Impossible Scissors

The American people have not been well-served by the reporting from Afghanistan; reporters are reluctant to either embed with the military or go native in a country that makes Iraq look like the Ritz Carlton. But they're not getting good coverage about the way Washington is handling Afghanistan, either.

Most press reports about President Obama's Afghanistan plan focus on sending 30,000 troops within the next six months. They tend to downplay the decision to retreat from Afghanistan between 2011 and 2013. The 30,000 troops may help to secure Afghanistan's population centers. But the second aspect of the strategy, the "date certain" for a phased withdrawal, ensures that the lives lost during the Afghan surge will have been lost in vain.

The president is trying to appease the factions within the Democrats and amongst the American people who have grown weary of Afghanistan. He's ascribed to fantasy stories from Carl Levin about training Afghanistan's army, and Joe Biden's delusion's that al Qaeda is finished in Afghanistan.

There's roughly 18 months between the start of the Afghan surge and the beginning of the withdrawal. Does anybody really think that 18 months is enough time to secure the Afghan populace, build its government's credibility, and build an army with any capability as a cohesive fighting force? The Iraqi Army and Iraqi government both required five years before America felt it was safe to start drawing down. And the challenge in Afghanistan, where central government and uniformed armies are alien concepts, is far greater than the one of Iraq's nation-building.

The war categorized as "the good war" to wipe out al Qaeda's safe haven after the 9/11 attacks is certainly doomed to failure, and no soldier should be asked to risk his life for an effort that America's leaders have no desire to win. In Afghanistan, the Karzai government will likely collapse within three years of America's withdrawal, just as the Soviet-backed government of Mohammed Najibullah did. And it will come as no shock when Hamid Karzai's mutilated body will be paraded around on CNN by the Taliban after they retake Afghanistan. A terrorist attack on American soil with the magnitude of 9/11 attacks won't be much of a shock either; al Qaeda will have no deterrent towards rebuilding in Afghanistan or attacking America after witnessing our lack of resolve in Afghanistan.

The notion of "Have you forgotten?" may seem like a schmaltzy lyric from a patriotic country balad, but the righteous anger and horror we once felt towards al Qaeda is gone. America has pledged its allegiance to a man who worshipped at the altar of "God Damn America." And now he's hoisting the white flag of surrender while asking our troops to die for a lost cause. The Obama Afghan strategy is about accepting defeat but delaying it past the end of his first term. President Obama wanted to make sure that the next president wouldn't be inheriting this war. I only hope and pray that our next president is a gutsy leader who will replace the schmuck from Chicago in 2012.

When it comes to Afghanistan, our media tells us that we're in good hands. Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama had taken his time, carefully weighed his options, and came up with a really, really smart strategy that he's going to unveil to the nation on Tuesday. It will be one thousand times better than any dogmatic knee-jerk reaction we would have gotten from the old "Cowboy-in-Chief."

The simple portrait splashed across our televisions by Obama's media sycophants, yet again, is a romanticized view of a far grittier reality. The arguments about Obama's thoughtfulness are far weaker than the view that the president spent two months dithering on an issue that has broad repercussions for the security of our nation.

Does anybody remember General McChrystal's very public appeals for 40,000 more troops? That was back in September. Since then, the president has conducted (according to published accounts) ten very involved strategy sessions with his most trusted military and foreign affairs advisors. Holding the meetings may show thoughtfulness, but does it really take two months to hammer out the details of a new strategy? Time is an unaffordable luxury (much like ObamaCare) while our soldiers' lives are still in harm's way pursuing the stagnant old Afghanistan strategy.

During these past two months, President Obama has made his priorities known. ObamaCare is his most pressing priority. Steering the Olympics to his Chicago cronies even seemed like it obscured Afghanistan on Obama's radar screen. Our nation is at war with jihadists halfway across the globe, but our president is waging war against the health insurance companies at home. Does our commander-in-chief have his priorities straight?

All the criticism of George W. Bush as a dogmatic and reactionary decision-maker comes from people with partisan axes to grind. Members of his inner circle saw Bush as far more studious and open to opinion than his critics would ever concede. Problems occurred when Bush too often deferred to the paranoia-tinged judgments of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld rather than listening to the cooler heads in the room (Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, Richard Armitage and even Colin Powell before he turned into a mindless Obama-lover.)

A careful examination of counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq shows the futility of dithering during an active war. The Bush National Security Council spent much of 2005 and 2006 debating counterinsurgency options, using terms like "Clear Hold Build" to describe strategies whose application to the theater of operations was spotty, at best. In fairness to President Obama, President Bush also took roughly two months between the firing of Donald Rumsfeld and the public announcement of the "surge" strategy in January 2007. But the surge strategy had to be forced on a military establishment that was resistant to counterinsurgency. It originated on the outside, thanks to historian Fred Kagan and retired Army chief-of-staff Jack Keane. It also faced considerable resistance from the Washington establishment, which viewed the Iraq Study Group as official top-cover for abandoning Iraq to a future of anarchy.

It's said that if a frog is placed in a pot of water that's heated slowly, he'll be boiled so gradually that he won't know what's coming next until it's too late to fix it. With President Obama, the slow heat of Afghanistan is catching up to his presidency, and he seems oblivious to it. Unless he starts to realize that there are far greater dangers in this world than American health insurance companies, his presidency will be boiled to death.

As my longtime readers likely know, I'm a huge fan of "Room for Squares," John Mayer's debut album. It was pure heaven; thirteen folk-inspired pop songs dealing with an awkward young man's desire for acceptance. I also enjoyed his sophomore effort, "Heavier Things," which was more of a mainstream pop-rock album spanning the gap between songs of awkwardness and songs of love and heartbreak.

After two really great albums, "Continuum" really felt like a kick in the balls. Sure, John Mayer really developed as a great blues guitarist in the mold of Clapton or Hendrix. But a lot of the songs didn't resonate with me. And the mixture of heartbreak-themed pop ballads with bluesy songs just seemed incoherent.

It was with some hesitation that I bought "Battle Studies," John Mayer's fourth studio album. I was immediately relieved to find that the incoherence of "Continuum" has been remedied. Predictably, the constant theme of the songs on "Battle Studies" is that all's fair in love and war. If love is a battlefield, Pat Benatar has good rounds to sue John Mayer. It's impossible to listen to any of Mayer's original songs and think they weren't written about Mayer's on-and-off flame, Jennifer Aniston.

The first track, "Heartbreak Warfare," seems like it's influenced by Seal's "Crazy" more than anything else. "All We Ever Do is Say Goodbye" is a return to Mayer's folk-influenced roots.

My favorite song on the album is "Half of My Heart," a track that blends the folk and blues influences into a very catchy tune. Taylor Swift lends her vocals, but her contribution is so short that you wonder why they bothered flying her out to the studio. Had Mayer and Swift sang the song as a true duet, I think it would have been an instant classic.

"Who Says" is the first single, and it sounds too much like "The Heart of Life" from "Continuum." Maybe I'm not very keen on it because if its nonstop references to getting stoned.

There were plenty of other great songs on "Battle Studies." "Perfectly Lonely" hearkens back to the gems on "Room For Squares" like "Love Song for No One." "Assassin" is funky and fun; "Friends Lovers or Nothing" reminds me of the melodies from "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" or "In Repair" from "Continuum," and that's not a bad thing.

Overall I really enjoyed "Battle Studies," and thought that it was a return to the coherent pop-rock of the "Heavier Things" period in John Mayer's career. It's not quite as good as "Heavier Things," and I doubt John Mayer will ever be able to top "Room for Squares." But it's a tall order to follow, and "Battle Studies" is a solid pop-rock album that will make a great stocking stuffer for all music lovers out there.

According to a recent interview with former president Jimmy Carter, the only reason why he didn't serve a second term as president was because he didn't launch a military mission to rescue American hostages trapped in Iran. But it was a wise and noble decision, because 20,000 Iranians would have been killed during the mission.

Jimmy Carter has been called "our greatest ex-president." I don't know if that's because of his legitimate humanitarian contributions after leaving office, or because so many people were glad to see him leave. But by this point it's clear that he's either losing his mind, or he's desperately trying to talk up an undeserved legacy to fit the Nobel Peace Prize he won several years ago.

For starters, there WAS a mission to end the Iranian Hostage Crisis, authorized by President Carter. It was called "Operation Eagle Claw." And it was aborted at an early phase after a fatal collision between two aircraft at a staging point. Reflecting upon the ill-fated rescue mission, it's probably for the best that the mission was aborted before progressing any further. It was a hopelessly complex plan that involved rendezvousing with a CIA team at the captured embassy, evacuating hostages with pre-positioned vehicles, and overtaking a soccer stadium as a staging point for flying the hostages to safety. The mission had the potential for even greater failure and loss of life had it gone any further. As to Jimmy Carter's figures of 20,000 fatalities, they don't appear to be substantiated with any expert's credible estimate of how violent a realistic hostage mission would be. If anything, Jimmy Carter is creating the strawman argument for a more comprehensive military mission that was never seriously considered.

Jimmy Carter's world view of 1980 is far rosier than anybody alive at the time would remember. It ignores the high unemployment rates, double-digit inflation, economic stagnation, price-caps and rationing on gasoline, the Moscow Olympic Boycott, and the Soviet War in Afghanistan. In short, 1980 was a pretty miserable period for America. President Carter admitted as much in July 1979 by declaring that America was at "a moral and spiritual crisis." Nothing he had done since the infamous "malaise speech" had given Americans any reason to think that this crisis would come to a close.

Ronald Reagan's candidacy in 1980 turned the nation upside-down. At first many Americans didn't know what to make of the actor-turned-Conservative-activist. He had served as governor of California. Then he shook things up within his own party by challenging the sitting president, Gerald Ford, who was largely overwhelmed by the highest office in the land. But near the end of the campaign, voters found in Reagan a voice that told them it was okay to be proud of the good America had accomplished and believe in the promise of tomorrow. It was time to abandon the past decade of self-flagellation and apologies that were exemplified when Jimmy Carter abandoned Iran's decrepit Shah in the face of the Ayatollah's fanaticism.

1980 was not a single-issue presidential race; it was a race built on vision. Ronald Reagan believed in projecting America's strength and rejecting the economic thinking that caused stagflation. Jimmy Carter kept telling us to give the old order more time to work. In the end, American voters turned a close race into a Reagan landslide and broke overwhelmingly for The Gipper.

We are learning more and more about Malik Nadal Hasan, the Army Major and psychiatrist who murdered 13 people and wounded 30 more at Fort Hood. There are two separate and conflicting portaits of the murderer: the first is the able psychiatrist who was described as "a loyal soldier" and wore his uniform to Friday prayers. The other is the angry opponent of US foreign policy who praised suicide bombers in internet postings, cleaned out his apartment in preparation for his suicide mission at Fort Hood, received reprimand for undisclosed problems dealing with patients, and shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he opened fire on his unarmed victims.

Even more shocking is the revelation that intelligence agencies had recorded Hassan attempting to contact known members of al Qaeda. If these reports are true, they're a repeat of the same bureaucratic paralysis that allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen. The forces of political correctness, excessive concern for the privacy of potential terrorists, and dysfunctional relationships between intelligence and law enforcement agencies blocked any reports of Hassan's descent into radicalism from reaching his superiors before he could murder 13 people.

There have been far too many senseless deaths owing to post-traumatic stress disorder from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. In those cases, the emotional trauma on the shooters is justifiably called "tragedy." Some media commentators have claimed that Hasan suffered vicariously through the combat scars of his patients. While true to some degree, it's absolute rubbish for explaining why Hasan lashed out yesterday. While his imminent deplopyment to a war he opposed seems to have set off his rampage, it still doesn't explain why Hasan chose the path of murder as his means of lashing out.

The only explanation is that Hasan was waging a one-man jihad. Malik Nadal hasan is an American terrorist.

It's silly to think that the terrorist or jihadist labels should be reserved only for people who have sworn their allegiance to Osama bin Laden with a video crew present to record the moment. But a terrorist is anybody who initiates violence to achieve their political objectives. And a jihadist is anybody who invokes Allah to excuse their murderous misdeeds. Regardless of whether Malki Nadal Hasan is revealed to have ties with any known jihadists, he is the very definition of a homegrown terrorist. Perhaps the only silver lining in the story is that Hasan survived and will never achieve the martyrdom he so desperately craved.

President Obama's deliberations over Afghanistan, ongoing since September, are proving to be agoni9zingly slow for many observers of international and military affairs. At the same time, American forces are still taking casualties in pursuit of the futile existing strategy as morale continues to drop and faith in the mission subsides.

Dick Cheney has emerged from the shadows to accuse president Obama of "dithering" in Afghanistan. General McChrystal has requested 40,000 troops to get the job done, so let's get moving. The White House retorts with a 'not so fast' and claims that the president wants to make the best decision possible.

For starters, there's two problems with the White House's justification for delay. If President Obama is spending a significant amount of time listening to Joe Biden's reservations, he needs to cut it out. After all, Joe Biden has never made a correct foreign policy decision in his life. He's delusional to think we can avoid major conflict with the Taliban, even if our mission focuses solely on fighting al Qaeda. As long as infidels remain in Afghanistan, the Taliban will fight them. There can be no coexistence in Afghanistan until American leaves or until the Taliban is defeated as a competent fighting force.

The other reason for possible delay would be the upcoming Afghan runoff elections, scheduled for November. The President likely wants a legitimate government before committing to a new strategy. But history doesn't support his decision. If anything, governments gain legitimacy when they can ensure the security of the common people. It's much harder for governments to start from a position of legitimacy and try to build security. The civil liberties available under a legitimate government often contradict the actions needed to impose security. Iraq is an example where the government lacked legitimacy because the common people felt threatened. It wasn't until he cracked down on the Shiite militias that Nouri al Maliki was able to gain a measure of legitimacy as Iraq's Prime Minister.

The delay in the Afghan decision boils down to two incompetent politician-leaders. One is Joe Biden, and the other is Hamid Karzai. Success in Afghanistan is too precious to be entrusted to either.

The Washington "FOX Hunt" is definitely on as the White House steps up its war of words against FOX News Channel. Communications Director Anita Dunn, advisor David Axelrod, and chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel are all on record saying that "FOX News" 'isn't really news' and it exists to make money. FOX News, for its part, seems to be enjoying a ratings bump stemming from their newfound public exposure.

The simmering war of words forces me to pause and ask whether the Bush Administration ever singled out media outlets for criticism. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't remember Tony Snow ever getting on the case of Keith Olbermann and MSNBC, or Dana Perino busting on CNN. Like FOX, MSNBC and CNN have their share of pundits who try to pass opinion off as reporting. The difference is that FOX is very critical of the president, while CNN and MSNBC swoon every time he reads off a teleprompter. I always thought the White House was supposed to be above petty and partisan shots against their detractors in the media. Then again, we're in the season of "change" in the Oval Office. Apparently "change" also includes a coarsening of the political discourse in Washington.

I'm reminded of the presidential campaign, when the Obama campaign launched an "Obama Action Wire" to discredit and smear author David Freddoso for his thoughtful critique The Case Against Barack Obama. The technique reminds me of the rabble-rousers who aim to shout-down anybody they disagree with and dominate the stage. For an administration that seeks to break the conservative stranglehold on talk radio, it's not particularly good at opening itself to intelligent criticism. Rather, President Obama and his staff are trapped in perpetual campaign mode. All I'm seeing from the White House is election-style tactics at controlling the message instead of providing truly bipartisan leadership.

Hopefully President Obama will realize that public attacks against FOX News, like the previous spat with Rush Limbaugh, only strengthens the opponents of the White House while eroding the dignity of the office. If he truly has what it takes to be a leader instead of a politician, he'd tell his staff to kill their childish bickering.