Republican doves?

Republicans as anti-war candidates challenges belief.

The hawkish consensus on national security that has dominated Republican foreign policy for the last decade is giving way to a more nuanced view, with some presidential candidates expressing a desire to withdraw from Afghanistan as quickly as possible and suggesting that the United States has overreached in Libya. The shift, while incremental so far, appears to mark a separation from a post-Sept. 11 posture in which Republicans were largely united in supporting an aggressive use of American power around the world. A new debate over the costs and benefits of deploying the military reflects the length of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the difficulty of building functional governments and the financial burden at home in a time of extreme fiscal pressure.


The evolution also highlights a renewed streak of isolationism among Republicans, which has been influenced by the rise of the Tea Party movement and a growing sense that the United States can no longer afford to intervene in clashes everywhere.

Not that the Democrats are exempt, but the Republican party has a great tradition of isolationism. Robert Taft a favorite of conservatives in his day was noted for an isolationism so deep-set that he opposed aid to Britain during World War II, and the creation of NATO after the war’s conclusion.” (Justice for all : Earl Warren and the nation he made : Newton, James S., p. 241

The heart and the fist

Greitens, Eric . (2011). The heart and the fist: the education of a humanitarian, the making of a Navy SEAL. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

This book is mentioned in an article that appears today in the Journal.


The men who conducted the assault on bin Laden's compound are part of a proud tradition of service that traces its roots back to the Underwater Demolition Teams that cleared the beaches at Normandy. The SEAL teams themselves were born on Jan. 1, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy commissioned a new force of elite commandos that could operate from the sea, air and land (hence the acronym, SEALs). Though SEALs remain the nation's elite maritime special operations force, part of what Kennedy wanted and needed from them—and what the nation still asks of SEALs—is that they be a flexible force, capable of operating in any environment.

Targets vary, but the objective of the planning is always the same: accomplish the mission and bring everyone home alive.


Over time, our picture of the al Qaeda network grew more complete. More and more terrorists were revealed, and the targets became so numerous that other forces had to be recruited to take them down. I had once imagined—probably based on watching bad movies about cops battling the mafia—that somewhere we would find a hierarchical chart of al Qaeda with bin Laden sitting at the top and pictures of men like this sniper near the bottom of a pyramid. In fact, no such clear picture existed, and every piece of new information seemed to offer a different way of interpreting what we thought we knew. 

Declare victory, and leave

LBJ and Nixon shoulda done this: Obama Cites Afghan Gains as Report Says Exit Is on Track. It's over; go.

Post-Holbrooke Question: ‘What Now?’

When President Obama turned to Richard C. Holbrooke during a White House meeting on Afghanistan last year, Mr. Holbrooke spoke gravely of the historic challenge the two men faced, likening it to when Clark M. Clifford advised Lyndon B. Johnson about what to do in Vietnam. “Richard,” an impatient Mr. Obama interrupted him, “do people really talk like that?” That strained exchange helps explain why Mr. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was an awkward fit in the Obama administration. A man of high drama and an acute sense of his own role, he ruffled feathers in a White House that prides itself on team-playing and a lack of drama.

That lack of acceptance of a dissenting voice can be the basis of failure. President Obama has made an impressive showing with his tax policy compromise with Republicans, but Afghanistan is his crucible.

Intelligence Reports Offer Dim View of Afghan War

With Mr. Holbrooke’s death on Monday, the administration has lost one of its most resonant voices, just as it completes its latest review of its Afghan war strategy. His death confronts the White House and State Department with some difficult questions, starting with how to replace a larger-than-life statesman in a post that was created for him and which he built from scratch.


For all the encomiums, though, Mr. Holbrooke was on tenuous footing with the White House. He was left off Air Force One on Mr. Obama’s last two trips to Afghanistan and was increasingly marginalized in policy debates. He held on to his job, several officials said, mainly because Mrs. Clinton protected him.

In the game of political hardball, he had his supporters and detractors. Only Secretary CLinton could protect him from the President's impatience, surely.

Civilian Replaces General as Nat'l Security Adviser

General Jones’s exit had been expected at the end of the year, but it came earlier, administration officials said, after the White House became annoyed by the appearance of quotations attributed to General Jones in Bob Woodward’s book “Obama’s Wars.” [973.932 W]

 General Jones brought military experience to the White House team, but the president never let him into his inner circle, said David Rothkopf, the author of Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power. “Aloof himself, he served an aloof president, so there was zero chemistry or connection,” Mr. Rothkopf added.[355.033 R]

Democrats Split as House Backs War Funds

The House of Representatives agreed on Tuesday to provide $37 billion to continue financing America’s two wars, but the vote showed deepening divisions and anxiety among Democrats over the course of the nearly nine-year-old conflict in Afghanistan. The 308-to-114 vote, with strong Republican support, came after the leak of an archive of classified battlefield reports from Afghanistan that fueled new debate over the course of the war and whether President Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy could work.

The Courage to Leave, by Bob Herbert

There is no good news coming out of the depressing and endless war in Afghanistan. There once was merit to our incursion there, but that was long ago. Now we’re just going through the tragic motions, flailing at this and that, with no real strategy or decent end in sight.

The U.S. doesn’t win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we’ve been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military.


What’s happening in Afghanistan is not only tragic, it’s embarrassing. The American troops will fight, but the Afghan troops who are supposed to be their allies are a lost cause. The government of President Hamid Karzai is breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent — and widely unpopular to boot. And now, as The Times’s Dexter Filkins is reporting, the erratic Mr. Karzai seems to be giving up hope that the U.S. can prevail in the war and is making nice with the Taliban.


There is no overall game plan, no real strategy or coherent goals, to guide the fighting of U.S. forces. It’s just a mind-numbing, soul-chilling, body-destroying slog, month after month, year after pointless year.The truth is that top American officials do not believe the war can be won but do not know how to end it. So we get gibberish about empowering the unempowerable Afghan forces and rebuilding a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent civil society.


Ultimately, the public is at fault for this catastrophe in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 G.I.’s have now lost their lives. If we don’t have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war, if we’re unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable for the way it is conducted, if we’re not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it.

Depends on your point of view

President Obama was interviewed by Bret Baier of Fox News; that is, he consented to be interviewed by the Fox guy. These days my sympathy for, and support of, the President flags, but these Fox people are quite a breed.

I saw some of the interview on Countdown (with Laurence O'Donneell; I can not abide Olbermann these days). Granted, MSNBC is biased on the liberal side, so the excerpts played dovetailed with their point of view. Nonetheless, in one exchange Baier kept interrupting the President and reading him excerpts from letters received by Fox complaining about the Democrats and the President. In turn, the President said that he receives hundreds and thousands of letters completely counter to the letters Baier quoted. So, it depends on your perspective.

Fox has its own way of looking at things. Here is one article appearing today: Obama's Presidency Is On the Line -- And It Shows by Andrea Tantaros - FOXNews.com. Bret Baier's questions for President Obama revealed the uncertainty of our leader and the direction of our country.

Say what? It is an opinion piece, but, where is this person coming from? The extreme right wing, surely.

El Universal, Mexico City, has this story on its website: EU debe ayudar más a México: WP
El periódico estadounidense The Washington Post asegura en su editorial de este jueves que la estabilidad del país es tan importante como la de Irak, Afganistán o Pakistán.

That editorial is  Is the U.S. doing enough to help dying Juarez?

THE BRUTAL slaying of three people connected to the U.S. consulate in Juarez, Mexico, last weekend has called attention to a crisis that is getting too little attention and resources in Washington: Mexico's desperate battle against drug traffickers. For Juarez, and for the democratic government of Felipe Calderón, this has become a fight for survival -- a war as bloody and as important as those being fought in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan. But though Mexican stability is a vital interest of the United States, the federal government's investment in the problem is far below what it should be, on both sides of the border.