Tag Archives: ISIS

by Barry Kelly | October 13, 2015 · 7:19 am

INSIGHTS 236 — PRESIDENTIAL WEAKNESS OR IDEOLOGICAL CONVICTION?

The Advisor put down the receiver after Chris, his Secret Service contact, told him the President wouldn’t be down today or for the rest of the week.

He had mixed feelings. The President was the only person he saw face to face. Over the years in his underground office, the Advisor had become dependent on the President’s visits. The isolation and loneliness were really affecting him. He really doubted he could function through the year remaining in the President’s term. He found himself losing track of some of his thoughts when he was writing in his journal. No question, he was really slowing down. Each day was a bit harder. His exercise schedule was a thing of the past. Without an appetite, he seldom did any meal preparation. He wasn’t sure whether it was his mental state or if age was catching up. To force himself to function, he decided to prepare a journal entry of the problems he had with the President’s actions and policies.

The Advisor thought, Even if the President is my only face-to-face contact, when he leaves I feel like I have been in the presence of a very dangerous man and I can’t do anything about it. In fact, my mission is to support him even though I know he is intent on destroying the America I fought for and loved. He is true to his ideology and background. Our President is a dedicated socialist and like so many guilt-ridden liberals, blames America for the world’s current and past problems. He is determined to be known in history as the president who weakened capitalism, imperialism, and the emphasis upon freedom of the individual. By weakening American economical and military power, he will force America to take a very diminished role in world affairs. The nation will be dependent on international organizations to define and protect the rights and privileges of all people. America will no longer be a unique nation and the hope of people everywhere.

There is no other way to understand his actions or his announced policies. He knows the withdrawal of America from the world will result in totalitarian forces like Russia, China, Iran, and the Muslim Caliphate filling the vacuum left by the retreat of the United States. To him that is a good thing. An accomplishment he is proud of. His primary foreign affairs goal is to transform not only America, but the world order as well. If anyone had described the President in these terms when he was first elected, I would have rejected them as the ravings of mad men.

When Vladimir Putin looks at the President, he sees a weak man who hasn’t the will or strength to stop him from annexing as much of the Ukraine as wants or to contest his power move into the Middle East which while very soon put Russia military into the Mediterranean with naval power and missile batteries installed in Syria. Putin doesn’t care one bit about Assad. His goal is to expand Russian power into the oil-producing regions of the Middle East and establish warm water ports for the Russian fleet. Neither Putin, the America progressive party, or Congressional Republicans understand the President is not acting out of weakness, though I believe he lacks physical courage, but he acts out of conviction. How else can anyone explain his foreign actions or job killing regulations by his administration?

The Advisor printed his journal entry and began to enter it into his journal with his slightly unsteady hand. The next time the President comes down, the Advisor thought, I just might tell him what his actions look like to America and its enemies. I’d like to discuss gun control with him. I know it isn’t the loss of life that is his point in his anti-gun crusade. If it was, he would be focused on places like Chicago and help the police and city government to enforce existing gun laws. And it isn’t just using the issue to attack the opposition party. The President knows no socialist/communist government has ever taken control of an armed population. Slave holders always have guns. Slaves never do. Doesn’t that tell us everything we need to know?

This is an account written by a fictional advisor who doesn’t exist but should.

Check out the latest Jack Brandon mystery suspense novel at your local bookstore. Follow the author on Twitter @factsfictions80.

INSIGHTS 164: IF WORDS WERE BULLETS AND PROMISES BOMBS

Our president fills the airwaves with words and promises. Most of us have learned to just tune them out. He has a reputation as a good speaker but only if someone else writes the words and his technical staff puts them on a teleprompter. It would be more accurate to say he is very good at reading speeches. Words are simply a means to achieve some murky end.

The president’s words in a war environment are very different. We do not dare tune them out. People’s lives and freedoms are at stake.

This president is the least equipped to be a commander-in-chief than any president in my lifetime, which goes back to FDR’s first term. President Obama carries with him some very strange baggage. I think he believes American troops in foreign lands are and were there as occupiers. He has even referred to our troops in Iraq during the actual war as an army of occupiers. His anti-colonial distrust of American power is deeply ingrained, but not well hidden. No troops were left in Iraq because he wanted his legacy to be the president who lived up to his pre-election rhetoric to end wars, not start them. Any American forces left behind in Iraq would be interfering with the sovereignty of Iraq and be occupiers, not protectors of the peace.

As a result, we have ISIS. I gave the president credit for putting together a coalition of Islamic countries and for authorizing the air war. The no-boots-on-the-ground chant bothered me but I thought he would take advice from the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to guide the air war and when the time was right to put some troops on the ground to direct the air war and stiffen the Peshmerga and Sunni tribes to resist ISIS advances. The airstrikes did work to save Kirkuk and the huge nearby dam complex. Now ISIS commanders have adapted and the air war failed to reach the level of hundreds of strikes per day against fixed targets and targets of opportunity. Even now, outside the Kurdish city of Kobani, which ISIS is poised to capture and massacre thousands of non-believers in ISIS’s brand of Islam, the airstrikes are far to few and ineffective.

To reach Kobani with the troops and fire power necessary to push the Peshmerga out of part of their homeland, ISIS had to establish and maintain long lines of logistical support. These kinds of targets are vulnerable to air interdiction. ISIS logistical convoys of tanks and trucks have to move though miles of desolate, sparsely populated areas. There is no cover and very little need to worry about collateral damage. Yet the might of the American air power is not being used.

Civilian command over the military is a very important Constitutional precept. But that doesn’t mean political hacks in the White House should manage the war. Militarily, they are worse than incompetent, because in arrogance they believe they are right. How many books by former Cabinet officers in the Obama administration do we have to read or hear on TV before everyone realizes there is a huge difference between civilian control and civilian-hands-on-management by politicians whose primary purpose is to make the president look good? I thought we had learned our lesson in the Vietnam War when the White House acted as a command center and target selection facility outside the Pentagon. Then, as now, no high-ranking generals or admirals resigned rather than kowtow to politicians with no or very limited military credentials. It would be more honorable if, rather than write books afterward, they openly resisted bad political/military orders and resigned. Their oath is to defend America, not their careers or the political legacy of any president.

Written by the author of “Insights: Transforming America — Is This What We Fought For?” available now as an ebook, in paperback or hardcover on Amazon.com or BN.com. Follow the author on Twitter @factsfictions80. If you think this message is important, please share it.

1 Comment

Filed under Barry Kelly, Intelligence & Politics, ISIS, Kurds, Sunni, Terrorism

Tagged as America, BarackObama, iraq, ISIS, Islam, Middle East, White House

by Barry Kelly | October 8, 2014 · 7:30 am

INSIGHTS 163: TRUST YOUR GOVERNMENT?

This is your government. You own them. You put them in power to take care of the people.

Are you better off economically? Do you even have a job? Are you feeling safer? Do you trust your government?

That last one is a critical question. If you don’t trust it how can you act on what you’re told? Trust has at last two critical elements:

Do you trust what they are doing?
Do you believe what they tell you?

Of course the second question is the key to the first. If you don’t trust the information the government gives you, how can you trust what they are doing?

We were just told that we are better off now then we were six years ago. Maybe so, considering the financial crises of 2008 and its immediate consequences when the housing bubble crashed. But we are certainly not better off than we were eight years ago. In fact, there were as many Americans with jobs in 1978 as there are today. In 1978 our population was around 222 million. In 2013 the population had grown to 317 million, not including uncounted illegal immigrants. That’s a difference of approximately 95 million more Americans today versus in 1978. The government unemployment numbers show none of those 95 million more Americans who want to work and do not have jobs. Granted, some unknown number work in the hidden cash or barter economy.

When the government, including President Obama, point with pride to the new jobs created, remember we just caught up to the job level of 1978. The government tells us the unemployment number is 5.1 percent. That ridiculous number does not include the number of people who have given-up looking for work and dropped out of the workforce. Only those who are drawing unemployment benefits are counted in the unemployment numbers. The real unemployment number is well above 11 percent. For blacks, women, young people just entering the work pool, and recent college graduates, the unemployment number is much higher.

Many of these new jobs are low-paying. Wage levels have not keep pace with inflation nor the Federal Reserve’s constant weakening the dollar by pumping $86 billion a month into the economy for years to keep inflation near zero. Americans on fixed incomes have seen their buying power eroded by ‘Qualitative Easing’ on the part of the Federal Reserve.

The result is that under Obama, the rich and upper middle class who had the resources to invest on Wall Street have done very well. With all of Obama’s preaching about re-distribution of income and decreasing the gap between the haves and have nots, the effect of his policies have increased the gap between the rich and poor.

Do not believe the Obama spin that is put on all information released by the government. His administration has lied about gun running by the Department of Justice; leaving people to die in Benghazi and lying about their complicity; has used the IRS to handicap Republican political organizations; has unlawfully tapped the phones of reporters; has claimed they weren’t adequately briefed about the strength of ISIS; called it workplace violence when an Islamist murdered others; and guaranteed you could keep your doctor and health plan under Obamacare.

You should not be surprised if we don’t trust them. The Obama government is proving that liberty requires eternal vigilance.

1 Comment

Filed under Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Obamacare

Tagged as America, Benghazi, class warfare, ISIS, Obamacare

by Barry Kelly | October 1, 2014 · 7:30 am

INSIGHTS 160: FACTS ON THE GROUND

While the president and his administration are pointing fingers of blame at everyone and everything but themselves, let’s look at some ground truths.

The Obama administration could have had a Status of Forces of Agreement in Iraq to protect our troops from being charged, arrested, and tried in Iraqi courts. All that is required is for us to leave a mobile Army Division augmented by its supporting logistical units, air support, selected combat teams, and Special Forces in a U.S.-controlled base strategically located in Iraq. Prime Minister al-Maliki was in no position to follow his Iranian guidance and refuse. We could have replaced him. Sometimes the development of a new democracy needs a little forceful guidance.

When Obama pulled out all our troops, the training of the Iraqi Army with critical American combat support had reached a point where it could have defended Iraqi territory. Without American boots and eyes on the ground to detect and stop al-Maliki from critically weakening the Iraqi Army by replacing most Sunni and Kurdish officers with Shiite replacements, the Iraqi Army was no longer the force America trained. It had no chance against the ISIS invasion. al-Maliki’s leadership destroyed any faint hopes the Sunnis and Kurds had in sharing Iraq’s resources and having a real say in the governing of the country.

The powerful Sunni tribes that fought with U.S. forces to destroy al-Qaeda in Iraq are not going to fight to defend a corrupt Shiite government in Baghdad. Many of these Sunnis joined ISIS as the better choice for them. Some of the Sunnis trained by American forces may well be fighting with ISIS now. They only thing we can offer them to change sides is the promise of their own Sunni nation with no ties to a Shiite government located somewhere south of Baghdad.

The Kurds and their Peshmerga forces are good fighters. They will fight to the death to defend their people and their land. They will not defend the Shiite regime in Baghdad, no matter the name of the prime minister. For many decades, the Kurds have wanted control of their historical homeland. They have fought the Turks, Iranians, and Iraqis as far back as their oral history. American arms and supplies sent to the Kurds through Baghdad will never reach Kurdistan. Out of this chaos the Kurds are betting they have a good chance of winning their freedom. But they will need our help. Without assurances of a free Kurdistan, they will not fight ISIS forces very far from their own borders.

Iran is the biggest danger in the region. Their intent is to development nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems. We don’t know when it will happen, only that it will. Probably during President Obama’s time in office. The mindset of the current Iranian Islamic autocracy is that when they have nuclear weapons, they will use them.

Here again, the president holds views that have no basis in reality. He even has a secretary of state who shares his view of peace through negotiations even when the other side only demands instead of negotiating. It is a one-sided negotiation. Iran doesn’t want ISIS on its doorstep but will not change its focus on the development of nuclear weapons. Iran does not want to be involved in a punishing ground war with ISIS. The Iraqi Shiites will be protected by Iran and become an Iranian puppet pseudo state.

The Obama administration could have prevented the ISIS crisis if it had been more interested in the reality of foreign affairs rather than using inaction to create a make-believe, no-fault-of-Obama’a world. Inaction led to pulling all our troops out of Iraq and turning victory into defeat. Inaction led to the civil war in Syria from spreading into Iraq. Either the Obama Administration did not know or ignored indications al-Maliki was destroying the fabric of the Iraqi nation by cutting the Sunnis and the Kurds out of their share of oil revenue and a voice in the running of the national government, creating a fertile environment for ISIS forces.

The rate of training 5,000 fighters a year in Saudi Arabia to serve as ground troops is not going to work. It creates the illusion of action but is not going to be effective. NATO countries and Sunni coalition members need to field a force of at least 20,000 combat troops, augmented by as many regional fighters as we can recruit, and declare all of Syria and Iraq as a no-fly zone for military aircraft. With the right approach the Sunni tribes we can cut them out of the ISIS recruitment pool and set up a Sunni government to rival ISIS. To do that, President Obama has to recognize the Baghdad government is over and to stop negotiating unimportant legalistic details with a government that will soon be fleeing south. He also needs to get over his anti-colonial hangups about the alleged misuse of America military power in foreign lands. It is not unusual to hear liberal Americans refer to our efforts in Iraq in the Bush years as the “occupation of Iraq.” This is the epitome of “hate America” thinking. We all deserve a better legacy than that espoused by progressives.

INSIGHTS 159: FLAWED VISION OR ANTI-U.S. AGENDA?

Normally when a president gives a speech to an international audience, the president and his staff carefully craft the message he is to deliver. The Obama White House is no different. They never miss a chance to get their message out. They are very good about keeping all their key members on the message.

What message was the president reading off his teleprompter this past week in front of his international audience? Was it that ISIS is a bad group that needs to be checked and all concerned nations should join him in the fight against ISIS? Sounds right. And he did ask for support.

The second message seemed to be that while these people are bad, they are not radical or extremist Islamists. In fact, he never used the words “radical Islamists.” He said America will never wage a war against Islam, going on to say there is no “them or us.” We have millions of Islamic members in America, he said, as if to say a war against Islam would be a war against our own people.

The president has a hard time with using words to describe terrorism inflicted on others by followers of Islam. Remember he and his attorney general still refer to the murdering of service members at Fort Hood by a self-avowed Islamist shouting “Allah Akbar” while firing into an unarmed group of service men and women as “work place violence.” The president and his attorney general have never used the Islamic label in any situation involving terrorism. (Hope the next attorney general can break this mold.) It is clear all Islamists are not terrorists but nearly all recent terrorism attacks have been done in the name of Islam by the terrorists. What is the problem with recognizing reality?

This president acts as if he doesn’t like America or its historical past. Does he really think the shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, is equal to the beheadings and murders of thousands of people judged to be unbelievers by ISIS? If not, why even raise the issue? The case in Ferguson is still under investigation and until the grand jury makes the evidence public, everyone, including our president and Eric Holder, should be quiet about the issue. It may not be exactly the way they would like it to be.

I suspect the president is so mired in the anti-colonial socialist past of his historical view that he has trouble seeing reality in some cases. Unfortunately, those cases sometimes involve national security. A lot of American blood and treasure have been spent by brave men and women to defend us from radical jihadists. How can we win the struggle against radical Islam if our leaders cannot even recognize the issue and call it by name? Your call: flawed vision or an anti-U.S. agenda?