Department of Offense

McChrystal was talking to you
Peter Heck – Guest Columnist – 6/28/2010 10:20:00 AM
The ink had not yet dried on my last column that discussed the fact that Barack Obama was woefully unprepared for the presidency and as a result is making deadly missteps in the execution of that role, when news broke of General Stanley McChrystal in essence saying the exact same thing toRolling Stone magazine. This isn’t just a story to be brushed off. This is a bombshell.

Don’t be distracted by the media comically chastising the General for daring to speak out against “The One” (yes, the same media that hailed military officers who were willing to “speak truth to power” in criticizing George Bush). That isn’t the story.

The true meaning of the McChrystal episode is titanic, because it is quite apparent the General was sending a stern message directly to the American people.

For more reasons than I can count, it is beyond obvious that McChrystal’s public criticism of Obama was not a lapse in judgment or a mistake. It was unquestionably intentional.

1. First, four-star generals have not achieved that rank without knowing the chain of command and the expectation of subordination to superiors.

2. Second, all of McChrystal’s advisers were touting the same message, demonstrating this was no fluke, nor an offhand comment taken out of context.

3. Third, McChrystal spoke the inflammatory words to Rolling Stone, a well known anti-war, anti-military magazine.

4. Fourth, reports are that McChrystal actually saw the piece before it went to print and offered up no objections to its content.

If all that is true, then it naturally begs the question: Why did he do it?

McChrystal is one of the lead authors of the “counterinsurgency” strategy that, despite the nay saying of liberals like then-Senators Obama and Biden, transformed Iraq from a quagmire into a success. He knows the strategy works. But as its architect, he also knows this new military policy requires two vital elements: lots of troops, and as much time as necessary for them to do their job..

While other factors are important (cultural bonds, regional partnerships, financial investment, troop morale, etc.), the two most crucial ingredients to making counterinsurgency work (in Afghanistan or anywhere) is a massive amount of troops on the ground to overwhelm the enemy and live among the people, and a commitment to stay as long as necessary to break the will of the enemy.

This is precisely why counterinsurgency worked in Iraq. Over the ignorant objections of both Obama and Biden, then-President Bush listened to his military commanders and ordered the troop surge. And while being pummeled by the media and Democrat political opportunists for not setting a hard deadline for withdrawal, Bush committed to stay in Iraq until the job was finished. The result speaks for itself.

As the Afghan war began to deteriorate, Stanley McChrystal was put in charge to implement that effective strategy there. But he quickly found that Barack Obama is no George W. Bush. First, Obama – having championed himself as the anti-war candidate – cut the number of troops McChrystal requested. And then, in what has to be one of the most foolish wartime moves in history, he announced an arbitrary date for the beginning of American troop withdrawal.

This may please the ex-hippies in the anti-war crowd that Obama courted during the 2008 campaign, but it has emboldened our enemy, imperiled our troops, and created a giant mess of our counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan.

Having pressed his case privately with Obama’s war team in Washington, McChrystal certainly saw the handwriting on the wall, and as a final recourse, pled his case to the American people.

Were his actions a breach of protocol? Yes. Did they rise to the level of insubordination? Probably. Was Obama justified in removing him from command? I think so. But after we’re done hammering McChrystal for going over the President’s head, we better give some serious thought as to why he was so willing to put his career on the line like that.

The reason is as clear as it is frightening: our political leadership in Washington is clueless. And their incompetence is costing us not only resources and money, but most importantly the precious lives of brave American soldiers.

General Stanley McChrystal was willing to lose his job to send that message to the only people who can do something about it. He was talking to you.

GO, MICHIGAN STATE !
Very interesting – the University is standing by their professor and not bowing down to special interest groups! 
 
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/wichman.asp
Professor Wichman E-mail
Claim:   A   Michigan professor sent an e-mail telling Muslim students to leave the country.  
Status:    True.

The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indred Wichman.
 
Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student’s Association.
The e-mail was in response to the students’ protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.
 

The group had complained the cartoons were ‘hate speech.’
============
Enter Professor Wichman.
==========================================
In his e-mail, he said the following:
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Dear Muslim Association,
As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest.
I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called ‘whores’ in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France.
This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Muslims to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile ‘protests.’
If you do not like the values of the West – see the First Amendment – you are free to leave. I hope for God’s sake that most of you choose that option.
Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.
Cordially,
I. S. Wichman
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
=============================
As you can imagine,
The Muslim group at the university didn’t like this too well.
They’re demanding that Wichman be reprimanded, that the university impose mandatory diversity training for faculty,  And mandate a seminar on hate and discrimination for all freshmen.
Now, the local chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray.

CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn’t believe that the good professor
Had the right to express his opinion.
==========
For its part, the university is standing its ground in support of Professor Wichman,
Saying the e-mail was private, and they don’t intend to publicly condemn his remarks.
============================================================
Send this to your friends, and ask them to do the same.
Tell them to keep passing it around until the whole country gets it.
We are in a war.

This political correctness crap is getting old and killing us.
==================

GO,  MICHIGAN STATE !

In his draft testimony, Gates wailed he’ll have to make “hard choices” on weapons spending. Since he rightly points out five Pentagon programs “account for half of total cost growth in weapons spending,” we can guess where the axe will fall. This, however, is a bad “hard choice”…short cut defense to pay for seeding the Mall in DC and subsidizing Hollywood films (yes…both in stimulus package)…and yes…the defense jobs that will be cut will be here in the US….so yes you got that right…we are going to layoff high-skilled engineers to spend hundred-of-thousands of dollars to hire gardeners. There is a better way…slash back the spending and social engineering in the bill and add the kinds of tax cuts that will really boost economic growth, the best recommendation I’ve heard is to reduce the corporate taxes by 10 percent…and by the way—don’t cut the defense budget. The world may or may not get richer in the next few years….it is not likely to get less dangerous.