We have been discussing the trillions of dollars spent on Iraq and Afghanistan while we cut environmental, scientific, and educational programs on the state and federal levels. Now, we are only a couple of weeks into the newest war against Islamic State but we have already spent an estimated $1.1 billion. Of course, President Obama has stated that he does not require any congressional approval for the war, which has been described by his Administration as having an indefinite duration. In the meantime, our latest war has been a bonanza for weapons manufacturers, including a $251 million deal to buy more Tomahawks from Raytheon Co after we unloaded on the Islamic State.
While it has certainly helped domestically as a political matter, the air campaign does not appear to have made much a difference as a military matter. The Islamic State has continued to gain ground against opposing forces. In the meantime, we are using enormously expensive missiles like the Tomahawk which cost more than $1.5 million each. We unloaded almost 50 Tomahawks and other missiles at a cost of $62 million alone. The sight of such missiles taking out our own Humvees and relatively small targets leaves many scratching their heads about the logic of the campaign.
The cost currently is estimated at about $10 million a day. Of course, my children are going to classes with 35-40 kids in a class because Fairfax cannot hire more teachers and our bridges are increasingly being found to be dangerous for lack of repairs. However, like a MasterCard commercial, the political value of news images of buildings or Humvees exploding is priceless during an election year.
Source: Yahoo
Olly,
My point regarding Article II, PL 104-132, PL 107-40, UNSCR 2170, PL 107-243, State’s FTO and SDGT designation for ISIS, PDD/NSC-39, and 3-President-deep counter-terror precedent merely disposes the legal issue of the Constitutional authority for Obama’s counter-terror anti-ISIS strikes in the scope of Professor Turley’s contention they constitute a “circumvention of the Constitution”.
My point does not dispose of the practical, policy, and political concerns about Obama’s leadership.
Hitler tried to rebuild the German Empire. He wanted to reunite the lands lost in the east after the disgrace piled on by the likes of Wilson. As it went on, it just got more creepy. Kind of like the NSA. Like I said, the French, Dutch, Belgians, and not so much GB–since they sort of knew, but stood by and let it happen–all contributed to the creation of a monster like Hitler. Big difference between the scientific and industrial knowledge of WW II Germany, and the camel-riding folks who keep coming across tons of American weapons in the desert for heaven’s sake. Nick has spent too much time in the John McCain video game.
All resources are limited and should always be used wisely. Time and energy wasted can never be retrieved.
Paul,
Nothing that you report surprises me.
Olly, You seem to forget I know the cast of characters. For some, I would have taken the time. I have read more books about Churchill than ANY other historical figure, believing him to be the greatest leader in modern history. But, I know the cast and don’t abide wasting time and energy on folks unworthy of my knowledge.
I count myself among The Great & Growing List. It is a very small honor. Most anyone can get on the list. It now numbers 4,386. Correct me if I’ve got the number wrong, Nick.
(Nick can be counted on for the details. He has Archives, too.)
Olly, ROFLMAO! See what I was saying about publicly educated people. Of course, your determination to have your child receive a real education tells me I’m preachin’ to the choir w/ you.
Docmadison,
So you support intransigence? Churchill was wrong in WWI and is not allowed to learn from that experience to become a great leader? Perhaps Nick would have been better to demonstrate how Churchill developed into a great leader from WWI to WWII.
Probably not a good idea to use someone’s hair and eye color to bolster one’s argument. That is very bad form.
New aliases, old beefs.
How did this thread turn south so quickly?
Olly, When someone makes my “Ignore List” they will try all type of tactics to get attention. I liken it to an attention starved child, standing on the edge of the pool, yelling “Look @ me. look @ me” as they prepare to jump into the pool. But, my self discipline is what helped me build a successful career and business. Poor kids, they apparently never got the attention they needed.
Nick didn’t say Churchill was a Dick. He did imply that the 1916 Churchill was not the same Churchill that Nick wants us to remember. Nick prefers a simpler history – history that can be written in one sentence One that is either black or white. No greys. It complicates things.
Chinamen is plural and speaks to a wide swath of people. But more importantly, Eric pointed out yesterday on another article comment that our Congress has authorized the use of military force against terrorists and it would include these terrorists. The War Declaration Clause, Sintur Klaus, is a misnomer here. It is the other clause, so often cited by me here. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Clause on pirates and those who violate Laws of Nations. Nuff said.
Northern Italians are blond haired and blue eyed. Did Mussolini favor them over the swarthy Italians?
Calling someone a Chinaman is also uncivil.
Olly, I’m seeing new aliases on several threads today. That never bodes well. But, I think ignorance of Hitler’s plan for an Aryan Race of BLONDE HAIRED and blue eyed people may have been skipped over in some of the public education history classes folks here attended? They were studying why we shouldn’t have Columbus Day or the Occupy Movement instead.
I’m sure that’s what Paulette meant because one would have to be a complete moron to take your comments otherwise.
Paul C. Schulte: “Eric – I would posit that Obama has done everything in his power to make sure we are no longer the leader of the free world.”
That’s what makes Obama’s foreign policy so insidious: America is still the leader of the free world.
Obama hasn’t changed our longstanding liberal foreign policy orientation. Instead, Obama’s course deviation from Bush’s paradigmatic liberal leadership has lost the strong-horse position we had hard-earned by the close of the Bush administration. Obama has rendered the US a harmfully incompetent liberal leader.
slohrss29 advocates that we stop leading and replace our liberal foreign policy orientation with ‘America First Committee’ Paulian isolationism. That’s not my preference, but comparatively, I prefer that option to what Obama has done: set up America to lose to our competitors and fail as leader of the free world.
The current anti-ISIS campaign is a case in point. The US has claimed the familiar liberal leadership role, but Obama has set parameters so that we’re acting ineffectively and leading as a weak horse.
In that regard, people like Paul (at October 9, 2014 at 9:21 am) who assert that fighting terrorists has only “created more terrorists” are partially correct. The part they overlook, however, is critical. Terrorist recruiting is moved by the strong-horse/weak-horse perception. As such, terrorists want the fight, but terrorist recruiting goes up contingent on the perception they are the strong horse in the fight. By the same token, their recruiting is cut down where they are demonstrated in competition to be the weak horse, such as happened with the COIN “Surge” with Iraq.
The terrorists’ strong-horse/weak-horse cornerstone formula is common knowledge in the foreign policy field. It’s basic stuff with old roots as prevalent in Marxist revolutionary dogma as in Qutbist Islamist dogma. That common knowledge is why folks like President Carter and former Obama officials like Gates, Clinton, and Panetta are coming down so hard on Obama: the situation was known, the alternatives predicted, and the current crisis reasonably could and should have been prevented.
With the COIN “Surge”, President Bush had set up President Obama to succeed as the strong horse. To secure his place in history as a winning leader of the free world, Obama only needed to carry forward the Bush Freedom Agenda in the Arab Spring and maintain course with Iraq.
Most of all, Iraq was the key. If he had done nothing else right, the one thing Obama absolutely needed to get right was simply staying the course – like Eisenhower followed Truman – with our peace operations that were building a “strong strategic partnership” (State Dept) with an Iraq that was then “poised to play a key role in the region if it continues its peaceful progress” (Obama).
Instead, Obama opted to ‘lead from behind’ in the Arab Spring – including the disaster of causing regime change in Libya while eschewing peace operations – and worst of all, sacrificing the pivotal peace with Iraq in order to “end the war”.
Obama inherited the leadership of the free world as the strong horse yet has acted to make American leadership the weak horse.
Olly, Indeed. And, I was a House Dick @ The Drake Hotel in Chicago. Very interesting job.