Author Archives: Barry Kelly

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About Barry Kelly

Author of "Justice Beyond Law," "Justice Without Mercy," "Shades of Justice," "Justice Without Mercy," and "Run to Freedom," as well as two ,"nonfiction books ,"INSIGHTS-The Transforming of America," and "INSIGHTS-Stepping Stones to Tyranny. He also is the author of the blog "8 Decades of Insights." Barry Kelly is no stranger to the world of espionage, counter-terrorism, weapons, deep cover, and the inner workings of the governmental security apparatus. His immersion in the Cold War began with enlistment in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. Following his discharge, he earned a BA from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree from Duke. His career in the CIA included deep cover operations and overseas experience, primarily in South and Southeast Asia. He has been awarded the Certificate of Merit with Distinction, the Intelligence Medal of Merit, the Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal and the Intelligence Officer of the Year Award. After retiring from the CIA, Kelly served as a special assistant to President Reagan. He holds a first dan black belt in hap-ki-do. Visit www.factsandfictions.com or find the author on Facebook.
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EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 129

IS THE PRESIDENT INEPT?

President Obama, photo by the New York Daily News.

President Obama, photo by the New York Daily News.

Many people, including many political scholars and sitting elected officials, often describe the president as inept, clueless, unengaged, and a poor leader. Yet President Obama has bested them in every conflict. He lurks in a cloud of disinterest and mind-numbing bumbling.

If that is your image of President Obama, you are wrong.

Here is a man from a modest economic background. He grew up without family connections that would assure his future. Barack Hussain Obama was raised  mostly by a single mother. He was surrounded by people who leaned far to the left. Somehow this young black man with a white mother got into and graduated from prestigious American universities. His grades are not public but we have to assume he was educated well. It is hard to attend Columbia and Harvard universities without embracing a far left political ideology.

At some point in this educational journey, he found his way to the teaching of Saul Alinsky, a brilliant American revolutionary intellectual. (Read his book Rules for Radicals if you think otherwise.)  Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton found their respective ways to Saul Alinsky’s revolutionary ideology by different paths, but both today are practicing progressives. (That term is one Alinsky thought was more acceptable in America than Socialism or Communism). Let’s agree that a stupid or inept man could not have gotten into and graduated from Columbia and Harvard with a law degree. Nor could a clueless, incompetent man make his way to the Illinois Senate, the U.S. Senate and finally become a two-term president.

The reason Republican intellectuals and elected politicians think he is inept is that they don’t understand the rules he plays by. They focus on problems and issues that need to be solved for the good of the nation or, more narrowly, their political party. President Obama does not focus on the same problems or issues. He is above that. Problems will always be with us. The proper use of problems according to Obama and Saul Alinsky is to use the issues that are associated with or come from the national problems to destroy your political opponents. Once you have destroyed the opposition and seized power, then you can fix America’s problems by establishing a one-party socialist government run by a progressive elite. The process is called Transforming America. Heard that before? Maybe from President-Elect Obama’s ordination speech in Chicago.

I believe the president must be astonished that his opposition has not yet figured out his game plan. I believe the progressive plan is so simple yet unique in American politics that lifetime politicians cannot grasp that Obama does not now care a whit about immigration, jobs, health care, education, foreign policy, terrorism, energy, military force size, debt, nor any other issue important to present and past political leaders. He or his successor will focus on those issues once they established a strong socialist state.

InsightsI have written the only book I know of that explains President Obama and the progressive game plan point by point or issue by issue. President Obama is not just a worse Jimmy Carter. He is a political type we have never before seen in America. He has no love or even an identification with the greatness of America and will destroy everything Americans have fought for since we arrived on these shores.

Read: INSIGHTS: Transforming America — Is this what we fought for?

By the author of the Brandon adventure/thriller novels.

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by | July 16, 2014 · 7:30 am
by | July 14, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 128

OBAMA AND THE MILITARY

Obama vs military

How did we get to the point where soldiers are being given termination of employment notice while in combat zones fighting for our safety and freedom? This is a new low for any president, his secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

After both world wars, America cut back on the troop level and budget of the armed forces. Then the respective presidents and the citizens believed wars were finally over and we could rely first on the League of Nations and later, the United Nations though they are both international organizations with more promise than results.

We should know better now.

The need for current troop levels and budget increases is real. Islam radicalism is real, as is their hatred for all things western and especially the United States. The Cold War is not over. It never was. Russia and China present real threats to the economic and military power of the United States. Diplomacy, no matter the narrow view of the liberal progressives now in power, cannot be effective without real military and economic power. This is political science 101, the most basic of all principles of the exercise of power.

There is a pervasive myth that is part of the code of the liberal left or progressive movement. Social welfare programs cannot be funded adequately if the resources allocated to the military cannot be drastically reduced. They would rather have an ineffective national defense than cap or limit social welfare spending. The myth is easily perpetrated among a social political group that sees no need for the military and its exercise of violent power. The Vietnam War did not create this liberal group who devoutly believe if they are good and just, all other nations will also be good and just. This belief has been here as long or longer than recorded history. The actions of the left toward our warriors returning from Vietnam will never be erased. This is the same political group that justifies President Obama’s Benghazi actions and the subsequent cover-up.

We all should be embarrassed at the actions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. They supported the president in the Benghazi tragedy and the cover-up, knowing it was wrong. In a democracy, a Constitution that designates the president as the Commander-in-Chief doesn’t excuse any military officer or civilian officer for  participating in a cover-up where Americans died without any attempt to rescue them. The Joint Chiefs do not have to act like mummies when they see the president’s secretary of defense destroying the best military force the world has ever known. They have a duty to resist and resign if necessary. Terminating the service of active duty military, officers, and troops while in a combat zone is inexcusable. There is no need for this. Funds can be found without damaging any sacred social programs. While the current debt is too high, the needs of the military is not the driving force of the national debt.

If the troops who are being fired for socialist reasons had jobs to go to, at least cutting the military force drastically wouldn’t be a humanitarian disaster. Thanks to the socialist need to transform American into a European socialist economy, there are no jobs for them to go to. Not only does this presidential action weaken America’s defense, it puts hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men and women into the ranks of the unemployed and hurts the morale of those who didn’t get cut.  Chief of the Joint Staff, General Dempsey and Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel, where is your sense of honor? It is time for you both to resign.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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by | July 13, 2014 · 7:34 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 127

OBAMA’S BORDER

Governor Perry of Texas,  whom I respect, said President Obama is either inept or has an ulterior goal. He may be inept but it is hard to tell when you are dealing with a president who does not govern by solving problems. There is no measuring stick. This president is very far outside the American mold for leaders.

It is not that he doesn’t recognize issues. He can smell an issue before it even becomes an issue. In fact he is very capable of creating issues that he can manipulate to achieve his ulterior goals. What is so hard about a border? Every nation has them. Leaving the Great Wall of China aside, most nations have exercised border control to keep people from leaving rather than to keep people from getting in.

America is rather unique. Our problem is securing our borders so we can decide who should come in from the millions of people who want to. And because we are who we are — a nation that believes in individual freedoms and the rule of law — we cannot use lethal force to protect our borders from people who want to be citizens. The solution, in theory at least, sounds doable: Establish a border that stops everyone and allows at the same time for approved applicants to enter either for seasonal work periods or to begin the process for citizenship, a process requiring learning English, a knowledge of our history, and a respect for our law.

Immigration is a good thing. We need the workers at all levels. Our nation’s birthrate is not high enough to sustain a vigorously growing economy after the taxers, wealth distributors, regulators, and hate-America administration is long gone. Enforcing borders is a solvable problem and even the Obama team is maybe up to the challenge.

Here’s the catch: The border issue is too useful to progressives for Obama to solve. The border issue can destroy the Republican Party (which is what Obama’s main goal is). Send the Republican House a request for several billion dollars so Homeland Security and the Justice Department can cope with the humanitarian  part of the border problem. The Republican House leadership may figure out this is not the way to solve the current border problem and refuse to allocate the funds. Which is exactly what the progressives running the country want. Then the border human tragedy becomes the fault of the Republican House who, judging by past actions, probably will not recognize the trap.

To avoid the trap, the House should send up their own allocation of funds that is addressed to solve the border issue. Obama may not be able to veto the border funding bill.

Yes, the president always has an ulterior agenda, but it can be defeated with some common sense and toughness. The progressives don’t have to win on the border issue their leader caused and they won’t if the Republican leadership and border governors work together to solve the border problem. I have a lot more faith in the border governors than I do in the Republican congressional leadership.

 

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by | July 12, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 126

WHEN TRUST FAILS

Forget for a moment about your biases, whether you’re pro- or anti-Israel, and look at the options the prime minister of Israel has in this growing conflict. He has no good options. He can’t count on the United States to keep the rest of the Arab countries out of the conflict. He must take action.  israel flagHe doesn’t have the luxury of doing nothing but talk. Rockets are falling on Israeli population centers. He knows, as everyone does, that the rockets are being fired from the Gaza Strip by Hamas, a  recognized terrorist organization. It wasn’t very far in the past that Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip at urging from the West that has struggled, painfully and ineffectively, to establish peace in the Middle East. A peace that the respective combatants don’t believe is possible. Both sides present goals that the opponents are not willing to offer.

Israel wants its Arab neighbors to recognize its right to exist as a nation state, more or less with existing boundaries. The Muslims want  Israel to retreat to borders prior to the 1967 war.  President Obama has stated the 1967 boundaries should be the starting point for negotiations. Israel believes the resulting Israeli nation would be untenable militarily and economically. Hamas and its West Bank partner would accept those boundaries as a starting point but at the same time render the whole process meaningless by their refusal to formally recognize Israel’s right to exist, regardless of any border. The main player, barely behind the scenes, Iran, has stated repeatedly it intends to wipe Israel off the map. Iran, a Muslim Shia state, funds, arms, and supports Hamas and Hezbollah, even though Hamas is Sunni while Hezbollah is predominately a Shiite organization. Without the aid and support of Iran and formerly Syria, neither group could survive.

Okay, that is the back story. What has changed?

The relationship between the American president and Israel has changed dramatically. Israel heard President Obama’s pro-Arab bias loud and clear. His disrespect of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter’s visits to America was off the charts. Israel has realized it can no longer count on American support or the word of its leader.

When the trust of America that Israel could count on previously disappeared, their options became more limited. When Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah, who also heard our president speak, no longer believe America is a player on the world scene their options increased.

The might of the United States is off the both the field of arms and the negotiating table. If there is to be peace in the Middle East, it will have to come from the Sunni powers that do not want war and the economic disruption that comes with it. Let us hope that the next administration will revert to supporting our only democratic ally in the region.

 

 

 

 

 

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by | July 8, 2014 · 7:31 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 125

NEW MAP NEEDED

Put your old map of the Middle East in the pile of historical documents. For a hundred years, the national boundaries of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon followed the contours of the lines diplomats drew to show the demise of the Turkish Empire. Their inked lines paid little or no mind to the impact those lines would have on language groups, cultural and religious realities, and tribal territories.iraq

Iraq is not now and never has been a nation with the common things that make a nation, a nation. Instead, it worked around religious animosities, language differences, and conflicting tribal affiliations. The work around was only possible due to the harsh policies of a Sunni aristocracy that had no hesitation about using brutal tactics to subjugate Shia and Kurdish minorities. The Kurds have wanted and fought for their own nation for decades. At times they have sought Western support only to be betrayed time after time. The Shia are pulled eastward to the strong Persian and Shia  state of Iran, the same state that the Sunni leadership in Iraq fought a brutal war with in the 1980s. During that war, poison gas was used against the Iranians. Saddam Hussein was an equal dispenser of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He also used poison gas on the Shia and the Kurds. Only ruthless cruelty and fear kept Iraq a nation.

Vice President Joe Biden, who almost got nothing right in his entire political career unless he copied it from someone else, stumbled on the right solution at the wrong time when he proposed dividing Iraq into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish areas, provinces, or whatever. It was not to happen. His solution was too far outside the box for most of us.

President Obama made all the wrong moves and gave the wrong signals when he took power and pulled all our forces out of Iraq. But let’s be fair. The only way for Iraq to exist as a nation was to put a ruthless Sunni dictator back in power. That wasn’t going to happen. In its wisdom, the Bush Administration destroyed the Sunni-led Iraqi Army and ruling political party, clearing the way for weak Shia leaders to win or manipulate a democratic voting process that prepared the path for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to run a Shia regime that looked eastward to Iran for support and guidance, turning Iraq into an Iranian province.

Our president, who has a strong Sunni bias, knew he could not provide real military support to assist a Shia faction to battle a Sunni force. So all the hand-wringing over the number and kind of troops  sent now to Iraq and what the president should do is wasted. Iraq is history. Now we need to seek common goals among the Sunnis and Kurds.

Either way, this is a perfect issue for President Obama to follow his mantra, “the issue is never the issue.”  He never tries to solve issues anyway, he only uses them to destroy the opposition.  In Iraq, doing nothing is close to being the perfect solution. The Republicans will find some way to use the Iraq issue against themselves.

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