24 May 2013 –

What Did The President Say Yesterday?  I Simply Don’t Remember. 

When I wrote speeches for the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, I learned two rules for public speaking:  Pick something important to say; then, make sure you say it.  If you ignore these rules, eventually people will ignore you.  If the President’s goal on Thursday in front of National Defense University was to assuage people’s concerns about the ”scandales du jour,” he failed.  Our beleaguered president imposed an hour of ramblings on the American people while providing nothing to resolve the issues at hand.  Clearly, his comments on how to resolve the issues were weak.  It was the wrong speech at the wrong time.   

If the President’s goal was to remind the American people that his anti-terrorist policies have kept America safe for the last five years, he failed as well.  I am sure that he did not mean to imply that his anti-terrorist policies were a natural progression from his much-maligned predecessor’s; but, it certainly came across that way.  President Obama’s remarks also beg one to observe that recent terrorist attacks on American soil prove that President Bush did a better job protecting America than he has done.  I did like what he said about the use of drones to attack terrorist targets overseas; he sounded like a spokesman for Secretary Condaleeza Rice.  But, alas, he did not explain the legal issues surrounding the use of attack drones in circumstances-less-than-conventional war as part of a well-thought out plan to accomplish a cogent strategy.  Fleeting comments from both his supporters and his critics in the last twenty-four hours seem to confirm the President’s bad timing and poor performance.  The President is making himself increasingly irrelevant in creating and implementing U.S. foreign and domestic policy.  We don’t need a campaigner; we need a leader.       

The President’s comments about using drones to kill terrorists deserve further inspection.   As an Air Force targets officer and campaign planner, I learned a lot about warriors, weapons, and winning wars.  I learned that warriors and weapons are necessary, but romantic elements of warfare.  Courage, loyalty, physical strength, and selflessness are among the virtues that compel warriors to “go to the sound of the battle.”  As well, most warriors tend to prefer weapons that prove them worthy of victory over the enemy.  Such is the ethos of the profession of arms.  It is a powerful, cohesive element that has bound warriors together since the days of swords, shields, and slings.  It also has led our society to assume that “good” warfare requires some version of warriors facing each other on the battlefield, armed with weapons and with honor.   Even our legal thinking generally says that warfare should be conducted in this intimate manner. 

Unmanned combat aircraft—drones—are superb weapons to kill individual terrorists.  They take the fight to small, mobile targets quite effectively.  Radical terrorists fear drones because they are difficult to elude and to shoot down.  Why then do we have a political problem including drones in our planning?  The problem is their success; fewer warriors are needed on the battlefield to kill the enemy.  That bothers many people who justify violence only if it is done in a traditionally “fair” way and not from a “safe” distance.  Other critics naively contend that we could convince our enemies to become our friends if we weren't so coldly focused on killing them.  Such critics dwell on warriors and weapons, not on winning.  The President would resolve all such issues if, in his next speech, he were to present a clear strategy for victory and how his campaign plan uses both warriors and weapons to achieve it.  But, that would require him to publicly identify radical Islamic terrorists as the real enemy.  His obvious denial of this obvious fact makes the President’s present strategy—if he has one—suspect and any supporting plan, drones or no drones, ineffectual.  What we have now is a recipe for failure.

This warrior tradition recruits and sustains military personnel from a generally supportive society.  But, warriors alone, even armed with good weapons, rarely ensure victory; they require the building and execution of an adaptable campaign plan that dictates the weapons they use to attack specific targets to achieve certain results.  These results must achieve carefully considered strategic objectives.  Expert planners take into account, but do not rely on, a warrior ethos.  Martial music is for warriors; accurate history books are for planners.   

27 May 2013 –

They Rest Close to Where They Fell

Memorial Day was established in the aftermath of the Civil War.  At least 600,000 Americans, mostly young men, were killed between 1861 and 1865, all on U.S. soil.  Since then, generations of Americans have maintained the graves of those who fought, died, and were buried close to where they fell.  Near the battlements, sunken roads, and hilltops of places such as Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Antietam, rows of grave stones mutely remind us of the friction of the opposing lines of troops and the sounds of dying men.  A war fought in one’s home, in one’s cornfields, and on one’s market roads must never be forgotten.  Memorial Day should always remain a sacred expression of how and why our war cemeteries came to be. 

But, since the Civil War, our troops have almost exclusively fought and died far from home.  This is because our Civil War fundamentally resolved the gaping conflicts that had previously prevented our coalescing as a nation.  Since then, we have worked on residual domestic issues with more peaceful means.   To help, God gave the “Grand Experiment” called the United States a choice land between two vast oceans to the East and the West and lesser powers to the North and the South.  Despite our mistakes, He has protected us from external enemies as few other countries ever have been protected.       

Since the Civil War, in our remote enclave, we have built a powerful nation.  We also have used our military instrument of national power to extend U.S. influence to more places in the world than has any great empire in history.  When we have wisely sent our troops into harm’s way in some distant land, we have fought and succeeded under the banner of freedom and liberty for us and for others.  When we have unwisely sent troops to fight and die under such a banner, the unbending principles of war have eventually mocked our banner and exposed us to the harsh consequences of our mistakes.  In every case, all glory should rest with the troops who took the fight to the enemy, and all criticism should rest with our leaders for answering badly the challenge of the moment.       

In the last 150 years, Americans in uniform have fought just about everywhere on the globe in the following conflicts:  the Spanish-American War,  World War One, The Russian Expedition, Nicaragua, Honduras, World War Two, Korea, the Cold War, VietNam, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Beirut, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq again, and Libya.  From these conflicts and others, we have returned most of our fallen troops to be buried in American soil.  In some of these conflicts, thousands of Americans died for allied freedom and were buried in now well-manicured cemeteries, close to where they fell. 

In November 1972, I was nineteen years old and living in southern France.  I visited the Rhône American Cemetery at Draguignan, about forty miles west of Cannes, near the town of St. Raphael.  This 12 ½-acre cemetery holds 860 graves and a wall with the names of 294 missing-and-presumed-dead soldiers from the U.S. Seventh Army’s invasion of Southern France in August 1944.   I learned that the invasion originally was to take place in June 1944, a simultaneous landing with the larger one at Normandy.  Together, they were to create a two-front offensive against German forces in France.  But, we didn’t have enough landing craft to support two landings at once; therefore, we had to wait until August 1944 to open the southern front.  The Seventh Army eventually landed and fought its way 400 miles northward to join up with the expanded Normandy forces.  Our unified forces created a front that stretched from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.  On that bright fall afternoon in 1972, I reverently stood among gently contoured rows of crosses, trying to take in the solemnity of my surroundings.  I experienced something there that my military service throughout the world has since reinforced.  In the shade of French oleanders and cypress trees, I felt as if I were on an American hillside amidst heroes who had fought valiantly for freedom and who were buried close to where they fell.  Nearly forty years later, I feel that same reverence every day the Stars and Stripes fly in front of our home.   

21 May 2013 –

“What Difference At This Point Does It Make?”

This administration’s tapestry of the Benghazi scandal may be on the verge of unraveling.  Eventually, all such weavings, those with a warp of arrogance and a weft of deceit, do unravel.    We conspiracy nuts have been snipping on the edges of this tapestry, finding threads to hold on to.  To us, the damning issue is not the miscasting of the reasons for the attacks, i.e., the editing of administration talking points.  Neither is it the decision to stand-down rescue forces, if that decision had been made based solely on events of that day.  The real issue, the one that could condemn people in this administration, finally may be emerging from the shadows.    

PJ Media has reported that people with reason to know are revealing that Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi to talk to al-Queda operatives.  He was there to try to buy back the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that Secretary Clinton’s State Department had covertly given to a group of insurgents in Libya to help overthrow Mohamar Qadafi.  These sources also reported that the CIA refused to be part of this arms decision, citing the risk that these missiles posed to civilian aircraft.  The sources also say that Secretary Clinton proceeded anyway, trying to “overthrow Qadafi on the cheap.”  Later, Ambassador Stevens was quietly sent to clean up the missile mess when it was discovered—shocked I am!—that these helpful insurgents were actually al-Queda and that they still had some of the missiles.  It makes sad sense to posit that these same al-Queda bad guys attacked our Benghazi consulate and killed the emissary sent there to meet with them.   

I agree with PJ Media’s source who regarded the whole enterprise as totally “amateurish.”  It is totally plausible that Secretary Clinton and the Obama Administration have performed in their three-ring circus of absurd talking points, no rescue of besieged Americans, and accusations that Republican cuts in DEPSTATE security funding were the cause of the deaths, in order to cover this up.  If the real reason that Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi isn’t exactly what these sources say, at least heavier hitters than just conspiracy nuts may start to focus on the real issue:  Why did Secretary Clinton and President Obama send Ambassador Stevens to Benghazi? 

Given this new information, I want to weave a plausible tapestry on the frame described above.   The Secretary of State decided to give anti-aircraft missiles to an “insurgent group,” which turned out to be al-Queda.  Such decisions are long-shot bets, audacious or foolish, depending on eventual success or failure.  This time, the decision can’t be described as audacious.  Making this decision public would have forced the Secretary to admit fault and to possibly resign; therefore, the Secretary of State chose to double down on the original, bad bet by trying to buy back the missiles and by doing it on, of all days, the anniversary of 9/11, and in, of all places, the terrorist pit called Benghazi.  The Secretary mistakenly allowed her opponents to set up the entire scenario.  Her emissary walked into a deadly trap.    

Until this moment, these “amateurish” decisions were leading only to failure and embarassment for the Secretary and, by extension, for the administration.  But, when things turned deadly, even worse “decisions were made.”  The Secretary—and, according to PJ Media’s source—the White House, refused to authorize forces to rescue their hapless emissary.  After all, no one in the know would then be able to talk about poor decisions or possible crimes.   You were right, Madame Secretary, when you said “What difference at this point does it make?”  If you made the Ambassador suffer for your sins, nothing you did, do now, or will do, will have made a difference for you.   

Such a tapestry does not display just a cover-up of poor decisions in a pop-up crisis; instead, it displays a lengthy series of dangerously bad decisions.  These same threads were then woven into a nefariously corrupt scene of hanging Ambassador Stevens out to die.  If this scene is accurate, then we know pretty much the worth of the life of an Ambassador of the United States to our former Secretary of State and to whoever was awake in the White House when the Commander of US Africa Command, General Carter Ham, was ordered to stand down rescue forces.  Anyone in line for an ambassadorship before 2017 should carefully examine the threads of this tapestry.     

18 May 2013 –

No Surprise In What He Said—Or In How He Said It.

Steven Miller’s testimony yesterday to the House Ways and Means Committee about IRS abuse of power was best described as that of a disrespectful, self-important teenager saying “You’re not the boss of me.”  He even had the audacity to refer to his agency’s performance as “customer service.”   How could he act this way in front of such a powerful committee?   

The answer hit me when I realized that Mr. Miller was a career IRS agent.  Tellingly, he once headed e actually the very office that decided which political groups would receive “increased scrutiny.”  I quickly saw his performance as an example of the IRS’s bureaucratic culture capturing and then corrupting the agency’s employees and their mission.         

I spent thirty years in one of the most bureaucratic organizations on earth:  The United States Air Force.  I have an advanced degree in Public Administration, aka, bureaucratic crap.  I have worked extensively with the State Department and with foreign governments and militaries.  My experience confirms what I saw in Mr. Miller’s performance:  All organizations create bureaucracies, which, in turn, engender and protect organizational cultures; and, they often do this at the expense of the organizations’ original missions.  The self-serving interests of ensconced bureaucratic cultures help us understand not only Mr. Miller’s performance, but the IRS’s vested interest in assaulting conservative organizations, and President Obama’s guiding role in this scandal.  

Every government organization, no matter its official mission, quickly coalesces around a culture.  This culture often coopts and guides organizational action.  For example, the Air Force’s mission is to be an integral part of a larger organization—Department of Defense—that fights our nation’s wars.  But, if you ask an Air Force fighter pilot what her mission is, she will say that it is to “fly, fight, and win.”  The technology of powered flight gave the Air Force its original “raison d’être” among the military services at the same time that it engendered a powerfully self-serving flying culture.   The scarf-in-the-wind culture naturally inspires and motivates Airmen.  It also helps sell complex arguments in the interagency budget and mission allocation battles.  But, in one case, drone technology languished for decades before the Air Force begrudgingly gave up pilot seats in aircraft for console seats in distant bunkers.  Such cultural power stultifies innovation and risks government success.  A flying culture also promotes pilots who, when leading the organization, have personal reasons to perpetuate the limited culture.  That is a tough system to deconstruct.    

The IRS as well has powerful cultural and organizational motivation to perpetuate its involvement in the present liberal, wastrel government.   The IRS’s powerful role as the arbiter of a complex tax code has long been abetted by the growth of a regulatory and intrusive government.  The thousands of agents that will swell IRS ranks to implement Obamacare, for example, will give the agency even more organizational, cultural, and personal power.  On the other hand, the IRS stands to lose tremendous organizational power if TEA Party and other conservative movements convince politicians of the necessity for limited government.  Limited government, lower taxes, and a simplified tax code—all conservative goals—could even eliminate the IRS as a major agency.   It is no wonder that Mr. Miller doesn’t admit to deliberate abuse of conservative movements.  He probably justifies his actions as necessary to perpetuate a powerful culture and organization that he bought into years ago.  It makes perfect sense to do what Mr. Miller did—in a corrupt, selfish sense, that is. 

What about President Obama’s role in this scandal?  I predict that there will be no tapes or e-mails implicating the President in these crimes.  The IRS did not need explicit presidential direction.  Mr. Miller and his fellow career IRS employees implemented common cultural and organizational survival practices when they blatantly abused conservative 501 (c) 4 applicants.  I repeat: The IRS did not need outside prodding.   Abusing conservative organizations helps the IRS thrive.  Therefore, Mr. Miller’s testimony that such abuse by his agency was not partisan is correct in a corrupt sort of way.  The IRS naturally satisfied the President’s partisan political and economic agenda because that is where the money is for the IRS.  It is no wonder that Mr. Miller, the career IRS agent, was so defiant and arrogant in front of the conservative House Ways and Means Committee; his culture has always rewarded him for doing so.  The President will survive this scandal because the IRS did his partisan work for him.  

15 May 2013 –

The President is in political trouble.  There even are mumblings of impeachment.  If he does not resolve today’s big three scandals with aggressive action, the House of Representatives may indeed start impeachments proceedings by next year.  There are two views of the effectiveness of impeachment.  Pragmatists say that the House would accomplish little by impeaching the President for his involvement in the current scandals; the Senate would never convict him.  Altruists contend that impeachment without the conviction still would be valuable because it would force the President to confront his bad acts.  Later generations, altruists say, will need these facts to accurately assess history.     

I remember President Nixon in 1973-74.  The House of Representatives was drawing up articles of impeachment based on the President’s misuse of the IRS to attack his political enemies and on his complicity in the bungled break-in of Democrat Party offices in the Watergate Apartments.  Why did Nixon, a renown political survivor, resign instead of fight through the process?  It wasn’t simply because he was guilty.  It was because Republican leaders finally said that they would not support him in the House’s impending impeachment and, importantly, in the Senate’s trial to convict.  Nixon knew his political life was over.  Initiating impeachment proceedings forced President Nixon to resign because his party supported what was right.       

The House, on the other hand, impeached President Clinton on 19 December 1998, on two charges: perjury—lying under oath while being questioned by federal agents about his sexual relations with White House aide, Monica Lewinsky—and obstruction of justice.   President Clinton survived the trial in the Senate, even with fifty of fifty-five Republicans in the Senate voting for conviction, because NO Democrat voted for his conviction.  President Clinton’s Democrat confederates stolidly held that his acts did not “rise to the level of impeachable offenses.”  President Clinton lost his law license in his home state of Arkansas, but not his key to the Oval Office. 

Steady party support for a beleaguered president is required in our era of divided government.  If the President has it, he survives the impeachment process.  If he doesn’t, he is gone.  In President Obama’s case, Democrat Party support is holding firm.  But, as in President Nixon’s case, that support can erode during the long hot summer. 

The President faces three scandals of political importance: the Benghazi cover-up; the IRS’s deliberate intimidation of conservative political groups; and, the Justice Department’s flagrant abuse of the Associated Press’s First Amendment’s rights.  I start with the last one.   

The President could make this Justice Department scandal meaningless to all Democrats and a temporary success to some Republicans.  He could tell Attorney General Eric Holder to resign and then to appoint a conservative Democrat or a moderate-to-liberal Republican to “refocus” the Justice Department.  Then, no matter what came of the investigations, scrupulously reported on by the vengeful press, there probably would be little pressure to implicate the President in any illegal decision-making.   Political case closed. 

President Obama has a bigger problem with the misdirection of the IRS’s power.  This worries Democrat politicians because the IRS scares the average Democrat voter more than any other function in government.  Democrat politicians could lose significant support in future elections by not treating this scandal as something that “rises to the level” of a serious offense.  The President could still resolve this scandal.  He could direct the IRS commissioner, Steven Miller, to apologize publically for the abuse and to immediately “refocus” the agency.  The President could then assure the American people that IRS rules will be followed scrupulously for all Americans.  Democrat politicians would thus be appeased, and life would go on.

“Benghazi” is a serious threat to President Obama’s tenure because the President has little control over what has become a determined investigative process.  Eventually, the most despicable facts will be brought to light about why Americans were killed on 11 September 2012.  The worst will be when America finally knows the real reason for the cover-up: The President wanted Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi for something he wanted nobody to know about.  To cover up this when things went awry, he hung the Ambassador out to die and went to bed early.  When that becomes known, no Democrat anywhere will risk political suicide by voting against impeachment and conviction.  This game will be long and painful.  The pragmatists will disappear.  The rest of us will feel little joy in the eventual verdict.      

13 May 2013 –

What a day.  Two things. 

A jury in Philadelphia rendered a verdict of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter in the Kermit Gosnell trial.  The three murder counts were for three of the babies whose spinal cords this “doctor” severed with scissors after they were born alive during botched abortions.  The involuntary manslaughter verdict was for his killing of a woman with an overdose of drugs while he was preparing her for a late-term abortion.  On 21 March, the trial will enter the penalty phase with deliberation for sentencing.  Pennsylvania has the death penalty and life in prison for first-degree murderers.  Much now should be written about the appropriateness of the death penalty for this murderer of innocent children.  I defer those remarks to others.  I don’t have the skill to express my feelings and still maintain control on a keyboard.

This sad moment in history is too long time in coming.  Elite intellectuals in the last century choked legal logic until it finally vomited up new privacy rights in the penumbra of the Constitution, i.e., abortion on demand.  An abortion industry sprang up and soon gained enough power to stretch “the right to abortion,” to extend it well beyond the first trimester of a pregnancy.  This killing industry’s spokesmen then pushed the argument even farther from original intent, enabling a junior senator from Illinois and presidential candidate to use the term “women’s reproductive rights” instead of “abortion on demand” to soften the issue beyond all original recognition.  At the same time, other senior lawmakers were proposing that life isn’t life until a mother and doctor say that it is. 

This trial of a monster murderer of babies finally yanked the argument away from the hollow parsers of language and the obfuscators of original meaning.  It put the argument in the hands of twelve ordinary citizens on a local jury.   One may contend that these jurors were unprepared to be Solomon.  But, these jurors performed a far wiser act than did Solomon when he determined the actual mother of a live baby.  They saw killing babies for what it was—murder—and declared it so.  Theirs was the right decision.  We should thank God that the jury system often brings us back to stark, simple reality.  Now, these same jurors need to recommend to the judge to do the right thing in the final, punishment phase of the trial. 

I cannot imagine a more tyrannical use of government power than the Internal Revenue Service’s recent harassment of conservative, non-profit organizations.  Such corrupt, politically motivated actions are real dangers to the Founders’ original concept of property and speech rights.  Perhaps, only dictatorship could be worse. 

The IRS’s role is to collect taxes.  It should do so by impartially implementing tax codes.  But, its corrupt day-to-day operations appear to have made it a dangerously powerful arm of the executive branch of government.  Alas, the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 seems to have done little to prevent the IRS from using its audit and policy powers to harass and rob those who exercise their constitutional rights to oppose the present administration.  

The IRS’s public statement that it targeted conservative political organizations with “increased scrutiny” is a stunning admission that demands immediate corrective action.  The President must treat this corruption as a crisis.  He must quickly move this situation to near the top of his “to-do” list instead of leaving it where he penciled it in during today’s press conference.  The President should aggressively cleanse the IRS and prosecute those responsible for their latest crimes.  He should do this for his own protection.  After all, corruption honors no code but its own.  An unrepentant IRS could target an ex-president after 20 January 2017, especially if the new president turns out to be as flexible in his moral standards as the present one has shown himself to be.   

8 May 2013 –

Sixty-eight years ago today, World War Two ended in Europe.  Representatives of the German high command unconditionally surrendered of all German forces on 7 May 1945 in Rheims, France.  The high command in Berlin ratified the surrender on 8 May.  The war raged on in the Pacific for another four months before it ended with formal surrender ceremonies on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September.  With the congressional events today about the Benghazi scandal, we should be reminded of a time when our leaders sent our military to stop the enemy and to win. 

In May 1995, fifty years after the end of the war, my Uncle Walt and Aunt Rosemary came to visit us in Belgium.  We were stationed at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, in Mons.  I was the Military Assistant to the Supreme Allied Commander and thought that was pretty impressive.  But, Uncle Walt, like his three brothers, was a WWII veteran.  That was truly impressive.   He served on the USS Boise, a heavy cruiser, as the captain of the first gun turret.  He fought throughout the war: in the Battle of Cape Espérance in the South Pacific near Guadalcanal; in the landings in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy; and, back in the Pacific, in the Battle of Okinawa.  He was decorated and proud to be a sailor.  He, as the son of a Polish immigrant, was proud to be an American.  After the war, he returned to Montana and worked as a railroad electrician for forty-four years before retiring.  A solid American success story.

But, some things don’t fade quickly.  Uncle Walt told me when we were driving from Belgium into France, that for years after the war, as he was working in the railroad roundhouse, the smell of burnt electrical wiring would make him sick.  It brought back vividly the smells of burning wire and flesh when his turret was hit by a Japanese shell that killed four of his men.  But, on that day in 1995, in the spring sunshine of northern Europe, on the road to Normandy, things were good.

We spent a bit of time in northern France.  We visited Saint-Lô, walked the beaches of Normandy, and paid our respects to the fallen at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.  While there, Uncle Walt told us stories and recounted events of certain battles.  He said that the USS Boise was there during the landings of Mark Clark’s Fifth Army at Anzio Beach in January 1944 and supported its fight up the peninsula toward the liberation of Rome.  Uncle Walt said that the USS Boise patrolled off the coast of Italy and provided naval gunfire support to the US forces ashore.  The USS Boise would shell German forces coming down the single coastal road.  This denied the forward German forces resupply and, thereby, enabled the Fifth Army to gain strength and eventually breakout of its coastal enclave.  It was great to listen to and remember stories that I had only read about in history books.

When leaving the cemetery at Normandy, we walked by an American couple going the other way.  The couple was of Uncle Walt and Aunt Rosemary’s age and paid little attention to Janet and me.  But, the two old men looked at each other and stopped.  Uncle Walt, as he was wont to do, extended his hand and said: "Hi.  I’m Walt Coleman, World War Two, USS Boise.”  The other man smiled and introduced himself as well.   Then, the man said something I shall never forget: “The USS Boise?  You were off the coast of Italy when I was with Mark Clark’s Fifth Army.  You guys picked off the Germans as they tried to go down the coastal road to reinforce their front lines.  You saved my life.  Thank you.”  It was as if these two retired war horses had rehearsed their exchange for that very moment.  The rest of the world simply faded away because it didn't matter. They spoke a bit more about family and their lives after the war before they shook hands again and parted company.  As we were driving out of the cemetery, Uncle Walt said that that was the first time anyone had ever thanked him for something specific he did during the war.  Today, we thank you, Uncle Walt.  We thank you, your brothers, and every man and women who fought in that war.  Uncle Walt died a few years ago; yet, the magic of that moment at Normandy, and such American valor, must live forever.  Victory in Europe, sixty-eight years ago today.  

7 May 2013 –

Odds ‘n Ends

The notable terms of the week in administration news events are “self-radicalized” and terrorist “network.”  The President used them in a news conference to describe the Tsarnaev brothers as “loners” whose bombings of the Boston Marathon were not tied to any “larger network” of international terrorists.  My intelligence and terrorist analysis ears perked right up when the President tried to separate the Boston Bombers’ actions from direct participation in larger terrorist networks.  The two terms as the President used them, “self-radicalized” and “network, are misleading.  They downplay the serious connections between local acts of violence and the larger movements of radical Islamists and their goal of conquering the world and establishing universal Sharia law.    

All my experience in the intelligence business confirms the salient facts about the Boston bombings that are being reported by the press: The Brothers Tsarnaev did not commit their atrocious crimes on their own.   They were aided, abetted, encouraged, and trained by an international society of radical Islam that hates the United States.  Nonetheless, the brothers, as immigrants and then as citizens, fed on the U.S.’s generous and free society while their radicalism coalesced and then when they planned their crimes.  Local imams, immigrant families, and other immigrant friends all exist in liberal, free societies such as the United States while they sow the seeds for those countries’ downfall. 

This radical society of Islam is loosely formed, worldwide, and far more durable than most Westerners assume.  In the West, elements of violent, radical Islam are found living among and drawing cultural sustenance and cover from the larger Moslem community.  To provide propaganda and sectarian support to those who want to adhere themselves to a particular jihadist movement, there are firmly ensconced nodes of decision-making in the overall network.  There, self-styled imams and voices of radical doctrine carefully craft then distribute radical messages on the internet, through zip drives, and through word of mouth throughout the Moslem diaspora.  Wherever the message falls on listening ears, the network is sustained.  It is a loosely jointed, but powerful method of indoctrinating vulnerable people into becoming radicals and then suicide bombers.  Whether the perpetrators of violence are killed or not, they are considered expendable, suicide bombers by virtually all leaders of radical Islam.   

The radical Islamic network is not a corporation with bylaws and letters of incorporation, operating openly under the rule of governmental law.  It more closely resembles multiple franchise operations, but one where the local franchisee and the head office usually compete constantly over control of the brand and its direction.  Nor is it a sovereign nation, in the western version of that term, with organized and commanded military forces and diplomatically accepted ambassadors.  It is a movement.  It is a many-headed Hydra with one heart, but with many maws that bite from different directions. 

Depending on the flavor of the month, parts of the movement are led by someone as well-written and charismatic as the Ayatollah Khomeini or Osama Bin Laden.  Or, they are led by colorless dogmatists whose close followers have a talent for organization.  Either way, these leaders await the moment when their fervent followers—read Brothers Tsarnaev multiplied by the thousands—eventually topple a government.  Then, in Khomeini’s case, the leaders move in to fill the void, establish a dictatorship, and establish their version of Sharia law.  It is a messy method, replete with martyrs.  It remains to be seen if radical islamists will be as successful outside the Moslem world as they recently have been inside.   

Parts of the movement are well-funded.  Saudi Arabia’s fundamentalist Wahabbist royal family funds madrassas and mosques throughout the world in which radical Islam is preached and abetted.  Lesser strains of radicalism are struggling to buy monthly internet access, but still may find enough money to build bombs out of pressure cookers.  What must be understood, however, is that the radical Islamic movement, in all its parts, is fundamentally opposed to western secular democracy.  They have shown no compunction toward sheltering, funding, training, or abetting perpetrators of violence against western secularism or democracy, whether those symbols are found in the West or in Islamic countries. The more investigators dig into the Islamic community in Boston, the more they will find such strains of radicalism, which, indeed it will be shown, aided the Tsarneav brothers in their horrific acts of violence.  Those are the “self-radicalized” terrorists and the “network(s)” that President Obama was referring to.  The movement continues whether the Obama administration admits it or not.    

Plan B Contraceptives

A U.S. District Judge in Brooklyn, Edward Korman, ruled eleven days ago that the Food and Drug Administration must make the “morning after” emergency contraception drug, Levonorgestrel—also known as Plan B—available over-the-counter without a prescription to “women” of “all reproductive age,” specifically to those fifteen years and older.  He commented in his ruling that the previous FDA policy to provide Plan B medicine without a prescription only to “women” seventeen and older as “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable.”  His Honor Judge Korman may indeed be on firm, activist legal ground by saying that to allow one minor, a seventeen-year-old, to purchase this pill on her own but to deny a fifteen or sixteen-year old minor that same opportunity fits the classic legal definition of “arbitrary and capricious.”  But, the moral and traditionally legal ruling would have been to restrict the policy completely for all minors.  The right thing to do would have been to nullify the existing FDA policy for seventeen-year olds as well. 

The judge should have referred to the fact all existing laws establish the age of majority as at least eighteen in all states.  He should have told the FDA that for a federal agency to implement medical and reproductive policies that allow minors of any age to buy such drugs over-the counter is wrong; it further blurs the lines between minors and adults in society and further erodes the rights and responsibilities of parents toward their minor children in such fundamental issues as sexual relations and their consequences.  That would have been a decision to read!

I used quotation marks above with the word “women.”  Female minors used to go by another name: girls.  Seventeen-year-old girls; fifteen-year-old girls; ten-year-old girls.  Another gender nonspecific name is, hmm, let’s see…how about children?  These minors, who are being told that it is now more convenient to have sex and avoid the unpleasant consequences of pregnancy, are children.  A fifteen-year-old is a child.  Such activist rulings as Judge Korman’s will make parents increasingly irrelevant in the lives of their children and endanger children’s chances for a healthy and happy adulthood.