Mr. Irrelevant makes another speech with no content

What if the President of the United States made a speech, but a tree didn't fall in the woods where nobody was around to hear it? The obvious answer is the press and the leftwingnuts would still applaud, whether there was any actual content or not. And so far, I have yet to hear any of the multitudinous blather of Obama that had any content whatsoever. "Blah, blah, blah...Bush did it!"

Our juvenile "never run anything but his mouth" (copyright Jesse Jackson on Obama) President is proving himself daily to be Mr. Irrelevant. He reminds me of my daughter's first full sentence at about the age of 2. "Robby did it!" Her older brother Robby was her convenient scapegoat for anything she might possibly be blamed for. "Layla! Have you messed your diaper?" With a straight face, this little blonde beauty would look at me and say "Robby did it!" and continue playing.

And for lo these first 100+ days, the only memorable words Obama has yet to utter are repeated over and over again ad nauseum, "Bush did it!" But finally, Mr. Irrelevant has reached a new low even for him. He has changed his tune to "Cheney did it!"

Yesterday, we were treated to the ridiculous theater of the President of the United States scheduling a speech deliberately just before the weeks-long-scheduled speech of the former Vice President of the United States, to rebut Dick Cheney's comments in advance.

How irrelevant do you have to be to try to one-up the former VP of the previous administration?

President Obama on Thursday vigorously defended his decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention site but said some terrorist suspects would be held indefinitely, setting up the prospect of a painstaking fight with Congress over relocating detainees to the United States and disappointing supporters critical of what they saw as a concession to Bush-era policies.

The announcement came midway through a 50-minute address, which kicked off a highly public and impassioned debate between Mr. Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney over how far the government should go to defend itself from terrorism - a back and forth that transfixed Washington and much of the nation...

But it was the give and take with Mr. Cheney that made the day memorable and historically significant.

Mr. Cheney's speech at the institute had been scheduled for a few weeks, and it appeared that the White House intentionally scheduled Mr. Obama's speech so that it fell right before the former vice president's. The White House has already in its four months handpicked conservative figures with low popularity ratings or who are repellent to moderates, such as radio-show host Rush Limbaugh, as foils for them to fight against publicly.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said "there was an awareness that [Mr. Cheney] was speaking, but the speech wasn't scheduled because he was speaking on a certain day."

And while I'm writing about irrelevant idiots in high office, if you thought that doofus who was briefly press secretary for President Bush (whathisname who wrote the book) was the most clueless White House press flack in history, Robert Gibbs is one-upping him spectacularly. Gibbs is such a doofus, even the liberal-leftwing press (pardon my repetition) is making jokes about him.

Fighting a lonely war far from home at Christmas

War correspondent Michael Yon, the Ernie Pyle of our day, reports good news and bad news from the frontlines of the war on terror.

The war in Iraq has ended. Violent elements remain, but they no longer threaten the very fabric of Iraq. The Iraqi Army, police and government continue to outpace the elements that would prefer to see Iraq in chaos. Iraq is no longer an enemy. There is no reason for us to ever shoot at each other again.

That's the good news. Now the bad news from Yon, who always tells it just like it is.

But Afghanistan is a different story. I write these words from Kandahar, in the south. This war here is just getting started. Likely we will see severe fighting kicking off by about April of 2009. Iraq is on the mend, but victory in Afghanistan is very much in question.

While Americans sleep tight in their beds, this time of year U.S. soldiers sit shivering through the frigid, crystal clear nights at remote outposts in places most of us have never heard of and will never see.

Often they head out into the enveloping darkness, to hunt down and destroy terrorists, who continue to kill innocent Afghans, Americans, Aussies, Balinese, Brits, Indians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Spanish ... in short, anyone who opposes their violent tyranny. Their greatest weapons are ignorance and terror. Witness the latest unprovoked attack on our friends in India.

These enemies have no wish to reconcile with their fellow countrymen, or compromise in any way that would diminish their control of the lives of the ordinary Afghans who don't share their feral vision of life. They throw acid in the faces of little girls whose only crime is that they go to school. So we must continue to send our toughest men to confront them eye to eye, while performing the difficult balancing act of not alienating those who intend us no harm. This is particularly difficult in Afghanistan, a proud nation with a deep tradition of antipathy toward outsiders - even those who are here to help, though I am finding many Afghans clearly do not want us to leave.

The hard work is especially difficult when our troops are spread perilously thin. Over the last nearly two weeks I've spent time with teams whose nearest ground support is too far away, and too small anyway, to help them when they get into serious trouble, which happens all the time.

Some of these groups are too far out for helicopters to reach within any reasonable amount of time, and so their only choice often is "CAS," or Close Air Support: jets with bombs. Sadly, despite the extreme precautions I have seen our people taking in Iraq and now Afghanistan, we are bound to make some mistakes, which the enemy exploits to full potential. In fact, there are reports that I believe credible that the enemy is actively trying to bait us into bombing innocent people. Such is the savagery of the Taliban and associated armed opposition groups (AOGs).

In Part Two of Yon's report on the war in Afghanistan, he writes about a little-known element of the coalition forces, Lithuanian Special Forces.

U.S. and Afghan soldiers in Zabul Province give high marks to the Lithuanian Special Forces, who like to ride these captured Taliban motorbikes (photo at top) to sneak up on, and chase Taliban fighters. The "LithSof" are on their way to becoming living legends: Both Afghans and Americans report that the Taliban are afraid of the Lithuanians. Stories about them are filled with dangerous escapades and humor.

Americans say that the Lithuanians are sort of a weaponized version of Borat, who think nothing of sauntering around a base in nothing but flip-flops and underwear. "They look like mountain men. They never shave, sometimes don't bathe, and often roll out the gate wearing nothing but body armor and weapons. Not even a t-shirt," an American soldier told me. The Lithuanians may be a little bit nuts, but the Americans love to have them around because Lithuanians love to fight, and when you need backup, you can count on them. That contrasts starkly with many of the NATO "partners."

Maybe when your country spends almost a half-century with the Soviet boot on its neck, its first generation of free soldiers know what freedom is worth - and that you sometimes have to fight for it.

Try to get that mental image out of your head, Lithuanian soldiers riding Taliban motorcycles wearing nothing but body armor and weapons.

If you'd like to do something to support our troops and their loved ones at Christmas, here ya go:

The Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund

SoldiersAngels

The United Warrior Survivor Foundation

Naval Special Warfare Foundation

Operation Enduring Christmas

Operation Support Our Troops