American Heroes

WASHINGTON — Nobel laureate Barack Obama, fresh from his Latin American spring break, is in serious trouble. Globalists and Utopians who once lauded his constant contrition now want POTUS to return his Peace Prize….

Naval Air Station Sigonella sits in the shadow of an active volcano – Mount Vesuvius.  Every once in awhile it belches ash and smoke and makes the people of this small Italian island hope that Pompeii was a one-time thing. 

Today, pairs of fighter jets take off and land with frequency in the shadow of the volcano as US F-16 warplanes speed south across the mediterranean to continue to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya.  But something else is rumbling:  calls for the president to lead this mission to a swift conclusion.  Pressure is mounting on Obama from republicans and democrats equally as the hastily assembled coalition of nations begins to break apart.  Yesterday Germany pulled out completely.  Turkey has voiced its unhappiness with the operation, and Russia’s president is getting downright nasty.

The truth is, the Obama administration went into the operation here with less of a coalition that George W. Bush had for the invasion of Iraq.

Here in the Mediterranean, more bad news:  While coalition airstrikes have reduced Libya’s ability to launch attacks from the air, the no-fly zone is  not stopping Ghadafi’s forces on the ground.  His troops are still beseiging the town of Misrata, in what some observers are calling a “massacre.” And while the cost of this war to American Taxpayers has already reached the billions, nobody seems really sure about how this will end if Ghadaffi stays in power.

 And while we’re being assured there will not be American boots on the ground in Libya, the feeling I’m getting is that something is going to blow.

By Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn, Public Affairs

ABOARD USS MOUNT WHITNEY, Mediterranean Sea – Two crew members ejected from their U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle when the aircraft experienced equipment malfunction over northeast, Libya, March 21, at approximately 10:30 p.m. CET.

Both crew members ejected and are safe.

The aircraft, based out of Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, was flying out of Aviano Air Base in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn at the time of the incident.

The cause of the incident is under investigation.

The identities will be released after the next of kin have been notified.

American cruise missiles and warplanes joined forces with a coalition of 12 NATO countries in bombing military targets within Libya, in support of the UN mandate of 17 March calling for the protection of Libyan civilians from attacks by their own government.  The resolution was in response to almost abject begging by the league of Arab Nations, which immediately condemned the attacks on Muammar Gaddafi’s air defenses as soon as they began.

Which kind of leads me to wonder why we’re getting involved at all.  Sure, protecting civilian life from attacks by its own government is a good thing, and something which good nations will feel compelled to do.  But if that’s the reason we’re bombing Tripoli, then why aren’t we also dropping Tomahawks on Burma, Sudan, Somalia and a host of other countries where governments are actively engaged in killing their own people. 

No, I get the feeling that while the politicians are making hay out of the “protect the civilians” part of the mission, perhaps in this case they would really just like to see Gaddafi gone.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing – the guy has been a nuisance to the west for forty years.  Then again, so has Fidel Castro, but we’re not bombing Havana.

What concerns me about Libya is the vast number of arms that are being distributed (and looted) from its arms depots.  I predict we will be seeing those again in future conflicts around the world.  The global black market for arms thrives on this sort of Chaos – weapons left behind when the US left Vietnam are still popping up today in the drug wars in Mexico. 

Arms are durable goods, and that means they may present more of a danger to world peace than drugs or tyrants like Gaddafi. 

Meanwhile, Hamas fired more than fifty rockets into Israel yesterday while the attention of the world was focused elsewhere.  Don’t be surprised if you see Israeli tanks putting some hurt on Gaza in the near future, and then being condemned for it by most of the world. 

WASHINGTON — Try this for a timeline of recent events that affect Americans, and see whether you can determine whether the leader of the Free World suffers from presidential attention-deficit disorder:Wednesday, March…

No one can deny that Narcotics cause a large share of the world’s problems.  From the opium that spreads like cancer from Afghanistan around the globe to the Marijuana grown in the highlands of Mexico, America leads the world in the fight against global narco-insurgencies.  Unfortunately, America is also responsible for much of the demand for illegal narcotics.  In this way, we are sort of funding both sides of the war – the surest way to make a war impossible to win.

In recent years, it has been fashionable in Mexico to blame the drug wars on American guns flooding south across the border.  Two years ago President Obama jumped on the bandwagon himself, stating in a press conference:

 ”A demand for these drugs in the United States is what is helping to keep these cartels in business. This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border.”

The only problem is, it isn’t true.  Not by a long shot.  Here are the real statistics from a GAO report from the same time period:

In raids on drug cartels in 2008, some 30,000 guns were seized by Mexican authorities.  Data from just 24 percent of those guns was submitted to the US for help with tracing.  Of that 24 percent, less than 3500 guns were shown to come from the United States.  This amounts to only about 12 percent, not 90 percent as quoted by Obama and many others.

From there, one must understand the nature of illegal arms.  Many of them do not come from the black market, but are legally purchased by the host country (in this case, Mexico) for use by their police and armed forces.  Unfortunately, many of these soldiers and police go AWOL, taking their weapons with them.  These guns which started in the “white market” make up a sizeable percentage of the 12 percent above.   This gun/drug bust in 2008 netted over 500 weapons, including “gold encrusted weapon” and a rocket launcher.  The gun runner was a deserter from the Mexican army. 

So where do the rest of the guns come from?  An AK-47 can be had on the foreign market for about $100. Thousands of tons of weapons were shipped to central and south America during the cold war by the US and Russia.  Many of those are still around.  Even guns that were left in Vietnam when the United States pulled out in the 1970′s sometimes show up in Mexico – making their way via the black market.

The bottom line is this:  Blaming the US for Mexico’s drug wars is like blaming AT&T for the fact that your mother-in-law keeps calling.  It might be a tempting target upon which to direct your frustration, but it will not fix the problem.  What Mexico should do is overhaul their laws to include the right to bear arms.  See, right now it is illegal for Mexican citizens to own a handgun for personal protection, and very difficult and expensive to own a long gun. 

So Mexico, how’s that working out for you?

WASHINGTON — Fuel and food prices are up. So is unemployment. Officials in the Obama administration and their allies on Capitol Hill are stunned. They shouldn’t be. It’s O-Team policy — or lack of it — that got us…

WASHINGTON — In 1794, during George Washington’s second term as president, Congress finally got around to appropriating funds to build six wooden-hulled frigates that were “sufficiently armed” to protect American…