Thoughts on Osama bin Laden’s extreme misogyny. Were female troops really the catalyst for 911? Those who have fought for coed armed services should ask themselves “Why do they hate us?”
Category Archives: War Commentary
Iranian Nukes And NASA
I have a piece over at PJM this morning that describes the linkage.
Esther Dyson
An interview, by Air & Space magazine.
[via Parabolic Arc]
The Arab Preference For War
Michael Totten, on why Arabia has perennially bloody borders, and peace in the Middle East remains elusive.
French President To American President
“Get real, dude!” Also, from the UK: President Pantywaist.
[Sunday morning update]
The president from Bizarro World:
Our alien president, rather than being a superhero disguised as a mild-mannered something or other, out to promote truth, justice and the American Way, is instead the doppelgänger from Bizarro World. In the American version of Bizarro World, our friends (England, Israel, etc.) are our enemies. Our active enemies and those countries that are merely passively hostile to us (North Korea, Iran, Castro, Venezuela, etc.) are the ones to whom we pay homage. Our cooling planet is a warming planet. The UN, one of the most corrupt organizations in the world, is the world’s only hope for peace. The way to cure the nation’s vast deficit is to incur more debt. Disarmament protects us. The only democratic nation in the Middle East is a Nazi country. Putting women in hijabs frees them. These are the values Bizarro World Superman/Obama has brought to us.
In other words, the world according to this alien being is a Bizarro World in which all principles, values and common sense are reversed. And just so you know this is absolutely true, I have it on good authority that the President’s real name, his Bizarro World name, is Amabo Niessuh Kcarab.
I think that the truth is kryptonite to him, though.
Giving Them Hell
Netanyahu is addressing the General Assembly, and tearing them multiple new ones. And that comment yesterday from Obama about the 1967 borders was reprehensible.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jim Geraghty has some related thoughts about the UN:
… what would it take to see the United Nations as a source of moral authority? How many years of keeping noses clean at the organization would be required before people began to invest moral authority in the U.N. and its leaders?
I don’t know, but it hasn’t even attempted to start to do so. The UN is a disgrace.
Kill The State Department?
Some thoughts. I think that several departments and agencies should be razed, and be rebuilt from the ground up (if they need to be replaced at all). State is an essential department, but it does need a complete overhaul. Same thing with the CIA, which would be disbanded, and replaced with something else. Over course, the departments of Education and Labor should be simply eliminated.
The UN Loves Barack Obama
…because he is weak. Just the way they wish all US presidents were.
Of course, that’s only when dealing with our enemies. On the home front, it’s the Chicago Way.
[Update a few minutes later]
Obama’s time warp — the US is still the bad guy.
[Late morning update]
Obama’s most naive speech ever? I don’t know, that’s a pretty high bar. But could be.
Nice Little AWACS You Have There
It would be a shame if anything happened to it.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force operated a single Simorgh, a former Iraqi Air Force Adnan. The Adnan AWACS was in turn a modification of a Soviet-built Ilyushin Il-76 transport.
The Simorgh collided with one of the Air Force’s Northrop F-5E Tiger II fighters over the area of the Imam Khomeyni Shrine, southern Tehran. According to eyewitnesses, the crash occurred immediately after the parade. Apparently, no mayday call was issued.
You say it was your only one? Too bad, so sad.
Remember
I was in San Juan, getting ready for a flight back to LA, watching Fox’n’Friends before going to the airport. When I saw the second plane hit the towers in real time, I knew there was no point in going to the airport. I also knew we were at war. That war hasn’t ended — the enemy still wages it against us. BUt the current administration doesn’t really seem to believe it. They can’t even bring themselves to call it a war, and they seem to gag on the word “victory,” or “win.” All they know how to and want to do with wars is “end” them.
[Update a few minutes later]
Reflections from Lileks:
It’s all so far in the past, isn’t it? The ten-year-old you had to sit down and console and reassure is off to college. The President is retired – seems like he left two years ago. The wars grind on, but as far as the front pages are concerned, they’re like TV shows that lost their popularity but pull enough viewers to avoid cancellation. (The video store doesn’t even carry the DVD of the first two seasons anymore.) We’re used to the hole in the ground where the towers used to be, and if they announced they won’t rebuild, but will pave it over and use it for parking, people would shrug. We haven’t forgotten that the towers fell, but no one remembers what they planned to replace them with. The towers they planned looked empty in in the pictures – shiny, contorted, as if twisting away to avoid a blow.
Right after the towers fell, people who’d never liked them as architecture wanted them back just as they were. Get back up in the sky! But it hasn’t happened. Even if they build the replacement towers, there’s still a space in the sky where no one will ever stand again. We could stand there once. That we couldn’t stand there eight years ago was their fault. That we cannot stand there today is ours.
Back to normal. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
[Update a few minutes later]
Michael Yon has a report from Helmand Province in Afghanistan, eight years later. Hit his tip jar.