 2011.</p>
<p>Recall, too, that the president halted F-22 production at 187 planes, far short of the planned 381; cut the nation’s strategic nuclear forces by 30 percent and has floated proposals to cut the deterrent arsenal to as low as <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204062704577223944004788290.html">300 warheads</a> (about the size of China’s); withdrew from Iraq, over the objections of his top commanders and diplomats; under-resourced Afghanistan, then undercut the mission he gave his commanders by announcing a withdrawal deadline; handcuffed U.S. foreign policy to the lowest-common-denominator approach approved by Moscow; and famously “led from behind” in Libya, letting America’s oldest, closest allies in NATO know that the scope, scale and duration of America’s involvement would be limited. (Early in the war, the allies were stunningly told that the availability of essential U.S. strike aircraft “<a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2011-04-04/world/libya.war_1_forces-rebels-opposition-fighters/2?_s=PM:WORLD">expires on Monday</a>.”)</p>
<p>Channeling Newt Gingrich during the mid-1990s debates over baseline budgeting and Medicare growth, Obama has assured us that his Pentagon cuts aren’t really cuts. “Over the next 10 years,” <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/01/05/remarks-president-defense-strategic-review">he said</a> in January, “the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow.” That’s a fair point: Slower growth is not a cut. Budget hawks and small-government types have been making that case for 40 years. But apparently that logic doesn’t apply to Washington’s overflowing smorgasbord of social programs (a subject for another essay).</p>
<p>Of course, “the fact of the matter” is that holding the Pentagon’s budget growth below the inflation rate, as the president plans, means fewer weapons systems, fewer troops, slower recapitalization—and more risk. This is where that fundamental review of America’s role in the world comes into focus.</p>
<p>To meet the president’s targets, the Navy has been ordered to cut the number of surface combatants from 85 ships to 78, stretch the “build time” of new aircraft carriers from five to seven years, and had to seek a special congressional <a href="http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/01/ap-navy-enterprise-leon-panetta-says-us-keeping-11-carriers-012212/">waiver</a> to deploy just 10 carriers (rather than the legally-mandated 11) while the USS <em>Gerald Ford</em> is built and other flattops are retired or refurbished. Pressed by budget-cutters, the Air Force plans to reduce its fleet by 286 planes. The active-duty Army will be cut from 570,000 soldiers to 490,000; the Marines from 202,000 to 182,000. The administration has slashed $810 million from the Missile Defense Agency, cut spending on ground-based missile defense by 22 percent and reduced the number of warships to be retrofitted with missile-defense capabilities by seven. A <a href="http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2013/FY2013_Weapons.pdf">DOD report</a> on weapons-acquisition plans for 2013 reveals spending cuts in combat drones, F-35 fighter-bombers, F/A-18 fighter-bombers, V-22 heli-planes, UH-60 helicopters, KC-46 refuelers, M-1 tank upgrades, Stryker armored vehicles, aircraft carriers, submarines, and a number of satellites and space-based sensors.  Remember, all of this is <em>before</em> sequestration.</p>
<p>For perspective, compare these numbers with some from the not-too-distant past. In 1991, the total active-duty force was 2 million; today, it’s hovering around 1.3 million—and falling. In 1991, the U.S. deployed 15 aircraft carriers, some 300 bombers and nearly 4,000 fighters; today, the U.S. deploys 10 carriers, 162 bombers and roughly 2,000 <a href="http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Magazine%20Documents/2012/May%202012/0512facts_figs.pdf">fighters</a>. At the height of the Reagan buildup, the Navy boasted 587 ships. The size of today’s fleet is 285 ships. Current recapitalization rates will not keep up with plans to retire ships, leading to “a Navy of 240-250 ships at best,” according to former Navy Secretary John Lehman.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/a-smaller-defense-by-design/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>7</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Indicting Penn State</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/indicting-penn-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=indicting-penn-state</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/indicting-penn-state/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Jul 2012 04:40:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abuse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cover-up]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[football]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerry Sandusky]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joe Paterno]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Penn State]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Predator]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=137373</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Time to remove the university's bronze statue of Joe Paterno? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/joe-paterno-statue.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-137377" title="joe-paterno-statue" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/joe-paterno-statue.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>Jerry Sandusky, the former defensive coordinator of Penn State’s football program, was convicted on 45 counts of sexual abuse of children in June. Sandusky used his position of authority, the trappings of big-time college football, and the facilities and respected name of Penn State, to prey upon young boys. But as we now know, the sordid story doesn’t end there.</p>
<p>Sandusky’s crimes went on for more than a decade. And Penn State’s administration, athletics department and football program did nothing about it until Sandusky was indicted last fall. In fact, what many suspected at the time is now beyond dispute: Former football coach Joe Paterno, former president Graham Spanier, former athletics director Tim Curley and others served as enablers for Sandusky and his monstrous crimes. As late as 2007, Sandusky had full access to football facilities and even kept an office as a “coach emeritus.” That’s 13 years after Sandusky’s first known attack and nine years after the first Sandusky attack the Penn State hierarchy was made aware of.</p>
<p>As the Freeh report concludes, by granting Sandusky continued access to the football program, Paterno and others “empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims to the campus…Indeed that continued access provided Sandusky with the very currency that enabled him to attract his victims.”</p>
<p>In short, people in positions of respected authority allowed a predator to roam and hunt and destroy. If you think this language is too strong, read the information in Freeh’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/penn-state-freeh-report/REPORT_FINAL_071212.pdf?hpid=z2">report</a>—but only if you are ready to glimpse the most depraved and cowardly side of man.</p>
<p>That brings us to the legacy of Joe Paterno, who was fired last fall as the scandal unfolded and died just a few months later, succumbing to cancer. We have heard much about how Paterno donated millions, built libraries and student centers, and selflessly gave to the university he loved. Students and alumni marched in support of the sainted coach. But the hard truth is that Paterno covered up a heinous crime and allowed Sandusky to destroy the lives of young boys. In his press conference, <a href="http://www.thefreehreportonpsu.com/Press_Release_07_12_12.pdf">Freeh concluded</a> that Paterno and the Penn State hierarchy “showed no concern” for the victims, displayed a “total disregard for the safety and welfare of the victims” and “repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the authorities.”</p>
<p>Rather than protecting the innocent—the report scathingly concludes that Paterno and other higher-ups “failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade”—the goal was to protect the football program. For those who know Paterno’s many good works by heart, this is hard to hear. Indeed, it is hard to see heroes fall. But those who hold themselves to a higher standard—those who allow others to elevate them onto pedestals—must be held to that higher standard.</p>
<p>Paterno did many, many good things in his half-century of coaching. But one bad thing—especially something this appalling—can sweep away all the good. This truth applies to anyone: the good husband who has but one indiscretion and ruins a family; the good teacher who loses control for just a moment and ruins her career; the good surgeon or CEO who cuts a corner and ruins someone’s life. This truth—this frailty of reputation—hangs over all of us.</p>
<p>Soon, the NCAA will weigh in on the Sandusky-Paterno scandal. There are reports that the NCAA is investigating Penn State for a “lack of institutional control” (LOIC)—code for the most serious violations of the spirit and letter of NCAA rules. The punishment could be devastating for the football program, including the NCAA equivalent of the <a href="http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefootball/story/penn-state-should-lose-football-privileges-dealth-penalty-in-wake-of-freeh-report-child-sex-abuse-071212">death penalty</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/indicting-penn-state/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 1421/1522 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 08:23:15 by W3 Total Cache -->