American Heroes

WASHINGTON — No nation ever has had a better military than today’s all-volunteer U.S. armed forces. Though I wouldn’t trade anything for the young Americans I served with in Vietnam — or afterward — those presently wearing America’s uniforms are the brightest, best-educated, best-trained and most combat-experienced military the world ever has seen. Now, in the midst of an unprecedented ninth year of war and nonstop high-stress deployments, their commander in chief intends to put the capabilities of this extraordinary force and our nation’s security at risk to carry out a radical social experiment.

During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama frequently promised he would reverse the U.S. military’s long-standing policy prohibiting homosexuals from serving in our military. Last October, at a Human Rights Campaign dinner, he said: “I’m working with the Pentagon, its leadership and the members of the House and Senate on ending this policy. … I will end ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ That’s my commitment to you.”

Last week, tucked into the closing paragraphs of his State of the Union address, the president said, “This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.” Set aside the disingenuous rhetoric. (It’s not about “who they are”; it’s really about “what they do.”) We now know the “repeal” process is already well under way.

Arguing with Idiots By Glenn Beck

This week, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an advocate of ending what he calls “this discriminatory policy,” convened a remarkable hearing to determine the “next steps” in “meeting the president’s commitment.”

Testimony by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed the Department of Defense isn’t going to evaluate whether repealing Section 654 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code — the 1993 statute that bars active homosexuals from the military — is a good idea. Instead, the Pentagon already is working to undermine the law and allow practicing homosexuals to enter and remain in our military.

According to Gates, “The question before us is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we best prepare for it.” He announced a yearlong study on how to implement a repeal of the law and baldly asserted that “we have a degree of latitude within the existing law to change our internal procedures in a manner that is more appropriate and fair to our men and women in uniform.” In other words, in the Obama administration, enforcing the current law, which overwhelmingly was enacted 17 years ago, no longer matters.

Gates now acknowledges in the midst of war that he is implementing a policy of “selective enforcement” to disregard a law that clearly states that “the presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.” So much for our national security.

Though Mullen expressed his “personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do,” he conceded he does not “know for a fact how we would best make such a major policy change in a time of two wars.” The Joint Chiefs chairman also made this curious observation: “We have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.” How that can be the case in a “don’t ask, don’t tell” era seems to have eluded the good senators.

Unasked and unanswered are these “where do we go from here?” questions the senators should have posed: If Congress changes the law and allows overtly practicing homosexuals in the ranks, should NAMBLA members be allowed to serve? Will those who advocate abolishing “age of consent” laws be allowed to don uniforms? Will the military have to acknowledge same-sex marriages? If so, will military chaplains be required to perform such rituals? Will same-sex couples be entitled to military housing? Will these couples be allowed to serve in the same unit or aboard the same ship?

Supposedly, those issues and many more will be resolved over the next 10 months in a “working group” headed by Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson and Gen. Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe. Allegedly, they will consider ways to ameliorate the effects of this inane decision on readiness, recruitment and retention in the world’s finest military. Then, in 2011, Congress will vote on whether to repeal a law the O-Team is willfully ignoring anyway.

Congress should not wait to decide this issue and become party to potentially irreparable damage to our military. Congress controls the purse strings of the Pentagon. Both houses should go on record now so “We the People” know who favors treating America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines like lab rats in Mr. Obama’s radical social experiment.

WASHINGTON — Regardless of station in life, faith or philosophy, unfulfilled expectations are the greatest cause of anger, frustration and discontent on the planet. That’s true whether those expectations arise in the interaction of husbands and wives, parents and children, teachers and students, employers and employees, businesses and customers, leaders and the led or politicians and their constituents. President Barack Obama apparently doesn’t grasp this fundamental truth of human nature.

Resolving the “friction” of unfulfilled expectations requires a straightforward recognition of personal responsibility for commitments — perceived or real — that have not been satisfied and a determination by the parties involved to do better in the future. My experience with this process with my wife, children and colleagues usually begins with an acknowledgment of mistakes or errors I have made and includes the words “I’m sorry” or a similar phrase.

When Mr. Obama was campaigning for president, he promised “hope” and “change.” The majority of the American electorate believed these nebulous ideas would make life better for us and our children. We now know better.

Current poll numbers — the lowest for any president at this point in office — reflect the unfulfilled expectations of millions who voted for him. Yet the president’s first State of the Union address indicates he still doesn’t get it.

Absent from Mr. Obama’s lengthy lecture to the assembled masses last Wednesday night was any recognition of personal failure or error or even the hint of an apology. Instead, he ascribes blame to his predecessors, his political opponents and even the Supreme Court for all our problems. Apparently, apologies still are reserved for our nation generally — and are delivered in front of “blame America first” audiences overseas.

Worse, the president’s efforts to deflect responsibility for his party’s political reversals, our current economic travail, national security threats and foreign policy setbacks lead him to be disingenuous at best and downright deceptive at worst. Thankfully, not everyone gathered in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday night was willing to timidly “go along to get along.”

When Mr. Obama accused the Supreme Court of reversing “a century of law … (to) open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections,” Justice Samuel Alito could be seen mouthing the words “that’s not true.” The justice is right, for the court has done nothing to remove long-standing prohibitions on foreign entities — be they individuals or corporations — against their contributing to our election campaigns.

Some argue our tolerance for dissembling on domestic political matters — limiting campaign contributions, legislation to create jobs, raising taxes, increasing government spending and debt, imposing government-run health care or increasing regulatory controls on free enterprise — is a long-standing tradition. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama carries the practice into issues of national security.

He boldly claimed he has provided “leadership” and “engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people.” He also said, “Since the day I took office, we have renewed our focus on the terrorists who threaten our nation.” Yet the administration’s belated support for pro-democracy movements in Honduras and Iran, abandoning of a U.S. missile defense shield in Europe, insistence on shipping terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. while returning others to the battlefield, and treating terrorists — such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief 9/11 plotter; accused Fort Hood killer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day “underpants bomber” — as common criminals all make his assertions ring hollow.

The same applies to Mr. Obama’s call for Congress to “repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.” The commander in chief apparently wants us to ignore that it’s not love of country that’s the problem. Simply put, a warrior’s ethos is incompatible with illicit, same-sex eros in the ranks. It’s not “who they are”; it’s what they do.

This cynical effort at resurrecting a campaign promise to use our military for radical social engineering raises expectations in the Democratic “base” that their leader can somehow prevail in implementing their agenda. Yet like so many of Mr. Obama’s pledges, it is unlikely to happen absent a sea change in the American body politic.

The 1993 law — Section 654 of Title 10, U.S. Code — was mislabeled “don’t ask, don’t tell” by the media and the Clinton administration. In fact, a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress found “no constitutional right to serve in the armed forces” and codified that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service,” holding that active gays in the ranks would pose “an unacceptable risk to the armed forces’ high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.”

Unless the O-Team can show irrefutable evidence that changing the law would somehow improve “military capability” in the midst of war, even this Pelosi-Reid Congress will have to reject such blatant pandering to the far-left fringe. That undoubtedly will anger some who have not yet learned how to avoid disappointment with Mr. Obama: Keep expectations low. He is sure to live down to them.

WASHINGTON — “We are at war.” So said the 44th president of the United States on Jan. 7. Those four words, a profound statement of the obvious, were uttered belatedly as our commander in chief transitioned from…

CAMP DELARAM II, Afghanistan — When our Fox News team was here more than a year ago, this was a platoon patrol base. Then this area was a Taliban free-fire zone, and rarely did Marines venture “outside the wire”…

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — This forward operating base, “20 miles from nowhere,” may be the fastest-growing military installation in the world. In the six months since our Fox News team was previously here, the…

Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan

I’m back in Afghanistan for my third month-long embed in nineteen months. When I visited Helmand province in the summer of 2008, Camp Bastion was a small forward staging base in the middle of the most miserable and inhospitable desert I could ever imagine.  The Afghans call the area “the desert of death.”  Leave it to the military to see that as a good place to build a city larger than my hometown.

Back in 2008, one could walk from one end of the base to the other in a few minutes, and the most exciting reason to visit was the fact that there were cold showers (in tents) and a field hospital (in tents) that saved the lives of many men injured on the front lines.

Last year when I returned, the base had seen incredible growth with the addition of Camp Leatherneck – a tent-city erected to house thousands of incoming Marines.

The trend has continued in the six months since that visit – today, the combined camps Bastion and Leatherneck span thousands of acres and it takes nearly half an hour to drive from one end to the other.  The headquarters building actually has a lawn – the only living green for probably a hundred miles. There is a thai restaurant, a Pizza hut, a coffee house and an Afghan-run everything store called the “Smily Suppling and Survice Company.”  

Outside the gate, a village has sprung up where the thousands of afghan workers who do most of the menial labor at the base (building, cleaning, etc.) sleep in hastily erected tents. Today, the bases house nearly 20,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.  The airfield, aside from being one of the busiest military airfields in the world, now even hosts commercial flights.  This now-sprawling base is ground-zero for the “Afghan Surge” and the capital of what some are now calling “Marinestan.”

All this growth makes me wonder.  What will this area look like in ten years?  Will the “camp followers” outside the gate take up permanent residence?  Maybe someone will decide to build a beach resort.  There’s definitely no shortage of sun and sand.  And parking.  Lots of room for parking. 

They’re going to have to do something about that “desert of death” designation, though.  Not exactly good marketing. <

I’ll be traveling the country with the DEA and Special operations for the next month.  Stay tuned.

(En route to) KABUL — Other than spending lots of time covering soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen, Marines and special operators who routinely get shot at, I’m not a gambling man. Those I know who frequent the…

I ran across the following video on a military aggregator site today – it shows in raw detail what life is like for many of our troops in Afghanistan these days.  The video begins immediately after a vehicle is struck by an IED – shot from the point of view of the troops INSIDE the vehicle that was hit. 

They are all surprisingly calm, a testament to their high level of training and to the incredible survivability they now have with the new MATV’s that are being rolled out as fast as possible. The MATV is a smaller version of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles that helped win the war in Iraq. 

Now, the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All Terrain Vehicles carrrying our troops in Afghanistan are, in my estimation, poised to do the same in Afghanistan. When the Taliban realizes (and they are already) that the game has changed – that the roadside bombs they litter the roads with just aren’t killing our soldiers very often anymore, they’ll start to adjust their tactics – which means that in six months or a year, the roads will be much, much safer. 

This is a good thing, but it also carries risk. In Iraq when the insurgents could no longer kill us on the roads, they began wiring up entire houses with explosives – “house-borne IED’s” they were called. And too many men were killed searching houses on patrol.  But that increases the civilian casualties, and so it led to the local populace turning against the insurgents. 

If we persevere, this will happen in Afghanistan, too. Be sure to watch to the end of the clip, when the soldiers hold a small worship service at their remote outpost. Watching our warriors giving praise to their creator is something that should warm your heart, and give you hope for America. Our men aren’t just tough, they’re GOOD.

WASHINGTON — He had to give them something. During his first year in office, Barack Obama made the rounds of his constituents and tried to appease them all. For the pacifists, there were promises to get out of Iraq….

WASHINGTON — It’s a war the so-called mainstream media apparently have decided to ignore. Though its death toll is higher than Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s combined, it evidently isn’t worth covering; and unless you’re…