Our Interesting Times

There is a Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times". Previous US administrations for generations sought to stop the spread of Communism in Latin America, fought Castro's influence, and turned back expansion of the Soviet sphere, even going so far as a shooting war in Grenada. Democrat presidents stood stalwart against the Reds with JFK and LBJ countering attempted insurgencies throughout their time in office. Only when Carter descended on the office, did the chimera of human rights begin to trump our commitment to anti-Communist allies. The United States has just shepherded back into office in Honduras Manuel Zelaya, a Chavista, a Marxist, and a wannabe president for life, against the wishes not of a military junta or power-grab coup, but over the objections of both the courts and legislature in Honduras who saw Zelaya stealing freedom and destroying the institutions of liberty to create his one-man rule. Zelaya was not some champion of the people as he has been portrayed in international old-line media, deposed in a coup of those trying to preserve their own entrenched power, but a dictator in the making- widely despised by Honduras' productive and educated class and manipulating the poor and illiterate to use as a lever to insert himself into Castro-type tyrannical rule. What Obama and the US State Department have facilitated is ultimately against the interests of democracy and the vast majority of the people of Honduras. As America foists an autocrat down Honduras' throat, our Secretary of State Hillary "Rotten" Clinton, explains to Pakistanis who have died in droves in suicide bombings and terror outrages, that Pakistan is not doing enough to fight terror (particularly al Qaeda) and that the Pakistanis must accept random death from the air from US unmanned Predator drone missile strikes which supposedly only surgically remove known terrorists. This lecture to beleaguered Pakistan comes at a time when our President Obama can not even make a decision on strategy, tactics, disposition of forces, and even if we will stay in the fight in what Obama himself called a "war of necessity" in neighboring Afghanistan. What Hillary is doing is telling people who live in the slums how to lead their lives, before she returns to her well-guarded mansion. Hillary does not have to live in that neighborhood, she sleeps in relative peace, comfort, and prosperity, while the Pakistanis she was lecturing do not know if on their next trip to market, they will face a Jihadi with a suicide bomb pack. How dare Clinton talk down to the people who have everything to lose because they took our side in the war on terror while her boss dithers on Afghanistan. Indecision is in and of itself a decision not to commit the forces necessary to win and at best, invites a stalemated war of attrition. Until Truman pulled the rug from MacArthur in the Korean Conflict, America won her wars. Our leaders had up to that point listened to their field commanders (with the notable exception of Lincoln, who juggled generals until he found U. S. Grant). In Vietnam, LBJ and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara micromanaged our tactics from Washington, imposed relatively restrictive rules of engagement, particularly on our air forces, and tried to dictate outcomes with limited information from thousands of miles away. Americans may finesse the end of our war in Southeast Asia by saying the North Vietnamese did not live up to their treaty obligations and that we did not lose the war- the South Vietnamese lost. Ultimately, we did not win that war and much of Southeast Asia fell to the carnage of Communism. Obama is unnecessarily repeating our mistakes from 1960s today in our war of necessity. We are living an old Chinese curse.