The war that’s not supposed to exist keeps getting bigger. Noah Schachtman at Wired reports the Obama administration authorized significantly more targeted Predator attacks in 2009 than in George Bush’s last year. Significantly, many of these are east of the Durand line — inside Pakistan itself or in Yemen. Wired wrote, “the Obama administration launched more than 50 reported robotic strikes, killing several hundred people. Compare that to 2008, when there were just 36 drone attacks.”
US strikes in Yemen are not new. Al-Qaeda in Yemen is coming back after a long decline, following a successful drone strike which took out the head of al-Qaeda in Yemen in 2002. Waq al-Waq explains: “A little over seven years ago, an unmanned US drone killed the head of al-Qaeda in Yemen, Abu ‘Ali al-Harithi, and with his death it effectively destroyed al-Qaeda in the country. The organization limped along for another year, but it never represented the same type of threat as it did under al-Harithi.” At the time it was denounced as a “summary execution” that violated human rights.
Signs of a possible al-Qaeda revival in Yemen were noted in March, 2008 by STRATFOR. “An attack against the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and another strike against a Yemeni government compound elsewhere in the country March 18 appear to have been the work of Yemen’s resurging jihadist insurgency.” One of its leaders was a man released from Guantanamo prison who claimed he only wanted to return home to return to the family business. The New York Times recently described how one of al-Qaeda’s top leaders in Yemen returned to the business of terror. They let him out.
The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.
The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.
While Shihri’s connection to Gitmo have been highlighted by the press, his connections to Iran have received less play except in the Long War Journal. Thomas Jocelyn notes that Shihri was not simply involved in Yemen. Far from being an innocent man eager to return to his family’s carpet business, he was actively involved in fueling jihadi not only in Yemen, but Afghanistan through Iran. He ran transit lines to Afghanistan through Iran for Saudis eager to fight there.
The Long War Journal reviewed thousands of unclassified files released from Guantánamo. The Mashhad-based transit line al Shihri helped run is not the only one al Qaeda operates inside Iran. More than fifty detainees who are either currently held or have been held at Guantánamo are alleged to have had some involvement with Iran. Some of them, like the Taliban’s former governor of the Herat province, were accused of illicit dealings with the Iranian government. The governor, Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, even admitted to setting up at least two meetings between senior Iranian and Taliban officials. At these meetings, Iran and the Taliban, who were one-time enemies, agreed to work together to counter American influence in South and Central Asia.
Dozens of the detainees analyzed by The Long War Journal used al Qaeda’s transit nodes in the Iranian cities of Tayyebat, Zahedan, and Mashhad – all three cities are on Iran’s easternmost border with Afghanistan. Iran’s capital, Tehran, was also identified in the unclassified files as a common transit hub.
These transit hubs were operated by Saudi-based charities that, in reality, acted as fronts for al Qaeda and the Taliban. One of these charities is al Wafa, which has been designated under Executive Order 13224 as a terrorist organization and is briefly mentioned in 9/11 Commission’s report as an al Qaeda front.
Prior to his release, al Shihri was accused of dealing with al Wafa. He had contacts with senior al Wafa officials and one of his aliases and his phone number were “found in the pocket litter of the Karachi, Pakistan manager of” al Wafa. More than 100 Saudis have been repatriated from Guantánamo to Saudi Arabia. In addition to al Shihri, dozens of others are alleged to have worked with al Wafa. Some of them helped run al Wafa’s operations inside Iran and Afghanistan as well. For example, former Guantánamo detainee Abdul Aziz al Matrafi, is alleged to have worked with the Taliban and al Qaeda at the highest levels while running al Wafa’s operations. At Guantánamo, al Matrafi was accused of personally working with both Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.
These deep interconnections are problematic for the Obama administration because it has publicly tried to portray the War on Terror as highly circumscribed by Afghanistan. The failed attack over Detroit and intelligence reports which have forced the closure of the US embassy in Sana to forestall another attack have clearly sent the message that the war isn’t over. Despite the low-key nature of its expanded Predator strikes, the threats clearly come from an area wider than Afghanistan. The UK’s Daily Telegraph notes the administration’s dilemma. It staked its political fortunes on telling the people that the War on Terror was largely confined or due to fear only to have it metastize all over the Arabian Peninsula, South Asia and over the skies of Detroit.
In his weekly radio address yesterday, President Barack Obama patted himself on the back for having “refocused the fight – bringing to a responsible end the war in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks”. …
Complacency, faux moralising and partisan shots at Republicans. It was a neat summary of where Obama is going wrong after the Christmas Day debacle when the Nigerian knicker bomber managed to waltz onto a Detroit-bound flight.
The administration has been increasing its covert Predator strikes even while describing attacks on US targets as the work of “isolated extremists” about which the public “should not jump to conclusions”. This split level approach has created openings which the Republicans, notably former Vice-President Dick Cheney have been eager to exploit. Cheney caustically said that Obama:
“seems to think that if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think that if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hardcore al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation, the restructuring of American society.”
In reality the War on Terror consists of a network of terrorist organizations and the intelligence agencies of rogue states waging a global war on the West. It’s ideological and financial wellsprings are in the Middle East and South Asia, with significant outliers in Western Europe itself. Like a cancer it momentarily went into remission, at least in certain parts of the world and in certain respects, following the American response after September 11. But that post 9/11 response, like chemotherapy in cancer patients, had unwelcome side effects. Barack Obama convinced the American electorate to give it up. In its place he offered a laying of the hands. The outreach speech to the Muslim world, the suggestions that he could achieve a Grand Bargain with Iran, the belief that his very person would attenuate hostility to America were all part of this painless alternative. Nor has he given up his claim. Even intractable Afghanistan, following a Presidential review of his own failing strategy, was scheduled to end in 18 months. All would be well. But despite these outward shows of confidence, the recent attacks and threats have led some to suspect that the cancer may be back and the Obama administration’s attempts to medicate it with secret Predator pills are bound to return to the public eye. The danger is that the jihad — the one that doesn’t exist — may metastize and become more deadly at precisely the time when the American President is withholding the political medicine necessary to fight it.
So far the administration has relied principally on blaming George W. Bush, who is increasingly revenging himself from the annals of history. Recently Iraq just passed its first month without a single American combat death — not bad for an unwinnable war. But at some point BHO will have to start tackling events themselves. The administration is already beginning to change its tune. The Guardian reports that the administration is now distancing itself from the assertion that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
The US believes the official intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear programme is wrong and Tehran is working on the design of a nuclear weapon, it was reported today.
Washington is seeking support for new sanctions against Iran at the UN security council following the expiry of a new year deadline, imposed by the US president, Barack Obama, for Tehran to respond to an offer of economic help and improved diplomatic relations in return for curbing its nuclear programme.
Washington is distancing itself from a controversial National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), produced by several US spy agencies in 2007, which suggested Iran had suspended work on weapons design four years earlier.
“Weapons of mass destruction” have now returned full-circle to the Middle East.
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Continuing the cancer analogy, I agree that metastatic disease is much harder, maybe impossible, to cure. But that’s no reason not to try. Traditional therapy includes radiation. Other tools include immunotherapy, where the patient’s immune system learns to identify the cancer cells as non-self and raises antibodies and killer cells to them. Ruthless and relentless adaptation are the key.
“…the patient’s immune system learns to identify the cancer cells as non-self and raises antibodies and killer cells to them.”
How is that possible when the “patient” isn’t ALLOWED, because of political correctness, to identify, or profile, the “cancer cells” that enter and leave the country at will?
Iran…. It’s one of the major elephants in the room…
Sure there is the Saudis, but Iran funds and supports Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Islamic Brotherhood, Al queda, Taliban, Yemen’s rebels & more..
America’s strategic policy reminds me of a guy stomping on a bag of dog shit on fire and ignoring the persons who collected the dog shit, put it in the bag, placed it on the step, rang the doorbell and lastly, lit the bag of dog shit on fire..
You can see those folks standing back and laughing…
Read a story this morning that said the Saudi’s had briefed DC in advance on what the PantyBomber was planning, thus enabling Barack to go on his Hawaiian vacation confident that he was totally caught up on the international gossip.
So that would be an example of the folks who collected the dogshit, put in the bag, placed it on the step, rang the doorbell and then set it on fire of doing something *other* than standing back and laughing.
The Saudi dude quoted was Nayef, whom they’ve tried to assassinate a couple of times already. Plus Saudi Arabia has been sending troops into Yemen for several months now, killing something they said was terrorists. I sort of think the Saud’s might take it a might personally when Al-Queda keeps trying to blow up the 3,000 Princes on the country’s payroll.
Energy remains the key, the underlying tide of human events.
The American voter was suckered with BHO’s election. It was a deliberate confidence game of bait and switch.
Of course, some voters are getting just what they want but most are realizing that this administration and this Congress don’t have their best interests at heart.
The hard realities of the world will roll back on us. Let’s fight to see that we have honest ballot boxes in 2010.
As to the fix for Muslim extremism, the Bush policy of creating more democratic governments was the only one with long term success. The globe’s need for their oil will not go away. Without oil money, extremists would have little means to bring war to us.
There is little on the horizon that will make oil less valuable to industrialized economies but we can get busy with CTL, GTL, and nuclear gasoline efforts. These have legitimate prospects for supplementing imported oil although at some security premium.
The global warming crowd had perhaps the deliberate effect of keeping us dependent on Muslim oil. Likewise the anti-nuclear movement.
Off Topic…unless you are used to the ways the Obama Administration is working against America and all that she stands for:
The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release December 29, 2009 Executive Order – Classified National Security Information
Where do you finally step back and say: If you cross this line…you are a Traitor and will be shot!
And if we did say it…who would the one that would be willing to give his life, his liberty and his treasure in order to do so?
That is the question.
Papa Ray
All enemies foreign and domestic
The cancer must be fought with a variety of tools. That is what “Full Spectrum Warfare” means. We need to have confidence in the value of our civilization, the cultural underpinnings of our constitutional system, so that we can aggressively go forth and sell respect for America. The poisoning of our educational system not only degrades the quality of the work force in a relative sense to the competition but also absolutely reduces the ability of those recruited by the government to effectively represent us to the outside. George Schultz asked new ambassadors to point on the map for him to “their” country, then he would growl “No, here is your country. America is your country.” When we are conducting combat against an enemy embedded in a foreign population then sometimes we will have to cut deep and perform radical surgery followed by a need to cauterize the wound. Fire from heaven can cleanse. Once the cancer is killed we must be willing to devote the resources to building a healthy body that will resist new infections.
Seventy years ago there were sizable jewish communities in Yemen and Iraq and Iran, really everywhere outside of KSA. Those communities are now gone. Without them the arab communities slip deeper into stagnation and Islamist rigidity. What the region needs is a transplant of a fresh culture. Perhaps in the next decades several million chinese of varying faiths and indian hindus will move to South-west Asia and East Africa.
An item posted on today’s Strategy Page says AQ is running out of sanctuaries, that they are hated in Afgh and even the Taliban are killing them. Trying to recoup in Yemen and Somalia they are running into even more trouble.
At these meetings, Iran and the Taliban, who were one-time enemies, agreed to work together to counter American influence…
Some of us saw what looked suspiciously like collusion in the simultaneous eruptions in Fallujah and Badr City in April 2004. But way back then we were assured by those much smarter than we that Shia and Sunni were inimical branches of Islam and so what looked like cooperation was simply unhappy coincidence.
Of course this alliance would never have happened had we not taken our eye off the ball and invaded Iraq which, of course, had nothing to do with 9/11.
And now we’re fighting in Yemen, which I guess does have something to do with something. I suppose it’s still all Bush’s fault, and for some that must be some solace.
War on Terrorism, are you kidding? How stupid is it to wage war on a tactic?
Washington is distancing itself from a controversial National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), produced by several US spy agencies in 2007, which suggested Iran had suspended work on weapons design four years earlier.
Hilarious. Considering that the NIE was written by Democratic allies to undermine the Bush administration, we get to consider two alternatives.
One of them would run that Iran was no threat at all, as stated by the NIE, and that either the inexperienced Hillary or the inexperienced Obama would capably guide the US to a more secure position once Bush was out of office.
The other would expose the NIE as a cynical, mendacious hit piece generated at the offices of the New York Times, which could be discarded after the Bush administration as the trash that it was.
Gordon @ 8: An item posted on today’s Strategy Page says AQ is running out of sanctuaries, that they are hated in Afgh and even the Taliban are killing them. Trying to recoup in Yemen and Somalia they are running into even more trouble.
Perhaps we the west have then made some points to dar al-Islam, such that Moslems world-wide will reject al Qaeda’s claim to their allegiances as Moslems, with the informed view that accepting al Qaeda’s claims may be followed by Predator flights, hellfire missiles, and US troops on the ground.
Wouldn’t that be lovely? Then we could leave Afghanistan to the Taliban, after all, as long as they stay home about it, what do we care? Well, I wonder about the coherence of such an analysis.
But even so, perhaps we are making our point. I tend to think we’ve been too subtle about it, and we’d better keep on broadcasting the same point, but perhaps this sounds like a bit of good news.
In the mid-90’s one analyst described the Clinton Admin as “bombing their way through another day.” Airstrikes on African aspirin factories, Iraqi radar sites, Afghani terrorist training camps, and the former Yugoslavia, were a substitute for actual strategy internationally and a useful diversion domestically.
Now we have the Obama Admin “droning along.”
One day I would like to see an analysis of just why Predator type UAVs have become so popular. In terms of actual ordnance on the target they are vastly inferior to a WWII P-47. They don’t fly in areas where plausible deniability is a factor. They are vulnerable to any enemy with airplanes more advanced than a Piper Cub. I wonder if it is cost, a change in ops concepts, or the political aspects that make them the weapon of choice.
Smaller UAVs make sense for battlefield observation – the modern replacement for the Piper Cub. So do very high performance drones like the GTD-21. But an airplane a B-17 crew would laugh at? Does not compute using the old equations.
The administration is already beginning to change its tune. The Guardian reports that the administration is now distancing itself from the assertion that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
STRATFOR recently published an article claiming this is just a disinformation campaign cooked up by those nasty Jooos and disseminated by their evil cohort Rupert Murdoch:
AN INTER PRESS SERVICE (IPS) REPORT emerged Monday in which a former CIA official claims that a widely circulated document describing Iran’s nuclear weapons plans was fabricated. The document in question appeared in the Times of London on Dec. 14 and cited an “Asian intelligence source” who allegedly provided the newspaper with “confidential intelligence documents” on how Iran was preparing to run tests on a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion.
Former CIA counterterrorism official Philip Giraldi, however, claims in the IPS interview that the Rupert Murdoch publishing empire — which includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post in addition to the Times of London — has been used frequently by the Israelis and occasionally by the British government to plant false stories to exaggerate the Iranian nuclear threat. Giraldi has been credited in the past with exposing disinformation campaigns by the previous U.S. administration that were designed to bolster claims that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy uranium from Niger.
[excerpt via TigerHawk: http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2010/01/iran-and-disinformation.html
I’m not quite sure how The Guardian fits in with this scheme. Perhaps Karl Rove has moles working there?
Josh, the first part of your analysis seems sound. I think remorselessly hunting down and killing extremists does accrue to the good, notwithstanding the occasional unintentional error–not sure the Taliban will ever be quite ready to entirely reject the extreme fundamentalist (extremist?) designation.
I’d rather support those such as Sistani, Mousavi, Zardari, and even Karzai–who support the idea of providing a workable alternative to theocracy. (Of course, I realize how naive I am to suggest democracy might actually work.)
Giraldi has been credited in the past with exposing disinformation campaigns by the previous U.S. administration that were designed to bolster claims that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy uranium from Niger.
No doubt Hitchens was either a dupe or willing participant in that disinformation campaign.
http://www.slate.com/id/2146475
RWE: I’d say the comparison is more like a scalpel to a cudgel. The endurance/loiter time, low detectability, sensor capability and the “shot that can’t miss” all make my skin crawl. I wouldn’t want a machine hunting me as I tried to gather intel, lay provisions, take a nap or hold a town meeting. Short of a Strela, how do you detect and knock the damn things down? I can envision a trip to radio shack to pick up the fixin’s for a device that detects thermal or even propeller vibrations, but not sure it could be tuned to certain frequency ranges to be useful and I sure don’t know how or what to solder together. Appears I’ve got vacant skill set in my network…
Human rights took a big hit in the 1980s when Reagan outsourced anticommunism to anyone who was willing to fight the Soviets. There were nasty civil wars all over the planet where we were arming one side.
I don’t think that was a better way to fight Communism. I question whether UNITA would have governed Angola better than the MPLA, and I wonder how supporting death squads in Central America really helped anyone.
And, of course, the decision to arm Afghan rebels against the Soviets didn’t turn out very well, either. Not in the simplistic “we made the Talian” sense, because we didn’t. Nor did we create Al Qaeda. But we did foment a civil war in Afghanistan that is still going on.
It’s not only more honest, but less lethal, to use our own military to fight our battles. We kill fewer people than a civil war would, and the outcomes are better. Afghanistan, despite dominating the headlines, seems to be suffering fewer civilian deaths than at any time during the civil war of the 1990s.
Sadly, the era of American willingness to occupy is coming to an end. We seem to be going back to the covert operation and the seedy arms dealer. All because it’s cheaper (for us) and no one cares about third worlders killing each other. Thanks, liberals.
How is that possible when the “patient” isn’t ALLOWED, because of political correctness, to identify, or profile, the “cancer cells” that enter and leave the country at will?
Think it’s bad now, wait until Europe has open borders with Africa to keep their social safety net going with ready labor. No passports, let alone visas, all the way from Algeria to Detroit on Lufthansa.
The American voter was suckered with BHO’s election. It was a deliberate confidence game of bait and switch.
It wasn’t that they were suckered, it was a matter of “don’t you want to be part of history? Thing of it, the first black president!” But the left is having second thoughts:
Almost a full year into his presidency, Mr. Obama is at a dangerous point. His ability to inspire has all but departed. The novelty of his historic ascension is over. And, late though it be, there are now questions about his effectiveness. As there are also doubts about whether that magnificently cool presence – his much-touted ability to distance himself from the turbulence and passions of those around him – springs from a fear of being overwhelmed by events rather than a confidence in mastering them.
As to the fix for Muslim extremism, the Bush policy of creating more democratic governments was the only one with long term success. The globe’s need for their oil will not go away. Without oil money, extremists would have little means to bring war to us.
Sure, more democratic governments. Women used to walk with their head uncovered in Iraq. Everywhere our troops go, we leave them reeling under Sharia Law.
Fire from heaven can cleanse. Once the cancer is killed we must be willing to devote the resources to building a healthy body that will resist new infections.
Nationbuilding is not and never was in the US Charter. That’s the Wilsonian/neo-con dream. All those billions of dollars a month playing whack-a-mullah is better served being left in US taxpayer’s pocket.
One of them would run that Iran was no threat at all, as stated by the NIE, and that either the inexperienced Hillary or the inexperienced Obama would capably guide the US to a more secure position once Bush was out of office.
The Soviet Union was a threat with their nuclear parity with the US, but so what? We made it. Mutual Assured Destruction. With Iran having one or two Hiroshima firecrackers it wouldn’t even be mutual. There’s something every nuclear power learns after it joins the club: Waving nukes around ain’t anything like deploying aircraft carrier battle groups. Playing with those matches is liable to set your whole country on fire.
One day I would like to see an analysis of just why Predator type UAVs have become so popular. In terms of actual ordnance on the target they are vastly inferior to a WWII P-47.
Why send a whole wing of bombers to take out a Scud factory when you can just blow up the Scud genius in his own car?
The major potential players in the war against political Islam have not yet been seriously involved. I mean China and India, with their tremendous demographic potential. But there are signs that they too begin to recognise the danger (especially after Mumbai attack and Ujghur unsurgency in Xinjiang), and to use Indian or Chinese troops in this war is a better option. But it requires re-alignment of US foreign policy to build such strategic alliances.
Cancer is an aptly gruesome metaphor for our Islamist enemies, especially I imagine for those of us who have lost loved ones to this dread disease. To make it more apt, we’d have to refine it to a blood cancer, or small cell (oat cell) cancer, where first it is diagnosed as “lung cancer” and then it shows up in the liver, brain, large bones…. Perhaps even more apt would be the Tasmanian devil facial tumor disease, which is contagious, spread by a virus, much as suicidal fantaticism spreads through the Internet, television, news. The Tasmanian devil tumors share a DNA, pointing back to a single host and a single malignant gene, perhaps 1,500 years ago. Analogies can go too far.
Turning back the pages of history to not long ago, we can see how much remains the same, and as Wretchard describes, how much our approach has changed:
Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command — every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war — to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.
This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. President George W. Bush
Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People
September 20, 2001 (Thanks for the pointer, GM.) For the past year, we’ve imagined Tehran is not Axis of Evil material, just another potential partner, not part of the cancer. Hmmm.
Facing a contagious cancer, the cowboy’s approach – with or agin us – seems appropriate. Saudi has been with us, though imperfectly so. Without Pakistan, as Subotai has often explained, we would have no hope of sustaining our efforts in Afghanistan to date. Our allies are not friends, but what other choices have we got? Our CIA station in Khost suffered grievously by taking the necessary risk of using dangerous, human weapons.
It is encouraging to see the Obama Administration starting to sober up a bit, perhaps we start to see the wars on American healthcare, imaginary global warming and George W. Bush as “distractions” from the real global war?
I found it startling that AQAP could respond so quickly and in kind to our aerial attacks on Yemen with an aerial attack on Detroit. There’s a world war going on, that has to be America’s priority number one. The world’s economy is stumbling, that has to be priority number 2, or 1.5. And all of these New Deal 2 operations have to fall in line behind these existential priorities. I think it will take another election or two to have that obvious re-prioritization occur.
#19 Sergey – You make a good point about an alliance with India. Not so much about the China thing as their goals and our are wildly divergent viz ME oil and future influence. With increased Chinese influence we are more likely to see foment of Jihad by China to weaken us strategically.
India is a different creature altogether. Not only is India a moderate friend who might share our own positive economic, social, and political aspirations, they are also our natural anti-Jihad ally, a potential nuclear billion man dagger pointed at the poisonus heart of Islam. We should be best of friends with a great nation like that.
But an airplane a B-17 crew would laugh at? Does not compute using the old equations.
Sure doesn’t.
B-17 crews would just drop iron bombs all over the area, and that would be that. We have to make a production out of it all.
But Bruce Sterling foresaw much of this in an older book, probably out of print now, “Islands in the Net”. There is just a certain video-game attraction to doing it all by remote control that meshes with our worldview. Book is certainly worth a read, if you can find it.
OTOH, don’t be too quick to dimiss the effects of precision guided munitions like Hellfires, can completely ruin your day.
Spengler in “Asia Times” proposes the following course for USA:
A hegemonic US would do the following:
Invite New Delhi to increase its role in Afghanistan – which the Russians emphatically support – and make clear to Islamabad that the consequences of a shift toward radical Islam will be to leave Pakistan at the mercy of India.
Dictate to India a conciliatory policy toward China, including an empty dance card for the Dalai Lama and consideration for Chinese interests in Nepal and Myanmar.
Persuade China to throw its Pakistani ally under the bus, in return for assurances of Indian good behavior, as well as other incentives (access to US technology, for example).
Assure China that the United States will not take advantage of its troubles with the Uighurs in Xinjiang or any other Chinese ethnic minority – and that it will police such allies as Turkey with respect to such problems.
Crush Iran’s imperial ambitions in the region, both to protect US allies such as Saudi Arabia and to eliminate a potential existential threat to Pakistan and remove a claim to legitimacy for radical Sunni Islamists.
Give Russia assurances that matters pertaining to its “near abroad” from Ukraine to Kyrgyzstan will be considered with a view toward Russian interests.
Sirius is right. There has been a problem defining the battlefield and the enemy from the beginning, owing mostly to a recency effect that causes us to forget the longer arches of human history.
This is the latest page in the war waged by Islam against Christendom. And the Muslims would have no chance were it not for our contraction of an autoimmune disease,secular-humanism.
To paint with an even broader brush, this is a conflict waged by two materialist faiths against the mechanism for human redemption. Christians are increasingly aware that they are the enemy and are under bilateral assault. When the masses that have been anesthetized by secular-humanism awake and realize the debt they owe to our Judeo-Christian heritage, then we’ll all have more of a fighting chance.
—But it requires re-alignment of US foreign policy to build such strategic alliances.—
Yes…
BILL EMMOTT, a former editor of the Economist magazine, has written that George W. Bush’s “bold initiative” to strengthen U.S. relations with India “may eventually be judged by historians as a move of great strategic importance and imagination.” It “may turn out to be the most significant foreign policy achievement of the Bush administration,”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/008yukki.asp
Hmmm….. Was that idiot Bush that far seeing?
Maineman: To paint with an even broader brush, this is a conflict waged by two materialist faiths against the mechanism for human redemption. Christians are increasingly aware that they are the enemy and are under bilateral assault. When the masses that have been anesthetized by secular-humanism awake and realize the debt they owe to our Judeo-Christian heritage, then we’ll all have more of a fighting chance.
It was the science of materialist secular humanism that built the World Trade Center and the plane that brought it down, but it was a non-materialist religion (focused on afterlife rewards) that hijacked the plane and brought it down. And your solution is….turn society back to another non-materialist religion that focuses on afterlife rewards.
Muslims have no problem with Jews or Christians, they are, after all, People of the Book. They don’t even have to fight in jihad, if they pay the jizya. But Muslims DO have a problem with materialist secular humanists, who believe in neither Yahweh nor Christ nor Allah, and it is between the unbeliever and the Muslim you find the war, not between the various members of the Abrahamic monotheism.
Teresita,
Muslims have no problem with Jews or Christians, they are, after all, People of the Book
That simply isn’t true. You are repeating their fantasy smokescreen that is used to minimize the threat and encourage unnecessary internal divisions in Dahr al Harb. You are sounding like Medaura of LGF. Your desire to defend the achievements of modern secular civilization are understandable. The science and the tolerance are not just means to greater prosperity but treasures in themselves that have been won at great cost. Please do not define the circle of the culture you admire so narrowly as to exclude those who do not threaten those treasures. While we must defend tolerance by being intolerant of the intolerant we must draw the line so as to exclude those who are either merely disagreeable or over issues, especially abortion, which are vitally important but which should be addressed by the web of political communities in a free society.
To be blogged under the title “Sizing the Tent.”
Actually, Muslims have lots of problems with Jews and Christians. They can be, theoretically, tolerated as second-class citizens under Islamic rule, but can not be allowed to build the states of their own, according Islamic teaching, and in practice even this dhimmitude status of People of the Book is not respected now in all Muslim-dominated countries.
#12 – RWE: But an airplane a B-17 crew would laugh at? Does not compute using the old equations.
You’re right. We can use one unmanned weapon to achieve a minimum 95 percent Pk (measure of the probability of achieving a target kill) vice a weapon that employs ten men (the B-17) to achieve a Pk a quarter of that, if that high.
Ten years ago we began thinking along the lines of targets per sortie, vice sorties per target. It is a huge, paradigm-changing difference.
The unmanned drones we are using are much better for those reasons: First, no crew, no man in the craft at all. Second, exceptional precison – no need for tons of ordnance when a single bomb or missile will achieve your objective.
An advantage for the predator & reaper UAV’s over manned aircraft – extraordinarily long Time on Target and loiter times. I’ve seen loiter times reported in the range of 14 hours for the Predator and 29 hours for the Reaper, far greater than any single seat fighter would be able to do. The long loiter time, of course, allows the predator to circle lazily above a suspected location for many hours just waiting for something to happen or someone to arrive. Not to mention that with an expendable platform you never have to worry about the risk of prisoners of war or other propaganda problems that would come from a captured pilot. This allows the predator operators to fly in regions that could be considered far too risky for a manned flight – other than the cost, there’s nothing wrong with flying a predator down the length of some desert canyon or mountain valley just to see if anybody takes a shot at it. If you lose the platform you’ve found some good info on where to keep looking.
Just think how many propaganda problems would have been avoided in Vietnam if an unmanned version of the F-4 had been available.
Also, when the predators small size is combined with a stealth enhancing composite construction, it should be fairly difficult to pick up on radar. And it’s not as defenseless to enemy aircraft (if there were any) as it may appear. If there were a threat, load a couple up with AMRAAM’s and see if the enemy really wants to risk his high value pilots against your low value drone – doesn’t seem like a trade he would want to make.
And that brings up a final advantage for the predator – a much lower cost than a manned aircraft, not just in the construction but also the operation. Consider how much cheaper and easier it is to train a ground based console flyer than it is to train and support a full combat pilot, and how much cheaper it is to build a Predator than it is to build an F-22 or F-35. And you have no risk of losing your console flyers to accidents or enemy actions. The pilot will always be relatively fresh because you can trade them in and out at will.
The entire concept brings up an interesting tactical point – in a large scale aerial conflict, which would you rather have – 100 manned aircraft, or 1000 remotely operated drones? Give each side the same armaments, especially long range AMRAAM missiles.
I think I’d take the drones in that matchup, because the lower relative cost per unit would mean I could afford to take more risks, and this is usually one of the keys to winning a battle. I could afford to send out drones on suicide missions just to lure the manned fighters out from cover, and no matter how good the pilot was I don’t think he could avoid a barrage of 20 missiles from 20 platforms simultaneously. The drone operator, of course, can designate a sacrifice wing just to soak up missiles while running interference for the shooters, a strategy the manned fighters would never be able to follow. (not unless we were able to resurrect some Japanese flyers from WW2)
These are probably the reasons that the F-35 is already being called the last manned fighter that the US will ever build.
Obama WILL achieve his goal of reordering and recreating American society, but not in the way he thinks.
The Detroit failed attack was the worst outcome for Obama. He clearly knows his policies and personality, increasingly, are deeply unpopular among Americans, and so he NEEDS a successful attack so he can suspend the constitution and elections to rule by decree.
Obama however is likely to fail in his desire to rule by decree, the attack likely to be too big and the US reaction too great. It is clear modern PC/Multiculturalism cannot survive the stress of Jihad and creeping Sharia. Eventually, some figure a mixture of Curtis LeMay and Patton, will emerge to fight a war of the peoples. Not the least of which is that this course brings real power to those on the outside of the Western society. Tragically hip PC/Multicultural yuppies and elitists will of course crowd out everyone else.
Obama is now offering a “deal” to the Undie-bomber, and is determined to close Gitmo. This is a sign of weakness, and his ability to partner with AQ, the Taliban, Iran, and Pakistan’s ISI is limited. They plan to just take from him rather than ask.
#26, Teresita: That Israel exists as a Jewish state, ruled by Jews, is the ultimate insult to Islam. Jews and Christians are meant to be dhimmis, an underclass allowed to survive to pay taxes to the Islamic Overclass.
Christians and Jews are not allowed to build new churches or synagogues in Islamic countries. And they suffer under all sorts of other discriminatory laws. Why? Because Allah must rule the world and all its living peoples. All must worship Allah in the prescribed manner. Yes, the “People of the Book” can get away with not following the Way of Allah, but that is seen really as a temporary expedient.
If you are not Jewish or Christian, but rather Zoroastrian or Bahai or Hindi, or animist, then you must be killed immediately. (Although Mohammed killed a lot of Jewish and Christian tribes on his way to being Top Dog.)
@john lynch:
Human rights took a big hit in the 1980s when Reagan outsourced anticommunism to anyone who was willing to fight the Soviets. There were nasty civil wars all over the planet where we were arming one side.
Ronald Reagan? How about trying Zbigniew Brzezinski? He’s the person who decided to start a dirty surrogate war in Afghanistan. And how about Joe Wilson? He fought his own secret, illegal war under Ronald Reagan’s nose, illegally running arms to whichever warlord he fancied. He’s widely viewed as a true patriot, although his breaches of the law far exceeded anything the much maligned Oliver North ever did.
Posterity appears to look kindly upon alcoholic, whore mongering Democrat members of Congress with the blood of others on their hands (see also: Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy).
@Teresita:
Nationbuilding is not and never was in the US Charter. That’s the Wilsonian/neo-con dream. All those billions of dollars a month playing whack-a-mullah is better served being left in US taxpayer’s pocket.
Wilson was a neo-con? Who knew? One thing is for certain — those years spent ignoring Afghanistan (1992-2000) certainly paid off on 9/11.
. . . With Iran having one or two Hiroshima firecrackers it wouldn’t even be mutual. There’s something every nuclear power learns after it joins the club: Waving nukes around ain’t anything like deploying aircraft carrier battle groups. Playing with those matches is liable to set your whole country on fire.
That makes sense when you’re dealing with rational actors. When you’re dealing with someone driven by religion, seeking the dual goals of returning the 12th Imam and putting an end to the state of Israel — not so much.
Women used to walk with their head uncovered in Iraq. Everywhere our troops go, we leave them reeling under Sharia Law.
Senator Patty Murray once claimed bin Laden was revered in Afghanistan because he built child day care centers. Presumably to allow Islamic moms to drive to work at the local jiggle joints run by his Taliban buddies.
Why send a whole wing of bombers to take out a Scud factory when you can just blow up the Scud genius in his own car?
Because if you’re a Republican or a Jew, when you “blow up the Scud genius in his own car” it will be denounced worldwide as a “summary execution” or an “assassination” that violated human rights.
———-
We currently have an ahistorical public that eats whatever conventional-wisdom-pablum that is fed to them. Whether it be the dinosaurs David Broder and Larry King or the new voices like Rachael Maddow, as long as so many people rely upon them we will never be able to critically evaluate the present using knowledge from the past.
Because the past has been re-manufactured.
And that’s not a bug — it’s a feature.
John Lynch #17:
“Human rights took a big hit in the 1980s when Reagan outsourced anticommunism to anyone who was willing to fight the Soviets. There were nasty civil wars all over the planet where we were arming one side.”
Oh, what utter BS! The wars were already there! The Soviets were either starting them or taking advantage of existing animosities. You think it would have been nobler to just let the communist side win? It’s only a “Human Rights Problem” if the victim fights back against the thugs? Yeah, of course, that’s it…. If Kitty Genovese had had a gun and shot her attacker then the neighbors would have called the police on her for disturbing the peace and possibly a hate crime on minority.
If it took such a freakin’ “big hit” then how after a decade of those policies we had the greatest advancements in human rights since 1945?
LYMayor #16, Josh #22, Old Shoe #29:
Y’all miss my point. I do not disparage the capability but question the platform. We could have
all the Predator can do with a much higher performance platform that would be far more effective, capable of carrying 50 Hellfires rather than two, capable of being a far more difficult target to enemy air defenses. Each war has a weapon that points toward the future. In Desert Storm it was smart weapons and stealth aircraft. In the WOT it’s a piston engine airplane. Is that due to cost, loiter time (fixable), or lack of foresight?
The first time I had a melanoma tumor removed, the doctor said, “The new method is to wait and see if more tumors develop. The old method was to remove anything vaguely suspicious.” I begged him to harvest everything, that the new method sounded too risky and more like denial to me.
I don’t see the current administration as being willing to have scars, let alone deal with pain, stitches, dressings, fear and doubt, blood tests, or the fact that half the family budget is going to the doctor for the next five months’ payments.
My current cancer, an ocular melanoma on my retina, is inoperable and an even more apt comparison — removing all potential Islamic fanatics from the planet isn’t going to happen, or if it does we might have to go, too. I’ve had shallow, focused radiation treatments (helium ions from a particle accelerator) to try to slow the growth (bomb those caves!), but it’s too close to my brain for safe surgical removal. The thing about melanoma is the cells are sneaky. To remove a tumor successfully you have to cut a wide margin (~2″) of healthy tissue out around the tumor (carpet bombing). If you cut into the tumor itself, the cells will spread and set up shop on any skin-like tissue (the liver…). By then, chemo is usually too little, too late. And it has ruinous side effects.
Every day since 9/11 I have remembered walking DD down the hill to the bus stop, the wind blowing the lines on the sailboats, pelicans fishing, songbirds in the trees, me drilling DD on her times tables and speech therapy. At the stop, one of my friends from when I was a tot said, “My sister just called and said a plane crashed in New York City!” and he loped home to check the news report. I got the kids on the bus, lunch boxes and back packs in order, then walked up the hill wondering what was going on in the world.
We lost some friends in the towers but we were lucky. Thirty-eight of my friends who were supposed to be there that day weren’t — a carpet was being laid in an office building, a child was ill so a mom stayed home, a business meeting ran late so a guy postponed flying back East… Two of DH’s employees in the NYC branch were visiting the towers and helped rescue survivors. One of my friends started sprinting across the plaza, spike heels in her hand, after the first hit and made it to the safety of her apartment (and infant son and nanny) before the collapse.
These memories sift through my mind and I check the news online, the pulse of our cancer patient, and breathe deeply, knowing *I* am ready. Until the rest of the world faces front, the actions taken to preserve and then renew the inherent good of our society will be piecemeal and probably insufficient. How many more “teachable moments” will it take to turn the tide? Will enough of us be vigilant in time? Would Jasper Schuringa have known instantly that he needed to take action if his mind hadn’t been prepared by the horror of 9/11?
whiskey – while a successful attack *might* have helped Obama at some point (I’m not as sure of that as you seem to be) it is now clearly too late for another attack to do anything but harm Obama and the Dems grievously. Think about why: the entire country is now on notice that we have been warned, that there may be as many as 100 Yemenis training for attacks against us. In the minds of everyone, not just people who follow politics closely, Obama has now been publicly warned and it his is clear job to stop that next attack from happening. If he doesn’t stop it from happening he will be seen as a complete failure and there will be *nothing* he can say or do to change that.
Which brings up the question – do they take this seriously enough yet to realize how desperately they need to scramble to stop the next attack? Or are they just going to blunder along, thinking everything is okay and allow it to happen anyways?
Since I have thought that Obama is an absolute idiot who has always been hopelessly out of his depth and who has surrounded himself with political hacks who are all intensely stupid people in their own rights, I think you can tell where I come down on this question.
Btw, any attempt to “suspend the constitution” and my bet is that Obama would go out like Ceacescu did. The US Army has never mutinied before, but I think that would do it.
Lincoln suspended part of the Constitution. Obama clearly MUST suspend elections and Habeaus Corpus to keep power.
The Media, Yuppies, ACORN, SEIU, Blacks, Hispanics, and Feminists/Women will all support Obama declaring some sort of Martial Law. So will top Pentagon brass who know where their bread is buttered. Regional commanders and governors and so on are another thing. But culturally, Obama is not American, and relies on Chavez and Castro as models. Certainly most of the media (like 99.999999% of it) would welcome an Obama martial law regime after a successful attack. Suppressing “Whiteness” and Christianity and Judaism and anything else that offends Muslims (even MORE PC and Multiculturalism and Diversity) to offer defacto surrender.
Don’t kid yourself: surrender to Sharia Lite and an abusive Nanny-PC state will be VERY popular, all non-Whites, Feminsts/women, and SWPL “winners” in such an uber-caste system of pre-defined virtuous people can see their permanent, hereditary advantage. That is the whole purpose of the PC State, i.e. never let a good crisis go to waste to transform the nation.
The problem for Obama is that the losers (Whites, basically, particularly ordinary White men) can’t just move to the suburbs. There is no where else to go. So there will be a fight, and as part of that fight cultural and social transformation.
Just not the way Obama wants.
Basically the Reconquista West. Which after all succeeded where Byzantium did failed. Given human nature, a Reconquista is the only model that works. Humanism fails spectacularly when faced by tribal forces like Islam. Only counter-tribalism, ethnic identity works.
This is clearly where the West is headed.
RWE wrote: “We could have all the Predator can do with a much higher performance platform that would be far more effective, capable of carrying 50 Hellfires rather than two, capable of being a far more difficult target to enemy air defenses.”
You do know about the MQ-9 Reaper, right? Although it’s not quite as advanced as the goals you put forward it is still a significant step in that direction. Obviously improvements will continue to be made – but remember that designers are always going to be tempted to bloat the platform, a flaw that was the bane of many a past project. (F-111 being a prime example) It’s important to keep any remote platform relatively small and cheap, thus preserving it’s expendable nature. The MQ-9 appears to me to be a very good balance of the competing goals of expendability and capability.
“As of 2009[update] the U.S. Air Force’s fleet stands at 195 Predators and 28 Reapers.”
“The MQ-9 has a 950-shaft-horsepower (712 kW) turboprop engine, far more powerful than the Predator’s 115 hp (86 kW) piston engine. The increase in power allows the Reaper to carry 15 times more ordnance and cruise at three times the speed of the MQ-1″
Sylvia — Thank you for your honest clarity, thank you for the diamond.
Part of conflict is breaking the will of your opponent, and while taking out half a dozen jihadis by flying a Hellfire through a 3rd story window is efficient, it doesn’t send quite the same message to the surrounding populace as having blocks at a time turned to gravel under a cloud of bombers that darkens the sky.
Sylvia,
I hope you make it. Just recently I’ve had a few close friends get cancer. One in remission the other, incurable but slow-growing. The one in remission had a recurrence and is in remission again. It gets so you don’t want to think about it because thinking about it doesn’t do any good.
But people keep going back over the past. What if I did this. Or did that. Maybe there was nothing that could have been done differently anyhow. Just the way things are.
But most people want things given to them straight. What’s the story doc? Though often you discover the doctors don’t have a clue. Or maybe just some statistical table. Your fate as an individual is over the short term, unknown.
I hope the President is giving it to the world straight. “Some isolated extremist”, “don’t jump to conclusions”. Hell it ain’t nothing but a flesh wound. It’s not a flesh wound. But it’s not fatal yet. And maybe the best way to make sure it doesn’t grow into something incurable is to give its due early.
Some years ago I wrote an essay called the 3 Conjectures. Basically it argued that if the West didn’t cure things when they were curable, then they would leave it until things got really bad, like a man with severe diabetes. Then you start lopping off limbs, a leg here, a leg there. And the question I asked was what in the world was so humane about letting things get really bad if it got you to the point when you did unthinkable things, even to yourself, just to stay alive?
This is my real fear about the War on Terror. All this human rights stuff for the bad guys may wind up costing everyone their rights, because we’ve abolished the distinction between the combatant and the regular criminal. All this softly-softly stuff may lead to a spasm of combat down the track if it only lets things get worse.
I wrote a parable once: on the day the Western world is driven to desperation and vaporizes some part of the Muslim world in exchange for the death of the Western city, an attorney will contact CBS News. It will be a video from Osama Bin Laden with this message.
wretchard, excellent channeling of bin Laden there.
with one breath, they accuse us of monsterous acts like Hiroshima, with the next breath they pretend we aren’t eager to do it again. I agree with the consensus here, the time will come when we will get to light one off, or two, or fifty. you might start drafting our response, see just who you’d want to channel to inspire that.
or maybe “bring it on” already covers it?
–
RWE, I see there are already a couple of responses about capabilities we already (publicly) have and additional ones already under development, publicly and secretly, and especially the effectiveness of PGM. Remember, the Predator was observation-only until some bright boys hooked up the Hellfires just a year or so ago. The reason for the modest technology is that the whole thing was still proof of concept, fighting a dozen technical and organizational battles before ever engaging the enemy. And between the current Predator and Reaper, it’s more than sufficient against the cave-dwelling scum who are fighting us.
When I argue that maybe a B-17 would be preferable, it’s because I have various theoretical reasons *against* using PGM, and in favor of more “collateral” damage. Regarding effectiveness against selected targets only, take the PGM every time.
Apparently the Hellfires are a fine little package, I hope somewhere their designers are getting some props.
Sylvia, we wish you well. What a beautiful parable you just wrote.
Wretchard, why wouldn’t this Western world simply coo like the momma grizzly bear “You threatened my cubs, God gave me claws, such is the way of this world.”
God love us all.
I’m a newbie here the two minute countdown caught me totally off-guard. I thought I had the HTML correct but things go inexplicably wrong on the intertubes all of the time. Here is what I tried to say, HTML willing:
. . . With Iran having one or two Hiroshima firecrackers it wouldn’t even be mutual. There’s something every nuclear power learns after it joins the club: Waving nukes around ain’t anything like deploying aircraft carrier battle groups. Playing with those matches is liable to set your whole country on fire.
That makes sense when you’re dealing with rational actors. When you’re dealing with someone driven by religion, seeking the dual goals of returning the 12th Imam and putting an end to the state of Israel — not so much.
Women used to walk with their head uncovered in Iraq. Everywhere our troops go, we leave them reeling under Sharia Law.
Senator Patty Murray once claimed bin Laden was revered in Afghanistan because he built child day care centers. Presumably to allow Islamic moms to drive to work at the local jiggle joints run by his Taliban buddies.
———
Whatever.
The people of Iran can’t change anything while sacrificing their lives in mass protests. Can anyone expect better results in an Afghanistan endeavor led by such a feckless American president?
Wretchard — Thank you too. I am grateful to have a place to suss ideas, and to read astounding posts like Sylvia’s, or your Three Conjectures, or the Parable of Islam. I am agnostic when it comes to God, but I know evil and its opposite when I see it. And UBL and their brand of Islam convince me that Satan is real.
We are all worried about what will come of all this. Many or all of us may not live long enough to see how it ends. Such is the way of existence. But worries that our hand will be forced to do (as yet) unthinkable things says a lot about who we are and how much we risk losing in our choices. I often argue with those who say we are like our enemy because we fight him, or will become our enemy because of what we will do to destroy him. We not forget who we are, or that we have done heinous things to our enemies before and did not lose our souls. There is a necessary progression the thing — first we come to know the enemy’s true scope and nature, then we come to know ourselves, what must be done. We are not there yet.
Re: Hellfire missiles ruining your day.
You mean like this? – http://img.youtube.com/vi/kI0lBkS4DMU/0.jpg
L’Amérique n’a pas besoin de 130.000 soldats pour chasser 100 combattants d’Al-Qaïda. Et comme le note Paul Pillar, du Bureau National des Renseignements pour le Moyen-Orient entre 2000 et 2005, les préparations les plus importantes pour les attentats du 11 Septembre 2001 « n’ont pas eu lieu dans des camps d’entraînement en Afghanistan, mais plutôt dans des appartements en Allemagne, des chambres d’hôtel en Espagne et des écoles de pilotage aux Etats-Unis
America does not need 130,000 soldiers to hunt 100 fighters of Al Qaeda. And as noted by Paul Pillar, the National Intelligence Bureau for the Middle East between 2000 and 2005, the most important preparations for the attacks of September 11, 2001 “did not occur in training camps in Afghanistan, but in apartments in Germany, hotel accommodation in Spain and flight schools in the United States
Malou Innocent Cato institute
got the link in french, apparently it’s a video in english on Cato Institute, the whole article is interesting
http://www.unmondelibre.org/Innocent_Afghanistan_surge_040110
So might be some truth there !
PS) My best wishes to sylvia
RWE: Y’all miss my point… I do not disparage the capability but question the platform…In the WOT it’s a piston engine airplane.
Ah – I see – you don’t like the current unmanned platforms. DOD’s cost structures will drive the move towards more efficient unmanned vehicles; the drone’s emergent capabilities will pull Dod in that direction, as will the distinct lack of humans in the aircraft. What powers the drone is immaterial, as long as it works and is cheap. The F-35 prob will be the last manned fighter, as someone else said above.
We don’t need a gold-plated drone capable of carrying 50 hellfires etc, but we do need 25 drones that can carry 2 hellfires each, are relatively expendable, and can cover the extended battelfield (with weapons and cameras). It’s an old argument. Don’t worry – we’ll inevitably go for the gold-plated 50 missile-carrying drone (sarc/off).
#35 Sylvia. Superlative post, and very thought-provoking. Best heart-felt wishes for a full recovery.
I missed the attack on the Pentagon because I’d extended my leave one day. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t think about that day and those we lost.
#42 Wretchard – As for America’s capabilities…the terrorists will eventually awaken us. The awakening will be costly, probably more than we can now imagine.
We are quite capable of ferociously violent acts in defense of our freedom; any reading of American history will underscore my words.
God help them, for we surely will not. I am quite certain they will be hunted to the ends of the earth and beyond. We no longer need to destroy cities when it is not necessary.
24 – mainman
When the masses that have been anesthetized by secular-humanism awake and realize the debt they owe to our Judeo-Christian heritage, then we’ll all have more of a fighting chance.
There’s an element of truth to that, but the problem runs deeper. Most of what is expounded by Christians and Jews – and has been expounded for a very long time – is seen by “secular-humanists” as at best naive nonsense, and at worst downright lies. So they simply reject it without question.
But behind the “naive nonsense” and “downright lies” there is something that can’t easily be explained if it can be explained at all. All it takes to begin to understand what this something is, is simple curiosity. It begins with curiosity on the part of individuals… The wish to understand.
Unfortunately the secular-humanist paradigm has always been that of “show me”. In other words, they want (external) proof that this “something” really exists. Absent such proof, they simply shrug everything off; they appear to have no incentive to search for themselves. And they are the only ones who can begin the search; nobody can do it for them. I’ve often marveled at the “ability” of highly intelligent human beings to totally miss this simple point.
Sylvia #35: thank you. I am pulling for you.
I believe you, Wretchard: by ignoring the problem, we are making a measured response impossible.
And Obama is the kind of person who will nuke a country. With him, it is either unicorns and rainbows, or a tantrum. And when you are the President of the USA, boy what a tantrum you can have!
The trouble with the Predators etc right now seems to be that they are being over-used for “assassination” and under-used for their primary role of recon/intelligence.
Remember that the goal is to reduce enemy capabilities and render them harmless. So when you can locate some Al Qaeda/Taliban type that is the brains of their operations in one locality or the other, then knocking him off moves you towards your goal.
However, just killing some of their muscle/enforcers who can be easily replaced
has minimal benefits. And while the victims of the enforcers are certainly likely to cheer the Predators on, a lack of permanent relief will take its toll sooner or later.
Meanwhile, not conducting proper survelliance of our AOs can and seemingly has, allowed enemy forces to mass for a major attack and do so undetected. As has sending all information to Langley instead of to the Corporals and Sergeants who should be first recipients.
In short, it looks like over-emphasis in one area has directed too much ordinance at low-value targets and left more critical enemy capabilities unmolested.
This is similar to having snipers shoot enemy staff and support officers because they are of field grade and ignore the junior officers
who are directing enemy artillery. Cannot stop incoming mail that way.
Wretchard et al, thank you for your good wishes. I’m at the point where I feel as if I did make it because I am here today, the pain isn’t too bad, I’m beginning to be able to see again in a useful way, and I’m contributing more to society that I’m taking. I will never assume there will be a tomorrow — there is no remission — but I’m okay with that. It is actually a decent existence to live each day knowing I cannot leave a mistake as is, that I must make sure my dear family knows how I love them, that falling asleep in my husband’s arms truly is as wonderful as it feels. I am blessed. It isn’t borrowed time; it’s a gift. The fear simply faded away and was replaced with joy.
W/42. I think our definition of “unthinkable things” will shift into darker realms, but there will be a corresponding shift in the way Western society interprets the paradigm of ethical/moral behavior. As Subotai wrote (White Powder #45), an older person is more likely to give no quarter. I’m not old, but I’m infirm and due to go on a death panel’s list, so my “unthinkable” is a very small subset of other women in my age group, especially those living near Whiskey. As more of the populace realizes that we are rapidly losing the choice, where personal safety becomes a goal instead of an assumption, I think we’ll see a form of societal fatigue akin to aging (Batman can certainly frame this better). Not that we’ll become jaded — those with less depth might — but that, like lights turning on at dusk, more people will grieve the loss of innocence and then become angry enough to take action, to give no quarter. The timing will be tricky and quite possibly too late. Cross your fingers.
Priorities can be terrifyingly flexible, and I cannot fathom those of an Islamic fanatic — too foreign a mind for me to comprehend. The Christian/Jewish absolute of not taking a life gratuitously will stand as a concept, but in practice? When push comes to shove? Many of us have lived in places where the societal norm was startlingly different from the more “civilized” places we now live, from relatively small things like a guy raping his sister to the larger act of killing her for her ration of food. I had read books containing such scenes, but I thought it was someone’s sick fantasy until confronted with the stark reality of a community where the most extreme reaction was that rape was a bit tacky (“Geez, man, you could have paid her…”).
Perhaps it is my own vanity of seeing the acts as justified, but I know that I have already done things that I’d have thought might land me in the guilt-ridden abyss of W’s parable, yet my soul is fine. Sure, I’m haunted by the past, but truth and beauty are even more brilliant now that I’ve experienced the flipside. Perhaps it is the direction of the vectors. Virtuous necessity? In my mind’s eye I’m seeing Venn diagrams and flowcharts and logic structures populated by peoples’ individual beliefs, where they’d draw the line, and how far necessity can shift it in one direction or another. At least some of the Crusaders were thought to be true believers. Is it a parallel to the speeches W wrote about — fighting for an ideal (freedom) trumps fighting for personal gain (all those virgins!)?
I hope we never find out.
RWE: AS I read the Afghan SITREP, I do not see a lot of need to put a lot of steel on target
from the air. It does not look like that Taliban has the level of firepower/fortifications that we encountered in VN. For close support, some suppressive fire
should suffice. (I stand ever ready to be corrected in this score). So 30/50 caliber
fire might be all that is needed. Okay, throw in 20MM and 2.35 rockets just to be on the safe side. The critical need is loiter time and spotting the miscreants.
Might want a turboprop version of the A1 Skyraider. It could carry a good 12 hours of fuel and simply patrol unless and until
a call came in. In the meantime, the state-of-the-art cameras on board would be televising all sightings directly to the ground commanders.
Oh and don’t forget the IMPORTANT piece of equipment. The relief tube. Utilize it in the near vicinity of low-value towelheads.
Off topic but I am curious: Did you ever use something called the Phillips Torch as a navigation aid?
Heathermc wrote @32: “Christians and Jews are not allowed to build new churches or synagogues in Islamic countries.”
Really? There is a rather attractive new Catholic Cathedral in downtown Kuwait City.
I have known devout Muslims who were wonderful people — I would have trusted them with my life. And many more not so devout Muslims who observe the mores of their culture at home, and enjoy a night out in a western city when the opportunity presents.
The unfortunate consequence of the western failure to name names is that we will end up unable to distinguish between those fine people and the real enemies. We will end up like Admiral Halsey with his constant refrain — Kill Japs! Kill Japs!
Sylvia, your posts are inspirational.
I want to say more, but do not know how. God Bless You,
America does not need 130,000 soldiers to hunt 100 fighters of Al Qaeda. And as noted by Paul Pillar, the National Intelligence Bureau for the Middle East between 2000 and 2005, the most important preparations for the attacks of September 11, 2001 “did not occur in training camps in Afghanistan, but in apartments in Germany, hotel accommodation in Spain and flight schools in the United States
The 130,000 soldiers are there to give the population some security, because it is the population that will provide the intelligence to find the 100 members of al-Qaeda or however many they may be.
The hard part of counterinsurgency isn’t killing the insurgents. It’s keeping the population safe; you are fighting for hearts and minds. That will never be yours for as long as the population fears the enemy. Once the population stops fearing the enemy, you get “awakenings”.
Counterterror is exactly that: counter terror. As to the Islamists who are in Europe the problem is the same but in a different context. The Muslims of Europe are in the best position to give up the renegades among them. The Europeans will never let “130,000 troops” or any Americans operate in Europe. That’s their intelligence problem; and it’s failures are their intel failures.
Yet the challenge is the same in Europe as in Iraq or Afghanistan. How do you make a British muslim comfortable with the idea of turning in his own? By convincing him he has a higher duty than blind loyalty to his co-religionist. That higher duty may come from a deeper understanding of Islam, or from an idea that springs from British culture itself. But most of all, it must come with the certainty that if he sides with Britain, then Britain will — and I mean will — keep him safe. Because if he does turn in a militant he’ll face ostracism or worse. The task of the British state is to make choosing between Brittania and Osama bin Laden an easy choice. And that’s hard. Just as the IRA sanctioned Irishmen who ratted them out, so do Muslims in Europe or Australia or America fear the Jihad. The Jihadis know where they live. The IRA inflicted huge casualties on the British security forces, including undercover people whose names we will never fully know.
So the commentator who implied that using 130,000 in Afghanistan was stupid was missing the point in a very fundamental way. You can’t operate on the ground without the cooperation of the people. You’ll never have their cooperation if they are owned by the enemy. You’ll never wean them from the enemy unless you can free them of fear.
Al-Qaeda knows this. That’s why in in Denmark their first priority is always to punish those who would oppose them (like the cartoonist) in a very public way. Fighting terrorism is not a matter of cleverness that the Americans lack. The French, who got booted out of Algeria, had an abundance of cleverness. They just never had the horses to tip the balance against the FLN. We know how that turned out. Quantity has a quality all of its own.
But as to right and wrong, sadly, the first impulse of the Left is always to assume that the jihadis are doing the intelligent and rebellious thing, while the counterterrorists are mere fascist gendarmes. Actually, it’s the reverse. Each terrorist attack is an Oradour, a Lidice.
That’s why the left, in sympathizing with terror, is really revealing not only its ignorance, but its inclinations.
The Predator was developed as a observation platform for low threat environments. It is not really stealthy. The CIA deployed them with missiles and after their success in Afghanistan in 2001 the CSAF directed the USAF to quit screwing around and do the same thing.
The Hellfire missile was developed to kill tanks from helicopters using nap-of-the-earth flying techniques. Being launched from high altitude drones against relatively soft targets was outside its nominal envelope, and it is surprising it worked so well. They subsequently developed versions with longer burn rocket engines that were more suitable for Predators.
So what we have is very much an improvisation, like the AC-47. Whether it is the best thing for the job, I do not know and I suspect that no one knows. Whether a larger more capable UAV – or manned aircraft – with 50 Hellfires is a more useful and cost effective answer I don’t know. And once again, I suspect that no one knows.
After 25 years in the USAF, most of it in the space business, it is interesting for me to see the Air Force’s progression on UAVs. It consistently has been very difficult for the USAF to wrap its head around unmanned “stuff.” The explanations we tried to deliver at the Pentagon were not the stuff of legend but more on the order of Monty Python skits. Ironically, I think it was space capabilities that finally led the Air Force to realize that UAVs could be useful, although how much that was the gradual sinking in of the idea of unmanned stuff flying around successfully and how much it was due to actual GPS and Satcom capabilities I do not know.
As far as it being easier to train UAV pilots than those for manned aircraft, the reality is there is no reason to have “pilots” at all. The airplanes can fly and land themselves just fine and the Army has taken that approach to reduce losses. The Air Force answer to the problem was to send more pilots to the forward operating bases to handle the landing phase.
And as for the F-111, the problems with that program was not due to Air Force gold plating but rather McNamera’s insistence that two widely different USN and USAF missions be combined into one aircraft. This led to a host of difficulties. I spent a lot of time working to fix that airplane and we got it fixed in time for it to shine quite well in Desert Storm.
Finally, let me leave y’all with a quote from the Deputy National Security Advisor from an appearance on Fox News today. Asked if it was a good idea to clean out GITMO based on recent experiences with prisoners sent back to places like Yemen he replied “Gitmo has to be closed down because its existence is a propaganda victory for Al Queda.” Now does anybody really believe that crap? Has Al Queda even ever said they give a rat’s rump about Gitmo? The place was a propaganda tool for Obama’s party and no one else, and that is why they find themselves in a position to have to close it.
Wretchard, I don’t think people will feel guilty or care. Why would they — it was the elite who demanded PC before say, Muslim profiling.
Look at Byzantium and the Reconquista. Byzantium held out, for a long time because it was big and had superior technology. But still, Byzantium lost Egypt, and Syria, and Iraq. Emergency measures and Greek fire was needed to save Constantinople itself, and then just barely. By Manzikert it was all over and Byzantium merely delayed their defeat, as priests and nobles squabbled over theological disputes instead of the Muslim onslaught. Without the intervention of the Mongols destroying the Arab and Turkish world for a while, Byzantium would have fallen by 1220 or so.
By contrast, the Visigoth kingdoms in Spain were quickly overrun. Weak and divided, themselves supplanting the barely functional Roman rule in Iberia which had stood for 700 years and then been wiped completely off the face of the earth, Spain was completely in Muslim hands in a mere generation, at around the same time Constantinople was barely saved from a Muslim conquering fleet.
The Muslims, themselves disorganized, faction-ridden, and rivalrous, nevertheless NEARLY conquered Byzantium right away and then steadily conquered more and more territory from them. Byzantium never was able to reconquer lands lost to Islam.
By contrast, the weak Visigoth kingdoms were slowly replaced by the Reconquista by the idea of a Spanish Nation under various Principalities that WON, steadily, against a Muslim regime that had on call nearly limitless manpower, far more wealth, and better technology as well as superbly mobile horseman of no equal.
How? How did a vastly outclassed in wealth, manpower, and unity, Reconquista succeed where Byzantium so spectacularly failed?
Because the idea of a nation-state, with unity found by ethnicity and religion is a far stronger glue than one of nobility, language, and religion only. Spaniards fought and died to expel Muslims from Spain because they WERE Spaniards, united by blood, ethnicity. This meant that supreme sacrifices could and would be made. Nobility and priests sublimated their struggles for supremacy and advantage because they saw themselves as Spaniards FIRST united in ethnicity not a noble or priest first as in Byzantium.
Osama could send the letter and the (surviving non-Muslim) part of the West would simply shrug like the Grand Inquisitor. Of course they will be Swiss, or Danes, or Poles, or Frenchmen (but probably not British or Americans, who resemble Byzantium). And nations have no qualms about killing aggressive, threatening foreigners to survive. They do so happily knowing the alternative is death and subjugation themselves.
Indeed, contrary to “Spengler” the singular aspect of Christianity is its total failure. Failure to provide a model for civilization, for meaning, for any type of resistance to Islamization. It degenerates quickly into post-Christianity “Green” or other nonsense, or arguments about Angels dancing on heads of pins while Muslims knock down the city Walls, or moralizing about profiling or human rights violations.
The only glue that is proven by history and evolutionary process is that of extended ethno-states united in race and traditions. A Spaniard is one who looks like your relatives, is a Catholic, and therefore can be trusted, unlike Muslims or Jews or Protestants, goes the thinking of the contemporaries of Isabella and Ferdinand. England, France, and the Netherlands merely taking that ethno-state further and to more complete high-trust networks with greater mobilization of human resources.
Yes, this necessarily means that there is no place for Third World exiles in the West. Sadly, the ethno-state is the only way to keep a society going under serious challenge by enemies. Humans evolved to trust those who look like relatives, act like relatives, hold the same traditions, and values. Cross-racial trust and cross-cultural trust is a fantasy, one that requires a Tito or Stalin or Ghenghis Khan or Caliph to work as long as the Great Man kills enough dissenters.
Jesus will only matter because that is what people of Switzerland, or Italy, or France, or Poland, traditionally worship, as it was for the Reconquista.
But clearly, the Byzantium model is a dead end.
Sylvia,
This is not the type of web site were a man rides in on a white horse to sweep a lady off her feet.
Consider yourself virtually swept. If we could battle dragons for you we would.
Josh,
You are correct that it possible to want more collateral damage. The first thing to do is to define the goal. If your goal is to induce a warm feeling in hearts and minds then you build a well and send the doctor around and share meals with the locals. If it is to kinetically effect a discrete object like a man in a car in a remote location then nothing works as well as the precision Hellfire delivered by the loitering Predator. If the purpose is to induce shock and awe then something less surgical may be appropriate. If what we want is for some people, arabs or muslims or observing russians or chinese etc, to behave in desired ways then we should determine if destroying any objects or communities will advance that goal and save lives in the future. If an analysis can be made that it will then we should be prepared to do so. If not then we should save the money. Our decisions should not be based on what a Special Rapperateur in The Hague will have to say after the fact.
Consider the purposes of the strategic bombing campaigns in WW-II. They were not designed to destroy individual leaders like Goering or Tojo. On rare occasions an individual like Yamamoto was targeted in the same way that a ball bearing plant may have been. On balance the purpose of the multi-Billion dollar air campaigns, culminating in the atomic bombs, were to induce the civilian population to stop supporting their armed forces and to induce the enemy armed forces to abandon the battle. Both are political goals with the physical destruction of the enemy’s military or civilian assets being only a means to the goal. Strategic combat did get Japan to surrender before an American invasion and the Germans by the Spring of 1945 were largely moving West to surrender. In both cases the utility of the bombing has been disputed. In the German case the advance of the Red Army probably had a greater impact on morale then the fire bombing of Hamburg or Dresden.
It concerns me that strangers to this site may read our comments and think that they can use them to defame us all as sadistic reactionaries eager to see cinematic violence. Those who bother to follow the conversations here will quickly learn that most here have experience in the military or in positions of responsibility or dealing as in medicine with issues of life and death that we can bring to delicate subjects. The hard part is accepting that violence is simply a tool and that while it is inappropriate in many indeed most situations, although it is always present as a potential in the background of any human interaction, there are times when it does solve problems. In those specific situations getting both the timing and the size of force correct is crucial. To little or to late can lead to far more disruption, meaning increased violence poverty hatred and death, over a far greater period of time. To much violence used either to early or beyond what is needed to achieve a goal will both waste resources and also distort future relations with all survivors, including your own. Unfortunately after several thousands of years of serious study by the best minds that humanity can produce we still have found no easy way to predetermine the answers to the questions “How much?” and “When?”
To be blogged under the title “Weighing the World.”
wretchard,
Could my #100 on the last thread get released from moderation?
48
I didn’t translate the whole article but read enough I think to get the gist of it.
Like this:“Which is the real strategic objective to remain in Afghanistan? And the political ones are they honest when they say that this is for the people of the Afghanistan or by necessitated to overcome Al-qaeda? “
The real strategic objective to anyone with half a brain is to destroy the enemies of America where ever they are and no matter what they name themselves. If they worship Allah it is very likely that they are our enemy and if they resist we will and must destroy them.
Now, right now only about 10 percent of Americans understand this. They understand that we can not allow our enemies a place, a time or the means to kill our families or bring destruction to our shores.
What it will take to awaken the other 90 percent remains unclear because 9/11 didn’t awaken more than half of our Republic, and because of Bush’s inept words then, they promply went back to the mall…and forgot what they had found out on that faithful day.
They should have figured it out from all the previous attacks on Americans on foreign soil. But since it was there and not here, it never even registered for almost every American.
Americans are their own worse enemy most times. They are so out to lunch or so busy making their little slice of American Pie or so drugged or drunk or so tied up in watching the latest garbage on cable that they hardly know what happens next door or down the street.
We here on the internet get a distorted view of Americans and America. We KNOW what is going on, WE READ hours a day or night. WE DISCUSS and CUSS everything that appears on this magic tube of the net.
Well, guess what Internet guys and girls. The majority of Americans don’t use the internet for anything more than porn, recipies, email and Facebook.
They don’t give a crap about politics, or the other things that start with P. Wars and terrorism and things that go boom are not even a second thought with most of them. Unless they have a relitive in the military.
Take all that and chew on it a minute.
While I am not immune to the fact that our government is in terrible shape now with idiots in charge and that this Republic is almost broke and owing one of our future enemies trillions upon trillions, even I have a hard time sometimes keeping myself on track to determine what I must do with all this information I have and how I can use it to protect my family. Which is very large in total.
OK, here is the serious part of me talking. Really serious. If it takes nuking two billion people to protect my family, my state and my republic.
I will vote for that. Not willingly or ignorantly but with great regret. But never the less I vote yes. Now for any other violence against our enemies that is less than a nuke, well get it on and pass the ammo.
Sometimes I despair because 9 out of 10 people I talk to have no idea what is going on and if you try and tell them they just zone out or dispute or just will not believe me.
So until thousands upon thousands of Americans die over a fairly long time don’t look for a consensus of Americans that will be ready to really take the fight to our enemies.
Sadly I will be long gone by then but I spend every chance I get making sure as much as I can that my family will have the tools and information and spirit to survive.
I suggest that the rest of you do the same.
Papa Ray
Sylvia, your post at #35 was beautiful.
Three friends of mine have had non-localized melanoma. One is a long-term survivor lucky enough to have had the lesion excised with clean margins. Another succumbed to melanoma ten years ago. An even closer friend is just about to enter his seventh year of stage 4. All have had more courage and dignity than I can describe.
I have always encouraged my close friend with stage 4 that he was going to be a survivor and thus far he has had that grace. I pray for the same for you. Thank you for your candid and heartfelt account. God bless.
What are the war aims of al-Qaeda?
They claim to fight to establish a universal global caliphate run by themselves.
Yet, I am not so sure that is what they truly want. If al-Qaeda had two options of either (1) creating the caliphate of their dreams by using peaceful means or (2) failing to create the caliphate of their dreams but succeeding in plunging the world into a state of perpetual warfare where they would live their lives as a saga of heroic struggle, which do you think our enemies would choose? I think the answer is obviously the latter option. Our enemies would rather play a real life version of Dungeons & Dragons than even win.
By now, suicide bombing isn’t merely a tactic of the Islamist. It is his identity. Suicide bombing is who our enemy has become, to the point of obliterating all other features of his own personality. Al-Qaeda’s idolatry of the suicide bomber has become so intense that it can legitimately be regarded as a form of polytheism. Although al-Qaeda claims to promote suicide bombing in the name of “Allah”, it’s really the other way around, to the point of perverting the culture of Islam into a welter of suicide bomber iconography.
Al-Qaeda proclaims this cult as “jihad”. It proclaims its atrocities of “dawa”, or proselytizing, yet its actions have effectively turned the image of Islam into that of a cartoon villain. I suggest that al-Qaeda, far from being an expression of Muslim faith, is actually an expression of Islamic agnosticism. Far from being an expression of piety, perhaps al-Qaeda is an attempt by tentative and uncertain agnostics to reassure one another that their deity does indeed exist in the flesh of the suicide bomber. Sometimes a man will fight not out of a belief in his cause, but rather to prove to himself that his cause is real.
Yet, more than this, al-Qaeda also serves another purpose. It gratifies the sadist who glories in torturing and murdering innocent people. Why? To such a man, gratuitous viciousness is fun. It also gives him a sense of purpose – “I kill, therefore I am.”
A nutcase who yells a bunch of weird ravings is just a nutcase. A nutcase who yells a bunch of weird ravings and also kills people is not just a nutcase, but also a terrorist. All too often, outsiders look at the lectures of al-Qaeda to discover why it’s fighting. Yet, in the case of Ayman al-Zaawhiri, murder is the only means he has to force other people to listen his weird ravings at all; were it not for his campaign of mass murder, his idiocy would be ignored.
We must find a way to laugh our enemies. We are not required to respect them no matter how many people they kill. They may be technically capable men, but they fight so future generations will fight in perpetuity. In contrast, we have something to fight for. Although the ideal of the “multiversity” has done much damage to our culture, we can and will rebuild. We have the capability of creating civilization. Al-Qaeda does not. Al-Qaeda is just another death cult.
Race means far less than culture. Muslim and Christian Filipinos are racially indistinguishable. So too, in all probability, are Catholic and Protestant Irishmen.
What is truly fatal is a breakdown in culture. Race is a proxy for that breakdown because it is a visible outward sign of culture. But when, as is happening in some parts of the UK, you have white ghettos with high rates of illegtimacy, unemployment, welfare dependence, etc, then being “white” loses its meaning.
We have other shorthands now. Elite high schools in Australia have a huge percentage of Chinese and Indians in them all dead serious and ready to work around the clock. You know you’re in trouble when you wind up in a class where everyone is named Kumar or Wang. But it’s nothing to do with race. It’s more to do with the fact that Kumar and Wang come from homes where there’s a mom and a dad and home life and some attachment to what Macaulay would have assumed as a Briton’s birthright: the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods.
The West has scattered the ashes of its fathers and torched the temples of his gods. In its place has come the shopping mall and the public house. And it doesn’t work. The real poison pill was the secular Left. What was on offer? A heaven on earth?
Well the West can have it, but only at the price of freedom and independence. That’s the kicker. That’s the fine print. You can be the Eloi if you don’t mind being eaten by the Morlocks. Nothing comes for free. But then Macaulay would have known that too. We have forgotten there’s no complimentary lunch.
Most of our problems are obvious. Why did we think that putting perverts in charge of safe schools, left wing activists in charge of security, welfare advocates in charge of industry would work? How did it become possible to believe that buying carbon credits, securitizing worthless mortgages, borrowing one’s way out of debt was a good strategy?
The tragic thing about many of the 21st century’s biggest dilemmas is that they are self-made conundrums. We’ve tied ourselves in knots. Lied to ourselves until we don’t recognize the truth any more. The system worked. Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s just a flesh wound. Turned vice into virtue and denied the existence of virtue into the bargain. The really tragic thing about this story is that, viewed from another vantage, it is really a comedy.
That’s why we have evil clowns for politicians. They are malevolent but ludicrous, as have parts of the culture become.
LOTM @ 62: What I want out of our military is effectiveness, and I fear we have been biased waaaay on the side of political correctness.
Regarding PGM versus less precision, I will settle for a compromise: PGM with big warheads, makes certain the target is hit, plus anything within a hundred yards or so. The lesson we need to teach is that you dare not have one in your neighborhood, that you, a neutral, are better off shooting anything al Qaeda and hauling it away, than allowing it any leeway at all.
Until and unless we do that, we lose.
That is, the war will continue, we will not have touched its sources. And we will get tired of it before they do.
And in cases like Fallujah, that may have called for carpet bombing.
If we had followed these rules, the Iraq war might have been settled by 2007 and most of the troops, or all of them, brought home, with fewer total casualities on both sides.
Afghanistan is a tougher nut, but the same kind of rules apply.
Now, this does not preclude our also building the well, electric plant, etc. We should probably do a lot of that nation building stuff, too. Totally different conversation.
Wretchward
“The 130,000 soldiers are there to give the population some security”
I know, that is what our soldiers say too
“You can’t operate on the ground without the cooperation of the people. You’ll never have their cooperation if they are owned by the enemy. You’ll never wean them from the enemy unless you can free them of fear.”
but if the population hates you ? it doesn’t seem from my readings, that they globally don’t appreciate us there, so it will be difficult to get some good informations, they are muslims first !
<i<Fighting terrorism is not a matter of cleverness that the Americans lack.
uh did I say so ?
The French, who got booted out of Algeria, had an abundance of cleverness. They just never had the horses to tip the balance against the FLN. We know how that turned out. Quantity has a quality all of its own.
Nope
Benjamen Stora a true historian and an expert of this war doesn’t say anything like that,
Independence of Algeria was already in De Gaulle agenda when a kind of a putch from the french generals in Algeria brought him to power in 1958.
His first discouse was ponctuated with “l’algérie franaise”, he reverse it later for independence, which is seen as his political cleverness for historians and “viciousness” for the pieds noirs.
Hardly arrived at Elysees palace it would have been unwise for him to claim that he envisionned the independance of Algeria directly, above all, in front of the people that just brought him there.
Thus he took his time, in visiting each military casern in Algeria, in visiting the diverse opinions associations there, and finally uncovered his decision for the independance, from where comes the pieds noirs ressentment against de Gaulle
Though he had to prepear the Pieds Noirs and the french population. Until then the rebels were harshly fought, in the meanwhile negotiations were opened in Evian with the FLN leaders on the conditions to let Algeria accesses to its independence, among them, how the french population and the harquis would be treated after the independence. While de Gaulle was preapring a referrendum, where 70 % of the French nationals and Algerians pronounced themselves for Independence.
In the Evian agreements, not the whole population of pieds noirs was expected to leave Algeria, according the the insurances that the french negociators had from their algerian counterpart.
But it wasn’t counting with the spirit of revenge from the FLN fighters, what was set as a normally a pacifical independence, became ” the suitcase or the coffin”.
the pieds noirs chose the suit case, but still the major shame of de Gaulle’s decision was to not let the harquis chose the suite case too, lots of them were massacred by the FLN.
We lost Algeria, but not the war, I know that algerians pretend the contrary, they forget that 70 % of the vote spared them to be more pressed on, the quarteron of generals, among them Bigeard had the control of the situation, and the army still remained there until the wole french popuation had quitted the land, it was already independance, though they were forbidden to interven into the algerian affair anymore, also they were forbidden to help their brothers in arms, the harquis. This will be ever the black point of de Gaulle in history.
The Emperor Nicephorus Phocas of the Byzantine Empire conquered Crete (961), Cyprus (965), and even the city of Antioch (969). All from Muslim forces.
The Orthodox Church had a specific ritual to convert Muslims to Christianity.
Although Islam’s conquest of the Byzantine Empire may seem inevitable from perspective of some post-1453 commentators, it certainly did not seem inevitable during the Middle Ages. Nothing is inevitable in history. History sometimes takes a U-turn.
Sylvia, back in “The lighting of the beacons”( October 22, 2009) I commented (#104) about my younger brother dying of cancer. His was also Melanoma.
This was a time I heard God directly. Often His plans are much more than we can understand. We see from individual perspectives. We cannot see the whole picture. I saw in my brother’s dying, he showed how to live.
I carry with me a posting by The Anchoress from 12-3-2004, a-moment-of-grace/ about her brother dying. It seems how we die, may be as important as how we live.
She quotes a note sent her” “A brilliant friend of mine suggests that what is being played out here is a moment of grace. He dropped me a note that spelled it out clearly. In my weariness, I could not articulate it, but he says it well”:
“This is all serving a purpose. A giant purpose. Just as the unseen core of the Church labors in obscurity holding the line against heresy, while the visible church flails around like a detoxing drunk with the DTs, this incredible death-scene is serving an unseen purpose of great importance. What matter is it that people are exhausted and wrung out if…by your sacrifice and effort, S is sustained long enough to come to Jesus in a pure and beautiful way? What a glorious thing to contemplate. That by our labors he is given enough grace to heal the chasm in his spirit?”
“Aye, glorious it is.” She responds.
My copy is getting a little dog-eared, since it travels along with other pearls of wisdom. It gives comfort, and reminds how God’s plan encompasses much more than we understand.
I wrote this poem at a recent memorial service at our church.
God’s Presence
Now you know
My presence.
Full & complete
Joy & peace.
Reunited in resurrection
with all you love.
Rejoice My beloved
at this present.
(c) Presbypoet, December 20, 2009
wretchard, is it really the trump of doom if Kumar and Wong get good grades? As late as the 1960s most of America was blue collar and only something like 20% of the predominant white culture had to do well in school. Maybe that has never really changed. Then there has been no downtrend in culture. I presume Australia is roughly the same. If some of the immmigrant groups are 80% good in school – is that a bad thing?
my post was swallowed !
#42 Wretchard . . .
Your “Three Conjectures” essay gave me the chills. After reading it I became a regular reader, though I don’t post comments very often.
You revealed yourself to be one of the clear thinkers, along with Steven Den Beste, whose essays I miss since he gave up writing.
I’ve located very few clear thinkers, and I’m always looking for them, i.e. people who have a grasp of human nature and the Big Picture.
I wish Rumsfeld and Cheney wrote blogs. I’m sure they would have lots of interesting ideas to pass on.
Anyway, Wretchard, please keep writing. You have a wonderful forum, and your essays are always thought-provoking.
Thank you.
Wretchard’s post @42 contains a variation of the old Biblical injunction, “Those who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind.”
And the post @66, that culture matters more than race, is totally correct. It is a tragedy that America has traded culture for race as its main signifier. Two to three generations of cultural erosion has gotten us to where we are today. As W said, “The tragic thing about many of the 21st century’s biggest dilemmas is that they are self-made conundrums. We’ve tied ourselves in knots. Lied to ourselves until we don’t recognize the truth any more.”
Our superior weapons are great to have, but if the culture blinds us to danger, dilutes courage, destroys clarity of thinking, rejects wisdom, then the weapons are of no avail.
And on our other theme, thank you presbypoet @69. It is posts like yours and Sylvia’s that make BC such an uplifting place. I am grateful.
What 0bama and even maybe Cheney – “He seems to think that if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hardcore al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war.” – miss is that it does not matter what WE say, it only matters what THEY say. And the Musselman insists we are at war. Even Bush really did miss this, that is an existential fight.
Whitehall @ 5:
Not the only one, but it the only palatable one. There is one other that has to be the end option should all else fail.
LOTM @ 7:
Why? That progrom was tried and did fail under LBJ domestically, it was called the “War On Poverty”. The survivors must build their own, it will be the only lasting structure. If they refuse to rebuild then they can fade away. That does not bother me one little bit.
whiskey @ 31:
America’s Left is now awakening from the honeymoon night(mare). They are finding that who they thought was a Prince Charming is really ‘The Prince of Thieves’. And he has had his way with them. He has reverted to character and does not remember for a few moments that he is now married. He awakes, rises, dresses and tosses $40 on the dresser on his way out – on to bigger and better things. The Musselman will treat 0bama as he has treated us – as a cheap lady of the night.
wretchard @ 42 channeling bin Laden:
No. I think he thinks this way but he fundamentally misunderstands the West. We are nice when we can be and absolutely viscous when we must be. 1 x e9 Musselmen dead? Okay. Your essay opened my eyes those many years ago.
Morton Doodslag @ 46:
But you cannot acknowledge his opposite is real also? Check your premises.
Papa Ray @ 63: They got pron on here? Who would of thunk it? ;>
I have said before, it is time to make like the Irish monks. Form communities that can withstand and weather what is coming.
Gleann Dá Loch
Josh,
Methinks /// you misread wretchard. It is bad news for you if you are Mr Average Dimbulb adolescent and find yourself dropped into a class where everyone else is named Kumar or Wong because they raise the standard. Unless you have excellent social skills you will get left in the dust. You are correct that the actual percentage of the population getting whatever education is available has not changed much in 100 years. Before WW-I about half the urban population in the US received a HS diploma and a tiny fraction of those went on to college. Today the percentage of 14 year olds in our urban centers who 5 years later will have a high school diploma is still about 50%. The difference is that the quality of that diploma and the education it represents is much less now. Most of those who get a HS diploma are now admitted to some supposedly college level program. Often that is an attempt to raise them to the level of employability that their Great-grandparents had after High School.
MC,
Errrp, mighty tasty.
RagnarD,
Why? Not for feel good purposes but because if they reinfect it means we have to go back in. Rebuilding in my sense could mean making it safe for missionaries or inviting 5 million Indians to move in. The purpose of foreign reconstruction is not the same as domestic welfare. Everyone gets that wrong, unfortunately including the people in DoD and State.
wretchard,
A sidebar link to an archived copy of the Three Conjectures might make a good feature for the blog layout.
To be blogged under the title “Clean Ups 01-03-10.”
LOTM @ 75: It may be that we have new and severe problems finding a good social position for what would have been blue-collar workers in the past. However, this would be due to secular trends in technology and automation – and globalization. Not cultural decay, as such. More like a sudden need for cultural evolution of some kind, rather a different proposition.
Wretchard, you are respectfully, telling yourself a pretty lie. Yes it is ugly that race does indeed matter and forms the fundamental basis for human organization. But indeed it does matter FAR MORE than culture: Peruvian, Chilean, Argentinian, Brazilian, Mexican, French, Spanish, Italian, and Polish Catholics do not fly planes into British buildings because the British occupy the Six Counties in Northern Ireland.
It matters “what side you are on.” The Reconquista succeeded and Byzantium failed because the former incorporated Race INTO the nation-ethno state, and the latter did not. Race is not merely a matter of skin color, rather a high-trust network of people who have the same cultural, religious, social, and other attitudes that mark them “SORTA LIKE VERY DISTANT COUSINS.”
You can trust your distant cousins, more than a fellow who looks like you but has a different language, culture, religion, and values. Malcolm X wrote of his spiritual awakening (as did Richard Burton) in Mecca when he observed the brotherhood of the Haj. BUT … Islam’s curse is that brotherhood is temporary, only for the Haj, and not something to organize a society around. A nation of vastly extended cousins, certainly is, and certainly works: Japan, Finland, Spain, France, Sweden, all function at a high level and have done so historically on the “cousin-principle.”
Moreover, all throughout the Dark and Middle Ages, the fantasy of having Muslims inside Europe in some happy John Lennon-esque multicultural heaven was found to be an ugly nightmare. This problem was “solved” by one side conquering and forcibly converting or expelling or killing the other. For Spaniards, that meant the Reconquista and the trust that a fellow Spaniard inspired. For Turks, that meant conquering the Balkans as a Slave possession and treating them as slaves, from which they have never really recovered and probably never will.
There is ZERO possibility that Muslims in Britain or other places in the West will be anything other than Muslims: a foreign entity desiring to conquer it, and the only solution for Europeans is expelling them all, long term. You can’t be “half-Sharia” in Britain or Denmark, and ordinary men there who wish to remain British or Danes cannot wish the problem away. It is NOT a problem of “protection from Jihadis” of “Moderate Muslims” since in the first place, there is no such thing as “Moderate Muslims” anymore than “just a bit pregnant” and secondly, the problem is that nation-states simply don’t function without an ethnic-religious-cultural state and significant minorities who differ in any respect in any numbers are an existential threat to unity and trust essential for a nation-state.
This is why Japan is a modern, coherent, wealthy nation and the Philippines a total mess, and why each is unlikely to ever change. Japan is filled with people who look, act, talk, believe, and behave like distant relatives and the Philippines is not. [Though to be fair, Big-Man-ism like my ancestors Ireland and Scotland can also produce pretty tribal and stupid feuds allowing powerful neighbors to gobble them up. Japan only advanced as it dialed down the Big Man-ism to some degree.]
Alexis — And how long exactly did Byzantium hold those places? A few years at best. By contrast, the disorganized, un-centralized, Viking-harassed West kicked Muslims out of Southern Italy and Sicily, PERMANENTLY. They never again ruled those places, at around the same time. Muslims were expelled from Southern France at around the same time. They were expelled because men were willing to fight and die to keep foreigners out of “their” lands. Not fight a meaningless battle for an Emperor more concerned with palace intrigues and likely to be replaced by an appeaser or weakling at any time by palace nobles, priests, and mercenaries.
Wretchard wonders how the West self-inflicted these cultural wounds that created evil Clown politicians? Duh. Because the West is in many ways, Byzantium: Wealthy, powerful, centralized, matriarchal, mercenary/volunteer driven military (instead of broad conscription), elite-ridden, priest-ridden, lacking NATIONALISM.
LOTM: “Rebuilding in my sense could mean making it safe …”
Yeah, I can see that BUT I equate to Africa. We have endless decades of data showing that all that money and education are for naught because they do not discover for themselves. Same goes for the US inner-cities. Poverty is the norm even after billions of $’s are thrown at it. Maybe I did not say it right but:
Advise the survivors but make it clear that they must create a just society that is peaceful on their own. If they do not others will swallow them OR they will fade into the long dark night. Either one makes no difference to me.
Well, I really really hate being downright wrong, but it seems that there ARE majority Muslim countries that have christian churches.
See here:
http://islam-west.com/2007/11/christian-churches-in-muslim-countries.html
On the other hand, there is this comment on that same site:
Bob Smith, December 22nd, 2009 at 16:12
“Unlike Saudi Arabia, many of those countries listed, aren’t Islamic theocracies. They may have a Muslim majority, but they’re not theocracies. Even Iraq tries to put on a secular veneer. At least six of the above listed countries allow alcohol. There are no Churches or Synagogues in Saudi Arabia, where they strictly follow Sharia Law, that forbids building or repairing them.”
If you look at this site, there is a list of very recent anti-christian violence, in India, Algeria, Iraq, etc.
http://www.persecution.org/suffering/index.php
And then there is this gem, at
http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2008/07/survey-how-easy-to-build-a-christian-church-in-a-muslim-country/
which talks about the Copts in Egypt. Apparently in that splendid country,
“State control of church property is governed by the outdated Ottoman Hamayouni Decree of 1856, amplified by the Interior Ministry in 1934 as the Alazabi Decree. This decree sets out certain restrictive conditions which must be met before a church can be built. It additionally requires the signature of the President before construction can commence. No such signature is required in order to build a mosque. So in order to build a Christian church, the President of the country must sign a resolution to that effect.
Needless to say, none are built.”
You should take a look at that last site. It mentions Turkey, Algeria, Indonesia among others.
Hey, and we don’t even want to talk about those courageous souls who leave Islam for Christianity.
Yep. Islam is a Light unto the Nations, eh?
Wretchward
“The 130,000 soldiers are there to give the population some security, because it is the population that will provide the intelligence to find the 100 members of al-Qaeda or however many they may be.”
That is what our soldiers say too, secounded by Sarkozy
“You can’t operate on the ground without the cooperation of the people. You’ll never have their cooperation if they are owned by the enemy. You’ll never wean them from the enemy unless you can free them of fear.”
From my reading of a few paprs, I understood that the population would prefer us out, they are muslims in the first place, and we still are infidels.. Renseignements aren’t quite trustful, they can also betray you as so easily.
.” The French, who got booted out of Algeria, had an abundance of cleverness. They just never had the horses to tip the balance against the FLN. We know how that turned out. Quantity has a quality all of its own.”
Nope, this is what I usely read fom your side, and algerians like to profess it too, but it’s ignoring the évents.
Independence of Algeria was already in De Gaulle agenda when a kind of a putch
from the french generals in Algeria brought him to power in 1958.
When he pronouced his discourse about Algérie Française, we didn’t think that he was already forecasting the Independance and would reverse his discourse later.
.It was his political cleverness for historians, and his“viciousness” for the pieds noirs Though, hardly arrived at Elysees palace it would have been unwise for him to claim that he envisionned the independance of algeria so soon, above all, in front of the people that just brought him there. Thus he took his time, in visiting each military casern in Algeria, in visiting the diverse opinions associations there, and finally uncovered his decision for the independance, (from where comes the pied noirs ressentment against de Gaulle)
Though he had to prepear the Pieds Noirs and the french population. Until then the rebels were harshly fought, (uh also you people like to recall us how) in the meanwhile negotiations were opened in Evian with the FLN leaders on the conditions to let Algeria accesses to its independence., among them, how the french population and the harquis would be treated after the independence,while de Gaulle was preapring a referrendum, where 70 % of the French nationals and Algerians pronounced themselve for Independence.
In the Evian agreement, not the whole population of pieds noirs was expected to leave Algeria, according the the insurances that the french negociators had from their algerian counterpart.
But it wasn’t counting with the spirit of revenge from the FLN fighters, what was set as a « pacifical » independence, became ” the suitcase or the coffin”. the pieds noirs chose the suit case, but the major shame of de Gaulle decision was still to not let the harquis chose the suite case too, lots of them were massacred by the FLN.
Also you can’t say that Algeria war was a defeat as far as militaries are concerned , still our “criss crossing” tactic of the cities (dating from Algeria war) is teached in the army academias, and Petraeus applied it in Irak too. Our army even remained in Algeria so long it would take to the pieds noirs to leave the country, but they didn’t interfer in algerians affairs anymore, they also were forbidden to help the harquis, who were fearing a repression. Ever this will be in history as a De gaulle failure.
I didn’t mention that we were specifically clever, but I guess that the sentence disappeared
17. john lynch:
“Human rights took a big hit in the 1980s when Reagan outsourced anticommunism to anyone who was willing to fight the Soviets.”
“I don’t think that was a better way to fight Communism.”
“And, of course, the decision to arm Afghan rebels against the Soviets didn’t turn out very well, either.”
It didn’t??? It was the straw that broke the camel’s back with the Soviet Union, John.
And they were our major concern at the time.
Sylvia,
God bless you.
Jamie Irons
Josh,
There are four separate categories that can be examined here for the “Blue Collar” population we are considering. These are whether they have completed High School or not and whether they are in the present, that is post 1980, or past, that is pre 1920. In each case we can examine their skills, both technical and academic as well as social or cultural and consider their employability. My argument is that both social/ cultural skills and technical/ academic skills have declined with the greatest decline being in the academic skill level of HS graduates. High Schools teach less and teach it worse to students who enter less prepared and leave less employable then their counterparts did 100 years ago. It is not that all adolescents 100 years ago were growing up in temperate stable homes imbued with the Protestant Ethic. In their day the Dead Rabbits were viewed with as much dread as the gangs of today.
Technological changes have reduced the complexity of low level operations. Agreed that global trading patterns have increased pressure on unskilled labor. That explains why immigration has more often been used as a social club against the Right than as a rallying standard on the Left.
18. Teresita
“Women used to walk with their head uncovered in Iraq.”
Yeah, sure, and their genitals uncovered in Saddam’s rape rooms. Get real.
I see that Near Beer is off his meds and channelling FC again.
I am tempted to roast him over the insane notion that conscription is ultimately anything but a disaster. However, a more important topic is at hand.
Nationalism is often useful, but only if it
is used to secure patriotism. As the Old Man noted, patriotism is the more complete way of saying “Women and Children First”.
A great example of discarding nationalism in favor of patriotism was the Adenauer family of Cologne. Staunch Catholics, they used to secure the premises and pray for defeat. Nationalism said that the incumbents needed to prevail. Patriotism said to root for Jimmy D and George P and tell them to please hurry it up. These foreign enemies were the only hope the women and children had of a livable Germany.
As far as describing a comprehensive set of folkways and calling that race instead of culture: How the heck did Joy Behar sneak in here anyway?
18. Teresita
“Nationbuilding is not and never was in the US Charter. That’s the Wilsonian/neo-con dream.”
That is so, Teresita, but nationbuilding can be the best solution when that nation is toxic and represents or has represented an existential threat.
We didn’t rebuild Germany after WWI and in fact exacerbated their financial predictament with the Versailles Treaty and they came back for an encore in 25 years.
We did it properly after WWII and solved the problem for good (I think) even though we had to stay for ten years to make sure the Nazis couldn’t do an encore and another 35 years to keep the Russkies off their backs so they had no excuse to re-arm in a big way.
So nation rebuilding can work though I’m afraid we may have cut the Iraqis loose before they were ready but that die is cast, now.
Whikey
“Because the West is in many ways, Byzantium: Wealthy, powerful, centralized, matriarchal, mercenary/volunteer driven military (instead of broad conscription), elite-ridden, priest-ridden, lacking NATIONALISM.”
it’s like for winning a bicycle race, you must be hungry, (I was told by a professional).
LOTM, we’re experiencing some thread drift, much of it my fault. You are equating a breakdown in education with a breakdown in culture, which was what I questioned about wretchard’s statement. Even if I concur with the observation about education, I have trouble making that leap. After all, Kumar and Wong seem to be taking it OK, and I made a a further statistical argument.
I know everyone here likes to make the moral jump in regards to the official thread topic of drones and what we fight and how we fight, I just insist on being dragged kicking and screaming before I accept these general conclusions.
What whiskey is describing at 77 sounds to me like a nation… not a nation-state, which is the conjunction of a nation and a government. A nation is a group of people with a good measure of geographic integrity who feel themselves to be a group with common goals and aspirations, in contrast to those outside the nation. I prefer that terminology to “race,” which sounds too eugenic to my ear, but I think it’s what whiskey is writing.
Which modern Europeans see as a very bad thing, because in their history from the 17th C to 1945 that concept got turned into aggressive nationalism and that nationalism led to fierce wars.
Europeans have a great deal of trouble understanding the difference between American patriotism, a group feeling that focuses inward on shared goals, and European nationalism, which focuses on competition with and dominance of other nations and often led to war.
Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire had that feeling until about the 12th Century or so, when the government lost the ability to defend its people (Manzikert, 1071 and after, esp. the disaster of the Fourth Crusade in 1204). In the absence of security, it gradually lost the feeling of nation-hood, even under threat.
Re Marie Claude @ 80, I thought wretchard had hosed you down pretty well about the 130,000 vs. 100 business, but apparently not. There is no logical connection between the number of people in the threat (supposing 100 is correct, which we have no idea), and the number needed to deal with them, except through the intermediaries of environment (human and natural), strategy, tactics, technology, and a host of other factors. Otherwise, the statement you quote is just a non sequitur.
, I thought wretchard had hosed you down pretty well about the 130,000 vs. 100 business, but apparently not. There is no logical connection between the number of people in the threat (supposing 100 is correct, which we have no idea), and the number needed to deal with them, except through the intermediaries of environment (human and natural), strategy, tactics, technology, and a host of other factors. Otherwise, the statement you quote is just a non sequitur.
uh it was an exterpt from an article with the afferent link, I didn’t expect to be “hosed” for it like you say. Though I understand that you read me with a pre-supposed opinion on the Afganistan war, of course of the “lefty side” I just didn’t express my opinion while bringing it, it was rather as a “question” in my mind, Got bashed
I’ll show my white paw before bringing a an article
Whiskey
“Humanism fails spectacularly when faced by tribal forces like Islam. Only counter-tribalism, ethnic identity works.”
Humanism has only been here 5 minutes, Whiskey. What the US did in the world wars was cultural and the Japs and the Germans will never forget it. And it was our culture which made us so strong economically and industrially that they didn’t have a sporting chance.
That culture is not yet dead. Secular humanism is an overlay but a thickening one.
Christianity is another big question mark in this struggle. I’ve reconsidered my attitudes towards Christianity in the light of my experience of Islam in the last ten years and I have more positive views of it now (Christianity).
It’s an integral part of our culture still as far as morals, ethics, taking individual responsibility (volition)and that sort of thing.
I hope the real Christians are up to the role their churches should be playing in this struggle.
The corporate memory of the long time struggle with Islam is still there in the Catholic church but I think the Anglicans/C of E are hopelessly compromised
“A Tailor’s Shop in Kabul”
Picture an elegant tailoring shop for men in central Kabul. Racks of sleek suits along one wall, Blond polished oaken cubby holes for folded robes along another. A Salesperson with a measuring tape draped over his shoulders stands facing the cubby holes, checking with a pencil stub items on a list. Qutaybah the Agitated, a wild-eyed Prospective Jihadi in frumpy and out-of-date terrorist garb pushes open the door,
The Salesperson turns and greets him.
Salesperson: “Peace be upon you, sir. How may I serve you this day?”
Jihadi-aspirant, glancing about with twitching eye: “My associate Husam al Din tells me you have set Rock-Bottom prices for exploding apparel this week…”
Salesperson: “Indeed we have. Just this morning we have taken delivery of the latest styles from Acme Manufactury. Please… come… here before the mirror…”
“If I may… direct your gaze to the salient features.
See, they have attended especially to the stitching… here under the arms. No binding as you raise your hands in final gesture of glorification, see?— and here, these additional pockets for those extra ounces of PETN, C-4, or other preferred combustant — and NO unsightly bulges…
Oh, and here … a titanium calling card to be inscribed with a final message glorifying Allah the Merciful. Is included with purchase…”
“Finally, a concealed zippered compartment for a clever booby trap, surprise for the clean-up crew!”
Jihadi-aspirant: “They DO think of everything. But, actually, this is a bit more audacious than I was looking for… I’m shopping for a friend… who needs to be a little more casual.”
Salesperson: “Too conspicuous, eh? Ah, I think I see where you’re headed… Okay, Here’s somewhat with less drama, yet conveys an authoritative message.”
Jihadi-aspirant, thinking: “Mmmmm. No, that’s still not quite what I had in mind…”
Salesperson: “Well, mayhap something RETRO… Mmmm this might intrigue, In’sh’Allah… Designed for either Cordite or Black Powder! Excellent for smaller INTIMATE gatherings.”
Jihadi-aspirant: ‘Say, I’ve always liked the aroma of fireworks.”
Salesperson: “Yes, distinctive and yet… so Piquant!”
Jihadi-aspirant: “You got something in a Napalm motif?”
slightly modified from a post from my long-fallow apsnyblog…
Josh,
A breakdown in education IS a breakdown in culture.
Whiskey
“Yes, this necessarily means that there is no place for Third World exiles in the West. Sadly, the ethno-state is the only way to keep a society going under serious challenge by enemies. Humans evolved to trust those who look like relatives, act like relatives, hold the same traditions, and values. Cross-racial trust and cross-cultural trust is a fantasy…”
Rubbish Whiskey.
Have a look at our Army today, the best one we’ve ever had. It’s full of non-WASPs who are culturally American and who have laid their butts on the line for this nation, not just talked about it.
I can tell Americans by the way they talk, walk and their attitudes, not by the color of their skin.
Lifeofthemind
“On balance the purpose of the multi-Billion dollar air campaigns, culminating in the atomic bombs, were to induce the civilian population to stop supporting their armed forces and to induce the enemy armed forces to abandon the battle.”
I don’t agree at all, LOTM. First priority was to disrupt or bust their industrial capacity to destroy their ability to wage aggressive war.
We were never going to get the Japs or Germans to quit supporting their armed forces though we were attempting also to destroy their morale.
Wretchard #66: The tragic thing about many of the 21st century’s biggest dilemmas is that they are self-made conundrums. We’ve tied ourselves in knots. Lied to ourselves until we don’t recognize the truth anymore.
We are doing what Jerusalem did in the 8th century B.C.: “You boast, ‘We have entered into a covenant with death, with the grave we have made an agreement. When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.’” (Isaiah 28:15)
And something analogous to what happened to them (the Assyrian, and then the Babylonian, invasions and captivities) will happen to us if we persist with all the lying (we’re not at war… the system worked… man-caused disaster… isolated extremist… we need another stimulus… CRU’s AGW… etc., etc.) And lest an inkling of light threatens to glimmer on any particular lie, there’s always the measured warning, “Don’t jump to conclusions” or one of its many variations to lull us back to sleep.
So much of the West’s current cultural memes and beliefs are dependent on lies that it’s really hard to see how we’re ever going to be able to clear away such a heavy load of bull****. There are shovels aplenty at BC but I wonder if Papa Ray @63 is right when he says that only about 10% of Americans know or even care. “Sometimes I despair,” he says, “because 9 out of 10 people I talk to have no idea what is going on and if you try and tell them they just zone out or dispute or just will not believe me.” I find that’s often the case around here too.
Sometimes, when somebody links to a particularly good YouTube video, I’ll notice the number of hits and think, What!?!!?? Only 3,456 people in the whole country have seen this since yesterday’s count of 3,342???
The truth shall set you free? If the truth – the truth about all of our 21st century conundrums – could be acknowledged, we WOULD be free to act. Until that kind of acknowledgment is widespread, and enough so that even our political leaders reflect it, we are powerless to act, except on an individual level with our own personal efforts of preparation.
Someone mentioned this above:
The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks
The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks
I have yet to come across a non-TTP resident of Waziristan who supports the Taliban or al Qaeda. Till recently they were terrified by the TTP to the extent that they would not open their mouth to oppose them. But now, having been displaced and out of their reach, some of them speak against them openly and many more than before in private conversations. They express their fear of the intelligence agencies of Pakistan whenever speaking against the Taliban. They see the two as two sides of the same coin.
What we read and hear in the print and electronic media of Pakistan about drone attacks as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty or resulting in killing innocent civilians is not true so far as the people of Waziristan are concerned. According to them, al Qaeda and the TTP are dead scared of drone attacks and their leadership spends sleepless nights. This is a cause of pleasure for the tormented people of Waziristan.
Moreover, al Qaeda and the Taliban have done everything to stop the drone attacks by killing hundreds of innocent civilians on the pretext of their being American spies.
They thought that by overwhelming the innocent people of Waziristan with terror tactics they would deter any potential informer, but they have failed. On many occasions the Taliban and al Qaeda have killed the alleged US spies in front of crowds of hundreds, even thousands of tribesmen. Interestingly, no one in Pakistan has raised objection to killings of the people of Waziristan on charges of spying for the US.
This, the people of Waziristan informed, is a source of torture for them that their fellow Pakistanis condemn the killing of the terrorists but fall into deadly silence over the routine murders of tribesmen accused of spying for the US by the terrorists occupying their land.
Those drones are going to have considerably less intel to rely on following the disaster of Chapman.
“The drone program relies on informants who can cross the border easily, in parts CIA officers cannot. The CIA is wary of making major trips into Pakistan for fear of the repercussions if officers were caught or killed there. Informants — especially Pakistani informants from the Waziri or Mehsud tribe — are the most valuable assets for the CIA in finding senior al Qaeda and Taliban militants who are targeted by the drone program.
“To go after the Taliban and the Haqqani network on the Pakistani side of the border, the United States relies almost exclusively on its predator drones. But those predator drones require agents on the ground to direct them, to say, ‘this is where you should be looking,’” says Richard Clarke, the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism czar until 2003 and an ABC News consultant. “The CIA does that in support of the military, and without their intelligence, we really have very little way of affecting what’s going on on the Pakistani side of the border.”
—
rufus said…
“I can understand the pampered children of the CIA making this naive, and amateurish mistake; but what in the holy hell was the base commander doing? He was supposed to be a “Soldier.”
—
trish said…
“There’s a reason the base commander had the title of Chief of Base. She was Agency.”
“People become way too comfortable in their operating environments. (It takes a conscious daily effort and good SOP to combat.) That’s human nature and that’s when shit usually happens. Although in the case of Chapman there seems to have also been a level of amateurism thrown into the mix that they paid for with their lives.
That makes the whole thing sadder by an order of magnitude.”
—
Yemen’s Chaos Aids the Evolution of a Qaeda Cell
While the government has been distracted by rebellions, Al Qaeda has built support in Yemen’s poor and lawless territories.
The truth is the WW I allowed a mob of vipers–though perhaps a scourge of locusts would be a more apt analogy–to hijack the 20th century. “Modernism” as a psuedo-culture, pseudo-religion and a psuedo-philosophy is itself a primary a cause of our problems. This is masked to us because of the great leaps in science and technology that occurred during the period, and the broad prosperity that seemingly poured out of it. We ere in mistaking the source of these advances and thereby threaten the foundations of them.
One can argue that whether this would have occurred or not without “modernism”, but it is clear that some portion of this advance was built on what preceded it. The West has squandered at least some part of this legacy. Unless we cleave toward our heritage, and nurture back to health what can be saved, we are doomed.
The Democrats go down the same path as the New Dealers, but this time around there is no Wasp aristocracy to pillage. They must now destroy the middle class. Thus they destroy the very last bulwark and redoubt.
They have nothing to replace it with. Those of them that are not overgrown children are complete nihilists who worship the dark. They crave the chaos and destruction. This is what brought them forward in the first place almost 100 years ago. It is their father and mother; it is all they know. The West has not seen the likes of this in its “leaders” since the fall of Rome.
I think that wretchard is again confused about culture and civilization and confounds them, but race trumping culture? A modern delusion. Culture is an expression of race, not race in te present but over time. We have an odd modern motion of “Race” as mere physiology, but as we once understood race sa a “race of men” it is surely true that it is not something arbitrary to culture. In our odd determinism and (philosophic) materialism, given to us by the cult of modernism, we cannot see this. Yes there are those around the margins, but they are deracinated. Yes forms are borrowed and mutated from other cultures, but the vary choice of those forms rest deep in the bone. Culture, or rather its parent, Civilization, is not a set of clothes to be donned at will. It is not s set of guidelines for a NYT music critic. Culture does not spring out of nowhere: We hold such odd views because we cannot understand our past, because we cannot face our past for we have betrayed it; we cannot understand thet we are decadents. Thus we wallow in lies, rationalization and vanity like menopausal women.
And of course it matters if America receded educationally and intellectually these last 40 years–what a bizarre construction. Someone is lost in their abstractions here. One might was well say “what if the last 1000 years did not happen”. That is just the point. It did happen.
Bob Murphy,
First priority was to disrupt or bust their industrial capacity to destroy their ability to wage aggressive war.
We are far down in the weeds here. The semantic question is whether the civilian population are counted as an industrial asset and whether their morale, meaning their support for continued conflict, could be effectively targeted. I misspoke by saying we targeted their support for their armed forces. What I meant was their support for military policy. The goal was a repeat of 1918, when the German army walked off the battlefield. Interestingly the grandfathers of today’s oh so sensitive English were conducting night time terror bombings of german cities while the American 8th Air Force was attempting suicidal daylight attacks on rail yards and manufacturing sites. Incredibly industrial production in Germany rose during the Winter and Spring of 1945.
Random bombardment of the civilian population to attack their support for a government can work. Morale in London, which had survived the terror of the Blitz, when defeat seemed probable, and endured the V-1 onslaught, cracked late in the war under the V-2. The defeat of Germany was already certain but one result was possibly the defeat of Churchill. More recently there is the case of Spain after 9-11.
To be blogged under the title “Strategic Bombing.”
wretchard,
Last thread closed with my comment still in moderation.
#wretchard: Those Chinese and Indian high-achieving students are not representatives of the whole of the respective nations, but more likely of Brahmin high caste or of generations long tradition of Confucian scholars. Ten or twenty generations of highly educated ancestors is not something easy to compete with. The same for these Jewish scientists that were instrumental in giving USA her nukes. Most of them were not progeny of shoemakers or craftsmen, but of priestly castes of Cohens and Levites. Only these three nations in the world have several thousand years of written law and scholarship behind them, in each case concentrated in hereditary elite, and this shows up.
Peru’s mountain people face fight for survival in a bitter winter
Climate change is bringing freezing temperatures to poor villages where families have long existed on the margins of survival!!!
Now some must choose whether to save the animals that give them a living, or their children.
—
If it is hot and dry, and crops die next year,
the cause will be…
You guessed it:
Climate Change!
I think President Bush’s idea is winning.
Wadeusaf
Sergey,
You conflate the old priestly hierarchy from Temple times with the rabbinic tradition of the last 2,000 years. While there is some residual social cachet to being descended from priests, they get to read the prayers first and once a year perform a blessing, the hereditary categories have no serious links to recent achievement. It is more accurate to say that the tradition of universal education for boys in the yeshiva, which encouraged disputation as well as memorization, combined with the talmudic methodology of analysis created a broad base with the skills both commercial and academic needed to thrive in the modern world. The jews achieved what the the protestants aimed for, a “Priesthood of all Believers.” Einstein’s father was an unsuccessful engineer and his family were mattress merchants. Samuel Goldfish started out a glove merchant before he founded MGM. In America the children of shoe merchants really do achieve great things.
The surprise is that inherited wealth and power doesn’t result in a more effective control over the transmission of critical academic and entrepreneurial skills. All to often a fortune is accumulated, universities are endowed and a few generations later you end up with John Forbes Kerrey. Obama is the outlier as the descendant from two old elites, one from the Lou tribe hereditary aristocracy and the other a very traditional farm/ banking/ elite education Protestant ascendancy. He started with a silver spoon and got helped all along the way through the best schools and he still doesn’t amount to much.
It would be interesting to find out if the Indian students are descended from Brahmins or other caste groups and if the Chinese students had Great-great-grandfathers in the Imperial civil service/Landlord class.
To be blogged under the title “Meritocracy.”
Taliban Bomber of CIA was Jordanian Doctor and a Double Agent
It is being reported that a Jordanian doctor was the suicide bomber double agent for the Taliban.
The implications for US security on the war on terror are profound. This should be a wake up call to amateur hour at the White House.
“A middle-aged mother of three and a warm-hearted man called Harold are a long way from the image most Americans have of their top spies in one of the wildest regions of Afghanistan.
But they will be among the seven stars added this week to the 90 on the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, after a Taliban suicide bomber killed seven agents and wounded six at a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan. The attack has thrown the CIA’s whole strategy into disarray.”
The suicide bomber was not someone mired in poverty. He was a doctor from what is thought to be a modern Arab country.
Basic force protection. Even if it was Mother Theresa coming in with Osama bin Laden’s little black book, she gets a body cavity search.
The base targetted by Wednesday’s suicide bomber was a control centre for a covert programme overseeing strikes by remote-controlled aircraft along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
‘Those who fell were far from home and close to the enemy, doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country from terrorism. We owe them our deepest gratitude,’ CIA Director Leon Panetta said.
Gratitude and a change in the rules of engagement. Basically, if you’re running a day care center in Tora Bora, its your own lookout. If you’re having a wedding party celebrating life inside a camp dedicated to manufacturing suicide bombers, if you’re sending your kids to school under an anti-aircraft gun position, if you check into a hospital that is a command and control bunker for the Taliban, then tough titties if you get a hellfire up your ass.
Inside Obama’s War on Terrorism
Recent threats have put more focus on the battles President Obama, pictured with his adviser John Brennan, faces fighting a far-flung terror network.
On the White House: After Balmy Hawaii, Chilly Washington
Americans Detained in Pakistan Deny Terror Plans
A group of Somali extremists was reported to be coming across the border from Canada to detonate explosives as the new president took the oath of office.
With more than a million onlookers viewing the ceremony from the National Mall and hundreds of millions more watching on television around the world, what could be a more devastating target?
What a warm, thoughtful and heady thread this is. Thanks for the great reads guys!
Josh’s and LoTM’s discussion about education tickled my caffeine-addled nerves this morning. I think that the thing that LoTM bemoans, and that Josh trips over, is that the word “education” has lost its traditional meaning. The word has become corrupted and today only denotes learning performed at governmental, institutional campuses, as signified by the institution’s branded (“Duke,” “Dartmouth,” or “UC”) credentials.
“We” say you are “educated.” And, because we sell “education,” have “education” credentials, and you bought “education” from us, if “we” say you’re “educated” then you are! Get it!” As most marketers will tell you, this is nothing more than brand assertion (ex. “GM makes good cars because we say we do!”) emitting from a government agency.
In this, the word “education” resembles the word, “news.” Both are hollow imprimaturs arrogated self-servingly to products by their own vendors. And, what with truancy laws, and because one can barely avoid CNN’s “news” products in commons’ like airports and train stations, both are now effectively compulsory for US citizens. Consumption of both misnamed media products, increasingly, is not a choice made diligently by consenting, free adults – it is foisted on us, and this resemblance to America’s earlier monopolized railway or telephone markets may be these institutions’ motivation for their products’ false branding.
To drive my point home, the editors of the New York Times (a for-profit media corporation) would like us to think that their ‘zine is “news,” and therefore, an indispensable resource to the USA’s function and that of its citizens. But, if the ‘zines’ readers don’t know that the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to non-uniformed combatants, or if they think that Federal funding is the only possible funds-source for embryonic stem-cell research, or if they believe that it was George Bush and not Bill Clinton’s Senate that “killed” Kyoto, then obviously, real news is not what the Times is peddling. Their readers pay and get “news,” not news.
Same goes for institutionalized “education.” If its matriculated “educated’s” can’t spell “Mississippi,” haven’t read Orwell, can’t multiply fractions and only ever read the picture captions in Homer’s The Odyssy, but still they got a shiny credential…then they got an “education,” not an education.
BTW: Aside from spending three months in Southern France on an exchange program (where I learned how to cook octopus!), the best learning I ever did was done while working on my friend’s Dad’s roofing crew for three Summers during my teen-years. In addition to learning about cooperative comraderie, pounding nails straight and playing medic to the crew, I was forced to put all that basic schoolin’ from grade-school – from multiplying fractions to calculating angles – finally too work. But, in the end I didn’t get any shiny credentials to flash around the faculty lounge, and I didn’t have a “Students’ Union” to complain to when my fe-e-e-elings got hurt… but I did gain more character and stature over those two years than I perceive in most of today’s credentialed politicos.
Me? I’d rather be educated, than “educated.”
It has been public knowledge since before the election that neither Barack nor Michelle Obama have a license to practice law. That is one of many things on the long list of what the MSM was uncurious about.
Now Parcbench claims that he gave his up voluntarily because he was “unwilling to register his aliases.” If someone in the field can explain that I would be grateful. They also say that Michelle Obama was ordered by a court to surrender her license due to “extortion.” That would be the genuine rarely met item, a bombshell. If there is anything behind this then the Secret Service will have to review how they respond to people throwing rotten eggs and tomatoes.
Blogged under the title “Grifters.”
LOTM: You are so correct in marking the rabbinical tradition as the signal shift in the jewish nation.
It is though this that they maintain themselves as a Nation without a State all these centuries. The tale is as remarkable as is it unique. It is from this their second great contribution springs (the first being monotheism as passed through the Abrahamic tradition). Neither is it that recent nor is it confined to traditional “intellectual” pursuits: Let us remember Mendelssohn, Heine and Mahler.
No reasonable discussion of the West can honestly exclude the Jews nor treat them has interlopers.
Expect whichever of those claims is most accurate to be buried most deeply, LifeOf.
…but you know that.
Obama IS the Problem. From “Man Made Disasters” to converting a real was into a “Legal Circus” – Obama is the problem.
The solution is to legally remove Obama from Office. I doesn’t really matter how it’s done, a successful impeachment or possibly a guilty verdict/plea from Obama regarding a serious felony – just get him out of office now.
Joe Biden would take his place. Sure, Biden is a Bozo but not a cancerous swindler and pathological liar as is Obama. Biden cannot hide behind the race card as Obama. Biden would be a significant improvement over Obama in many ways.
OK, Oldest grand daughter and younger one had to go to coffee shop today with me. NO school.
In my continuing quest to educate Americans in what is really going on instead of what they read in the paper as steveaz points out so well above, I spotted a guy that I had not seen before and asked if we might sit with him. To make a long story short I managed to get the kids engaged in one of those games on the place mats that they have for kids and eased my way into conversation with this new target of mine.
We engaged in a little chitter chatter- nothing important so I could feel out his character and get a hint of his political or otherwise persuasions.
I mentioned that I had read where a judge had kicked out the case against the Blackwater Contractors and awaited his response. He had no idea what I was talking about so I gave him the cliff notes version. He started to expound on the fact that many innocent Iraqis had been killed by our troops and how it was stupid that a judge would dismiss these horrendous charges. I let that slide and mentioned to him Obama’s Executive order about INTERPOL and giving them total immunity and the run of our nation and the fact that Obama’s Justice Dept had people working for and with INTERPOL. He didn’t even blink and said: “That should be useful in fighting crime.” NO idea that it would and could be one of the most destructive acts of an American President ever.
I then suggested that INTERPOL now could arrest those Blackwater contractors that the Judge had let go and that the Iraqi PM vows justice in the Blackwater shooting case.
His eyes lit up and he said: “I hadn’t thought about that but that is right and I think that they should arrest and convict them.” No comprehension of the legalities of this nor even which court would/could “convict” them.
As I had my kids with me I didn’t want to start a debate or argument but suggested that he go to a couple of websites. I wrote them down and gave them to him.
We left and as I drove home I wondered if the average American will ever even know what has destroyed their freedoms or their Republic or will they be left with just questions and half burned copies of old history books and will look at the ripped and singed page that shows our Constitution and wonder what it is and who it was for…?
Papa Ray
Excuse me, but in bombing Tokyo, Dresden, and Hiroshima we were not trying to convince the civilian populace of anything. Nor any other times we (or they) dropped bombs anywhere in WWII.
You have to realize two technological limitations in WWII, first we couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, relatively speaking, it took 100 guys in a dozen planes to even try to hit something like a bridge, which they were lucky to even find in the first place. Second, it was hard to deliver the tonnage of mere chemical explosives it took to devastate large areas. So, necessarily, we focused on high value targets, except on special occassions.
Given virtually unlimited destructive capability today, we have some moral and ethical decisions to make, and of course it’s possible to err on either side.
Mongoose (#99):
You wrote:
Those of them that are not overgrown children are complete nihilists who worship the dark…
I think this is correct; as Mephistopheles introduces himself to Faust:
Ich bin ein Teil des Teils, der anfangs alles war
Ein Teil der Finsternis, die sich das Licht gebar
Das stolze Licht, das nun der Mutter Nacht
Den alten Rang, den Raum ihr streitig macht…
I am part of the part that was first of all,
Part of the Dark that gave birth to Light,
That proud Light, that now disputes with Mother Night
Her ancient rank and realm…
[Loosely translated by myself...]
Let’s just pray this Dark has given birth to Light…
Jamie Irons
The discussion of culture, race, and civilization, it seems incomplete without considering Americanism, the amalgamation of Judeo-Christian morality, theology, and metaphysics that is widely held to be a religion in its own right. I think if you took a poll, you might be surprised at how many Americans believe the country to have been divinely inspired, and at very least a majority of us almost certainly still believe in American exceptionalism.
As I suggested earlier, this is a religious war that’s underway, and there are two fronts, Muslim v. Christian and Americanism/Judeo-Christian v. secularism.
It’s actually the metaphysical conflict between freedom and determinism, life v. matter. The emphasis on obedience and control in Islam is obvious, and the materialist (i.e. deterministic) nature of secularism is only slightly more difficult to discern.
I think, Jamie, that it’s more that dark is the absence of light, evil the absence of good and, as we’re now seeing, the greatest good can therefore give rise to the greatest corruption.
“Obama is the outlier as the descendant from two old elites, one from the Lou tribe hereditary aristocracy and the other a very traditional farm/ banking/ elite education Protestant ascendancy. He started with a silver spoon and got helped all along the way through the best schools and he still doesn’t amount to much.”
I don’t like the man either, but he did become POTUS. This has been the highest objective standard of achievement in our country for some time. Maybe if he thought there was any value to intellectual attainment he would have tried for that as well.
Mongoose (#110):
You wrote:
No reasonable discussion of the West can honestly exclude the Jews nor treat them has interlopers…</i?
From your lips to God's ears!
I think the effort to effect precisely the exclusion of which you write, going on among the "elites" of the West right now, and with renewed force, bespeaks our cultural decline.
Jamie Irons
As I suggested earlier, this is a religious war that’s underway, and there are two fronts, Muslim v. Christian and Americanism/Judeo-Christian v. secularism.
May I continue with my skepticism?
I am not willing to let the opponent set the agenda. I do not see this as a religious war on our side. I don’t even see Islam as a religion. Some bearded loser screaming “Allah Ackbar!” does not convince me that there are theological implications, just a violent nutjob with delusions of religion along with all his other failings.
Neither do I see the failings of our countrymen as secularist absence of faith in either the diety or traditions. Indeed, if there is an absence, it is in their respect for our own *secular* traditions. And while I do see much of our culture as grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition, that is a very broad description, and is mostly a story of origins of secular traditions and not of ongoing morality.
The historical facts are that our founding fathers were Deists at most and founded an entirely secular government, but that perhaps the basis for that is Jesus’ acceptance of rendering unto Caesar that which is Caear’s – a lesson that Islam has always eschewed. The assertion that without an ongoing religious basis everyone turns into a godless secular humanist coddling criminals and self-hating America in favor of the global internationale – I don’t think so. Isn’t our current POTUS a great believer in religion, and also exhibiting some of these secularist beliefs? It’s not one or the other. I’m not going to condemn the Federalist Papers and their authors as lost to godless secularism.
#99 Mongoose, interesting argumentation
seems that the problem of identiy has become a leitmotiv in our western world, and the debate launched on our national identy is accurate, as more than often patriotism is cofounded with nationalism, thus for the immigrants of a different culture, as racism.
It’s true that an official religion was the base of the new founded nations after that the roman empire collapsed, this is why Clovis became catholic in the first place if he wanted to impose his rules on the new conquested provinces, as the populations had not a common communication mean, language, habits… were differents, only a religion could carry common rules through prays and ceremonies, this is also why the church had to be so ostentatory on its decoration, it was the vehicle for the official power that one had to rever.
But Church ceased to represent our identity after the “enlightened century”, people developped another notion of identity, universality of the human rights, and it implied to break the old rules, its how America concepted its constitution based on human rights and liberty, it how we got our constitution too. We became free “humans” after being subjects and or serfs. This is why America let immigrants from whatever country populated its space, without fearing that its constitutional pillar would be controversed, this was/is also our constitution that still rules our country too.
and it’s history that repeats itself, a new religion wants to manufacture us a new identity, it is funny that this religion hasn’t evolved since Mahomet initiated it, dating about the same times when our kings became christians, this immigration is about to erase what is our collective memory dating from the enlighteneds that inspired our republican values, and want to replace them by old fashionned religious rules.
It’s because we thought to have reached wiseness and perfection in the matter of ruling a modern society, and above all that it would be eternal, that we thought that the immigrants appreciated our conception of liberty, when they only thought of taking benefit of it, we didn’t emphasized on duties towards our collective memory as a “universal” republic, and that the values that were the bases for it, are floutted, even by our nationals.
So it is urgent that we remind to our whole society what is our collective memory, what are the constitutionnal rules, our common language, this has nothing to do with races, but with to share common principles
This is why the debate on our national identiy makes controverses, and is stigmatized as being a temptation for discriminating immigration, naturally by muslims and lefties.
Though we must be those “wises”, and be ferm with our principles, so long as we exist.
Stephen,
…POTUS. This has been the highest objective standard…
Not even close. The owner of the hardware store I worked in when I was 19 was a man of substance. Roland Burris and Charlie Rangel despite their subsequent failings are people with compelling personal stories of achievement. Obama is just an over promoted empty suit. He could issue a press release saying that he is now Pope or Grand Exarch of the United Federation of Planets, it would not matter. He reduces the importance of any office that he occupies. As far as occupancy of the office being the “standard of achievement” I dispute it as a fact in America and would disagree with it in principle. People who produced in Industry (Edison, Gates, Rockefeller), athletics (Ruth “He had a better year,” Manning), or the Arts often matter more. What should matter anyway is what is done to earn the accolade not the title on door. Jack Welch commands our attention, even when we disagree with him, because he worked his way up and then performed in a way that could be evaluated when he ran GE. He does not gain my attention by waving his old name plate and gold watch around.
I don’t like the man either, but he did become POTUS. This has been the highest objective standard of achievement in our country for some time. Maybe if he thought there was any value to intellectual attainment he would have tried for that as well.
hahaha. good one. I did not think you capable of this sort of wit.
Marie Claude (#119)
I think you’re on the right track here.
You write:
So it is urgent that we remind …our whole society what is our collective memory, what are the constitutional rules, our common language; this has nothing to do with race, but with sharing common principles…
[Forgive me for editing slightly...]
The common language issue is, I think, one area where the French have an advantage over our present situation, where our government has decided to pander, in an official way, to our (to me extremely valuable) immigrants, and have signs and documents in Spanish, and here in the Bay Area, in multiple other languages. Don’t get me wrong, I value both the languages themselves (I speak fluent Spanish, and treat my Spanish-speaking patients in their own language), and the speakers of those languages, but I believe we need to have everyone fluent in English in order that our culture survive and prosper.
Jamie Irons
Speaking of Droning On, the title of this post, I don’t believe I’ve blathered so much in these precincts for quite some time.
Forgive me.
Jamie Irons
119/MC — My favorite of your comments. Beautifully expressed. Thank you.
113/Papa Ray — If you ever wander into your coffee shop and see a tall redhead knitting, bring the girls over and I’ll teach them how to knit whatever pleases them *and* enjoy chatting with you about things that matter. Don’t lose faith; do keep trying. As Karen Yvonne wrote in #96, it is up to us to spread the truth until it reaches critical mass.
92/Mad Fiddler — You made my husband laugh. Wonderful.
82/Jamie — You made me cry. [That's good.] 122. Vietnamese is one of the languages on all the bus notices down here in Silicon Valley.
108/steveaz — Agree about the education/”education” thang, though I wish I knew history like Alexis, psych like Batman, a fraction of what’s in L3′s mind… I can fix, make or build nearly anything practical and tangible, cook like a dream, and find my way overland across any terrain, but I’m in a perpetual scramble to learn enough to comprehend half of what the BC’ers write.
Not everyone is exposed to CNN. We bought a TV when DD was inert with chicken pox at age 5 (12 years ago) and we lived in Chicago. History channel, Food Network, and she watched the news in every language but English. After a few months we were all back to reading, the novelty of moving pictures no longer enough to hold our attention. Turned the TV on for 9/11 and the few days after. Didn’t bother taking it with us the next time we moved. When my friends come over they are amazed by how peaceful our house is. When I go to their houses I cannot handle the noise — people leave their TV’s turned on all the time! Is it a disinclination to hear the thoughts in our minds? Is it “easier” to hear and blindly accept CNN? Ack.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34687312/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia
Who bombed the CIA station? According to NBC, a double-agent from Jordan. A doctor originally allied with al Qaeda, then caught and believed to be turned by Jordanian and American intelligence, handled by a top Jordanian intelligence officer related to the ruling family (nephew or something), and then sent to Afghanistan with the mission to find and befriend Ayman al-Zawahiri. Very interesting. I suppose he wouldn’t need GRU help in that case – how hard would it be to fake it all the way up to the Kaboom!?
Sylvia, I thought of you when I read this last night:
“Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers and rewarded according to their capacity.”
— Thomas Merton
Josh, let me simplify. Either one has a belief in something absolute, above/beyond, and toward which he is to strive and in the service of which he is to attempt to conform his behavior, or he is doomed to “turn into a godless secular humanist coddling criminals and self-hating America in favor of the global internationale” or some such caricature of a human being.
Not that religion is an automatic antidote to degeneracy, by the way, a fact that is further compounded by the variable qualities of different religions, secular-humanism being but one particularly counterproductive set of beliefs.
But you can bet your boots that the founding fathers were constantly aware of the absolute and the need to adhere to natural law. Secularists are relativists by their very nature and therefore precisely the opposite.
And I can’t imagine what on earth gives you the impression that Obama is in any way religious, unless you’re saying he’s a closet Muslim, I suppose.
Where does the only 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan meme come from? It keeps popping up, especially in anti-war chatter.
What is the source of this purported “statistic?”
And how long exactly did Byzantium hold those places? A few years at best.
Antioch was held for over one century, from 969 to 1084. One century isn’t bad. That’s longer than the United States has held Hawaii, and considerably longer than America’s hold over the Philippines. Crete and Cyprus were held for over two centuries. Byzantium’s hold over Crete and Cyprus compares favorably to the tenure of United States of America holding Florida, Michigan, and every piece of territory west of the Mississippi River.
Cyprus was held by Byzantium from 965 to 1184, when a Byzantine rebel controlled it for 14 years. Richard I of England conquered Cyprus in 1198, and Cyprus remained a Crusader kingdom until 1489, when Venice took over the island. Venice lost the island in 1573 to the Ottoman Empire.
Crete was held by Byzantium from 961 to 1204. Venice conquered it during the Fourth Crusade. During a protracted struggle lasting from 1648 to 1718, the Ottoman Empire pushed Venice out of Crete.
The Byzantine Empire didn’t lose Crete or Cyprus to Muslim forces. Both Cyprus and Crete were conquered by Crusader forces. Then, Venice lost them to Muslim forces, not the Byzantine Empire.
If Muslims were all the Byzantine Empire had to worry about, chances are that Constantinople would still be a Christian capital of a Christian empire. However, the Byzantine Empire not only had to deal with Muslim invasions, Bulgarian invasions, Serb invasions, Viking invasions, and civil strife caused by Byzantine versions of political correctness, but also Crusaders. Venice hijacked the Fourth Crusade so Crusaders would sack Constantinople instead of Muslim cities. That Venetian double cross is still a cause of resentment from Eastern Orthodox Christianity toward Roman Catholicism.
Before one sneers at the Byzantine Empire, one should stop to consider that the resurrection of Byzantine power in the centuries after the monumental betrayal of 1204 was not a minor feat. Although Byzantium did fall in 1453, it could well have fallen even sooner had it still been in the possession of western princes.
Re: 94 “Have a look at our Army today, the best one we’ve ever had. It’s full of non-WASPs who are culturally American and who have laid their butts on the line for this nation, not just talked about it.
I can tell Americans by the way they talk, walk and their attitudes, not by the color of their skin”
The idea of America is our culture and our race. “The land of the free and the home of the brave” may be just words to the Left and the Euros (I know I repeat myself), but they mean something to our soldiers, who are indeed the finest the world has ever seen.
Sylvia (#124):
You made me cry, too. [Also a good thing, as I rarely do that.] I think what you have been writing has touched everyone here.
Sounds like we’re at opposite ends of the Bay. (I’m on a mountain on the east side of Napa Valley, and am lucky enough to look over it every day.)
Jamie Irons
Josh @118: may I suggest you read the book, Original Intent by David Barton? It may help to dislodge the idea that “our founding fathers were Deists at most…”
I have often thought of the commenters here at BC that are atheists/agnostics and appreciate that they too hold great respect for truth, despite their secularist views. Personally, I think that you guys are closer to conversion than you realize
!
I cannot agree with your assertion that our current POTUS is a great believer in religion.
Darn, wish I had more time. This has been another one of Wretchards fascinating threads.
Stephen @ 117 said:
I think that will change once the full-spectrum of The Juan/Won’s dysfunctionality becomes known. It may become pejorative.
Oops, in reading further I find LOTM said it just as well if not better. I will let what I say stand, tho’.
RagnarD (#132):
For some reason I have been given editing privileges for this post of yours. Naturally I did not take advantage of them! (Nothing needed editing, IMHO…)
But I have read here that this has happened with other posters and posts.
I wonder if our host can remedy this problem?
Jamie Irons
Jaime – This seems to be an undocumented feature of the WP comments plug-in that PJM uses. Not much wretchard can do to remedy. And when the moderators are off doing things like living life the entire site slows down and gets a bit … hinky.
No harm, no foul.
Re: 133 It looks to me like the permission to edit a submitted post for 6 minutes (or whatever) after it original submission is global, that is, it is not tied to the name of the user who submitted the post. Even if it were tied to the name, I could edit one of your posts by inputting the name Jamie Irons within the 6 minute window.
The thing to do is to tie the editing permissions to the IP address of the person who originally submitted the post. I think PJ uses WordPress (?) as the blogging software and I don’t know how much it can be customized.
Here are some facts about the demographic compostion of the military.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda08-05.cfm
http://www.nationalreview.com/owens/owens100402.asp
Think of the learning that would occur if we all mimicked Papa Ray each day in our interactions with others.
Folks would begin to experience multiple encounters with this new breed of conversationalists.
Couldn’t hurt!
Jamie could even slip in a little auto-suggestion @work!
Karen Yvonne/131
Darn. Not sure where I’d fit being self-proclaimed deist and agnostic.
In my definition agnosticism mean: cannot be determined (falsified) either way by the prevalent deliberation mechanisms. (Other mechanisms/methods exist, though)
Thus, there is no contradiction.
Listen friends, and mark my words in this moment and this hour–
God is jealous for his name for his name is jealous.
Nor is this a charming flower to set before a man
nor one of his commands.
Yet, without Jesus, this is more than we can love as we desire peace,
and less than we can know as we desire joy.
For the sacred fire
that makes us liars–
I mean, that separates speech from dreams,
and separates our flesh from the future–
is God’s power manifested.
So, in the year and the hour– for his sake, invest your desire in Jesus.
Follow his holy fire for right now. Right now he intercedes for us in heaven!
Some will say we are people of the way.
We are people of the way.
We praise his holy name
Yahweh.
I am who I am.
I cause things to be.
I am the first cause of creation.
We praise his holy name
Elohym.
And say “Thank you Jesus for your precious blood–
better, so much better than the blood of Abel.
How then should we pray?
I pray bless me a lot oh God.
Show me your kingdom and righteousness
in such a way that my thoughts words and deeds
reflect your wisdom and power–
and that– for the sake of your honor and glory.
So that I will live in your presence
in this life and the next.
For your name sake
Let me hear my children praise your name
And their children too.
I pray all this in Jesus name.
Amen.
Years ago, returning from a reunion in New Haven (Branford ’72, but I had transferred in from JE in my second sophomore year…) I engaged in a conversation with my seatmate on the plane. Somehow the conversation turned to an extraordinary experience from my 12th summer. My brother’s guitar teacher, who was Hopi/Hawaiian, took us and our mom along with her for two weeks on the Hopi reservation. The Hopi community consists of a small number of villages perched on 600-foot mesas smack in the middle of the sprawling Navajo reservation, a few hours from Flagstaff, Arizona.
My seatmate – now, this was about 1977, so I might have details crummed up – said something along the lines of this: that he or his brother had just spent a year or two living on the Navajo reservation and serving as a doctor there.
Hmmm. Does that sound familiar to anyone in this forum?
It is a shame I can’t remember details…
I know this sounds off topic, but I’m trying a longshot to connect with others who comment here.
I can be reached for offline conversation thru apsnyblog.blogspot.com
O/T Did this next thread about scaring the monkey get the plug pulled by PJM? I just tried to post and was told it was closed for comments.
And here I had wonderful idea about cutting off all aid (read: FOOD) to all nations that elected to disregard the recommended air security precautions.
Hunger motivates only second to Fire.
I fear Josh and Marie Claude misuderstand the American Founding and First Amendment.
For the most part the Founders were religious by the standards of their day (Jefferson and Franklin less so than most others). Several colonies had been founded by religious dissidents (Plymouth, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island), and preventing government from establishing religion was intended to let people freely practice whatever religion they wished. It was a much, much later idea that religion should be removed altogether from the public sphere.
The French Revolution, as I understand it, on the other hand, was truly opposed to the clerical estate that had allied with the nobility to run the country to the detriment of the growing bourgoisie and the peasants. A much different history leading to a different result, although there has been some convergence as the US has moved to remove or weaken public acknowledgement of religious practice, making itself more like France.
Still, I would argue that compared to a sharia-based theocracy we are threatened with, the US and France have far more in common than separates us.
Marty, we have had five constitutions since our Revolution,
I believe America, still one.
Even the first constitution didn’t deny religions, Jews became french citizens, protestants remained protestants, only the abusive and corrupted clergy was removed, by a pseudo cult for a supreme being, that look more like Deism (dear to Voltaire)
As soon as revolution was over, traditionnal catholiscism recovered its privileges. It’s only in 1904 or 1905 that separation of the state affairs with church occured.
Also I wanted to comment on whiskey’s refelexion in the other thread
People do not fight and die for a Constitution, or the idea that all men are created equal, or the idea of America or France or the United Kingdom. That’s a fantasy.
Then what is freedom for you ?
what was WW2 ?
what were independance wars ?
of course we don’t fight for one abstract idea of our country, but for it justice system, where individuals are equal in right, and naturally for our borders.
Nowadays, our democraties fight mostly defensive wars, against tyranical powers. Before, king made mostly wars for conquests, and some times, defensive wars.
our first war for liberty was launched by our revolutionnaires against a monarchies coalition, that wanted to bring back monarchy and its privileges into France.
colonial wars of conquests happened of course, but the result is limited in time, one century, for Hitler, 6 years !
There seems to me to be a good opportunity, right now, for a very expensive (to the enemy) gesture. Dubai is rather proud of having the tallest building in the world by a considerable margin. (Of course, they would have more reason for such pride if the designers and just about all the workers on it weren’t foreign.)
Just finished and inaugurated with a fireworks party, and the entire world has its eyes on it. What a good time to take it away from them. A couple of submarine-launched conventional Tomahawks should be enough. And the accompanying message? “We in the West are sick of your violence and your intolerance. You took two of our buildings off us and we have now taken one of yours. Start growing up, and stop acting like spoilt brats with guns, or the next target is the Kaabah.” And if they don’t take the hint? Then the next Tomahawk is a TLAM-N.
Behind Afghan Bombing, an Agent With Many Loyalties
The former official said that the fact that militants could carry out a successful attack using a double agent showed their strength even after a steady barrage of missile strikes fired by C.I.A. drone aircraft.
“Double agent operations are really complex,” he said. “The fact that they can pull this off shows that they are not really on the run. They have the ability to kick back and think about these things.”
—
Sam said…
A U.S. intelligence official said the CIA constantly tries to guard against double agents. “Preventing the double cross is something that is as old as the agency itself,” the official said.
A former senior intelligence official said that al Qaeda had attempted to run double agents against the CIA prior to 9/11, but such efforts appeared to trail off after the 2001 offensive in Afghanistan that drove them into the tribal regions of Pakistan.
“When you’re on the run, you don’t have time to sit back and run a double agent.”
Double Agent
O/T RE: The chicken choking on monkey meat, of the next thread…,
I would suggest that the 6’7″ muscle man is us, and under the democrat regime, we have forgotten or foregone our role so instead of becoming a source of sober stability and or civility, we have become baby huey like, and therefore ready to believe any and everything told to us.
It is I suppose a false hope to believe the result will be the same as in portrayed in the cartoon.
Irrational, instinctive patriotism, much like affection to one’s blood relatives, and religiosity, always were and ever would be much more potent emotional impulses than any abstract political ideas. That is why attempts to supress ethnicity-based patriotism and public expression of religious sentiments, so obvious in continental Europe and especially in France, not so strong in Britain, and in USA promoted only by hard-left, are suicidal in global battle against Islam and destructive to social order and morality. Victory or defeat in this battle crucially depend on ability of Europeans to return to their religious roots, restore their ethnic identities and get rid of all isanities introduced into european culture by French revolution and various forms of progressivism. At least, Général de Gaulle understood this right.
FC – 146
Dubai may be the only decent thing going in the Middle East. It is easier to trade with traders than it is to have peace with agitators. It is easier to have truce with somebody who lives in a glass house. The lowest human emotion may well be jealousy and it would be a pretty sh!tty world to go around knocking down each other’s proud edifices. A civilized world couldn’t otherwise exist.
See why we don’t have nice things?
146. Fletcher Christian: A couple of submarine-launched conventional Tomahawks should be enough. And the accompanying message? “We in the West are sick of your violence and your intolerance. You took two of our buildings off us and we have now taken one of yours. Start growing up, and stop acting like spoilt brats with guns, or the next target is the Kaabah.” And if they don’t take the hint? Then the next Tomahawk is a TLAM-N.
That’s the stupidest post I have ever seen on the Belmont Club, and I’ve seen a lot of Habu posts. The message is “grow up” and “we’re sick of violence” and you take down a building in the most Westernized, decadent emirate in the Gulf?
Obama fights wars by “sending messages”. Clinton thought he won in Serbia by breaking a lot of Milosumbitches’ stuff. Al Qaeda lives in caves and go around dressed as women to avoid Predator drones, they don’t have a lot of “stuff” to break, and the skyscraper in Dubai isn’t on the list of Al Qaeda stuff.
This is how you win the war: Pull all our bases back from overseas and set them in a belt between San Diego and El Paso with a mile between each one. Every night, the troops patrol that mile between the bases for anyone coming north and incarcerate them, no “catch and release”. You blacklist Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, putting their whole countries on “No Fly” lists. Exceptions to be granted on a case-by-case basis. Then Al-Qaeda can knock themselves out building training camps for suicide bombers.
Teresita,
You beat me to it.
Fletcher, usually you serve-up a pretty decent brew at Richard’s “parties.” But, since we’re all drinking from the same bottle here, you might bring a wine with fewer sulfites in it next time.
Just sayin’s all.
I hope nothing is wrong, technically or otherwise… “Kill the chicken” thread has comments closed on the same day of publication… Is anything amiss?
The war is not with Al Qaeda. Any more than WWII was with the Afrika Korps.
And the message would be that we don’t care whether a country calls itself progressive or not – if it calls itself Islamic it’s the enemy.
Sure, it’s the most decadent place in the Gulf. It’s where the hypocritical bastards who run Saudi Arabia go to party. Or at least one of the places.
“It is easier to trade with traders than it is to have peace with agitators.” True. It is easier still to ignore people whose vile and disgusting habits are confined to their own kind – as they were before oil was discovered in the Gulf.
The rulers of Saudi (for example) are not entitled to their oil money. They didn’t earn it, and they have been using it for fifty years to subvert and kill their benefactors. Time to take it off them – and their country too, while we’re about it.
The war is with Islam. And the sooner we in the West realise that, and act on it, the fewer people – including Muslims – are going to have to die.
Marie Claude quoted something Whiskey had written:
“Also I wanted to comment on whiskey’s refelexion in the other thread
“People do not fight and die for a Constitution, or the idea that all men are created equal, or the idea of America or France or the United Kingdom. That’s a fantasy.”
It is *not* a fantasy, and I must agree with Marie, this is one of the most surprisingly false statements Whiskey has made. I don’t doubt that he believes this, which probably illustrates the wide divide between his thinking and the vast majority of Americans, past and present. (especially past)
I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading letters and first person accounts of the American Civil War – not novels or later generations understandings, but the actual voices of the men who fought, in their own words. The best are the letters that men wrote home to tell their families what they were doing and why they were doing it. These are far from uncommon, in fact most soldiers referred to this in almost every letter they wrote. (They also discuss it and their campfire conversations about the topic in their journals, which many kept) The first impression, sadly, is that the average 19th century American with only a few years of formal education was still on average far more literate and well-spoken than most college graduates are today. (anyone who does research for themselves will find this confirmed hundreds of times over) The realization that good writing was once common and is now becoming a lost art is part of what got me hooked in looking at these. (it’s also why I read this blog)
But what is really striking is that over and over, these men on *both* sides were willing to give their lives for an ideal – on the north, for the concept of “The Union” and an inviolable Constitution (by far the most common motivator, rather than equality) and on the South, for the idea of States Rights and an anger at northerners telling them what to do. (but not to preserve slavery, very few southern soldiers were slaveholders) In their own words, this is what they say over and over that they are willing to die for. Over a million men willingly became casualties for those ideals – today, I constantly wonder, even with our much greater population, how could we find so many men willing to die for an ideal? Our forefathers did. There is a constant refrain in their writings – their beliefs were more important to them than their lives.
Something else that I found almost shocking, and contrary to my expectations, is that in their letters most of them understood that they were going to die along the way, yet still they did it anyways. They hoped to live, but they did not fear death and they accepted it as a likely outcome. At Cold Harbor, where Grant lost 30,000 men in an afternoon, his entire army before the ill-fated charge wrote their names on pieces of paper and pinned them to the inside of their uniforms, so that their bodies could be identified and sent back to their families. Knowing that they were about to die, they still went willingly. Over and over, soldiers on both sides charged into their deaths knowingly, because they believed their ideals demanded it of them. For the South it wasn’t just Pickett’s charge but Franklin, Tennessee, where the entire officer corps of Hood’s Army virtually committed suicide for the chance of one last victory near the end of the war. People who said that 9/11/01 was “the worst day in American history” have no idea how many times America (combining both sides) took losses of 20,000 to 30,000 men in a single day in that war. And both sides kept on coming back for more.
Over and over when I read these accounts, I am left with a feeling of astonishment and humility – could I ever be capable of that level of devotion to an ideal? Could anyone in our self satisfied, solipsistic generation? I know there are some, and many of those already wear the uniform proudly. But I doubt that even many of them go into service expecting to die as so many of my forefathers did. I can only be thankful that I have been lucky enough in my life to never yet have been put to the test that so many who preceded me have taken on so willingly.
Serguey,
Irrational, instinctive patriotism, much like affection to one’s blood relatives, and religiosity, always were and ever would be much more potent emotional impulses than any abstract political ideas.
That is why attempts to supress ethnicity-based patriotism and public expression of religious sentiments, so obvious in continental Europe and especially in France, not so strong in Britain, and in USA promoted only by hard-left, are suicidal in global battle against Islam and destructive to social order and morality. Victory or defeat in this battle crucially depend on ability of Europeans to return to their religious roots, restore their ethnic identities and get rid of all isanities introduced into european culture by French revolution and various forms of progressivism. At least, Général de Gaulle understood this right.
Wrong for us, the only country that resists the most to shariah is France, because of our authoritian republican values, immigrants are obliged to conform to our public system of education, speak our language, to comply to our justice system, (anti veil law, and soon anti burka, foreign imans are obliged to attend french language and french laws courses).
What does make you think that we are doomed is that our suburbans burn cars, but this practice refers more to our remnent instinct of contestation, manifesting is one of our national sports, and suburbans are very french in that sense, they manifest in a way too, it’s pecifically a teens protestion, against the administration that has ghettoised them in a place where 40% of unemployment is still not eliminated. These youngs don’t request any religious right, but a future, where they will be normal citizens, be they muslims, but not only, also poor afticans, poor asians, poor europeans. These are strikes much more like unions’ were in the late 19 th century and first half 20th’s.
Naturally, these youngs express hate against France too, that relegated them there, though you only see teens doing so, because up to last years, and to a certaint grade,in 2009 too (depends on the mayor’s will to apply security rules, most of these suburb cities have a socialist mayor), teens weren’t tried in court, only at 18 years old.
Now you think that these images represent the whole muslim community ? only 10% !
but medias like to focus on “scoops”, the biggest part of our muslims are integrated, is highly educated, is muslim without practicing its religion like most of the french are catholic without practicing it too, our cement is republican values.
Sarkozy has a few muslims ministers, and they are more french than the majority of us in defensing our constitution, I must say that they are majoritarely women, but in Universities, professors, concils for businesses, communication, policies, lots of laic muslim men are involved.
What is the threat ? the global internationalist jihad, like marxism was in another time. and sure in front of a youth desesperance, the sirens of their crusade against the west that had condamned this youth to not enjoy a place in our society, have some sympatisan ears.
So, our deal is how we can manage that these youngs find a place in our society, for you can’t kill them because they are muslims, it’s contrary to our constitution.
“ethnic identities” is a non sense, since our country existed it had always been with immigration too, check the names of our citizens !
#155 wws: May be, their unshakable belief in afterlife has something to do with their resolve?
MC @ 145–You’re right. Sorry, my previous post tried to compress too much history into too few words. French Revolutionary anti-religion was really more against the Catholic hierarchy who had been allied with the nobility, and the argument if you will between clericalism and anti-clericalism was not really decided until the Dreyfuss Affair ca. 1905 as you point out.
I would still suggest that comparing government’s stance vis a vis religion actross France, USA and most Islamic countries, France and the USA have much in common and both are threatened by the Islamists.
FC @146 and commenters thereon–
People who “send a message” usually just send the message that they won’t really act.
And why Dubai? Cairo, Mecca, Riyadh, if a message is what you want to send… tho I really don’t see the point. Doing something outrageous and stupid sends an entirely different “message” than you intend, anyway.
Don’t send a message. Take meaningful action that advances your self-interest, and be resolute in maintaining it. The subtext (“message” if you will) is that you won’t be dissuaded from taking care of yourself, and maybe “there’s more where that came from.” But not just stupid expressions, real actions with tangible benefits.
wws @ 155–WW2, as well. Despite Spielberg’s ambivalence in Saving Private Ryan, letters from the combat zone in WW2 (including from my uncle who was in Torch, Anzio and Bastogne) often express the need to deal with Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo so they can libetrate the enslaved people, and then come home to a country no longer threatened.
153. Morton Doodslag
“I hope nothing is wrong, technically or otherwise… “Kill the chicken” thread has comments closed on the same day of publication… Is anything amiss?”
I doubt if anything is amiss.
Wretchard is an enigmatic chap who will brook only so much critiquing of his thread before he pulls the plug.
You, no doubt, were not blogging here say five or six years ago when he simply shut down completely. That was back in the day when he was only a name, no picture and he wasn’t under the thumb of whatever edicts the Pajamas blog cartel dictates to it’s members.
That shut down gave rise to The Elephant Bar Blog where perhaps 70% of the BC contributors migrated. It enjoyed a good following for many years but in the last three of four years has been reduced to perhaps five or six regular contributors.
There is a regnant philosophy on the ‘net that even some contributors follow. The blog owner is allowed to beat you and you’re suppose to sit back and take it, since it is “his/her” blog. My thinking has always been that they are the owner/hosts and as such are offering a forum and should treat the ones that make them a success, the contributors, with courtesy and respect.
I believe W does a great job, but he is enigmatic in writing and deed.
Mad Fiddler (#142):
If you’re still around, I replied to you by email.
Jamie Irons
HABU: That shut down gave rise to The Elephant Bar Blog where perhaps 70% of the BC contributors migrated. It enjoyed a good following for many years but in the last three of four years has been reduced to perhaps five or six regular contributors.
About twice that, Habu, and about ten others who weigh in from time to time. It turned out Wretchard was just having temporary technical difficulties, but the folks who treated his blog like a chatroom wanted somewhere to land, and Deuce came through with the EB.
DOUG: The former official said that the fact that militants could carry out a successful attack using a double agent showed their strength even after a steady barrage of missile strikes fired by C.I.A. drone aircraft.
Thought experiment:
Replace the War on Terror with the War on Drugs. Replace the CIA with the DEA. Replace Afghanistan with Mexico. Replace the “militants” with drug cartels. Suppose a drug cartel “informant” manages to kill eight DEA agents after he promises to bring in a drug lord’s little black book of contacts.
Both the so-called “war on drugs” and the “war on terror” are billed as existential challenges, two wars where America’s very existence hangs in the balance. But that is just the rhetoric they use to keep funding both of them. In reality, both are the result of a political failure to seal the border with a patrolled fence. If the fate of American civilization really depended on keeping marijuana and Yemeni terrorists out of the country, then the first thing you do is supplement America’s natural defence of two wide oceans with a controlled land border. But no, “Don’t go there Teresita, we don’t ask people if they are citizens, it’s racist.”
FC – 154
I guess this is where you and I and others disagree. Your approach is to impugn a quarter of the whole world and if you’re Whiskey make that three quarters. Divide and concur is a more successful approach and while I agree with your assessment of Saudi Arabia, I would be no more inclined to make war against them at this point anymore than I would Dubai. If I had to put my finger on it I’d say Tehran is the center of our Islamic problem and if they were to become a smoldering crater in the desert then I don’t think we’d have much problem elsewhere. In short, your approach is all stick and no carrot. The US Marines, who have some success fighting the worst of Islam, say “Marines – no better friend, no worse enemy”. I’m with that too. It’s called multispectral warfare and it may not be glamorously violent but it is effective.
Habu – 159
I remember that pretty well too. For a year straight we got lectured by Desert Rat about how the war in Iraq was lost and if we thought any different we were all idiots. Furthermore, he was a successful millionaire and newspaper owner he could put us in contact with his banker to prove it, therefore all of us idiots had no right to offer an opinion, over and out. 2164th was only a little more sufferable but righteous indignance is not fun to have crammed down your throat on a daily basis.
Border control is a good idea, but it can not replace actual destructure of enemy. “Fortress America” does not exist anymore, the very idea of American experiment is based on an open society. It is impossible to make USA another copy of the late Soviet Union with a lot of barbed wire along all borders, without free travel and millions foreigners making legal buisness with and in USA. While anywhere exist terrorist training camps for hundreds potential suicide bombers, America can not prevent devastating attacks, and nuclear terrorism is only a question of time. Iran is behind many of terrorist acts, it has special forces dedicated for this purpose. It is really a war, and denial of this treat will not help.
so Sergey, it’s a defensive war for your principles
163. Annoy Mouse
Oh yeah , I remember. Desert Rat was the biggest RINO I’ve ever had the displeasure of coming into contact with. He always claimed otherwise (at least when I was there) but it never passed the Duck test. He also loved to “hold court” and preach to the rest of us.
Teresita was a very valuable contributor. We had our differences which I took too far but Ms. T knows a good deal. Sometimes, as it should be in any forum, they’ll be various viewpoints but she’s good ….so I’d go with her correction on the number of contributors that still visit the Elephant Bar since I only make about one comment there a year now…. however the “technical difficulties” aspect at BC…hmmm….they sure lasted a long time.
Now if you want to blog at Elephant B you can eventually work your way up to Golden Crested Cock-a-doodle with gold tipped wing and a Fasces.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/01/censorship-google-blocking-negative-searches-related-to-islam.html
does that has something to do with what A.S.site says
Annoy Mouse:
About your contention that eliminating the Iranian Mullahocracy would largely eliminate all our difficulties:
I gotta say, “Close, but no cigar”.
Were “Islam” THE problem, you might be spot on.
However, “Islam” is a (perhaps the) common thread, but not THE problem.
What we have here is an existential struggle between cultures that nurture species survival
and cultures which (intentionally or otherwise) necessitate species extinction.
In the Mideast, the dysfunctional elements are
currently divided between “Arab” and “Persian”. Neither can be ignored.
First priority has to be given to Arab, simply because there are a lot more of them
and they sort of surround everybody else including the Persian. Hence the invasion and (finally) successful occupation of Iraq has given us a spreading cultural inkspot in the ME.
Without this advantage, counter-Persian efforts would be inherently crippled. As it is, our presence in Arabia has given the good-guy Persians a fighting chance in spite of their being being ignored/shafted by the
Obamaroids. Yes, taking out Saddam and others did give Hamas and Hezbollah greater prominence but not greater capabilities.
On balance, we continue to enjoy an enhanced but precarious ME position.
Now if the Good Lord Is Willing And The Crick Don’t Rise, our Persian insurgents will prevail and a physical threat will abate. The Persian-sponsored organizations, like the Al Qaeda-sponsored ones will have reduced rations. All well and good. The basic struggle though will go on for another generation or two as terrorism can get by on
very little nutrition.
Point is, there appears to be no magic bullet
at our disposal. We have to wear the bad guys down a little at a time.
Teresita: About your isolationist proposal:
Close, but no Buchanan fer you.
Against the kind of infiltration capabilities
“they” have, you do have some tactical soundness. However those defenses are no more
leakproof than are less dramatic border measures
and cannot, say again, CANNOT, eliminate the need to go abroad, deny sanctuary, grab balls and thereby motivate hearts and minds in the right direction.
Habu — Thanks for the history/reminder. I was a sometimes reader perhaps that long ago, but only very intermittently; I don’t remember the site closing down at all, must have missed that one. Elephant Bar sounds familiar, but that’s also a restaurant chain here in Los Angeles — so maybe I’m confusing the two. I remember reading several sites in those early days before things started to fracture, like smalldeadanimals, littlegreenfootballs, JihadWatch/DhimmiWatch and other sites which I no longer visit, all of which were confronting Islamic Jihad. Ironically I think I first heard about WretchardtheCat reading that once and future tool, Andrew Sullivan in 2004-5. Since then I’ve been a huge fan. BC, Shrinkwrapped, and JihadWatch are the best blogs on the subject at hand, and I find the comments by posters at Shrink/BC to be just about the best on the web, bar none. I posted thousands of comments under another nic in those days at all of these sites (except for LGF — CJ’s bizarro registration scheme of opening up registration for arbitrary minutes along with his insane “lizaroid army” shtick always totally put me off — my intuition about that guy proved right…) A few years ago I stumbled upon my nom de guerre and have stuck with MD ever since. Amazing seeing how the core of the anti-Jihad blogosphere has evolved. It’s also heartening to see some of the themes, profiling, the real danger of Islamic Jihad, the tenets of terrorism enshrined within Islam becoming more and more mainstream. It sometimes appears we’re moving backward, but when you compare the dialoge taking place in the aftermath of Kurt Westergaard’s recent assault, or the panty bomber and Fort Bragg — our nation has made some remarkable headway. At least some in the media, and some politicians are clearly beginning to listen, though it’s taken far too long, and we’re barely starting to learn about our heinous enemy.
Thanks Dave. I was merely making a specious argument as to why we shouldn’t declare war on the UAE or bomb the largest building in the world. Maybe I should have said; “With all of the stimulus money we should build an even bigger tower in place of the WTC.”
I think someone has already said – Al Qaeda would *love* to blow up the Dubai tower, that’s the physical manifestation of everything they despise about the wealthy gulf elites who do business with the west. From what I understand, taking it out would proabably wipe out several British banks who fronted the money for it. Doesn’t make much sense to do AQ’s dirty work for them.
“Al Qaeda would *love* to blow up the Dubai tower”
I’m not so sure. For our consumption the Arabs like to pretend that they are as much a target of al Qaeda as the West is. This is demonstrably false. There have been scant few attacks directly against the Saudi Imperium, or the other satrapies of Islam. Targeting against Arab oil infrastructure has been feckless and almost non-existent. They have had ample opportunity to strike at the potentates and property of Islam but they have not. I think al Qaeda is establishing itself as the pure Islamic Reformation/Revolution, on the lines of the Iranian Shiite revolution, deeply religious in their motivations, but certainly not above this veil of tears.
Saddam Hussein also tried to confiscate and dominate Arab oil. With Kuwait’s 15% share of proven global reserves added to Iraq’s ~25% share, had he succeeded he would have controlled 40% of global reserves, dominated control of another 30% quite easily. It makes good sense that Osama’s goal is little different in that regard, except his ambitions are bigger.
If al Qaeda’s Jihad succeeds Osama or his designate would become the Kalifa of Islam, King of the World. I believe that is a plank of al Qaeda’s ultimate goal.
Dave: Point is, there appears to be no magic bullet
at our disposal. We have to wear the bad guys down a little at a time.
How many bad guys do we take out in a year in Pakistan with drones? A hundred? Every day, more bad guys are born in one Muslim city like Cairo or Kabul, bad guys we will have to take out in fifteen to twenty years when they’re old enough to get a plane ticket or hold an RPG. A brand new training camp is constructed in Somalia and Yemen for every “high-level al-Qaeda operative” we take out with a Predator.
…go abroad, deny sanctuary, grab balls and thereby motivate hearts and minds in the right direction.
Go abroad, where every gallon of gas burned up in a US Marine vehicle in Afghanistan costs $400 to deliver. Deny sanctuary? Our Marine guards have to hand these scumbags in prison their Q’u'r’a'n wearing white gloves lest the Pure Words of Allah be contaminated by the filth of the Infidel, and you think we’re going to deny them the sanctuary of their Mosque/Command & Control Bunker?
Josh @ 71 & ff:
Some of your assumptions about the U.S. are seriously distorting your views, especially those about the 50s and 60s.
For instance, in the 50s some 25% of all HS grads went on to college – so considerably more than the 10% of HS students you mentioned had to “learn something” in order to do that.
Blue collar workers were not 50% of the population either, but much less. The new, heavily college-educated middle class of the 50s was over 50% of the population. While some of them were blue collar, so that there was some overlap, they were not the same groups.
The basic driver of the decline in the U.S. culture, which started during the 50s, then accelerated mostly in the the 60s, was not education. Rather, it was what happened to the basic, 2-parent family. That is shown in the sharp worsening in most social indicators, which have not improved much to this day. Those were the enormous increases since 1960 in rates of violent crime, illegitimacy, divorce, teen suicide, addictions, abuse, fatherlessness, cohabitation instead of marriage, gang activities, worsening education, growing illiteracy, increasing psychological illnesses among teens, etc., etc., etc.
Those who don’t like to take time to check out the actual data can always simply ask one or more of the many better-educated old geezers around about what actually happened in the 50s and 60s. It’s no secret to them. And it can be even more interesting, as well as quicker, than reading some real history.
Others here have effectively responded to your misapprehensions about the Founders being mostly Deist. It is surprising to see so many serious misunderstandings of U.S. history here on BC, and to note the effects it has on someone’s thinking.
Best wishes.
Teresita, Dahlink: Since when are new-borns bad guys? Since when is it written that those born today will try to kill us in the future?
Since when is it written that the culture of death cannot be replaced with the culture of life?
Can you explain to me how not killing members of Al-Qaeda will stop the construction of training camps?
$400 a gallon gas? Show me the credit card statements.
A sanctuary for the enemy is one where their
folkways (aka culture) gets to exclude ours
and operate as an unchallenged monopoly.
Just sticking our noses in there guarantees there will be no such monopoly.
And if you want to make yourself useful, try to MyCroft ways and means of running things at low monetary cost and even at an operational profit.
Start with Bridger, Jim.
GerryP#175:
The best book on the subject of American cultural decline since 1950s is Francis Fukuyama “The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order”. Not much about the history, but sociology and moral statistics, with lots of factual material, thoughtfully analysed. And yes, these data confirm your point that decline in all aspects of culture, including education, begins with disruption of two-parent family. Statistics is very convincing.