Archive for the ‘Not America’ Category
Kurt Westergaard, Mohammed Cartoons, And Liberals Ignoring The Obvious
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
Liberal bloggers are so very, very brave. They can quote out of context and everything! They can also question the bravery of others while not being brave themselves. They can accuse other of hypocrisy and can’t see their own. It’s awesome. Ummmm:
I’m more than a little troubled/confused by the story of Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who survived an attack this Friday from an axe-wielding critic by hiding in a semi-fortified panic room. (Westergaard drew one of the controversial Muhammad cartoons in 2005). I mean, there are any number of complexities about the story, but here’s the one that I’m most perplexed by.
At the time, Westergaard was looking after his five-year-old granddaughter, Stephanie. He was confronted with a terrible choice: risk being killed in front of his granddaughter, or trust that the PET, Denmark’s security and intelligence service, knew what they were talking about when they had told him terrorists usually don’t harm family members but stick to their target.
Westergaard chose to escape into his bathroom, which had been specially fortified as a “panic room”, while Stephanie was left sitting in the living room. From the bathroom he alerted the police as his assailant reportedly battered the reinforced door with the axe, shouting, “We will get our revenge!”
Both survived unscathed, although God knows how a 5-year-old processes something like that, and you’ve got to imagine her folks aren’t going to be letting Grandpa babysit again anytime soon. Still, how does one even make that choice? Was it really a rational process, as implied above? I could not even begin to say. Or judge.
Well, actually, I think that this author is judging…as am I. If there was a way to get the kid to the safe room, I’m guessing he would have, right? If he callously left her…what the hell? But of course, there’s more to the story.
From the Guardian article:
“Those minutes were horrible,” Westergaard recalled yesterday. “But I think I have got through this fairly well – and so, it seems, did my grandchild. That, of course, is the main thing. I would not have been able to live with myself if something had happened to her.”
From the outside, Westergaard’s house in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-biggest city, looks like your average suburban home. But according to the cartoonist, it is a “fortress without a moat”, equipped with security cameras and armoured windows. Living under the constant threat of revenge, he has always had to take precautions when leaving his home – visits to the gym, for example, could not be at predictable hours, so he would change his schedule every week. He carries a personal alarm and tracking device everywhere, and every day a police car would escort him to and from his work at Denmark’s biggest-selling daily newspaper.
Makes me think the above blogger wants to note the cartoonist’s hypocrisy…he’s not all that brave. While she also omits that this guy is being hounded by radical Muslims every day because of a cartoon.
Can we focus on the closed-mindedness here? Imagine, say, that the cartoon was about Jesus and years later the cartoonist had to have a police escort and a tracking device and a safe room.
It’s called perspective liberals. While you kvetch about his cowardice leaving his grand-daughter in the living room–something, I too, question–you also ignore the constant, relentless threat he lives under for being an artist who dared poke fun of the Religion of Peace. The real story is that a couple years later, psychotic Muslims aren’t enlightened enough to endure criticism of their religion and then reinforce all stereotypes of a barbaric religion by being barbaric. (Ya gotta admit, an axe is pretty barbaric, no?)
It’s also getting more difficult to ignore the Religion of Peace when their extremist adherents are trying to blow up planes on Christmas. Oh yes, they respect other religions as much as they endure insults to their own.
So, until Islam goes through a reformation, focus your ire where it belongs: On the psychotic people unwilling to embrace enlightened values like tolerance and love and peace. You know, all those things John Lennon liked to imagine. It’s not the Christians conducting a jihad, here. They’re making difficult choices like whether they have time to pull their five year old granddaughter into the safe room without getting them both killed by an ax-wielding Muslim or trying to not get blown up on their plane home on Christmas.
“You wanted to have peaceful Germans. Now you have them. Don’t complain.”
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009Regarding increasing German troops in Afghanistan via the Weekly Standard:
Stinner acknowledged that the Germans “need to do their fair share” but that the cultural hurdles to greater German military involvement were great. “Germans are the most risk-averse people in the world,” he says. And they are not so easily inclined to go to war, following 60 years of social reengineering: “You wanted to have peaceful Germans. Now you have them. Don’t complain.”
He kinda has a point.
An Actual Hitler Story: Seriously, Not A Politician Like Hitler, Actual Hitler
Monday, December 7th, 2009Hitler’s body was burned by the KGB:
Adolf Hitler’s remains were burned and dumped into an East German river by Soviet agents 25 years after the end of World War II, Interfax reported, citing Vasily Khristoforov, the Federal Security Service’s chief archivist.
The remains of Hitler, his companion Eva Braun and the family of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels were destroyed in April 1970 on the secret orders of then-KGB chief Yuri Andropov, the Russian news agency said today. Andropov went on to become Soviet leader from 1982 until his death in 1984.
The Soviets were concerned that graves of Third Reich leaders might one day attract Nazi sympathizers, Interfax said. The remains were burned and dumped into the Biederitz River, outside the eastern city of Magdeburg, according to the news service.
So, Hitler got torched. I’m glad he’s dust. The thought of his remains remaining is disturbing. Some souls shouldn’t exist.
War Crimes Tribunal For Petreaus?
Friday, October 16th, 2009Why the UN Council going after Israel is dangerous:
Tactics deployed to hurt Israel inevitably cause collateral damage. It’s a good thing that the United States, and a handful of European countries, have opposed the referral of Israel to a war crimes tribunal, but they aren’t doing enough (and, of course, France and Great Britain absented themselves from the vote). They would do more, I think, if they understood that Israel represented a kind of test run for a uniquely nefarious idea. Israel may find itself in the docket soon, but the U.S., and Britain, and other Western democracies that are battling Islamist terror, may soon find themselves in similiar straits. Who could seriously argue that what happened in Gaza was unique? Talibs hide behind civilians in Afghanistan, and often those civilians get killed. It’s only a matter of time before David Petraeus, or Bob Gates, find themselves under attack from the same forces that want to punish Israel for trying to defend itself from a state-sponsored terror group seeking its elimination.
Why Would Americans Be For An Afghan Surge?
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009Americans poll positive on surging in Afghanistan. Why would that be? Because most Americans have dealt with moles, ant-hills, head lice, or some other kind of nasty infestation. The bugs die when they are 1. exterminated and 2. the environment is cleaned up.
Libs hate George W. Bush for his warmongering ways. They’re giving Barack Obama a hypocritical pass. But Bush knew that this two pronged approach is necessary to rid of pests…especially murderous pests. Killing them works, but making the environment clean so that bugs don’t grow is important for prevention.
Americans have stayed amazingly consistent: Kill the bugs. Clean the house. This is just common sense.
H/T Instapundit
Chaos At The Daily Kos Over Afghanistan
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009A reader who wishes to remain anonymous tipped me off to a fascinating thread over at the Daily Kos that echoes the utter confusion of the Left on Afghanistan.
You see, despite all the caterwauling about foreign policy that we heard from the Left during the Bush years, it’s still ultimately little more than a political football to them. So now, the aimless indecision of the White House has drifted down to the activist level. And no wonder:
* During the campaign, Barack Obama “made it clear” that winning in Afghanistan was vitally important. Now, he seems much more indifferent.
* Liberals told everyone who would listen that we were wasting resources in Iraq that could better be used in Afghanistan. But, now that resources have been freed up, Obama’s hedging on sending them even though the generals say they need them to win the war.
* The poll numbers on Afghanistan seem roughly split at the moment, but that may be misleading. Whatever else may be said about Bush, he was a dogged man. He would have stayed as long as necessary and done whatever it took to win in Afghanistan, no matter what the political fallout turned out to be. If we lose in Afghanistan, how is Barack Obama, who has zero “tough guy” credibility with the public, going to look? How would the American people react to losing a war because of the personal weakness and political machinations of the man in the White House?
With all that in mind, comes a Daily Kos ad page for an anti-war show called, “Obama’s war.”
Here’s the initial post about it:
Getting online today the first thing I notice was the DKOS background and the words ‘Obama’s war’.
WTF? I beg to differ, but this is NOT Obama’s war. This is Bush’s war, plain and simple. One thing we do NOT need to be doing at this juncture is feeding into the right wing meme that this is Obama’s war. Obama is trying to clean up the mess started by Bush and his cronies at Halliburton.
I know that Obama is trying to wind this quagmire down, but that does NOT make it ‘his war’. It must suck being the only adult in the room for him, but that’s the job he applied for, and he is doing the best at it humanly possible.
I see those around here giving Obama down the road all the time, and that’s fine by me. But this ‘Obama’s War’ crap is going too far, and simply parroting FoxNews talking points.
So please, people. Let’s stay level headed about this.
This is NOT OBAMA’S WAR.
Dammit.
Because Obama is not sending a clear signal about which way he is going to go (the Left is actually much more authoritarian and centralized in thinking than the Right), the responses to this are all over the map.
Well, then it is an … (1+ / 0-)
… American war, at least until we can get out, which means that “Obama’s War” is an incorrect appellation. Thanks for proving that for the diarist.People can demand that troops be pulled out and not put in, and they can be careful about what they call it. But, if they want to voice their right to call it “Obama’s War,” then I can call them clueless. That’s my right.
“Obama, Obama, I love ya, Obama; you’re only November away” — cute ginger kid
by Tortmaster
You can call (1+ / 0-)
it any kind of war ya want.I sure don’t have a problem with calling it Obama’s war, since he’s the CinC, and he’s ramped it up there.
If you want to speak to the current administration, who do you go to?
by Hound Dog
Thank you (4+ / 0-)
I don’t care if it’s an ad or not, and it matters little what the overall intent is–either on the part of the site or the show itself.But this is exactly the message it sends–that it’s “Obama’s War”, and it also makes it look like it’s something the site supports.
Disgusting. If I was really full of myself, I’d go GBCW and get lost. But nobody really knows me from adam around here anyway, so I think I’ll just get lost. This has absolutely, thoroughly disgusted me.
Necessity is the mother of revolution…
by o the umanity
Most Americans (7+ / 0-)
did support the invasion of Afghanistan. (I was not one of them). And while I agree that the execution and decision for the war was Bush’s, he no longer has power. It is Obama’s war now. Just as Viet Nam became Nixon’s war as opposed to Johnson’s – those of us who voted for Obama did so hoping he’d apply sanity to the situation – and we are not terribly comfortable with the statements coming from his White House on this nor the actions.More drones? More civilian deaths? That’s not going to resolve this situation.
by KibbutzAmiad
Actually, Afghanistan is an American war. However, Barack Obama is the Commander-In-Chief and therefore, he’s the one ultimately responsible for winning it.
Moreover, the fact that Barack Obama is starting to take political considerations into account in fighting the war in Afghanistan may not be surprising, but it is alarming. When his generals are telling him that they need more troops to win and he’s hemming and hawing while his political handlers pour over polling data, it’s disturbing. This is a time for leadership, not a time for “voting present.”
As long as Barack Obama is doing the best he can to win in Afghanistan, Barack Obama deserves conservative support for that part of his agenda. But, if he ultimately chooses to waffle on doing what it takes to achieve victory, he should be forewarned that the criticism will be merciless and savage.
John Hawkins blogs at Linkiest, among other blogs, and is happy to have been given the opportunity to help fill in for Dr. Melissa Clouthier.
Sarah Palin V. Barack Obama: Round Whatever
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009As President Obama pontificates before the UN talking about his four pillars, the first one being disarmament, also known as defanging the West so they’re helpless before an enemy that will never disarm, Sarah Palin talks about what is important to the American people and the economic world: It’s the economy, stupid.
Foreign policy often hinges on economic policy. The guns just back up the message.
Did Sarah Palin’s message work? No one can fully say. The press wasn’t allowed in to hear it. But here are a few of her words via the Wall Street Journal:
“We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place,” the former Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate said Wednesday at a conference sponsored by investment firm CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. “We’re not interested in government fixes, we’re interested in freedom,” she added.
Is Barack Obama’s speech before the UN working? He is saying some interesting things, but the meta-message, weakness, will trump all words. No wonder the UN members like him, says the UK’s Nile Gardiner:
It is not hard to see why a standing ovation awaits the president at Turtle Bay. Obama’s popularity at the UN boils down essentially to his willingness to downplay American global power. He is the first American president who has made an art form out of apologizing for the United States, which he has done on numerous occasions on foreign soil, from Strasbourg to Cairo. The Obama mantra appears to be – ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do to atone for your country. This is a message that goes down very well in a world that is still seething with anti-Americanism.
It is natural that much of the UN will embrace an American president who declines to offer strong American leadership. A president who engages dictators like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez will naturally gain respect from the leaders of the more than 100 members of the United Nations who are currently designated as “partly free” or “not free” by respected watchdog Freedom House.
The UN is not a club of democracies – who still remain a minority within its membership – it is a vast melting pot of free societies, socialist regimes and outright tyrannies. Obama’s clear lack of interest in human rights issues is a big seller at the UN, where at least half its members have poor human rights records.
The United States has a study in contrasts–as does the world. There will be those who dismiss Sarah Palin’s quaint provincialism and extol Barack Obama’s egalitarian moral equivalence. Eventually, though, a world economy driven into the ground by soft-socialistic policies makes even the most ruthless tyrant hunger for the good old days when there was food and riches and wealth.
It’s a good day for evil world leaders if America goes down the toilet, but it’s a suicidal impulse. Americans, too, might want a softer place to land economically, they might desire big spending Eurpoean social programs, but that makes America weak and beholden to foreign nations. Suddenly, American foreign policy is dictated by dictators and those who hold the economic power.
In the end, Sarah Palin’s speech and philosophy will mean more for American security and sovereignty than President Obama’s empty words to a heedless world. They adore Obama but they disrespect the United States because we are buried in debt.
Foreign policy and economic policy are so wrapped together, one can’t be discussed without the other one. President Obama’s philosophy is making America weak both ways.
More on Obama’s policy objectives here:
Undermine our allies. Embolden our enemies. Diminish our country.
Those nine words define the Obama doctrine with respect to American security policy. All three elements were much in evidence in the president’s benighted decision last week to cancel the “third site” for intercontinental-range missile defenses in Eastern Europe. They will be on display as well during this week’s several conclaves with foreign leaders.
The cumulative effect is predictable: A world in which the United States has fewer friends, more enemies and fewer options for assuring its security.
Obama = Weak UPDATED
Thursday, September 17th, 2009President Obama signaled to the world that dictatorial regimes have carte blanc while struggling Democracies will be left to defend themselves. Today, on the 70th anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Poland, the President announced that there will be no defense shield in Europe. Poland, Europe, is on their own.
Russia is the same. It’s the United States that has changed. Well, that’s what President Obama promised, but it’s not good changes that he’s delivering.
Meanwhile, Venezuela signs agreements with China while building up militarily. And China is building up too:
“In fact, when considering the military-modernization programs of countries like China, we should be concerned less with their potential ability to challenge the US symmetrically — fighter to fighter or ship to ship — and more with their ability to disrupt our freedom of movement and narrow our strategic options,” Gates said in a speech to the Air Force Association.
“Investments in cyber and anti-satellite warfare, anti-air and anti-ship weaponry, and ballistic missiles could threaten America’s primary way to project power and help allies in the Pacific — in particular our forward air bases and carrier strike groups,” Gates said in National Harbor, Maryland.
The new threats meant long-range military aircraft would take on greater importance as the latest weaponry would “degrade the effectiveness of short-range fighters and put more of a premium on being able to strike from over the horizon — whatever form that capability might take,” he said.
Defense analysts have warned that the US military will soon lose its dominance on the high seas, in space and in cyberspace as China and other emerging powers obtain sophisticated weaponry and missiles.
Whether it is sending the wrong message to Iran, abandoning Honduras, abandoning Poland, putting tariffs on Chinese goods, or all the rest of it, President Obama signals weakness around the world.
And he wants to increase debt with health care at the time when America is drowning in debt. What happens when those debts are called in?
Why do Democrats like projecting and being weak on the world stage while dominating and enslaving average Americans with oppressive taxation? It’s like they don’t recognize an enemy when they see one.
UPDATED:
Kim Priestap has a must-read piece. She also says:
I believe Obama’s decision to abandon the missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republican is nearly as bad as Carter’s decision to abandon the Shah of Iran. Radical Islam grew as a result of Carter’s decision. A new Soviet style Putinian Russia will grow as a result of Obama’s decision.
Bookworm calls President Obama a “very bad man“:
“He’s a bad man. He’s a very, very bad man.”
That’s all I could think of when I read that today, on the 70th Anniversary of Poland’s invasion by the Nazis, Barack Obama made the decision to leave Poland and the Czech Republic vulnerable to Putin’s tender ministrations. The former Soviet Union may be in demographic decline, but that clearly hasn’t stopped Putin’s dreams of grandeur — and what better way to use up former military stock, regain your former imperial glory, and augment your dying population, than by engaging in a little empire building. Nor do I buy Obama’s claim that he’s just replacing a standing defense system with something more “agile.”
Human Right’s Watch Worker Nazi Memorabilia-Collecting Wierdo
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009He’s not the only antisemitic HRW worker, so, take their blabbing about Israel’s human rights “violations” for the nonsense it is. Bookworm has the whole story:
Omri Ceren, who blogs at Mere Rhetoric, is a member of the Watcher of Weasels Council. He is as good a blogger as one can get, and someone with a real gift for ferreting out the truth behind the story. So it was no surprise that Omri, using what he describes as simple due diligence, discovered that yet another high level member of Human Rights Watch, an ostensibly objective organization that is in fact fiercely hostile to Israel, has a distinctly unsavory past, and one with strong ties to antisemitism. Omri’s discovery concerned Marc Garlasco, who happens to have an obsessive interesting in Nazi uniforms. Garlasco’s interest transcends mere hobbyism. As Omri details, Garlasco exhibits what veers into a libidinous excitement about Nazi uniforms, something that makes an ugly package when combined with his slobbering servility to Palestinians, his hostility to Israel, and his regular lies about the Jewish state.
Surprise! New York Time’s Kidnapped Journalist A Moron Who Cost A Soldier And Friend Their Lives–UPDATED
Thursday, September 10th, 2009The paper of record will probably not report the flaming ignorance of their own reporter, Stephen Farrell, but the British press is less inclined to cover for him. Remember the NYT reporter who got abducted and subsequently rescued? Remember how good the NYT was with keeping that secret, you know a secret that mattered when lives were at stake?
A soldier lost his life to save this, what’s the Van Jones word?, that’s right, a**hole. Here’s what happened:
Afghan police and intelligence officers repeatedly warned journalists including Mr Farrell that it was too dangerous to go to the site. Kunduz is a notorious Taliban northern stronghold and was one of the last holdouts of the regime when it was toppled in 2001.
While Mr Farrell, who was kidnapped in iraq five years ago, and Mr Munadi were interviewing Afghans near the site of the bombing an elderly man warned them to leave as the Taliban were on their way.
But they stayed and shortly afterwards gunshots rang out and they were taken into captivity. Mr Munadi was working as a freelance during a break from his university studies in Germany.
The dramatic rescue operation came in the early hours of Wednesday when a troop of Special Boat Service commandos supported by a company from the Special Forces Support Group left an American base in US helicopters. But the young British soldier died in the battle to the distress of his commanders.One senior Army source said: “When you look at the number of warnings this person had it makes you really wonder whether he was worth rescuing, whether it was worth the cost of a soldier’s life. In the future special forces might think twice in a similar situation.”
Another military source said: “This reporter went to this area against the advice of the Afghan police. So thanks very much Stephen Farrell, your irresponsible act has led to the death of one of our boys.”
Was his life saving? No. He knew the risks in his job. No doubt, his friends and family members are relieved to have him back in one piece. But there are other people, a British soldier, his interpreter, a woman and a child now dead because he ignored the advice of those who knew better.
And the New York Times? The paper couldn’t be bother with Van Jones or John Edwards, or, most of all, their own idiot reporter.
UPDATED:
The reporter a Brit, tells his story. He concludes:
It was over. Sultan was dead. He had died trying to help me, right up to the very last seconds of his life.
There were some celebrations among the mainly British soldiers on the aircraft home, which soon fell silent. It later emerged that one of the rescue party was also dead, mortally wounded during the raid. His blood-soaked helmet was in front of me throughout the flight. I thanked everyone who was still alive to thank. It wasn’t, and never will be, enough.
The soldier’s name. What is his name? At this point, the reporter’s “ordeal” means little. The man who died for him does.
If NYT … WSJ, CNN, Fox, assorted freelancers, the lot of them … stopped taking risks, we would have very little information about what happens in bad places. I don’t believe that most of them do it lightly, though I’ve known a few who do it irresponsibly and have been lucky they didn’t end up in this situation. A lot of them now have considerable time incountry, experience with these issues, and receive professional training and advice. A lot of them have also died, been injured, or spent time in captivity. It often comes down to judgment calls about what level of risk to take. Here’s an easy call to make in the aftermath: It looks like Farrell made a bad one. Harder to say about the military, which also had the option of standing off and exercised its own judgment in the moment.
I guess what makes me so angry is the way the newspapers so easily trash the very same who would save their sorry hides. The military is treated with contempt by the Western media. As a citizen (recognizing that all parties involved were British), I don’t feel inclined using vast resources and potentially putting solider in harms way for a risk-taking fool who works for an organization working in opposition to their own country’s interests.
The newspapers have no trouble putting soldiers in harms way with irresponsible reporting–remember the flushed Koran? How many false stories have put American and allied soldiers at risk? And now, a soldier’s family must live with the idea that their son, brother, father died for an agent who often indirectly colluded with the enemy.
I’m upset at the gross injustice in this. Over at Jawa, the reporter is described as a “self-indulgent asshole”. That’s being kind.
