Read Pinheads and Patriots Online
Authors: Bill O'Reilly
Pinheads and Patriots (8 page)
O'Reilly:
Wellâ
Obama:
Well, look, thatâ
O'Reilly:
Come onâ
Obama:
Well, what I have said isâI have already said, it's succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.
O'Reilly:
Right. So why can't you just say, “I was right in the beginning, and I was wrong about the surge”?
Obama:
Because there is an underlying problem with what we have done. We have reduced the violenceâ
O'Reilly:
Yeah?
Obama:
But the Iraqis still haven't taken responsibility. And we still don't have the kind of political reconciliation. That we are still spending, Bill, $10 to $12 billion a monthâ
O'Reilly:
And I hope that, if you are President, you can get them to kick in and pay us back. And I'llâand I'll go with you.
Obama:
Let's go.
O'Reilly:
We'll get some of that money back.
Obama:
Yeah. [
Laughs.
]
O'Reilly:
All right, let's go to Afghanistan.
Obama:
All right.
O'Reilly:
Look, there is no winning the Taliban warâ
Obama:
Yes?
O'Reilly:
âunless Pakistan cracks down on the guys that are inâPakistan, okay?
Obama:
And you and I agree completely.
O'Reilly:
Okay, yeah? And we all know that.
Obama:
Right.
O'Reilly:
You gave a speech in Denverâa good speech, by the way.
Obama:
Thank you.
O'Reilly:
But you bloviated about McCain not following them into the cave. You are not going to invade Pakistan, Senator, if you are President. You are not gonna send ground troops in there, and you know it.
Obama:
Here, here, here is, here is the problem. John McCain loves to say, “I will follow 'em to the gatesâto the gates of hell.”
O'Reilly:
But he is not going to invade either.
Obama:
Well, thatâand, and the point is, what heâwhat we could have done isâ
O'Reilly:
No, no, not “could.” Let'sâwhat do we do now?
Obama:
What, what we can doâ
O'Reilly:
Yeah?
Obama:
âis stay focused on Afghanistanâ
O'Reilly:
Yeah?
Obama:
âand put more pressure on the Pakistanis.
O'Reilly:
Like what?
Obama:
Well, for example, we are providing them military aid, without having enough strings attached. So they are using the military that we useâ
O'Reilly:
For nothing.
Obama:
âforâto Pakistan. They areâthey are preparing for a war against India.
O'Reilly:
So you are gonna pull them out, and let the Islamic fundamentals take 'em over?
Obama:
No, no, no, no. What we say is, “Look, we are gonna provide them with additional, uh, military supportâtargeted at terrorists. And we are gonna help build their democracy and provideâ”
O'Reilly:
That's exactly what we are doing nowâ
Obama:
âthe kind of fundingâ
O'Reilly:
Right.
Obama:
But, but we are notâ
O'Reilly:
âand he is doing that now.
Obama:
We, we haven'tâthat's not what we have been doing, Bill. We have wasted $10 billion with Musharraf without holding him accountable for knocking out those people.
O'Reilly:
All right. So you are gonnaâagainâmore diplomacyâand we need it, absolutely. Try to convince the Pakistani government to take a more aggressive approachâ
Obama:
And what I would, and what I wouldâ
O'Reilly:
âand, and to say, “If you don't, we will pull the plug.”
Obama:
And, and what I will do isâwell, if we have bin Laden in our sightsâ
O'Reilly:
Yeah?
Obama:
âwe target him, and we knock him out.
O'Reilly:
But everybody would do that.
Obama:
Well, I meanâ
O'Reilly:
I mean, that would be the biggest win Bush could haveâ
Obama:
Of course.
O'Reilly:
âis if we could do that.
Obama:
And that isâ
O'Reilly:
But you can't send these ground troops in, because then all hell breaks looseâ
Obama:
We can'tâwe, weâwe can't have, uh, uhâ¦. That nobody talked about some full-blown invasion of Afghanistan. But the simple point that I made was, we have got to put more pressure on Pakistanâto do what they need to do.
O'Reilly:
I mean, well, I gotta tell you. I don'tâI don't think the administrationâ
Obama:
I don't think, I don't think you and I disagree on this.
O'Reilly:
No, but they have put an enormous amount of pressure. And NATO doesn't fight in, uh, in AfghanistanâI don't know whether you know that or not.
Obama:
Well, firstâ
O'Reilly:
The Germans won't fight.
Obama:
Wellâ
O'Reilly:
The French will, because of Sarkozy.
Obama:
They will. Theyâ
O'Reilly:
But the Germans wouldn't allow it, and the others won't.
Obama:
Right.
O'Reilly:
So it's all on us, again. Why? Well, why won't the Germans fight against the Taliban?
Obama:
Well, you know part of the reason?
O'Reilly:
What?
Obama:
Part of the reason is, is that we have soured our relationshipâwith the Europeansâafter Iraq. And you know, when I went over to Europeâ¦and if you listen to that speech in Berlinâwhich you know, a lot of your buddies had a good time making fun ofâ
O'Reilly:
I don't have any buddies, butâ[
Laughs.
]
Obama:
[
Laughs.
] But if, if you listen to what I said, one of the things I said in that speech is, “You cannot think that the Americans are gonna just carry all the weight on this thing. You guys have to step up to the plate.”
O'Reilly:
So when you are Presidentâ?
Obama:
But, but Bob Gates, the secretary of defenseâwho, by the way, I think is a, is a serious guy in this administration and has, and has helpedâ
O'Reilly:
A good guy.
Obama:
âhelped, helped straighten out some of the foreign policy problemsâhe himself has acknowledged that part of the problem is, politically, there is, uhâthere is enough anti-Iraq sentiment in thereâin, in Europeâ
O'Reilly:
âto poison the well for Afghanistan.
Obama:
âto poison the well for Afghanistan.
O'Reilly:
So you are gonna change all that with a magic wand? Come on.
Obama:
I am not gonnaâno, I am not gonnaâno, I am not gonna change all that with a magic wand. That, thatâI am not gonna change anything with a magic wand. What I am gonna
do is I am gonna, uh, engage in the kind of liberal diplomacyâand change our policy in Iraq to send a signal to the world, the central front on terror right now is in Afghanistan, and the hills between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
O'Reilly:
Yeah, but you can't, you can't change a thing in Iraq, uh, uh, if it's gonna benefit Iran. And, and that'sâ
Obama:
Yeah, that I agree with you.
O'Reilly:
That's gonna be your minefield as you go onâ
Obama:
But, but Bill, uh, you and I probably agree on the fact that Iran is one of the biggest beneficiaries of us going into the Iraq in the first placeâ
O'Reilly:
It has been, but not now. Now, now they are paying a big price for miscalculatingâ
Obama:
Wellâ
O'Reilly:
âthe resolve of our country.
Obama:
I, I will say that the, that the fact that the Shia militias have folded upâright nowâis a good thing.
Where do I start with this? First of all, that was the only time so far that I have heard President Obama admit he had made a mistake. As you see, he said the surge worked, but he, of course, had forcefully opposed it. Two years ago, that was the big headline that came out of this interview.
Because Iraq remains an unstable situation, the President has been patient in withdrawing U.S. troops from this troubled country. That measured policy has angered the Far Left. I think we should give Mr. Obama credit for not caving into that constituency, which is misguided on Iraq. In light of all the blood and treasure the United States has spent
there, we simply cannot let Iraq go down the drain. But we should never again get involved in this kind of morass.
As for Afghanistan, it's obviously a colossal mess. But, do you know what? That's nobody's fault. The place is just impossible. About ten years ago, American Special Forces and some Afghan allies defeated the thuggish Taliban in about ten minutes. Since then, the situation has deteriorated into an absolute debacle.
After a decade of our involvement, most Afghan police are arrogantly corrupt, the army rarely fights, and the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is an incompetent weakling who is probably a criminal. Certainly, his brother, who runs the province of Kandahar, is a thief and a drug lord. Just as President Bush was before him, President Obama is stymied. The Taliban, hiding in plain sight by dressing in civilian clothing, are able to kill at will, terrorizing the population at night. NATO forces, no matter how brave and skilled, can't protect the Afghan people because there are not enough NATO forces. That means that the poor Afghani folks are afraid to support the Americans and NATO, which could mean death even though the allies are sincerely trying to help them and deny the terrorists an important sanctuary.
The Taliban can also hide out in Pakistan, and NATO forces can't cross the border to kill them. In addition, some Pakistani intelligence big shots are actually supplying the Taliban with arms and logistics. Can you say
chaos?
In a controversial move, President Obama took months to announce his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan but simultaneously undermined this move by promising to begin pulling U.S. forces out of there in July 2011. On hearing that, the Taliban broke out some humus and pita
bread, or whatever it is they eat, and celebrated.
Then the Afghan commander, General McChrystal, got sandbagged by the dopes at
Rolling Stone,
and the world finally focused on what is an awful situation.
We should all be praying that General David Petraeus can pull off another miracle in Afghanistan and stabilize the country. If he does not do that, the Taliban will continue to brutalize millions of innocent people (especially women), and al-Qaeda terrorists will once again have room to roam. Remember, the reason NATO is in Afghanistan at all is because the Taliban partnered up with al-Qaeda before the attacks on 9/11. Nothing much has changed in that relationship.
If NATO fails in Afghanistan, the defeat will be on President Obama. It is his war now, just as Vietnam became LBJ's war, even though that war began under President Kennedy. I believe President Obama realizes the danger to him here. That means General Petraeus will get what he needs to do what he does. But this thing is hanging by a thread; absolutely anything could happen. In fact, Michael Scheuer, a former CIA agent who headed the bin Laden unit, writes that the Afghan war is already lost:
Â
“Afghans hate and will not tolerate their country being occupied by foreigner infidel.” This [historic quote] is verifiable over almost 24 centuries of history by referring to the Afghan experiences of Alexander the Great, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union. It took varying periods for the Afghans to get rid of each occupierâthe Greeks were particularly tough to root out as Alexander created Greek colonies in the countryâbut in time each was defeated and left with its tail between its legs. And so will we.
Mr. Scheuer is a noninterventionist and skews his commentary that way, but there is no question that President Obama's strategy of limited engagement while winning Afghan hearts and minds may not work. Scheuer is blunt on the point:
Â
War means fighting, and fighting means killing, and any other approach to war means wasted resources and lives, and will yield nothing but defeat and the need to fight the same war over again. This is why Obama should have sent a marine [commander] to replace [General] McChrystal. This is also why he did not.
Â
Finally, I get a ton of mail basically agreeing with Michael Scheuer and also arguing that the President is soft on terrorism in general. Some of the correspondents point to the fact that the President will not even use the words “war on terror.” True, but another fact defines Mr. Obama as the “drone king.” In his pursuit of terrorists, he has ordered scores of missile attacks launched from Predator drones. They have been devastatingly effective, killing hundreds of al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders along with some civilians. Obama has used this space-age weapon far more than President Bush did. So how do we explain that? If he's soft on terrorism, why is he conducting a very aggressive missile campaign, which by the way the ACLU and other Far Left kooks hate? That's an interesting question, is it not? Remember, President Obama is a complicated guy. One of the major themes of this book is that things are not always what they seem. I give a lot of credit to CIA Chief Leon Panetta, a true Patriot, for wising up Mr. Obama about the threat these terrorist killers pose to Americans. So the next
time you hear that Mr. Obama is a Pinhead for not taking the war on terror seriously enough, remember that he is definitely the “drone king.”