The NYT’s Ross Douthat eloquently catalogs three lessons learned from the Libyan kinetic military event that might have been gleaned from a trip to any used car salesman. Before buying a car, look under the hood. He writes, “First, judging by events on the battlefield, its fighters probably won’t be able to topple Qaddafi’s government unless we find a way to significantly step our support.”
Next, make sure the engine works and it’s not really being pushed by someone in back on the test drive. “Second, we’ve already offered them more support than anyone realized, since it turns out that the C.I.A. has been assisting the rebel leadership since well before the United Nations resolution that officially justifies our involvement in this conflict”.
Lastly, take reasonable precautions to ensure the car’s not hot before you buy it. Douthat writes, “and third, the jihadist presence within the rebellion, while not dominant by any means, may nonetheless be real and meaningful — and growing apace, perhaps, as the civil war drags on.” Otherwise you might have trouble down the pike. Like Secretary Robert Gates, who Wired says, may already be sensing something bad and edging towards the exit. Not that you’d blame him.
In an attempt to reassure skeptical legislators on the Libya war, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the U.S. commitment to the conflict is already scaling down now that NATO has assumed command. When it actually ends, he left unsaid.
“Our role has already begun to recede,” Gates told the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Buck McKeon. “We will not be taking an active part in strike activities and we believe our allies can sustain this for some period of time.” He and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to estimate how long the war will last.
But Gates said that the U.S. is now in a “support role,” providing ships, planes and equipment for “electronic warfare, aerial refueling, lift, search and rescue and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support” missions. Mullen added that “starting today” the U.S. contribution to the war will be “significantly reduced,” anticipating cuts in deployments to come “fairly dramatically over the next few days.”
Is Gates saying that whether the rebels need it or not, it’s time to ramp down, that losing is an option? That question is only important if winning was ever a goal. But it never was. The object of the kinetic military event, in case nobody remembers, was humanitarian assistance. Victory is not a word in that lexicon.
Other sources suggest that Gates may actually resign if forced to employ ground troops. The LA Times reports that “in his strongest language since the U.S. deployed warplanes to protect Libyan civilians, Gates ruled out sending any U.S. forces to Libya “as long as I’m in this job” — a viewpoint that he said President Obama shared. But he admitted that the rebels needed help to withstand the assault from Kadafi’s forces, even with NATO warplanes overhead.”
Hot Air writes of Gates, “he didn’t use the R-word but it’s easy to read between lines as broad as these. A vignette from this morning’s House hearings on Libya, in which a glum SecDef gamely tried to choke down the ‘turd sandwich’ currently being served by his boss”. But people of quality never eat anything of the sort. It’s probably the third sandwich of high quality pâté, one several delectable kinds, which we have neither the smarts nor the sophistication to degustate. For the uninitiated, there is the pâté de foie gras of France and the more earthy pâté en terrine. Gates is probably sampling the pâté en turdrine which is a Potomac specialty.
Ross Douthat notices a disturbing tendency among some rebels to go out and get medieval on the population. Quoting a Time report, Douthat observes that revenge can happen on the battlefield. This would not have been news to William Tecumseh Sherman who once said, “I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers … it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated … that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.”
In other words, “war is hell”. But that word is not in the R2P lexicon either. Neverthless Time reported:
After pushing back into Bin Jawad on Tuesday afternoon, the rebels quickly set about searching the streets and homes of the town for hidden troops, mercenaries and traitors. “Alley to alley, house to house,” shouted one man at the fighters as trucks veered down Bin Jawad’s unpaved, bumpy side streets. He used Gaddafi’s own words — an infamous threat from an earlier speech that is often repeated in the rebel-held east. It’s meant to mock the Colonel; it’s even graffitied on the walls. But as the rebels tread into unwelcome territory, they seem to mean it in much the way Gaddafi did — in a kind of unrelenting and paranoid door-to-door campaign to rout their enemies.
Pretty soon it may be apparent to a fair number of people that civilians may actually die in the Libya operation; and said individuals will then forget they were for it before they were against it. The car they thought they were buying turned out to be something else. What was it supposed to be again? What is American policy in the Middle East again? Let’s ask Hillary.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – when asked about why we’re involving ourselves in Libya but not Syria – said this about Bashar Assad: “Many of the Members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.” For understandable reasons – more about that in a moment– those comments didn’t fly very well. So it was time for a retake.
Yesterday, when asked about her statement at a press conference, Secretary Clinton said, “Well, first, Jay [Solomon], as you rightly pointed out, I referenced opinions of others. That was not speaking either for myself or for the administration.”
Poor SOS Clinton, unable to speak for herself or the administration, yet speaking all the same as if possessed. Who is she channeling? And what then should one make of her latest declaration, put forth in the same briefing where she expressed ignorance of the origin of her own words. She said that the administration had made no decision to arm the rebels and yet was preparing to do so.
MODERATOR: Our first question is from Andy Quinn of Reuters.
QUESTION: Madam Secretary, in your meeting today with Dr. Jibril, I was wondering, were you able to make any concrete offers of assistance to them, either through turning over the $33 billion in Libyan funds that have been frozen in the United States, or in discussing possible arms transfers?
And Admiral Stavridis told the Senate today that intelligence shows flickers – he called – he used the word “flickers” of al-Qaida in the Libyan opposition. How great a concern is that? And is that part of the U.S. debate over any potential arms transfers to the transitional council?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Andy, first of all, we have not made any decision about arming the rebels or providing any arms transfers, so there has not been any need to discuss that at this point. We did discuss nonlethal assistance. We discussed ways of trying to enable the Transition National Council to meet a lot of their financial needs and how we could do that through the international community given the challenges that sanctions pose but recognizing that they obviously are going to need funds to keep themselves going. We discussed a broad range of matters and certainly their presentation, which some of you may have seen earlier today, as to what kind of civil society and political structure they are trying to build in Libya are exactly in line with what they have consistently said were their goals. Their commitment to democracy and to a very robust engagement with people from across the spectrum of Libyans is, I think, appropriate. We do not have any specific information about specific individuals from any organization who are part of this, but of course, we’re still getting to know those who are leading the Transitional National Council. And that will be a process that continues.
MODERATOR: Our next question is from Sam Coates of the Times of London.
QUESTION: Two things. First of all, is it your understanding that the UN Resolution 1973 makes it illegal to supply arms to the Libyan rebels, or do you think there could be some room for maneuver of that should it get to that?
And secondly, it’s quite striking when the rebels were talking earlier today, none of their names are public apart from three or four of the 30-odd of them, and they clearly have access – they have quite a lot of power and access to a lot of funds through oil money. Do you think that they should be more transparent in terms of declaring who they are, where they’re from, what kind of groupings they come from, and how they’re using the money?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, as to the first question, it is our interpretation that 1973 amended or overrode the absolute prohibition of arms to anyone in Libya so that there could be legitimate transfer of arms if a country were to choose to do that. As I said, we have not made that decision at this time.
The problems attending the Libyan operation were all straightforward and foreseeable. Khadaffi’s power rested on the road network, the water supply and the oil infrastructure. Take it from him and he fell. Let him keep them and he remained. But first you had to make up your mind about what you wanted to do. If you didn’t have a destination on the map, not the fastest car in the world would ever get you anywhere. Generations of ordinary military officers understood that kinetic military events were decided largely, if not primarily, by the superiority of conception; by setting the right objectives amid the chatter and confusion of the news.
The utter chaos which has overtaken the Libya operation proceeds primarily from the disorder in the leadership’s mind. The “smartest people in the world” haven’t got a clue what they are doing and that confusion reflects itself in the form of immense waste, gratuitous violence, aimless floundering and complete disorientation on the ground. America’s massive strength is dissipated in projects forgotten almost as soon as they are begun, in aimless marches and counter-marches, in flights of rhetoric no one takes seriously or even knows the provenance of.
“We are the people we’ve been waiting for.” Great. Now what?
The old Prussian Clausewitz argued that War was fundamentally an affair of the mind. You had to imagine where you wanted to go and to translate the political conception into the contours of the ground; into tons of supplies and into the faces of actual men. This first had to be clear in the leader’s mind before anything had a chance of happening. That is something that administration has signally failed to do. So now they are eating their pâté sandwich with great ceremony. And since Hillary doesn’t mind channeling others, maybe she can speak out the words of the long-dead contemporary of Clausewitz, Napoleon Bonaparte, who said: “If you are going to take Vienna, take Vienna”.
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it turns out that the C.I.A. has been assisting the rebel leadership since well before the United Nations resolution that officially justifies our involvement in this conflict
Well, I should certainly hope so.
Isn’t that what the CIA is for?
Covert and deniable aid to enemies of our enemies; it’s not like that’s something that should surprise anyone after the history of the agency since its inception.
Isn’t that what the CIA is for?
Covert and deniable aid to enemies of our enemies; it’s not like that’s something that should surprise anyone after the history of the agency since its inception.
In 2002, during the debate on whether we should have a DHS, I had a letter printed in the Washington Times where I said we didn’t need no stinkin’ DHS — we needed our various security assets doing their jobs well. I pointed out that had we had a comprehensive, ruthless, ongoing series of covert actions against terrorist networks and their accomplices since at least 1983, we wouldn’t need a DHS, nor might we have needed to go into Afghanistan or Iraq in a big way.
In 2002, during the debate on whether we should have a DHS, I had a letter printed in the Washington Times where I said we didn’t need no stinkin’ DHS — we needed our various security assets doing their jobs well. I pointed out that had we had a comprehensive, ruthless, ongoing series of covert actions against terrorist networks and their accomplices since at least 1983, we wouldn’t need a DHS, nor might we have needed to go into Afghanistan or Iraq in a big way.
Decisive covert action against terror cells is impossible because enemy supporters have done an end run in the political sphere. By extending their influence among the Western elites and most especially by writing prohibitions into the law, treaties, charters where they are not already enshrined in talking points, they have essentially made large scale covert action illicit.
By now the illegality of covert action at the scale needed to counter terrorism without war is so baked into the political discourse that it is a non-option. That leaves war — excuse me, kinetic military events — as the sole alternative. By abolishing covert action, the politicians have made landing the Marines the next step up the ladder from the diplomatic protest.
Now they have redefined the landing of Marines in terms of Responsibility to Protect. War itself is now illegitimate, unless authorized by the Security Council, though it is not called that, though it may be legitimate if a Nobel Peace Prize winner wages it, without reference to Congress. Or it maybe the idea of someone not the speaker nor even the administration. It may have come from the ouija board, but as long as the seance consists of the right people, it’s all fine.
The whole thing has been reduced to absurdity and it would not be surprising to find that not only has covert action become impossible, but even “kinetic military events” will share its fate. We have given everything but stupidity a bad name.
Those operatives of USG, running around on the ground in Libya have orders. Those orders come from somewhere in their food chain of USG. So far, a conceptual plan that might frame their orders is completely opaque to all of us observing from outside. Heck, those at senior levels of USG may not have a plan, which is easily believable. But someone does, and those folks on the ground are behaving as if they know what it is.
At one point in the situation comedy “Cheers”, Frazier and Diane are to be married in Italy. Diane leaves Frazier at the altar; eventually he tracks her down in a monastery, where she is working as a cook, and confronts her. Diane has betrayed him, with among others, the entire Italian national football team.
Frazier is outraged. He tells her “Now, when a player tries to kick the ball but misses and falls down, they call it a Frazier!”
Diane demurs- “That’s probably just a coincidence.”
Frazier explodes. “If he’s knocked out cold, they call it a Frazier Crane!”
This one was looking like a Frazier at first, but more and more it’s looking like a Frazier Crane.
Bill has certainly schooled the Mrs in obfuscation; The reason the first answer did not “fly well” was, she never answered the question of why the President/Obama Administration is involved in Libya but not Syria. The second time she answered, honestly, that she was only passing along scuttlebutt, and again never answered the question. But then, she knew no one in the press would make her. I have not picked up nor read an actual newspaper in over five years and this is why. Print news is dead.
“The object of the kinetic military event, in case nobody remembers, was humanitarian assistance.”
Not quite. The real object was to LOOK like you were providing humanitarian assistance while avoiding shaking hands with that tar baby called Regime Change. And all while carefully ignoring that the only real humanitarian assistance in such a situation is called Freedom.
The current administration is opposed to Regime Change not simply because it is a product line associated with W Bush and Company, but because they have enthusiastically embraced the idea that any one kind of government or any single set of beliefs is superior to any other. This is intrinsic to their Big Tent philosophy.
In the words of David Horowitz, describing an anti-war rally circa 2002, “Islamic fascists marched alongside lesbian feminists, despite the fact that the Islamists would have the lesbians killed if they gained the power to do so. Very high levels of cognitive dissonance is a requirement for the Left; indeed, one wonders if it is not an end in itself.
“If you are going to take Vienna, take Vienna”
That’s right !
As you have previously stated the current confusion is a natural consequence of an inability to admit a very simple truth. We engaged in war to preserve the flow of light crude to Italy and France. The potential disruption would have threatened their economies and thereby adversely affected US economy. (Today our Fed disclosed that a surprising number of European banks received funds in 2008.) They are tying themselves in knots to avoid the label of blood for oil. Not to imply there is anything wrong with engaging in war to protect US national interest including the economy
Not quite. The real object was to LOOK like you were providing humanitarian assistance while avoiding shaking hands with that tar baby called Regime Change. And all while carefully ignoring that the only real humanitarian assistance in such a situation is called Freedom.
True. But my difficulty is that I must now consciously interpret what leaders are saying as a lie in order to discern the truth. Worse, I am actually expected to interpret it as a lie by the very speakers themselves. They say the opposite of what they mean and we are meant to understand that this is so, while pretending that it is not.
Nothing can be taken at face value. Everything is written between the lines. Someone once argued that the real problem with politically correct speech is that we eventually assume everyone is lying or speaking in code. In reading the newspapers we search for subtle clues as to what is really being said. The text itself is useless.
But eventually things reach the point when people begin to believe their own lies. It’s like the man who corrupted the database so that he could manipulate his bank balance only to lose track and find that he really didn’t know whether someone else had played the same game with him.
After Marcos fell I was invited by Cory’s new national security adviser to tour an intelligence facility. I kept wondering where the files were. Gradually I realized that particular agency had none or very few. Nobody knew squat; most of the stuff they supposedly knew was made up or gleaned from hearsay. It was empty of real information. That was the secret.
first of all, we have not made any decision about arming the rebels or providing any arms transfers, so there has not been any need to discuss that at this point.
Now I understand. First we decide, then we discuss. Lenin took pains to appear more logical and democratic.
3. wretchard
The whole thing has been reduced to absurdity and it would not be surprising to find that not only has covert action become impossible, but even “kinetic military events” will share its fate. We have given everything but stupidity a bad name.
That pretty well sums it up.
2. Don Rodrigo
Bush the Younger created DHS as a way to punish the CIA. He couldn’t make them go away, only Congress has that legal authority. IIRC all he can do is reduce funding and that requires co-operation from Congress and I think he was limited to a 10% funding cut. Not real sure about that. I read it somewhere but I’ve never seen a second source. What you can do is “reorganise”.
It is the bureaucratic form of musical chairs. The boxes on the O-chart get shuffled. It drives bureaucrats crazy, since it becomes all out war to see who gets the most boxes on their O-chart. When it started the CIA had a good sized O-chart that was along side of the NSA O-chart. CIA had a seat at the table though, since they are cabinet level and NSA isn’t.
When the reorganisation was finished, the CIA was a small box in the DHS O-chart.
Serves them right. The CIA tried to stab a sitting POTUS in the back. Remember Rule One of taking down the King?
Rumor is that the DDO flew to Vail to meet with Soros and Lewis to plot against President Bush’s re-election. While not illegal, it is dangerous. Remember the CIA estimate that said Iran had stopped working it’s nuclear weapons program. Turns out that was a series of half truths spun into a lie. The CIA attacked a sitting President and failed to topple him. That is why they are a small box on somebody else’s O-chart.
3. wretchard
The whole thing has been reduced to absurdity and it would not be surprising to find that not only has covert action become impossible, but even “kinetic military events” will share its fate. We have given everything but stupidity a bad name.
That pretty much sums it up. PResident Obama has himself tied in a pretzel trying to bs his way around the fact it is HIS Regime Change His War of Choice!
Bought a new car recently and I got a complementary year of Satellite Radio. I checked out Left wing Talk. Gawd, they are foaming at the mouth over this Libya adventure. I don’t think he can count on that base any more. His lack of conviction is stunning!
Salaam eleikum Y’all!
1. It MIGHT be covert IF YOU DON’T announce that the CIA is on the ground.
If the President of the United States covertly attack another nation with the intention of attempting to overthrow a recognized government, he cannot be indignant if his country is attacked. If the President was an honorable man he would have gone to Congress and asked for a declaration of war. Whatever high ground the President may have had he is down in the dirt now.
Gates seems to have another way for us to exit without losing. We bomb the side we were supposedly on:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/world/africa/01civilians.html?_r=2&src=twrhp
Members of the NATO alliance have sternly warned the rebels in Libya not to attack civilians as they push against the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, according to senior military and government officials.As NATO takes over control of airstrikes in Libya and the Obama administration considers new steps to tip the balance of power there, the coalition has told the rebels that the fog of war will not shield them from possible bombardment by NATO planes and missiles, just as the regime’s forces have been punished.
“We’ve been conveying a message to the rebels that we will be compelled to defend civilians, whether pro-Qaddafi or pro-opposition,” said a senior Obama administration official. “We are working very hard behind the scenes with the rebels so we don’t confront a situation where we face a decision to strike the rebels to defend civilians.”
The warnings, and intense consultations within the NATO-led coalition over its rules for attacking anyone who endangers innocent civilians, come at a time when the civil war in Libya is becoming ever more chaotic, and the battle lines ever less distinct. They raise a fundamental question that the military is now grappling with: Who in Libya is a civilian?
….
Now, iirc, GWB was an evil moron for even considering Ahmed Chalabi as a political player in Iraq in a post-Saddam world. Here Obama and Hillary can’t find an Ahmed Chalabi with a geiger counter, so to speak.
16. Greifer
Sounds like Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder is running this war.
“The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!” Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment’s thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?
{5}I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life “in harmony with society,” as they say. ”
havel 1978
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165havel.html
Texans in the Houston area may remember the late Donald Morris, who wrote a foreign affairs column in the Houston Post for many years. He graduated from Annapolis just after WW II then transferred to the early CIA where he spent his early career in W Berlin, then most of the rest in Africa. He wrote one of the two definitive accounts of the Zulu nation, “The Washing of the Spears”. Upon retirement in 1972 he began writing his columns.
Pertinent to a point Wretchard makes above, Morris said for years in his columns and in person exactly that: you have to have an option between diplomacy and the USMC, an in-between that permits a level of force just proportional to the problem at hand.
In the present Looking-Glass world we have lost that option, mainly through fuzzy terminology which in turn is a perfect reflection of fuzzy thinking. It would be comical were it not so … Shermanian (?).
Re. 14. Marzouq the Redneck Muslim
“they are foaming at the mouth over this Libya adventure. I don’t think he can count on that base any more. His lack of conviction is stunning!”
I think you are mistaken: some of them already rumbling that their man was forced by evil such-and-such (chose you name) and they want to liberate him so he can do the right thing(s).
BTW, to give you an idea of true believers mind-set: old commies faced the firing squad with yells “Long live comrade Stalin”.
They all are extremely dangerous in their stupidity.
Greifer #16:
Brings to mind something Sen Barry Goldwater said about the situation in Nicaragua in the early 1980s “I have had briefings far beyond what the public has access to and I still have not figured out who the good guys are.”
The winning of the Cold War should have solved that problem. We should have been able to be honest about who we liked and who we did not. But Political Correctness and Moral Relativism became one of our most important exports. The Left fears certainty more than it fears any potential enemy. And of course there is all that money out there… A few quiet million into the right accounts buys a lot of even handedness and relativism.
16. Greifer
Is the new policy “Kill them all and let the UN sort it out”?
Isn’t that the same policy used in Rowanda, Dufar and the Congo?
Why is it new? OIL.
SOS Clinton:
“Sh_t On a Shingle” Clinton?
This is so Monty Python. Facing Moummar(He’s no ordinary rabbit)the Administration threatens with the Holy Handgrenade.” Three shall be the count and the count shall be three. Neither four nor five……”
Early on I called the Obama Doctrine the “Master Blaster” strategy. In the movie “Beyond Thunderdome,” Master is a smart dwarf who rides on big old stupid Blaster’s back and tells him who to stomp.
But in the Obama Doctrine, Master is the UN, EU, Arab League, and polite opinion while Blaster is big ol’ stupid USA. The theory is, with all those “organizations” riding Blaster’s back, how could he miss? ‘Cept in practice they tell him “Blast over there! No, over here! Blast our enemies! Blast your friends! Stomp those Trucks. No, not those. These. Stop. Start. Slow down. Go faster!” And so on. To the point where blaster is confused and wants to take sick days even though he just got off vacation.
And now we have reached the Laurel and Hardy moment. That’s were Barack Laurel and Hardy Clinton look at each other and say at the same time, “This is another nice mess you got me into!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_2XU88OUkM
@20
Solzhenitsyn talks about the people you describe in his work The Gulag Archipelago. I can’t remember the Russian name he gives them, but everyone in the camps knew a prisoner who was just astonished that they, a loyal servant of the Marxist regime, could end up doing twenty years in the gulag. “If only Comrade Stalin knew about my fate!” they would moan to anyone who would listen. “If only Comrade Stalin knew about these horrible camps, he would move heaven and earth to fix the problem!” In other words, Comrade Stalin was kept in the dark by horrible and evil forces of reaction. It certainly couldn’t have anything to do with him…he’s the great and dear leader! The Father of the People! The cognitive dissonance is disgusting but instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with the Leftist mindset.
“If only Comrade Obama understood the forces of reactionary evil surrounding him, forcing him into such horrific things like the Libyan excursion, he would definitely take action to make things right! Hope and Change!”
“how can i knock over the chessboard” thought obama, grimly eyeing the hmmm, whirring gears of of, hmm, oh heck writer’s block again.
***
Solzhenitsyn had a phrase he used from time to time: “the crowbar of history”.
I fear a ‘Blackhawk Down’ moment.
Guys,
This Libya thing stinks to high heavens. And the precedent it sets could prove fatal to the Westphalian system, America’s federal system and local policing from Orange County to Broward County.
Consider that,
1. Gaddafi, the international Left (which includes Hillary, Obama and Soros), and the Muslim Brotherhood are inter-operable. They are on the same team.
2. Feigned enmity is a favored circus trick of gangstas. Saddam Hussein would never work with AQ, right? America’s media clowns paraded that one daily to delegitimize Operation Iraqi Freedom, and to protect their team player from the US military.
3. Now the US military is aiding Al Qaida in Libya. Our own knife has been turned in our hand.
4. R2P is a dress rehearsal for international involvement in any autonomous nation where a select victims group faces arrest or injury at the hands of civil peace officers, whether the officers work for democratic or monarchic governments.
5. The international Left exonerated a black male named ‘Mumia’ for shooting a police officer in a major Pennsylvania city in the nineties, this despite multiple convictions in civil trials by juries “of his peers.” Obama’s cabinet and Hillary’s mentors sit in the pews of Mumia’s extra-judicial church.
Do you see the pattern? Do you perceive the threat here?
At least in Iraq’s case, Bush relied on several years worth of UNSC resolutions, US Congressional and Senate deliberations on regime change and Saddam’s own violations of his signed armistice after the Kuwait adventure. This posed no abstract threat to the Westphalian system nor to responsible Hellenistic democracies.
Obama’s doctrine, abetted by Hillary and the international Left, does though. It institutionalizes their “social justice” system extraterritorially, and poses a direct threat to any Westphalian nation which permits free association (ie. right to protest) but will not legislate the Left’s foreign jurisprudences into being.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: all it’ll take is one coordinated Facebook mob descending on a major American urban center with demands for “justice”, and the cops responding with tear-gas, rubber bullets or real bullets in a sustained, deliberate manner, and the Obama doctrine will come into play.
Might we see French Mirages firing missles into Topeka? How about Qatari and Iranian “peace-keepers” manning barricades in St. Louis? Well, Obama/Hillary have just set the precedent for both. They’ve delivered an enormous prize to their internationalist masters.
If convicted American cop-killer Mumia can get a street in Paris named after him (and he can), then there should be no doubt that Obama’s deniable Gaddafi gambit could sure as hell get played here.
Which group’ll be the first to try this game in the USA? The six-nation’s “Mohawk” tribe in league with Palestinian activists and labor unions in Canada’s Caledonia is trying on the suit and it’s fitting so far. What’s to stop a similar amalgam from wearing it here in the USA?
Well, if the trick works in Libya, nothing. I hope that Carlos Slim recognizes the threat, and that Douthat’s dipping his toe in a sustained critique of it. But I’m not going to bet any money that he is.
The best antidote to this is regular Tea Party protests, so that the faceless “rebels” have to contend with a pro-American rebel presence for media time. If we yield the streets to the Left’s victims groups, it’s game over for America I’m afraid.
Really afraid.
Hillary Clinton’s popularity is up to a personal best: 66%. This is working out well for her, moronic answers or not.
Mel…
That stat exists because Hillary benefits from ‘forced perspective.’
This makes small objects in the foreground appear larger than actual size.
The old unwritten signposts are being torn down. The extent to which governance relied on tradition, custom and a voluntary sense of limits will be recognized in their absence. While Clinton and Carter disregarded some of these old boundaries, the Obama administration is the first to cast them utterly to the winds. They are first self-consciously unfettered messiahs in North American history and are exhilarated by it. They won’t stop until something or someone stops them.
What will be that something? Events probably. Or a slow awakening of the political system, which is still operating with the customary reference when that deference is about as appropriate as a waiter respectfully addressing a street gang that has wandered into a Michelin 3-star. The system still feels the phantom limb, the lost limits, even when the leg has been sawn off.
This is how catastrophes begin; it is when the circuit breakers are tied down or when you bypass the fuses. All the lights go on for a while, and then the artificial brilliance blinks out and the blackout comes, together with whatever is out there.
“The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing. ”
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165havel.html
On the day Martial Law was declared on Sept 21, 1972 Marcos sent around small groups of officers to tell the Senators and the Congressmen that their offices had been abolished. In particular, he sent an arrest team to pick up Benigno Aquino at the Hilton Hotel, where he was attending a dinner.
The question that many tried to answer after the fact was what would have happened if the the Congressmen, the Senators and the Supreme Court had refused as a body. If they had simply said “no”, what would have transpired. Nobody will never know.
For many, it was a lost opportunity. The grand what-might-have-been, the missed moment in democracy. Later I realized they could not have stood. Their offices had been incrementally dissolved by the growing shadow and that fateful night was simply the coup de grace.
Democracy had to reconstitute itself through a crucible. It had to shed all half-hearted and the opportunists. The dross had to go. And who burned off the dross except Marcos himself. Ultimately democracy returned on the backs of people who found something they hardly knew existed within them.
Ninoy knew he was going to die when he came back that day in 1983. I don’t believe he could explain, even to himself, why he did it, except to observe that he could not, not do it. I believe it was a mystery to him even when the bullet smashed through his skull. But that moment was a long time in the preparation. A lot of the old Aquino died in his jail cell, when the prison staff bored holes in the walls and openly watched the conjugal visits which he had with Cory. The man who emerged from the cell was a far, far better man than the person who entered it.
That is the way of resurrection. For unless a seed fall to earth and die, it shall not arise again. I don’t think that the coming events will be anything so dramatic as the Martial Law events except in general principle.
If Washington has fallen into dysfunction, it has was a long time coming. If it is ever to regain itself, it will be a long time returning. What is destroyed over decades takes decades to repair.
A crisis is always a test of survival. We will survive. Humanity always does, but it does not survive unscathed.
“{17}The original and most important sphere of activity, one that predetermines all the others, is simply an attempt to create and support the independent life of society as an articulated expression of living within the truth. In other words, serving truth consistently, purposefully, and articulately, and organizing this service. This is only natural, after all: if living within the truth is an elementary starting point for every attempt made by people to oppose the alienating pressure of the system, if it is the only meaningful basis of any independent act of political import, and if, ultimately, it is also the most intrinsic existential source of the “dissident” attitude, then it is difficult to imagine that even manifest “dissent” could have any other basis than the service of truth, the truthful life, and the attempt to make room for the genuine aims of life. ”
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165havel.html
This is like middle school. Back in the day, two males would get into it in the yard after school. Somebody’s ass got kicked and that was the end of it. Now people get arrested or somebody brings a gun or a knife or a bunch of homies and somebody dies. Nothing in the middle except talk and talk dont settle that kind of beef or this for that matter.
Now we have the International Community, filled with moral equals, telling the US how lets You and Him fight.
Theres no real point in trying to reason this sort of think out using Grand Geopolitical/Historical Theories. Nations act like people. You got your adults (US, GB, Canada,Oz, basically the Anglosphere) you got your trailer trash (Pakistan, NorKs, Yemen, et al) You got your thugs (Iran, Syria) I could go on. Their actions and reactions are consistent with their place in the scheme of things. The Urps are the people who dont want to get involved and dont want any trouble.
Mark this: This exercise will be over by Easter, unless something cataclysmic happens that welds the American will to the cause. The Urps dont have the stomach for it and Kadaffy does. He’ll fight to the last Somali. Barry will change the subject and the press will go along since we wont have a dog in the fight.
End of the day MK will still own Libya and every tinpot thug will be gunning for us. Id cancel any non-Anglosphere travel, if I had any.
22:
Except Hilary really does act emotionally to stop the Darfurs when it suits her. Just not the actual Darfurs, of course. It’s Kosovo again, and she’s easily manipulated.
It may be that the French and Italians like the “kill them all, let the UN sort it out policy” because they always manage to get the oil contracts at a nice price. The problem is that unlike the French or the Italians, the American left doesn’t actually think it’s okay to leave them to their own fate; no, they intervene just enough to make sure the violent extremists that hate America and Israel end up winning.
26 Dack:
Wretchard had a brilliant post a while back using just that phrase–”if only Stalin knew!” http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/09/09/run-away-run-run-run-away/ This is yet another example of that, yes.
Bonaparte’s Retreat.
Apres Moi, O’narcissist’s deluge.
…-
“History of the Expedition to Russia
Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812
Author: Count Philip de Segur”
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18113/18113-h/18113-h.htm
“Full text of “An aide-de-camp of Napoléon; memoirs of General Count de Ségur”
http://www.archive.org/stream/aidedecampofnapo00segu/aidedecampofnapo00segu_djvu.txt
Not that again.
…-
“In Libya’s rebel base, a mix of hope and fear Washington Post”
” LIBYAN leader Muammar Gaddafi personally ordered the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, a former Libyan justice minister claims.
“I have evidence that Ghadafi ordered the Lockerbie [attack],” Mustapha Abdeljalil said in an interview with Swedish newspaper Expressen, after he defected from Ghadafi’s crumbling regime.”
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/muammar-gaddafi-ordered-lockerbie-bombing-says-libyan-minister/story-e6frfku0-1226011070628
Mustapha is now in the UK–singing
His evidence should provide cover for a snatch job–or 007 action– by the Brits against Daffy.
The sooner we back out and leave the Libyan quagmire up to the rest of NATO and the Arab League–the better.
You know, Wretchard, this precedent Obama is setting is very dangerous in its own way. The President has, without consulting Congress, effectively committed the country to war, sorry, “kinetic military action” for purposes clear only to him, if that. I wonder how long it will be before a future republican president decides to build on this. In fact, I wonder how the next president will view all the precedents Obama is setting. One thing for sure, the next time the Left complains about a war, the Rights answer will be “Obama”.
Maz2
but Libya Campain is only ment for vacations on Mediterranea coast, so there will be no retreat, but a return from a trip
w/32, This is how catastrophes begin; it is when the circuit breakers are tied down or when you bypass the fuses. All the lights go on for a while, and then the artificial brilliance blinks out and the blackout comes, together with whatever is out there.
JR Nyquist, in his remarks on Dinesh D’Souza’s The Roots of Obama’s Rage, says of Obama’s election:
This death sentence, pronounced by the citizens against themselves, is seconded by the very critics who suppose they have seen a fang in the darkness while neglecting to consider the presence of a whole tiger.
Herb @ 36,
You pose the best case scenario, I think. But, if it comes to pass, then the Left will still claim that our involvement, no matter how confused or short-lived it is, constitutes another “root cause” of the next wave of terrorism to come.
No matter what happens in the world, it is always America’s fault, or The Rich’s fault, or Whitey’s fault. And in the words of Obama’s pastor, the inestimable Reverend Wright, America’s chickens will have laid another despoiled clutch that surely must come “home to roost.”
We pulled out of Mogadishu and ran from the USS Cole bombing and we got 9/11. If we conduct an operation interruptis in Libya and the media moves on to covering Brittany Spear’s or Rehanna’s G-spots instead, what will we get? A nuclear prod in a major city this time perhaps?
And the Left will say that we deserved it!
Either way, the Left will use its poetics to justify the next attack. And the next, and the next…until America submits. Maybe I’m just pessimistic today…could be the coleslaw I ate at the social I attended yesterday. But, the pattern is too well established by now, and there’s little reason for the Soros left to discard its playbook now. Especially now that the script is out of the playwright’s hands and the play is in limited production at select theaters near you.
There’s no shaking the feeling that the shakedown has gone global now, and nothing shy of complete bankruptcy (or its shadow, caused by American’s caching their dough in their matresses) will convince the conmen to give up the game and go home.
Burp! There’s that bad coleslaw again. I shouldn’a.
What’s interesting is Obama and Clinton find themselves being bested by a Looney Tunes Character — one with the style sense of Elmer Fudd, the oratorical skills of Yosemite Sam, and the impulse control of Daffy Duck. Early on he was mistaken for Daffy Duck — only when he kills people, they stay dead (hence “Duck of Death”). The question everyone at the White House is asking: Who can we blame (How about British PM Cameron — they say he is a Conservative).
Charles Krauthammer gave them 30 days to get rid of the Looney Tunes Character in Libya and they got 23 days left. They had better replace Gates — excuse me, recede him — and send in the Marines, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, FEMA, and Meals on Wheels. Get her done!
But my difficulty is that I must now consciously interpret what leaders are saying as a lie in order to discern the truth. Worse, I am actually expected to interpret it as a lie by the very speakers themselves. They say the opposite of what they mean and we are meant to understand that this is so, while pretending that it is not.
Yes indeed, Richard, I have noticed that they lie even when the truth will serve them better. In other words, it is “pathological.” They get away with it because the media and the rest of the ruling class play along. Most of the media is basically a bunch minions who have sold their souls to the Leftist “cause” and will go along no matter what. But the playing along must be grating on a lot of them. If the Obamabots are successful, it is one thing. But they are looking more and more like failures. Problem is: what to do? Well, obviously things have not gotten bad enough to do actual reporting (at least reporting that is not “buried”) — but it could happen if the economy collapses and four more wars break out.
‘ kinetic military event ‘– – hmm ok –
it’s a war – you kill people, uniformed and civilian – you break all their stuff – you beat on them so bad they say – ok – stop – we give up. if they don’t say that, you continue to wreak hell on them – all of them —
not my rules, these are ancient.
you make pate’ out of them and all there stuff . it’s hell – it’s not nice – there is no diplomacy – or any of that – diplomacy is hooking someone up to a 48 volt DC battery – a big one – - and putting your hand on the switch -
a war is throwing the switch and walking out of the room for awhile –
this (small part of our larger) war is just nutz – we should not be in it – in this particular detail – maybe – I’m not sure — both sides are our enemy, and we very probably will have to continue to fight whoever wins – it’s a much larger problem than just libya – i suspect whoever our ‘administration’ is, knows this – why they are doing this like this, is the question
on the other hand – it is unavoidable isn’t it – we will have to fight both, either/ or – anyway — so perhaps it doesn’t really matter all that much how it’s done – hmmm
“what would have happened if the the Congressmen, the Senators and the Supreme Court had refused as a body. If they had simply said “no”, what would have transpired. Nobody will never know.”
They would have hung together, instead of separately.
The Duck of Death will win. He is ready willing and able to murder anyone in his way. Those in his way aren’t. In the real world that means they lose. Mubarak is hiding out because he didn’t have the foresight to keep bully boys around to do his killing.
Right does make right. Has for thousands of years and it isn’t going to change because some people (mostly those without might) don’t think that’s fair. They are right, it isn’t fair. SO?
The choices are to go along, or go down shooting. Most people don’t go down shooting because that small, cowards voice tells them they aren’t going down. That it’s all a mistake and any second now it will be corrected.
I’ll wonder if they are still thinking that when the bullet hits the bone.
I ruminate sometimes about Ninoy on the plane; like the entire Normandy invasion on D-Day was just one guy.
I’m not trying to suck up to anybody, but when the history of the early 21st Century is written, the Belmont Club archives–assuming they survive–will be one of the very best sources of what actually went on back then.
Victor: “His evidence should provide cover for a snatch job–or 007 action– by the Brits against Daffy.”
If it were only that simple.
Some speculation has Daffy abdicating to his beautiful blonde daughter Aisha, who hates the west, to deflect the justification for such a plot and the NATO attacks themselves. :http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/Blonde-bombshell-daughter-helping-Gaddafi-rally-troops/articleshow/7830870.cms
The evil Buraq has won again. Not only will Europe lose that “Labia” oil and the European economy will falter, we will be much more exposed to terrorism. Dubya had effectively corraled the Dogs of Terror after 911; now I’m afraid Buraq has unleashed them. Buraq’s call to revolution, his smoozing of MB and Iran, and his callous and flippant behavior towards our national interests, taken together are a personalized invitation/signal for the Jihadis to attack us. Our porous southern border, care of Janet Napalitano, is an open gateway to all sorts of sophisticated state sponsored terror. If it happens, which of the following suspects do we finger for the deed: Daffy, the Taliban, Paki, Hamas, Hiz’b'allah, Syria, Iran, the MB, and of course Al Qaeda. Does anyone believe our Dear Leader has shown the slightest interest, much less the mettle to tackle all those suspects and respond effectively?
I watched a clip of Hillary referring to the Optometrist as a “reformer.” I should be more accustomed to it, but the smoothness of the delivery, the boldness of the lie, the effrontery of it, puts me at a loss for words. What the hell is going on? Are we really at the point when direct public statements from our leadership are assumed to be lies?
Over at LGF Charles has been all over these troubling developments. And by “all over these troubling developments,” I mean Charles is hunting down seekrit evvul Intelligent Design creeashunists.
If the lies become too obvious, if there is no spinning that can possibly rationalize the insanity, then the Left will start ignoring events. Focus on the global warming deniers. That Palin is really a hick. Kochtopus!11!! Protect the unions from those taxpayers. I predict the news cycle will soon move on.
50 unks
” Does anyone believe our Dear Leader has shown the slightest interest, much less the mettle to tackle all those suspects and respond effectively? ”
no , i don’t anyway – DL can barely golf, he obviously has no mettle, sense, nor interest, in much of anything –
– i suspect you are right – but what is far more curious, is why does our congress not show much understanding, nor interest, either? much less our Citizenry –
troubling -
from Drudge:
The Putzmeisters
are on the way
to save the day.
http://chronicle.augusta.com/latest-news/2011-03-31/srs-concrete-pump-heading-japan-nuclear-site
I think that would work in Libya, too, bury Gaddafi under thirty meters of concrete.
50. Unsk
Yes, the evil tale gets more and more demonic–Daffys daughter was a defense attorney for Saddam in Iraq.
Mustapha is talking about Pan Am 103, Daffys supplying arms to the IRA–just those account for 1000 + American and UK civilian deaths
–he is also talking about the Nuke connection with Pakistan and Daffys attempt to become the King of Africa in collaboration with China
- a tale of genocide, money, minerals and oil
–the Heart of Darkness Redux
–much more to come about that apparently.
The IRA — Brit murders alone warrant direct action by the SAS–they are very good at these 007 mission–or used to be.
Mustapha flew into an RAF base in the UK
—he is running from the PLA/China apparently.
The China/Daffy relationship is a modern Heart of Darkness–but the PLA owns our debt.
So radio silence will prevail on that matter
perhaps – if one contemplates Historical – we see that Human Political Evolution – has not got very far – in some -i don’t know – lots – of thousands of years – we moved from physically strong clan -tribal leader – to Kings – which really are just very rich tribal leaders – they can hire fighters, rather than be fighters themselves – but not a significant difference in kind –
only very recently in Human history – in fact, only 235 years ago – was there a significant change in Political Arrangement — it was unusual, unique, and has since faded – and that would be US – read your Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Related Papers for details –
the idea – of We the People – is not a Historical one – it is thus very radical
perhaps it is the – 3 steps forward, two steps back – phenomena – and we are at this time, unfortunately – now in a two steps back – phase.
” I think that would work in Libya, too, bury Gaddafi under thirty meters of concrete.”
it’s late and the wine is beginning to take affect – so when this was read, my brains immediate response was – hell bury the whole M.E. in 30mtrs of concrete, we can drill through that — but, of course, we do not have enough concrete – so- dang.
Unsk @ 50: Dubya had effectively corraled the Dogs of Terror after 911; now I’m afraid Buraq has unleashed them. Buraq’s call to revolution, his smoozing of MB and Iran, and his callous and flippant behavior towards our national interests, taken together are a personalized invitation/signal for the Jihadis to attack us.
And now this.
SAN DIEGO — One of the nation’s largest military bases is reportedly under tighter security after three Middle Eastern men tried to enter without proper authorization.
10News learned the three men — 40-year-old Afghani Ahmad Rahmani Naeem, 41-year-old Iranian Vahik Petrossian and 27-year-old Iranian Sengekdi Norvik Avanosian — attempted to get into Camp Pendleton last weekend under what was considered suspicious circumstances.
57
another probe – these are not very smart people – they are bold in their own way – sort of – the – ‘inteligence’ version of a suicide bombers – they are told to push – the result is noted – it’s a probe. there’s a lot of this – doesn’t usually make the news.
#29 steveaz
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: all it’ll take is one coordinated Facebook mob descending on a major American urban center with demands for “justice”, and the cops responding with tear-gas, rubber bullets or real bullets in a sustained, deliberate manner, and the Obama doctrine will come into play.
Might we see French Mirages firing missles into Topeka? How about Qatari and Iranian “peace-keepers” manning barricades in St. Louis? Well, Obama/Hillary have just set the precedent for both. They’ve delivered an enormous prize to their internationalist masters.
I have no doubt that much of the motivation behind this botched abortion of a “humanitarian kinetic military action” is to set the stage for just such a thing to be possible. When this began I noted the violation of national sovereignty and the UN’s own charter implicit in this resolution.
Your scenario may come to pass, the way things are developing. I remember, years ago, when we were gearing up to go into the Balkans. We were driving past Fort Carson, and I heard the ‘thump, thump‘ that can only come from a Huey. Being fond of watching military aircraft in flight, I looked up and was immediately furious. It was a Huey, painted white, with “UN” in blue on the sides and bottom. I knew intellectually it was one of ours, getting ready to go to the former Yugoslavia. But the sight of a UN military aircraft over our country triggered rage.
If Buraq’s people think that they can try to use the Libyan R2P precedent here; they had better figure that their only hope for survival is total and permanent victory on their part. Because if this country is ever free from foreign invaders, it will not be over. Not until every country that invaded us has not two stones left standing together, and the only sound is the lamentations of the wind. We will never forget, nor shall we forgive, anyone involved in this; foreign or domestic.
I have mentioned this before. Voter rolls are public documents and can be obtained usually for the cost of copying. Union rolls are harder to come by, but a list of local companies that are unionized may come in handy. No, not every Democrat or union member will automatically side with the invaders. But it is a good first approximation. And a first step in sorting out those who may claim to be patriots but are working for the other side. Acquisition of those lists may be a prudent thing to do.
Wretchard mentioned a crucible. The heat is being applied now, and we are probably going to see what kind of metal we are made of, right smartly.
#50 Unsk
If it happens, which of the following suspects do we finger for the deed: Daffy, the Taliban, Paki, Hamas, Hiz’b’allah, Syria, Iran, the MB, and of course Al Qaeda. Does anyone believe our Dear Leader has shown the slightest interest, much less the mettle to tackle all those suspects and respond effectively?
When the terrorists do strike, that list of suspects is incomplete. Heading it should be the Democrats and the American Left.
Subotai Bahadur
–bits, some of these guys are trying to get inside the prison system –they have proselytizing missions in the inmate population.
#60 buddy larsen
Speaking from personal case involvement, it is not trying. They are very much there …. everywhere.
Subotai Bahadur
60 – oh yea – ‘trying to’ is putting it mildly – well aware of that – and much more – it’s far more prevalent than most are aware of — not good, imho
our press is not covering this – but it is known – problem is the public needs to know, not just – some – — not sure why this is – all it would take is for our ‘press’ to publicly document this – the events are there – the documents are there – - they are not being reported to the public-at-large
i have no inside info – but i have time and it’s winter so i spend a lot of it searching out news – the reports are there – they just don’t get beyond the local 1 day report level in small towns / newspapers / tv stations -radio –
it’s a problem – don’t know the solution – blogs like this one and others help – but it’s only reaching a fairly small group, who – mostly – are already aware of this — i do think it’s getting better – there is more exposure of ideas – events – questions – i wish it was more – but – i don’t run the world — yet. heh
There are High-school dropouts working the night shift at the McArnold’s near my house. One evening recently, for an order totaling $3.17, I handed the yoot at the counter a five dollar bill, a quarter and 2 pennies, and he thought for a second, opened the drawer and handed me two ones and a dime… WITHOUT ASKING THE MANAGER FOR HELP.
I’m sorry. I’m lying. That never happened.
Well, not any time in the last fifteen years. Normally, the kids behind the counters — who punch in the customers’ orders by selecting the pictures of the burgers, fries, and drinks on the cash register KEYS — are paralyzed by such complex calculations, and have to call for assistance from a manager.
Still, it’s clear the kids on the McArnold’s night shift are better qualified to lead this nation than the collection of degenerates currently in charge.
Nobody can be so consistently incompetent, ignorant, and gutless; they could never have advanced so far in their sick and twisted careers. This can only be the playing out of long-planned deliberate policy. Traitors and monsters are running the country.
But, Hey! Don’t worry. As Wretchard reminds us, nations have survived disasters many times throughout history. And when nations have crumbled and their populations have been forced to pack the pathetic shards of their lives into a kerchief and plod barefoot across the tundra to the nearest continent that wouldn’t slaughter them, well, they’ve gone on to have full rich lives in their new homes. Yeah.
One night 20 years ago, as I sat in the den after wife had gone to bed, I heard the front door open. I got up and walked into the living room and found a guy standing there, looking confused. In an instant, although i didn’t react outwardly, i felt the room take on a hallucinogenic flare, and my heart began to race. We had a very brief conversation — he said something lame about being in the wrong house. I remember saying in a very measured tone that he needed to leave right now. I placed my hand on his shoulder and guided him toward the front door.
In just a few seconds, I escorted him to the door, and closed it behind him. Then called the police.
If he had offered so much as a twitch of resistance, I was READY. Look, I have no illusions of bravery. I just know that in that moment, something took over. I’ll never know what his intentions really were, but he had no business coming into my house, and he knew. He would have had the fight of his life.
Maybe the scent of adrenalin reaches the other person…
I’ve only had a few occasions in my life that I was that focused and concentrated. Of course, that’s no guarantee that he couldn’t have overwhelmed me… I’m just saying that people will ultimately defend their homes and families.
That seems to be the factor that will in the fullness of time determine how the present fustercluck plays out.
I’m told the Irish phrase Sinn Féin translates roughly to mean “Ourselves alone.” (Literally, “We Ourselves.”)
I still like the Boy Scouts’ motto. In multiple calibers.
Victor…
Even a stopped clock is right from time to time.
Yes, China was decisive in this conflict. Without her it never could have started.
It was China that told the Duck of Death that she’d take 100% — if necessary — of his product — no matter what.
Thus freed of his quasi-monopsony clientele… he embargoed them… and discovered the European hard spot.
China correctly figured that she could economically war upon the Euros — as a whole — and they’d never see the play.
For whatever Daffy sold Red China, she’d profit most by marking it up brutally and flipping it to the Euros — with total deniability.
After all that had come to pass — Daffy would be hoisted on his petard! China now would have pwned his exports! The idjit had given Beijing re-marketing control over his fate. What an idjit.
Even if Daffy finally figured out that Beijing raped him…
How can he crawl back to the infidel?
sb/59, did you ever see this? (try to read the 2009 ‘original’ material, not the later reaction material generated after the locals unexpectedly toke note of the investment and rose to demand to know what was going on. Oops! Whitewashings and dubious pretzels then flowed forth, and were probably jacked up to first page in search status, a la BP’s search gaming.
–also search [ hardin montana ] for local press articles trying to ‘come down’ and reframe the whole affair as some tomfoolery on the part of the town council. (yes, but…)
Here’s the thing that has troubled me –the first set of vehicles had a logo on the doors that, when the blogs lit up with speculation as to the meaning of the two-headed eagle, were then immedately changed to a generic non-symbolic logo.
But people had taken pictures. Note not just the eastern european heraldic eagle (Soros ‘break the bank of England’ fund, employed ag/ UK in that pivotal NWO year 1992, was named the “Double Eagle Fund”. Find out more by searching managed funds association, the group massively shorting America), but behind it the fiery solar disc symbol, tagging another NWO clear sign.
Again, whoever these people are (said to be freelance govt contractors ex of Blackwater –which BTW has changed names to Xe, pronounced ‘shay’ –find THAT on the net after only hearing not seeing in print!), they were very sensitive to the clearly unexpected depth of attention to their logos. The disc is showing up on many things –all over the vigilant citizen sinister sites URLs, on AmeriCorps and its subsidiaries such as the Robin Hood Foundation. Tune in to it. You’ll start seeing it.
57. peterike
Here we have suicide-jihadis ( USMC, suicide fur sure. ) and we didn’t belt them and send them to Pokistan?
Just how are we supposed to win this thing?
BTW, did the post security read them their Geneva rights?
It would have been short — they don’t have ANY.
“But Political Correctness and Moral Relativism became one of our most important exports”
Politcal correctness is based on ethnic hatred. Liberals have been the bastion of racism since the begining of the republic. Left with the proposition of getting over their bigotry or redirecting it they chose the later and called it social justice.
You see, everyone in the world is good except a certain subclass of people and you know who you are.
one, reason i call myself – bits – it because that is literally true – i know – some bits – i can’t see the whole thing —
perhaps we are all like that – if there was some way of -leveraging – all our disparate – bits – perhaps we could get it to go faster – to be spread faster –
This blog as an example – it is doing that – it is why i am here, and probably you are here – how do we consolidate, – expend this – news and info and personal experience – faster and more widely –
it is doing that of course – i’ve read Mr. Ferndeze’s blog since it started – have only recently commented – and now it is a part of Pajamas Media – so it is growing, getting wider exposure – i’m not sure if we can speed this up – it does depend in the end on individual people – not only reading it – but excepting the ideas and information it presents – perhaps it is going as fast as it can — certainly it would be different if the main-stream-media was more attentive – but – to paraphrase –
we don’t spread the news with the media we want – we have to use the one we got
i try and let anybody i email to know that there is a good – or better – source – here – PJM – other – and it will thus grow as many others are doing this too — it can seem frustratingly slow – and the stakes are – high – and events seem to be distressingly eminent – i don’t know – we do what we can – i keep thinking there must be some way to – better focus – but – i can’t quite figure out how to do that – maybe there isn’t – i don’t know – will keep trying though – as i figure you will too -
Blert
You seem to have some mysterious sources, could you share some of them, so that we can base a new analyse of the facts. This would be a good reason, for sure, why Sarko and Cameron went into the war plot, though I still not understand then why Italy was reluctant to undertake this war.
It would be interesting to know more history on that ‘brand-new, empty, $20 million detention center’ sitting out on the savannah outside the town of Hardin, Montana.
like these late night wanderings – i think it’s good to have a lot of different ideas flowing –
63 – i live in a very small town – and almost always pay in exact change – got a reputation for that here – sometimes will do what you describe – to get a $5 or some other easy change — they pretty smart here – rarely causes a problem – and they seem to appreciate my effort to make their lives a bit easier – sometimes the new ones are a bit mystified – but usually only once – and they use old mechanical registers – plus the local schools teach math, and the parents are mostly mechanics or loggers, shop keepers or other that require a basic understanding of math – practical people – perhaps therein lays the difference
and – around these parts – we generally shoot people who get inside our house uninvited – bit harsh perhaps – but fully legal – and thus – very – rarely – happens – just once, most times.
I know some people here wish Buddy Larsen wouldn’t post conspiratorial information.
I love his posts.
I’m not saying I agree with everything he says, but he sure puts up some great stuff. I hope he keeps up the good work. They’re entertaining if nothing else.
dt/72 …some people here wish Buddy Larsen wouldn’t post conspiratorial….
aHA!
i KNEW it!!!
***
(*groan*)
RE: Hardin Detention Facility
Hhmmn. Looks like the road leads back to … Texas:
Promoted by a consortium of Texan developers/operators, and despite an initial economic feasibility analysis that concluded it would not be a viable project and despite substantial legislative obstacles, construction began…
Shades of Mick and Judy:
We didn’t just wake up one day and go ‘I think we’ll build a jail.’
The Montana Town That Wanted to Be Gitmo:
“This place would be torture for some of those boys.”
In fact, most of the recent (last decade) build-out in large-scale institutional health care facilities (cardio and cancer centers, etc) in rural locations was developed by groups out of Texas with a 5-yr rotation of staff who arrive lured by sweet deals, which expire leading to their exit for something better – not hard to find in the tight market for medical professionals.
I used to think that medical facilities were being intentionally sited away from potential urban terrorist targets. My current theory is that the oil industry is diversifying the portfolio as a future hedge into an industry that will likely be even bigger than oil. Or it could be mafia money or even drug money. Hard to tell but the build-out and the operation smells like the dark pool investment-grade funding behind the empty Hardin Detention Facility. Same M.O.
I forgot to mention. Effective today (April Fools Day), the minute a patient is admitted to any of the medical care facilities, his/her treatment is handled by hospital staff, not by the family doctor. Revenue streams. No choice. Stay healthy.
(Caveat: applicable to some states/facilities – not sure nationwide.)
“[I] referenced opinions of others. That was not speaking either for myself or for the administration.”
Nice way to make a clean of hypothetics polemics
Stephan @ #4 said “Those operatives of USG, running around on the ground in Libya have orders. Those orders come from somewhere…”
Does the name “Soros” ring a bell?
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/foreign-policy/6845-the-puppetmasters-behind-the-military-action-in-libya.