That war thing
Jeff sends us a link to Politico in which someone is trying to campaign using the troops once again.
Gen. John Allen, Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan, said the idea that Obama is bucking his commanders, put forth by Romney and some other Republicans, simply isn’t true.
“There is no daylight … between the commanders on the ground and the commander-in-chief,” Allen told reporters Sunday. “I was asked whether I could execute [Obama’s withdrawal] plan, and I told [him] that I can.”
Really? What did they expect him to say? Did they think he’d pull a Stan McCrystal and let out a tirade of expletives about the president’s policy? Meanwhile, Old Trooper sends us a link to a Daily Beast article about CentCom Commander Gen. James Mattis planning for the next war.
Mattis wanted to send a third aircraft-carrier group to the Persian Gulf earlier this year, The Daily Beast has exclusively learned, in what would have been a massive show of force at a time when Iranian military commanders were publicly threatening to sink American ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The four-star Marine Corps general and CentCom commander believed the display could have deterred Iran from further escalating tensions, according to U.S. military officials familiar with his thinking.
But the president wanted to focus military resources on new priorities like China, and Mattis was told a third carrier group was not available to be deployed to the Gulf.
It seems like not all of his commanders are in synch with the president as Politico and General Allen would have us believe. We’ve been at war with Iran since 1979 and we haven’t had a president willing to accept that reality. The Iranians have been supporting every one of our enemies materially over the past eleven years and they’ve made inroads into our backyard in South America. Between Obama’s worldview of a Chinese opponent and Mattis’ Islamic Republic scenario, which is more likely to explode first? Carrier group presence in the Persian/Arabian Gulf is more likely to deter a war with Iran than have an effect on China.
But the Obama plan is less likely to cost as much in the short term as Mattis’.
Well, except in American lives when the balloon inevitably goes up.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Foreign Policy, Terror War
China? I understand politically, we’re not exactly friendly nations. However, given the facts that A) China holds a great portion of our debt, and B) has approximately $4 Trillion USD in their own coffers (they claim), I find it highly unlikely China will go to war with us anytime soon. If they expect us to make our payments, and want that 4 trillion to actually be worth anything they’ll leave us alone. I dont even have a “Harvard Education” and I can understand that. We tank = China tanks. Besides, who will buy all their shit?
#1: PRC is not quite so monolithic. The PLA has been spoiling for a fight for the past twenty years, and it’s simply a function of time before the warlords figure they can safely buck Beijing and start a nice little war.
Or, more likely, when the PRC economy collapses, and they call in their debts and the fiction of our wealth is exposed as so much paper, there will be combat as countries scramble for tangible sources of wealth – natural resources.
It’s a fight we aren’t likely to win given the Tyranny of Distance of the Pacific, and how often politicos give away the nation’s strategic oil reserves and won’t drill.
At what point is this president going to take a threat to our military seriously?
#3 Doc: at the point Putin says “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
I wouldn’t have stopped at a third carrier group; publicly increased production of Tomahawks and call upon Hilton and Sandals to submit redesign plans for the Iranian coastline.
Dave, would that be right after Obama gets the “flexibility” he seeks for “negotiations”?
I always wondered what chinas currency is backed up with… I was going to go someplace with this but…squirrel!
Iranian leadership are without a doubt terrorists, sympathizers, or both. But would going to war with them be worth the shitfit Russia and China would have?
JPJ–the yuan is tied to the dollar because they know damned well if it wasn’t their economy would sink like a rock. Consider that even though China is the world’s second greatest economy, their GDP is barely 1/4 of ours. Consider population, and per capita income is less than 1/10 of the average American.
Most Chinese depend on the American economy for their own survival, from shit shipped to WalMart, et al, to knockoff products they never pay to rightful owners, to factories making Apple computers and the like. They can call our bluff, but deep down, both the US and Chinese governments know one uncontrovertable truth–they need us more than we need them.
Thats what I kinda thought sparky. I would be more worried about the bond villian Vlad, but as long as he is rich and happy I really don’t see the Ruskies coming after us. Granted I could see some pushing and shoving over “reclaiming” former territory. Seeing how our “glorious” leader has handed so much of it over and has basically given him the worlds oil production while cutting off most of ours. Now I am seeing images of Red Dawn but 40-50 years too late.