This claim from national security adviser Susan Rice stands in such contrast to reality that Foreign Policy’s Paul McCleary gave it the subheadline, “Really? Really?” Speaking to a group of Iraq War veterans who began the day wondering how the US and Iraq could possibly have lost Ramadi, a city for which Americans bled to pacify, Rice tried a novel approach to the question — complete and utter denial of reality. McCleary notes, “Susan Rice whiffs” in the main headline:
Even before National Security Advisor Susan Rice started speaking Tuesday night, at a poignant German Embassy photography exhibit of soldiers wounded in combat, U.S. vets there who had served in Iraq were privately fuming over the fall of Ramadi — and how it could have been allowed to happen.
Rice further stoked their frustration. “Now that we have ended two wars responsibly, and brought home hundreds of American troops, we salute this new generation of veterans,” Rice told the audience of about 150 people who were seated between the hauntingly beautiful mural-sized portraits of severely disabled veterans.
Such a description of the U.S. military departure from Iraq in 2011 — when American forces left after failing to negotiate a security agreement to stay — raised eyebrows across the crowd that included active duty and former troops and officers, among them at least two generals and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen. “Responsibly, right?” one retired Army officer said sarcastically to FP’s Lara Jakes afterward.
Point of order: which wars does Rice believe to have ended? We’ve certainly walked awayfrom one war in Iraq, and we’re in the process of walking away from another in Afghanistan. Neither of those wars “ended” at all, not even the one in Iraq for the US. We’re currently conducting air raids around Ramadi in an attempt to push back ISIS as the Iraq army flees both the city and the weapons we’re providing them, as well as elsewhere in Iraq, while our coalition partners bomb Syria.
Andrew Malcolm can’t quite believe it either, or the lack of pressure from most of the DC media:
He added, “We have seen a lot of success. But we’ve also seen significant periods of setback.”
No kidding. The loss of Ramadi. The loss of Mosul. The loss of Falluja, each of which required significant investments of American treasure and lives to capture in the first place. Poof. Lost, just like that. (The full Earnest press briefing for May 19 should be posted here sometime today.)
We have no way of knowing what kind of glue this White House staff is sniffing. But they’re taking something powerful to so seriously distort their thinking. They talk of the ebb and flow of protracted battle. This one has been mostly ebb. …
The D.C. media have been consumed in recent weeks re-litigating the Iraq war by getting every prominent Republican on record on what he or she might or might not have done had they been president 12 years ago and known or not known about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
Those news people should now watch the video above — to the end.
So … the White House believes that two wars have ended even though we’re continuing to fight both of them, and think that the rapid expansion of ISIS shows that their strategy is a success. With that sense of unreality, the failure of American policy abroad suddenly becomes … much more understandable. Perhaps the White House just needs better spokespeople:
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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