Osama bin Laden: Dead

In a surprise announcement last night, President Obama gave a speech that every American has been waiting to hear: Osama bin Laden is dead.

The mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks had been evading capture for almost ten years ever since President Bush gave the orders to the U.S. military to invade Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and to dismantle the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

According to President Obama, bin Laden was killed in a Navy Seal operative shoot out where he was hiding in a mansion in Pakistan, presumably where he has been hiding since fleeing Afghanistan. His body has been disposed of at sea.

While the death of Osama bin Laden immediately sparked celebrations nationwide and should offer some closure to the families of the men and women killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, this does not mean that al-Qaeda is gone.

Immediately following the news that bin Laden was killed, the terrorist group, Hamas, publicly condemned bin Laden’s death saying "We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood.”

In other words, there will be a high level of alert, as this news has likely infuriated al-Qaeda and followers of radical Islam. Al-Qaeda has already selected its new leader to succeed bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and most likely, al-Qaeda will continue in its pursuit to do harm to America.

On a side note, while the entire Middle East region is increasingly becoming destabilized, it was interesting to know that Ali Abdullah Saleh, the President of Yemen, after indicating for weeks that he would leave power at the height of protests, refused to cease power on the same day that bin Laden was killed. Yemen just happens to be a country that is infested with al-Qaeda.

For the moment however, this should be an exciting day for Americans and to offer some closure to those families affected by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is one step closer in combating Islamic terrorism in the Middle East. But when will the battle actually end? We may never know.

Afghanistan situation worsening

Despite the Obama Administration's earlier claims this last year that sufficient improvements to make Afghanistan a solvent country again was working, recent UN maps seem to contradict those claims. These maps are used to help monitor areas of danger in the country and to help NATO address those areas which are dominated by the Taliban.

According to the United Nations, the two maps demonstrated a vast deterioration in certain parts of Afghanistan specifically in areas in battle grounds between NATO troops (which two thirds are from the United States) and the Taliban, as well as under developed parts of the country.

If only things could get worse.

Many will remember President Obama, during his campaign, saying he would pull troops out of Afghanistan in his first term. Well, he failed to live up to his promise to all of his liberal supporters. Instead, he announced to deploy 30,000 additional troops and to work with NATO on its new exit strategy, while continuously saying that the country is trying to stabilize itself and is working towards improvements. The Administration says that they will now pull out by 2014, turn it over to Afghan forces, who will begin to restructure Afghanistan in an effort to become a solvent country, for once.

Like that will ever happen.

Everybody knows by now that Afghanistan has failed considerably over the last three decades to become a stabilized democratic country. Does the President honestly believe that by the time the United States pulls out of Afghanistan, that there will be a newly installed democratic government? Apparently he does. Both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration, as well as the Defense Department has mentioned this time and time again. Overthrow the bad government and form a free democratic government.

Wasn't that what we did with Iraq? How did that work out? Not so well, thus far.

Bottom line in my viewpoint is that this particular region of the world is inhabited by radical Islamic and terrorist groups, despicable individuals who cherish their barbarianism and mutant lifestyle.

If indeed the day does come in 2014 that a new government is put in place in Afghanistan, the Taliban and al-Qaeda, or mutants, whatever you wish to call them, can simply recruit new members and go back and take control of it all over again. It has happened many times before.

Same pattern, different era.

Worse than Watergate, Saudis financing Terrorism

What has to be worse than Watergate and the secrets uncovered during the Bush Administration over the War in Iraq, another released U.S. diplomatic cable from WikiLeaks indicates that Saudi Arabia is the world's largest financier of radical Islamic terrorism groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Incredible.

In one of the memos from December 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says that "more needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Hamas which probably raises millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources... Saudi Arabia constitutes the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide..."

This is a country that is supposed to be the United States' ally in the Middle East. I'm curious as to how long Mrs. Clinton was going to fool the American people by going on propagating this charade of pretending to be friendly to Saudi Arabia, even though she had direct knowledge in these secret cables that the country was financing terrorism this entire time.

Here's just a side of advice for the Madam Secretary... resign!

The cable does indicate that Saudi Arabia has been attempting to block financing to terrorist networks in the Middle East, and also went to cite Arabia's bordering country, tiny little Qatar, another ally, as being the "worst in the region" concerning its counter-terrorism relationship with the United  States.

Perhaps Qatar, even though as small of a country as it is with the billions of dollars it has in resources as a kingdom, has the capabilities to deal with terrorist threats. But perhaps it is resistant to do so, because of Saudi Arabia's now leaked relationship in financing millions of dollars to these terrorist organizations that are committed to destroying Israel and the United States.

I'd suspect and would not be entirely surprised that the Middle Eastern region is nearly on the verge of breaking out into a massive war. Iraq is a disaster area, U.S. troops have been unsuccessful in their attempts to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Iran has a nuclear program bent on whipping Israel off the face of the Earth and now Saudi Arabia one of few Middle East allies of the U.S. is financing terrorism throughout the entire region, while Secretary Clinton feels it was necessary to keep all of this completely secret from the American people.

It is just disgraceful.



 
 

U.S. documents leaked

On Sunday,  an online whistle blowing organization known as WikiLeaks, were able to get their hands on hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department secret memos and documents which detailed relationships and diplomacy, particularly in the Middle East.

The details of some of these secret documents centered around countries such as Saudi Arabia,  apparently trying to pressure the U.S. to take action against Iran and its nuclear program; additionally, there was also major concern to get the U.S. to move on problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan, centering around al-Qaeda; as well as growing discontent in North Korea. WikiLeaks went on to say that they were quite surprised by the level of espionage that the U.S. is engaging in, after analyzing the documents in full.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated in a press conference this afternoon, that the U.S. would take 'aggressive steps' in finding those responsible for leaking the documents.

To be quite frank, I'm actually glad that Wikileaks released the documents which they claim more than half were unclassified anyway. Whether or not they actually where does not really concern me, but rather the U.S. Government continued ability to remain secretive about issues when it comes to foreign policy. Americans are already angry and fed up with things they're not supposed to know anything about,  so Americans knowing some of these so called 'classified' memos would be more comforting, rather than finding out later on that these things were kept behind closed doors and kept away from the American people which would make everyone, probably twice as angry.

Do we need to re-analyze the Bush Administration's policies that were kept from the American people?

The release of these documents are an embarrassment to the Obama Administration, and rightfully so. This President campaigned on the objective that he would provide more openness and transparency in Government and set up a stronger dialogue with the American people. 

I think a majority of Americans now realize that was obviously a false pretense, and he can add this to his list that has exposed him as nothing more than a pathological liar. 

NATO putting on the pressure to pull out of Afghanistan

Last weekend President Obama hopped all over the financial summits in Asia to discuss global economic reform, and now this weekend, he is meeting with leaders at the NATO summit in Lisbon concerning the War in Afghanistan.

As many may remember, President Obama repeatedly stated that he wanted troops to come home by 2011 and handover the responsibility to Afghan forces. Now it appears that officials are more or less focusing to withdraw the 100,000 troops, which included the 30,000 troops ordered by President Obama last year, by 2014.

The reason for this?

Mainly because Afghanistan has shown very little signs of stabilizing itself.

It shouldn’t appear to be such a shocker to President Obama, nor for any official in our Federal Government, as Afghanistan remains one of the top unstable governments in the entire world and has dealt with a continuous civil war for many decades, both from the invasion from the Soviet Union in the 1970’s, to an internal war throughout the 1990’s which resulted in the Taliban. Yet every time there seemed to be a war going on in Afghanistan, it was never able to build itself into a stabilized country.

I seem to recall we also went into Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein. Yet after years of fighting a war in that country, Iraq is still quite unstable and the place is pretty much uninhabitable.

Of course, the primary reason for going into Afghanistan back in 2001 in the first place, was to overthrow the Taliban and dismantle the al-Qaeda network, as a direct result of the September 11^th terrorist attacks. Since that time, the U.S. Military has been unsuccessful in capturing the real ringleader behind those attacks, Osama bin Laden, ranging from theories that he is dead, or hiding out someplace in Pakistan.

President Obama has quite a bit to deal with right now in the Middle East, from leaving Iraq, to stabilizing Afghanistan, and apparently ignorant over Iran’s nuclear program.

At the NATO summit, leaders are pressuring President Obama to implement a better strategy for exiting Afghanistan by that time. While NATO has no exact departure date to be set in 2014, it is projected that the new war efforts in Afghanistan will cost American taxpayers $125 billion through these next three and a half years. Never mind the fact that the United States has enough problems on its plate including servicing its $14 trillion national debt, and providing health care for veterans that just returned from Iraq.

The real question remains as to when the United States does in fact leave Afghanistan, is that country going to be able to sustain itself as a stable government with democracy and its Afghan forces; or will it just become another breeding ground for future generations of al-Qaeda, again posing as a threat to our country’s national security, and the rest of the world?