“This is not an uplifting post.”
Category Archives: War Commentary
“Hamas Is Our Role Model”
So says the Muslim Brotherhood.
This isn’t going to end well.
[Update a few minutes later]
Reflections on the wishful thinking about Egypt:
There are wolves all too ready to profit from the gamboling of the sheep. Indeed, they are even quite willing to put on a wool disguise to lull them further into daydreams. The French aristocrat who converted to Catholicism to be king said that Paris was well worth a mass. The Islamists think that Cairo is well worth inviting dumb American journalists to dinner and being hospitable to them.
It’s the same generally with the West, dreaming of a moderate Palestinian state at peace with Israel; of moderate Islamists happily preserving their religion of peace; of Middle Easterners expressing gratitude to those wonderful Westerners who stopped backing dictators and evil Zionists to support instead the masses’ legitimate aspirations; and all the rest of that man-made global balminess.
Try to explain your good intentions to the firing squad. Blindness and wishful thinking are traits one cannot afford in the Middle East because the price for them is going to be very, very high.
The old joke about denial not being a river in Egypt seems particularly apropo here.
Merry Christmas To All
…my Christian readers. And if you have prayers, they should go out to the persecuted Christians in the world. For many, the “Arab Spring” was a sad new winter.
[Update on Christmas morning]
Related thoughts from Mark Steyn.
Totalitarian Grief
Observations from Michael Totten.
A Hitchens Roundup
Thoughts from Nick Gillespie, Michelle Malkin, Wretchard, Rob Long, Lileks, Peter Robinson, Melissa Clouthier, John Podhoretz, James Fenton, Joy McCann, Jason Cowley, Doug Wilson, Simon Jenkins, and last but by no means least, his brother Peter.
I first recall being impressed with him in the nineties, in his fearless willingness to take on the lies of the Clintons. He was devastating, to anyone who paid attention.
[Update a while later]
The Atlantic remembers Hitchens, as does Michael Totten.
[Update late morning]
Here’s another from Pete Wehner.
[Almost noon]
And Ron Radosh weighs in.
[Early afternoon update]
David Corn: sharing an office with Hitch.
Willful Blindness
Thoughts on the idiocy at the Obama Defense department:
It reflects the Obama philosophy that we cannot even hint that an interpretation of Islam — drawn literally from Islamic scriptures — is the force motivating our enemies. Even though this is unquestionably true, to say so, to acknowledge it in any way, would mean, according to administration thinking, that we are at war with Islam itself — with all 1.4 billion Muslims, including the hundreds of millions who do not subscribe to this interpretation. Unwilling to entertain the possibility that the enemy has a coherent, knowable doctrine — which is a powerful catalyst precisely because it draws credibly (not inarguably but credibly) on scripture — we have forfeited the natural right to defend ourselves and the troops who make it possible for us to live freely.
This is criminal recklessness. It is idiocy beyond description, so I should just stop trying to describe it. Watch it in all its jaw-dropping ignominy.
You can’t win a war when you pretend that you’re not in one.
Assad Has Lost His Penultimate Ally
Israel. Now there’s no one left but Iran. And as he notes, we should be doing at least as much to remove him as we did with whatshisname in Libya.
More On State Department Stifling Of Free Speech
This is just nuts. It would never happen in a Bolton-run State Department.
Stifling Free Speech By The State Department
…on behalf of Islamic dictatorships. All in a day’s work at Foggy Bottom.
[Update a while later]
More stifling of free speech — a constitutional amendment to strip the right from pro-business non-profits, while leaving it intact for anti-business non-profits.
Pearl Harbor Considered
A review of the history, and application to current events.