And the Ineptitude Continues Apace . . .

Doyle McManus, in his op-ed column in today's Los Angeles Times, discusses how the $500 million that Obama requested (and received) from Congress a year ago to train 15,000 opposition fighters in Syria has resulted in only 60 trained fighters to date. 

"Sixty?" he asks, incredulous. "UCLA has more men on its football roster." 

McManus says that skeptics figure this amounts to about $9 million per fighter. "Not an impressive number," Defense Secretary Ashton Carter apparently conceded during his report to Congress on the training program's progress. 

Writes McManus: "[T]he story of the Pentagon's amazing shrunken training program — an idea that almost looked bold when Obama first proposed it — could serve as a metaphor for the whole of U.S. strategy in Syria: ambitious in its goals, but so risk-averse in design and so hamstrung in execution that it remains painfully ineffective" (italics my own). Yes, italics are often necessary when discussing this administration's gross incompetence. 

McManus's column is linked at the end of this post, if you like. Meanwhile, there's this: 

At least 4,000 Assyrian Christian families are believed to be among the 120,000 people who in recent days have fled the Syrian city of Hassakeh. ISIS forces are entering the city and looking to carry out a mass ethno-religious slaughter, humanitarian groups said, warning that the world still has not provided an adequate response" (italics mine).

 . . . Meanwhile over 200 Assyrian Christians remain captured by terror group ISIS, taken from a raid on Assyrian villages back in February. Though the Khabur river villages have since been liberated, the jihadists are believed to be asking close to $23,000,000 for the release of all 227 captive Assyrians, an amount which is impossible for families to pay.

Ethnic cleansing continues, the world's greatest superpower is flaccid and impotent, and this administration's ineptitude (or is it disinterest?) continues apace.

**** 
For Further Reading

"In Syria, $36 Million to Train 60 Opposition Fighters?" (Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, Sunday, July 12, 2015)

"ISIS Commits Mass Ethno-Religious Slaughter of Assyrian Christians as the World Ignores Genocide, Humanitarian Groups Say," (Stoyan Zaimov, Christian Post, July 2, 2015)

Somebody Please Tell Obama the Shadow Has Returned?

"The shadow of crisis has passed. 

The state of the union is strong." 

(Barack Obama, State of the Union address, January 21, 2015).

"We're not at a time of war" 

(Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking at the National Press Club, February 17, 2015)

The shadow of crisis has passed? We're not at war? 

Tell that to the parents of James Foley and Kayla Mueller and Steven Sotloff. 

Tell that to the families of the twenty-one Coptic Christians beheaded simultaneously on a beach in Libya. 

Tell that to the 45 souls who were burned to death in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi today. 

Tell that to Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, who says Iran is busy "speeding up" its nuclear program.

Tell that to the countless men, women, and teenagers, and children of Nigeria, Libya, Iraq, who have been kidnapped, sold into slavery, flogged, beheaded, beaten, crucified, etc. at the hands of Boko Haram. 

Tell that to Islamic State which is currently on a religious crusade for worldwide dominion (see article in this month's Atlantic, below). 

Tell it to Barack Obama, who to this day refuses to acknowledge that these savages are on a mission dictated by yes, Mr. Obama, by their religion (Islam). While you're at it, tell him that the state of the union is not strong, that the shadow of crisis is back. 

If you can find him, that is. Look for him on the links, or at a photo op, maybe a fund-raiser, or writing an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times. 

Actually, I take that back. Today he's heading up a "symposium" on radical extremism, a symposium complete with break-out sessions and planning groups. 

Meanwhile, Islamic State continues its scorched-earth campaign of murder and terror, all in the name of their god.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the article in The Atlantic, by Graeme Wood (it's pretty long!): 

What is the Islamic State? 

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

The group seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. captivity at Camp Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Then, on July 5 of last year, he stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations—upgrading his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. The inflow of jihadists that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing.

(Read the rest at What ISIS Really Wants here). 

Pity the Left and Its Offspring

2014 may well be remembered (by those who recall beyond the 24-hour news cycle) as The Year The Left Showed its True Colors. Of course, people who study the Left are not surprised. Leftism is a religion, and its devotees, fanatical. Unlike devotees of true religion, however, Leftists are not content to simply believe their creeds and coexist peacefully with those who differ. Leftists, at their core, are at war with those who differ from them. 

I looked up the word jihad, and the definition seems apropos. In the context of Islam, it means "a holy war waged on behalf of Islam as a religious duty." But the broader meaning, "a crusade for a principle of belief," sums up what the Left is engaged in. 

A few recent examples:

• Calling those who believe the jury's still out regarding man-caused climate change deniers (word association: Holocaust deniers).  

• Calling those who adhere to the the time-honored, Judeo-Christian, Biblical definition of one man/one woman marriage bigots and pressure them to resign unless they recant (you heard that correctly, recant). 

• Denying someone an honorary doctorate and refusing to let her speak at college commencement because she has the temerity to tell the truth about radical Islam. 

This is the strategy of the Left. Don't merely disagree with those who hold different views or challenge them to a debate. No, you must shun them. Debate is not an option since to debate is to concede that maybe a middle ground exists.

And so the Left traipses merrily along. 

I pity its followers, in a way, especially the young people, so proud of their progressive views, blissfully ignorant of what they're missing out on when, for instance, in the case I mentioned above, Brandeis decreed that they should not be exposed to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's views. The students, knowingly or not, are the poorer for the exclusion. 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: What I Would Have Said at Brandeis

* Note: updated for clarity July 2018

Obama, the Great (Prevaricator)

I think it's safe to say that he's got chutzpah (which, come to think of it, means audacity). But is it also safe to say we've been snookered? 

So by now we all know he's a liar. But what we didn't know was the depth of his antipathy towards Americans. He really thinks he can stand there and say, no, what I really meant was . . . 

In case you Obama supporters still think he's some sort of a knight in shining armor, here's a montage of his promises, followed by yesterday's incredible charade. 

Note that the assurances ("if you like your health care plan, you can keep it") began as early as 2008 and were repeated again and again as recently as this year, even though the administration already had been warned two years ago that people would, in fact, lose their insurance policies.


 
It's clear he was lying. Yet instead of owning up to it, he has the nerve, the audacity, to stand in front of the cameras and say, basically, Hey you schmucks, here's what I really said:



"What we said was..." 

Oh really?

This is incredible on so many levels, not the least of which is the fact that the people who voted for him (this includes nearly everyone in my extended family) probably don't have a problem with this. 

We are schmucks*, we've been swindled but good, and if Obama fans haven't figured it out yet, eventually they will. Just today, in fact, Kathleen Sebelieus admitted to Congress that

"employer based insurance plans will also be cancelled as a result of grandfathering caveats and government requirements making plans illegal under Obamacare" (read entire article here).

So yes, it's safe to say, we've been screwed.

*Note: "schmuck" is Yiddish for "penis." I didn't know that, but in this case, I guess the metaphor works. He's the Grand Poobah of Schmucks, and he's screwed us all.