Strategy for failure

On Tuesday, speaking from West Point, the "Silver-tongued Devil" himself, Barack Obama, once again showed his talent for talking out of both sides of his mouth. He opened his speech by reiterating that our reason for the war was "19 men [who] hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people." He never referred to them as terrorists; merely as "extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the worlds great religions." He equivocates for a few 'misguided Muslims' for mass murder, yet for nearly a year in his travels around the world he has been bowing and scraping before foreign world leaders, apologizing to everyone except the American people, and implicitly blaming the US for all the world's problems.

But the bloom is coming off the rose. All things considered, the world is not greatly impressed with him as either a president or a commander-in-chief. If anything, Obama has become a behind-the-scenes laughing-stock, at least to other world leaders.

As I watched the speech, I was more intent on the faces of the cadets. These are the young men and women who will be subject to the orders of the president. They and the soldiers in their charge will be the ones who suffer and die when grand strategies fail. I saw real concern as Obama told a worldwide audience what amounted to our plans for not fighting to win over the terrorist elements.

In the larger picture, the president pleased no one but the non-thinkers. Even megalomaniacial leftists like Chris Matthews, who called West Point "the enemy camp," criticized Obama. "The president said tonight that we're fighting in Afghanistan because al Qaeda is in Pakistan," he said. "Is that what this is all about? Is that why we're fighting and some are dying in Afghanistan?"

General McChrystal asked for 80,000 troops, but said he would make due with 40,00. What he got from the president was a commitment for only 30,000 troops; not enough to win against a guerilla force in a rugged country the size of Afghanistan; but just about enough to fight a war of attrition with an implacable foe that is willing to sacrifice innocent lives - or their own (except their leaders) - for nothing. On the other hand, our overly-sensitive rules of engagement put our troops at increased risk, giving the enemy an advantage over us.

As if to add injury to insult, Obama also told our enemies how long they need to stay low before we pull out - which is coincidentally around the same time as the next primary election (and is also when most of the remaining stimulus funds is expected to be handed out - yet another incredible coincidence, eh?). He even gave them our proposed operating budget for the war, which indicates the measure of our resolve and the limits of our will to (not) win.

Does anyone remember a little place called Vietnam? We have met the enemy, and he is our leader.

Global hype. Notwithstanding Al Gore's legacy of lies and his totally undeserved Oscar for Best Propaganda Piece and Nobel Prize for Global BS, and after years of embarrassments such as global warming conferences being held during blizzards and a population explosion among polar bears, the truth about this worldwide scam is finally leaking like an open porthole in the Titanic. The discovery that raw climate data was intentionally thrown away, and a number of e-mails in which global warming advocates write about concealing unfavorable evidence are exposing the bogus pseudo-science that is being pedalled as political necessity. Addtionally Gore himself has faced a rising tide of discontent during his most recent book tour, as critics brave his bodyguards to get answers to simple questions.

The scale of the swindle is mind-boggling when you consider it is being used as the framework to restructure the entire Western world and to transfer the bulk of what wealth we have left to those with an even greater propensity to squander it than our own congress. The swindlers will reap in huge profits, and America will continue its descent to third-world status.

Actually, the Earth has been in a cooling trend for nearly a decade. Nevertheless, an estimated 16,500 UN delegates, activists and reporters is set to descend upon Copenhagen this month for the UN Climate Conference 2009, leaving a cloud of CO2 emissions in their hypocritical wake. The primary intent of the summit is to formulate what amounts to a global tax on American productivity and life in general (because it would hike the cost of everything). God help us if Obama signs anything other than another expensive restaurant bill.

Fed up. You can tell it's bad when avowed socialist Bernie Sanders (I-VT) agrees with a number of Republicans in trying to hold up Ben Bernanke's reappointment as head of the Federal Reserve Board.

The Fed has the legal (cringe when you hear that word; not every law is moral or good) authority to literally create fiat (false) money out of thin air merely by adding numbers to a favored account.

Case in point: During the stimulus package giveaway, the Fed padded AIG's books, simply by adding zeros to their ledger. Keep in mind that although it is intimately entwined with the government, the Fed is not a government agency but a privately-owned financial conglomerate that has controlled the US economy since its inception in 1913. Now AIG is paying back the Fed with the profits from selling off two of its subsidiaries - to the Fed! Thus a huge fortune is made by investing in thin air, but the economy suffers because the dollar is devalued in the exchange, meaning that everything costs more. The top execs at the Fed are mostly mega-million and -billionaires. Meanwhile, businesses close down and millions of American citizens are out of work, with no real good news forthcoming.

If the truth be told, the Fed is, at its core, perhaps the greatest con game ever foisted upon a people. In 1913 the government granted it the authority to print money and set interest rates for selling that money to banks. Those interest rates affect our credit and debt. The ultra-rich get richer, and the rest of us go deeper in debt. But this isn't about class envy, it's about institutionalized dishonesty. The Fed - which has never been audited - should be abolished.

'Net threat. While our attention is focussed on healthcare, the war, and Tiger Woods' unexplainably stupid indiscretions, a bill has been silently wending its way through the US Senate. The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (S. 773) threatens to give the government unprecedented power over internet communications; including the authority to shut it down upon a declared "emergency". It may come as no surprise that the bill was authored by that globalist extraordinaire, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV).

Each new propsal to limit our freedom for the sake of "security" moves us closer to slavery. And yet, the majority of Americans are content to sit silently on the sidelines, as though nothing will interrupt their "lives of quiet desperation". Alas, Babylon.