NYC Letter: Operation "Not Victory"

Day 190 of CHOPE

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That's the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just. And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: We will defeat you.

Mr. Obama,
being clear about defeating Ameria's enemies
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON A NEW STRATEGY
FOR AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN
WASHINGTON March 27, 2009 (White House)

Or maybe not.

OBAMA: 'VICTORY' NOT NECESSARILY GOAL IN AFGHANISTAN

July 24, 2009 (FNC) - President Obama has put securing Afghanistan near the top of his foreign policy agenda, but "victory" in the war-torn country isn't necessarily the United States' goal, he said Thursday in a TV interview. Obama to ABC News:

I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.

[Hat tip: Gateway Pundit]

The worst imaginable hazard of war is a commander-in-chief with cringing "notions" about war.

Mr. Obama is too sensitive to commit the United States to victory. [Impatient pause.] Then what exactly constitutes the enemy's defeat in Mr. Obama's delicate worldview? An apology from Al Qaeda? A posey from Mullah Omar?

Forget that Emperor Hirohito didn't "come down" to sign his country's unconditional surrender,* [Impatient pause.] just what is wrong with such a "notion"? [Impatient pause.] At the time Japan was a world power that needed to be conclusively beaten, its ambitions destroyed, its military broken, its military class excised, its political class upturned.

Mr. Obama's grasp of WWII history is as willfully ignorant as his grasp of the Cold War.

Like President Medvedev and myself, you're not old enough to have witnessed the darkest hours of the Cold War, when hydrogen bombs were tested in the atmosphere, and children drilled in fallout shelters, and we reached the brink of nuclear catastrophe. But you are the last generation born when the world was divided. At that time, the American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose.

And then, within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.

Mr. Obama,
explaining how the Cold War wasn't won
GOSTINY DVOR, MOSCOW July 7, 2009 (White House)

This is a narrative few, if any, in Hungary, the former Czechoslovakia, Poland (and this), Bulgaria, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, or Georgia -- or Russia itself (and this) -- would recognize. Former deputy assistant secretary of state Liz Cheney debunks Mr. Obama's fanciful Cold War.**

There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth. President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week.

... The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not "competition in astrophysics and athletics." It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet "sphere of influence" was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.

It is irresponsible for an American president to go to Moscow and tell a room full of young Russians less than the truth about how the Cold War ended. One wonders whether this was just an attempt to push "reset" -- or maybe to curry favor. Perhaps, most concerning of all, Mr. Obama believes what he said.

Mr. Obama believes America can defeat its enemies while he spares them the embarrassment of defeat, because, you know, "victory" is mean-spirited. [Thoughtful pause.] In a crowded field (and here and here), Mr. Biden may no longer be the most ridiculous person in this adminstration. With Team Barry, asininity is top-down.

CHOPE.

Wrong. Mealy-mouthed. Irresponsible.

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* Japanese envoys Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu signed the surrender treaty. Oh-ho, here's a kicker.

** Former U.S. attorney general and adviser to President Ronald Reagan, Edwin Meese III, also contests Mr. Obama's fairy tale Cold War, detailing five specific policies pursued to win the Cold War and defeat the Soviet Union.