Category Archives: War Commentary

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

What Happened To The Cold War?

21 Comments

Younger people can be easily forgiven for not understanding the significance of what happened in Berlin two decades ago, both because they have little personal memory of what it was like to live under the nuclear threat, and because the teaching of history in public schools is so appalling. But Walter Shapiro remembers. It’s well worth reading for those who don’t realize how close we came to Armageddon on multiple occasions through those decades.

The president, of course, has no such excuse. He was born at the height of the war. Unfortunately, he was raised by people on the other side.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Military Base Shootings

9 Comments

Why there will be more. If we couldn’t fix all of this suicidal multi-culturalism and political correctness in the military during the Bush administration, it’s hard to be very optimistic about doing it now. There was reportedly an interview by a CNN reporter who asked a military wife how she felt about her husband being deployed to Afghanistan. “At least he’ll be safe there, and able to shoot back,” she said.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Whatever happened to “connecting the dots“? If this is the best we’re willing to do, prepare for another 911.

[Update early afternoon]

I don’t often agree with David Brooks, but he has this spot on — The National Rush To Therapy:

There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors.

This response was understandable. It’s important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion. But it was also patronizing. Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage.

Worse, it absolved Hasan — before the real evidence was in — of his responsibility. He didn’t have the choice to be lonely or unhappy. But he did have a choice over what story to build out of those circumstances. And evidence is now mounting to suggest he chose the extremist War on Islam narrative that so often leads to murderous results.

The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.

It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.

It’s sadly ironic and amusing, as always, that such sentiments come from people who delude themselves that they’re part of the “reality-based community.” A culture that won’t defend its values or itself is doomed to lose to one that will.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Continuing To Ignore The Problem

3 Comments

Andy McCarthy expands on some Fort Hood thoughts that I had in comments yesterday:

The depth of the challenge we face is daunting. Hatred for America and the West is rampant in the Islamic world. We are not merely willfully blind to it. Our government, wittingly or not, is endorsing it, and not just by Obama’s apology tours. At his ballyhooed Cairo speech on Islam and the West, the president insisted — over the objections of the Mubarak government — on inviting members of the Muslim Brotherhood, whom administration insiders view as Islamists we can work with. This is the same Muslim Brotherhood whose motto remains “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” It is the same Muslim Brotherhood that encourages suicide bombings and other terrorizing of Israelis (i.e., “resistance”) in the Palestinian territories. It is the same Muslim Brotherhood for which Qaradawi — who has promised that Islam will “conquer America” — speaks.

Islamism is about a lot more than al Qaeda. Nidal Malik Hasan committed a mass-murder under the influence of principles held by a disturbingly large percentage of the world’s billion-plus Muslims. Rather than condemning those principles as barbaric, it is the policy of our government either (a) to pretend that those principles do not exist, (b) to pretend that they are held only by a teeny-tiny handful of extremists who have “hijacked” Islam, or (c) to encourage the Muslims who hold them by engaging, embracing and legitimizing the leaders who preach them. Under these circumstances, I think Victor’s three-to-six-month timeline is not only sensible; it’s the best we can hope for — and the atrocities are going to get worse.

You can’t win a war when a) the country’s leadership refuses to recognize that we are in one and b) the country’s leadership doesn’t even believe in the concept of victory. At least when it comes to non-domestic enemies.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Smart Diplomacy

2 Comments

The bottom line:

…the Obama team picked the wrong horse, found itself in a diplomatic dead end, found a mechanism to abandon its failed gambit, and now supports elections — the very position that the Honduran interim government and the administration’s critics have been urging from the beginning. Well, in fairness, it is a display of diplomatic genius compared with Obama’s Middle East policy.

Sigh…

War Commentary

Fort Hood Shooting

57 Comments

OK, not much info to go on yet, but a single shooter has different implications than multiple shooters. And when it’s on an army base, it looks like a suicide murder, at least eventually. Call me a bigot, but the latter has to make me speculate about the shooters’ religious beliefs. And if that plays out, I think that it could be said that the administration didn’t keep us safe from attacks. But we’ll see.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, the FBI is saying that this was “not a terrorist incident.” A dozen people dead, a couple dozen more wounded, by multiple shooters, but it wasn’t a terrorist incident? What in the world does that mean? If they mean it’s not international terrorism, or Islamic terrorism, then they should say that, but they just make themselves look stupid if they deny that this is terrorism.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Major Malik Hasan Nadal. Probably a Jehovah’s Witness.

Move along, nothing to see here.

[Evening update]

Had meetings this afternoon, then came home and made dinner, so not much time to follow up.

Just three points:

First, if you want to call this guy crazy, then he has millions of crazy cohorts who agree with everything he said. The only thing different about him is that he managed to survive in the US military with such beliefs for so long.

Second, I’d like to know how far up the chain of command warnings about his behavior went, and at what level they were squelched. This might tell us the degree to which this was a failure of the current administration.

Third, in response to Dave O’Neill, yes, absolutely there would have been many fewer casualties today had the people who have been issued, and trained in the use of, their service revolvers semi-automatic pistols been allowed to carry them on base (not to mention in public in one of the most liberal, using that word in its correct meaning, states in the allowing of carrying weapons by trained citizens, off base). Those military and civilian personnel were just as sitting ducks as people in idiotic “gun-free” schools and universities. I’d like to think that this would result in a rethinking of the policy of disarming military personnel on base, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for it in this administration. <sarcasm>That regulation sure prevented Major Nadal from bringing his own 9mm weapons to the slaughter.</sarcasm>

And Patterico documents the emerging politically correct and false narrative from the media.

One other point. From what I hear, his cousins and family (Muslims) are devastated and cannot understand his actions. I have no reason to believe that they are not patriotic Americans, and my heart goes out to them, as well as to the families of the victims. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that he was, at its root, driven by his own religious beliefs, warped or otherwise. If we continue out of political correctness to refuse to confront that reality, we cannot win this war.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Another Karine-A

14 Comments

Noah Pollack has the story:

What will Obama say about all this? Being that evidence of Iranian-Syrian hostile intent complicates the administration’s desire for “engagement,” whatever that means anymore, the answer is: probably nothing.

What will the human-rights hustlers say? Where is Judge Goldstone? Where is the flurry of outraged press releases from Human Rights Watch? These weapons are intended for one purpose only — to terrorize Israeli civilians and drag the region into war. Shouldn’t this be an easy call for peace-loving human-rights activists? HRW has condemned Israel for violating international law over the way it funds public schools. I would bet a large sum that HRW will say nothing about the 500 tons of arms Iran just tried to send to Hezbollah. Priorities, you see.

That this is happening almost exactly thirty years after the hostage taking in Tehran is particularly appalling.

Humor, Political Commentary, Satire, War Commentary, Weird

Our Ursine Allies

7 Comments

But the president is spurning them, natch:

Barack Obama has announced that he is withdrawing from all existing treaties and security arrangements with the ursine community. Explaining his sharp break with the Bush administration’s policy of supporting overseas bear operations, president Obama said “bears are still our valued allies, but we can no longer pursue the arrogant policy of unilaterally supporting one member of the animal kingdom over another.”

He added, “Of course I believe in bear-exceptionalism, just as I believe in badger exceptionalism and tree sloth exceptionalism. But the days of a pecking order in the animal kingdom, with top of the food-chain predators and disrespected bottom-of-the-food-chain prey, are over.”

Some animals are more equal than others.