OBAMA’S NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERIENCE IS ENHANCED BY HIS INTELLIGENCE AND THE EXTRAORDINARYLY HIGH LEVEL OF HIS JUDGMENT
HE MAY BE BRIGHTEST MAN TO RUN FOR THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT SINCE THOMAS JEFFERSON
Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Parle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Dick Cheney are just a few of Defense Department legions of those with resumes overflowing with experience on matters related to national defense and homeland security. They are also a list of leaders on National Security who made one of the biggest mistakes in matters of national defense in history. All the experience in the world could not save these men from making fools of themselves and our nation.
These men with more experience in national security than any group in modern history in matters of state and defense came up with the idea for a preemptive invasion of Iraq. After six years it is only a handful of people blinded by their loyalty to the Republican Party who continue to believe that the invasion was not the biggest error ever made in international relations by this youthful nation.
The preemptive invasion of Iraq is the largest black mark on our entire history and indelibly marked by the know-how of men with more military experience than we have seen in any leadership assemblage of any administrations in recent history including John McCain. And every last one of these “brilliant military minds” was dead wrong; making mistakes from which we may be unable to flee for decades.
Let me suggest that those of you who continue to belabor the inexperience and lack of judgment of Barack Obama on matter of international affairs stop looking at the world through your belly button.
Barack Obama has astute judgment and broad-based of experience that all of the neo-conservatives that led the way to Baghdad from Kabul could not match when all of the resumes were put together.
And John McCain’s portfolio of experience and judgment is one six-pack short of a case. Retired generals have made the very astute observations that McCain’s six years in a Viet Nam concentration camp did not give him more insight into questions of international relations than living six years in a dark hole.
McCain came from a family where his grandfather and father were naval admirals. He received an appointment to Annapolis where more of the military mind set was pounded into his head. His mind has been tutored to think in the narrow lane of a six lane highway.
In his criticism of Obama, McCain continues to say that when he is commander-in-chief, he will depend on the commanders in the field to tell him when our troops should be redeployed.
We need a president who will seek the advice and counsel of the generals in the field, but whom as president will decide when our troops should come home because as president, he is the commander-in-chief.
Obama did just that today in Iraq. He made it clear that while he will seek the advice and counsel of the top military minds, in the end the people have elected Obama to be in charge and it a job he will gladly undertake
After his prisoner of war experience and the rehabilitation from the numerous injuries received from his captors, McCain’s flight status was reinstated and he became the commander of a flight squadron in Florida.
Except for that brief tenure as commander he has had no administrative responsibility. I would be interested how he merits such loud praise for his national security and defense experience which as far as my research can detect was limited to flying A-4 Sky hawks off the S. S. Forrestal.
On July 20, 2008 the president of Iraq, al Maliki tells a German magazine that he agrees with Obama’s long term policy. The U. S. should bring the boys and girls home again in 16 months. In other words, the president of Iraq, al Maliki, agrees with Barack Obama.
Many of you will recall that Bush said bluntly at one his unmemorable news conferences, that when the Iraqi government asked us to leave, we should leave. They have! We should.
McCain has also criticized Obama for refusing to say publicly that the “surge” has been successful which the Senator from Arizona has been saying for some time. The purpose of the surge was to give the political leaders sufficient time to agree on the political issues that must be resolved before Iraq can have a viable government. If the surge has been successful, the Arizona Senator should be pushing for the American troops to come home.
The surge was successful or it was a failure—McCain must make up his mind. He cannot have it both ways. If the surge was as successful as McCain insists, the troops should be on their way home at this very moment. If it was not successful, the troops should remain until the victory that McCain persists on and which has nearly no chance of ever coming to fruition, has finally been reached in the minds of McCain and his fellow-hawks.
And if the surge was successful, the generals on the ground should be calling upon the president to bring the soldiers back to America. Their certainty of the surge’s success is obvious by their utter silence.
In fact, the average Sunni on the street does not want Americans to go home, not now, not ever.
I have been arguing ever since the surge began that it is Moqtada al Sadr who has won the surge. He ordered his troops home when Bush announced the surge of 30,000 troops. Al Sadr ordered his troops to return to their homes and their hideouts until the Americans, victims of their own foolish pride and patriotic misperception, departed the Iraqi shores.
With the deep reduction in American deaths, and the genocidal slaughter of Iraqi civilians both the American political leaders and the equally blinded patriotic military leaders such as John MCain with artificial egos bigger than their limited I. Q. s made the irrational conclusion that the surge had worked and that the American presence of a mere 30,000 additional troops had squelched the insurgents and the radical militia.
It appeared so obvious to me that our attempt to eradicate a hatred that has caused the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to fight each other for 1400 years had no chance to work; that no 90 day surge which was turned into a three hundred and sixty-five day surge, that no army of 150,000 troops plus 150,000 contractors which the Bush Administration has interjected into the war by tiptoeing around the Congress, will never—let me say it again, will never turn this nation that has survived for thirty-five years under the ruthless dictatorship of the minority Sunnis dominance and its harsh leader--Saddam Hussein will suddenly become one nation under Allah.
The country’s population is composed of 60% Shiite, 20% Sunni, and 20% Kurdish Sunni, etc. 1.8 million Iraqi have been displaced to nearby countries, 1.6 million have been displaced in Iraq itself.
It does not take a PhD in math to determine that any democratic election will result in the control of Iraq by the Shiites who have very strong ties to Iran. Nor does it take a PhD to realize that the Sunnis are in serious danger whenever the coalition forces retire from the country.
Since the Parliament which has been arbitrarily divided by the American occupiers can not reach an agreement on a long term, permanent, distribution of power and oil revenues the options are simple—either the coalition forces remain there for the indefinite future or we simply pull out our forces and financial support and let the country work out its future on its own whatever that means.
The Sunnis do not want the U. S. to leave. They will readily tell you that outside of Baghdad the surge is a joke. The insurgents continue to fight the militia; the Kurds and the Shiites continue to fight over the rights to the oil reserves located in an area dominated by the Kurds, Iran continues to penetrate Iraq and lend its armies and its money to their brother Shiites and Parliament cannot decide how the power can be divided equitably.
As one Sunni on the streets told Liz Sly, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, “This is the calm before the storm. Don’t ever think Al Qaeda and the (Shiite) militias have gone. They are still there and they are waiting for a chance to attack again.”
Another civilian told the reporter, “The Iraqi army is doing a good job…but only because they are being supervised by Americans. I’m afraid that if the Americans leave, the Iraqi army will split and each one will fight on behalf of his own sect.”
In this statement we see why the surge did not work. The purpose of the surge was not to stop the violence that made every street in this ancient city a potential nightmare; it was to provide enough civility on streets throughout the city for all parties to this war a chance to establish a viable government.
What this man is attempting to say is that the only thing that is keeping the relative calm and peace glued together is the American forces, and that the moment those forces depart, the sectarian warfare between the three camps will resume.
America has spent approximately $1 trillion on this ill-advised invasion. Every month that we stay there we spend billions that could and should be invested in the infrastructure of our country, in our schools, in our inner-cities, in our roads, bridges eighty-five percent (85%) of which are in danger of collapse, in our Social Security System, in Medicare and Medicaid; not to mention paying off of the debt that the Bush tax cut for the rich and paying off the debt emanating from the massive cost and waste from the war in Iraq. There is a multitude of additional debt related to the needs vital to rebuilding a country that the Bush administration has allowed to fall into disrepair. We simply cannot afford to continue this dreadful error in judgment at the expense of our own people. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Kristol, and all of the other neo-conservative whose warped view of the world persuaded Bush and his military leadership to oust Saddam Hussein should be made to pay for their incompetency.
John McCain wants the U. S. to remain in Iraq until the United States wins. This nation cannot afford to continue this expense and the American people who by the standards of our constitution are the source of power in this democratic country by a number in excess of eighty (80%) percent want our troops brought home now.
If this is an example of McCain’s vast experience and superior judgment, he fails the grade. Another reason he disqualifies himself for the presidency is his total disregard for his disregard of the urgent domestic needs of our nation and his willingness to put our people even more deeply indebt with his unwavering support of the tax breaks for the rich at the expense of poor.
Barack Obama wants to establish a time table of 16 months after he takes the oath of office and begin to pull our troops out—some to Afghanistan to complete the unfinished job of destroying the al Qaeda that flew planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York killing nearly three thousand Americans. They are headquartered in the mountainous region of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border hiding in caves and small camps along with their founder and leader Osama bin Laden. They must be destroyed.
Unfortunately, the incompetent Mr. Bush and his neo-conservative supporters mistakenly redeployed our combat troops and our military equipment to preemptively invade Iraq which had nothing to do with the 9/11 devastation and gave the al Qaeda the opening they needed to reorganize themselves, re-staff their motley combat forces and lead the fight to bring the Taliban back into power in Kabul. They have not succeeded, but they are making dangerously rapid progress toward that end. The U. S. must deploy 10-20,000 more troops there to wipe out their camps, destroy their training facilities and either capture or kill their comrades in arms.
McCain’s insistence on victory in a war that should not have been waged and cannot be won disqualifies him both as an expert in national defense and terrorism.
Barack Obama, as he meets with world leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England is proving himself to be the man this nation needs at this time in our history. His informed confidence and his brilliant mind that is capable of extraordinary judgment must be sitting in the oval office leading this nation into a new and exciting future.
11:22:10 PM 
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