Tag: war

Solipsism as national security

Kathleen Parker offers further evidence in support of the dire need to end women’s suffrage:

Women, and by extension children, suffer what too many have come to accept as “collateral damage” in theaters of war. We hate it, of course, but what can one do? It isn’t in our strategic interest to save the women and children of the world. Or, as an anonymous senior White House official recently told The Post:

“Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities. There’s no way we can be successful if we maintain every special interest and pet project. All those pet rocks in our rucksack were taking us down.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, no stranger to the importance of advancing women’s rights, promptly repudiated the comment. Even so, the anonymous spokesman’s opinion, though inartfully expressed, is hardly isolated.

But what if this is a false premise? What if saving women from cultures that treat them as chattel was in our strategic and not just moral interest? What if helping women become equal members of a society was the most reliable route to our own security?

The problem, of course, is that it is not. Parker might as reasonably have asked what if buying women rainbow-striped unicorns was in our strategic interest or if buying vibrators for Libyan women was the most reliable route to American national security. I would very much like to know who actually pays this woman for her opinion, as I’m quite confident that one could find a Labrador puppy whose columns would be a) more intelligent, b) more interesting, and c) less expensive than the gynocentric drivel Parker has on offer.

Granted, every column would concern how it is a vital national interest to feed Labradors more raw meat, or alternatively, how it is a national disgrace that Labradors are only fed 60 percent of the amount of raw meat given to Rottweilers, but how is that substantially different from what most female op/ed writers produce anyhow?

Does this moronic female seriously wish to argue that women and children suffer more than men do in times of war? They may suffer more of the collateral damage, but only because the whole purpose of the intentional damage is to kill the enemy men. How many women and children died at Salamanca or Gettysburg? The last time I read something this stupidly myopic, it was an old joke about the New York Times: “Asteroid to end all life on Earth, women, blacks to suffer most.”

But even worse than the total ignorance of military history is the idea that equality, at home or abroad, is in the American national interest. America has been lethally weakened by the equalitarian dogma; there would be no need for the 30 million immigrants that are presently dismantling the social fabric if 30 million American children murdered by their mothers had lived. “Saving” women by enforcing Western equalitarian dogma is not only not in our strategic interest, it quite clearly isn’t in our moral interest either.

Women may not be pet rocks, but Kathleen Parker is clearly less intelligent than a box of them.

Two birds, one stone

Frankly, I don’t see much downside to the equation that many in the media are suggesting. If each religious book burned results in 20 dead United Nations bureaucrats, where exactly is the net loss to American interests? And I’m not sure which is more amusing, the Democrats who are attempting to claim that it is a totally legal book burning that has a direct causal relationship to lethal Islamic riots a world away while the bombing of a Muslim country cannot possibly be to blame, or the Republicans who are loathe to actually come out directly against a man’s right to burn his own book while trying to make sure that everyone understands they think the book-burning is “ill-judged” and “unhelpful”.

Unhelpful to what? Maintaining a pair of long, expensive, unconstitutional, and strategically stupid military occupations? Continuing mass migration from third world hellholes? And as for General Petraeus, his comments make it clear that he is a politically correct coward and a certain war loser.

Following Sunday’s meeting with Gen. Petraeus and the ambassadors, Mr. Karzai requested in a new statement that “the U.S. government, Senate and Congress clearly condemn [Rev. Jones’] dire action and avoid such incidents in the future.” Mr. Karzai issued this demand even though President Barack Obama has already described the Quran burning as “an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry”—adding that “to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity.”

I’d have more confidence in the U.S. military effort if Rev. Jones was leading it. Any statement that falls short of the following by any American leader is an indication that the speaker is completely unfit for office.

“Rev. Jones, like any American, is free to dispose of his own property in any manner that happens to please him. This is not a matter of any concern whatsoever to the United States government.”

Be careful what you wish

The Libyan rebels get a little more air support than they’d bargained for:

A NATO-led air strike killed 13 Libyan rebels, a rebel spokesman said on Saturday, but their leaders called for continued raids on Muammar Gaddafi’s forces despite the “regrettable incident.” NATO has conducted 363 sorties since taking over command of the Libya operations on March 31, and about 150 were intended as strike missions but NATO has not confirmed hitting any targets.

One wonders how many non-combatants have been killed by these so-called surgical strikes. I tend to suspect that the Libyans who are neither regime nor rebel supporters are probably less inclined to be as forgiving of such collateral damage as the rebel forces are.

The boots are on the ground

Justin Raimondo notes an admission by Mr. Obama and explains why the USA is now invading its third Moslem nation in ten years:

Like all US wars since the Revolution, this one is about the internal politics of the US, rather than a real external threat to our security. The Clintonian wing of the Democratic party is determined to regain power, and Hillary’s push for war is the spearhead of the Restoration. The Clintonites are determined to outflank the Republican party in the foreign policy field, and eliminate the Democrats’ alleged “national security deficit” once and for all, albeit while swathed in a penumbra of moral righteousness.

The Republicans, who have presided over the most aggressive expansion of the American empire since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, are in no position to criticize this new crusade in the Middle East. They do so with the albatross of Iraq weighing heavily around their necks. Politically, it’s win-win for the Democrats, as they gear up to save what remains of their hold on power.

It is certainly amusing to see how Republicans and conservatives are contorting themselves into political pretzels, trying to explain why Iraq and Afghanistan were necessary defenses of American national security while Libya is not, while simultaneously attempting to claim that they are the champions of fiscal restraint and small government. The Pauls, Ron and Rand, are among the few sane Republicans these days, which no doubt is why they are considered “unelectable” and “crazy” by the conservative media.

Hearts and minds

Surely if Americans just keep killing Arab civilians, the people will eventually come to love democracy:

Soldiers Jeremy Morlock and Andrew Holmes had spotted a young farmer working by himself. Gul Mudin, 15 – only four years younger than Holmes – was the only Afghan in sight, had no weapons on him and had a ‘welcoming’ face. Nobody else was around.

Gul walked towards them when called and stopped when asked. Morlock tossed a grenade at him, using the wall as cover, then both soldiers opened fire. Gul fell face down into the ground and there was soon a pool of blood coming out from his head. Morlock screamed over the radio that he had come under attack, but Adam Winfield told his fellow soldier Ashton Moore that it was more likely a staged killing.

Morlock and Holmes told a sergeant that Gul had been about to attack them with a grenade and they therefore had to shoot him, reported the magazine. The story of a lone Taliban fighter, with one grenade attempting to ambush a platoon in broad daylight, seemed unlikely to top officer Captain Patrick Mitchell.

But he told Staff Sergeant Kris Sprague to ‘make sure’ Gul was dead. Sprague fired his rifle twice at the boy.

A local elder working nearby in the poppy fields came over and accused Morlock and Holmes of murder, but he was ignored by the soldiers. This elder was asked to identify the boy, but it tragically turned out that he was his dad. ‘The father was very upset,’ an official Army report noted.

The soldiers followed Army protocol of cutting off the dead boy’s clothes and stripping him naked to check for tattoos, before scanning his iris and fingerprints. But then they began taking photographs of them celebrating the kill, with Holmes posing for the camera by grabbing Gul’s head by the hair as if he was a deer.

One should not be surprised when soldiers, who are trained to kill people, kill people. That’s what soldiers tend to do, regardless of how well they are trained. They are not very effective at tasks that do not involve breaking things and killing people, which is why using them to establish democracy or make foreign populations love America is unlikely to be a successful strategy.

Yearning for freedom

Clearly the Egyptian anti-Mubarak movement almost exactly reflects the left-liberal secularism of their most enthusiastic supporters in the USA:

Amnesty International has today called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month.

After army officers violently cleared the square of protesters on 9 March, at least 18 women were held in military detention. Amnesty International has been told by women protesters that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to ‘virginity checks’ and threatened with prostitution charges.

It is obviously complete madness to conclude that the Ikhwan has any connection to the mass uprising of democratic people power in Egypt.

It would appear I was wrong

Back in November 2008, just before Obama was elected, I declared: “you know that between Zimbabwe, Kenya, and the Congo, a President Obama is going to invade Africa one way or another.”

But he’s running out of time and obviously Obama is not invading Libya, he is merely engaging in kinetic action there. I’m not sure which is more amusing, all of the usual doubletalk meant to indicate that engaging in acts of war is not warfare or the contortions with which Obama’s most liberal supporters are attempting to excuse their erstwhile peace candidate as he not only continues Bush’s two wars, but launches a third one.

But I know what is more amusing still… the neocons’ new fears that their World Democratic Revolution blueprint, which involves making use of the UN to sideline the U.S. Congress and justify attacking anyone the neocons want to attack, could lead to a US attack on Israel if utilized by the new Arab democrats in the Middle East.

All of which goes to underline the inherent wisdom in pre-WWI American isolationism. Wars may be wildly profitable to some, but they reliably lead to circumstances that are unforeseen by even the most perspicacious profiteers.

Mailvox: a failure of observation

RCA hasn’t been paying much attention since 1945:

You are wrong [in reference to my most recent WND column, The Third Bush Term.] The peoples of the world’s various nations no longer want to be ruled by dictators! Period. They want freedom. Period. The United Nations SHOULD be in the business of intervening when a dictator uses its might to kill its people.

That is my take. Where am I wrong?

Where to start? I told him the two fundamental errors he made in an email. But rather than spelling them out here, I imagine most of you can identify them rather easily.

WND column

The Third Bush Term

It would appear that Americans never learn. Fresh from getting bogged down in what is fast approaching a decade-long failed military occupation in Afghanistan, approaching the eight-year mark in the failed military occupation of Iraq, the Obama administration has now revealed its submission to the insane neocon foreign policy of its predecessor by preparing for military strikes on Libya. Let us be clear about this: There is no more national security interest at stake in Libya than there was in Afghanistan or Iraq. The rationalizations being cited could just as easily be used to justify an invasion of Bahrain, Yemen, North Korea or even China.

Here we go again

Somehow, I doubt that the third time will prove the charm:

U.S. and British warships have reportedly launched the opening salvo of the intervention in Libya — called Operation Odyssey Dawn — firing some 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Qaddafi anti-air defenses, mostly on the coast of Western Libya and extending between Tripoli and Benghazi. Word is that U.S. AFRICOM will run the first few days of the operation in an effort to “shape the battlefield” before turning over command to another member of the coalition.

The initial launch also included the launching of American electronic warfare aircraft.

Nothing spells decline and fall like a bankrupt, demographically dying empire getting entangled in one unnecessary military conflict after another.

UPDATE – This is certainly an amusing development: A hard-core group of liberal House Democrats is questioning the constitutionality of U.S. missile strikes against Libya, with one lawmaker raising the prospect of impeachment during a Democratic Caucus conference call on Saturday.

I told you that the Democratic elders want to get rid of Obama a while ago. There is absolutely no way they want him leading them into the 2012 electoral campaign. And it would be absolutely hilarious to see Democrats leading the impeachment charge against this lamest of first-term lame ducks.