I had not planned on reading the “firsthand account of hte mission that killed Osama Bin Laden (UBL),” but there has been so much writhing and hand-wringing and threats and whining I thought that I’d weigh in and give the former Navy SEAL some of my hard EARNED money. No Easy Day
“A year before, I had been a partying college student, obsessed with The Lord of the Rings and hte Harry Potter books. Getting to class and writing to papers had been pretty much the limit of my responsibilities. Now I was a leader in a combat zone, entrusted with the role after the army had invested millions of dollars in my training. Any decision I made could have unseen consequences. I second-guessed myself constantly, concealed it from the men, and did my best to absorb every lesson thrown my way.”
I’d like to suggest that the Obama Administration be renamed the OBA Administration or the Obama Back-Assward Administration. When most of us have a problem we try to find and fix using logic. For instance, my car was having some trouble starting so I had the battery and alternator checked. If I were to act like the Obama Back-Assward Administration, I would probably have my key checked. It would be funny except that these folks are “running” the country or should I say “ruining” the country…
In “Parse-imony” I break down current news stories with my pithy, running commentary…
First the headline:
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan President Hamid Karzai, angered by an airstrike that Afghan officials said killed 14 civilians during the weekend, demanded on Tuesday that the U.S.-led coalition halt aerial strikes on Afghan houses and threatened to take unspecified actions if the coalition doesn’t comply. [when one doesn’t possess a “big stick” or any stick for that matter it is best to leave out the specifics.]
It is often interesting to look at the ease with which non-incumbent candidates can point to the incumbent’s record and critique their performance and bloviate about what they would do in similar situations. It is hard to prevent such a successful strategy and we have learned with the current resident of the White House that a blank slate can be a powerful tool when combined with a thorough lack of inspection of a candidate’s qualifications by both the main stream media and many of the voters.
In case you haven’t noticed Afghanistan has sort of become a major hotbed of resistance to our military. There has been heavy fighting and far too many deaths of our military personnel. One thing that seems the most disappointing to me about Iraq and Afghanistan is how the local citizens do not seem fully committed to their freedom. As Americans I am not sure that we can completely understand this because most of us were born free and continue to live free.
Common knowledge about Afghanistan and Afghans is generally about how rough a country it is; how inhospitable both the landscape and the residents can be. It is hard for those of us in the west to imagine a world of dominated by warlords, tribes, and a culture that seems stuck in the first century. Brad Thor 
At the risk of having my head removed from my body I have a few thoughts on the GSM (Ground Zero Mosque) controversy:
Update – many on the conservative side breathed a cautious sigh of relief when General David Petraeus was placed in charge of the NATO war effort in Afghanistan. Not many criticized his predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal, but there were grumbles about how he handcuffed his troops through tight rules of engagement as discussed in the original post.
Patraeus was seen as perhaps more of a warrior who would take the gloves off and permit our soldiers to do what soldiers do in war…kill the enemy and break things. To many Patraeus was Patton. As expected General Patraeus did modify the complex rules of engagement in Afghanistan. He actually made them even more stringent in an attempt to win the support of the Afghan people.
I walked into our living room a few nights ago and my daughter was watching Miracle which is the Hollywood version of the United States’ hockey team winning the Olympic Gold Medal at the 1980 games in Lake Placid, New York. I had stuff to do, but I made the mistake of sitting down and got hooked. I had seen the movie before and remembered the actual event (I even think I had saved the Sports Illustrated magazine that came out after the win).
