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From: Newt Gingrich <no-reply@gingrichproductions.com>
Date: August 7, 2013 3:57:45 PM GMT-06:00
To: <bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com>
Subject: Losing the War
Reply-To: Newt Gingrich <no-reply@gingrichproductions.com>
Losing the War
In the last few months we have had at least six events that prove the American strategy in the Middle East is not working.
The evidence is so clear that it demands a serious national conversation about our national security strategy and the system which implements it.
Five of these events were prison breaks. The other was the closing of nineteen American embassies which the government had to temporarily close out of fear and ignorance.
If you connect the dots of these stories you will understand that this is what losing looks like.
Twelve years after the 9/11 attacks, the American strategies of Bush and Obama are losing. Our enemies in the Middle East (and increasingly around the world as they spread by Internet and migration) are winning. The forces of law-abiding civilization are losing.
The key question is whether we will have the courage as a people to insist on a serious investigation of this failure and to seek to understand the requirements of a strategy of success.
Countries that are winning do not have to close their embassies in nineteen countries. This is a statement of impotence and incompetence on a grand scale, an admission that the United States cannot even defend its own embassies (and this is after decades of turning our embassies into fortresses isolated from local communities).
These were not nineteen trivial countries. As Jack Copeland notes, "Approximately 25 million barrels of crude oil are produced in these thirteen countries. To put this is in perspective the total consumption was at 79 million barrels per day worldwide."
So the United States has demonstrated that it has to act out of timidity and weakness in countries which produce one third of the world's oil. This is after thousands of Americans killed, many thousands of Americans wounded, and trillions spent in the Middle East. Twelve years of the wrong strategies on a bipartisan basis have led to this failure.
Lets look at another symptom of losing.
Major prison breaks have been occurring throughout the Middle East.
Afghanistan, April 25, 2011. The London Telegraph reported: "Taliban insurgents dug a 1,050-foot (320-metre) tunnel underground and into the main jail in Kandahar city and whisked out more than 450 prisoners, most of whom were Taliban fighters, officials and insurgents have claimed."
Afghanistan, June 8, 2012. CBS News reported: "Taliban fighters blew a hole in the side of a prison in northern Afghanistan Thursday night, allowing 31 inmates to escape."
Iraq, July 22, 2013. Reuters reported a prison break at Abu Ghraib, the notorious prison on the outskirts if Baghdad: "'The number of escaped inmates has reached 500, most of them were convicted senior members of al Qaeda and had received death sentences,' Hakim Al-Zamili, a senior member of the security and defense committee in parliament, told Reuters."
Libya, July 27, 2013. CNN reported that 1,200 prisoners broke out of a Benghazi jail in an attack linked to Al Qaeda: "A riot inside Al-Kuifiya prison erupted when a number of masked gunmen launched an attack from outside the prison facility. As a result, more than 1,000 prisoners escaped."
Pakistan, July 30, 2013. Sixteen months of planning led to a successful prison break. McClatchy reported: "The operation was completed in two hours, 40 minutes, and the militants were gone before the military arrived and surrounded the prison. The 250 prisoners they'd freed included about 40 experienced but otherwise not extraordinary militant commanders who've been repatriated to their parent factions in the tribal areas, as part of a quid pro quo for those factions' logistical support of the operation, the activists said.
"Similar tactics were adopted during a July 25 assault on an office of the military's Inter Services Intelligence directorate in the southern town of Sukkur. That attack killed nine ISI operatives in an area that had previously not seen terrorist activity."
So nearly 2,500 prisoners escape in four different countries. In case some apologists suggest this was just a coincidence consider the Associated Press report that "Interpol, the French-based international policy agency, has also issued a global security alert in connection with suspected al-Qaida involvement in several recent prison escapes including those in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan."
So after 12 years of intense effort, two overt wars, dozens of minor skirmishes in Somalia, Libya, Mali and other countries, widespread use of drones to kill people, and a massive investment in power projection and intelligence gathering, the fact is our enemies are widespread, growing and increasingly dangerous.
The House and Senate should launch hearings into the growing defeat facing the United States and we should have the courage to face the facts and think through the consequences.
Isolationism and withdrawal will not work. The very existence of the United States and the free, open culture of America is a mortal threat to radical Islamists. There is no practical act of withdrawal which will make America so unimportant that terrorists and propagandists will not want to replace our civilization with their belief system.
Massive intervention will not work. I warned for years that we could turn Iraq into a Western democracy if we were prepared to stay as long as we have in South Korea (now 63 years and still engaged) and if we were prepared to be as ruthless as we were in post-Nazi Germany and post-Imperial Japan.
It was clear we were not prepared to do either. Our limited engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan will disappear as a rock in the desert is gradually covered by the sand.
We need a fundamentally new strategy that recognizes the scale of the threat and the limitations of our military, financial, and political powers.
Such a strategy does not exist today.
In fact, neither Republicans seeking to sustain the Bush interventionism nor the Democrats seeking to defend the Obama "lead from behind" model are prepared to even have the discussion.
Hopefully the disaster of having to close nineteen embassies, the danger of having 2,500 escaped prisoners, and the daily reports of violence in Mali, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, etc. will convince our elected leaders that they need to open a serious in depth analysis of what is really happening, what we thought would happen, and what we have to consider in developing a new strategy and a new system of implementation.
Your Friend,
NewtP.S. Ellis the Elephant returns this fall to discover the American Revolution in Yankee Doodle Dandy! You can pre-order here.
Charity of the Month: Honor Flight Network
by Newt and Callista Gingrich
The Gingrich Foundation is pleased to announce the Honor Flight Network as its August Charity of the Month, in recognition of the veterans of World War II.
The Honor Flight Network helps Americans who served in World War II travel with other veterans in their area to Washington, D.C. to visit the National World War II Memorial.
Honor flights began in 2005, one year after the memorial first opened, as a way to ensure that aging veterans could make the trip to see their long-overdue monument in our nation's capital.
The project was the idea of Dr. Earl Morse, who worked in a VA clinic in Springfield, Ohio. When the memorial in Washington, D.C. opened, Dr. Morse discussed it with many of his patients who served in the war and found they would have difficulty making the journey to see it. In addition to his medical work, Dr. Morse was also a private pilot. One day, he asked a patient if he could fly him to Washington to see the memorial, and the patient accepted, breaking down in tears.
Not long after, Dr. Morse asked other members of his aero club if they would be willing to assist the effort by flying WWII veterans on their planes to Washington, D.C. Several pilots stepped up to help, and in May 2005 the group flew 12 WWII vets from Ohio to Washington to visit their memorial. From there, the project exploded. The next year, Dr. Morse co-founded the Honor Flight Network to work with local affiliates across the country to help Americans who served in World War II make the trip to Washington, D.C.
Soon, the organization began chartering planes to transport many veterans at a time. Then in 2008, the Honor Flight Network began to partner with Southwest Airlines.
Once in Washington, veterans are met by volunteers who accompany them around the memorial and the city.
To date, the Honor Flight Network has carried approximately 100,000 veterans to Washington, D.C. -- an amazing accomplishment. On any given day, visitors to the World War II Memorial on the National Mall are likely to see these veterans and Honor Flight volunteers making their way around the site.
The Honor Flight Network does important work to honor the the many sacrifices of America's Greatest Generation.
Please join us in supporting the Honor Flight Network today.
Your Friends,
Newt and Callista
Land of the Pilgrims' Pride
Ellis is back and ready to learn about the birth of our great nation in the New York Times bestseller, Land of the Pilgrims' Pride. Written and illustrated by Callista Gingrich and Susan Arciero, Ellis once again educates and entertains as he discovers America's thirteen original colonies. Order autographed copies now>>
Victory at Yorktown
New York Times bestselling authors, Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen present the triumphant conclusion to their George Washington series with Victory at Yorktown, a new novel about faith, leadership, and the triumph of the American cause. Order autographed copies now>>
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