Inviting War

Inviting War
Oliver North
Friday, June 04, 2010

WASHINGTON -- Sixty years ago this month, the North Korean People's Army, enticed by the Truman administration's announcement that Korea was no longer within the "U.S. defensive perimeter," launched a surprise attack across the 38th parallel -- the arbitrary demarcation line drawn by the United Nations between the Republic of Korea and the communist north, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The onslaught was so successful that in a matter of just three days, Seoul was captured and the poorly trained and equipped ROK military was smashed. Hundreds of American advisers and hastily deployed reinforcements were killed, captured or listed as missing in action. By mid-July, the remnants of U.S. and ROK forces were driven into a tiny defensive perimeter around the port of Pusan.

Three years and more than 150,000 American casualties later, an armistice ended the fighting -- but not the war. Ever since, American national security policy has been based on the idea that attacks against the U.S. homeland, our national interests and our allies could be prevented by "containing communism" and maintaining sufficient nuclear and conventional forces to deter aggression. American intelligence capabilities were focused on knowing what our adversaries were up to and sharing that information with our allies. Until Jimmy Carter came along, it was a strategy that generally worked.

Carter decided -- and Congress agreed -- to gut U.S. defense and intelligence budgets, dramatically reduce the U.S. military presence in the Republic of Korea and replace deterrence with "diplomatic engagement." America's adversaries wasted no time in taking advantage of his perceived naivet<é>e and weakness. Though the U.S. withdrawal from South Korea was stopped thanks to a major political movement launched by World War II hero Maj. Gen. Jack Singlaub, other American allies weren't so fortunate.

While Americans here at home were distracted by economic woes that included double-digit inflation and interest rates, Panama, Nicaragua, Iran, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and eventually Afghanistan all succumbed to "revolutionary" regimes or outright invasion during Carter's mercifully brief tenure as commander in chief. He used the threat of reduced arms sales and aid for Israel to initiate the novel concept of a "Palestinian homeland" during negotiations for a peace treaty with Egypt.

Though Ronald Reagan restored the idea of "peace through strength" and carried out his promise to confront Soviet expansion, we still are paying the price for the Carter administration's ineptness and misfeasance. The undetected nuclear weapons programs in both North Korea and Iran trace their lineage to Carter's intelligence cuts. As a consequence, two of America's most steadfast allies -- Israel and the Republic of Korea -- now face the clear and present danger of existential annihilation. Both democracies are literally under the gun -- and getting little but platitudes or worse from the Obama administration.

After the Cheonan, an ROK navy patrol boat, blew up in international waters, killing 46 sailors March 26, Seoul's military -- as our mutual defense treaty requires -- turned to the U.S. for advice on how to respond. The O-Team counseled caution -- urging the South Koreans to invite an "international committee" to conduct a "fair, impartial and transparent investigation" to determine what happened. They did -- and the panel found overwhelming evidence that the Cheonan had been sunk by a torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine. The Obama administration's response to this overt act of war: to refer the matter to the United Nations. In Pyongyang, the brutal regime that has starved its people to build nuclear weapons now promises "total war."

It's even worse for Israel -- abandoned by the Obama administration and beleaguered by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon's detonating on Tel Aviv, renewed rocket attacks on civilians from Iranian-supplied Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and a rearmed, Iranian-supplied Hezbollah terror movement in southern Lebanon. Last week's flawed effort by Israel Defense Forces to inspect a so-called "humanitarian aid flotilla" for weapons and military equipment has resulted in international opprobrium because nine "activists" aboard the vessels were killed. The O-Team's response: to demand that the United Nations conduct a "fair, impartial and transparent investigation." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has to be thankful no one insisted on a U.N. investigation after more than 70 were killed in Waco, Texas, in April 1993.

Americans once again are distracted by economic woes and a Gulf oil spill. The U.S. intelligence community is leaderless and in nearly total disarray. Our southern border is an open passage for unlawful entry at best -- and a virtual invasion path for well-armed enemies at worst. The Iranian regime, having brutally suppressed its internal opposition, overtly is arming Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaida while racing to acquire nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them. The vicious despots running North Korea -- having escaped any retribution for repeated violations of international law -- commit an act of war, and the U.S. backs down. Meanwhile the Obama administration is intent on turning the U.S. military, already engaged in a two-front war, into a laboratory for radical social experiments. Even Jimmy Carter didn't try that.
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Will Our Peace Prizewinner Lead Us Into a New War?
Ken Blackwell
Thursday, June 03, 2010

“During his campaign for the 2008 election, Mr. Obama promised to brand the mass killings genocide.” That’s how the left-wing BBC described one of Barack Obama’s promises in his most successful election campaign of two springs ago. It seemed so easy then to satisfy every group of voters. Everyone, it seemed, was getting in step behind the pied piper.

Now, we see the fruits of that campaign. Or, as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright might say: The Mideast chickens are coming home to roost. Last March, when the Democratic-dominated House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 23-22 to brand the Turks’ mass killings of Armenians a century ago a “genocide,” the Turkish government of today reacted angrily. The Turkish people have been voting for an ever-more alarming mix of nationalists and Islamists.

So much for the politics of sentiment. So much for being—as columnist David Broder recently called Barack Obama--“the Empathizer in Chief.” If you feel every group’s pain, you’re going to be in for some real pain of your own. Here it comes.

Turkey backed a blockade runner, a large ferry boat that could well have included in its capacious hold arms and munitions for the Hamas regime in Gaza. Israel last weekend attempted to enforce their blockade. They wanted only to inspect the ferry’s cargo. The melee on the ferry deck showed “peace” activists attacking the Israeli commandos with sharpened iron bars. When the Israelis fired back, 10 of those on board the ferry were killed.

International condemnation of Israel has been swift. This has followed a UN Resolution over the weekend that called upon Israel to comply with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel. Well, if you can’t get any results from Iran, why not put some extra pressure on your ally, Israel? The Obama administration stood by impotently while this potent anti-Israel resolution passed.

Israel is in graver danger today than she has faced in recent memory. In 1948, when the State of Israel was proclaimed, she was invaded simultaneously by five Arab armies. But, and a most important but, the U.S. stood staunchly behind the infant Jewish State.

President Harry Truman defied his Secretary of State, George Marshall, the man he most admired in the world, to recognize Israel just eleven minutes after independence was declared. That timely demonstration of U.S. support helped avert disaster then.

Twenty-five years later, Israel was attacked in 1973 on Yom Kippur by Arab armies led by Egypt. The initial battles went badly—disastrously so--for Israel. But President Richard Nixon—though increasingly surrounded by the congressional hounds pursuing Watergate convictions—summarily ordered the U.S. military to re-supply the embattled Jewish State.

Many have since written that Nixon’s spontaneous action may have saved Israel at its moment of maximum danger. Surely, the USSR was unwilling to risk a nuclear clash—even with a politically wounded Richard Nixon—over so important an ally as Israel.

In 1948 and 1973, Israelis could at least rely on American liberals to support their claims.

No more. No sooner had the clash on the high seas occurred than liberal blogger Peter Beinart joined the worldwide anti-Israel cabal by posting on “Israel’s Indefensible Behavior.”

We now face a real prospect of a new Mideast war, one in which Israel will be beset by Iran, by Iran’s cats paws, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Even more menacingly, we could see Turkey—long Israel’s only Muslim ally—join this unholy alliance.

Who is responsible for this serious downward spiral in the Mideast? Who else? When the Obama administration spends its first year “extending an open hand” to the murderous mullahs in Tehran, and when it fails to do anything meaningful to stop Iran’s march to nuclear weapons, when the administration stiff-arms the Israelis, and treats Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu like a pariah for building apartments for Jews in the capital of the Jewish state, the wolves of jihad gather. They scent blood. Will this be one more chapter in the lamentable story of how weak and irresolute leadership leads us into war?

We must pray it doesn’t happen.