An Interesting Parallel

One war . . .

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
August 1, 2006

On September 11, 2001, a freedom-loving nation was attacked by a terrorist organization operating from the territory of a sovereign state with the acquiescence, if not the active complicity, of the latter's government. The United States retaliated with what can only be called a "disproportionate response."

America launched air and ground assaults on Afghanistan, aimed at destroying not only the al Qaeda safe havens but toppling the Taliban regime. We damaged or destroyed critical Afghan infrastructure so as to deny its use to the enemy. Civilian casualties occurred, as did refugee flows. At one point, the U.N. declared the resulting dislocation a humanitarian crisis.

Once the campaign to eliminate al Qaeda was launched, there was no consideration given to negotiating with the terrorists or the government that afforded them protection. The United States would not have contemplated a U.N.-mandated cease-fire, let alone the insertion of an international peacekeeping force under a Chapter 7 mandate from the Security Council -- whose purpose, inevitably, would have been to protect the terrorists from our military, not the other way around.

And most especially, it would have been inconceivable that the U.S. could accede to one of its enemy's central demands -- for example, removal of all American forces from the Mideast -- as part of a negotiated cease-fire brokered by the U.N. and approved by the Taliban at the direction of al Qaeda.

It is therefore stunning, not to say depressing, to see how the Bush administration's early, strong support for Israel's response to the murderous attacks on its territory by the terrorist group, Hezbollah, has morphed in recent days.

First, Israel was told it must not undermine the Lebanese government, even though the latter not only acquiesced to what amounts to a Hezbollah-controlled state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon. The government in Beirut actually has two Hezbollah ministers in its Cabinet -- a role al Qaeda never enjoyed in Taliban Afghanistan. This injunction had the practical effect of limiting Israeli efforts to press officials in Beirut to disassociate from the terrorists in their midst.

more ...

The man makes a lot of sense. Read the entire piece.

Technorati Tags:
Israel/Lebanon War
Hezbollah
Israel
Lebanon
War
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Words of Wisdom

"Hearing the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hizballah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world—governments, the media, UN bureaucrats—has completely lost its moral bearings." —Charles Krauthammer

Amen, brother!


Technorati Tags:
Lebanon
Hezbollah
Israel
Morality
Jews
Politics

The Gibson Paradox

I confess to being conflicted about the Mel Gibson flap. The guy was drunk and stopped by the police. He apparently had some nasty things to say about the Jews.

I don’t like or approve of people making disparaging remarks about racial, religious or cultural groups. Period. I don’t think it is desirable, necessary or helpful. I condemn that sort of rhetoric. I also condemn driving drunk and losing control in public.

On the other hand, here in the United States we are free to say pretty much whatever we want to, however despicable, hurtful, stupid, nasty, inconsiderate, or inflammatory it may be. We are free to criticize the Congress, judges, politicians, religious figures, sports figures, the President of the U.S., or anyone else we want to. We can call the President an idiot if we want to; people have done so recently. We can accuse our military personnel of horrible atrocities without any proof; people have done so recently. We can accuse elected leaders of anything we choose without proof; people have … you know the drill. Such is the nature of our God-given right to free speech protected by our Constitution. Speech is protected; even stupid, nasty, hurtful, or inflammatory speech.

When you make public statements of a controversial nature, you are fair game for retribution in kind, or of some other kind. These days if you criticize or say something nasty about the President, or Christians, or Republicans and conservatives, the retribution is light. Normally, saying bad things about Jews is okay, because Jews and the others in the preceding group are on the Politically Correct Target List.

Why, then, is Mel Gibson the focus of so much “righteous indignation”?

Sure, he’s a big name. He drinks too much and shouldn’t drive (or talk, for that matter) when he’s drinking. He said some stupid, nasty things. Maybe it was the booze talking, or maybe he’s a Jew-hating bigot.

But what Gibson did is no worse than what so many others with big names do regularly. People like Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, that Baldwin guy, Ted Danson, the Dixie Chicks … the list is a long one.

Seems to me Mel Gibson is getting far worse than he gave, and he’s getting far worse than a lot of the others who don’t engage their brain before starting up their mouth.

Technorati Tags:
Mel Gibson
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Politics

Sometimes Survival Gets a Bit Noisy

By Wesley Pruden
The Washington Times
August 1, 2006

If the Jews would just die without making a lot of noise, the Nice People could get on with the really important things in life, stuffing their faces with salmon and bean sprouts, watching the Rev. Billy Don Moyers pontificate on PBS, and making more Nice People.

The Nice People, manipulated by the coverage of the fighting in Lebanon, are getting fed up with the Israelis, who are acting as if they have the right to survive in peace to live lives of quiet exasperation. But the Jews insist on "disproportionality," on firing back when fired on by the Hezbollah "guerrillas," as the newspaper and television correspondents insist on calling "terrorists."

Louise Arbour, the high commissioner of human rights at the United Nations, is typical of the Nice People of the West who are losing patience with the Jews. She's against killing, and not only that, she "strongly condemns" it. Or some of it. She demands an investigation, but only of the Israelis, and not just an investigation by anybody. She wants "international expertise."

"In order to establish facts and conduct an impartial legal analysis," her "office" says, employing the magisterial third person, "the high commissioner reiterated the need for independent investigations." To this end, she advocates "the active involvement of international expertise."
It's important to be fair, even to be fairer to some than to others, so we can guess who these paragons of "international expertise" might be, recruited from the crowded ranks of the compassionate of Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iran, maybe even North Korea, all, naturally, determined to protect and preserve human rights.

The Israelis, once efficient and savvy, now seem to be as confused as everyone else in the West, so fearful of giving public-relations offense that they can't speak for themselves. There's plenty to show and tell, but they're allowing the world media to get away with the usual evasions, distortions and prevarications, to draw the outlines of the fighting with the moral equivalence so prized in the salons of the West. The photographs of the dead children of Qana would break the hearts of anyone but an Islamist terrorist, but the photographs of the Hezbollah artillery and missile batteries, planted among the women and children precisely to draw Israeli fire, were smuggled out of Lebanon by an Australian journalist and published yesterday in the Herald Sun of Melbourne. The photographs are proof of Hezbollah courage, of terrorists hiding behind the chadors of their women and cowering with the children.

"Israel is losing this war because it is not fighting it in a manner calculated to win it decisively," observes Jed Babbin of the American Spectator. "It is fighting only Hezbollah, a proxy of its real enemies. If Israel accepts a cease-fire without breaking Hezbollah's hold on southern Lebanon, all of Lebanon will become a colony of terrorist Iran. And Israel will have suffered a strategic defeat. On the ground and on the airwaves, the war must be fought ... to win decisively, or lose inevitably."

But enabling Hezbollah will be more than a defeat for Israel. George W. Bush understands this. The restraint so admired in the West is regarded as the weakness of poltroons in the land of Allah, and grand talk of diplomacy and compromise is merely the funk and fear of frightened old women. The extraordinary ordinary American gets it, as he nearly always does, even when others don't. Everyone is "tired of war," a barber in Des Moines tells an inquiring reporter for The Washington Times. "The consensus here is that if Israel laid down their arms, there would still be fighting. But if Hezbollah laid down its arms, there would not be."

The president laid down "clear objectives" yesterday, and for the sake of Lebanon as well as for Israel and the United States, he must stick to them. This means that Syria and Iran must for once behave themselves.

"It's important to remember this crisis began with Hezbollah's unprovoked attacks against Israel," he said. "Israel is exercising its right to defend itself." And so it is. Survival is often noisy, and the rest of the world will just have to put up with it -- and thank the Jews.

Technorati Tags: Terrorism, War, United Nations, Lebanon, Israel, Politics

A Sterile War

What the world wants, what the world expects, is a sterile war, a war in which no non-combatant is harmed, or even inconvenienced. Surely this is a universal hope, a universal goal. Who, after all, would want to hurt innocent people?

It is from this thesis that a large portion of the world judges the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict.

But human beings have failed themselves. We have failed to learn how to fight a war without injuring or killing innocent bystanders.

The Israelis are guilty, in the eyes of many—perhaps most—of the world’s peoples, of gross and deliberate atrocities against innocent non-combatant Lebanese. Israel shares this dubious honor with the United States—the most glaring purveyor of evil—on the world stage. The United States has foisted unmentionable horrors on the good and innocent people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Israel has done likewise in Lebanon.

The United States was attacked and 3,000 of its citizens were killed on September 11, 2001 by Islamic terrorists and Israel was attacked by a group of Islamic radicals three weeks ago. The natural response from both the U.S. and Israel is to go after their attackers. But a large number of world citizens insist that they must not harm or kill even one non-combatant.

In the eyes of this faction of people, however large it may be, both the United States and Israel have broken this covenant with the world. The U.S. and Israel are evil. The U.S. and Israel are war criminals.

This is why this faction supports the enemies of the U.S. and Israel. This is why it supports al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah.

If the United States and Israel are to defend themselves, if they are to defeat their sworn enemies—the radical Islamic groups that have sworn to destroy them—they must do so without harming or killing innocent non-combatants.

Technorati Tags: Terrorism, War, Lebanon, Israel, Politics

The Cowards of Hezbollah

U.N. Chief Accuses Hezbollah of 'Cowardly Blending' Among Refugees

LARNACA, Cyprus — The U.N. humanitarian chief accused Hezbollah on Monday of "cowardly blending" among Lebanese civilians and causing the deaths of hundreds during two weeks of cross-border violence with Israel.

The militant group has built bunkers and tunnels near the Israeli border to shelter weapons and fighters, and its members easily blend in among civilians.

More ...


Technorati Tags: Terrorism, Cowardice, Lebanon, Israel, Politics

Letters on Enemy Combatant Treatment - Redux

I found this piece in my archives. I like it. I hope you do, too.

==============================================================

George W. Bush
President
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, District of Columbia

Dear Mr. President:

I am taking time to write to you to protest the treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo Naval Base’s Camp X-Ray. The Muslim individuals you have detained there are being held under conditions reminiscent of what was done in Abu Ghraib, Auschwitz, and the Gulags and as an American, I do not appreciate what you are doing in my name.

I cannot believe that you do not understand that their cultural differences mandate that we treat them humanely, with kindness and compassion. They have been removed from their culture on, what at best, seem to be spurious circumstances and their having an attitudinal problem with their captors seems perfectly normal. I understand that you have a war to fight, but these people are prisoners of war and are entitled to all the considerations of Prisoners of War.

Please insure that these POW’s and any future POW’s have all of their rights protected. Their food must be culturally acceptable, prayer rugs must be provided, copies of their holy book must be provided and their cultural needs met. They should never see women in circumstance other than what they are used to in their culture.

America stands for acceptance and tolerance of differences and these people deserve our kindness and consideration and nothing less. I demand that you begin to treat them as guests in our country until this unpleasantness with other cultures be resolved.

Sincerely:

John Q. Liberal, Atty.
American Civil Liberties Union

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington D.C.

Dear Mr. Liberal:

Thank you for your recent letter criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington.

You’ll be pleased to learn that thanks to the concerns of citizens such as yourself, we are creating the Terrorist Retraining Program, to be called the “Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers” program, or LARK for short. In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, which provides for these detainees to be distributed to homes throughout the United States, we have determined that your home is a place that we can count on to provide just the type of care you recommend for them.

Your detainee has been scheduled for delivery to your residence next Monday. Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud, captured fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Although Ahmed is sociopathic and extremely violent, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his “attitudinal problem” will help him cope with these as “cultural differences.”

Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. He is also expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless you feel that this might offend him.

Ahmed will not wish to interact with your wife or daughters since he views females as a subhuman form of property. This is a particularly sensitive subject for him. He has been known to show violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the dress code that he considers appropriate, but I’m sure that over time they will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the bhurkas I have enclosed with this letter. Just remind them that it is all part of respecting his culture and his religious beliefs.

Thanks again for your letter and your willingness to not just complain, but to actually help out.

Take good care of Ahmed and good luck!

Sincerely,

George W. Bush

==========================================================

Found at The Wide Awakes, and slightly edited.


Technorati Tags: Terrorism, Enemy Combatants, POWs, Liberalism, Politics

Just another coincidence?

By Tony Blankley
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published July 26, 2006

Tuesday's front-page New York Times headline on the Hezbollah-Israel fighting — "International Force Is Favored, But No Nation Commits Troops" — was widely received with a giggling "Well, duh." In a way, it was funny. While the Europeans agreed that international troops should be sent in to stop the fighting, the article ended with, "The Germans recommended the French, the French recommended the Egyptians, and so on."

But if one scratches just beneath the surface of the headlines, the great strategic failure of America since September 11 can be detected in the fourth paragraph of the New York Times article: "

There has been strong verbal support for such a force in public, but also private concerns that soldiers would be seen as allied to Israel and would have to fight Hezbollah guerrillas who do not want foreigners, let alone the Lebanese Army, coming between them and the Israelis." Well, of course they don't.

From my extensive conversations with Europeans, high and low, I don't doubt the accuracy of that statement. Most Europeans — and far too many Americans — still see Hezbollah terrorism as just part of that Arab-Israeli mess in the Middle East. (And, of course, Hezbollah doesn't want foreigners to stop it from killing.) But, more importantly, most of the peoples of the world — including U.S. citizens — still don't believe that radical Islamist terrorism is a grave, worldwide challenge to civilization.

And therein lies our greatest strategic failure to date. So long as most people — certainly most Europeans, perhaps most Americans — see Islamist terrorism as merely the more or less disconnected actions of a relatively small number of fanatics, then Europeans will never send their sons to fight and die to defeat it. And, of course, they won't send their sons to risk death for the "Jewish state" of Israel or the "imperialist" United States. And who can ask any parents to risk sacrificing their sons for some foreigners — despised or not?

President Bush has failed in five years to successfully make the case — to America or to the Western world — that we are in fact in a mortal, worldwide struggle: what my old boss Newt Gingrich recently called World War III; what I called "The West's Last Chance" in my book last year; what I and many others have called the clash of civilizations.

Only when that case has been made persuasively will the real struggle for victory begin. Only then will Europe raise armies to fight — not for Israel or the United States, but for their own survival.

And we are not without resources. Europe — from Poland to the Atlantic, from Sweden to Greece — is over 700 million strong. Hindu India is over a billion. North America is over 400 million. It is absurd to think that such a mass of civilization cannot send sufficient troops to smash — door to door and hand to hand if necessary, and it probably will be necessary — a few thousand Hezbollah fighters. For that matter, a force could be raised to clean out the tribal lands in northern Pakistan and the Islamist/anarchic Horn of Africa and wherever radical Islamists have cover and succor. (Currently, in Lebanon and throughout the world, peaceable Muslims understandably cannot resist the violent threat of their radical co-religionists. We must give them a chance to be partisans for civilization.)

But such martial force can only be raised and sustained on the foundation of broad and deep public support.

Now, with the whole world watching the unfolding chaos, would be an excellent time to start that public education process. The president should give a series of major speeches on the nature of the worldwide threat. He must rise above his previous efforts with more blunt, honest and detailed analysis — not merely well-worn phrases.

But much more is needed. The Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees should hold extensive, high-octane, joint, select public hearings in the next two months on the nature of the threat. Let the best advocates for each perception testify. Former presidents, princes, generals and specialists should all come and testify. Congress can and must give both depth of analysis and sustained public attention to such a presidential initiative.

The media should give major front-page and top-of-the-news attention to such a great debate. It is not enough for Fox, The Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, talk radio, selected authors and blogs to carry on the debate. The mainstream media should join in giving prolonged, prominent coverage in conjunction with such hearings.

In five years we have, remarkably, never had such a sustained effort to publicly debate the nature of the danger. At the outset of the Cold War, Congress spent years holding hearings on the "red menace." Some people think they overdid it. I do not. It required that sort of an effort to establish the public support and bipartisan judgment over the 50 years that Communism was in fact a worldwide threat to civilization. It was such a threat; and it was defeated — but only because the public, for 50 years, understood the danger and voted for politicians who were prepared to devote trillions to defense.

Until the American and European publics have become convinced of the present danger to them, we will continue to stumble, take half measures and fail to adequately defend ourselves.

Before action must come belief; before belief must come understanding; before understanding must come education and debate. In the beginning was the word. It is time to begin.

Technorati Tags: Terrorism, Freedom, America, World War III, Politics

Crazy Americans

I love my country. America has its problems, and the American people have their problems, but the United States is still the best country on Earth, and the American people are among the best people on Earth, with generosity unparalled anywhere.

Among the problems Americans have is that some of us have little ability to reason, and others of us are spoiled and unable to deal with adversity. These two dubious characteristics combine to produce such things as the recent attitude of Americans in Lebanon.

When you are in a foreign country, all bets are off for your being safe. Our government cannot even guarantee our individual safety here at home, and in fact is not supposed to do that. The possibility of the U.S. government protecting its citizens when they are in other countries is no more than a fairy tale. We—not our government—are responsible to use common sense and due caution in our daily lives to keep ourselves out of harms way.

Is there is a more potentially dangerous place in the world than the present day Middle East? Living in Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Iraq or Syria, or Egypt today is taking a big chance with life and limb. So, the reaction of some of those Americans who had to be rescued from Lebanon is not only curious, it is preposterous. They complain that accommodations on the ships and other means of transportation are inadequate and uncomfortable. Some of those having their dumb butts carried to safety by ship are upset that they didn’t have clean sheets, or enough to drink. They complain that they weren’t rescued quickly enough.

Here’s a message for them: Shut up and be thankful that you are not still in Lebanon. You chose to go there, it’s your own fault you were in trouble, and we’re tired of your whining and sniveling.


Technorati Tags: War, Lebanon, Americans Rescued, Common Sense, Foolishness

The Common Sense of Common People

There are lots of opinions out there for our consumption. Some are informed opinions; some are uninformed opinions; some by professionals; others by amateurs. George Mosko, who is not a professional writer, wrote the letter to the editor that follows. It reflects a common sense perspective about war and fighting that escapes many people, both professional and amateur.

Benevolence may cost soldiers’ lives

I believe that America has a problem. I am reading where two U.S. soldiers were found dead, tortured and mutilated beyond recognition in lraq. On the other end, I am reading where our government has prosecuted seven U.S. Marines because of what is likely an accidental shooting of an Iraqi civilian.

If American soldiers are intentionally murdering Iraqi civilians, then they should be disciplined. It is, however, very difficult to determine who is innocent in a time of war in a foreign country. These soldiers were most likely acting on impulse during a time of insurgency in Iraq. I am sure that Osama bin Laden did not try to distinguish who was innocent and guilty when he ordered the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

This also sends a negative message to individuals who are thinking of a career in the military. I would be thinking twice about joining the military if I knew that, with one wrong decision, I could be in prison for defending my country.

In the time these seven Marines had to identify this civilian, it could have cost them their lives. We cannot win wars by running 30-day background checks on our enemies before we fire our weapons. If we have become that benevolent in combat, then the enemy has the advantage. This may be a factor in why we have lost 2,500 very good men in this conflict. Something to think about isn't it.

George Mosko

Good points, Mr. Mosko.



Technorati Tags: War, Iraq, American Forces, Common Sense, Politics

Worth a Thousand Words

Technorati Tags: Stem Cell Research, Clonning, Valuing Life, Culture, Science and Ethics

Just Desserts

Virginia executed a rapist/murderer yesterday. On days like that my state makes me proud. My Governor, Tim Kaine, a Democrat, also made me proud. He denied clemency for Brandon Hedrick, a 27-year-old degenerate who raped and murdered a young mother.

“I pray for everybody that believes in Jesus Christ in heaven and I pray for the people that are unsaved, that they will accept Christ because they know not what they do and will accept Christ one day,” the pervert said just before being executed. That’s a nice sentiment. It looks like Hedrick found the Lord somewhere along the path from rape and murder to meeting his deserved fate.

Or did he? You can excuse his rambling incoherence; he was about to die after all. But did you notice that he didn’t say he was sorry for raping and killing an innocent human being and for taking a young child’s mother from him? In my book, that’s evidence not of religious conversion, but of bargaining for a cooler seat in eternity.

Hedrick is the first person electrocuted in the Commonwealth since 2003. Virginia gives its condemned miscreants the choice of electrocution or lethal injection. Hedrick chose the chair over the gurney, his attorney said, because he thinks Hedrick was afraid of dying by lethal injection. Electrocution isn’t a pretty thing, and it isn’t painless. That’s why it is such a good choice for murderers and rapists. Hedrick was maybe a little stupid in addition to being a vicious bastard who was unable to get a woman except by force.

After being dispatched from this life by an Earthly hot seat, Hedrick is now enjoying the fruits of his foul labors in a hot seat in Hell. Good riddance.

Technorati Tags: Crime and Punishment, Crime, Justice, Death Penalty, Execution

Puzzlements

It is a sad commentary that our society requires you to wear a helmet to ride a motorcycle, and have a permit to put a deck on your home, and be licensed to drive a motor vehicle, but allows everyone to have children without question.


Isn’t it interesting that more than a few of those Americans being rescued from Lebanon are complaining about the transportation and accommodations?


Why is it that when terrorists, like Hezbollah and al Qaeda, hide behind innocent men, women and children, and some of those innocents are killed or injured, liberals don’t blame the terrorists, but instead blame those the terrorists are attacking?


Does it ever bug you that when a dog viciously attacks and injures a person, the dog is put to death, but when a pedophile rapes a child they often get only a light sentence?


Why does the Left want to save the whales and the trees and the wetlands, and protect terrorists and criminals, but not embryos and fetuses or American traditions?

World War III, Part II

What follows was received as a comment to the preceding post, World War III, from my friend The Windjammer. I decided to post it because it is at least as relevant as my original post. The Windjammer has a longer historical perspective than I, and has some truly valuable things to say on the subject:

You are correct, of course.

I was there for WWII, albeit a bit young for the early stages, and there is no way that I could tell you when the big one actually started. It may have been ca 1930 when that crackpot genius we call Hitler held a thuse meeting in a beer garden in Munich. I suspect by that time it was well under way, although nobody fully understood just what he had in mind and shoved him into a remote corner of our collective minds and wrote him off as a raving maniac. Almost everyone who was alive at that time knows about when the fireworks started, but those were only a direct result of our failure to nip it in the bud, as Barney might have said.

The terrorists have been demonstrating to all of us both here and abroad exactly what they have in mind, but because of a reluctance or some other psychological phenomenon we as a world people fail to read the messages. There has been terrorist activity in Afghanistan, Bali, Chechnya, Egypt, England, France, Gaza (O.K., so it's only a strip), Germany, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan, The Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia (now essentially under the control of terrorists), Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand and the Good Ol' U.S. of A. I realize that list isn't complete, but it should give even the most obtuse skeptic sufficient evidence that the threat of terrorism is truly global. I suspect one reason that so many have failed to connect the dots is the fact that terrorism comes with so many unusual and unholy names which the perpetrators have tried to make sound holy. The various groups which practice terrorism hide behind those appellations in order to create confusion among the enemy which is all of the rest of us. The system has worked remarkably well.

Despite the variations, the whole is tied together in one objective. If there is any person alive who does not know what that objective is, he just hasn't been paying attention or has been listening too much and too long to the left-wing media.

The present dominant process of engaging the world in a universal conflict was started several years back. I am not sure whether it was during the eighth century when the Moors (read that Saracens) invaded Spain or whether it was during the twentieth. It certainly wasn't the twenty-first. I suspect that if any historian would admit it, he doesn't know for sure either.

There are literally billions of us (humans, that is) today who believe that if we close our eyes and ears, the evil will go away. History tells us that isn't the way it works.

I believe whole-heartedly that William Sherman was only partially right when he said, "I am sick and tired of war. It's glory is all moonshine...War is Hell." He should have added, "War is a Hell of a way to settle anything."

If every lunatic on the planet who harbors an uncontrollable desire to dominate the rest of us for whatever reason would understand that, we wouldn't have so many.

There are still a few of us who don't want to be dominated and will raise Holy Ned to avoid it.

The Windjammer

Technorati Tags: Terrorism, Fredom, America, Liberalism, Politics

World War III

I see in the news today where Newt Gingrich has said that we are in the third World War now. This is a realization I arrived at several months ago.

I got in some trouble recently on another guy’s blog for questioning the “generally accepted” starting date of WWII. I was told that I was really stupid when I questioned, for example, when a war starts and suggested that there was more than one possibility: when the aggressor fires the first shot; when the aggressee first fires back; or perhaps even as far back as when the aggressor starts planning his aggression. When WWIII began is an open debate, but there is no question among thinking individuals that radical, fundamentalist Muslims have been attacking the United States for more than 20 years.

One of the reasons that I don’t quibble too much with the war in Iraq is that while the information that circulated in the United Nations and in most every major nation in the world at the time the Iraq war began may have been wrong, the fight we are in is far broader than just the conflict in Iraq. This is a major point that so many, particularly on the Left, fail to understand. Whether they are so caught up in hatred for George W. Bush, whether they actually don’t believe we are in the fight of our lives, or whether they are intellectually incapable of “getting it,” the Left does not understand or admit that defeating terrorism, which has a decidedly Arab face on it, is the most significant challenge to the American ideal since this nation was founded, and if the major battleground of that conflict is Iraq, so much the better. As long as it isn’t the United States.

Terrorism is not just the problem of the U.S., and terrorism is not only the province of barbaric Muslims. But this cowardly practice is the current most serious challenge to free people the world over, and if the doubters don’t soon wake up to that reality, defeating terrorism will be far more difficult.


Technorati Tags: Terrorism, Fredom, America, Liberalism, Politics

The Good Ol' Days

I got this in an email today:

---

To all the kids who were born in the 1930s 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers that took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able toreach us all day.And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers,problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned ...

HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And if you are one of them, CONGRATULATIONS!



You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

New Comment System Enabled

I have re-implemented the HaloScan comment system to eliminate the spam, so word verification is no longer effective.

I had used HaloScan for a while a year or so ago, and for some reason that I can't remember, took it off.

Thanks to a reminder from TexasFred, who said that it is not subject to the efforts of spammers, I will try it again.

Word Verification Back On

Regrettably, I am forced to turn on Word Verification for comments again. I had a 48 spam day today.

I know it is somewhat inconvenient, and I regret that. But there really aren't that many comments on the site anyway, so maybe it won't hurt too much.

Plame's Fame Game

Valerie Plame, who worked in a non-undercover job at the CIA, got her husband Joe Wilson, a Bush administration critic, a job trying to find out if Saddam Hussein was trying to buy yellow cake from Niger. Good Ol’ Joe predictably didn’t find any evidence supportive of the administration’s position and chose to go to The New York Times to tell the world that there was no effort to buy yellow cake, instead of reporting to Congress. Somewhere along the way Miss Valerie’s name was made public and there was a great cry throughout the land that the name of a covert agent had been made public. Except she wasn’t covert, and it appears that Miss Valerie’s name and association with the CIA, which wasn’t ever a secret, became truly public when Ol’ Joe’s bio appeared in Who’s Who, followed not much later by a cover story about the Wilsons in a widely distributed national publication.

As a testament to how much ado about nothing this entire fiasco is, after nearly three years of investigating a federal prosecutor has found no one to indict for a real crime because there was no crime, and the best the prosecutor could do was to indict a ham sandwich in the person of the Vice President’s chief of Staff, who got his facts mixed up. He’s now charged not with outing a covert CIA agent, since there was no covert agent outed, but instead charged with—horrors—“lying to the government.” Well, now Miss Valerie and Ol’ Joe are suing claiming her career was ruined when her husband "outed" her and are now hoping to strike it rich in the courts. They both also have a book deal.

It just goes to show that if you want to strike it rich in the U.S. you can do it be being duplicitous and subversive.

Technorati Tags: Terrorism, Something for Nothing, Filthy Lucre, Plame, Politics

The Supreme Court, Enemy Combatants, and Confusion

I have problems with the idea that enemy combatants—people captured in the act of trying to kill Americans or suspected of being involved with people trying to kill Americans—are supposed to be treated the same as uniformed soldiers from nations that are signatories to the Geneva Conventions. That means that participating nations agree to a standard set of rules for the treatment of captured enemy military personnel. If the U.S. and, say, Great Britain are at war with each other, and both nations have signed the Geneva Conventions, both nations have pledged and are bound to follow the provisions of the agreement with regard to the treatment of captured enemy military personnel. That makes sense.

The Geneva Conventions is a set of rules for fighting wars in a civilized fashion, to the extent that war can be civilized. Signatory nations read the Conventions and agreed to them. The United States signed the Conventions, and is bound by the standards set forth in conflicts with other signatories. Al Qaeda is not a signatory to the Conventions. Al Qaeda is not a nation with a uniformed military. Al Qaeda does not follow the Conventions. The sixty-four dollar question is, then: In conflicts with al Qaeda and other non-signatory barbaric terrorist combatants, if they aren’t bound by the Conventions, why should we be?

“We hold ourselves to a higher standard, and that is what separates us from, raises us above, the rest of the world.” This concept is put forth as the principle upon which we base our need to treat our enemy better than he treats us, and is sometimes advanced by people whom I hold in high regard. And it is an honorable principle, to a point.

However, if you are in a fistfight and your opponent pulls a knife, are you going to stand on principle and try to defeat your enemy with only your fists and feet, and not pick up an available knife? Is that a principled position? Is it a smart decision?

Would you rather be dead, but have stuck by your principles while your enemy, not burdened with your principles, cuts you to shreds? Or would you rather be alive and maybe wounded, with your principles lying nearby to be reclaimed when they are appropriate, and your enemy lying bloody and dead?

I choose the latter.

The U.S. Supreme Court erred in finding that terrorists who do not wear the uniform of a nation, and who do not represent the government of a nation that has signed the Geneva Conventions are subject to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

Technorati Tags: The Courts, War, Geneva Conventions, Government, Enemy Combatants