…or how Dilbert won the war. Though actually, credit has to go to the pointy-haired boss.
I think this also explains a lot about why we haven’t made much progress in space.
Category Archives: War Commentary
They’re Not Against War
They’re just on the other side:
Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.
Al Jazeera on Monday broadcasted footage from the Gaza flotilla’s lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, showing Israeli Navy commandos boarding the ship. Helicopters could also be seen flying overhead.
“It was like a well-planned lynch,” one IDF officer said. “These people were anything but peace activists.”
As Claudia Rossett notes, this isn’t about peace, or freedom, or humanitarian aid. It’s about making a terrorist-supporting political statement, with the added frisson of killing Jews.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s more:
In a later search aboard the Marmara, soldiers found caches of bats, clubs, knives, and slingshots used by the rioters ahead of the IDF takeover. It appeared the activists were well prepared for a fight…
…It appears that the error in planning the operation was the estimate that passengers were indeed political activists and members of humanitarian groups who seek a political provocation, but would not resort to brutal violence.
They won’t make that mistake again.
[Late evening update]
A photomontage of “peace” activists.
And it’s time for Israel to stop playing Mr. Nice Guy.
It certainly hasn’t bought them much.
Remember The Fallen
Some thoughts, and links.
Peter Beinart’s Hero
Ron Radosh has some thoughts on anti-Israeli Jews.
[Update late morning]
More thoughts, and good ones, from Noah Pollack:
The sad truth is that Peter Beinart isn’t any kind of trailblazer or whistleblower, and he most certainly has not earned himself any trouble by coming out as an Israel-basher. He is someone who has rather belatedly fallen completely and predictably into line with the demands his ideological compatriots make for orthodoxy when it comes to their increasingly passionate interest in assaulting Israel and championing the Palestinian cause. In Beinart’s work, we are not witnessing an act of courage but rather a spectacle of conformity.
I used to think that Beinart was smarter than that.
Woodrow Wilson Redux?
What will the president do if he loses the Congress? I think the parallels with Wilson are interesting, but not compelling.
Led By Schlemiels
Some thoughts on self-abasing Jews. I like the Star Trek reference in comments.
And sadly, this seems related. They’re not brown shirts — they’re purple shirts, supported and encouraged by the State.
Folks, for those who have been brainwashed by academia all these years, this is what real fascism looks like.
[Update later morning]
A thug too far? Unfortunately, probably not, unless the media gets interested in the story.
[crickets chirping]
How Bad Is The Obama Foreign Policy?
Let us count the ways.
Meanwhile, so feckless is its erstwhile ally, Israel is forced to make an alliance with the Arabs against Iran.
The Contest Winners
Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch announce Reason’s selection of the best of yesterday’s pushback against multiculturalism and sharia. And Iowahawk explains why he abstained.
America In Retreat
The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.
That picture — a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam — is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there’s no cost in lining up with America’s enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement.
Proving once again that incentives work.
Useful Advice For The Obama Administration
How to identify “moderate” terrorists.
[Update a few minutes later]
The administration is joining with the “moderates”:
Fresh from announcing his quest for moderate Hezbos, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser for homeland security, John Brennan, has given a speech in which — after the usual pandering to, among other things, Islam’s purported dedication to the “aspiration” that we should all be able to “practice our faith freely” — he referred to his favorite city as “al-Quds, Jerusalem, where three great faiths come together.” Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has the clip, here. As explained by the link Hoft provides, “al-Quds Day,” which is now cause for anti-Israeli demonstrations throughout the world, was actually started by Ayatollah Khomeini 27 years ago — as the “Day of the Oppressed.” (The real nasties in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps are called the “al-Quds” forces.)
This administration certainly does go out of its way to give our Israeli allies that warm feeling, doesn’t it.
Indeed. But I think that some of the rubes are starting to catch on.
[Early afternoon update]
Michael Totten explains why the search for “moderate terrorists” is a complete waste of time. Don’t expect tools like Brennan to get it, though.