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CHRISTMAS IN A WAR ZONE

Posted by EWRoss on Monday, December 14, 2009 7:00:00 AM

The first unit of the 30,000 troops President Obama has ordered into Afghanistan, 1500 Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, will arrive before Christmas. Many of them have spent Christmas away from home before in Afghanistan or Iraq. They'll join thousands of others who have done the same. It goes with the territory. It's no big deal, unless it's your first time.

 

For me that first time was Christmas 1966. A brand new 2nd LT assigned to the reactivated 9th Infantry Division at Ft. Riley, Kansas, six months earlier, I deployed on 2 December with the 3rd Brigade aboard the USNS General William Weigal out Oakland, California. Twenty-one days later we moved by truck convoy from the port of Vung Tau, South Vietnam, to the 9th's new base camp at Bearcat southeast of Saigon. I spent Christmas eve sitting on a sandbag wall, cleaning my M-16 rifle, looking up at the stars, and thinking about my family 11,000 miles away. I'll never forget that lonely night because it made me aware of what Christmas is really all about--family, friends, and shared beliefs.

 

A lot has changed in 44 years--the troops today have have email, cellphones, digital pictures, and video. What hasn't changed is that America's young men and women must still go in harms way to defend our freedom. Remember our troops this Christmas. They'll be thinking about us.

 

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TROOP MORALE - The Most Precious Commodity

Posted by EWRoss on Monday, October 19, 2009 8:00:00 AM

We hear conflicting reports about troop morale in the US armed forces. High-profile people who visit our troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places report that morale is high. After eight years of war since 9/11, however, years more of war ahead, and the US strategy to win it uncertain, others report that troop morale is low. Whatever the situation, now, more than ever, it’s important that American leaders and the American people not take troop morale for granted and exercise great care not to squander this most precious commodity essential to success.

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OBAMA'S NOBEL POLITICS PRIZE - It's All About George W. Bush

Posted by EWRoss on Monday, October 12, 2009 8:00:00 AM

What can I say about the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama? Statements of shock and surprise have poured in from around the world. Even Obama’s fellow travelers were surprised. The president himself could hardly believe it. Perhaps we might pause, however, before we scratch our heads and move on, and consider the “teachable moment” here. Why are so many people saying this is all about George W. Bush; and what does this tell us about America’s European critics and how we should consider what they say and do?

Read my full column at http://ewross.com/Obamas_Nobel_Politics_Prize.htm
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JOHN WAYNE & THE UIGHURS

Posted by EWRoss on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 8:00:00 AM
All I know about the Uighurs recently released from the Guantanamo detention facility is what I've learned about them from the media. I do, however, have lasting images of the Uighurs I met when I visited Xinjiang, Province, China in 1983.

While serving as the assistant US Army attaché in Beijing my wife and I flew to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where we rented a car and a tall, husky Uighur driver, whom we dubbed "John Wayne" because of the way he walked. We spent the better part of a week in that car with "John" and covered over 1,000 kilometers visiting the Turfan oasis, Buddhist caves, and ancient ruins. Of course, you can't learn all that much about a people from hanging around with one of them for a week, but we did our research before and after the trip and observed how Uighurs in Urumqi and in the countryside lived. We also observed how John behaved everytime we encountered one of the ever-present Chinese policemen or soldiers we encountered. He bristled.

Like Tibetans, Uighurs are an oppressed minority in China. They have become increasingly radicalized in recent years by their al-Qaeda and Taliban neighbors to their west. Indeed they have conducted terrorist attacks in China directed at the Chinese government in Beijing, and some of them have been found fighting in Afghanistan. But when I see video clips of released Uighurs swimming in the ocean off Bermuda, I think about John and wonder what ever happened to him. They also remind me that not everything is black and white. As the old cliché goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
 
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DISSING SARAH PALIN - The Corrupt Side of Our Politicial Humor

Posted by EWRoss on Monday, June 15, 2009 8:00:00 AM
Politicians are prime sources of comic material. They always have been, and in free societies they always will. Good, clean political humor, the kind legendary comedian Bob Hope served up for 70 years, is healthy. It helps prevent everyone from taking politicians too seriously, and it brings comic relief to hard-fought partisan struggles. When the purveyors of political humor attempt to use it to unjustly demean and degrade politicians, as David Letterman’s comments about Sarah Palin and her daughter attempted to do last week, they corrupt an important aspect of American politics.
 
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SHOOTING CRAPS WITH AMERICAN LIVES

Posted by EWRoss on Thursday, June 11, 2009 8:00:00 AM
Rep. Mike Rogers, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee's Terrorism Subcommittee, recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan. He reports that FBI agents are reading high-value detainees their Miranda rights in an apparent effort to build cases against them that will stand up in US courts.

Coupled with a recent report in the Los Angeles Times about the DOJ’s “global justice” initiative, it demonstrates that the FBI is taking a greater role in managing terrorist detainees in Afghanistan. A DOJ spokesperson stated that Justice had issued no blanked guidance on Mirandizing terror detainees in Afghanistan; but, it acknowledged it had.

This, no doubt, is a reaction to CIA waterboarding, and many Americans may approve of it. But it’s a reversion to the pre-9/11 mentality of treating global terrorism as a law-enforcement problem rather than an intelligence and military problem. Reading captured top terrorists their rights and giving them access to lawyers may get them convicted in US courts, but it will seriously damage our ability to collect obtain critical and perishable intelligence that might prevent another horrific terrorist attack. It’s shooting craps with American lives.
 
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OBAMA AND THE WORLD - Do His Policies Match His Words?

Posted by EWRoss on Monday, June 08, 2009 9:00:00 AM
President Barack Obama, in his foreign policy speeches at home and abroad, seeks to present a more engaging image of America to countries and peoples around the world. He frequently refers to the "mistakes of the past eight years," and he presents himself not so much as the leader of a superpower and the free world but as a leader of a co-equal member of the community of nations. How deeply committed is Obama to the national security ideas and principles he articulates; and do Obama administration policies match the President’s words?
 
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OBAMA'S SPEECH TO THE MUSLIM WORLD

Posted by EWRoss on Monday, June 01, 2009 7:00:00 AM
When Barack Obama gives his speech in Cairo Thursday he should show his respect for Islam, Muslims, and Arabs without apologizing for American actions in the Muslim world over the past 100 years. He should remind them that the US has come to the defense of Muslims in Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan and to their rescue after the Tsunami in Southeast Asia, as it has for people in need around the world. He should tell them that the US seeks a just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the US will never ask Israel to sign its own death warrant by agreeing to a peace settlement that ultimately will lead to the destruction of the State of Israel. He should ask them to look inward. Have they done everything they could to help solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Finally, he should ask them to look forward, speaking out strongly for freedom, democracy and human rights and sending a clear message to Mubarak and others autocratic Muslim leaders.
 
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THE RETI OPENING: Obama's Foreign Policy Chess Games Begin

Posted by EWRoss on Monday, February 09, 2009 8:00:00 AM
Before all his pawns are in place, President Obama has begun multiple foreign policy chess games with the Réti Opening. Named after chess Grandmaster Richard Réti, who used it to defeat World Chess Champion José Raúl Capablanca in 1924, the opening is best described as a series of moves "rife with transpositional possibilities." If you're not sure what that means, that's the effect Reti and Obama likely intended.
 
Obama’s queen in the global game, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, moves multiple squares next week in Asia. Knight Richard Holbrooke, in the South Asia, moves to Kabul, Islamabad, and Delhi after attending the Wehrkunde Conference this past weekend on security policy in Munich, Germany, with rooks, Vice President Joe Biden and National Security Advisor James Jones. It's Israel's move in the Middle East. Who makes it depends on the outcome of Israel’s election. Meanwhile, Obama reportedly is laying the groundwork for a match with Iran's president while he considers how to react to Russia's opening moves.
 

 
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