the sound of silence…

I’m glad others are noticing the same thing I do:

Obama is following George W. Bush in making war, not love. Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan. Bush dropped bombs on those places, and all we heard about was gut-wrenching wailing and screaming from the Left for eight years because of all the innocent people who died. Now O is doing the same thing … and all we hear are the sounds of silence.

via American Thinker Blog: Liberals and O’s Afghanistan policy.

Insincere Criticisms?

This may be the best article written on the Obama administration to date.  Turns out that all those criticisms Obama leveled against Bush… were a bunch of bunk compared with the way Obama runs the country.

Victor Davis Hanson on NRO:

There were many legitimate critiques of the Iraq war. But insisting, as Barack Obama did, that we invaded recklessly and in haste was not one of them. From the fall of the Taliban in December 2001 to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration deliberately and in public fashion sought debate in the Congress for over a year, received bipartisan authorization, and tried for months to win sanction from the United Nations.

In contrast, Barack Obama immediately upon entering office demanded the largest government expansion in the history of the nation. The staggering debt program will require nearly a trillion dollars in borrowing to fund all sorts of entitlements and redistributive efforts, and in revolutionary fashion redefine the role of government itself. Obama pronounced the current economic crisis the moral equivalent of war, and he wanted a national mobilization to meet it — pronto.

But unlike the Bush administration, which took 15 months to prepare the country for a real war in Iraq, the Obama administration gave the public only a few hours to read the final draft of the legislation before it was made into law. Where the polarizing partisan George Bush managed to obtain the vote of majorities in both parties to remove Saddam Hussein, the healing bipartisan Barack Obama lacked the support of even a single Republican in the House and won over a mere three Republicans in the Senate.

Liberals who once screamed that congressional opponents of the Iraq war were being unfairly tagged as unpatriotic by the Bush administration now yelled louder that the opponents of the Obama debt program were, in fact, unpatriotic.

Bush was pilloried for supposedly hyping al-Qaeda in order to create a security state. Obama trumped that by proclaiming that the present recession is a catastrophe, a disaster, a Great Depression. He ceased his scare-mongering only when he had exhausted the vocabulary of doom. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” bragged Rahm Emanuel, reminding us that the envisioned Obama socialism could take root only if a climate of fear was created.

via The Audacity of Irony by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online.

The Truth About Russia in Georgia

I finally got around to reading one of the most most illuminating reports of the Russian-Georgian conflict… and I hope you will take the time to read the piece in its entirety. There should be no doubts about Russia’s complicity in starting this war… and the need to aid the Georgians… a people very much like most of us from the cureltys done to them by (essentially) Russian mercinaries.

While you are at it, why not consider donating to Michael… who would not be risking his life but for your support.

Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn’t start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war…

“The next provocation: On April 16 Putin signs a presidential decree recognizing the documents of Abkhazians and South Ossetians in Russia and vice versa. This effectively integrates these two territories into Russia’s legal space. The Georgians were furious. So you have all these provocations mounting and mounting and mounting. Meanwhile, as of July, various air corps start moving from the rest of Russia to get closer to the Caucasus. These are obscure details, but they are available…

On the 6th of August the shelling intensifies from Ossetian positions. And for the first time since the war finished in 1992, they are using 120mm guns.”

“Can I stop you for a second?” I said. I was still under the impression that the war began on August 7 and that Georgian President Saakashvili started it when he sent troops into South Ossetia’s capital Tskhinvali. What was all this about the Ossetian violence on August 6 and before?

He raised his hand as if to say stop.

“That was the formal start of the war,” he said….

“On the evening of the 7th, the Ossetians launch an all-out barrage focused on Georgian villages, not on Georgian positions. Remember, these Georgian villages inside South Ossetia – the Georgians have mostly evacuated those villages, and three of them are completely pulverized. That evening, the 7th, the president gets information that a large Russian column is on the move. Later that evening, somebody sees those vehicles emerging from the Roki tunnel [into Georgia from Russia]. Then a little bit later, somebody else sees them. That’s three confirmations. It was time to act….

Continue reading

Suckers…

Democrats Then:

  • efforts to stabilize the country had been a “complete failure” - Senator Barak Obama
  • the surge “is a failure,” - Senator Nancy Pelosi
  • the troop buildup “is a failure” – Senator Biden
  • the surge was an “absolute failure” – Ron Paul (ya, I know he isn’t a democrat but he was still wrong)

Democrats NOW:

  • More American troops have brought more peace to more parts of Iraq. I think that’s a fact. – Dick Durbin
  • The military aspects of President Bush’s new strategy in Iraq … appear to have produced some credible and positive results. – Carl Levin
  • We’ve begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar Province, it’s working. – Hillay Clinton

I don’t need to add any commentary to this… I am vindicated.

Oh, and this in the New York TImes: