Tuesday, January 19, 2010
As we continue to look at all of the massive failures of the Obama regime in the aftermath of the Christmas Day attacks over American airspace, I keep going back to a simple Facebook note from Sarah Palin:
It’s War, not a Crime Spree
President Obama’s meeting with his top national security advisers does nothing to change the fact that his fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed. We are at war with radical Islamic extremists and treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation’s security. That’s what happened in the 1990s and we saw the result on September 11, 2001. This is a war on terror not an "overseas contingency operation." Acts of terrorism are just that, not "man caused disasters." The system did not work. Abdulmutallab was a child of privilege radicalized and trained by organized jihadists, not an "isolated extremist" who traveled to a land of "crushing poverty." He is an enemy of the United States, not just another criminal defendant.
It simply makes no sense to treat an al Qaeda-trained operative willing to die in the course of massacring hundreds of people as a common criminal. Reports indicate that Abdulmutallab stated there were many more like him in Yemen but that he stopped talking once he was read his Miranda rights. President Obama’s advisers lamely claim Abdulmutallab might be willing to agree to a plea bargain – pretty doubtful you can cut a deal with a suicide bomber. John Brennan, the President’s top counterterrorism adviser, bizarrely claimed "there are no downsides or upsides" to treating terrorists as enemy combatants. That is absurd. There is a very serious downside to treating them as criminals: terrorists invoke their "right" to remain silent and stop talking. Terrorists don’t tell us where they were trained, what they were trained in, who they were trained by, and who they were trained with. Giving foreign-born, foreign-trained terrorists the right to remain silent does nothing to keep Americans safe from terrorist threats. It only gives our enemies access to courtrooms where they can publicly grandstand, and to defense attorneys who can manipulate the legal process to gain access to classified information.
President Obama was right to change his policy and decide to send no more detainees to Yemen where they can be free to rejoin their war on America. Now he must back off his reckless plan to close Guantanamo, begin treating terrorists as wartime enemies not suspects alleged to have committed crimes, and recognize that the real nature of the terrorist threat requires a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor.
- Sarah Palin
Obviously, it’s those final words, the fact that Obama needs to "....recognize that the real nature of the terrorist threat requires a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor" are what stand out. This caused us to further discuss this in a piece called: President Obama To Sarah Palin: Where You Lead I Will Follow!
Not long after, Liz Cheney’s group Keep America Safe released this video that highlights just how dismal it all truly is for those of us who would actually like a President that cared about keeping us safe.
Pretty powerful statement. Remember how the democrat/communists and the media (yes, I know, same thing) were caterwauling because it took President George Bush a whole seven, eight minutes to respond to the attacks on September11, 2001?
If you remember, President Bush was in Florida reading a book to a group of school children when he was told. Now rather than run out, hair on fire in a panic, the President chose to calmly finish the last pages of the children’s book, then calmly excuse himself to handle things.
Obviously that was the right thing to do. Over the next few hours there would be plenty of fear, anger, and confusion. It would have been irresponsible on his part to add to it.
But to this day, the moonbats on the left whine about those seven or eight minutes.
Here we have a president that waited 97 hours before addressing what was the third high profile terrorist attack on American soil since taking office!
No way in hell was this guy about to have his vacation interrupted.
We’ve seen a radical Muslim terrorist kill a soldier at an Arkansas recruiting center, something the Obama friendly media rushed to cover up. Pamela Geller has the story though at her popular Atlas Shrugs website, here.
And of course, we’ve had Hassan, who was obviously an al Qaeda "sleeper" who killed our troops in the attacks at Ft Hood, Texas...the largest armored military base in the world. Obama and friends have rushed to quickly shove that story out of sight and out of mind.
Now we have the Eunuchbomber who was only a failed fuse away from not only killing everyone aboard the jetliner, but who knows how many hundreds, or thousands on the ground as this thing crashed into the densely populated area below.
Of course, Obama’s crack team were all on the job assuring us that "the system worked!" It would be great sketch comedy if this wasn’t serious business.
To say the system failed would be quite possibly the understatement of a lifetime. I mean the terrorists’s own father called and told us his son had been radicalized by the Religion of Piece!
This of course got me to reflecting on what a truly horrible, inept, and maybe indifferent Commander-In-Chief Obama is. I looked back at a couple of articles I wrote earlier as an example of the man’s unfitness for duty.
The first one involves the heralded and much celebrated Alaska Defense Force. This deal was so petty, that if I didn’t know better, I’d say this was a direct shot by Obama at Sarah Palin.
For those that don’t know, the Alaska Defense Force is a federally recognized militia, and part of Homeland Security’s planning. In practice, this is a voluntary militia that serves as reserve police
force in the state of Alaska, as well as a reserve military unit. They receive full military training, and are under the direct command and control of the Governor of Alaska.
This issue in question involves living ADF members who fought the Japanese in WWII. Alaska was invaded by the Japanese in WWII, and brave members of the ADF held them at bay. These brave men were mostly Native Alaskans, and they fought without receiving any paid compensation whatsoever.
For years Alaskans had fought to, at the very least, get these brave men some retirement money from the government. They finally succeeded.
Early in the year, Barack Obama put a halt to this.
As the McClatchy New Service reported at the time:
WASHINGTON -- In a strongly worded message to Congress outlining its priorities for a military spending bill, the Obama administration today said it disapproved of including money for pensions for 26 elderly members of the World War II-era Alaska Territorial Guard.
The Guardsmen are among those assigned to protect Alaska from the Japanese during World War II.
The Army decided this year to no longer count service in the Guard in calculating the military's 20-year minimum for retirement pay, although it still counts for military benefits. As a result, their pensions were decreased in January.
An estimated 300 members are still living from the original 6,600-member unit formed in 1942 to protect Alaska, then a territory, from attack. The 26 men have enough other military service to reach the 20-year minimum for retirement pay but would lose it if the Territorial Guard service doesn't count.
A Senate military spending bill up for a vote in the Senate allows the former Guard members count their service as part of active military duty, and it reinstates the payments.
State lawmakers passed a bill earlier this year to fill the pay gap until Congress made a permanent fix, but the White House said Friday it didn't think it was "appropriate to establish a precedent of treating service performed by a state employee as active duty for purposes of the computation of retired pay."
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who along with Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, sponsored the fix, called the administration move "deeply disappointing, bordering on insensitive." The legislation honors 26 elderly Native people who are the few remaining survivors of a military unit that served the country with valor, Murkowski said.
"The administration's justification, which is that the legislation will set the precedent of treating service as a state employee as federal service, defies logic and history," she said in a statement. "Sixty-two years after the Territorial Guard was disbanded, the Obama administration minimizes the contribution of this gallant unit to America's success in World War II by calling its service 'state service.' "
At the time, I added this to our reporting: "For her part, Governor Sarah Palin, in her role as Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska Defense Force, a modern day equivalent to the Territorial Guard, signed SB 89 which funded, these pensions until 2010."
This was Sarah doing what a Commander-in-Chief does, taking care of her troops.
You can read more background on the ADF, their WWII history, as well as the history of the efforts to get these brave Alaskans honored and paid here.
For Sarah, as well as both Alaska Senators and the one Congressman from Alaska all teamed up to fight this. We learned just before Christmas that the efforts of all had paid off, and they had defeated Obama’s attempts to deny these brave men their due.
Wasilla’s Tracey Porreca has this covered well from her blog Finding Myself In Alaska:
Alaska Territorial Guard Wins!
While I am not pleased with some of the enormous and even reckless spending our government seems to be determined to push forward, I received via Facebook and Rep. Don Young's site notification that H.R. 3326 has passed. The price tag for this is $636 billion, which is nothing to laugh at, but it secures several things in the area of defense, one of which is the status of the remaining Alaska Territorial Guard members.
As you may remember and have read in previous blog posts on this site (here and here)the Alaska Territorial Guard's status has been in question and those who had received retirement benefits in the past were at risk for no longer receiving them. While still in office, Gov. Sarah Palin assured this group the State of Alaska would continue their benefits until the issue was resolved. With today's vote, according to Rep. Young's site, H.R. 3326 "Clarifies the military status of World War II Alaska Territorial Guardsmen as active service for the purposes of retirement."
This is a very small portion of this bill and I for one am glad that those involved included language in this legislation that protects the benefits so deserved of these brave men
Here is the letter that Sarah wrote Obama concerning this:
Dear Mr. President:
It was with great concern that I learned of the recent decision by the Department of Defense to rescind the program that currently provides retirement payments to veterans of Alaska's Territorial Guard (ATG). This unfortunate decision was made without any notice to those affected and will cost a group of elderly Alaska veterans a significant portion of their retirement income at a time when the cost of living, particularly in rural Alaska, is substantially higher than in the rest of the United States.
In 2004, Congress fully vetted this issue and decided that service in the ATG was the same as military service. This is the right and proper way to honor these brave individuals who answered the call of duty during times of great national peril.
Prior to World War II, Alaska's territorial Governor was authorized by Congress to organize a two-branch military response organization - the organized National Guard, and the ATG, which would mobilize to help defend Alaskans in the event of an invasion. An estimated 6,600 men and women, mostly Alaska Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts, responded to that calL Instead of hunting, trapping and fishing, they patrolled rural Alaska and served as the eyes and ears of the Army for more than five years without pay and benefits.
It took our nation almost 60 years to have these defenders of our territory honored for their time in the ATG, and for their service to be counted the same as federal military service. While most died waiting for their recognition, some have survived to receive their honorable discharge from the United States Army.
Now they are being told, again, that their ATG service is not worthy of federal recognition, and that is not right.
These people are our heroes.
The stellar service of these mostly rural, mostly Native, soldiers is to Alaska today what the service of the militia at Lexington and Concord was to New England.
I urge you to remember all that these valiant members of the ATG sacrificed while defending this country and ask that you reconsider this decision and immediately reinstate the retirement benefits that Congress already recognized in 2004 and that these heroes have certainly earned.
Thank you for considering my views.
Sincerely,
Sarah Palin
This was Sarah Palin again doing what a Commander-in-Chief does, taking care of her troops!
In another piece, that just happened to involve Alaska, as Obama stopped there on his way to kick off his "Bow to the World’s Other Leaders Tour"in Asia, to refuel Air Force One. This time Obama refused to be filmed with an Air Force F-22 Raptor, the pride of Elmendorf AFB.
This was a real slap in the face to the brave men and women who serve there, and around the world. Of course, this was all political because Obama was one of the ones behind the efforts to kill off the F-22.
We wrote about this in a piece called Pathetic: Barack Obama Refused To Be Photographed With F-22 Fighter.
Obviously, Obama is not all that fond of the military. Of course, he’s not wild about the CIA either. I still haven’t heard him address the attack on one of our key CIA stations, or the deaths of those brave agents.
As we are talking Commanders-in-Chief, I thought it would be nice to offer some contrast. We wrote a piece back in June, The ‘Cuda Goes to Kosovo that talks about her trip to visit her troops.
By now we have all witnessed how Obama acts around the troops, and it’s rather obvious how he feels about them, and well...the American people...since he obviously isn’t all that into the whole "national security thing" especially if it is going to cut into his Hawaiian vacation time! Got get that golfing in, no matter what!
By contrast, here is some raw video of Sarah in Kosovo:
Quite a contrast.
Here’s Maj General Craig E Campbell discussing Sarah’s role as Commander-in-Chief with Greta back in 2008:
We wrote another story about Sarah welcoming home her son Track and the rest of his Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Iraq this past Fall. Sarah was honored as the Brigade’s "senior mom." You can read about it all here.
As Commander-in-Chief, Sarah Palin attended every deployment ceremony and was at the airport to great every returning group of soldiers, personally thanking them for their service and sacrifice to this great nation.
One has to ask, looking at how these two have conducted themselves as Commanders-in-Chief, looking at their actual record and performance, just who would you want to be your Commander-in-Chief?
While you think about that, take a peak at this inspiring video produced by our old friend, The Mighty Serf:
Sarah's Web Brigade
