Internet Scofflaw

The cultural illiteracy of this story is astonishing: Rep. Allen West (R-FL), who formerly served as a battalion commander in the Army in Iraq, received a bunch of demands from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (an organization linked to terrorists). West replied with one word “NUTS!”.

The Center for American Progress’s (a leftist think tank closely tied to the Democratic party) Zaid Jilani professes to be perplexed by this response:

One has to wonder why West chose to respond in this bizarre way. One possible explanation is that West is channeling a famous line by an American general fighting the Nazis during World War II. During a battle with German troops in Western Europe, Gen. Anthony McAuliffe was told that the Germans wanted his men to surrender. He replied, “Us surrender? Aw, nuts!”

“One possible explanation”? This is obviously what West was referring to, although Jilani does garble the story. As I’m sure most of my readers are aware, “Nuts!” was famous as General McAuliffe’s one-word reply to the German demand for surrender. What’s this business about “Us surrender? Aw, nuts!”

Well, it turns out that quote was related by Lt. General Harry Kinnard, a member of McAuliffe’s staff that day, explaining the circumstances under which he suggested the “NUTS!” reply.

How on earth would Jilani be aware of the more obscure “nuts” reference, but not its famous usage? Here’s my theory: If you google the term “nuts”, the first two hits are for pages dealing with nuts. The third hit goes to a page about Harry Kinnard, and if you search for “nuts” on that page, the first hit is the quote “Us surrender? Aw nuts!” The article goes on to explain how the exchange resulted in McAuliffe’s famous reply, but it doesn’t actually mention that the reply was famous. (Presumably since, being famous, everyone should know that already.)

This fellow apparently never heard of “NUTS!”, had to google it, and then still didn’t get the point. Okay, that’s fine. Cultural literacy is not a requirement. Still, it’s remarkable that not one of Jilani’s friends or colleagues at the Center for American Progress could fill him in. The cultural divide between our military and the left is wide indeed.

(Via Althouse.)

Even the anti-war left knows now that we won in Iraq, if the bumper sticker I saw recently is any indication:

There can be no victory in a war which never should have been fought

Hmm.

The Washington Times reports:

The Obama administration, which refuses to send terrorism suspects to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, on Wednesday defended its decision to interrogate a detainee for two months aboard a U.S. Navy ship, outside the reach of American law.

“He was detained lawfully, under the law of war, aboard a Navy ship until his transfer to the U.S. for prosecution,” presidential spokesman Jay Carney said.

It’s easy to preen on the campaign trail, but things look different when you’re responsible for our nation’s safety. He would do better to admit he was wrong, rather than going through contortions to do his off-shore interrogations somewhere other than Guantanamo, but I don’t think he has it in him.

The administration of the president who pledged to pull American troops out of Iraq, hell or high water, prepares for the American presence in Iraq to continue indefinitely.

And well we should have a small presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future to safeguard our accomplishments there. I won’t criticize them for flopping to the right position. But I also won’t forget how they shamefully demagogued John McCain for saying the same.

As of today, President Obama is out of compliance with the War Powers Act, which requires the president to obtain congressional approval for military action within 60 days. Absent such approval, the president must terminate the military action after 60 days, unless he certifies in writing that “unavoidable military necessity” requires the continued use of military force, in which case the president may delay the withdrawal for at most 30 additional days.

Sixty days after the opening of the Libyan campaign, President Obama has not even tried to obtain Congressional approval, nor has he certified “unavoidable military necessity.”

Of course, it is an open question whether the War Powers Act is constitutional. But presidents usually follow the rules anyway, even while maintaining they are not required to do so. Indeed, the Obama administration pledged to act “consistent” with the Act less than two weeks ago.

Personally, I think it’s a tough call whether the Act is constitutional or not. In any case, I think the best policy is to preserve the useful ambiguity that has largely prevailed since 1973, in which presidents have followed the Act’s requirements, but have maintained they were not required to do so. For Obama to abandon that policy, for no apparent reason at all, is foolish.

POSTSCRIPT: It is interesting to note that Obama is the second president to violate the War Powers Act. The first was our last Democratic president, Bill Clinton. In 1999, President Clinton continued his Kosovo campaign for over 60 days without obtaining approval. His legal team argued that Congress had implicitly given approval by funding the campaign, but that argument was absurd, since the Act says explicitly that funding cannot be construed as approval:

Authority . . . shall not be inferred — from any provision of law . . . including any provision contained in any appropriation Act, unless such provision specifically authorizes the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities . . .

(Previous post.)

Peter Kirsanow has a question for the president:

You extended deserved praise and congratulations to the SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden. You did not, however, extend praise and congratulations last year to the SEAL team that captured Ahmed Abed — the most wanted al-Qaeda terrorist in Iraq — responsible for killing and mutilating a number of Americans. Instead, three members of that SEAL team — Officer Second Class Matt McCabe and Petty Officers Julio Huertas and Jonathan Keefe — were tried because Abed claimed he’d been slapped by one of the operators. All three SEALs were acquitted.

Will you now praise and congratulate McCabe, Huertas, and Keefe for capturing Abed? If not, why not?

I’ve been puzzled by how the Obama administration could take such an unambiguously good event as the death of Osama Bin Laden, and roll out the news so ineptly, but Victor Davis Hanson explained it in the latest Ricochet podcast.

If this had happened during the Bush administration, the story would have been: we went in and shot him, he’s dead, ooo-rah. There would not have been any hand-wringing about whether this was the right thing to do. But the Obama administration is different. They are profoundly uncomfortable with extra-judicial killings. Their allies in the media attacked US special forces (which includes the team that took out Bin Laden) as the Dick Cheney’s assassination squad. In 2009, Eric Holder was even unable to answer the question of whether Bin Laden, if captured, would need to be read a Miranda warning.

As a result, a story that would have been good enough as-is for President Bush needed to be embellished for President Obama. Hence we were told he was taken in a firefight, he was resisting, using a human shield, etc. All of that was to provide an excuse for why we didn’t take him alive, read him his rights, and whisk him off to a civilian jail. All of that was to provide answers to questions no one outside the far-far-left would ask. Unfortunately for Obama, his administration has internalized the far-far-left.

Most of our wars follow a consistent pattern. In phase one we smash the enemy. In phase two we rebuild their country. Frank J notices that, in recent wars, phase one is fast, cheap, and carried out with strong popular support. Phase two, on the other hand, is slow, expensive, and plagued with hypocritical political attacks. Ergo, we should skip phase two:

So what’s the solution? Don’t get into any more wars? Well, President Obama has pretty much proven that’s not a possibility. I mean, he was the stereotypical liberal peacenik, denouncing President Bush as vehemently as possible as an awful, awful man for even contemplating getting us into a conflict with a country that was no direct threat to us, and even he couldn’t help but start another war in the Middle East (I mean, “kinetic military action in the Middle East,” wink wink). It’s like the dictators there exist just for the purpose of being villains. If you accurately portrayed them in a movie, critics would call them unrealistic for being too one-dimensionally evil and crazy. And when you see people that terrible and also so much weaker than us militarily — the U.S. fighting them outright on a battlefield would be like the NFL versus a peewee league team — no one has the willpower to not smack them around. Obviously avoiding wars in the Middle East is not a realistic option, and I’m sure we’ll get involved in plenty more in the future. . .

It’s useful to understand that no matter how much the left screamed about the Iraq War in those protests, 95% of that was partisan silliness and, at most, 4% actual deeply held belief (and possibly 1% brain parasite). That’s pretty evident when you consider how relatively quiet they are with Obama — pretending to care about civilians being killed today won’t help defeat Republicans, so why bother? That’s the big problem now — there’s no longer a separation of war and politics. And our staying in a country and trying to help people means the war goes on longer, which gives it more time to be exploited politically while our troops are in constant peril. Plus, everyone else grows tired of hearing about it. So I ask: Why should we even stay and help a country after we’ve bombed it?

I don’t think he’s serious, although it’s hard to say with Frank J. But either serious or no, it’s hard to fault his logic. This is what our contemporary politics urges us to do. The only reason we wouldn’t do it that way is because we are better people than them.

President Obama has pledged to veto a proposed bill that would maintain funding for our troops during a government shutdown. That doesn’t sound like smart politics to me.

The Senate was tricked into approving a non-binding resolution approving the no-fly zone in Libya.

It’s hard to know who is worse here: the people who would secretly slip such a measure into a unanimous consent resolution, or the senators who give their consent to such measures without reading them.

In President Obama’s latest reversal, (alleged) 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will be tried at Guantanamo by a military tribunal.

The Obama administration has told the House of Representatives that it will not abide by the War Powers Act:

The White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya even if Congress passed a resolution constraining the mission, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a classified briefing to House members Wednesday afternoon.

Clinton was responding to a question from Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) about the administration’s response to any effort by Congress to exercise its war powers, according to a senior Republican lawmaker who attended the briefing.

The answer surprised many in the room because Clinton plainly admitted the administration would ignore any and all attempts by Congress to shackle President Obama’s power as commander in chief to make military and wartime decisions. In doing so, he would follow a long line of Presidents who have ignored the act since its passage, deeming it an unconstitutional encroachment on executive power.

Note that the last sentence isn’t true. Yes, all presidents have taken the position that the War Powers Act violates the president’s power as commander-in-chief, but no, they have not ignored the act. The president and the Congress have always avoided a head-on collision over the Act. For example, the president has always either withdrawn the troops or sought (and received) Congressional approval before the deadline, even while maintaining he was not required to so.

That’s what is so remarkable about the administration’s declaration that it will not follow the Act. He is abandoning the tacit agreement between the two branches that Congress will not infringe on the president’s war-making power provided that the president follows Congress’s process.

Why is President Obama doing this? I think we’re seeing a continuation of a pattern we’ve seen since early in Obama’s presidential campaign. Barack Obama is unable to admit to making a mistake. He cannot bring himself to go back and get Congressional approval now, but he knows this war is unlikely to be done within 90 days. And thus he has set the two branches on a collision course.

Can you imagine the reaction had President Bush done this? The legacy media and the left (but I repeat myself) would have seen it as proof that we are on the fast path to fascism or something. But from Obama, we get little more than ho-hum.

(Via the Corner.)

Hillary Clinton, when asked why the administration didn’t get Congressional approval for its action in Libya, spouts a whole lot of nonsense:

“Well, we would welcome congressional support,” the Secretary said, “but I don’t think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama was speaking of several years ago.”

“I think that this had a limited timeframe, a very clearly defined mission which we are in the process of fulfilling,” Clinton said.

Point 1: Not unilateral? One of a number of countries? On the contrary, this action has our smallest international coalition in decades.

Point 2: Limited timeframe? Gates said, in the very same appearance, that he has no idea how long it will take. The British say it could take 30 years. (That’s nonsense, but it underscores that we have no idea how long it really will take.)

Point 3: Clearly defined mission? Not remotely.

Moreover, I don’t see how any of those things would absolve the administration of the need (morally, if not legally) to obtain Congressional approval anyway. Furthermore, Gates said, again in the very same appearance, that no vital national interest was at stake, which only heightens the need for the administration to get the people’s representatives on board.

(Via Hot Air.)

The anti-Qaddafi coalition is collapsing due to lack of leadership:

Deep divisions between allied forces currently bombing Libya worsened today as the German military announced it was pulling forces out of NATO over continued disagreement on who will lead the campaign. A German military spokesman said it was recalling two frigates and AWACS surveillance plane crews from the Mediterranean, after fears they would be drawn into the conflict if NATO takes over control from the U.S.

The infighting comes as a heated meeting of NATO ambassadors yesterday failed to resolve whether the 28-nation alliance should run the operation to enforce a U.N.-mandated no-fly zone, diplomats said.

. . .

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu suggested that air strikes launched after a meeting in Paris hosted by France on Saturday had gone beyond what had been sanctioned by a U.N. Security Council resolution.

‘There are U.N. decisions and these decisions clearly have a defined framework. A NATO operation which goes outside this framework cannot be legitimised,’ he told news channel CNN Turk.

Adding pressure to the already fractured alliance, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has also reiterated a warning that Italy would take back control of airbases it has authorised for use by allies for operations over Libya unless a NATO coordination structure was agreed.

. . .

In the U.S., Obama has made it clear he wants no part of any leadership role in Libya.

As the leader of the free world, leadership is our job. If Barack Obama doesn’t want it, he has no business being president of the United States.

President Obama’s old position on presidential war-making power (I noted this one a few days ago):

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

Vice-President Biden’s old position on presidential war-making power:

The President has no authority to use force in Iran unless Iran attacks the United States, or there is an imminent threat of such an attack. The Constitution is clear: except in response to an attack or the imminent threat of attack, only Congress may authorize war and the use of force.

and:

I want to make it clear. And I made it clear to the President that if he takes this nation to war in Iran without Congressional approval, I will make it my business to impeach him. That’s a fact. That is a fact.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s old position on presidential war-making power:

If the country is under truly imminent threat of attack, of course the President must take appropriate action to defend us. At the same time, the Constitution requires Congress to authorize war. I do not believe that the President can take military action – including any kind of strategic bombing – against Iran without congressional authorization.

We are now at war without any imminent threat of attack, and without any Congressional consultation, much less approval, which makes one thing completely clear: This bunch didn’t mean one word of what they said. They are completely full of it. As Joe Biden would say, that is a fact.

UPDATE: Biden is getting grief for his pledge to impeach the president if he takes us to war without Congressional approval. Plus, a second occasion on which he made the pledge.

Barack Obama on presidential war-making power, in 2007:

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

Barack Obama on presidential war-making power, in 2011:

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(Via Instapundit.)

POSTSCRIPT: It’s striking to look over Obama’s other preening answers to the 2007 questionnaire, and compare them to his actions as president. (For example: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.)

UPDATE: John Larson’s (D-CT) complaint seems fair:

They consulted the Arab League. They consulted the United Nations. They did not consult the United States Congress.

(Via Instapundit.)

It should be obvious to anyone with the slightest grasp of history that sanctions and threats aren’t going to stop a murderous dictator from defending his regime. Should be. But apparently it is not obvious to our president, according to ABC News:

On Tuesday, President Obama became clear that diplomatic efforts to stop the brutality of Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi weren’t working.

Presented with intelligence about the push of the Gadhafi regime to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, the president told his national security team “what we’re doing isn’t stopping him.”

Some in his administration, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been pushing for stronger action, but it wasn’t until Tuesday, administration sources tell ABC News, that the president became convinced sanctions and the threat of a no-fly zone wouldn’t be enough.

It took President Obama until last Tuesday to figure out what should have been obvious from day one?! I had assumed that Obama knew it probably wouldn’t work, but didn’t care. After all, this is a guy that wanted to pull out of Iraq even if it caused a genocide.

Now they tell us that he actually thought it would work? He actually thought that, for the first time ever, sanctions and threats would be enough to stop a murderous dictator from doing the things that murderous dictators do?

That kind of naivety is horrifying to contemplate.

(Via the Virginian.)

Remember the fierce moral urgency of change?

President Obama announced Monday that military trials will resume for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, saying he wants to “broaden our ability to bring terrorists to justice.”

The president issued an executive order outlining the changes Monday afternoon, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates rescinded a January 2009 ban against bringing new charges against terror suspects in the military commissions.

All that stuff about the horrible immorality of the military tribunals was merely political posturing? Who could have predicted such a thing?

Let’s review: Military tribunals are on. The Surge is retroactively a Democratic accomplishment. The troop withdrawal deadline in Afghanistan is kaput. Guantanamo is still open, with no sign of closing. The FISA Amendments Act (which approved warrantless wiretapping of foreign terrorists even when they call the United States) was passed with bipartisan support, with both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton managing to miss the vote (and with announced support from Obama). And the unitary executive theory has been embraced by Democrats.

In short, now that they are in a position where they have to take responsibility for the consequences of their policies in the war on terror, Democrats have embraced nearly every Bush-era policy they used to condemn. In other words, virtually everything they ever said to attack President Bush’s anti-terror policies was simple demagoguery.

Well this story sure brings back memories:

A leaked intelligence report suggests Iran will be awarded with exclusive access to Zimbabwe’s uranium in return for providing the country with fuel.

The report – compiled by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog – said Iran’s Foreign and Co-operative Ministers had visited Zimbabwe to strike a deal, and sent engineers to assess uranium deposits. . . Uranium ore, or yellow cake, can be converted to a uranium gas which is then processed into nuclear fuel or enriched to make nuclear weapons.

This should be read keeping in mind that we have offered to give Iran nuclear fuel rods in exchange for giving up its enriched uranium. If they are going elsewhere for uranium, it’s because they have something other than nuclear power in mind.

But of course, no reasonable person contests any longer that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. John Hinderaker juxtaposes this with another story, noting that a new National Intelligence Estimate has finally retracted the infamous 2007 NIE’s absurd conclusion that Iran had halted its nuclear-weapons efforts. It’s not clear what took them so long; the revelation in 2009 of Iran’s secret nuclear installation at Qom, which is too small for civilian use, torpedoed the notion.

In fact, all public evidence is that there was no good intelligence to support the NIE’s conclusion even at the time. Obviously I’m not privy to any classified intelligence, but those who were have written that they were shocked at the time that the NIE was written so strongly. They believe that the NIE was written to be leaked. That would fit into a concerted effort by some at the CIA to undermine Bush administration policy, particularly in regard to Iran.

POSTSCRIPT: Returning to the African yellowcake, it’s hard not to compare with the Joe Wilson fiasco. In light of that, it’s worthwhile to remember that the British investigation ultimately concluded that British intelligence had credible information from multiple sources to support its conclusion that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Niger. Furthermore, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence discovered that, despite what Joe Wilson told the press, his own findings actually buttressed the case that Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee report on the Fort Hood shootings, released yesterday, isn’t exactly shocking. We pretty much knew all this already. A better word would be horrifying. It is horrifying to see the sheer volume of unmistakable evidence that Nidal Hasan was (as the committee put it) a ticking time bomb, all of which was ignored because of political correctness.

The signs that were ignored included (starting on page 27):

In the last month of his residency, he chose to fulfill an academic requirement to make a scholarly presentation on psychiatric issues by giving an off­-topic lecture on violent Islamlist extremism. . . Hasan’s draft presentation consisted almost entirely of references to the Koran, without a single mention of a medical or psychiatric term. Hasan’s draft also presented extremist interpretations of the Koran as supporting grave physical harm and killing of non-Muslims. He even suggested that revenge might be a defense for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

and:

The most chilling feature of both the draft and final presentation was that Hasan stated that one of the risks of having Muslim-Americans in the military was the possibility of fratricidal murder of fellow servicemembers.

and:

Hasan advanced to a two-year fellowship at USUHS. . . Hasan confided to a colleague that he applied for the fellowship to avoid a combat deployment in a Muslim country; one of Hasan’s supervisors realized that he had the wrong motivation for applying and warned against accepting him.

and:

Hasan’s radicalization became unmistakable almost immediately into the fellowship, and it became clear that Hasan embraced violent Islamist extremist ideology to such an extent that he had lost a sense of the conduct expected of a military officer. Classmates . . . described him as having “fixed radical beliefs about fundamentalist Islam” that he shared “at every possible opportunity” or as having irrational beliefs.

and:

Less than a month into the fellowship, in August 2007, Hasan gave another off-topic presentation on a violent Islamist extremist subject instead of on a health care subject. This time, Hasan’ s presentation was so controversial that the instructor had to stop it after just two minutes when the class erupted in protest to Hasan’s views. The presentation was entitled, Is the War on Terror a War on Islam: An Islamic Perspective? Hasan’s proposal for this presentation promoted this troubling thesis: that U.S. military operations are a war against lslam rather than based on non-religious security considerations. Hasan’s presentation accorded with the narrative of violent Islamist extremism that the West is at war with Islam. Hasan’s paper was full of empathetic and supportive recitation of other violent Islamist extremist views, including defense of Osama bin Laden, slanted historical accounts blaming the United States for problems in the Middle East, and arguments that anger at the United States is justifiable.

and:

Several colleagues who witnessed the presentation described Hasan as justifying suicide bombers. These colleagues were so alarmed and offended by what they described as his “dysfunctional ideology” and “extremist views” that they interrupted the presentation to the point where the instructor chose to stop it. The instructor who stopped the presentation said that Hasan was sweating, quite nervous, and agitated after being confronted by the class.

and:

One classmate said that Hasan supported suicide bombings in another class. He told several classmates that his religion took precedence over the U.S. Constitution he swore to support and defend as a U.S. military officer. . . His statement was not part of an abstract discussion on the relationship between duty to religion and duty to country. . . Rather, Hasan’s statements about the primacy of religious law occurred as he was supporting a violent extremist interpretation of Islam and suggesting that this radical ideology justified opposition to U.S. policy and could lead to fratricide in the ranks. Perhaps for this reason, Hasan’s comments on his loyalty to religious law, which he made more than once, were so disturbing to his colleagues that they reported Hasan to superiors.

and:

Later in the fellowship, Hasan pursued another academic project in the ambit of violent Islamist extremism. . . It was the third project in the span of a year that Hasan dedicated to violent Islamist extremist views.

and:

Hasan proposed to give Muslim soldiers a survey which implicitly questioned their loyalty and was slanted to favor the violent Islamist extremist views he had previously expressed. In one question, Hasan wanted to ask whether the religion of Islam creates an expectation that Muslim soldiers would help enemies of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. And again, Hasan raised the ominous possibility of fratricide by Muslim-American servicemembers against fellow servicemembers as a central reason for his survey.

(Bold emphasis mine.)

Hasan’s radicalism was not even balanced by professional competence:

Hasan was a chronic poor performer during his residency and fellowship. The program directors overseeing him at Walter Reed and USUHS both ranked him in the bottom percent. He was placed on probation and remediation and often failed to meet basic job expectations such as showing up for work and being available when he was the physician on call.

Hasan wasn’t eligible for the fellowship he received (p. 29) and he didn’t even show up for work! Despite all of this, Hasan received positive evaluations:

Yet Hasan received evaluations that flatly misstated his actual performance. Hasan was described in the evaluations as a star officer, recommended for promotion to major, whose research on violent Islamist extremism would ass ist U.S. counterterrorism efforts. . . These evaluations bore no resemblance to the real Hasan, a barely competent psychiatrist whose radicalization toward violent Islamist extremism alarmed his colleagues and his superiors. The lone negative mark in the evaluations was the result of Hasan failing to take a physical training test. Other than that, there is not a single criticism or negative comment of Hasan in those evaluations.

In summary:

Thus, despite his overt displays of radicalization to violent Islamist extremism and his poor performance, Hasan was repeatedly advanced instead of being discharged from the military. . . The officers who kept Hasan in the military and moved him steadily along knew full well of his problematic behavior. As the officer who assigned Hasan to Fort Hood (and later decided to deploy Hasan to Afghanistan) admitted to an officer at Fort Hood, “you’re getting our worst.” On November 5, 2009, 12 servicemembers and one civilian employee of DoD lost their lives because Hasan was still in the U.S. military.

In addition to all this, Hasan made contacts with terrorists under investigation by the FBI (beginning on p. 35), but like the Army, the FBI took no action.

Glenn Reynolds remarks “yeah, everybody already figured this out, but thanks.” If only that were true. The report notes (p. 9) that the Army still hasn’t figured this out:

However, DoD — including Secretary Gates’s memoranda — still has not specifically named the threat represented by the Fort Hood attack as what it is: violent Islamist extremism. Instead, DoD’s approach subsumes this threat within workplace violence or undefined “violent extremism” more generally. DoD’s failure to identify the threat of violent Islamist extremism explicitly and directly conflicts with DoD’s history of directly confronting white supremacism and other threatening activity among servicemembers.

Despite 13 murders, political correctness is still in charge.

The Defense authorization bill passed this week bars the transfer of any prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to the United States.

It looks as though Congress is going to repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Should they? Well, I think DADT is a good policy and the military is better off with it in place, but I also think it doesn’t matter much in the scheme of things.

The basic problem is romantic relationships — real or imagined — between service members. Service members who form relationships with one another are prone to do stupid, dangerous things. When I was in training with the Army Reserve, I knew one male soldier who was infatuated with a female soldier. The relationship was entirely in his head, but that didn’t help the problem; it might have even made it worse.

Once we were on a field training exercise, and we were manning the perimeter in anticipation of an enemy attack. This soldier thought he heard his would-be paramour screaming for help. (He didn’t, but it doesn’t matter.) He decided he needed to abandon his post to go find her and save her. The rest of us on that part of the perimeter were, shall we say, strongly against his plan. But he went ahead, leaving his zone unprotected. Shortly thereafter the OPFOR penetrated our lines and “killed” us all.

My experience is not at all unusual. The lesson is that men and women should not mix on the front lines. As a practical matter, that means that women should not serve on the front lines, since an all-female combat unit doesn’t seem like a realistic option (outside of fiction).

The problem posed by homosexuals is simultaneously harder and easier. Heterosexual relationships can be prevented by segregating men and women, but that won’t work for homosexuals. (The only way to handle the problem by segregation, to place at most one homosexual in each unit, is obviously not a workable arrangement.) However, while gender cannot be kept secret, sexual orientation can. Doing so gives us a workable arrangement that allows homosexuals to serve in the military. Indeed, this is the essence of “don’t ask, don’t tell”.

That’s why DADT is a good policy. It allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military while limiting the problems caused by relations between them.

That said, I don’t see this as a particularly important issue. The lion’s share of the problems come from heterosexual relationships; the homosexual contribution to the problem is miniscule. And, unfortunately, the heterosexual problem is going to get much worse, since the government seems determined to mix genders throughout the armed forces, even in front-line units. Next to that, any damage done by repealing DADT is insignificant.

President Obama’s national security adviser Jim Jones is on his way out. Jones was eminently qualified for the job, but by most accounts he never had much influence. He is being replaced by Thomas Donilon, who is principally a political operative. (The guy was a lobbyist for Fannie Mae for six years, for crying out loud.)

Defense Secretary Gates said that Donilon would be a disaster in the job, although he started walking that remark back once Donilon was selected. Jim Jones’s criticisms of Donilon (as reported in Bob Woodward’s book) are sharper and more detailed. The RNC has a summary here.

Gates is reportedly on his way out too. I’m nervous.

How irresponsible was Bill Clinton?

Retired Army Gen. Hugh Shelton wrote in his memoirs that former President Clinton misplaced the nuclear launch card for a couple months, reportedly not the first time a president has dropped the ball for the nuclear “football.” . . .

Lt. Col. Robert Patterson, who was responsible for carrying around the “football” — or the briefcase that serves a mobile strategic defense system, made a similar accusation seven years ago in his book “Dereliction of Duty.”

At the time, Patterson described how Clinton misplaced the card for months, confessing the loss after being asked to provide the card so it could be replaced with an updated code.

Despite an extension of over two weeks, New York State is not complying with the military voting act:

More than one week after its extended deadline, New York still hasn’t mailed out absentee ballots to all its 320,000 military servicemen and women and overseas voters, in clear violation of the MOVE Act, FoxNews.com has learned.

New York’s statewide races do not appear to be competitive, but there are House races upstate in which this could make a difference.

Now that the war in Iraq is officially over (as a practical matter it’s been over for two years) Randall Hoven summarizes its financial cost:

All told, the war in Iraq cost $709 billion, including foreign aid and training of local forces. That’s according to the Congressional Budget Office (p. 15). If you include the rest of the Global War on Terror (mostly Afghanistan), it brings the total to $1.1 trillion through 2010. That’s a lot of money to be sure, but despite what some on the left have said, it’s nothing compared to our gaping fiscal hole.

POSTSCRIPT: In fact, it’s worth recalling that for the last few years we’ve been spending more on stimulus boondoggles than on the war:

Max Boot looks at the troubling history of post-war military contractions.

Our government is throwing trillions of new spending on every boondoggle imaginable, financed by tax hikes and monumental deficits, but they are looking to cut spending in the one area that really is a federal responsibility: defense.

I guess that means the world must be getting safer, right?

(Via the Corner.)

The Pentagon is planning for the possibility that Congress will fail to fund the war:

The Pentagon is “seriously planning” for the possibility that Congress will not pass emergency war funding before lawmakers head to the August recess, said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell.

The Pentagon is developing an “emergency plan” to deal with the lack of supplemental funds for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Morrell said at a press briefing Wednesday. Morrell did not disclose any details of the plan, because Defense Secretary Robert Gates has yet to consider the options under that plan.

“Needless to say, all of this is extraordinarily disruptive to the department,” Morrell said. “But we’ve had some practice at this over the last few years. We’re sadly getting used to this fire drill.” . . .

While Congress was late in passing supplementals in the past, this year’s situation is much more difficult because most Pentagon accounts are on their “last legs” toward the end of the fiscal year.

Democrats are too busy usurping power for Congress to carry out its basic functions.

Six Algerians would rather stay at Guantanamo Bay than return to Algeria.

Barney Frank wants to gut the military:

A panel commissioned by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is recommending nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget during the next 10 years.

The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a commission of scholars from a broad ideological spectrum appointed by Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, laid out actions the government could take that could save as much as $960 billion between 2011 and 2020.

Measures presented by the task force include making significant reductions to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which has strong support from Defense Secretary Robert Gates; delaying the procurement of a new midair refueling tanker the Air Force has identified as one of its top acquisition priorities; and reducing the Navy’s fleet to 230 ships instead of the 313 eyed by the service.

Remember that we cancelled the F-22 because President Obama’s top brass decided that the F-35 could carry the load. We can’t now cancel the F-35 as well. Frank’s task force also wants to cancel the V-22 Osprey (now that it’s finally working), scrap European missile defense, and slash our nuclear deterrent (cut warheads by a third and scrap bombers entirely). And it’s not just technology, they want to slash the human side as well: they want to “reform” military pay and health care and cut recruitment.

Is Frank under the impression that the world has been getting safer? Still, kudos to him for having the chutzpah to appoint his very own panel and not even pretend to make it bipartisan.

POSTSCRIPT: You want to save $1 trillion over ten years without endangering our national security? I’ve got an idea.

(Via Innocent Bystanders.)