The Freedom Fighter's Journal: "When I Left, We Were Winning"

TIA Daily • October 21, 2010

The US military is perfectly capable of winning the war in Afghanistan, if our politicians can keep from messing it up.

Editor's Note: My latest local radio interview on Rob Schilling's show is now up on the web, and I've just set up a new one on KSFO in San Francisco at 6:15 AM Pacific Time on Monday, October 25.
Finally, I'll be speaking at a National Issues Forum hosted by the Jefferson Area Tea Party in Charlottesville next Friday. The way our local Tea Party is organized, we are legally barred from endorsing or campaigning against candidates, but we are allowed to talk about the issues—and if we happen to do so four days before the election, so be it.
Readers on TIA Daily's free list will also notice that a few items in today's edition are marked as being for subscribers only. (Subscribers get a note indicating that the content is for subscribers only—and then they get to read the whole thing.) This is another little reminder that I'll be doing a lot more of that after the election—so sign up now at www.TIADaily.com/subscribe to avoid being cut off. On November 3, the action doesn't end—it's just beginning. So don't miss out.—RWT

Top News Stories

Commentary by Robert Tracinski

1. "We Broke Their Neck"

Last week I linked to a London Times article describing the success of the NATO offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar. Now the New York Times confirms it: using a coordinated counter-insurgency strategy and the same kind of relentless assault that was such a success in the Sunni Triangle in Iraq, we have driven the Taliban out of their heartland in Southern Afghanistan.

Jack Wakeland zeroed in on the part in this story about a hyper-accurate new missile system that apparently has the Taliban awestruck by its ability to land on top of their heads with no notice. He writes: "Have you taken a look at the improved MLRS? You can put 200 pounds of high explosive within a dozen feet of anything out to 45 miles. I sure wouldn't want one of those things landing on my house."

"The new 'unitary warhead' was designed to replace the cluster munitions of the M26, M30, and M39 and MGM-140 rockets. The idea is that we can hit one house in a village, killing virtually all inside, while wounding and killing very few people in neighboring structures."

All of this shows that the US military—the best-trained, best-equipped fighting force in history—is perfectly capable of winning the war in Afghanistan, if our politicians can keep from messing it up.

For news about the politicians messing it up, see item #2 below.

"Coalition Forces Routing Taliban in Key Afghan Region," Carlotta Gall, New York Times, October 20

American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years, NATO commanders, local Afghan officials and residents of the region said....
Western and Afghan civilian officials are more outspoken, saying that heavy losses for the Taliban have sapped the momentum the insurgency had in the area. Unlike the Marja operation, they say, the one in Kandahar is a comprehensive civil and military effort that is changing the public mood as well as improving security....
The civilian and military effort in Kandahar has been 18 months in the planning. Only after thousands of extra troops were in place at the end of August—part of the surge of 30,000 troops President Obama ordered last year—did the operations finally begin producing results. The combined strength of 12,000 American and NATO troops and some 7,000 Afghan security forces in the province has meant that for the first time they are able to mount operations simultaneously in all of the most critical areas of the province....
Military and civilian officials say there are also signs of a crisis in command as Taliban leaders have struggled to maintain logistics and supply routes, suicide bombers have failed to turn up for attacks, and even senior commanders were showing reluctance to follow orders from their leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, to go in to fight the NATO onslaught in Panjwai....
[R]esidents say that the Taliban have been stunned by fast-paced raids on their leaders and bases. In particular they talk with awe of a powerful new rocket that has been fired from the Kandahar air base into Panjwai and other areas for the last two or three weeks, hitting Taliban compounds with remarkable accuracy....
[T]he Afghan police and officials say the Taliban have been severely weakened. "We broke their neck," said Hajji Niaz Muhammad, the police chief in the Arghandab District. "There is no doubt they are very weak in this area now."

2. "When I Left, We Were Winning" (subscriber-only content)

There's an old bumper sticker that used to be popular with Vietnam veterans: "When I Left, We Were Winning." And it's true. Vietnam is another war that was won by the soldiers and then lost by the politicians.

Are we going to do the same thing this time around?

(This item is for paid subscribers only. To read the rest, subscribe to TIA Daily at www.TIADaily.com/subscribe.)

3. Mortgagegate

I recently mentioned the story behind the story about the recent push for a moratorium on foreclosures. The campaign for "affordable housing" —which actually meant housing that people couldn't afford—led to a disastrous system for creating and storing the legal paperwork on mortgages, which no one noticed until there was a flood of foreclosures and all of the problems with the paperwork came to light.

Thanks to TIA Daily reader Greg Czora for recommending this link.

"What You Don't Know about "Mortgagegate" Could Crush the US Banking System," Shah Gilani, Money Morning, October 15

The breadth and depth of this newest mortgage crisis is so dangerous that the US Federal Reserve last month pre-announced another potential round of quantitative easing (pundits are calling it "QE2") to address "potential negative shocks."
In fact, the fallout potential is so numbing and the actions that birthed it so scandalous that commentators have given the crisis the Watergate-esque title of "Mortgagegate."...
Here's what's wrong. When a homeowner buys a property with a mortgage, the property title lists them as the rightful owner and their lender as the mortgage-holder. The named lender possesses an encumbrance on the title. If the homeowner doesn't pay his or her mortgage, the lender can rightfully repossess the property and sell it.
In order to take the home back, the lender must first foreclose on the property. The problem begins with the fact that lenders, in order to make trading mortgages between themselves easier so they can be packaged into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) pools and sold to investors, assign their rights on titles to a "nominee."...
But here's what's been uncovered: The people who are signing the necessary documents on behalf of the lenders aren't even reviewing documents—which means there's absolutely no way they followed the prescribed procedures. It turns out that signers are basically "rubber-stamping" legal documents....
Here's a key question: If these foreclosures aren't being legally executed, are homeowners being kicked out illegally?
Is everyone going to sue everyone? What will a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures do to the inventory and prices of unsold homes?
The bottom line for investors is that until all these issues are cleaned up (which might take years, or even decades)—or until there's perhaps some sort of legislative clarity that eases uncertainty—investors face the threat of a severe "correction" in any or all of the markets that have risen on the hope that the long-hoped-for US recovery is finally taking hold.

4. State-Owned Media

For a long time, I have thought that the very concept of "public television" and "public radio" is an abomination and an assault on the First Amendment. There is no place in the American system for state-owned media. Now we can see very public confirmation for why this is true.

On Thursday, National Public Radio fired Juan Williams on charges that are pretty vague but basically amount to the fact that they don't approve of Williams appearing as a commentator on Fox News Channel—despite the fact that Williams shows up there to give a moderate liberal's arguments.

What's worse personally, for Williams, is that his claim to fame is his writings about the Civil Rights Movement—but NPR accused him of being a bigot. What's worse for the country as a whole is that they accused him of being a bigot for recognizing that the terrorists who killed Americans on September 11 were Muslims—a fact that has apparently become politically incorrect.

Meanwhile, it's OK for NPR commentators to wish death on conservatives.

Williams has written a blistering op-ed denouncing the conformity and group-think at NPR.

Well, now that I no longer work for NPR let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas, or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air). This is evidence of one-party rule and one-sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech, and writing.

This had led to a chorus on the right demanding that NPR be stripped of its government funding. This comes from Newt Gingrich—which is ironic, because he backed off from eliminating NPR's funding back when he had the chance in 1995— from Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, and now from soon-to-be Speaker of the House John Boehner, who told National Review Online:

We need to face facts—our government is broke. Washington is borrowing 37 cents of every dollar it spends from our kids and grandkids. Given that, I think it's reasonable to ask why Congress is spending taxpayers' money to support a left-wing radio network—and in the wake of Juan Williams' firing, it's clearer than ever that's what NPR is.

Most amusing is the way Fox News has rushed to benefit from the situation, offering Williams a lucrative new contract and pointedly noting which network is really "fair and balanced."

"NPR's Intolerant Firing of Juan Williams," Michael Barone, Washington Examiner, October 21

By now you have heard the astonishing and dismaying news that NPR has fired Juan Williams for making the following comment on the O'Reilly program on Fox News Channel.
"I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."...
Of course neither statement is bigoted.... We're all aware that most identifiable Muslims on planes, like most young black men on city streets, are peaceful and unmenacing. But we also know who hurled those planes into buildings on September 11....
Reading between the lines of Juan's statement and those of NPR officials, it's apparent that NPR was moved to fire Juan because he irritates so many people in its audience. An interesting contrast:...many NPR listeners apparently could not stomach that Williams also appeared on Fox News. But it doesn't seem that any perceptible number of Fox News viewers had any complaints that Williams also worked for NPR. The Fox audience seems to be more tolerant of diversity than the NPR audience.

5. "'Multikulti' Is Dead"

The odd thing about the past few years is that, while the US was moving left, Europe was apparently moving right. Thus, the Europeans have been rejecting Keynesian "stimulus" economics, and now German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come out against "multiculturalism" and in favor of the cultural assimilation of immigrants.

"Merkel Says German Multicultural Society Has Failed," Stephen Evans, BBC News, October 17

Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed," Chancellor Angela Merkel says.
She said the so-called "multikulti" concept—where people would "live side-by-side" happily—did not work, and immigrants needed to do more to integrate—including learning German....
In her speech in Potsdam, however, the chancellor made clear that immigrants were welcome in Germany....
Mrs. Merkel said: "We should not be a country either which gives the impression to the outside world that those who don't speak German immediately or who were not raised speaking German are not welcome here."...
Earlier this week, Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU, said it was "obvious that immigrants from different cultures like Turkey and Arab countries, all in all, find it harder" to integrate.
"'Multikulti' is dead," Mr Seehofer said.

6. China's Long March to Freedom (subscriber-only content)

It's been a while since I've carried a piece on the continuing pressure for political liberalization in China—but that trend hasn't gone away. In fact, it may be intensifying.

(This item is for paid subscribers only. To read the rest, subscribe to TIA Daily at www.TIADaily.com/subscribe.)