{"id":10808,"date":"2016-01-19T05:47:57","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T11:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=10808"},"modified":"2016-01-19T05:47:57","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T11:47:57","slug":"when-appeasement-is-in-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/01\/19\/when-appeasement-is-in-season\/","title":{"rendered":"When Appeasement is in Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

A refreshing read with no bias and no bullshit. You can tell this guy is not a politician. -SF<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"kerry\"<\/p>\n

Last week was especially bad for the American military, already drained by sequestration and segregated from a society where \u201caffluenza\u201d has become our signature epidemic. A panel of Federal judges in San Francisco \u2013 probably none of whom had ever served in uniform \u2013 decided that \u201cstolen valor\u201d medals are trumped by \u201cfree speech.\u201d Because the \u201caffluenza society\u201d routinely fights our wars by putting Other People\u2019s Kids in harm\u2019s way, medals for gallantry are understood as being mere fashion accessories.<\/p>\n

President Obama, whose military experience was limited to \u201ccommunity organizer\u201d<\/em> before becoming our generalissimo, said that appeasing Iran is merely evidence of his \u201csmart diplomacy.\u201d His designated spokesman similarly saw nothing wrong with our soldiers surrendering at gunpoint before apologizing abjectly to their captors. Sorry, sonny, but those \u201csoldiers\u201d were actually U.S. Navy sailors drilled since basic training in the Code of Conduct. Their core ideal: \u201cNever give up the ship.\u201d John Kerry, who once served with valor in that same service, visited my alma mater, National Defense University (NDU), the esteemed Secretary of State providing our future military leaders with context for these brave new ideas. Above all: refuting the obsolete 19th\u00a0century ideal that their highest purpose is merely to win the nation\u2019s wars. Twenty-first century appeasement is much trickier, requiring real leaders to be feminized, socialized and self-effacing. Martial role-models have changed too, not so much General Patton or Admiral Nimitz as Neville Chamberlain or Debbie Wasserman Schulz.<\/p>\n

After such a week, I was in no mood to catch the Democratic debate last night or even to watch \u201cMadam Secretary,\u201d \u2013 same themes but with better drama and more appealing star-power. Instead, I crowded into a packed movie theater to watch Michael Bay\u2019s new thriller,\u00a0Thirteen Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. While the movie is far from flawless, it is action-packed and compelling, especially when compared to those tedious congressional hearings. Straight answers in those endless proceedings were as rare as an endangered species, especially Hillary Clinton\u2019s notorious non-answer, \u201cWhat difference does it make?\u201d While her name is left scrupulously unmentioned, the movie provides a stark eye-witness account of what happened when American fighting men left were left marooned and unreachable even as their enemies massed. The main culprit: A deeply complacent, and even delusional, State Department bureaucracy. Given Hollywood\u2019s usual cheerleading for Democratic leaders and agendas, the wonder is that such cinematic truth-telling was even allowed; but maybe after\u00a0American Sniper\u00a0broke box office records last year, studio executives decided that business was, after all, just business.<\/p>\n

If so, then they complicated Hillary Clinton\u2019s current efforts to live down her past, trying to substitute her husband\u2019s name and reputation to repair her own. Although her arguments often seem forced and self-serving, watching\u00a0Thirteen Hours, I saw something else. To me, Benghazi closely resembled Mogadishu, Secretary Clinton\u2019s bungled response in Libya closely rivaling President Clinton\u2019s debacle in Somalia. In case you have forgotten, in Mogadishu on October, 3, 1993, 18 American Rangers were killed and 75 others seriously wounded on what was supposed to be a \u201cpeacekeeping operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, I led a Joint Chiefs study that analyzed classified after-action reports to determine what had gone wrong. NDU Press published it in 1994 as\u00a0Somalia Operations: Lessons Learned, a poor man\u2019s version of Mark Bowden\u2019s\u00a0Blackhawk Down\u00a0(and, sadly, without his royalties). But in uniformed circles it was considered controversial because I criticized the chain of command for ignoring fundamental principles while embracing the new-normal of peacekeeping. Shortly before the disaster, one of my sources (himself a general) had even witnessed a flash-mob of heavily armed Somalis swarming around – and very nearly overwhelming – an elite US infantry battalion. Yet when the American on-scene commander requested the same tanks and armored vehicles that had recently brought victory in Operation Desert Storm, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin refused. Why risk admitting to the American people that a peacekeeping expedition was rapidly going south?<\/em><\/p>\n

Substitute \u201cArab spring\u201d for \u201cpeacekeeping expedition\u201d and you have precisely the same arrogance and delusions that, twenty-odd years apart, link Benghazi with Mogadishu.<\/em> While there are more similarities than differences between Secretary Clinton and President Clinton, at least one of those differences remains important. While the secret soldiers of Benghazi were ignored, short-changed and even pressured into signing non-disclosure statements, the boys of Mogadishu received this well-earned tribute from President Clinton in March, 1994:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there are any debates still to be had about our mission in Somalia, let people have those debates with me. But let there be no debate about how you carried out your mission\u2026Your nation is grateful and your president is terribly, terribly proud of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes even a little candor from the boss means a whole lot.<\/p>\n

A former draftee,\u00a0Kenneth Allard is a retired Army Colonel who served as Dean of the National War College\u00a0and NBC News military analyst.\u00a0Living in San Antonio, TX, he is a regular contributor to the Washington Times, and columnist for Real Clear Defense.<\/i><\/p>\n

Read the Original Article at Real Clear Defense<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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A refreshing read with no bias and no bullshit. You can tell this guy is not a politician. -SF Last week was especially bad for the American military, already drained by sequestration and segregated from a society where \u201caffluenza\u201d has become our signature epidemic. A panel of Federal judges in San Francisco \u2013 probably none…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[74,1286,2820],"tags":[3870,3871,3872,3873],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}