You don’t think liberals are watching our backs? You’re wrong, and I’ll prove it. Consider the swift and decisive action officials took last week in Staten Island, New York, in the apprehension of Patrick Timonthy. On Friday, Timonthy showed up a P.S. 52, a local elementary school, brandishing an automatic assault rifle. There is no telling what might have transpired had it not been for the quick reflexes and courage of principal Evelyn Matroianni, who at great personal sacrifice, forced Timonthy to the ground in the school cafeteria and wrested the weapon away from him.

After which she frog-marched Timonthy, by this point in tears, to her office, where she promptly phoned his mother.

Oh, did I omit the fact that Patrick Timonthy is a fourth-grade student in the school? Or that the rifle in question is two inches long and manufactured by the makers of LEGOs?

If so, I probably also neglected to mention that the New York City Board of Education enforces a strict zero-tolerance policy toward bringing weapons onto the school grounds. Now there is something in that by-law about a school employee’s use of personal discretion in sizing up a “situation” and about the disciplinary measures that follow a breach.

Now some may feel that Principal Matroianni overreacted to the threat potential of a two-inch long weapon. Others may feel that a suspension of Patrick Timonthy — which hasn’t been ruled out yet! — is perhaps extreme.

I say, “Do the crime, do the time.” I don’t care if the perp is 9 or 90. (Actually, those ages have much in common when it comes to comparative threat potential.) I say throw the book at him.

My only caveat is to be sure to read Timonthy his Miranda rights. That’s what the Justice Department under Eric Holder does when a threat to homeland security arises. And look how safe we are with that bunch watching our backs!

Presumably, the comment was supposed to make Americans feel all warm and cuddly inside, knowing that their leader is a man of principles—someone who is willing to take his medicine when the system goes down on his watch. That view might not ring quite so hollow if Obama hadn’t spent every day of his administration previous to this one whining about the “mess he inherited” and blaming FOX News Channel or certain pollsters for his falling approval ratings.

But whether Obama’s self-recrimination is credible is really beside the point. The more important issue about the sentiment is what does he mean by it? In the same speech, Obama allowed as how “America’s first line of defense is timely, accurate intelligence that is shared, integrated, analyzed, and acted upon quickly and effectively.” But taking quick and decisive action in the face of accurate intelligence is precisely the opposite of he ordered done when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was seized by authorities. Rather than grill the Nigerian for information on who had trained him, where he had acquired the explosive materials used in the would-be attack, and whether, where, and when other attacks were imminent, Obama’s security team read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights and allowed him to lawyer up.

Obama also gave assurances in his speech—or at least the impression thereof—that he understood the enemy we as a nation are up against. He described al Qaeda as “a far-reaching network of violence and hatred … that offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death … while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress.” As Charles Krauthammer has noted, this views is disingenuous for many reasons. Chief among these is that al Qaeda is not out for justice or progress. On the contrary, they deplore both, which is what they despise the West. When Osama bin Laden or other Islamofascist leaders speak, they wax nostalgic about a worldwide caliphate; they pine for the glory that was Andalusia, the Latinized version of the name Al-Andalus that Muslims gave Spain in the Middle Ages, when the entire Iberian peninsula was under Islamic control.

A second problem with Obama’s statement is his identity of al Qaeda as the enemy. Indeed al Qaeda is an enemy and perhaps a prominent one. But they are not alone in the desire to bring death and destruction to the West. There are countless other sects and splinter groups dedicated to the same fanatic ideology, which is religious in nature. In short, we are at war with worldwide jihadism. Obama’s continuing to go out of his way to excuse Islam, as he did again in this speech, is to dismiss the problem, which is squarely grounded in Islamic doctrine.

Ultimately, this speech, like virtually every other one Obama has given, reveals a man who is more interested in appearances than he is in substance. The problem we as a nation face going forward with Barack Obama as our leader is that when you peel away the layers of fluff and bravado, there may be little inside.

Cross-posted at Manhattan Conservative Examiner

The President’s strategic priority here is that Westerners, and especially white Westerners, no longer be in the position of Middle Eastern dynasts, namely, statutory rulers of non-Westerners (Muslims for the most part) dwelling with and among the Jews in this case. Furthermore, the scenario that I’m suggesting is entertained by Obama (and key foreign-policy advisors) has two prongs.  In the first, Iran acquires nuclear weapons and the ability to loft them Jerusalem-wards.  Israel, put on notice by the US, does little or nothing about it.  For reasons that I feel no obligation to flesh out here, such an outcome must before long lead to the extinction of the Zionist enterprise known as the State of Israel.

The second prong, obviously, is that Israel will strike Iran to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weapons over the near term.  All the terrible things that have been forecast should Israel attack Iran very probably will occur.  In that case, the Administration will sever all ties to the country, or will at least attempt to do so, and Israel will be abandoned to its fate.  Needless to say, that outcome will not be the end of Israel but the end of American support for Zionism.

Like all leftists, Barack Obama is a leveler.  He will bow enthusiastically to the Emperor of Japan because he is both non-white and non-Western.  He will bow obsequiously to the King of Saudi Arabia because he is non-Western.  On the other hand, he will merely nod to the Queen of England because she is echt white and Western.  Elizabeth II is the literal embodiment of the historical dominance of non-whites and non-Westerners by white, Western “imperialists.”  The Chinese, naturally enough, must be accorded supreme deference in this hierarchical scheme.  In Copenhagen, for example, Obama wasted no time with the Europeans, whom, I suspect, he despises, but went hat in hand to the President of China for approbation.  George Bush and Bill Clinton’s toleration of the political deformity that is present-day “Communist” China was largely pragmatic.  Obama’s is viscerally ideological.  It is a thoroughly depraved ideology, true, but an ideology nonetheless.

To resume, the Iranians, who are white but fanatically anti-Western, currently have a well-wisher in the Oval Office.  Let them get the bomb, and let the Jews, the white, Western canaries in the geopolitical coal mine, tremble.  What more might an anti-Western bigot, whom the West in a spirit of deracinated anti-bigotry nominated as its spokesman, desire?

Each deadly scenario puts the American military and national command authority in disastrously untenable situations just a few to several years from now, and each would be world-historical (not in a good way):

• collapse in Pakistan involving the U.S. in a nuclearized and Islamicized regional war
• politically and economically de-stabilizing pandemic plague
• a series of nuclear attacks in the American homeland brought off by an effectively unidentifiable (and therefore un-targetable) sponsor
• a 1914-like Middle East outbreak of war, centered on Israel
• Chinese moves on Taiwan forcing a choice between global war and the loss of the Pacific Rim (and more)
• systematic Islamist assault on global resource and supply chains leading to economic catastrophe
• civil war in an abandoned Iraq leading to a re-alignment in the Gulf:  the U.S. on the outside; China, Russia, and Iran on the inside

In short, 7 American catastrophes – and each entailing blows not just to our abstract “interests,” but to the very concrete counterparts of those interests:   our lives and our way of life.

Now consider further that there’s nothing preventing two or more of these or similar scenarios arising concurrently.  Indeed, there’s good reason to suspect that each such crisis may increase the likelihood of others, leading to and in turn being accelerated by the simultaneous exhaustion of American resources, will, and credibility.

If, for instance, the Chinese have an itch for Taiwan, how much more likely are they to make a move when we’re already stretched to our limits with war and nuclear terror well off to the left on the map, and when we’re already devastated by global economic sabotage?  Or if China moves first on Taiwan, wouldn’t that be a perfect time for Islamists to escalate subversion in Iraq and Pakistan, confront Israel, and assault off- and inshore oil facilities and container mega-ships?  And it must be said that there are other potential major and minor threats – some of them more purely economic, some of them merely familiar and therefore addressed if not truly mastered by current military doctrine and deployments – that may also feed or be fed by the slew of cyber-subversions, area denials, global double-crosses, terrorist depredations, and acts of sabotage that pop up repeatedly and all across Krepinevich’s narratives.

We could spin up chain reactions and “mother of storms” scenarios all day:  As Neil Young once sang, “It’s a wonder tall trees ain’t laying down.”

Krepinevich himself might consider such speculation a gross misuse of his work.  He’d like to see a modernized, permanent version of Eisenhower’s Planning Board integrated into the contemporary military and fully resourced.  He’d probably like to see much larger investments in a range of anti-missile, special forces, deep strike, cyberwarfare, and other capacities.  And I think he’d like to see our real world Defense Secretary, who receives a couple of uncomplimentary mentions, get his head on completely straight about what he’s publicly dismissed as “next war-itis.”

In short, Krepinevich advocates prudent investments, not apocalyptic proclamations.  In his forward, he presents a scenario composed in the late 1990s, describing a war and counterinsurgency difficulties in Iran, in order to make a key point:  A useful scenario neither needs nor attempts to foretell the future.  Having addressed the limitations in planning, equipment, and doctrine that eventually come to plague his fictional warriors on the eastern side of the Gulf ca. 2016 would likely have helped a decade earlier when real world warriors were fighting just one country over in either direction.

Well, sure, but the thing is:  His Iran scenario still mostly makes sense – so make that Eight Deadly scenarios.  Or take a step back and you’re facing One Great Big Deadly Scenario made up of major and minor sub-scenarios – and you may be feeling like fictional Defense Secretary Summers, reacting to President Reynolds’ temporizing response to terrorist nukes going off in American cities:

The country is now at war, [Summers] says, against a group of states and nonstate entities that are practicing a form of ambiguous aggression against the United States.  The United States can attempt to sue for some kind of peace, although with whom he hasn’t a clue; or it can accept the fact that it is at war – a war that has already caused more damage to the American homeland in a few weeks than all of World War II – and mobilize its full resources to defeat its enemies.  Summers declares that he has no interest in negotiation; he is interested only in the total cooperation of these rogue states, and their capitulation to American demands for unfettered access, so that they may avoid “their complete and utter destruction.”  It is time for the nation to mobilize its resources to fight the war that has been waged against it ever since radical Islamists seized the first American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran over thirty years ago.

To state the obvious, there are more than a few Americans who not too long ago were already on board with the above – well before the destruction of downtown San Antonio, Chicago, San Diego, and Boston.

As for Krepinevich, if he’s not ready to call for anything remotely resembling full mobilization for global war, it’s less clear whether, in his heart, he believes a complete strategic re-orientation, implying a very different national leadership style than the American political system has been producing, is necessary.  Still, whatever he himself believes, the one factor that ties his scenarios together is that Presidents Reynolds, Simmons, Dickson, Collingwood and so on all tend to resemble President Merkin Muffley (now there was a scenario), flailing with outmoded sanities against realized insanity.

Under a Muffley Administration, it probably wouldn’t matter much whether the Pentagon had three times as many SpecForces operatives to call upon, five times as many anti-missile systems, a 6000-ship blue and green water navy, and a $50 Billion Planning Board budget:  Our committed adversaries – and the larger circles of spoilers, opportunists, and passive supporters – would with good reason fear us too little, and know the world is far too small for us to remain insulated, yet always too big to be fully defended.

The rot is very deep indeed. I take back the title question. It’s patently obvious to the most casual observer not working at The New York Times or MSNBC why he was permitted to continue malpracticing.

Praise Be to Allah

I’ve put Steyn’s whole post below the fold because NRO links don’t appear to be working reliably

Fort Hood Confidential   [Mark Steyn]

Major Hasan put up more red flags than the Politburo, but there’s always room for one more:

Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s military superiors repeatedly ignored or rebuffed his efforts to open criminal prosecutions of soldiers he claimed had confessed to “war crimes” during psychiatric counseling, according to investigative reports circulated among federal law enforcement officials.

On Nov. 4, the day after his last attempt to raise the issue, he took extra target practice at Stan’s shooting range in nearby Florence, Texas and then closed a safe deposit box he had at a Bank of America branch in Killeen, according to the reports… Diane Wagner, Bank of America’s senior vice president of media relations, said that her company does not “comment or discuss customer relationships”.

Which evidently is more than you can say for Dr. Hasan.

Captain Surman told investigators that Hasan had formally contacted military prosecutors to report patients he was evaluating, according to people briefed on the exchange. She said Hasan signed his e-mails with “Praise Be to Allah.” Legal analysts say psychiatrists are strictly bound by the rules of patient confidentiality except in cases where they might become aware of crimes about to be committed.

Imagine you’re back from a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Army assigns you a shrink who tries to convert you to Islam, and looks on his “counseling” sessions as war-crimes interrogations.

The U.S. military appears awfully close to having colluded in Major Hasan’s abuse of his patients. But that’s okay, it’s not like they’re Gitmo detainees or anything . . .

“The world,” Malzahn writes, “has been waiting for clear words from the White House for months. Obama has had government and military analysts studying the military and political situation in the embattled Hindu Kush region since early January.”

Clear words from the White House? Isn’t clarification what the White House specializes in? Isn’t the Bartlett Quotation Obama will be best remembered for “Let me be clear”?

Apparently not. As Malzahn writes several paragraphs later, “So far Obama has only made it clear that he doesn’t intend to withdraw any troops and that he hasn’t decided yet whether to add more soldiers.”

I wouldn’t bet the farm on Obama’s not withdrawing any troops — or all the troops. He is already feeling heat from the left. Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd recently wrote at the Puffington Host that he has become “deeply concerned that . . . the reason for the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan has become lost, consumed in some broader scheme of nation-building which has clouded our purpose and obscured our reasoning.” Translation: Time to pick up our marbles and head home.

Forgive my cynicism, but I believe that for Obama another “clear choice” looms, and it is this choice that will drive his decision regarding Afghanistan. The choice is how best to placate his dwindling base in the likely event ObamaCare is stripped of its public option before the bill arrives on his desk. The only way to mitigate such a grievous loss is by giving them something they want — a complete withdrawal of troops on the ground and a return to the Clintonian strategy of lobbing bombs in the general direction of Osama bin Laden’s likely location.

War of necessity? Let’s see him be perfectly clear about what he meant when he said that.

To be sure, the president has proved a tough read at times. I myself have spent time pondering the motivations for some of his actions. I think I have finally hit on an answer. Barack Obama, age 47 48, is belatedly going through adolescence. His mind obviously is on girls and fast cars, not affairs of state, which are BOR-IINNG!

In the same way your teenager needs to be told twice to take out the garbage, so Barack of the raging hormones needs to be told repeatedly to meet with his general in Afghanistan. Say what one will about George W. Bush’s famous infelicity with the English language, at least he conducted himself like an adult. Faced with a similar situation in the Middle East, Bush spoke with his generals on the ground every week or two. Not Obama — not until the conservative press (which nags, nags, nags) finally goaded him into meeting with his security team in the White House Situation Room yesterday to conduct a meeting by satellite with Gen. Stanley McChrystal. (“You should really visit your grandma. She’s not getting any younger.” “Aww, I don’t wanna. I’ll call her, OK?!”)

Like an adolescent, Obama has plenty of homework right now. He has health care reform, which he chose to make a priority in his young presidency. He has a still-flagging economy to contend with. (He also has a history report due Wednesday.) So what does he do? He hops on a plane (in the back seat of a friend’s car) and heads off to Denmark to make a pitch to the International Olympic Committee on behalf of his buddies in Chicago (heads to the arcade at the mall).

To make matters worse, teen Obama has no conception of — or at least no concern for — what things cost. His trip to Copenhagen, by some estimates, will cost taxpayers $10 million, partly because his “girlfriend” had to be included and went in a separate plane (car).

And finally there’s the matter of “chipping in for gas.” Can you imagine the carbon footprint of a 747 and a 727, each carrying essentially one half of a married couple, for a trip destined to last 15 hours? Can Obama imagine it? Isn’t he concerned that he might be called into Vice Principal Gore’s office tomorrow?

So said Nancy Pelosi on March 8 of 2007. Soon after, both houses of Congress passed a bill for ending the war in Iraq, arguing that it was a distraction from the “real fight.”

The opinion implicit in that resolution — that Iraq was a war of choice and, hence, the “wrong” war, while Afghanistan was a war of necessity, thus the “right” war — was echoed by the three leading Democrat candidates for the presidency at the time, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. Howard Dean, leader of the Democrat Party, argued that “we don’t have enough troops in Afghanistan. That’s where the real war on terror is.”

The mainstream media echoed the theme, ratcheting up both the volume and fervor once Barack Obama became the presidential candidate and made this part of his platform. The din became so loud that it drowned out the most reasoned voices on the right, such as that of Charles Krauthammer, who pointed out that Afghanistan was “a geographically marginal backwater with no resources, no industrial and no technological infrastructure,” as compared with Iraq which was

one of the three principal Arab states, with untold oil wealth, an educated population, an advanced military and technological infrastructure which, though suffering decay in the later Saddam years, could easily be revived if it falls into the right (i.e. wrong) hands. Add to that the fact that its strategic location would give its rulers inordinate influence over the entire Persian Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states.

Krauthammer’s view that an Iraq victory was critical was shared by two individuals with a heavy stake in the outcome of that battle. One of those men said “the most serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War that is raging in Iraq.” The speaker was Osama bin Laden. The other, his chief henchman Ayman al-Zawahiri, said that Iraq “is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era.”

But the Dems knew better. They always know better. So they stuck to their guns (so to speak), which is why after Barack Obama was elected president there was general agreement in Congress with his decision to add 21,000 U.S. troops to the combat forces in Afghanistan. He also spoke at the time, as Leslie Gelb writes in today’s Wall Street Journal, of “Afghanistan’s strategic centrality to prevent Muslim extremism from taking over Pakistan—an even more vital nation because of its nuclear weapons” and promised to “fully resource” the war.

That was eight months ago. Flash forward to today, when the general Obama handpicked to run the operation in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, has called for yet more troops. What is Obama’s response? “There is no immediate decision pending on resources, because one of the things that I’m absolutely clear about is you have to get the strategy right and then make a determination about resources.”

So, General Obama is of a mind that you fight a war for a while and then decide on a strategy? Interesting.

More interesting, though, is that all the strong talk about the “right war” and “war of necessity” that must be “waged and won at all costs” has suddenly vanished along with Congress’s and the left’s appetite for this war or for any war.

When a young child asks for more food than he can possibly eat, a wise parent will tell him that his “eyes are bigger than his stomach” and exercise portion control. A weak parent will give in and ending up wasting perfectly good food (or, worse, eating it himself). The Democrats have already bitten off more than they can chew. What do those of us who understand and understood all along that war is not just a political football tell our elected officials now? What do we American citizens say now about all the lives and treasure that have been expended to date in Afghanistan? Do we simply agree to “cut our losses,” as the Democrats and liberal voices are so crudely urging now? What about the ongoing threat from Islamofascists, which is sure to grow more virulent if we pull up stakes, thereby seeming to betray weakness? Finally, what do we tell the brave men and women currently in harm’s way, who may not get the combat forces they need to see this war through?

The Obama administration has an opportunity to turn its decision — which so far seems tentative and even reluctant — into a unilateral display of U.S. strength and confidence, and thereby seize the high ground on arms reduction while warning one of the world’s most recalcitrant proliferators that the game will soon be over. Hopefully, this is an opportunity the president and his advisers will seize.

“Obama Made the Right Decision on Missile Defense” – Tom Nichols – The Corner on National Review Online.

Events are fast pushing Israel toward a pre-emptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, probably by next spring. That strike could well fail. Or it could succeed at the price of oil at $300 a barrel, a Middle East war, and American servicemen caught in between. So why is the Obama administration doing everything it can to speed the war process along?

Bret Stephens, “Obama Is Pushing Israel Toward War” – WSJ.com.