Greg Corombos of Radio America and Andrew Johnson of National Review are amused and surprised to see some liberals still not wanting Hillary Clinton to be president. They also groan as Kay Hagan moves ahead in the North Carolina Senate race and GOP hopes of taking the Senate majority look a bit more iffy. And they have fun with the public spat between Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and Facebook executives over the immigration/amnesty debate.
Many black Americans are making bad choices from having children out of wedlock and embracing a violent inner city culture that keep them from reaching their potential and liberal government policies are encouraging them to make those bad decisions, according to Wall Street Journal editorial board member Jason Riley.
Riley is author of “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make it Harder for Blacks to Succeed.” Instead of encouraging black people to dream big and take responsibility for their actions, he says liberal politicians and civil rights leaders are more interested in telling them who to blame for their condition.
“They want to keep the focus on white behavior, not black behavior. That’s the agenda of the black leadership today, from the NAACP to Al Sharpton to Jesse Jackson, we’re not talking about black behavior. All the bad black outcomes we see are a result of white racism. That’s their narrative and they want to stick to it,” said Riley.
As policy experts debate the effectiveness of Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty”, Riley says the path to advancement is the same for black people as it has been for all other demographics: less government assistance and more individual achievement.
“Blacks must ultimately help themselves by developing the same habits and behaviors and attitudes that other groups in America had to develop in order to rise here. To the extent that a government program or policy, however well-intentioned, interferes with that self-development it does more harm than good,” said Riley.
“I argue that blacks have been subjected to a lot of policies that aren’t doing them any good by interfering with the necessary self-development that needs to take place. For instance, trying to replace a father in the home with a government check is not helpful, but that’s what a lot of these welfare policies have attempted to do over the decades,” he said.
If the pathway to societal advancement is well-established, why are so many in the black community choosing not to take it?
“I think the left has done a brilliant job of convincing blacks that government is good for them and the more government the better. So you get an over-dependence on government among blacks, both in terms of jobs in the federal government, the military, the post office, civil service jobs or in terms of handouts like food stamps and welfare,” said Riley.
According to Riley, this problem is evident in countless areas of society. However, in just two examples he says we can see the damage done by the liberal approach to black Americans. Riley believes the first step toward addressing many ills of blacks is to get fathers back in the home. He says study after study shows that problems from criminal behavior, to drug use to dropping out of school is greatly worsened when fathers aren’t living with their kids and active in their lives.
“You name it, there’s just a lot of bad things that happen when dads aren’t around and that’s what you have as the norm in black communities. As late as 1960, two in three black kids in this country grew up with a mother and a father in the home,” he said.
“Today, more than 70 percent do not. You can draw a straight line between that fact and a lot of the problems you see in the inner city, in these communities where these young black men have no sense of what it means to be black or a man. And it’s because there’s no one around to teach them that,” said Riley, who says the problem is made worse when people are condemned for urging responsible parenthood.
“When Bill Cosby wanted to talk about this a little while back, he got his head handed to him from the left, saying he was elitist, he was talking down to blacks, he was condescending. Even when Obama on occasion and his wife have talked about absent fathers and the bad outcomes associated with that, they get slammed by the black left,” said Riley.
Another major issue is crime, says Riley. He says liberals and the media constantly focus on relations between blacks and the police and issues like racial profiling. Riley says the glaring issue is rampant black criminality, but few are interested in addressing it.
“Blacks are about 13 percent of the population but are responsible for about half of all murders in this country. Until that changes, you’re going to have tensions between the black community and police. Blacks are arrested at numbers two to three times their numbers in the population for all manner of violent crime, all manner of property crime in this country,” said Riley.
“Until that changes, racial profiling is going to be an issue. People, black and white, are going to view young black men suspiciously so long as crime rates are what they are,” he said.
While the black vote is overwhelmingly Democratic, Riley asserts many black people are very frustrated with how Democratic leaders and prominent black figures approach key issues like education.
“Today you have civil rights leaders siding with the teachers’ unions who, of course, put the interests of the adults in the school system ahead of the interest of the kids. A disproportionate number blacks get hurt that way by being stuck in the worst schools, even though polls have shown overwhelmingly for decades that parents, and poor parents in particular, favor school vouchers, favor charter schools and so forth,” said Riley.
Riley says reaction to criticism of the conventional liberal approach to the black community comes in two forms. He says the elitists have no tolerance for him or any other black conservatives who dare to to challenge the system.
“I like to joke that black conservatives get put on the couch. You know, Justice (Antonin) Scalia is just wrong as far as the left is concerned, or maybe a little evil. But Justice (Clarence) Thomas is a sellout, Uncle Tom, self-hating. They put him on the couch and psychoanalyze him,” said Riley.
However, he says many black people have responded very favorably to the criticisms and recommendations outlined in his book.
“I think a lot of blacks don’t self-identify as conservatives but they agree with a lot of what I’m saying, particularly on the cultural stuff. Church leaders, business owners, parents who struggling with trying to shield their kids from this culture, the rap music and all that, the materialism and the violence, they get what I’m saying. They understand this is something blacks are going to have to take care of on their own,” said Riley.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are encouraged to hear Jay Carney say barely hanging on to the Senate is the best-case scenario for Democrats in November. They also discuss new allegations that the State Department withheld certain documents on Benghazi from the Accountability Review Board because they reflected negatively on Hillary Clinton and other top officials. They wonder why Pres. Obama is openly offering advise to ISIS and sigh as John Kerry still cannot figure out if we’re at war.
The Middle East has seen unrest on multiple fronts throughout the summer. While the ISIS threat rages, the Israel-Hamas war is now in a protracted cease-fire. So how is there hope for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians? The Capitol Steps take us inside their version of the secret negotiations.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review welcome news showing President Obama losing a lot of support from his base. They also discuss the loss of key intelligence because terrorist leaders are targeted by drones rather than captured. And they react to John Kerry insisting we are not at war with ISIS.
American military personnel are smarter and savvier than previous generations but they share the same love for country and desire to take the fight to the enemy, according to Bing West, the tireless embed reporter who has chronicled the work of our men and women in uniform throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As the U.S. marks 13 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the last anniversary where significant combat forces are expected to be in Afghanistan. West has just published his sixth and final book detailing his time embedded with Americans in this war, entitled “One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War.”
West, a 74-year-old Vietnam veteran and former assistant secretary of defense, says he committed his time and risked his life time after time to tell a story that had to be told.
“I thought somebody had to tell the story who had been in combat at the same level that they were. The generals and colonels hadn’t been because they came up after Vietnam, so I thought I could go back with these platoons and try to explain to people what it’s really like down there and what they’re really doing,” said West.
“One Million Steps” traces the six-month assignment of a Marine platoon of the Third Battalion of the Fifth Marine Regiment in a small but deadly place called Sangin District in 2010 and 2011.
“It was the hardest battle of the war. More British troops, before the Marines got there, and more Americans were killed in Sangin than any other place in the country,” said West.
West says there’s a good reason why that sliver of Afghanistan was so much more violent than the rest of the country.
“The basic reason was the Marines and the British had gradually squeezed the Taliban tighter and tighter in Helmand Province, which was the heartland of the poppy fields that supply 90 percent of the heroin and opium to the world,” said West.
“The Taliban had great finances there. Gradually they were squeezed more and more and finally when they got to this one district called Sangin, the Taliban said, ‘They’re not going to take this from us.’ So that’s what caused the battle,” he said.
The platoon created lodging by “hacking caves out of farm walls”. West says a key three-mile stretch of the area was covered in thick vegetation, reminding him of Vietnam. He says the limited pathways were also natural targets for Taliban-placed land mines and other improvised explosive devices. That made for careful, tedious patrols.
“We went single file on these patrols with generally about 14 or 16 Marines on each patrol. The point man was watching out for the mines and he had a mine detector. He would drop bottle caps. The last Marine in line would pick them up and the rest of us made sure we walked right on the bottle caps where the point man had swept for mines,” said West, noting that even with such caution, the platoon suffered heavy casualties over the six months.
“On average we found one or two mines a day and probably killed about one Taliban a day. But this went on for 200 days. The platoon had begun with 52 men. Of the original 52, only 27 were standing at the end,” he said, marveling at how well the unit adapted to casualties.
“In the book, I try to explain how…they found the courage every day, kept the courage to keep going, and how they kept raising up leaders. When one leader would be hit, and we lost some terrific leaders, the next leader would take over,” said West.
Being in close quarters with American forces 30-40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, West says this generation is even more impressive in some ways then those he fought alongside decades ago.
“They’re smarter than we were. They’re more questioning of authority but the authority at the lower levels has a way of communicating back and forth with them about what they’re doing it. They plan better and they have a recognition of how to use technology that no one can match,” said West, giving an example of one major high-tech tool our forces now use.
“The way we use air on a battlefield, when we’re allowed to use it, is astonishing. We can see every individual on a battlefield from 10,000 feet. We now have a way that the soldier on the ground is looking at the same picture. So they have higher technology. They are more intelligent, and they’re just as dedicated as they were in the past,” said West.
While in theater, West had Marines fill out a survey covering many different topics. The Marines were rather pessimistic about the present and future in Afghanistan. The vast majority said the people of Afghanistan either couldn’t be trusted or were easily bullied by the Taliban. A majority expects the country to be a mess not long after the U.S. leaves.
Nonetheless, in a unit where many members were killed or wounded, 92 percent of the survivors said they would do their service all over again. West chalks that up to a special mentality that can be found in our heroes in uniform. He shared part of what he told the Marines when given the chance to address them by the platoon commander.
“You know that you joined because there was something in you that said, ‘I want to be a warrior.’ I’ll tell you what, anyone who wants to come back with me now, I can speak to the general and I can get you out of here. Who wants to come with me? Of course, no one raised his hand. I laughed and I said, ‘You see what I mean?’ recounted West.
“You like to complain. You bitch a little bit but you know you love being here because you’re having an adventure that only one of a thousand will ever have,” he said.
“There is such a thing in our culture as some people who believe they were born to be warriors. That doesn’t mean they spend their lives in the service, but it does mean they’re willing to go out and fight for us and go back into civilian life and be able to say, ‘Yes, I fought for my country,'” said West, who is greatly encouraged by the impact he expects these Marines to have on America in the future.
“When you look at these young men and women that are volunteering, they’re just terrific. So I have high hopes for where we’re going,” he said.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud President Obama for telling terrorists like ISIS that we will go after them wherever they try to hide. They’re also very concerned that Obama told everyone what we won’t do to crush ISIS and that experts think his strategy is very ill-conceived. They rip Obama and his speechwriters for using the speech to discuss the economy, Ukraine and Ebola. And they reflect on the 9/11 attacks 13 years later.
Choosing nation building over victory and refusing to take any action that might have the slightest chance of endangering civilians puts our troops in a position that makes progress almost impossible in Afghanistan and exposes the poor judgment of political leaders and military commanders who have no personal experience in combat.
That’s the conclusion of Reagan administration Pentagon official and prolific military embed reporter Bing West, in his new book, “One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War.” West also scolds President George W. Bush for becoming obsessed with nation-building and President Obama for thinking our enemies would go away if just stopped fighting them.
In the book, West recounts his time with a Marine Corps platoon patrolling Sangin District, the deadliest area in Afghanistan. West describes Sangin as a place where the Taliban retreated after being forced back from other parts of the country. The dense vegetation made it very hard for Marines to see the enemy, but the rules of engagement made it even more difficult.
Due to intense protests from the Afghan government whenever civilian casualties occurred, the U.S. went to tremendous lengths to prevent future deaths from happening. In doing so, West says our commanders tied the hands of our soldiers and Marines in unreasonable ways.
“I am one of the few who doesn’t hold in high respect our four-star generals who most others know by household names, because I believe that those generals never understood the nature of the war. They told us that we would go over and persuade the population to join the side of the government and to become democrats and it never happened,” said West.
“They said in order to do this, we had to avoid any civilian casualties. The generals said to do that, you will have positive identification (PID) before you take a shot. Well, the fact of the matter is the other side isn’t stupid,” he added, noting that those rules didn’t stand up very well to the reality on the ground.
“Usually, in a firefight you very rarely see the other human being. You only see him for about a second or two and then he’s gone again, because he’s hiding to stay alive and you’re hiding to stay alive. The notion that you needed positive identification, we all knew on the lines, everyone from a lieutenant colonel on down, that you really couldn’t do that,” said West.
The rules only got worse from there. When he was commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal further tied the hands of American forces by ordering they could not attack any compound unless they knew for a fact no civilians were present.
“You can’t be a squad leader as a four-star general,” said West. “The fact is when we were getting fire from a compound, 99 times out of 100, we knew from being in that area that was where the Taliban were and where the people were not. And yet our orders were that we weren’t to return fire and certainly we weren’t to use artillery or air.”
West says these rules constantly put our forces in a defensive posture, but the red tape didn’t stop there. In “One Million Steps,” he reveals that each battalion had an attorney on staff. Troops engaged with the enemy were required to call into battalion headquarters and get legal permission before artillery and air power were authorized.
“Sometimes you would call for air, honestly I had this happening. You’d end up in this debate between the sergeant who’s standing next to you on the phone and the lawyer who’s back at the battalion and the air officer who’s back there and the pilots in the air. You’d all be talking back and forth about, ‘Well, are you really taking enough fire that I can really bomb? Are you really sure [no civilians are] there.’ All of this was done with the best of intentions, but we went entirely too far,” said West.
How did the U.S. military end up tying its own hands? West says part of it came from leaders asking troops to do things those commanders had never done.
“It’s the civilians and the generals having a wrong-headed view of war. Most of our generals have never been at war. Most of them were colonels or generals when the war began. They have never fired at anybody in anger,” said West, who says President Bush had good intentions but set the stage for great frustration in Afghanistan.
“President Bush started it by basically saying we owe liberty to these people. What? I didn’t understand this and I fundamentally opposed what we were doing when I was out there. We said we could go to these Iraqis and Afghans who are Muslims and say, ‘We’re form the West and we’re here to show you there’s a better way of doing things,’ and they would become democrats and we would build their nations for them. That was injudicious. As a result, we’ve reaped a bad harvest,” he said.
West, who is a Vietnam veteran, says the approach in Afghanistan should have been much simpler.
“If you’re going to fight people because they’re your enemy and they’ve killed you, go over and kill those who have killed you and stop right there. Don’t go any farther. Now we’ve reaped the whirlwind and we’re back into Iraq because we left it too early after we did all this. Now we’re back to fighting these guys again,” he said.
While West slams Bush for his focus on nation-building, he faults Obama for letting his political ideology trump sound policy.
“He did not want to be involved in wars and he told us, ‘I’m just stopping these wars.’ Well hello? If the other guy’s still trying to kill you, you can’t just stop a war. So he made the great mistake of pulling us out of Iraq and I’m very worried that he’s still promised that we’re pulling out of Afghanistan completely. If you allow those who intend to kill you to plot when they’re going to kill you, you’re going to get killed,” said West.
West is very critical of Obama’s semantics in how he addresses the ISIS threat. Obama repeatedly insists there will be no “boots on the ground”. West says a thousand of our forces are already there. He says the government can officially designate the troops to be under CIA command and thus deny we have ground forces there.
With respect to the big picture, West says Obama and his team obviously haven’t thought about the long term goals.
“We haven’t figured out the political end game. We go in and we destroy Islamists. Who are we going to destroy them with? We’re going to destroy them with the Sunni tribes. Why are we doing this? Because the Baghdad government is Shi’ite and aligned with Iran and they were oppressing the Iraqi Sunnis when we left. So what are these Iraqi Sunnis going to do when they retake their country?” asked West.
“If you listen to President Obama, he’s going to tell you that this is reuniting Iraq under the Shi’ite government in Baghdad. No it’s not. I’ll bet you if we have this conversation two years from now and the Islamists have been driven out, that the Sunnis announce they’re going to have their own state. I don’t think we’ve thought through where we’re going in this war,” said West.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see polls showing Americans trust the GOP by 38 points more than Democrats on national security and to see Chuck Todd suggesting Obama could do Jimmy Carter-like damage to the Democratic brand on the issue. They also react to the news that the Democrat pushing a frivolous case against Scott Walker is doing it because Walker’s union policies made his wife cry. And they have fun with the revelation that the Justice Department accidentally called Rep. Darrell Issa’s office in an attempt to leak documents related to the IRS scandal so they could get ahead of the story.
President Obama plans to legalize millions of illegal immigrants by granting refugee status to people coming to the U.S. unlawfully from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador even though they shouldn’t qualify, according to a prominent black conservative.
“It’s been leaking out for quite a while and they’ve already announced their plans in terms of numbers of refugees they’re allowing in, even though they’re already over that number,” said Joe Hicks, co-founder of Community Advocates Inc., a Los Angeles-based think tank. He is also a former executive director of the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and is a member of the Project 21 black leadership network.
According to the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service within the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. law defines a refugee as someone “located outside the United States,” has “special humanitarian concern,” “demonstrates that they were persecuted or fear prosecution” and “is admissible to the United States.” Hicks says people from Latin America may be in dire straits but don’t meet that criteria and Obama’s efforts to unilaterally change the criteria “turns the whole notion of refugee on its head.
“Prior to Obama, the notion of a refugee was someone who was fleeing war or some similar kind of circumstance in their home countries. No doubt there’s very bad conditions in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, as it is in Mexico and in much of central and South America,” he said.
“But as long as I can remember…those nations were experiencing poverty and violence, but not from wars. These are endemic to those nations’ cultures. So to claim that this is some new rationale to allow these immigrants to stay in the country based on a refugee status makes no sense because those nations have always had conditions of poverty and gang activity,” said Hicks.
If Obama were to go through with designating millions of illegal immigrants as refugees they could well be on the path to citizenship. Hicks argues against blanket amnesty for an an entire nation or region of the world.
“There is no automatic right to come to this country as a refugee. We have to make the determination. The government and the proper authorities have to look at all of these cases and determine if or if they do not measure up to prior standards, which have normally been held almost as international standards of what a refugee is,” said Hicks, who argues the flood of young people illegally crossing the border came prepared to appeal for refugee status.
“These kids coming across the border (are) virtually reading from a script to border agents because they know the proper language to use. ‘We’re fleeing poverty and violence.’ Those were the two words they would routinely use. They’ve been put in detention and in some cases resettled all across the country. So it really does make a mockery out of the process,” he said.
Hicks also studies the impact that the cheap labor provided by these illegal immigrants will have on our economy. He says young and low-skilled black workers are already hardest hit in this economy and Obama’s plan would make things far worse.
“Black low-skilled workers and black workers in general continue to be affected by the recession. They suffered longer and deeper under this recession. Their unemployment numbers are still above the norm by a fairly disproportionate level,” said Hicks, arguing that illegals already have a leg up on American citizens on the job front.
“There are parts of this country where you can go into fast food restaurants where there is a high percentage of Latino illegal labor available. You simply cannot find a black kid working in a fast food restaurant. Go on a construction site in many parts of this country. You can’t find black workers working at those sites because Latino workers have simply depressed the wages,” he said.
Hicks says Obama granting refugee status to millions who shouldn’t qualify for it will only lead to more frustration among black workers.
“Yes, they will be harmed. Project 21’s view is that will not be something that most black workers welcome if five to 15 million new illegal aliens are made legal by the stroke of the pen by this president,” he said.
Only 31 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of the immigration issue. Some think he’s going much too far while others are frustrated he’s not moving faster or being aggressive enough. The number is not likely to get any better as Obama delays his executive action.
But Hicks says the president’s lack of action should not be interpreted as Obama being rudderless on the issue.
“I don’t think he’s confused. I think he knows exactly what he’s trying to do and he’s doing it for political reasoning. I think a lot of Americans will be outraged that he didn’t simply bring his argument before the people, in this case before Congress and make his best case to try to get Congress to act. Presidents are not like a child. You don’t always get everything you want,” he said.
