How Our Overly Restrictive Rules of Engagement Keep Us from Winning Wars

From National Review:

Imagine if the United States had fought World War II with a mandate to avoid any attack when civilians were likely to be present. Imagine Patton’s charge through Western Europe constrained by granting the SS safe haven whenever it sheltered among civilians. If you can imagine this reality, then you can also imagine a world without a D-Day, a world where America’s greatest generals are war criminals, and where the mighty machinery of Hitler’s industrial base produces planes, tanks, and guns unmolested. In other words, you can imagine a world where our Army is a glorified police force and our commanders face prosecution for fighting a real war. That describes our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For more than a decade, complaints about the rules of engagement have bubbled up on soldiers’ message boards, in stray comments — often by soldiers’ parents — on conservative websites, and in the occasional article in the mainstream press. Frequently, this comes in the context of lauding the military for its restraint. Yet despite being such a vital — and sometimes decisive — factor in a more than decade-long war, the rules of engagement are still poorly understood, and their impact is largely unknown. As ISIS continues to grow and its reach expands from the Middle East to Europe, the United States, and beyond, it’s time to consider the true cost of America’s self-imposed constraints.

These policies have evolved from the Vietnam era. The civilian leadership has let the the anti-war activists to set to the narrative that America and it's soldiers are evil and must be restrained. The purpose of war is killed people and break things, the other guys people and things.

The Collapse of the Obama Presidency

From Peter Wehner at Commentary.com

In the first year of his second term, the president has failed on virtually every front. He put his prestige on the line to pass federal gun-control legislation–and lost. He made climate change a central part of his inaugural address–and nothing has happened. The president went head-to-head with Republicans on sequestration–and he failed. He’s been forced to delay implementation of the employer mandate, a key feature of the Affordable Care Act. ObamaCare is more unpopular than ever, and it’s turning out to be a “train wreck” (to quote Democratic Senator Max Baucus) in practice. The most recent jobs report was the worst in a year, with the Obama recovery already qualifying as a historically weak one. Immigration reform is going nowhere. And then there’s Syria, which has turned out to be an epic disaster. (To be sure, Mr. Obama’s Middle East failures go well beyond Syria–but Syria is the most conspicuous failure right now).

And the American people still has 3 1/3 years left to suffer for this fool's incompetence.

Did Kerry blink in Syria standoff?

John Kerry: We Wouldn't Have to Bomb if Syria Put Its Chemical Weapons Under International Inspectors
Syria: Okay
Russia: Okay
John Kerry: I Meant That Hypothetically

John Kerry may have offered it as a way out of the trap Obama has set for himself regarding the Syrian Chemical Weapons Stores.

America’s top diplomat suggested in a passing remark that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avoid a U.S.-led strike if he handed over all his chemical weapons, but the State Department quickly dismissed the comment as more of a “rhetorical argument” than an offer.

In a London news conference this morning, Secretary of State John Kerry responded to a question about whether Assad could do anything to avoid war by saying “he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay and allow a full and total accounting.”

Kerry delivered the statement almost dismissively and quickly said Assad had no intention of giving up “weapons he denies using.” But it was still the first time such a suggestion had been made by the Obama administration.

So What does Russia do?

The Russian foreign minister says Moscow will push Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control.

Sergey Lavrov said Monday that if such a move would help avert a possible U.S. strike on Syria, Russia will start work “immediately” to persuade Syria to relinquish control over its chemical arsenals.

Lavrov told reporters that Russia would urge Syria to concentrate its chemical weapons in certain areas under international oversight and then dismantle them.

So looks like the smartest people running an Administration ever, got snookered.

14 Principled Anti-War Celebrities We Fear May Have Been Kidnapped

From Buzzfeed: Gee, I wonder why they have disappeared since 2009?

The 2002 Barrack Obama -- Updated

The following is an update with the current plaeyers in the Regime of NPR’s 2009 transcript of the remarks then - State Sen. Barack Obama delivered in Chicago on Oct. 2, 2002. In his speech, Obama said that what he was opposed to was ‘a dumb war … a rash** war.’ He said the war was a ‘cynical attempt’ to shove ‘ideological agendas down our throats’ and would distract from domestic problems*** such as poverty and health care.”

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz Samantha Power and Susan Rice and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove David Axelrod to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein Bashar Assad. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi Syrian people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam Assad poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi Syrian economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi Syrian military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

Kinda scary? (H/T: Ace of Spades HQ)