Having re-read the speech I want to know: can Obama answer these questions?
1. If non-profit independent health care cooperatives are such a good idea, why don't we have them already? Liability? Non-viability? Bueller?
2. When you say anyone can lose their health care, did you forget that you and anyone who's ever been in Congress can't?
3. Are you aware that for all your horror stories about our current system there are worse stories from Canada, Britain etc.?
4. Since only YOU, exalted one, can fix, fraud, waste and abuse ( well no one else has been able to) and wring TRILLIONS of savings from the health care system, what do WE do when you're gone? You are planning on leaving office in the next 4-8 years? Aren't you?
5. If nothing in the plan requires VA patients to change their careplan why did you want to bill their insurers earlier this year?
6. When you compare your new requirement for all Americans to carry health insurance to states requiring drivers to carry auto insurance, do you realize that ONLY those who choose to drive are forced to purchase auto insurance. Are you aware that Americans can opt out of auto insurance by not driving?
7. Where in the constitution is the authority to require Americans to purchase health insurance?
8. Not that I personally care, but has it crossed your mind that this requirement will further stigmatize illegal immigrants by forcing them to commit another crime?
9. Will REQUIRING businesses to cover costs of health care hurt the economy by discouraging enterpeneurs and by forcing even more jobs overseas? If not, why not?
10. What happens when a person purchasing her own insurance loses an income source?Has unexpected expenses? Misses a few payments? Is it a federal offense? Does it make you a criminal? Felony, misdemeanor, violation?
11. Isn't choosing how to spend our own money and deciding where to take risks what the founding fathers meant by "pursuit of happiness?"
12. When you say: "Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75 percent of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90 percent is controlled by just one company." Why then are you opposed to allowing insurers to do business across state lines?
13. "Now, Here's what you need to know. First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future." Starting when? Really? Because wouldn't that be a change from the first 8 months of Obamasatan?
14. "And -- and I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need." How?
15. "And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead." How does your Messiahship plan to reconcile this with the previous statement?
16 When you say "...reforming malpractice laws..." do you mean tort reform? Will Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid seriously entertain that? If they do who will fund the DNC in the next election cycle?
17. Do you think that Ted Kennedy's will leaves more money to purchase health insurance for the poor than it leaves wealth to his children?
18. Is it possible to oppose this reform, without being demonized by the president? Does my conscience count, or am I being unpatriotic?
10 September 2009
06 September 2009
George Will Needs To Know: Afghanistan Matters!
George Will laid down the gauntlet. While a few conservatives have always been reluctant about our efforts in Afghanistan, Will’s September 1, column advocating withdrawal has opened a rift on the American right with conservatives taking sides. George Will says it’s time to quit Afghanistan. As a soldier who was in Afghanistan for most of 2008 I say unequivocally George Will is wrong; Afghanistan matters.
Will has surprising allies including former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. They say we can’t win, though we managed to achieve success in Iraq. They claim that our struggle is against al-Qaeda not the Taliban. This is akin to saying our fight was against the Japanese and giving Hitler a pass. They say Pakistan is more important, but they don’t say how losing our base in Afghanistan will solve that nation’s problems.
The debate is set against the background of an expected decision by President Obama on whether to heed his generals who are calling for an Iraq like Surge, or to find a quicker way out. Obama may have campaigned on the premise of supporting the “right war” in Afghanistan, but liberals, including most of the democratic congress are opposed to any expansion of US forces abroad. The left is now getting help from Will and McCarthy on the right. But the stakes in Afghanistan are high. The Taliban, our enemy, are resurgent there, enabled by NATO’s inability to fight a consistent counter-insurgency campaign, and the porous border with Pakistan.
Pakistan, aye there is the rub. That nation has slowly descended into its own chaos. The area along Pakistan’s Afghan border known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), is a Pashtun-Taliban enclave, inaccessible to any forces friendly to the US and its allies. The Pakistani military, a nuclear armed force of over a million men including reserves, cannot even access, much less control its own border.
The mountainous region, including the FATA, which straddles the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, is at times referred to as Pashtun-istan. The Pashtuns, a 42 million strong ethnic group, are minority populations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have always been the core strength of the Taliban. Not all Pashtuns are Taliban, but most Taliban are Pashtun. Tribal ties, tradition, and ethnic politics lead most Pashtuns to support the Taliban.
Afghanistan continues to be a failed state, Pakistan is failing. We have the opportunity to continue to influence events in the region due to our presence in Afghanistan. Should the US withdraw entirely from Afghanistan certain events are highly likely to unfold. The first would be a Taliban victory in Afghanistan. They might not see the complete victory they achieved in 1996. They would at least end up seizing and dominating several provinces. These provinces would certainly include several, North and East, which dominate the landlocked nation’s rudimentary road net. The Taliban would gain a stranglehold on the Afghan economy.
They would also rule the Pashtun speaking border region. The resulting consequences of this outcome are impossible to predict. However a larger autonomous Taliban dominated zone would surely threaten the weak Pakistani government. The unspoken, nightmare outcome, we all seek to avoid, is the takeover of Pakistan by the Taliban.
Pakistan is a nuclear power. Yet in spite of this modern achievement, it is a failing nation. Assassination and civil violence have dominated recent politics. The populace is fragmented ethnically and politically. The urban elites live western lives with modern hopes. Most others live poor desperate lives. Islam is the single greatest unifying factor! Many Pakistanis of various ethnicities have shown a consistent predilection for anti-American, anti-western, pro-Taliban politics.
Two or possibly three Talibanized nations in place of today’s Afghanistan and Pakistan are in no one’s interest, especially if one of them is nuclear armed. Let us recall further that Afghanistan’s western neighbor is the WMD seeking state of Iran. That nation has infiltrated arms and personnel into the western Farsi speaking provinces of Afghanistan to pressure the US and Afghan governments, and to create its own sphere of influence.
George Will’s imagined scenario of special-forces and airpower serving in place of boots on the ground in Afghanistan surely sounds good to deskbound policy wonks. But they would do well to remember that policy failed us through the Clinton era. At that time Pakistan was under the more stable hand of Musharraf.
If we abandon our foothold in Afghanistan, we abandon our contacts on the ground. In order for predators, cruise missiles, and SF operators to succeed repeatedly against al-Qaeda, or any other enemies, our forces need human intelligence. This is why al-Qaeda and the Taliban high command retreated to and continue to hide in the inaccessible reaches of Pakistan. It’s why al-Qaeda chose the then closed state of Afghanistan as a base in the first place.
Additionally, a premature withdrawal from Afghanistan will surely present a tremendous propaganda victory to the Taliban. This would be a strategic weapon for all of our Islamist enemies in the current struggle. George Will has stepped up his campaign, and now wants to quit Iraq early as well. He mentions the ties that Shiite Iran has established with Shiite Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki as a reason to end our commitment there.
If we were to follow Mr. Will’s prescription, by 2011 we could be facing a hostile band of powers stretching from the India-Pakistan border through Syria, to the Mediterranean. This would be the worst middle-eastern scenario the US ever faced, as bad as the Soviet dominated region envisioned by Carter and Reagan circa 1980. We could face two Islamic, hostile, nuclear powers. Such an outcome would represent the beginning of the end for Israel. It would signify the end of American hegemony, and the start of a truly new world order; one that would be highly unfavorable to our interests.
These are just the consequences for us. Mr. Will would also abandon the Afghans, the Iraqis and others to the Taliban to the likeminded Shia of Iran, and to al-Qaeda. He and his applause section remind us that Islam is incompatible with democracy, that extremism pervades the region, and that generally we have no business there anymore.
While not subscribing to the left’s drivel that poverty and frustration are the root of terrorism, I think that a poorer more Islamic mid-east will be more miserable for the Afghans and Iraqis, and the Pakistanis and Iranians. Having spent time in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I have seen that most people there want peace and prosperity. They want to end the violence and raise their children more comfortably than poverty and war has thus far allowed.
While Islam may indeed lend itself to oppressive rule, so did Christianity, for nearly two millennia of Romans, feudalism, and absolutism. Today, millions of Iraqis and Afghans have shown an appreciation for democracy, and the idea of peaceful, lawful change of governments. Come to think of it, so have the much abused Lebanese. In Iran, millions voted, and when the mullahs executed a massive electoral fraud millions protested. In India millions of Muslims regularly live peaceful lives in a democracy.
It is true that democratizing the Islamic world is not, and should not be the primary prescriptive mission of the US military. However to cede the entire middle-east to the forces of extremism, to abandon our allies, to surrender our security, and make the world a much more dangerous place seems folly. And to do it so that we can say we are not nation building, so that our military is doing what a few purists claim is “its job” is beyond foolishness. My job as a soldier is to preserve the security of my nation by whatever means necessary. Right now I can’t think of a better way we can do that than holding the line against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Will has surprising allies including former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. They say we can’t win, though we managed to achieve success in Iraq. They claim that our struggle is against al-Qaeda not the Taliban. This is akin to saying our fight was against the Japanese and giving Hitler a pass. They say Pakistan is more important, but they don’t say how losing our base in Afghanistan will solve that nation’s problems.
The debate is set against the background of an expected decision by President Obama on whether to heed his generals who are calling for an Iraq like Surge, or to find a quicker way out. Obama may have campaigned on the premise of supporting the “right war” in Afghanistan, but liberals, including most of the democratic congress are opposed to any expansion of US forces abroad. The left is now getting help from Will and McCarthy on the right. But the stakes in Afghanistan are high. The Taliban, our enemy, are resurgent there, enabled by NATO’s inability to fight a consistent counter-insurgency campaign, and the porous border with Pakistan.
Pakistan, aye there is the rub. That nation has slowly descended into its own chaos. The area along Pakistan’s Afghan border known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), is a Pashtun-Taliban enclave, inaccessible to any forces friendly to the US and its allies. The Pakistani military, a nuclear armed force of over a million men including reserves, cannot even access, much less control its own border.
The mountainous region, including the FATA, which straddles the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, is at times referred to as Pashtun-istan. The Pashtuns, a 42 million strong ethnic group, are minority populations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have always been the core strength of the Taliban. Not all Pashtuns are Taliban, but most Taliban are Pashtun. Tribal ties, tradition, and ethnic politics lead most Pashtuns to support the Taliban.
Afghanistan continues to be a failed state, Pakistan is failing. We have the opportunity to continue to influence events in the region due to our presence in Afghanistan. Should the US withdraw entirely from Afghanistan certain events are highly likely to unfold. The first would be a Taliban victory in Afghanistan. They might not see the complete victory they achieved in 1996. They would at least end up seizing and dominating several provinces. These provinces would certainly include several, North and East, which dominate the landlocked nation’s rudimentary road net. The Taliban would gain a stranglehold on the Afghan economy.
They would also rule the Pashtun speaking border region. The resulting consequences of this outcome are impossible to predict. However a larger autonomous Taliban dominated zone would surely threaten the weak Pakistani government. The unspoken, nightmare outcome, we all seek to avoid, is the takeover of Pakistan by the Taliban.
Pakistan is a nuclear power. Yet in spite of this modern achievement, it is a failing nation. Assassination and civil violence have dominated recent politics. The populace is fragmented ethnically and politically. The urban elites live western lives with modern hopes. Most others live poor desperate lives. Islam is the single greatest unifying factor! Many Pakistanis of various ethnicities have shown a consistent predilection for anti-American, anti-western, pro-Taliban politics.
Two or possibly three Talibanized nations in place of today’s Afghanistan and Pakistan are in no one’s interest, especially if one of them is nuclear armed. Let us recall further that Afghanistan’s western neighbor is the WMD seeking state of Iran. That nation has infiltrated arms and personnel into the western Farsi speaking provinces of Afghanistan to pressure the US and Afghan governments, and to create its own sphere of influence.
George Will’s imagined scenario of special-forces and airpower serving in place of boots on the ground in Afghanistan surely sounds good to deskbound policy wonks. But they would do well to remember that policy failed us through the Clinton era. At that time Pakistan was under the more stable hand of Musharraf.
If we abandon our foothold in Afghanistan, we abandon our contacts on the ground. In order for predators, cruise missiles, and SF operators to succeed repeatedly against al-Qaeda, or any other enemies, our forces need human intelligence. This is why al-Qaeda and the Taliban high command retreated to and continue to hide in the inaccessible reaches of Pakistan. It’s why al-Qaeda chose the then closed state of Afghanistan as a base in the first place.
Additionally, a premature withdrawal from Afghanistan will surely present a tremendous propaganda victory to the Taliban. This would be a strategic weapon for all of our Islamist enemies in the current struggle. George Will has stepped up his campaign, and now wants to quit Iraq early as well. He mentions the ties that Shiite Iran has established with Shiite Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki as a reason to end our commitment there.
If we were to follow Mr. Will’s prescription, by 2011 we could be facing a hostile band of powers stretching from the India-Pakistan border through Syria, to the Mediterranean. This would be the worst middle-eastern scenario the US ever faced, as bad as the Soviet dominated region envisioned by Carter and Reagan circa 1980. We could face two Islamic, hostile, nuclear powers. Such an outcome would represent the beginning of the end for Israel. It would signify the end of American hegemony, and the start of a truly new world order; one that would be highly unfavorable to our interests.
These are just the consequences for us. Mr. Will would also abandon the Afghans, the Iraqis and others to the Taliban to the likeminded Shia of Iran, and to al-Qaeda. He and his applause section remind us that Islam is incompatible with democracy, that extremism pervades the region, and that generally we have no business there anymore.
While not subscribing to the left’s drivel that poverty and frustration are the root of terrorism, I think that a poorer more Islamic mid-east will be more miserable for the Afghans and Iraqis, and the Pakistanis and Iranians. Having spent time in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I have seen that most people there want peace and prosperity. They want to end the violence and raise their children more comfortably than poverty and war has thus far allowed.
While Islam may indeed lend itself to oppressive rule, so did Christianity, for nearly two millennia of Romans, feudalism, and absolutism. Today, millions of Iraqis and Afghans have shown an appreciation for democracy, and the idea of peaceful, lawful change of governments. Come to think of it, so have the much abused Lebanese. In Iran, millions voted, and when the mullahs executed a massive electoral fraud millions protested. In India millions of Muslims regularly live peaceful lives in a democracy.
It is true that democratizing the Islamic world is not, and should not be the primary prescriptive mission of the US military. However to cede the entire middle-east to the forces of extremism, to abandon our allies, to surrender our security, and make the world a much more dangerous place seems folly. And to do it so that we can say we are not nation building, so that our military is doing what a few purists claim is “its job” is beyond foolishness. My job as a soldier is to preserve the security of my nation by whatever means necessary. Right now I can’t think of a better way we can do that than holding the line against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
05 September 2009
Reason Enough to Fight On
Just over one year ago, on August 19, 2008 my friend was murdered. Taliban gunmen assassinated Mohammed Ayoob on his doorstep, in a village along the
-
Not the toughest soldier, Ayoob sometimes seemed to fear his own shadow. His commanders assigned him to the supply section; the Taliban noted his gentler nature and targeted him. In the end, he was tougher than he realized. Courageous in the face of death, when three terrorists ambushed him with AK-47 assault rifles, he drew his sidearm, and fired a single round at his killers before falling, the pistol smoking in his hand.
-
My friend’s death exemplifies the dynamics of the violent struggle for
-
The last time the Taliban ruled
-
As an American soldier, I was proud to call Ayoob my friend, but language and culture made understanding difficult. I never knew whether he was more concerned with defeating the insurgent than with holding a paying job. I suspected the latter. Ayoob, and his family, lived in a state of poverty. Like most Afghans they scraped by as best they could from year to year.
-
Whether he fought for patriotism or money, Ayoob chose to stand up to the Taliban. Despite the risks involved, Sgt. Ayoob accepted a job that endangered his life. He demonstrated personal courage and a rejection of the Taliban. Soon after he died, I realized his family stood with him.
-
Muslims must be buried within twenty four hours of death. The day after Ayoob died, my team, continued our own anti-Taliban efforts in the district. On the way back to our base we passed Ayoob's funeral. In a nation where few people have cars, I saw dozens of cars, packed with hundred’s of friends and relatives at the hilltop cemetery where they laid Ayoob to rest. Attendance at Ayoob’s funeral represented a public rejection of the Taliban.
-
Ayoob’s friends and family are hardly unique in their rejection of the Taliban. Last week, Afghan presidential elections were held for the second time this decade. While insurgents intimidated millions of Afghans into staying home, millions more risked heir lives to vote.
-
Today, in the
-
McChrystal, the new commander of US and NATO forces in
-
McChrystal surely envisions the “Iraq Surge” as a model for the way forward in
-
Our president, who owes his political career to the far left, is now caught between his core and his campaign. He promoted the “right war” on the campaign trail to capture the middle. Now, he can expect serious pressure from his allies in Pelosi’s Democratic congress to resist an “Afghan Surge.”
-
Americans may be weary of the war after eight years. Surely though, we are not more weary than the Afghans; they have known only war and terror for decades. The difference is that millions of Afghans know this war is worth fighting.
-
Like the loved ones of Mohammed Ayoob, they clearly want to end the violence. Their communities have been torn apart by decades of violence, but they will not surrender to terror to achieve peace. They know that the peace of the terrified is no peace at all.
-
Here at home, Americans are bombarded by the objections of the political left, and spoon-fed the dubious opinions of mainstream media pundits, but hopefully we will remember our own recent past. Eight years ago the Taliban allowed al-Quaeda to plan and train in
-
Today liberals, and an increasing number of conservatives are willing to allow that same Taliban to reclaim rule over
-
John Byrnes is a member of Veterans for Freedom. As a Staff Sergeant in the National Guard he spent most of 2008 in
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)