The Assassin’s Creed
Tens of thousands of people have so far died in the Syrian civil war. Foreign Policy has a special article describing the inventive lengths to which the combatants have gone to kill the other. Here we see the Syrian Army’s vaunted “barrel bomb”.
Not to be outdone, let us view the power of the rebel improvised mortar.
It is probably fair to say that the accuracy of these devices leaves something to be desired. Whether these weapons actually hit a military target must be a matter of the purest luck. Most likely their guidance system has the following microcode: “to whom it may concern”.
When the IDF struck Ahmad Jabari, head of Hamas’ military wing in a precision strike while traveling in his car “world opinion” exploded in outrage against the Israelis. Here was the murderous Zionist regime striking at an individual target. Assassination! Barbarity! Atrocity!
It might be asked why this act should be any more or less horrible than the operation of the Syrian “barrel bomb” or the rebel mortar. After all the victims, whoever they may be, are as dead from the one as from the other.
But the meaning of their death — the political content of their demise — varies from one to the other. This fact did not escape Dominic Tierney, a professor at Swarthmore College, who wrote in the Atlantic about how there appeared to be a right and a wrong way to die. And he is genuinely perplexed.
The United States announced that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would be a “red line,” potentially triggering intervention. … Oddly, the international community seems less concerned by how many people the Syrian regime kills than by the methods it uses to kill them.
The rule of murdering your population is: Don’t use chemical weapons. We often draw a sharp distinction between “civilized” conventional arms and intolerable weapons of mass destruction–or the evil triad of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.
Blowing your people up with high explosives is allowable, as is shooting them, or torturing them. But woe betide the Syrian regime if it even thinks about using chemical weapons!
A woman and her child under fire in Aleppo might miss this distinction. It’s not obvious that high explosives are inherently less evil than chemical weapons. …
The combination of buttons that unlocks international interest in a humanitarian crisis can seem arbitrary. Killing with conventional weapons in Africa? Sorry, that’s old news. Using chemical weapons or concentration camps in the Middle East? Now you’ve got my attention.
Let me try and offer a theory to resolve his dilemma. Deaths are not equivalent. They vary one from the other not by the value of the life that was cut short but by column inches of copy they generate. The principal metric of the tragedy of a modern death is its news value. If the death serves a narrative it is tragic. If not, who gives a damn?
Here is how it works.
Black Africans killing black Africans with machetes has no news value. White Europeans killing black Africans with machetes has a big news value. Anyone killing anyone with bladed weapons generally has little news value. Anyone killing anyone with a handgun has front page news value, especially where the Second Amendment is concerned. Arabs killing Arabs is page 10 news. A Jew killing anyone is the headline story.
Babies dying in their millions from abortion does not even qualify as a story. The IDF killing a stone killer from Hamas is a horror of unimaginable international proportions. Arabs rocketing Israelis is not even reported. Israelis shooting back — well how dare they.
The sight of Americans jumping in terror from the burning World Trade Center is something to be forgotten. We need to “move on”. The men who hijacked the airplanes to plunge them into those towers — now that calls for a mosque on ground zero!
You may be starting to get the drift.
No death is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the narrative,
A part of a tweet.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Darwin is served.
As well as if a plain man died
Of a heart attack in a frame house of his own
Or if thy friend were.
Each man’s death varies from the other,
As set out in the talking points.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls as told.
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I’ve never been able to figure out how dying from the 10 PSI overpressure wave of say a 1000 lbs bomb is better than dying from shrapnel wounds from a cluster munition, but then maybe that explains my moniker.
The ignominious part of the whole pinpoint strike on Hamas is that it is just whack-A-mole with a $150,000.00 hammer.
There will be no end. Even if it all goes nuclear it won’t stop the fighting. It will make the survivors maniacal in their resolution to see the “enemy” obliterated from the gene pool. Sadly, they won’t see their mistake until the killing begins in the familial confines.
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was right.
JFSanders/2
There will be no end.
Sticks and stones led to clubs, clubs led to spears, spears led to bows, bows led to gunpowder, and gunpowder led to the Manhattan Project. And so it goes. At every step the carnage grew. At every step man comes closer to returning to sticks and stones.
Chivalry is dead, the embattled man cried
Leaning heavy against his stout horse
Dead and buried beneath the sharp incoming tide
Dead beneath the foul uncaring gorse!
He paused to take breath then resumed his sad tale
Edged weapons are things of the past
A man is now had for a two penny sale
And good chaps like I cannot last
I’ve killed men in battle but never in spite
‘Twas always but simply our way
To fight true and fair is the code of the knight
To think I should see such a day
As seen on this ground, a changed thing to amaze
And good men lay dead where they stand
As unseen projectiles are now the new craze
With men like I swept from the land
He sobbed in despair as he saw in his pain
A future where noblemen died
At the hands of the rabble both dirty and plain
Then he hefted his sword and he sighed
‘Tis over, my friend, in a world that’s gone daft
With everything worthy laid low
While I who spent years in perfecting my craft
Am slain by a man with a bow
JFSanders@2: “Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was right.”
Back in my younger years I never would have believed that I would end up agreeing with that sentiment, but God help me, I do. There’s only so long you can go on actually studying human conflict with an open mind before you absolutely must, if you’re intellectually honest with at least yourself, come to the conclusion that the quicker, more vicious and more decisive you are about achieving your aims, the more humane your action turns out to be in the long run. A lot of Georgians and other southerners (and northerners, for that matter) are alive today because Sherman did what he did. A lot of Japanese and Americans are alive today because Truman pulled the trigger on Fat Man and Little Boy. A lot of Palestinians and fewer Israelis are dead because Israel has tried beyond human tolerance to spare the Palestinians the true horror of what Israel could have brought down on them at any moment for the last 40 or more years.
Of course, getting back to Sherman being right, today’s media wouldn’t much care beyond condemning Sherman as just another vicious, patriarchal white male because the beneficiaries were mostly white people (in these people’s minds the freed slaves don’t seem to count when talking of such things).
You know…I *remember* absolutely detesting Jesse Helms. I hated everything that had the Republican or Conservative label attached. It was the height of common sense that the fewer guns, the fewer gun deaths. Anybody who disagreed with my “enlightened” view was at best severely misguided and at worst an evil scumbag who deserved instant death. And then one day, after witnessing how the Dems, my trustworthy allies, were acting after the 2000 election (which results I detested) I decided to do a thought experiment. What if Repubs and Cons are actual people with real families that they actually love? Ridiculous, I know, but what if? What if they are arguing in good faith, and have been all this time? What if (gasp) their ideas actually have merit? So I investigated, with an open mind for really the first time, in my early 30s, my whole conception of the left/right liberal/conservative divide. I looked at the OJ Simpson trial with new eyes. The Clinton years. Gun control. Abortion. Lots of other things. And over the space of maybe 6 months I flipped. On every. Single. Issue. And now I see great value in Sherman’s approach. Surely it is a sign of the apocalypse. Or maybe my own stupidity. It’s humbling.
I think it goes back to “who is responsible.” Responsible people kept the Capitalist system running well. If you asked “Who is responsible” it meant who is reliable and can be put in charge of a job. So the left changed the meaning of the word to “who is to blame” and instead of praising responsible behavior used every opportunity to attack it. For instance, it was responsible people who created ladders with a top step. Meanwhile they would defend those who were not responsible and stood on the top step (they would picture them as powerless victims of society — victims of those who are responsible for the plight of those who are not responsible).
The Israelis, needless to say, are responsible.
The Left Democrats are now running everything in the US and their instinct is to duck responsibility for the problems. They are taking over business through regulation but are keeping CEO’s around to take orders and to take responsibility for failure. If the Republican House did not exist they would have to invent it (they must be held responsible). They lie easily to cover their mistakes. They manipulate. One thing they are not, though, is responsible. Instead they want to take credit for a wonderful future that does not and will not exist and assign blame for the many failures along the road to a bad place.
You’re kidding with that barrel bomb, right, he lights it with a cigarette and pushes it out the door, Wiley Coyote could do better – and I don’t even see an explosion on the film, did I miss it?
I suspect a barrel of large gravel would be about as effective a weapon.
…Now Josh, you just described a cluster barrel bomb. And those are against international law.
Walt, #3
With every step, we get closer to the stars. Our atrocities may grow along with our triumphs, but our triumphs still grow.
My grandchildren will think nothing of a trip to Mars. And they will think less of an earth-bound society that immolates itself.
RE: the political content of the killings, etc —
Possibly you are over-thinking the question, for it it is really very simple. Whether it is slaughter in a foreign land, or a neighborhood drive-by, the dynamic is identical. There is only one issue of concern regarding killing or “oppressing” – WHO is doing the killing/oppressing?
Are they the demons of the international activist set? i.e. Americans, whites, Israelis, Allies of the West, Straight people….. what? Then they are monsters for the ages, who must be stopped from their murderous rampages at all costs.
Are they darker of pallor, third-worlders, socialists, gays, enemies of Western Civilization… etc?
“Meh. Just another day, (yawnnnn), nothing to see here, move along folks”.
It IS that simple, and it IS the fact every single time. Whether it is the blood-soaked lands of the Middle East, or a playground in Chicago, the dynamic is identical and as predictable as the sunrise.
We, the people who invested in the Norden Bombsight that could put a bomb in a pickle barrel from 30,000 ft so that we could endure greater casualties using accurate daylight bombing than the British who resorted to area bombing at night were willing to endure to defeat German National Socialism, are now passive before Arab Ba’ath National Socialists that put the barrel in the bomb and drop it randomly.
Much of what the Arab-Palestinians do to the Israelis appears to be a parody of what the Jewish-Palestinians, as they were called, did to the British or to invading Arabs. The Hamas mortars are imitations of the Palmach’s Davidka of 1948 that convinced the Arabs that the Jews had atomic bombs. Under the logic of fantasy projection that dominates both Leftist and Islamic culture their unfounded belief in a prior act by their enemies to explain a failure and defeat justifies their future use of any weapon or outrage. The failure of the Jews to panic and believe that the Jews are now helpless before super weapons, super conspiracies, and forces of History, as the Arabs have believed themselves to be, is taken as more proof of suspect or even blasphemous conduct.
Josh…
Is it just me, or did Assad’s boy use a blunt to light off that barrel?
=========
The speed, open air cabin and improvised bomb release scheme means that Syria has regressed to 1914 air warfare.
Pretty slick.
It was axiomatic and expected that you hated Jesse Helms, back when he was in Washington. No bigger demon existed in the Democrat universe than Helms. But, curiously, he was always first on the list when it came to making the rounds in negotiations. Why? Because if you cut a deal with him, he’d honor it. That’s rare as gold in Washington. There were a very few Republicans and also a very few Democrats who could be termed reliable back in that day. It’s worse now. Our prez is a joke, being the most shameless guy ever to haunt the White House. With the majority leader of the Senate in this president’s pocket as a lacky whore, the very idea of negotiation between Congress and the President is laughable.
That, and the fact that the Democrats want autocracy, dooms us. All-Powerful Gob’mint is their goal. They long ago ceased being a fifth column on Capitol Hill. Anyone who isn’t a Democrat finds themselves in that column instead.
It is digusting, and also a long time coming. I really don’t know what to do at this point except seek an exit. Would that we could “go West, young man!” That was the former salve and relief valve. America itself began as that relief valve, escaping Europe.
But there isn’t anywhere obvious left to go.
The main concern for American Christians and Christians world wide must be the plight of Syrian Christians-they were 12% of the population but this has increased dramatically as Syria gave safe haven to 100s of thousands of Christians fleeing Iraq
Who cares about the fate Christians in the Levant?
The Levant and the MENA were Christian countries for much more than a 1000 years.
bftp @ 10: We, the people who invested in the Norden Bombsight that could put a bomb in a pickle barrel from 30,000 ft so that we could endure greater casualties …
I think you meant “inflict” rather than “endure”?
But Jehoshaphat, look at all that analog machinery, even the gyros took minutes to stabilize, imagine just the manufacturing, imagine just the training to use the damn thing, today with computer design and manufacturing we can turn out far finer machinery even when we mostly never have to but this … I remember picking up random pieces of nonfunctional WWII era machinery, looked just like this. It’s almost like an artifact from Avatar, from another supposedly more primitive world that works miracles out of nothing. Our PGM, computers, lasers and all make the Norden Bombsight about as relevant as a bronze sword, but damn, even a bronze sword can be beautiful.
Hard to put that in the same world as a barrel bomb. I mean, once upon a time some of the most beautiful and useful swords in the world came from Damascus, am I right? Place sure has run down since then.
It’s not the bullet with your name on it you have to worry about, it’s the one addressed: To Whom It May Concern.
Accuracy shmaccuracy, all biologicals are addressed to whom it may concern. Evil shite and Assad will use ‘em if he deems he needs ‘em. I mean why get hung or worse?
#9. Andrew X
Yes–its just the principles of Affirmative Action elevated to the international stage. If you have a “disparate outcome” then it must, by definition, be because the winners of the contests cheated. And to properly punish the cheaters you must institutionalize cheating for the losers at the first contest so that they win at each and every future contest forevermore.
It doesn’t seem to matter that most of the historical injustices of one group against another are so far in the past that all of the people who had any active parts in it, victims and perpetrators alike, are all dead now.
And I suspect that the people who most subscribe to this idea would be most mortally offended if I gunned down someone solely because of some personal wrong his grandfather had done to mine. That’s just something rotten filthy hillbillies do. Its amazing how flexible the idea of historical injustice is.
But then again, those who indulge too much in Orwellian doublethink and double standards have to digest many paradoxes per day. And I suspect that absorbing too many paradoxes is much like taking too much LSD–it ultimately leads to a permanent divorce from reality.
The evidence is all around us.
re: 4. Agoraphobic Plumber
You give one hope in an otherwise dark future.
Damascus Steel is artisanal. Yes, however you called it, that steel was primo grade steel for hardness, durability, and keeping its edge. That steel didn’t come from Syria, however, but India.
Indian metallurgists do remain something of a mystery. They punched way above their weight, coming out with advanced steels using compatively primitive techniques during production. It’s an open question how they pulled it off.
But, they were artisans who made some wonderful metallurgical products!
” 8. Neil
Walt, #3
With every step, we get closer to the stars. Our atrocities may grow along with our triumphs, but our triumphs still grow.
My grandchildren will think nothing of a trip to Mars. And they will think less of an earth-bound society that immolates itself.”
You’re kidding, right? we are headed back to the stone age. At warp speed.
“And he is genuinely perplexed.”
As I have been for decades. The rants and incrimination of Hiroshima always seem more about the accusers rather than the event as the butchery in Manila just months before by Imperial Japanese forces never gets a mention -
http://battlingbastardsbataan.com/som.htm
Butchering by bullet, bayonet, and barbed wire is somehow more humane?
#19, Backhoe.
The kiddies think the stone age is the 70s. The 1970s, that is.
As for Syria, I’m having a hard time deciding who to root for. I suspect that the Al Quaeda rebels will be far more brutal than the current regime, however.
Lots of things can be used as weapons.
“In a sermon broadcast by Egypt’s Tahrir TV on November 23 and translated by MEMRI, Egyptian cleric Abd Al-Fattah Abu Zayd told his followers that “abominable elders of Zion” realized that “armed force would be futile against those Muslims, because they love death as much as we love life.” Instead, he charged, the Jews decided to employ “soft power” against Muslims through the corrupting vices of “urges, sex, women and 4.2 million porn websites on the Internet.”
“Just imagine,” he told his attentive devotees, “4.2 million porn websites, the No. 1 purpose of which is to corrupt the nation of Muhammad.”
(posted by Israellycool)
Last week Palestinian officials blamed Israel for a rise in AIDS cases in the PA. A few years back Israelis were accused of distributing “sex gum” in Gaza to corrupts the morals of Muslim youth.
….
I think poison gas is out of bounds because it hits a horror cord in those places where monsters, like the scheming sexually depraved Shylock Jew, live deep in our neural circuits.
“Most likely their guidance system has the following microcode: “to whom it may concern”.
Brings to mind an old Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In skit. Scene is a northern Irish bar. One man is holding a large rifle. Another man asks him, “Paddy, when you are out there in the streets in a riot with a bunch of Catholics and Protestants, everyone looks alike to me. How do you tell who to shoot?”
Paddy replies, “I point my gun and shoot. Whoever I hit is a Protestant.”
Agora Plumber #4:
You are a rare and highly admirable individual. All too rare. Yesterday Rush was saying what I have been saying: No matter what happens to them, some Obama voters will never, ever realize that their own actions led to their personal disaster. You are not one of them.
By the way, did you realize that one of the black men whose attendance at a southern university caused such controversy at the dawn of the civil rights movement was a lifelong Republican who worked in Jesse Helms’s office?
Lots of things can be used as weapons…
In Rwanda, it was machetes, lots of them Chinese.
Real efficient machetes. (Especially after all those genocidal radio broadcasts.)
File under: Machetes don’t kill….
The Middle East is a total cluster as time plays out uncannily in the West as Orwell predicted. Big Brother ubiquitous, ongoing historical revision and constantly shifting alliances in never-ending war.
*****
If I had gov’t thugs dropping bombs on my community, I would be up in arms and looking for enemies of my enemy. No brilliant insights there, but the question is – after I overthrow the old strongman who becomes the new strongman? Is it me or my new enemy, the former enemy of my enemy.
If history and biology have taught us anything, it is that the strong survive.
“One day in the pavilion at Karakorum he [Genghis Kahn] asked an officer of the Mongol guard what, in all the world, could bring the greatest happiness.
“The open steppe, a clear day, and a swift horse under you,” responded the officer after a little thought, “and a falcon on your wrist to start up hares.”
“Nay,” responded the Kahn, “to crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet — to take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their women. That is best.”
“its just the principles of Affirmative Action elevated to the international stage.”
Right, the Left equates civilization with protecting the weak, good so far, to the point of victim worship, not so good. The reason I surmise is that the Left is a party of hate that sees all who resist them as an evil worthy of destroying. To elevate themselves above an appearance of self-interest, they introduce the third party victim, whom they, and only they can protect. Thus the war on woman, the war on poverty, racism, and the suggestion that Republicans want to take over the historical Democrat roll and re-enslave people of color.
The human race in Western culture has evolved so a child must be reared well into its twenties while puberty takes place at a younger and younger age. We have reached a point where maturity is never achieved but a culture of youth replete with athletic sex, princess worship, and psycho-pedophilia imbedded into our senses by a ubiquitous media. And violence, how we love to revile it.
Republicans, like Israeli’s, offer the world personal responsibility and the Democrats, like the Europeans, offer the world impersonal sex with a government provided prophylactic to act as a barrier between some of the gooey parts.
Republicans offer the world a firm and just response to keep the peace and the Democrats offer facile words and condolences like a mother who consoles a child just spanked by its father.
We have become a world of impetuous 28.4yo menstruating homo-youth. May God raze the whole anti-Darwinian edifice to the ground.
“China’s new leaders ban red carpets, pomp and ‘empty speeches’ ”
Apparently Obama is giving pomposity a bad name. Even fellow communists are thinking of keeping a lower profile. Meanwhile, as the prols suffer the the destruction of the economy as a mere byproduct of anti-capitalism which is a thin cover for anti-white hatred, his imperial magesty prepares for his multimillion dollar retreat to Hawaii.
We are in the future, time is where what you write and what you speak must be PC, BB now reads all, listens into all and your past is followed… Do not mistake that as being all knowing or that Intelligence will be involved.
T-16, It’s not how bad, how horrific, it will be, more of how long you will endure it and which side will you come out in…
I have a plaque that reads in part, “Accepting the challenge of Jihad since 2001,” that came from discussions with fellow Marines during down time in Iraq. The point I was trying to make was at some point we had to accept the concept that Muslims were at war with us and we needed to answer the challenge head-on without worrying about offending them. Sadly, after all this time we are still unwilling to recognize our enemy honestly. The progressives in the US have been at war with the Constitution since Harding. When the fighting gets too close to the average citizen the blood will start flowing. How much of your liberty and personal property (income and accumulated wealth) must be confiscated before you are willing to take up arms? When they come for the weapons you can be sure we have entered into the endgame. It will be much harder to stop than it was to start.
25. hammaknocka: I am not an expert on Ghengis Khan but your excerpt is more indicative of the Hollywood version of the Khan than accounts I have read. I enjoyed, Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. From that I got a very different impression of Ghengis Khan than simply a maraudering barbarian. Allegedly, his first order of business after gaining power was to end the raiding of other tribes as a means of support and opening trade routes. War was a means to an end, not the end in itself.
A little off topic. This story is several days old. Perhaps BCers have seen it?
More on what happened in Benghazi and many questions posed.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/51400
f @ 31: More on what happened in Benghazi and many questions posed.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/51400
A lot of that is new to me, good grief, it started at least twelve hours earlier? Where do these guys get their putative info, and how much of it was known in DC even a day later? IOW, is this report credible? It is, after all, still somewhat incomplete, still raises questions it never quite answers.
#18 Cowboy:
Indian metallurgists do remain something of a mystery. They punched way above their weight, coming out with advanced steels using compatively primitive techniques during production. It’s an open question how they pulled it off.
Possibly by means of “ritual.” I come to that conjecture via the Japanese sword-making process. In pre-mass production/pre-computerization days, a precise ritual followed to the letter could attain amazing results. The making of a premium samurai sword was done under the watchful eye of masters and Shinto priests, and the hammering of the smithy was done to the beat of ritual drums. Perhaps the Indian metallurgists had something similar.
Am I a bad person if all I want for christmas is everyone to take up a collection to buys weapons so that we can ship them over there… that way they can kill as many of each other as possible so that my nephews don’t end having to go over there and do it?
I understand that the “to whom it may concern” meme comes from the Northern Irish “troubles”. I heard in the 80′s that Brit squaddies took to carrying bullets with their name written on them. PIRA snipers got wind of this and took to marking their bullets “to whom it may concern”.
“Let me try and offer a theory to resolve his dilemma. Deaths are not equivalent. They vary one from the other not by the value of the life that was cut short but by column inches of copy they generate. The principal metric of the tragedy of a modern death is its news value. If the death serves a narrative it is tragic. If not, who gives a damn?”
Might i suggest that is a description of the leftist media’s criteria for deciding if a death(s) is noteworthy?
Deaths are equivalent, at least in the eyes of the Judeo/Christian God. Perhaps what we are looking at is the criteria by which a death is justifiable or not.
The left’s criteria is whether a death(s) supports, retards or advances its ideological agenda.
While a minority on the right view deaths from the opposite side of the same coin, classical liberal western criteria is whether a death is objectively justified by traditional moral standards and reason. The charge of hypocrisy still resonates on the right. The left views ‘hypocrisy’ as an outdated, invalid concept, that the ends sought justify any means necessary.
The dialectic of the left perfectly illustrates the difference between right and left, “When I am the weaker, I ask you for (mercy and forgiveness) because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I show no mercy, because that is my principle.”
#2,
“There will be no end. Even if it all goes nuclear it won’t stop the fighting. It will make the survivors maniacal in their resolution to see the “enemy” obliterated from the gene pool. Sadly, they won’t see their mistake until the killing begins in the familial confines. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was right.”
Yes, he was. But there can be an end. You presume, that there will be survivors…one’s to desire the obliteration of their ‘enemy’. However, history is filled with conflicts in which there were NO survivors, to desire revenge.
But genocide is unneeded, as WWII Japan and Nazi Germany illustrate. The Japanese and German people’s were not obliterated and yet there was no overwhelming desire for revenge upon the survivors part. The reason is that the ideology of WWII Japan and Germany was invalidated in a manner that compelled the survivors to abandon it. It is not Muslims per se which must be destroyed but Islam.
#4 Agoraphobic Plumber,
I too followed that path and so have others. The blogger neoneocon is just one example. But it took me much longer than 6 months to complete my transformation. I can still remember in the 90′s listening to Rush and literally fuming with anger at him. Yet more than any other individual, he awoke me to the blinders upon my eyes.
Perhaps being unable to deny reason and logic and, in my youth, a big fan of Robert Heinlein, a huge proponent of libertarianism, enabled me to be open enough to change.
#19,
“we are headed back to the stone age. At warp speed.”
Not so. A new dark age, quite possibly yes. 47+% of America and some massive but judiciously applied voter fraud in key swing states resulted in a ‘majority’ vote to end modern western civilization. If America goes down the tubes, there will remain China, Russia and possibly but briefly, the jihadist M.E. ‘Briefly’ because it’s certain that neither China nor Russia will have any hesitation about permanently and with prejudice, removing the Islamist threat, once their usefulness is at an end.
c @ 18: Indian metallurgists do remain something of a mystery. They punched way above their weight, coming out with advanced steels using compatively primitive techniques during production. It’s an open question how they pulled it off.
The steel came from India, but the swords were still made in Persia – or maybe even Damascus, or maybe Damascus is just where the swords were encountered or where the wielders were from. And just exactly what is still something of a mystery, much less the how. Just how good modern imitations are, or how they compare to the best modern steels, etc. But you also had to make the swords in a certain way so as not to lose, or to perfect, the underlying qualities of the material.
One detail I didn’t know that I just picked up Googling on that, though, was the idea that filagreed swords might be an attempt to imitate the pattern, to make lesser swords as attractive, if still not mechanically, the equivalent.
So let’s see some nice art painted on the barrel bombs, OK?
#22,
The ‘good’ Egyptian cleric Abd Al-Fattah Abu Zayd is partially correct. Not of course, about the Zionist conspiracy but that the fatal, mortal danger posed to Islam that exposure to the modern West’s fascination with “the corrupting vices of urges, sex, women and 4.2 million porn websites on the Internet” threatens 7th century Islam with…Consciously or not, fanatical jihadists deeply sense the mortal threat to Islam, that women’s unrestricted sexuality poses to its 7th century ideology. Not to mention freedom of speech, religion and the individual pursuit of happiness. Islam cannot survive another century of exposure to the West, for them it is literally a fight to the death because they face ideological extinction.
Josh @ 6 said:
“You’re kidding with that barrel bomb, right, he lights it with a cigarette and pushes it out the door, Wiley Coyote could do better – and I don’t even see an explosion on the film, did I miss it?”
I was looking for it too and didn’t see it. My reading is the fuze went out and the whole package augered-in without exploding.
I was also wondering: The barrel bomb explodes in mid-air and “Then what?”. All of the metal fragments would quickly reach terminal velocity. The guys on the ground would then be inconvenienced with little bits of metal raining down on them harmlessly. I believe the principle behind artillery shrapnel is the whole projectile is traveling at supersonic speed and explodes by a timer fuze just above the target. The shrapnel are mostly metal balls with high ballistic coefficient that rain down well before reaching terminal velocity.
JFSanders@2 earlier said: “Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was right.”
Agoraphobic Plumber@4 responded:
“Back in my younger years I never would have believed that I would end up agreeing with that sentiment, but God help me, I do.”
For William T. Sherman, war was a mathematical process. His standard operating procedure before a military engagement was to estimate the number of enemy deaths required to achieve victory and compare that estimate to the anticipated number of deaths amongst his own troops. Sherman would not engage if he could not inflict enough death amongst the enemy to achieve his tactical objective or if the estimated death amongst his own troops exceeded the reward from victory. You can see precisely this sort of calculation in the letters he exchanged with General Grant. Both Sherman and Grant saw their own troops as “coin” with which they could purchase victory. Likewise they saw the enemy’s troops as assets that had to be destroyed. Sherman was quoted somewhere as saying that victory over the South could not be achieved until after a couple hundred thousand Confederates had been killed in combat. Sherman’s mindset was “there is a fixed number of people that need to be killed to achieve victory so let’s do it quickly and get it over with”. This philosophy towards war is totally contrary to the moonbat mindset that one should be nice to the enemy because war is bad for children and small growing things.
What confuses me is the Israelis don’t seem to understand Sherman’s concept of war. The Israelis seem to regard their continual conflict against their neighbors as a process like “mowing the lawn”, i.e. the Arabs will never change their behavior so the best the Israelis can do is hurt the Arabs until they stop fighting and then back off. This concept works until the Arabs produce a WMD or the Israelis make a tactical error and then it’s all over for Israel. What the Israelis need to do is deliver a knock-out punch, expel all Moslems who live within Israel’s territory and then construct an uninhabited buffer zone (no settlers) around their territory that’s about 50 miles wide. Of course, Israel will never do this so it’s just a matter of time before they get nuked or make that last tactical error.
#23,
Ah! The old “kill them all and let God sort it out” philosophy!
#25,
Genghis Khan’s purported psychopathy is shared by perhaps hundreds of thousands in every generation. Jesus’ deep humanity has convinced, in every generation, millions to at least attempt to emulate it. Humanity’s ‘glass’ is a bit more than half full.
The bad boys get all the publicity, as if it bleeds it leads, but its the average Joe whose basic decency keeps civilization running.
#26,
God or ‘the barbarians at the gate’ will raze the whole anti-Darwinian edifice to the ground. When a society rejects its ‘rough men, ready to do violence upon their behalf’ its just a matter of time.
#34,
How long before the missing Libyan surface to air missiles start taking out America’s civilian airliners? Are they already in transit through Mexico?
#42 Eggplant,
“What confuses me is the Israelis don’t seem to understand Sherman’s concept of war.”
They understand it quite well. Their difficulty lies in the old truth, “it’s not what you don’t know that will get you killed, it’s what you think you know, that isn’t true, that gets you killed”. Israeli’s accept as a given truth that they need American aid and support, even though that aid is predicated upon the condition that Israel refrain from Sherman’s total war, the only way to actually and permanently win a war. They accept that Israel cannot make war upon a religion, even though that ideology is at war with them. They believe that world opinion matters. They believe that if only the world could see that they’re the good guys, the world’s animus towards Israel would change. Israel is caught within the ideological and intellectual bars of its own self-created prison.
Geoffrey Britain@44 said:
“Israel is caught within the ideological and intellectual bars of its own self-created prison.”
I agree. Israel is programmed to fail. Israel has survived this long mainly because the Arabs have been incompetent soldiers (vicious idiots). The day will come that the Arabs acquire WMDs or a Saladin or Ataturk rises up as their leader (both non-Arabs).
If I was an Israeli, I’d immigrate to Australia.
38. Geoffrey Britain
#4 Agoraphobic Plumber
If you have access to Sirius/XM, you will probably find Andrew Wilkow (Patriot channel before Hannity) to your liking. I believe his thoughtful deconstruction of liberal arguments and solid constitutional reasoning should be the platform for the new party which should replace the GOP. Naming it the Constitutional Party would preclude a number of issues and provide a solid basis for a winning ideology.
I see the Israeli/Islam solution as a cause and effect problem. What Islam wants is the destruction of Israel, not an expansion. Every time Israel is attacked it should expand, widdening her buffer zone. They have a choice then, live in peace or perish. Both choices are winners.
45. Eggplant
‘If I was an Israeli, I’d immigrate to Australia.’
Then when antisemitism develops in Australia, where should they move to, Mars?
If Jews, after 2,000 years in diaspora and with a presence in Israel for 4.000 years, can’t live in their homeland, where, pray tell, can they live?
In regard to Islam, a reformation is only possible after a total defeat. The only way to defeat Islam, is to destroy what they hold as their ‘holy’ sites – the kaba, qum. No 12th imam for them. No need for millions of dead ignoramuses, just rubble, barney.
Where Will It End
Re: Agoraphobic Plumber, #4:
Me, too; your last paragraph there. Ditto, ditto, and DITTO.
It got to be a sort of game with me: “Let’s see — what ELSE have the Left lied about?” as one sacred cow after another bit the dust.
I even listen to Rush Limbaugh these days, who, to my astonishment, turns out to be a rather genial, sometimes amusing, garden-variety old-school Republican with a gift for gab. I used to hate his guts on “principle,” never having listened to him for one second.
The Left’s empire is built on a foundation of lies, sold as idealism.
SpeakEasy@47 said:
“Every time Israel is attacked it should expand, widening her buffer zone.”
This is a good strategy and maybe even the correct one. However Israel could find itself in the dilemma that the United States found itself in after the Mexican-American War, i.e. we conquered way more territory than we could hold. Fortunately the United States had sense enough to only take the northern mostly uninhabited fraction of Mexico and throw back the rest. What would Israel do if it conquered the Nile Valley? One would think that Israel would throw it back realizing that the Nile Valley could not be held. However (obviously) there is a long Jewish tradition associated with Egypt.
Where Will It End @ 48 said:
“In regard to Islam, a reformation is only possible after a total defeat. The only way to defeat Islam, is to destroy what they hold as their ‘holy’ sites – the kaba, qum. No 12th imam for them….”
For years I thought Moshe Dayan showed considerable shrewdness in taking down the Israeli flag from the Al-Aqsa Mosque after it was conquered in the 1967 war. However Moshe Dayan might have been too clever. Perhaps a better strategy might have been to tear down the entire structure brick-by-brick and toss the rubble into the sea. I’m more inclined towards a half way solution of doing an “Abu Simbel” with the Al-Aqsa Mosque, i.e. have archeologists carefully dismantle the structure and then hand it to the Saudis to do with as they please.
#45,
Unfortunately, Australia has a small but growing radical Islamic minority population. No matter where Jews emigrate en mass, Islam will follow.
#46,
I’ll check him out.
#47,
That’s what Israel’s settlement program is somewhat about. Trying to put pressure on the Palestinians to see that continued conflict means slow but sure loss of land. It’s not working of course because Muslims value theology over land or peace.
Were Israel not in the ideological and intellectual prison of its own assumptions, it would long ago have annexed Gaza and the West Bank and expelled all Palestinians from its territories. Then create a buffer zone at the Sinai, Lebanese border and Jordan River where nothing can cross.
#48,
I’ve been saying something similar since June of 2010. But rather than just destroy Islam’s holy sites, I’ve suggested holding them hostage to radical jihadists ‘good behavior’, using the sites hostage status as a deterrent. The rationale being that the only thing fanatical jihadists value is Islam and, Islam is unique in the inordinate importance it places upon its holy sites. Indeed, pilgrimage to Mecca to pray before the Kaaba is a mandatory duty (if at all possible) for all devout Muslims.
Mullahs, Imams and the most devout of Muslims; radical jihadists…all will be very reluctant to lose those shrines, if they are certain that terrorist attacks will result in their destruction.
To convince them of that new reality, Israel and/or the US would announce a new doctrine; terrorist attacks will result in the loss of a Islamic holy shrine, nuclear terrorist attacks will result in nuclear retaliation against the capital of the nukes’ country of origination and against Mecca itself.
Just to drive the point home, I’d make the first reprisal against the Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third holiest site. Then I’d respond to the predictable outrage with an unapologetic response; “OK, now you know we’re serious. Do you want to up the ante, or go all in and put Mecca on the table too?
Won’t happen of course. But it’s our best shot at deterring Islam long enough for cultural exposure to the west to rot Islam from the inside out and put it upon the ash heap of history.
Since it won’t happen, Wretchard’s Three Conjectures is almost certainly Islam’s fate. They insist upon it.
a Parody
————-
One evening as the sun went down
And the jihad fires were burning,
Down the track came a jihadi hiking,
And he said, “Boys, I’m not turning
I’m headed for a land that’s far away
Besides the crystal fountains
So come with me, we’ll go and see
The Black Rock Candy Mountain
In the Black Rock Candy Mountain,
There’s a land that’s fair and bright,
Where the virgins grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the tents all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the hashish trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Black Rock Candy Mountain.
In the Black Rock Candy Mountain
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers’ trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I’m bound to go
Where there ain’t no snow
Where the rain don’t fall
The winds don’t blow
In the Black Rock Candy Mountain.
In the Black Rock Candy Mountain
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The infidels have to tip their hats
And the sheiks are blind
There’s a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Black Rock Candy Mountain
In the Black Rock Candy Mountain,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There are short-handled daggers
axes, saws and picks,
I’m bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That didn’t submit, arg arg
In the Black Rock Candy Mountain.
I’ll see you all
when the Bunker Buster fall
In the Black Rock Candy Mountain
40. Josh
c @ 18: Indian metallurgists do remain something of a mystery. They punched way above their weight, coming out with advanced steels using compatively primitive techniques during production. It’s an open question how they pulled it off.
The steel came from India, but the swords were still made in Persia – or maybe even Damascus, or maybe Damascus is just where the swords were encountered or where the wielders were from. And just exactly what is still something of a mystery, much less the how. Just how good modern imitations are, or how they compare to the best modern steels, etc. But you also had to make the swords in a certain way so as not to lose, or to perfect, the underlying qualities of the material.
…………….
I read somewhere that Damascus swords got its steel strength and flexibility from trace metals found in meteorites. That the reason that the worship stone in mecca is a meteorite is because abundant meteorites strewn across saudi Arabia (second only to Antarctica) were melted down and their trace metals incorporated into iron to make Damascus swords which were the weapons of choice during the Islamic expansion from roughly 640-840, that set to ruin the Mediterranean world and Persia.
Fox News reporting right now that intelligence states the Syrian military has mixed Sarin gas and is loading weapons with it – it has a 60 day expiration date… Here is the red line. As stated above, it is the weapon, not the body count that determines sending our troops. And, just when is it considered crossed – that red line? Back to Netanyahu and his drawing at the U.N. Buckle up, folks – this while those damn fools are all set to let the clock run on sequestration.
Josh 14,
I meant “endured.” The US chose to use precision daylight bombing of heavily defended industrial targets in Germany while the British resorted to the night time firebombing of cities. Consequently the Americans faced and endured horrendous casualties. The 8th Air Force was the most dangerous unit of that size that an American could belong to. It was in effect a suicide mission. That was the back story behind the dark humor of “Catch-22.”
In post war strategic terminology the US attempted to fight using a Counter Force strategy while the British engaged in a Counter Value exchange with the Germans. We did so because even while fighting the Nazis we at least initially desired to avoid civilian casualties and concentrate our firepower on military targets. Our ability to do so was aided by our physical distance from the theater that shielded our civilian population and our enormous relative wealth in both materiel and manpower.
This can be compared to our approach to Japan. Given the mutual ferocity of the Pacific War the wonder is that Douglas MacArthur achieved a miracle by preventing the extermination of the Japanese people and building a basis for mutual support and even affection.
Recently on Al Jazeera(?) they did a piece on the Israeli practice of
“roof knocking” which refers to the use of a non-lethal projectile usually launched from a drone that explodes harmlessly on the roof of a target which is intended to let the occupants know that real munitions are soon on the way.
This gives people time to evacuate the building before it’s blown to little bits by the IAF.
The tone of the news item was one of outrage at the practice, while I watched I wondered how many mortar rounds or rocket attacks by hamas against Israel were made after a warning shot? “None” was the first word to come to mind. This network NEVER allows that maybe Israel is acting resonably and in its own defence.
As Ace pointed out a few days ago, Buraq was really quick to call for our ally Mubarak”s ouster after the Arab Spring rioting pushback got ugly. Well Buraq and Hilary, Isn’t time for your pal Morsi to go? Where are the calls for his ouster?
Oh- does it have anything to do with Morsi being a radical Islamist? Huma said what?
Buraq and Hilary have really exposed their true selves this time. No getting around it.
And are we still giving him that $4.8 bil?
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/06/video-protests-in-egypt-turn-deadly-5-dead-hundreds-injured/
Re 44. Geoffrey Britain, re 45 Eggplant
One factor that could reverse the situation you both note is the internal demographics in Israel. The Israelis on the left tend to have less children, while the more conservative and more religious have larger families.
Another recent trend is more of the left wing youth are getting exemptions from military service, (medical or academic) and conservative and religious kids are increasingly not taking exemptions. The law that made it fairly easy for strictly religious youth to avoid conscription while studying Jewish law was overturned, and the government is still working out the parameters of a compromise to bring more of these devoutly religious Jews into the army. Most of the NCOs are now religious Jews, and many of these religious-Zionist types volunteer for combat and special forces. The higher officers tend to be non-religious, but as the IDF generally moves to the right this will change.
In the long run, the government/polity and army of Israel is shifting right. This may undo the assumptions that have limited Israel’s ability to wage war properly. Will the shift go fast enough and far enough? We shall see.
Re 50 Eggplant
“What would Israel do if it conquered the Nile Valley?”
They almost did in ’73. The answer then was wait for the ceasefire then let the surrounded Egyptian army go home, then negotiate to withdraw Israeli forces.
Next time they should keep the Sinai.
“However Moshe Dayan might have been too clever.”
In ’67 the IDF brass was universally left wing and secular. As I point out above, the up and coming generation of IDF officers and enlisted will be more religious, Zionist, and right wing.
After the next war I expect the proper flags to remain flying.
Where are the calls for his ouster?
Well here goes:
Because Morsi’s our man. (With echoes of….”We could no more disown Morsi than we could disown ourselves…” etc., etc.)
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3484/egypt-morsi-train-wreck
Hold on. If we’re en route to Armageddon, does that mean that Obama really is the Messiah?
File under: Morsi beat
Jay…
It doesn’t follow that ANY Israeli government could be more Zionist than Moshe Dayan.
You ARE describing the Defense Minister of Israel during the Six Day War.
{
If you want a chuckle — read the Wiki on Dayan. As you might expect, it’s written and re-written by Arabs and anti-Zionists.
Within the Wiki, one reads of chronic failure and incompetence on the part of Moshe — which leads — inexplicably — to his vertical rise through the ranks.
In reality, he was handed every hot potato the IDF ran into. He was a one man fire-brigade.
Of particular distortion is the Wiki’s rewrite of the Golan. Securing it had been an Israeli obsession since the start. It’s the high ground overlooking their breadbasket. It also is critical to their water supply.
}
As for the ultra-orthodox entering the IDF — you’re the first one to advance that notion in my neck of the Internet. All others are wringing their hands that the IDF and Israel are in a terminal bind because these fellows are free-riding.
The only Jews I know who think that the Arabs would be really willing to trade peace for land don’t live in Israel.
Of course, Hamas is on record: perpetual war until the Jewish state is liquidated; no ifs ands or buts.
Which makes sense, they’re a front for Iran; which is fighting the West right on down to the last Sunni islamist.
The only Jews I know who think that the Arabs would be really willing to trade peace for land don’t live in Israel.
Alas, not so. (AKA Peres the thought?)
Anyway, de Nile seems to be flowing strongly also in the land between the River and the Sea. True, there used to be a whole lot more deluded souls in the heady days of Oslo; but they’re still around, ever certain, ever vocal about the truth and righteousness of their earnest misbelief.
In fact, it seems that belief in the Palestinian desire to exist together in peace with Israel is the latest false God (and has been for some time) to have been embraced by the Children of Jacob.
File under: Thou shalt not….doubt the good intentions of those who wish to destroy you.
Senators Graham, McCain, University of Houston Professor Craig Pirrong, and @ReginaldQuill all insist Syria must be made safe for the Muslim Brotherhood to establish the second MBO dominated government on Israel’s borders. And of course any leakage of MANPADs and other devastating weapons to jihadis was purely incidental and the CIA was only in Benghazi to take those weapons back not to facilitate their rapid delivery to Syria. Nothing to see here folks, move on.