Operation Jade Helm 15 - And Response

  • Thursday, May 7, 2015

The uproar by extreme right-wing conspiracy groups over our own American military preparing to conduct training exercises called "Jade Helm" on American soil is flat out bizarre. 

Truly patriotic Americans would reasonably support and want our own military to train at home in environments and situations they might encounter in real life world situations. 

Our military is conducting this training on public lands and on private lands with the permission of property owners. Prior notification has been given to state and local officials. The training is intentionally designed to cover vast areas of territory in different environments and terrain over a period of time. 

Our own military and our own constitutionally elected government are not the enemy. None of those holding national office took their positions by force. The military is under democratically elected civilian leadership and is training to protect and defend the nation and her citizens abroad and at home. 

Members of our Armed Forces are patriotic Americans willing to “give their lives in freedoms cause.” The civilian commander-in-chief has been duly elected twice by the American people to protect and defend the nation "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." 

The President has done a pretty good job of protecting the nation by ordering the operation to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. He has authorized a host of successful military operations using Special Forces and drone strikes to take out hundreds of enemy fighters as they plotted to attack American interest all over the world. 

He has vowed not to let Iran obtain destabilizing nuclear weapons and he is focusing our resources to defeat the latest rising threat of ISIS around the globe. None of these tasks are particularly easy.  The President, our military, our intelligence and law enforcement communities deserve our confidence and support in this training and on national security issues. The reality-based record proves it. 

No major terrorist attack against the U.S. has been successful against us while Obama has been president. Those conducting smaller terrorist attacks against us have been killed or captured and are being brought to justice. One such trial was just held in Boston.   

The extreme right-wing conspiracy theorist that continue to try to infiltrate the mainstream Republican Party and surreptitiously plot to undermine our own military, intelligence, law enforcement and elected commander-in-chief with concocted falsehoods, should be swiftly and soundly repudiated.  

The national Republican leadership should stand up and defend the military, intelligence community, law enforcement and the democratically elected commander-in-chief of any party for doing a decent job in protecting the nation. These issues are too important for petty politics that is not based in reality.  

Doing this will give our party much more credibility with general election voters than letting crackpots from within try to convince our own citizenry that our elected president "is more of an enemy than Putin" or that "young people should not join the military while Obama is President" or "the Patriot Act is being used to listen to your personal phone calls with aunt Sally" or "our own military and the Obama administration are conspiring against us to take over several Republican leaning Western states by imposing martial law with Jade Helm." 

We will be better off when the mainstream Republican Party rids itself of the conspiracy-theory lunacy of those lacking even a basic understanding of necessary military training and national security related concepts. 

Tim Gobble
Republican 

* * *  

I may be the world's worst at being able to read between the lines, but Mr. Gobble's last paragraph implies a lot: 

"We will be better off when the mainstream Republican Party rids itself of the conspiracy-theory lunacy of those lacking even a basic understanding of necessary military training and national security related concepts." 

Among other things, it implies that the Democrat Party in general, and the Obama White House in particular, do have a good handle on necessary military training and national security related concepts. 

That's scary, isn't it? 

Larry Cloud
Chattanooga

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