Which is to say, Democrats are nervous over even the appearance of an Obama war push that will prove to have been a manifestly fraudulent veneer erected solely for propaganda purposes. Which is to say, they don't think he can pull it off, and are pissing themselves over what he may blunder us into:
In a nation weary of war....
[BLEEP BLEEP] IT, STOP THE [BLEEP]ING TAPE! If there is ANY phrase I am sick to death of hearing because of its roaring idiocy and insatiable insult to my intelligence, it's that America is "weary of war". Weary of war? Has any "war" come to our shores, our cities and towns, since 9/11/01? No, it has not, thanks entirely to President George W. Bush. Has this country experienced economic privations brought on by war? Inflation, rationing, price controls, government command of private industry? Sure, either existent or on their way, but they're domestic policies for which "We, The People" voted, not imposed by any national security emergency. Has this country suffered hundreds of thousands or millions of military casualties? No, it has not. A few thousand deaths, a few tens of thousands wounded over a combined period of thirteen years. A trauma and tragedy for the families impacted, to be sure, but rising to the level of a national calamity of which to be collectively "weary"? Get serious. We suffered almost sixty thousand combat deaths in Vietnam over a comparable period. A similar number of Americans die from cancer each year. 43,000 Americans died on the nation's highways in 2013. A few thousand combat deaths over more than a dozen years? For a (now former) superpower engaged globally in an existential asymmetrical struggle against an implacable alien culture irredeemably bent on our destruction and conquest, that's a drop in the bucket.
And it would be recognized as such, but for one thing: the puerile decadence bred by the prosperity we've forfeited and the suicidal attraction toward tyranny it has caused a majority of Americans to ignorantly embrace and defend to this day. This is the politically toxic context in which the bargain of only a few thousand combat deaths and few tens of thousands of wounded over a dozen years in exchange for a safe and secure homeland has been cast. And the past six years have been living off the fumes of the seven years of heroic actions that preceded them. Which means that if "the nation" thinks it's "weary of war" now, they will soon learn what infantile, self-absorbed pomposity that mindset truly is.
Resume tape:
....yet alarmed by the prospect of an emerging threat, President Barack Obama's plan to strike Islamic State militants is ruffling the usual left-right politics in several races that will decide control of the Senate.
Republicans who have hammered the president on a variety of issues for months have tamped down their rhetoric and, frequently, are avoiding taking a clear stand on his proposal.
Because Republicans, for some inexplicable reason, still subscribe to that quaintly anachronistic notion of politics "stopping at the water's edge". They should, instead, be hammering him with the utter absence of any specifics offered for his so-called "strategy," and using that to accuse him both of not having one, as he admitted just a fortnight ago, and question whether he opposes the Islamic State at all.
They will never do any of that, but the "should" pile was looking a bit lonely, so I thought I'd throw it a few bones.
Some of the nation's most endangered incumbent Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have expressed skepticism to portions of Obama's plan, saying they fear a new plunge into a new Middle East war where supposed allies can become enemies.
Don't worry, my Democrat "friends," the Obama Doctrine has seen to it that we no longer have a single true ally on the face of this planet, much less above or beneath it. The only players that aren't actively inimical and hostile to us are eight random NATO members, Australia, and maybe the Kurds, and none of them trust us. And even if they did, they're all even more militarily impotent than we are.
This notion that we have to build "alliances" is also profoundly tiresome. It's all symbolism and show and propaganda nonsense, not military necessity. You know who fought Red China and North Korea on the Korean Peninsula from 1950 to 1953? Not "the United Nations", but the United States. You know who fought Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1990-91? Not any damned "coalition," but the United States. Afghanistan? Same thing. Operation Iraqi Freedom? Same thing. We've had allies - past tense - but we've never needed them. And I would very much like to believe that we don't need allies now to wipe out the Islamic State, because if that's not the case, then we're screwed, because there's nobody else that can bail our asses out of the peril into which 62 million perfidious idiots have twice voted us.
And if it is, it still won't matter, and for the same reason.
Others want to talk about something else, or are trying to avoid talking about the issue at all.
You mean like ObamaCare? Notices of next year's massive premium hikes and benefit reductions of which go out to "customers" next month, by the way. No wonder Dems are so disappointed that O delayed his illegal, unconstitutional amnesty decree until after the election. They haven't had anything to talk about that isn't politically lethal to them for almost a full year.
Which makes General Michael Hayden's comparison of The One's anti-ISIS hand-waving to casual sex even more merrily insightful:
Retired Air Force General Michael Hayden on Friday elaborated on his "casual sex" analogy in describing President Barack Obama's sole reliance on using airstrikes to combat the Islamic State (ISIS) — saying it referred to America's commitment to destroying the terrorist group after it beheaded two American journalists.
"Our allies and our enemies view that as our limiting our commitment to this enterprise," Hayden, who later directed both the CIA and the National Security Agency, told CNN's Jake Tapper regarding the airstrikes. "They're reporting today limited enthusiasm on the part of our allies to take up the role we said we would refuse to do.
"And people read the lack of commitment," Hayden said. "People don't question American power. What people need to be convinced of is American will."
In criticizing Obama's ISIS speech from the White House on Wednesday, Hayden told reporters in a conference call organized by the Atlantic Council: "The reliance on air power has all of the attraction of casual sex: It seems to offer gratification but with very little commitment. We need to be wary of a strategy that puts emphasis on air power and air power alone." [emphasis added]
Because in the 111 years that mankind has had the power of flight, no war has ever been won by air power alone. No matter how powerful air capabilities become, you still need ground forces to take and hold territory. Period. And by eschewing deployment of U.S. ground forces, Barack Obama, even if he was sincere about everything else he said in that Wednesday speech - which he wasn't - has pre-emptively guaranteed that ISIS cannot be destroyed, defeated, or even "degraded."
On what possible grounds, consequently, could any "people" ever be convinced that America has the will even to survive?
Exit thought: If we do hit ISIS hard enough in Syria to actual do them serious damage, just wait for their sleeper cells to be activated over here. Democrats might not be saying it publicly, but if I were one of them, that's what would have me quaking in my boots.
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