Eid-Ul-Adha

None of us speak eloquently - or with heart - about that which frightens us. Barack Obama is in a fix. On one hand, he needs to satisfy those who brought him to the wedding; while on the other, he needs to satisfy the bride. We, the American people, are Barack Obama's bride. If she should begin to suspect that he's playing around, she might grab his golf clubs and beat the crap out of his SUV. If those who brought him should leave him stranded... Well, you know the rest. (By the way, I think it’s a disgrace the way the media is hounding Woods. For once, it doesn't seem to be political.)

By the way, last week I saw something I have never seen in these parts before. My son and I usually take a walk uptown after dinner. We live in a bedroom community twenty miles from New York City along the commuter rail line. The commercial district consists of banks, upscale stores and eateries. We noted a man walking a dog, which is not unusual in itself, except this dog seemed mighty strange. It looked and walked funny. As we got closer, we noticed it wasn't a dog; it was a goat. (I've never seen anyone walking a goat, even in India.)

I'd been led to understand that it was illegal to keep farm animals inside our city limits. But, then, things do change. When I got home I checked the net and found that we were only a couple of days away from Eid-Ul-Adha, the Muslim 'Festival of Sacrifice' marking the day after Arafat.

Infinite Buzz Saws

The first thing to note is that this was a political CYA (cover your ass) speech. Any war continues to be deeply unpopular with Obama's base. Hence, he needed to make the point that an escalation of the war effort in Afghanistan must be seen as an exit strategy. It's actually a tactical mistake (and I am not the first to say this) to tell the enemy when we’ll be leaving. That's much is obvious. The WH spin will be that it will force Karzai's hand into cooperating more fully with us. This should have been discussed with Karzai privately.

Now, all this is sure to signal the Taliban that they have already won; that our sole concern is that they hold off their murderous celebrations till after we've had our next presidential elections. It also ensures that, from now on, no one in Afghanistan will cooperate with us, knowing full well that after we're gone, they will be murdered if they’ve had anything to do with us.

Back in Pol Pot's day (in Cambodia), all those found wearing glasses and all those found with books in their houses were summarily shot. In our inner cities, all those with good school grades are bullied and ostracized by their peers. In the Palestinian Territories, everyone knows that anyone harboring ideas of peace with Israel and being vocal about it or having in any way participated in any U.S. or Israeli attempt to bring peace to the region will result in their families being threatened with extreme violence. In our Universities, anyone not viewing the world through a leftist prism automatically fails. The same principle applies to Afghanistan: all those who are found as having had anything at all to do with U.S. sponsored 'nation building' are guaranteed to meet their end.

Pervez Musharraf, former Pakistan strongman, actually wrote a good editorial in this morning’s WSJ. He said that for a nation to change, it must do so from within. This notion opened my eyes to some extent. Too often, we equate strategic advantage on the battlefield – winning, if you wish – with ancillary matters such as human or women’s rights. We abhor Sharia law; we abhor their proclivity to slaughter animals in the most brutal ways. We swoon at their beheading and disemboweling their enemies. Often we tend to define victory also in terms of their changing their ways to conform to our own sensibilities. Yet this is the precisely the part that they can’t stomach about us. It is why they will fight to the death against us.

The last war we fought for all the right reasons was for Kuwait. One country had invaded another in a blatant display of aggression. We drove the aggressor back and left the aggrieved parties to clean up the mess, each in its own way. Since then, we’ve become involved in nation-building and we’ve failed miserably on all counts. Unless we accept the concept that Paul Harvey repeated so often and so eloquently, that "it is not one world”, we will run into infinite buzz saws of never ending trouble. …the very same trouble, by the way, that Obama and his ilk are likely to face in trying to re-make America into something it is not.

Change (you can believe in)

Barrack Hussein Obama went into the 'enemy camp' last night and laid down the law. He basically said that he will be sending 30,000 of our finest into that hellhole, also known as Afghanistan - to do what? Unknown. And then, almost immediately, he’ll pull them out again. You can just imagine what happens next.

Then, after everything falls apart over there, after he’s been safely elected to the second of his interminable terms, he'll declare victory – not over the Taliban or Al Qaeda, but - over the American military, that last remaining rancid remnant of the previous Bush administrations, that will now find itself utterly disgraced and humiliated, proving the point that any demonstration of military might will never again work in Obama’s vision of the new world order that is happily promoted by leftists, progressives, warmers, vegetarians, eco-anarchists, lap-dancers, etc. the world over.

It’s the same predictable MO that was used to bring down our economy, health care, the automobile industry, etc. Break it, and sweep it out with the refuse. Thank you Mister President for giving us yet another piece of the puzzle to the enigma you have labeled so artfully “change” (you can believe in).