Category Archives: Eight Decades of Insights

by Barry Kelly | August 22, 2014 · 12:09 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 143

DON’T TAKE A KNIFE TO A GUNFIGHT

From all their pronouncements, it seems the Obama Holder dynamic duo plan to use their law and order weapon against ISIS. That is as foolish as taking a knife to a gun fight. ISIS Terrorism does not operate on a law and order field. They know and say they are in a war with the west. Their weapons and tactics are from the manuals of warfare. During my time in the Reagan White House, as the point staff person for terrorism, we used the law and order approach. Even with the relatively very small number of terrorists and terrorists organization active at that time, the law and order legal process was cumbersome and stretched nearly to its limit. The requirement to collect information that would stand up to the rules of evidence in our courts was a heavy burden. None of us were thinking enough outside the box of legalism. The military leadership, the intelligence sector, the Congressional committees, and, of course the State Department were all mired in the rules of our court system.

Looking back now, our efforts to fight international terrorism with the weapons of law and order were not equal to the task. To apply law and order restraints to the war against terrorism, yes it is a war, today is beyond reason. It is absurd. Our President and his Attorney General do not trust the military to capture, detain, question and try terrorist in a military court. They have an engrained ideological fear that some terrorist may have his or her civil rights violated. I think the roots of that thinking go deep into their guilt over American power being used in the colonial past. No matter what the issue, the President and his soul mate will ride the civil rights horse onto every battlefield. No, I can not square that legalistic approach with using drone strikes against terrorists even if they are American citizens. I can only guess that the law and order rules of engagement do not extend to drone strikes. Maybe it is because dead people have no civil rights, due process, and no need to have Miranda rights read to them.

The law and order people do not seem to understand the need to obtain real-time intelligence from interrogating (not torturing) combatants captured on the battlefield. Intelligence wins wars, saves American lives, and treasure. The cumbersome time required for the law and order system to play out does not match the need to defeat terrorists before they can bring the war to our shores again. Imagine having a backlog of several hundred terrorist prisoners to move through our law and order procedures. Lastly our Constitution does not apply to foreign nationals who are trying to kill us. Nor should it apply to U.S. citizens fighting on the side of terrorists. The first step should be to strip them of their citizenship. That is an appropriate job for the law and order process.

Using law and order procedures as our Attorney General has in the past will ensure we lose the war against terrorism. Save the law and order rules for U.S. citizens or residents who commit terrorist acts inside the U.S. Due process is their right.

Read my non fiction book, INSIGHTS Transforming America. Is this what we fought for?

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Filed under Barry Kelly, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Terrorism

Tagged as Attorney General, Holder, ISIS, military, terrorism

by Barry Kelly | August 20, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 141

KURDS AND ISIS

However he got there doesn’t matter. It is rare that President Obama gets policy and action together to do the right thing. So let’s give him credit for helping the Kurds rescue thousands of minority religious followers and begin pushing ISIS back into traditional Sunni tribal areas. Without U.S. airstrikes and weapons delivered to the Kurds, the Mosel Dam and Christians and other minorities would still be in the hands of ISIS. There is absolutely no question that ISIS is capable of genocide against any people who do not believe in sharia law.

Unfortunately, this is not a short-term problem with a quick answer. The right thing is to support the Kurds. Their army, the Peshmerga, can and will fight to protect their homeland and people. All they need is an American commitment to supply needed weapons and some economic support. They can be a pillar of stability in the region and a military balance to the ISIS. The Kurds will not, unless forced, ever put their fate in the hands of a Baghdad Shiite or Sunni government. They have suffered under successive Baghdad regimes. The Kurds also have no love for Iran or Turkey.

Over the last five-plus years, the world has seen that our word cannot be taken at face value. Therefore, the problem for the Kurds is deciding whether they can trust our commitments. They are in a very dangerous position with few options. America will get another chance to show the world if our word means anything. The president has broad powers in foreign policy and armed conflict issues. But in this case it would help if he could involve Congress in long-term support for the Kurds. This is an issue he should not use to attack his opposition. There has to be some kind of a line between progressive political goals and something as serious as building a area of stability in the wreckage of Iraq that is friendly with America.

We can not expect the Kurds to trust us if we show intent of putting them back under a Baghdad regime. The president and Congress need to accept that the idea of a Shiite government ever being trusted by the Sunnis or the Kurds is gone. In fact, it was never a viable option. The borders of the Middle East have been changed de facto. A smart foreign policy would accept the change and move on. Please, Mr. President, keep Secretary of State, John Kerry out of Kurdish policy issues. You and we cannot afford any more bumbling by your Department of State.

Read my non-fiction book, “INSIGHTS: Transforming America –Is this what we fought for? “

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 140

OBAMA AND IRAQ

The first requirement for the development of an effective foreign policy is to differentiate between your beliefs and reality. I don’t believe President Obama can see the real world. He only sees what he wants it to be. That kind of vision is dangerous in the making and implementing of foreign policy.

Iraq is a clear example. General David Petraeus and his surge strategy won the war in Iraq. To be fair, President Obama did not inherit a stable Iraq. He made the situation worse by his haste to pull all troops out of Iraq. The Iraqi government Bush left him could not last without enough American troops on the ground to check Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s rush to follow Iran’s guidance and to purge his administration and military of all Sunni and Kurd leaders. The end result was the creation of a Shiite oligarchy, no better that the Sunni dictatorship President Bush defeated.

The Bush regime won the war, but paved the way for a failed Iraqi government when they destroyed the Iraqi army and the Bath party of Saddam Hussein. None of the existing infrastructure every government needs was left. To make matters worse, the Bush administration failed to understand a Shiite/Maliki government would never be a check to the Shiite nation of Iran. Instead the Iranians ended up owning Maliki who preceded to further weaken the Sunnis and the Kurds. For all the American blood and treasure the Bush administration spent in Iraq, little was left for Obama to work with, especially given his primary motive to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible. I doubt President Obama, or either of his inept secretaries of state, ever saw the real geo-political problem a Maliki government would cause. You would think that President Obama, who leans hard in the direction of supporting Sunni Muslims, would have recognized the growth and consequences of Shiite power in Iraq.

You didn’t need timely intelligence, which Obama claims he never received, to see the Sunni Islamic radicals that joined the rebellion against Syrian Shiite President Assad could easily cross the border into Sunni areas of Iraq. The Sunni tribes alienated by Maliki were ready to provide support in the form of manpower, logistics, weapons and money. Borders mean nothing if they are not defended.

The result of the ISIS invasion of Iraq is that tribal and religious areas no longer follow the lines drawn by western diplomats after WWI. All remnants of the Shiite/Maliki government are being forced to fall back into Shiite populated areas, primarily south of Baghdad. A realistic map of Iraq will soon show Sunniland, Kurdistan and Shiiteland. The Sunnis and the Kurds will never go back into a centralized Shiite-run government. That failed experiment is over. Only more American blood and treasure could delay the collapse of Iraq, and for what? Our government needs to stop believing a Iraqi centralized government is possible. It is not.

Our policy should be to support the Kurds with modern weapons and monetary aid until their own fighters get properly equipped and to persuade the outside Sunni world to help bring the ISIS under some restraint. In the meantime, use unfettered air power and required boots-on-the-ground to break the advance of ISIS and stop their atrocities against the Christians and other religious groups ISIS is now slaughtering. Some massive evacuations of endangered refugees may be necessary. All because two administrations failed to see the Middle East as it is. Hawks and doves are equally to blame.

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EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 139

ISRAEL AND HAMAS

When Israel and Hamas have their battles every few years you can depend on a number of things being repeated. There is the start of the conflict provoked by some aggressive act by Hamas, a raid from a tunnel or the launch of missiles from Gaza into Israel. We have also seen repeated cease fires, some lasting days, some a few hours and others never getting started. We can also count on some bumbling by the State Department. Secretary Kerry is a world-class bumbler. In the end, Israel’s air, ground, and artillery forces prevail and the fighting stops until the next time.

During the conflict all the anti-Israel liberal voices in America and Europe bleat their moronic chants. They need no practice. It is always the same. “Israel needs to be controlled. They are not trying to avoid civilian deaths, the citizens of Gaza under Hamas’s leadership are fighting for their independence. If only Israel would end their occupation of Gaza and withdraw to the 1967 borders there would be no more violence. Israel won’t negotiate. The government (America’s) needs to pressure Israel to act responsibly.”

I know the radical left (today’s liberals) dislike facts unless the facts are theirs, but here goes in constant hope the truth will prevail.

(1) Hamas always starts the mini wars. Mostly with an increase in missile attacks. An increase because Hamas has launched missiles into Israel several times every month. How many nations would remain defensive in the face of rockets and mortars landing in civilian centers? Hamas missiles have poor or no guidance systems beyond the burning of the missile’s engine. So Hamas has no capability of avoiding population centers. In fact, population centers are their targets but poor guidance capabilities and the effectiveness of Israel’s “iron dome” missile defense and civilian missile shelters have spared Israeli population centers from heavy damage.

(2) No nation can negotiate with an enemy whose clearly stated goal is the total destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. What’s to negotiate?

(3) Hamas diverts cement and building materials, the Israelis permitted to cross the border, to the building of tunnels and other military facilities.

(4) Without support from radical Muslim nations, Hamas could not wage war.

(5) Hamas cares little about improving the lives of their citizens.

It is hard to understand why liberals equate the actions of a designated terrorist state with those of the only democracy in the Middle East. Except the liberal history is to always blame America or Israel. I think this blame America attitude has it roots in the liberal belief you can negotiate with anyone. If you show willingness to compromise your adversary will reciprocate. This history is shared by high officials in our government. How else can you explain the reckless reliance on negotiations and sanctions? Nations whose goal is to destroy us, use negotiations to buy time. If the end game is critical to our enemies, they will embrace the trade of continued negotiations and possible sanctions for time.

Israel is our only real ally in the Middle East. Why should we not use our influence and power to encourage the growth of democracy? Even in Muslim states. The book describing wars between democratic nations has not yet been written. The source material is just not there. I guess it never will be. On the other hand, there is great source material for the attacks of Muslim states on both other Muslims states and non-Muslim states. What is ISIS about? Has it shown tolerance for Christians or heretical Muslims? (Muslims who do not fit their definition of acceptability.) Is the ISIS movement’s mission to reinstitute a strict Muslim rule over the territory its armies spread the Muslim religion in the 700s AD?

For more about the Obama Administration and the world, read “INSIGHTS: Transforming America — Is this what we fought for? Available in hardcover, Kindle Free and paperback at Amazon.

by the author of the Brandon mystery/thriller novels.

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Filed under Barry Kelly, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Hamas, Intelligence & Politics, Israel, Obama, Politics, Terrorism

Tagged as Islam, Israel, Middle East

by Barry Kelly | August 7, 2014 · 7:35 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 137

FREEDOM OF CHOICE

The real result of all far-left ideologies, be they communism, socialism, or Obama’s progressivism, is their impact on the choices left to other groups, organizations, and individuals. Far-left ideologies all have the goal of establishing a one-party system of government to manage the affairs of business, education, health, industry, justice, the military, and individuals. The progressive government is controlled by a small group of the progressive elite. The driving force is that the elite progressives “know what is better for everyone.” They are not evil. They just believe that the only way to establish their version of heaven on earth is to take control of all aspects of society. This is where they get their willingness to constantly use any means to accomplish the end: “a much better and fairer life for all.”

The very essence of progressivism is to control choice because they believe it is chaos when people are free to chose their life’s occupation, their education, reading material, TV programs, news, religion, ways of raising children, including the choice to have children or not, health care, and the people who govern them. The current struggle in America between conservatives and liberals (the far-left liberals are progressives who now control the Democratic Party) is not over some obscure political difference. It is over who makes life’s choices, you or a progressive elite.

Progressives and communists hate what capitalism and the free market stand for. They do not believe the forces of the free market are real and think greed is the only driving force of capitalism. Progressives will not believe the infinite number of choices made by a free people in a free competitive economy can result in anything but chaos. Instead, a small group of progressives can make better economic decisions that will produce a vastly more efficient economy and much fairer distribution of wealth.

The promise of freedom is the existence of choices. Without individual choices there is no freedom. Those of us who have lived seven or eight decades have seen, sometimes up close and personal, societies where the basic choices Americans exercise every day were unheard of or only imagined. The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and some South American nations have tried various far-left ideologies. In every one of them personal or individual choices vanished.

The last remaining choice is to fight the system. Not many take that choice. All isms can be measured by the choices made by an elite and those made by the people. North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, probably the best political organizer of the 20th century, had North Vietnamese people organized into to a cascading staircase of political, economic, and social organizations. Everyone belonged to a peer organization with each peer group sending a delegate to the next higher group. There was no real individual choice.

All of the socialist, communist, or progressive one party elites are more or less the same. The more mature the system becomes the more extensive its choice making. Let’s look at a few of those. Take education. The elites decide what schools and courses will be available, who will be selected to go to what school, and what each will study. The same elites will decide what doctor, what hospital, what treatment is authorized, where people can live, what size of apartment, what will be grown on the farms, what industries will be allowed, and what each will produce in both quality and quantity. Some even decide how many children a couple can have. Internal travel and trips to other countries is strictly controlled.

When you lose your individual freedom, you lose the right to make most of life’s choices. The elites will look after you. When you think about something conceptual like freedom, think instead about the right of making choices being taken from you and your family. Don’t be taken in by the words. They don’t mean anything. Remember, “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” Without choice all hopes are narrowed.

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