Michael Yon: Cheering on mass murder.
Category Archives: War Commentary
Is He Dead, Jim?
What’s going on with Hugo?
I hope that the prospects for Venezuela are better than this article would indicate.
Why Is It Controversial To Call The Muslim Brotherhood…
…radical? Good question.
I’m sure that designating an equivalent Christian group (if one existed) by that word wouldn’t raise any media eyebrows.
A Political Deadline For Afghan Troop Withdrawal?
You don’t say?
The 58-year-old Petraeus couched his committee answers in the standard Washington etiquette acknowledging civilian control of an obedient military.
However, his forthright replies rapidly reverberated across the Capitol, where so many in the political business are so ready to believe that the accelerated troop withdrawals were ordered by the Democrat more to enhance his troubled reelection plans, than because they would enhance the cause of crushing terrorist forces in Afghanistan.Afghan war US Sgt William Bee ducks just in time, file
Under questioning, Gen. Petraeus admitted today, “The ultimate [drawdown] decision was a more aggressive formulation, if you will, in terms of the timeline than what we had recommended.”
As previously noted, this not only has the potential to backfire, but a high probability of it. And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving politician.
The President Is No Churchill
In 1940, Churchill appeared before the House of Commons and described Britain’s goal in World War II: “I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory despite all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”
This hyperbolic rube was too unsophisticated to appreciate that the goal doesn’t apply to overseas contingency operations or kinetic military actions.
As I wrote last night, the president and the Democrats are like the French in The Simpsons, for whom “victory” isn’t in their vocabulary, unless it applies to their domestic enemies.
Michael Walsh wasn’t impressed, either.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Nor was John Tabin:
President Obama isn’t terribly concerned with winning wars.
In his speech last night, Obama talked about “our effort to wind down this war,” “responsibly end[ing] these wars,” and “tak[ing] comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding.” He did not use the words “win” or “winning”; the word “victory” appeared only in a reference to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
To these people, wars are for “ending,” not “winning.” It was something that I and others noticed in the debates in 2008, but not enough others noticed. The funny thing is, I suspect that they even realize that we notice, but they just can’t bring themselves to use the word.
[Update a few minutes later]
Could the president’s political decision backfire on him?
It bears repeating that the deadline imposed by the president has nothing to do with military or strategic calculation. It has everything to do with an electoral calculation. President Obama wants those troops out two months before Americans go to the voting booth.
This may prove a disastrous political calculation, too, however. If the war is going badly in the summer and fall of 2012, it will be because of the decision the president made this week. Everyone will know he did it against the advice of his commanders. Everyone will know he did it for political reasons. So if the war is going badly a year from now, whom do you think the American people will blame? There will still be 70,000 American troops in Afghanistan, but as part of a losing effort. Will Americans reward Obama at the polls under those circumstances?
It’s not like he’s been politically brilliant so far. The tragic thing is that he’s doing something militarily stupid to serve his political needs.
[Early afternoon update]
You don’t say. Afghan women fear Obama’s peace talks with the Taliban. I’m sure NOW is fine with it, though, because he supports abortion.
Elena Bonner
Jay Nordlinger remembers:
Last summer, Bonner reflected, “I can say that many of Chazov’s Western colleagues [in the anti-nuclear organization] were wonderful people and high professionals. But they, I think, understand nothing of the essence of socialism-totalitarianism, and were very easily deceived by the organization’s name.”
She continued, “Millions of people today are deceived just as easily, believing in the slogan of the Middle East ‘Quartet,’ ‘Two states for two peoples.’ And I’m afraid that they will realize their mistake only after it becomes impossible to save the State of Israel without a third world war. It will be like Munich. You remember what Chamberlain said: ‘I have brought you peace.’ And the Second World War began!”
In Bonner’s view, the Nobel peace prize had “been devalued.”
No kidding. And sadly for freedom, the world remains full of useful idiots.
A Victory For Free Speech
In the Netherlands:
The presiding judge said Wilders’ remarks were sometimes “hurtful,” “shocking” or “offensive,” but that they were made in the context of a public debate about Muslim integration and multi-culturalism, and therefore not a criminal act.
“I am extremely pleased and happy,” Wilders told reporters after the ruling. “This is not so much a win for myself, but a victory for freedom of speech. Fortunately you can criticize Islam and not be gagged in public debate.”
Meanwhile, back in the supposed land of the free and home of the brave, Yale has decided that criticism of some anti-semitism is off limits:
An antisemitism program needs scholars who deal with Qassam rockets, Grad rockets, and other rocket systems, not snowballs. Scholars who deal with satellite systems, and firebombs targeting Israeli civilians and tanks. Who study soldiers of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other antisemitic terror groups. It needs scholars who deal with Islamist thinkers, from Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb to Mohammad Chatami, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s anti-Israel and pro-suicide-bombing fatwas.
It needs scholars who deal with the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamism — not only in Egypt, but in the entire Middle East, Europe, North America, and elsewhere. It needs scholars on Iran and the analysis of incitement to genocide.
It needs scholars on Turkey, lawful Islamism, and its relationship to anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
It needs scholars on Islamic jihad, terror, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and homegrown terrorism in the West.
It needs scholars on left-wing, progressive, Muslim, and Neo-Nazi anti-Zionist antisemitism, and the ideologies and concepts of postorientalism, postcolonialism, and their possible relationship to antisemitism (e.g., in the work of Edward Said). And it needs scholars on antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda in Western mass media in the 21st century.
There is nothing wrong with scholarship on France and Jewish history; it is important. But it shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for serious scholarship on contemporary antisemitism. The study of dead antisemites and past campaigns of vilification is already part of every single Jewish Studies department in the world. And dealing with Jewish literature (the topic of Samuels’ new book in 2010) has nothing to do with research on (contemporary) antisemitism.
Unfortunately, any serious anti-Semitism program at Yale would probably end up indicting much of the faculty there, which is probably why it was shut down to be replaced with the more anodyne one.
[Update a few minutes later]
More thoughts from Mark Steyn:
Nevertheless, as in all these cases, the process is the punishment. The intent is to make it more and more difficult for apostates of the multiculti state to broaden the terms of political discourse. Very few Europeans would have had the stomach to go through what Wilders did — and the British Government’s refusal to permit a Dutch Member of Parliament to land at Heathrow testifies to how easily the craven squishes of the broader political culture fall into line.
And at the end the awkward fact remains: Geert Wilders lives under 24-hour armed guard because of explicit death threats made against him by the killer of Theo van Gogh and by other Muslims. Yet he’s the one who gets puts on trial.
As he says, it’s shameful.
Operation Barbarossa
Some thoughts on the seventieth anniversary.
All Hitler had to do was not be as bad as Stalin. The Ukrainians initially welcomed the Nazis as liberators.
But being a fellow leftist, he couldn’t manage it.
The President’s Speech
I managed to actually listen to the whole thing because, praise Gaia, it was short.
I remain bemused at his idiosyncratic pronunciations. The Taliban remains the Tollybahn (Hey Mr. Tollybahn, tolly me banahna, daylight comes, and me wanna go home), yet Afghanistan is pronounced like Stan Laurel. It is clear that he doesn’t want to end the war so that he can reduce the nation-destroying deficit, but so that he can “reinvest” (i.e., continue to spend us into oblivion) at home.
And he remains, like most modern Democrats, congenitally incapable of using the words “win” and “war” in the same sentence, at least when it’s an American war — at best, it can be “ended.” He would choke on such a conjunction — our national sins remain too great to allow such an outcome. He only wants to “end” it. He reserves actual victory for his goal with respect to his much more fearsome and evil domestic enemies.
The Palestinian Path
What if the European Jews had followed it?