Commander in Chief? Of What? Toilets?

Cheerleader in Chief
by Wayne Simmons
12/10/2009


At no time in recent American military history has a speech delivered by a President of the United States done so much to distance our nation from victory and put the men and woman of the military and intelligence agencies in harm’s way.

President Obama’s big Afghanistan speech caused nary a tremble in the polls. Before he spoke, most Americans didn’t support him. And after? His popularity continues to sink.

It was positively painful to watch Gen. Stanley McChrystal try to explain how you can win by not losing in his Tuesday congressional testimony. He’s doing the president’s bidding, not following a leader who has a clear idea of how to win a war.



It’s not only that President Obama is naïve and ignorant of history and the roles of our military and intelligence communities in world affairs. It’s mostly his inability to lead.

Leadership isn’t an intangible: it’s the ability to convince and inspire people to follow. His legislative successes aren’t proof that he’s a leader. To the contrary: Obama has pronounced big ideas that were already on the liberals’ agenda page. He merely turned them loose and then failed to lead them in the particulars -- the practicabilities and costs -- of the ideas.

On everything from the phony “stimulus” package to socialist health care, Obama is a cheerleader, not a real leader. It’s not just because he is young. It’s that he’s ignorant of important principles and completely at odds with the fact that America is a superpower.

Just consider his Afghanistan speech in the context of his June Cairo speech. Obama is reaching out his open hand to the Islamic radicals in disregard of how many times they slap it away.

In 1899 at the age of 25, Winston Churchill wrote some of the most profound paragraphs of his life.
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
~ The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), Volume II pp. 248-250.
At such a young age Churchill’s understanding of Islam and its goal of supreme world dominance is uncanny.

The leaders of “the greatest generation,” the generation that sacrificed hundreds of thousands of American men and women in World War II, understood the importance of achieving victory and of supporting the men and women sent to the front lines every day to protect our nation and the world from tyranny. There were no political considerations to determine how a President “felt” before ordering our nation to war against its enemies. When we were attacked on December 7, 1941, we responded with all of the might a great nation could muster.

Today we are in a Global War on Terror. The United States was attacked by Islamic terrorist’s on September 11, 2001, resulting in the deaths of almost 3,000 innocent men, women and children. One of America’s great war time leaders, President George W. Bush, along with a war time Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, responded. Their policies kept America safe for 8 years and liberated millions. Today, Barack Obama, giving a pallid imitation of a President, has chosen to appease our enemies around the world in his misguided effort to mollify those that would kill us.

The touchy, feely, feminization attitude that permeates American society has found its way to our military decision makers. Our institutions of war with long rich histories of producing courageous war fighters are now producing leaders that are being trained to better understand and be sensitive to our enemies feelings and concerns rather than how to defeat and destroy them.

There are very few leaders today who could have made the wrenching decisions to bomb Dresden, Tokyo or Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those decisions were instrumental in ending World War II and saved millions of American lives. The deaths of civilians as collateral damage while horrible and unfortunate are an intimate and inextricable part of war. Historians will continue to debate the number of lives that would have been saved had the Atomic bomb been ready and used earlier. How many American fathers, husbands, son’s and brothers would have survived had the war been shortened?

Afghanistan is arguably one of the most desolate, insignificant 4th world countries on our planet. It is not Kazakhstan, a country flush with gas and oil, diamonds and gold. Other than Kabul, it is a nation divided by tribes and regions, controlled by warlords. The Western dreams of a centralized government for Afghanistan are just that, dreams. After 9/11 the U.S. conquered Afghanistan killing or capturing most of those responsible for the attack on America and driving out the Taliban. Then we abandoned her like a West African aids victim. If America did not learn from the repercussions of abandonment and is not diligent and committed once again in its efforts to destroy the Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan, then all of those who have died in Afghanistan and continue to die will die in vain.

At no time in U.S. history has an American president ever half heartedly expanded a war only to advise his enemy that the expansion is temporary. Obama’s decision to provide 30,000 more troops to help defeat the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the correct decision if we expect to prevent safe haven for the terrorists. However, telegraphing his intentions to withdraw our troops in 18 months is misguided and will prove deadly to our soldiers and marines as well as our intelligence experts. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a successful military campaign that did not depend upon reliable, actionable intelligence. I can tell you from personal experience that it is virtually impossible to devise a human intelligence network, humint, when assets are convinced that there is no future or reason for them to cooperate with you.

The message to the warlords in the tribal regions of Afghanistan should be simple and clear. We are leaving. There will be no more American bloodshed in Afghanistan. If you want our continued financial assistance or our friendship, then you must not allow safe harbor to the enemies of the United States. If you do, there will be devastating consequences. There will be Dresden. And we must deliver.


Wayne Simmons was recruited by the CIA in 1973 while in the U.S. Navy. He became part of an Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Group where for 27 years he worked against Narco terroris's, Arms Smugglers, Counterfeiters, Cyber-terrorist's and Industrial and Economic Espionage.