gwot – Moe Lane

This is the single most insane thing that I’ve seen today.

Oliver Willis being screamed at for approving of Osama bin Laden’s double-tapping*. Link via @keder because I’d prefer not to give the screamer direct traffic from my site. Not that Willis has entirely clean hands: Bush, for the record, was not “evil.” In fact, his GWOT policy was much like Obama’s, only more competent…

Moe Lane

*For the record: I have very little problem with the idea of Barack Obama starting out each month by ROATSing a random terrorist or terrorist-enabling dictator. I won’t even mind him taking credit for monster-killing; because, you know, the end result would be less monsters.

#rsrh Duelling QotD, John Yoo edition. #p2 #ows

(Via Instapundit) Mr. Yoo is cruel, yet accurate, in his assessment of the almost-competent GWOT strategy of Barack Obama.

Let’s give partial credit where it is due. Apparently the Obama administration argues that al-Awlaki was a legitimate target because he is a member of an enemy engaged in hostile conduct against the United States. At least Obama has figured out that the war on terrorism is in fact a war, and that it is not limited just to Afghanistan. We should be thankful that Obama officials have quietly put aside the arguments they made during the Bush years that any terrorist outside the Afghani battlefield was a criminal suspect who deserved his day in federal court. By my lights, I would rather the Obama folks be hypocrites in favor of protecting the national security than principled fools (which they are free to be in the faculty lounges both before and after their time in government).

Continue reading #rsrh Duelling QotD, John Yoo edition. #p2 #ows

#rsrh Cheney’s second-unkindest cut of all.

While I agree with Allahpundit that the single unkindest cut of all would have been for Dick Cheney to criticize President Obama’s counter-terrorism policy from the left, that wasn’t going to happen. Honestly, when it comes to that sort of thing the President – like virtually all contemporary Democratic politicians, really – still has to be graded on a curve. It’s going to be a long time before that party is going to be comfortable with electing another Truman (unfortunately for the country, they’re probably capable of electing another LBJ a lot sooner), mostly because a critical generation of power brokers is only now reaching the point where its members are starting to die 0f old age.

Still, Cheney genially praising Obama for showing the elementary good sense to follow George W Bush’s lead on the GWOT is pretty good stuff. My only quibble there is that the former Vice President didn’t observe that the current President had really ‘grown in office’ in that regard; but then, that can be a killing insult, inside the Beltway. The doctors probably told Cheney to take it easy until he’s more comfortable with his cyborg body*…

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh Cheney’s second-unkindest cut of all.

Why the GWOT is not an issue in the midterms.

Via Hot Air Headlines, Tom Brokaw does not understand why the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not looming issues in this year’s election; or, indeed, really issues at all. He doesn’t bother to even try to answer the question, himself – apparently, Brokaw decided that his wordcount was better suited towards the production of ponderous melancholia – but fortunately I’m here to explain things to him.

In order: Continue reading Why the GWOT is not an issue in the midterms.

#rsrh VDH: Obama now Bush III?

Well, yes and no.

So here we are back at the beginning — the Nobel Laureate is a continuance of George Bush on the war against terror; he has sized up both his domestic and foreign supporters and understood that their former outrage was not principled but largely emotional, driven by short-term political considerations, and thus centered on the caricature of a white, male, Christian, Texan cowboy, conjuring up all the easy tropes of anti-Americanism. Obama, to his credit, figured out that the Western world wanted to be kept safe, and that Bush had figured out how to do that, and that his own messianic presence could square that circle by being the un-Bush Bush.

The donkey in the room that Victor Davis Hanson is not addressing is rendition: which the Bush administration abandoned, in favor of Gitmo; which we have started up doing again; and which will cause a major foreign policy firestorm when the first pictures get smuggled out of Pakistan (or wherever we’ve ended up sending suspected terrorists). That’s the other major reason* why I don’t make the welkin ring on Obama’s plagiarizing of Bush’s GWOT strategy; in at least one major way, he hasn’t.

And, naturally, it’s the one place where he should have made sure to. One wonders why the Secretary of State didn’t warn him off…

Moe Lane

*The first being that if you’re going to steal the ideas in private of a man who you habitually (and insecurely) deride in public, the absolute best that you’ll get out of me is silence.

[UPDATE] Glenn Reynolds raises an excellent point about hats.

So much for a Yoo/Bybee show trial.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Actually, there are two reasons why the Left is going to be upset:

For weeks, the right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his plans to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going to be upset: an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

The first reason is, indeed, that their fever dream of seeing Yoo and Bybee in the dock – or even subject to disbarment – will die, choking.

The second reason is that ‘heckled’ is a poor choice of verb for what we did to Holder. ‘Overruled’ works so much better.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The White House has found a place for the Uighurs! Palau!

I had to look it up, too.

8,188.82 miles away from Washington, DC (if this site is to be believed), which is actually about 8,000 miles less than I expected. Then again, there probably isn’t anything there except empty ocean*, and if the administration was just going to dump terrorists into the water it would have said so.

Palau (Who?) to Take in 17 Uighurs

The obscure Pacific nation of Palau, one of the world’s youngest and tiniest countries, has agreed to take in the 17 Uighurs — Muslim Chinese — currently being held at Guantanamo.

President Johnson Toribiong announced in a statement to the Associated Press that Palau “agreed to accommodate the United States of America’s request to temporarily resettle in Palau up to 17 ethnic Uighur detainees.” He said their resettlement in Palau would be “subject to periodic review.”

[snip]

The US government has pledged $200 million in aid to Palau, but a White House official denied that money, for development assistance, had anything to do with the Uighurs going to Palau.

No word from Jake whether the official was able to say that with a straight face. Well, that’s how the game is played. See also Hot Air and AoSHQ for some healthy doses of cynicism; mine below the fold. Continue reading The White House has found a place for the Uighurs! Palau!

Obama / Bush: Not quite the same on the GWOT.

I can’t quite agree with this passage:

John Ashcroft, who was Attorney General when Marri was designated an enemy combatant, makes no such apologies. Interviewed just before the Inauguration, he defended what he described as a “sound decision” to “maximize the national interest,” and predicted that, in the end, President Obama’s approach to handling terror suspects would closely mirror his own: “How will he be different? The main difference is going to be that he spells his name ‘O-b-a-m-a,’ not ‘B-u-s-h.’ ”

(Via NRO MediaBlog; well, technically via Think Progress, but I don’t link to pro-torture apologists if I can help it.) Continue reading Obama / Bush: Not quite the same on the GWOT.

The curious incident of the antiwar movement in the night-time.

Please, by all means: assume that I’m equating them with dogs.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers. Interested in DC School Choice Rally videos?

Whipped ones, in fact, as Environmental Republican demonstrates (via Glenn Reynolds). You see, he went looking for the Usual Antiwar Suspects’ outrage at the drone strikes in Pakistan, and discovered… well, that apparently it wasn’t really worth noting at all, really. His conclusion?

So what con we surmise from this little investigation? How about the left-wing of this country is populated with hypocritical ideologues who not only hated Bush but had a severe dislike for America. Now that they have a leader who they feel a kinship with, well, it’s all good.

You shouldn’t be surprised: the terrorists that got attacked weren’t Europeans – which is my polite way of saying that they weren’t sufficiently white and Western for the groups running the antiwar movement to particularly care, especially since caring might embarrass a President who isn’t a Republican. Was that too harsh? No? OK, let’s try again: the antiwar movement is run by racists who only like brown people when they can be used as clubs with which to beat anybody to the antiwar movement’s Right.

Well, anyone to their Right, and Jews. A quick perusal of the major players in question indicates that they’re all really upset that Israel isn’t baring its collective neck for the knife.

Moe Lane

PS: If you won’t respect yourself, don’t expect me to respect you, either.

Crossposted to RedState.

A very interesting briefing on counter-piracy operations.

Found here, by Vice Admiral William Gortney. Blackfive sums up the whole thing nicely, I think:

The entire point, of course is to “disincentivize” piracy. That’s a nice way of saying they want to make piracy more painful than fishing. Right now there is no disincentive, or what little there is remains vastly outweighed by the potential rewards. So Somali fishermen have become pirates. The average payoff today is $1.5 million to 2 million a ship. CTF-151’s mission, in reality, is prevent successful hijackings, capture the pirates and help the rest rediscover their love for fishing. When enough head out to hijack a ship and don’t come home, but end up dead or in prison for a long, long time, Gortney figures fishing will start looking a lot better again.

Continue reading A very interesting briefing on counter-piracy operations.