America's Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Are Not 'Ended'

By Dennis Prager

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

In his State of the Union address, on four occasions, President Barack Obama mentioned the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq coming to an end:

1. "And in tight-knit communities across America, fathers and mothers will tuck in their kids, put an arm around their spouse, remember fallen comrades, and give thanks for being home from a war that, after twelve long years, is finally coming to an end."

2. "When I took office, nearly 180,000 Americans were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, all our troops are out of Iraq. More than 60,000 of our troops have already come home from Afghanistan. With Afghan forces now in the lead for their own security, our troops have moved to a support role. Together with our allies, we will complete our mission there by the end of this year, and America's longest war will finally be over."

3. "And with the Afghan war ending, this needs to be the year Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers and we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay ..."

4. "As this time of war draws to a close, a new generation of heroes returns to civilian life."

At the end of his speech, when the president introduced gravely wounded Army Ranger Cory Remsburg, he said that "like the Army he loves, like the America he serves, Sergeant First Class Cory Remsburg never gives up, and he does not quit."

What Obama said is not true.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have not ended. Only America's involvement has ended (in Iraq) or is about to end (in Afghanistan).

And, unlike Sergeant Remsburg, America has quit.

As Peter Beinart, a man of the left who believes that America should never have fought either war, wrote in The Atlantic:

"When it comes to the war in which he [Remsburg] fought, quitting is exactly what the United States plans to do. Obama said as much earlier in his speech. In lauding America's exits from Afghanistan and Iraq, he didn't cite a single thing the United States has accomplished in either country. How could he have? Parts of central Iraq are today in the hands of jihadists, and the carnage there has never been worse. When the U.S. and its allies leave Afghanistan, one expert recently predicted, 'the likely outcome is a civil war, much more fierce and widespread than the one fought during recent years.'"

The expert Beinart cites is a prominent Pakistani journalist and author, Zahid Hussain, who also predicted that this civil war in Afghanistan "will not be confined to Afghanistan but will also spill over into Pakistan."

That Beinart thinks that we should never have fought the Taliban is what one expects of a man of the left. When it comes to fighting evil, the left is almost pacifist. Moreover, he and the left generally are busier fighting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, American conservatives and carbon emissions.

So let's make two things clear about the president's repeated claims that the wars have ended.

First, as noted, the Iraqi and Afghan wars have not "ended." Only America's involvement has "ended." In Iraq, the war between violent Islamists and other Iraqis is intensifying; and in Afghanistan the war between violent Islamists and other Afghanis will begin as soon as, or even before, American troops leave.

Second, when a country leaves a war before achieving victory it is not called leaving. It is called defeat. The only goal of a war is victory. Even if you have been victorious on the battlefield -- as we have been in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and as we were in Vietnam -- if you leave before securing your ends, you will have lost the war. Had America left South Korea after having won the Korean War on the battlefield, there would still have been a war on the Korean peninsula -- a war that South Korea would have ultimately lost, and thereby disappeared from the map. All of Korea would have then become the concentration camp that North Korea is today.

If America is not prepared to stay indefinitely -- and to stay does not necessarily mean to continue fighting -- in a country in which it fights, it should never engage in that war.

Because when the decent leave, the indecent win.

Thanks to President Obama and the Democratic Party, the decent will have left Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama and the Grievance Industry

By Mona Charen

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

From one point of view, President Barack Obama's invocation of the hoary "77 cents" myth regarding the relative earnings of women and men was a shallow and cheap political pander. Democrats, eager to maintain their advantage with women voters, stoke grievance. It's the same playbook they've used to solidify their standing with black voters -- suggest whenever and wherever possible that Republicans are racists. It's crude, offensive and libelous -- but effective.

Yet Obama fancies himself an intellectual. Campaigning against Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia, the president chastised the Republican for challenging climate change, saying, "It has to do with what's true. It has to do with facts. You don't argue with facts." Many in the press and in progressive circles regard this president as a bit of a thought leader.

So it's remarkable that he is willing to betray how out of touch he is with social science by peddling the decades-old and utterly outdated idea that our great challenge as a society is ensuring women equal pay for equal work. He could not be more dated if he were issuing calls to improve phonograph needles.

Conservatives like Christina Hoff Sommers, Charles Murray and Kay Hymowitz, have long been drawing attention to the declining fortunes of boys and men in American society. They have been joined recently by nonconservative scholars and researchers as well.

A paper by two Massachusetts Institute of Technology economists, "Wayward Sons," published by the center/left think tank Third Way, outlines the startling decline in the fortunes of moderately to poorly educated men over the past several decades. The title of the opening chapter is direct: "Women Gain Ground, Men Lose Ground." Starting with the cohort born in 1951, a gender gap in high school completion has opened up and continues to grow. More girls than boys are graduating from high school.

The college picture is even starker. Whereas the high school graduation rate for males has stagnated (while women's has improved), college attendance for males has declined while women have advanced. "Females born in 1975 were roughly 17 percent more likely than their male counterparts to attend college and nearly 23 percent more likely to complete a four-year degree." Young women are also more ambitious and have higher hopes for their futures than young men.

Much attention has focused on the decline of blue-collar jobs over the past several decades, and "Wayward Sons" duly acknowledges that the loss of low-skilled jobs to automation, globalization and de-unionization may have contributed to the notable decline in wages suffered by less educated men in the past several decades. But the puzzling fact is women with equivalent levels of education have not suffered the same income declines, nor have women's labor force participation rates declined as men's have. While men's wages have declined for all but the most educated since 1979, women's wages have increased for all but the least educated. Women's income gains have far outstripped men's at every level of education, particularly among college graduates ages 40 to 64.

"Wayward Sons" considers the possibilities -- are women better at the tasks a highly information-rich economy rewards? Is the loss of brawny jobs to blame for men's falling labor force participation and declining earnings? Each theory gets a hearing.

At length, the authors come to the elephant in the room: the dramatic change in family structure since 1970. In that year, 69 percent of black men without a high school diploma were married. By 2010, only 17 percent were. The marriage rate among non-college attending whites and Hispanics has declined precipitously as well.

The link between family composition and child welfare is well-established. What "Wayward Sons" adds is data on the differentially harmful effects of fatherlessness on sons versus daughters. "Growing up in a single-parent home appears to significantly decrease the probability of college attendance for boys, yet has no similar effect for girls." Boys from such homes "are 25 percentage points more likely to be suspended in the eighth grade than girls from these households, whereas the corresponding gender gap between boys and girls from households with two biological parents was only 10 percentage points."

A vicious cycle is clearly underway. Poorly educated women do not find marriageable mates among low-earning or jobless young men. Women then raise children alone and handicap their sons more than their daughters, and the cycle repeats itself.

The collapse of the marriage culture is arguably the "defining issue of our time." Neither men nor women thrive without marriage, but men and boys seem to suffer more. Fatherlessness is driving income inequality, child poverty and declining mobility. But Obama is manning the barricades on "equal pay for equal work" -- a matter addressed by Congress in 1963.

Why Certainly: Obama for Peace Brings Us War

By John Ransom

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords. Psalm 55:21

There are many things that are difficult to explain about the Obama administration. An apparently free and independent people not only elected him president of the United States, but also re-elected him even as it was apparent that his administration was mostly a miserable failure-- even by the measure of liberals.

Historians will long ponder how a president who spent as much money and legislated as much produced very little that actually helped the man on the street…and then was re-elected. Obama’s very own rhetoric about jobs, wages, and the economy since his re-election has been a confession of failure more than a domestic program.

But while we have been focused on the ruinous domestic side of Obama’s policies, it is perhaps on foreign policy that the results will travel farther with us.

The Middle East is ripe for the next world war, as we go into the sixth year of appeasement policies aimed at getting our enemies to think we are really swell guys. It’s the first time since 1944 that the geopolitical conditions in the Middle East are so unstable that it’s hard to predict with certainty how it will all play out.

And a stable foreign policy doesn’t thrive on that type of uncertainty.

Revolutions do though, as we are witnessing.

The situation in Syria, we’ve learned this week, is so bad and so unstable that even Al Qaeda is beginning to disown the effort and their allies.

“Al Qaeda appears to have had enough of one of its affiliates fighting in Syria: the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant,” says CNN. “The group has been locked in conflict with other Islamist factions and gained a grim reputation for abuses in parts of Syria it controls, including summary executions and mass killings.”

The last time we checked in with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, they were busy plundering the Iraqi Anbar province.

Imagine what you must do to gain a reputation for savagery so bad that even Al Qaeda is put off by it.

Congratulations Obama.

Because while Al Qaeda is the most visible participant in the coalition fighting in Syria, make no mistake: It’s Obama that’s given groups like the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant the guiding hand and the support the terror coalition needs to make a fight in Syria and Iraq and in Libya.

If there was any one thing the White House could do to make Syria’s Baathist dictator Bashar Hafez al-Assad look like a more appealing alternative to the terrorists supported by the U.S., they must have just overlooked it.

Because they have done everything possible to prop up Assad, while apparently attempting to topple him.

From a blood-thirsty dictator, they have turned him into a kind of martyr, who while not possessing saintly attributes, is a better devil that we know than the devils Obama is supporting.

Which leads us to the eternal—and internal—question of the Obama administration: Are the people behind the Obama policies really this dumb—along with their president—or are they doing this on purpose?

It will be a question that historian will wrestle with, and perhaps the legacy that Obama leaves for his presidency.

Because while liberals like to cite Bush as “stupid,” his policies and goals were clear to allies and enemies, even when they lacked in execution.

Clarity, indeed, is actually a central goal of any good foreign policy, if foreign policy is meant to avoid war.

World War I was started because all parties misunderstood the goals of every other party. Before the outbreak World War, II Hitler misunderstood England’s resolve to fight, because English leaders were too busy assuring Germany that they wouldn’t fight under any circumstances. Stalin underestimated Truman at Potsdam, while Truman was unclear about American commitment to Korea, resulting in the Korea War-- a war that we carry with us today.

War is made more possible by pusillanimous, covert and unintelligible foreign policies.

And I’m just saying that war is probably not what liberals signed up for.

But war, very possibly, is what they will get.

In fact, they have it already.

Obama either meant to do it, or he didn’t.

And historians will be left sifting through the rubble to ask why.

Progressivism Kills

By Kevin D. Williamson

Saturday, February 01, 2014

There are many horrific stories to be told about the implosion of Detroit, once the nation’s most prosperous city, today its poorest. There is the story of its corrupt public institutions, its feckless leaders, its poisonous racial politics, its practically nonexistent economy, the riots that have led to its thrice being occupied by federal troops. The most horrific story may be that of the death of its children.

Detroit has the highest child-mortality rate of any American city, exceeding that of many parts of what we used to call the Third World. The rate of death before the age of 18 in Detroit is nearly three times New York City’s, and its infant-mortality rate exceeds that of Botswana. The main cause of premature death among the children of Detroit is premature birth — the second is murder. While the city’s murder rate among adults is nothing to be proud of, more horrifying is the fact that between 30 and 40 children are murdered in Detroit in a typical year. Some of those children are nine-month-olds killed by rifle fire in their beds; some are budding criminals in their late teens — and each of those situations offers its own unique horrors. So dangerous is the city that children are being armed by their parents, which has predictable consequences. “I work in the Wayne County Juvenile Court, and these children are obtaining guns from adults,” children’s-law attorney Lynda White told the Detroit News, which has been conducting an in-depth investigation of how Detroit’s children are dying. “They’re obtaining guns illegally from people who are supposed to be responsible and people who are supposed to protect them. And if that person who has a huge influence in your life is giving you a gun, some of them tend to think it’s okay to carry it. And they’re being told, ‘You need this for your protection, you live in Detroit.’”

Detroit represents nothing less than progressivism in its final stage of decadence: Worried that unionized public-sector workers are looting your city? Detroit is already bankrupt, unable to provide basic services expected of it — half the streetlights don’t work, transit has been reduced, neighborhoods go unpatrolled. Worried that public-sector unions are ruining your schools? Detroit’s were ruined a generation or more ago, the results of which are everywhere to be seen in the city. Worried that Obamacare is going to ruin our health-care markets? General-practice physicians are hard to find in Detroit, and those willing to accept Medicaid — which covers a great swath of Detroit’s population — are rarer still. Worried about the permissive culture? Four out of five of Detroit’s children are born out of wedlock. Worried that government is making it difficult for businesses to thrive? Many people in Detroit have to travel miles to find a grocery store. This is the endgame of welfare economics: What good is Medicaid if there are no doctors? What good are food stamps where there is no food? What good are “free” schools if you’re so afraid to send your children there that you feel it prudent to arm them first?

Detroit is what Democrats do. The last Republican elected mayor of Detroit took office during the Eisenhower administration. The decay of Detroit is not the inevitable outcome of the decline of the automotive industry: The automotive industry is thriving in the United States — but not in Detroit. It isn’t white flight: The black middle class has left Detroit as fast as it can. The model of Detroit politics is startlingly familiar in its fundamentals, distinguished only by its degree of advancement: Advance the interests of public-sector unions and politically connected business cronies, expand the relative size of the public sector remorselessly — and when opposed, cry “Racism!” When people vote with their feet, cry “Racism!” When the budget just won’t balance, cry “Racism!” Never mind that the current mayor of Detroit is the first non–African American to hold that job since the 1970s, or that, as one Detroit News columnist put it, “black nationalism . . . is now the dominant ideology of the [city] council” — somewhere, there must be a somebody else to blame, preferably: aged, portly, white, male, and Republican. No less a fool than Ed Schultz blamed the straits of this exemplar of Democratic single-party rule on “a lot of Republican policies.” Melissa Harris-Perry, “America’s leading public intellectual,” blames Detroit’s problems on its conservatism and small government, oblivious to the fact that Detroit maintains twice as many city employees per resident as do larger cities such as Fort Worth and Indianapolis, and three times as many as liberal San Jose.

The result of all that municipal “investment”? For children newborn through age 18, Detroit sees 120 deaths per 100,000 each year — a rate 26 percent higher than second-place child-killer Philadelphia. That’s nearly two and a half times the rate in Los Angeles, which isn’t exactly a leafy suburban paradise. Every time our progressive friends come to us with another idea for transferring wealth from the productive economy to them and their friends, they scold us: “Think of the children!” But those who resist their efforts to do to the country at large what they have done to Detroit are thinking of the children.

There used to be a popular bumper sticker reading, “War Is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things.” War is hell, Detroit merely hellish. The difference is, we don’t send children off to war.

Three Facts About The Super Bowl That Could Transform Our Economy

By Austin Hill

Sunday, February 02, 2014

Are you ready for some football?

Super Bowl Sunday is, obviously, a day for fun, food and friends. But as you enjoy the football game, consider the deeper meaning of it all – and how our economic fortunes could improve if we seriously changed our outlook. Consider these important “truths” about the game, and how they can apply after the game.

    1) By the end of the game one team will be declared the winner, one team will be declared the loser, and only one individual player will be declared “MVP” - These facts are so obviousand common place that we don’t really think much about them. Yet allowing for natural and healthy competition to determine the score is completely counter to how most Americans (as well as the politicians they elect) think about labor, the possession of wealth, and the health of the economy.

    Instead of allowing the best performers to enjoy the spoils of their labor (as we do with athletic competitions), with economic matters many Americans think in terms of “shared prosperity” (you have too much wealth and the government should take more of it away!), “shared responsibility” (the rich people should pay for my food stamps, Medicaid, mortgage relief, etc..), and “leveling the playing field” (I can’t have get enough success if you are enjoying too much of it). It’s not an accident that Americans continually elect politicians who promise to make our lives easier by minimizing the success of others. If we accepted other people’s success in the economy the way we accept it on the football field, we might just find that other people’s success actually creates jobs and benefits everybody.

    2) Every member of each team will be required to play by the same rules – the NFL goes out of its way to eliminate human error when it comes to officiating. The referees are well-trained professionals who are expected to enforce the rules in equal measure with all the players from both teams – and when applying the rules is uncertain, digital instant replay technology is deployed to make that the “law” is applied appropriately.

    But when it comes to real-life things like jobs, opportunity, wages and wealth, Americans don’t necessarily like the “everyone plays by the same rules” approach. We prefer government policy makers who hold some of us to the letter of the law, but give others of us special breaks. A tax deduction for me, a tax hike for you. Special grants and opportunities according to our gender, ethnicity and marital status. “Free” subsidies for so-called “green energy” companies, but harsh taxes and penalties for oil companies. That’s apparently the way we like it. Yet we might just find that if we chose a government that held us all to the same requirements, the “high scoring” players among us might create more opportunity for all of us, and us “lower scoring” players might be incentivized to improve our game.

    3) “Inequality” runs rampant in the NFL – and it’s not a bad thing - By its nature the game of football treats quarterbacks differently from punters and place kickers, and we think nothing of it. Quarterbacks negotiate for the highest compensation possible with an NFL team, yet many punters and kickers are lucky to play for the base minimum salary guaranteed by their union.

    Yet when it comes to economic matters outside of professional sports it is often presumed to be unfair that the CEO of a company earns a multi-million dollar salary, while entry-level employees of the company earn a government mandated minimum wage. We accept the fact that the value that football players bring to their team may vary according to their talents, skills and position, but in our workplace everybody is somehow supposed to be treated “equally.”

    If we stopped demonizing the high achievers among us (and quit electing politicians who demonize them as well), we’d likely learn that other people’s achievements can create opportunity and prosperity for all of us.

Will America return to being that “shining city on the hill” where achievement is respected, both on and off the field?