During the Vietnam War when the Johnson Administration tried to micro-manage the air campaign over North Vietnam.  The following article from Wikipedia is very consistent with what I personally observed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder

Washington dictated which targets would be struck, the day and hour of the attack, the number and types of aircraft and the tonnages and types of ordnance utilized, and sometimes even the direction of the attack.^[27] Airstrikes were strictly forbidden within 30 nautical miles (60 km) of Hanoi and within ten nautical miles (19 km) of the port of Haiphong. A thirty-mile buffer zone also extended along the length of the Chinese frontier. According to Air Force historian Earl Tilford:

Targeting bore little resemblance to reality in that the sequence of attacks was uncoordinated and the targets were approved randomly – even illogically. The North’s airfields, which, according to any rational targeting policy, should have been hit first in the campaign, were also off-limits.^[28]

There was also little consultation between Johnson and the military chiefs during the target selection process. Even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army General Earl G. Wheeler, was not present for most of the critical discussions of 1965 and participated only occasionally thereafter.^[30]

The United States had the ability to quickly destroy the North Vietnamese Air Defense system and to also destroy its fuel supplies.  Instead we sent in our aircrews to take on trivial targets while being restricted to specific routes.  This insanity resulted in our aircrews getting hammered by the deadly combination of radar controlled anti-aircraft batteries, surface to air missile sites and high performance Migs flown out of conveniently off-limits airfields.

When Richard Nixon got tired of playing the game and ordered B52s over the North, the North Vietnamese folded like a cheap umbrella and signed the peace treaty. The Viet Cong were barely involved because they had been destroyed during the Tet Offensive.

I have often wondered how many thousands of lives were lost because of micro-management of the Vietnam War by incompetent and politically motivated people in Washington.

One would think that lessons were learned from this, but no!  President Obama is going to personally micro-manage our airstrikes, if any, in Syria:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/388306/report-obama-requiring-personal-signoff-syria-bombing-targets-andrew-johnson

So the real strategy to defeat ISIS is for Obama to personally directly our military efforts.  Since he has provided such brilliant leadership for the last six years what could possibly go wrong?  Have you thrown up yet?

TDM

Mort Zuckerman owns the U.S. Daily News and the U.S. News & World Report.  He is a regular on MSNBC and the McLaughlin Group.  He is a strong Democrat and was a strong supporter of President Obama.  He even claimed to have written one of Obama’s political speeches.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/07/12/mort_zuckerman_admits_he_wrote_one_of_obamas_speeches.html

Well he sure doesn’t support Obama any more.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/09/15/zuckerman_on_obama_i_dont_think_weve_lived_with_anybody_with_that_kind_of_record_of_failure.html

Well, I mean, he’s lost so much credibility amongst Americans in terms of his foreign policy. I don’t think we’ve lived with anybody with that kind of record of failure as far as the American public sees it. So I think they’re very nervous about what he’s going to be leading the country into. And frankly, the more he goes in one direction, a lot of other Americans are going to go in a different direction.

It doesn’t get any worse than this.  A President can survive almost any scandal, if they are considered up to the job.  That is why Bill Clinton survived Monica Lewinsky.  But a President cannot survive being considered incompetent, particularly with regard to national security.  Obama may stay in office, but even Democrats realize that we cannot rely on him to provide the leadership necessary to navigate these troubled waters.  I have no way of predicting where this goes, but it has to go somewhere and it has to happen sooner rather than later.

TDM

Tom Kaine is a Democratic Senator from Virginia.  His op-ed in the New York Times is a stunning rebuke of President Obama:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/opinion/obama-must-get-congresss-backing-for-the-fight-against-isis.html?&_r=0

Just a few months ago Obama was suggesting that congress repeal the authorization given George W. Bush to wage war against al Qaeda.  Senator Kaine describes the Obama administration interpretation of that authorization:

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in May 2013, representatives of the Obama administration blithely opined that the 2001 authorization could allow for war to be carried out for another 25 years, an astonishing claim that surely went beyond what Congress intended 13 years ago.

Note the date here.  At the same time Obama was telling us that he had ended the war in Iraq and was about to end the war in Afghanistan, his administration was telling the Senate Armed Services Committee he had authority to continue fighting for another 25 years.

It is particularly important that this was done by a Democratic Senator. Tom Kaine is no fool and he probably talked to several other Democratic Senators before he published this opinion.  One will note that on this subject, Tom Kaine reached across the aisle to get support from John McCain.

This is a strong message to the Obama administration from someone they cannot afford to ignore.  We can be sure that there are private conversations with the administration that are increasingly blunt.  It is now clear that at least some Democrats are moving from frustration with Obama to fear of the consequences of his incompetence.  This is impossible to predict and it cannot be ignored.  We are truly in very unusual times.

TDM

President Obama may find it a little difficult to put together a coalition willing to fight ISIS.  The problem is everyone knows two things.  First, boots on the ground will be required to destroy ISIS. Second, President Obama will not provide the boots.  That leaves Obama with the impossible task of convincing other world leaders to take on the casualties he is not willing to risk. Obama plans on supplying the airpower while coalition partners provide the cannon fodder. Any foreign leader who accepts that deal is too stupid to be a worthy partner. That is why Obama is now proposing giving arms to “so-called” moderate rebels in Syria. The same rebels that Obama felt weren’t up to the job a couple of weeks ago. In addition these “moderates” may or may not have sold a hostage to ISIS and they may or may not already have a treaty with ISIS. So why is Obama choosing them?  Easy, he can’t find anyone else stupid enough to take on the assignment.

Right now it appears as if the only people fighting ISIS are the Kurds and odds are once they shove ISIS out of their back yard they won’t want to take on ISIS either. In the meantime let me paraphrase the sale pitch used by John Kerry and Barack Obama to put together the coalition:

Here’s the deal. I can’t send in ground troops because some of them might be injured or killed and that would make me look bad. So I need you to send in your boys and we will supply the air power. I am full committed to providing air support as long as there is limited risk to our people.  By the way, no matter how things are going after six months, we’re out of there. Please join my crusade.  You can count on me!

Obama is facing the same problem overseas that he faces here in the United States.  He is rapidly running out of people stupid enough to believe in him.

TDM

President Obama has blundered his way into a serious constitutional crisis.  He has played one too many word games and this time he could have made a critical unforced error.  Congress is not about to give Obama a blank check to wage war.  They are also not about to deny Obama the funds to bomb the crap out of ISIS.  Obama jumped into the ambiguity with both feet.  He forgot something really important:  “Only congress can declare war.”

His disastrous speech Wednesday was bad enough. Most people interpreted that as saying we were at war with ISIL, which is precisely what Obama intended.   Then John Kerry shot off his mouth saying we aren’t actually at war.

“I believe what we’re engaged in is not a full-fledged war like we were in before.  It’s a heightened level of counterterrorism campaign, and it will have its own pace, its own dymanic, but it’s counterterrorism.”

That confused just about everyone, so today Presidential spokesman Josh Earnest said that:

“The U.S. is at war with ISIL in the same way the U.S. is at war with al Qaeda.”  

Rear Admiral John Kirby said:

“This is not the Iraq war of 2002, but make no mistake we know we are at war with ISIL, in the same way we are and war and continue to be at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates.”

The problem is that George W. Bush asked for and received congressional authorization to wage war against al Qaeda.  That legislation is very specific and it most definitely did not include ISIL or ISIS.  Obama didn’t even bother to get some lawyer to pretend he has this authority.  He just decided we are sort of at war and he didn’t think it necessary to consult congress.

Some in the liberal left are trying, desperately, to blame Republicans for not stepping up to the plate and declaring war.  Following is from the New York Times:

The cowardice in Congress, never to be underestimated, is outrageous. Some lawmakers have made it known that they would rather not face a war authorization vote shortly before midterm elections, saying they’d rather sit on the fence for a while to see whether an expanded military campaign starts looking like a success story or a debacle. By avoiding responsibility, they allow President Obama free rein to set a dangerous precedent that will last well past this particular military campaign.

Mr. Obama, who has spent much of his presidency seeking to wean the United States off a perpetual state of war, is now putting forward unjustifiable interpretations of the executive branch’s authority to use military force without explicit approval from Congress.

The New York Times is making a desperate attempt to blame congress for not protecting Obama from himself.  That is absurd.  Congress has no duty or authority to take over the role of Commander in Chief from the President.  For better or worse, in this case worse, Obama is President of the United States.  If he asks congress for authority, they have a right and a duty to react responsibly to that request.  Congress cannot and should not just declare war because Obama is too stupid to ask.  They also should not authorize military action not requested by the President.

Republicans realize that Obama is self-destructing and is taking the Democratic Party down with him.  They will vote to give him the funds to bomb ISIS/ISIL and perhaps to arm the Syrian rebels, but other than that they will just get out of the way.  There is an old rule in politics that says when your opponent is self-destructing don’t get in the way.  That has never been truer than now.

We are in uncharted waters.  No President in our nation’s history has been this stupid.  It almost seems as though Obama is daring Republicans to impeach him in the hope that Republicans would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  But Republicans are not going to do anything.  ISIS/ISIL is not exactly an imminent threat.  The bombing already being conducted by Obama will slow them down long enough to get past the election.  There is little incentive for Republicans to deal with this right now.

Almost anything is possible.  Democrats are probably in panic mode.  This is approaching the worst case scenario for them.  The New York Times editorial is hard to ignore. Both Democrats and Republicans realize that Obama is a serious problem.  Neither has a clue on what to do about it.

TDM

It is official.  The Obama Presidency is over. Obama’s speech wasn’t all that bad.  It was about the best we could hope to expect.  But the response is stunning. I watched the recap of Obama’s speech on CNN and it was really bad.  No one was impressed, other than Donna Brazile, and even she appeared frustrated. When you are Obama and Newt Gingrich is your strongest supporter on CNN you are in real trouble.

Then special guest Jay Carney showed up only to be schooled by Senator John McClain.  Every time Carney opened his mouth, McClain crammed it shut with cold, hard, facts.  Carney tried to say he respectfully disagreed but McClain refused to let him off the hook.  McCain said he can disagree all he wants but that doesn’t change the facts.  It was possible the worst debut on National TV since Chelsea Clinton appeared on NBC’s Rock Center.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/chelsea-clinton-mixed-reviews-tv-debut-nbc-rock-center-brian-williams-article-1.990764#ixzz3D3RMVwNq

“Rather, what was surprising to see on Monday night’s show is how someone can be on TV in such a prominent way and, in her big moment, display so very little charisma — none at all. Either we’re spoiled by TV’s unlimited population of giant personalities or this woman is one of the most boring people of her era,” 

When you are described as “one of the most boring people of her era” that is pretty hard to beat but Carney may have been up to the challenge.  It is better to be boring than to be proven a liar every time you open your mouth. When Carney surfaces again we can be sure CNN will keep people like John McCain as far away as possible.

But as bad as it was on CNN, it was even worse on ABC, NBC, CBS and MSNBC.  Fox News was kinder than these guys.  What’s up with that!

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/387662/oversimplification-wildly-base-msnbc-slams-obamas-isis-speech-brendan-bordelon

Al Sharpton was reduced to saying that just because President Obama couldn’t explain his plan doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one.  Actually, Al, that’s exactly what it means.

It only goes down from here.  The liberal left is angry and bitter because they know that Republicans are poised to run the table and it may take decades for the Democratic Party to recover.  They are mostly angry at themselves for trusting the liberal dream to someone as clearly incapable as Obama.

Liberals cannot fathom the possibility that liberalism itself is hopelessly flawed, so they always blame failure on the leader of the day.  Liberals go to bed at night dreaming of the great leader in the sky who will prove once and for all that they are right.  If only they could find the liberal Messiah.  Liberals are famous for putting down people of faith, but no one demonstrates more faith in the impossible than liberals.

The problem is that if you believe the liberal dream you are too stupid to be a leader.  So, by definition, liberal leaders are destined for failure.  When they do fail, liberals are the most unforgiving of all. Obama is about to learn that the hard way.  He may start to fear former liberal supporters more than he fears ISIS.

In case you doubt that, read the following editorial in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/opinion/obamas-betrayal-of-the-constitution.html?&_r=0

Ackerman is a very liberal guy.  He wrote “Social Justice in the Liberal State.”  He more recently wrote: “The Failure of the Founding Fathers.”  I have always believed that Obama has far more to fear from the liberal left than the Republican Party.

TDM

I have tried to watch MSNBC on rare occasion and always come away with astonishment that anyone would watch this nonsense.  They are so far off the mark it is laughable.  It is almost like watching a Will Farrell parody of a news broadcast.  I tried to think of a phrase to describe MSNBC and the best I could come up with was “the clatter of the clueless.”  Even the rest of the main stream media with its own liberal bias is appalled by MSNBC.  So are the viewers, which is why viewership at MSNBC is now at about a 20 year low.

Now, in an astonishing admission of the obvious, Andrea Mitchell informs us that President Obama has chosen the same class of clowns who regularly appear on MSNBC to give him advise on how to deal with ISIS/ISIL:

http://dailycaller.com/2014/09/09/andrea-mitchell-obamas-new-foreign-policy-advisers-all-msnbc-regulars-video/#ixzz3CyZ0DPeI

“It looks like a review of our guest list here at ‘Andrea Mitchell Reports,’” she said. “Julie, why did the president finally reach out and bring in all of these different voices on foreign policy?”

“It was a pretty unusual thing for the president to do,” Pace explained. “Not only does he not usually reach out to folks like this, he actually has criticized was he calls ‘the Washington chattering class,’ people who tend to comment from the outside.”

 “So this was a real attempt by the president to bring those people into the fold, let them hear directly from him,” she continued. “And also hear from them, get some advice. A lot of these people on the list — who as you said, are great guests on your show — are people who have been through a lot. And they might actually have some advice that he could learn from.”

It does take a special advisor to come up with a strategy based on the idiotic conclusion that the I in ISIS or ISIL which stands for Islamic does not mean that the group itself is Islamic.  Neither does the fact that they have a nasty habit of killing people who refuse to convert to Islam or their goal of setting up an Islamic caliphate.  Where does one find people capable of coming up with such obvious stupidity?  The answer is pretty easy:  MSNBC.

Obama brought in as advisors the only group of people left on the planet who hold residual illusions of him having a shred of leadership ability. It is pretty scary when a President with a failed foreign policy chooses to receive input from foreign policy advisors on a failed network notoriously inept and completely out of step with the American people.  With the President relying on this level of expertise for advice it is increasingly difficult to be an optimist.

TDM

Something incredible is going to happen tonight.  This is unprecedented in our nation’s history.  A President of the United States is going to speak to the nation and ask for authorization to go to war, sort of.  Actually he is going to explain why ISIS is a threat to national security, somewhat oblivious to the fact that the American people figured this out before he did.  He is then going to explain what he is going to do about it by concentrating on what he won’t do.  He will then ask congress for support he says he does not need and odds are he will be unable to resist taking some shots at Republicans.

Recent polls are amazing and unprecedented.  Normally a President who asks for approval to go to war soars in approval as the nation unites behind him.  That has always happened in the past.  But this time while the nation supports the war, they don’t support the President.  This is the price of leading from behind.  No one trusts President Obama to lead anything.  I can’t recall any American President who blundered his way into this worst case scenario.  This does ring eerily similar to when Neville Chamberlain tried to rally support after he had blundered his way into World War II.  He was literally booed out of office.  Great Britain had a solution for that problem, Parliament voted to appoint Winston Churchill as Prime Minister and the rest is history.  However in this country, there is no option for congress to vote for a new President to replace one who is clearly incompetent.  Instead we either have to impeach this one and hope that Biden will miraculously be better, or wait until 2016.

Sadly, I have been waiting for a moment like this, but I always hoped it would never happen.

TDM

In full disclosure I have a lot of Scottish blood but I have never lived in Scotland and have no honest opinion regarding the Scottish independence vote.  That being said, I find this more than a little interesting.  Scotland won its independence from Britain starting when Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scots on March 25, 1306.  The final battle for independence was at Bannockburn in June 1314.  The Declaration of Arbroath was sent to Pope JohnXXII in 1320. Following is a quote most of you probably know from the Declaration of Arbroath:

…for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself

The Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton was ratified by the English Parliament on May 1, 1328 and Scotland became an independent country.   Scottish independence lasted until around 1603 when James the VI of Scotland became James the I of England uniting the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland. You might be interested in knowing that this was the King James of the King James Bible.  Scotland and England had the same King, but still had separate parliaments.  That lasted until 1707 when the Acts of Union resulted in the union of the English and Scottish parliaments.  One motivation for Scotland giving up its parliament was that it ran out of money.  It sure looks like the leaders in Scotland did choose riches over independence.

There was a serious financial problem.  Scotland had tried to establish the colony of Caledonia on the Isthmus of Panama.  They picked a spot on the Gulf of Darien, which was a lousy choice.  It is still mostly uninhabited today, for the same reasons it was uninhabitable in 1698. It was a major failure and Scotland ended up broke and in debt.  So in exchange for a lot of English money and the right to participate in English trade, Scotland gave up its parliament.  Both Scotland and England benefited from this decision.  Scotland thrived financially and an amazing number of British prime ministers have been Scots.

If you have ever been to Scotland, one quickly learns that the Scots do not like to be confused with the English.  They have always considered themselves to be a separate country.  For example at the Edinburgh Tattoo the announcers asked the audience where they were from.  He mentioned places all over the world.  Then he sighed and said, “Ok, do we have anyone from south of Hadrian’s Wall.”  It was obviously said in good humor.

Now, 300 years later, Scotland is considering setting up its own parliament again.  They may or may not agree to keep Queen Elizabeth.  England is trying desperately to keep Scotland by basically offering more money.  This is like Déjà vu all over again.

TDM

I am a Vietnam Veteran. I have long ago accepted the brutal reality that my country sent me off to fight a war and then later decided it wasn’t worth it after all.  But the ultimate insult is when the cowards who protested against the war try to cloak themselves with the mantle of self-righteousness.  They arrogantly express pride for being against the war as if this was some great act of courage. It was not.  Which takes more courage, burning your draft card or serving in the military and putting your life on the line?

Those people who celebrated stopping this war seldom, if ever, consider what they accomplished. They paid little or no attention to whom we were fighting in Vietnam and gave zero consideration to what was at risk for the people of South Vietnam.

It was not exactly peace and love in Vietnam after we left. After the fall of Saigon on April 40, 1975, the North Vietnamese communist government took over.  They renamed the country The Socialist Republic of Vietnam.  The communist government implemented a “Re-education” program.  Former military officers and government workers, along with civil servants, capitalists and priests, were imprisoned in brutal work camps.  Actual statistics are illusive, but it is estimated that over 1 million, and possibly as high as 2.5 million, people were imprisoned in these facilities.  An estimated 165,000 or more prisoners died in re-education camps.

One of the consequences was the Vietnamese boat people.  They risked their lives using almost anything that would float to escape the “peace and love” in Vietnam. Somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 of the more than 2 million who tried to escape died in the attempt.

The following article from the Daily Beast tells the story of one person:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/30/remembering-the-fall-of-saigon-and-vietnam-s-mass-boat-people-exodus.html

“Living in Vietnam became unbearable,” remembers another refugee. “We’d forgotten what it was like to have freedom, hope and happiness. Our determination to leave the country strengthened. I was nine months pregnant with my second child when we escaped again…we were given only 24 hours to pack our belongings.”

Did you notice that she described the period of time when the U.S. military was fighting on behalf of the South Vietnamese as a time of “freedom, hope and happiness.” Congratulations, war protestors! You rescued people from suffering under freedom, hope and happiness and gave them a brutal communist regime.  You must be so proud.

The following article from rebirthofreason.com details what happened after we abandoned our friends and allies.

http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/dickeymf/_Years_after_Fall_of_Saigon,_75_Million_Murdered.shtml

We will never know how many people died in Vietnam after the war.  We were too focused on the 57,000-plus Americans who died in the war. It may or may not be the 7.5 million estimated in this article, but it was definitely millions of people.This is not new data and it is not disputed. It is just ignored.

Vietnam has adopted some capitalism lately and things are finally improving, but it remains a very poor country. I talked recently to a Vietnamese janitor from Sacramento who said he sent $50 per month to his family in Vietnam because it made a major difference in their lives.  He explained that $50 a month was a lot of money in Vietnam.  This shocked me, so I did some research and quickly verified that the average monthly income is about $150 per person per month:

http://www.aroundinvietnam.com/money-matters/average-salary.html

Even that $150 is only an average.  Some people make much more and a lot of people earn even less.  I checked on Wikipedia to see how Vietnam’s average monthly wage compares to other countries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

This only lists the top 72 countries, so Vietnam isn’t even on the list. Then I compared South Vietnam to South Korea.  We did not abandon South Korea like we did Vietnam. South Korea is number 10 on the list, with an average monthly wage of $2,903.

Obviously, the people in Vietnam and Cambodia paid a terrible price when we decided the war wasn’t worth it after all. Please explain to me why it was so necessary to stop that war? The only people who benefited were the terrified college students who avoided serving in the military.  The 57,000-plus Americans who died in Vietnam did not benefit, because you tossed their sacrifices on the scrap heap of history.

It is a lot easier to protest fighting in a war than it is fighting in one. I still remember getting on the plane returning me to Vietnam for my last combat tour.  I looked around and I saw a lot of men, actually boys, just like me, who did not want to be there.  I saw a lot of men, just like me who were terrified and who wondered if we would ever make it back home.  And then I realized that the real demonstration was by the men who quietly got on that plane and flew back to war. Too bad no one in the main stream media noticed.

As for all the self-righteous, anti-war protestors who continue to pat themselves on the back for having the courage to protest the war:  Congratulations. I hope you are very proud.

TDM