Tag: war

An astonishing coincidence

It’s still so easy. Golf Pro, aka Tad, mocks the idea that Minnesotans have anything to worry about from the Somali jihadists in Minnesota:

I’m positive that comparing Minneapolis to Kenya is a bad idea. They
aren’t really the same place, same culture, same institutions, same
history. Really, there is no similarity. The good folks in Minneapolis
have nothing to worry about.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Reason, the Mall of America has jacked up its security measures. For, we can assume, no particular reason at all.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn.—The Mall of
America has stepped up security after the deadly attack by the Somali
militant group al-Shabab at a mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Officials at the Bloomington mall say some of the extra security
precautions will be noticeable and some won’t. Millions of people visit
the mall and its 500 stores each year. Mall of America says the safety
of its guests, tenants and employees is top priority. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the United
States. At least 22 young men have traveled to Somalia since 2007 to
join al-Shabaab and the FBI says its investigation of the terror group’s
recruiting remains a priority.

Mailvox: the dead horse quivers

SV digs up, from the past, a certain blast:

I read your Sept 6, 2004 review of Michele Malkin’s book supporting internment and I was wondering if you remember or noted where you found the information for this paragraph:

“In January 1942, prior to both Executive Order 9066 and the battle of Midway, the Imperial Japanese Navy possessed 717 carrier-borne planes and 176 ships, of which 15 were troop transports. The IJN’s troop-bearing capacity was about 42,000 men. Reinforcement and resupply required a roundtrip transit of 11,000 miles to a coastline only 1,359 miles long.”

Less important are the facts here, but just in case you have it:

“The Overlord invasion required 4,600 ships to travel 100 miles under the air cover of 12,000 planes to land 156,000 troops on a French coastline 3,437 miles long. Over the next three weeks, the Allies brought in another 850,000 men, 148,000 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of supplies.”

If I recall correctly, I worked out the IJN numbers from Tony Tully’s excellent The Imperial Japanese Navy Page.  I don’t remember where I looked up the statistics related to the invasion of Normandy, but they’re readily available.

It is a little amusing to look back and recall that some people actually took Me So Michelle’s book seriously at the time. It’s largely forgotten now, but it didn’t escaped my attention how she quickly stopped talking about it in public after I exposed her complete lack of research in support of her attempt to manufacture a retroactive military justification for the historical internment of Japanese-Americans.

One thing I didn’t mention in that article was that the former Marine Commandant’s first reaction, when asked about the viability of a Japanese invasion of the U.S. West Coast, was an instinctive snort of disdain. I mean, the hypothetical invasion is the sort of thing you have to be a complete military ignoramus to even contemplate for a millesecond. Forget Anzio. An IJN invasion of California would have made the Bay of Pigs invasion look sane and conservative by comparison.

The sham of democracy

The gloves are coming off and faux democratic secularists around the world should expect no quarter or mercy from the next duly elected Muslim government to take power somewhere in the Arab world:


An Egyptian court
on Monday banned the Muslim Brotherhood from carrying out any
activities in the country and ordered the seizure of the group’s funds,
widening a campaign to debilitate the Islamist movement of deposed
President Mohamed Mursi.

“The court bans the activities
of the Muslim Brotherhood organization and its non-governmental
organization and all the activities that it participates in and any
organization derived from it,” said the presiding judge Mohammed
al-Sayed.

The court ordered the government to seize the Brotherhood’s funds and administer its frozen assets. The
army-backed government is waging the toughest crackdown in decades on
the Islamist group, which says it has a million members. Security forces
killed hundreds of its supporters and rounded up thousands more since
Mursi was deposed by the army on July 3 after mass protests against his
rule.

The Brotherhood won parliamentary and presidential elections after veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in 2011.

So, what Turkey and Egypt have taught the Muslim fundamentalists is that if they play by the rules, win popular support, and get duly elected, the secular elite will utilize the military to overturn the elections, ban them, and deprive them of their accumulated assets.

But at the same time, that same secular elite is going to encourage them to settle all throughout the West. So now we have a large group of people who have learned that there is absolutely no point in being restrained by the laws and have no legal alternative to violence, and are being actively aided in spreading as far and wide as possible.

This should end well.

And it is an object lesson to everyone who asserts that the democratic system is the correct and proper way to manifest societal change. It isn’t.  Beyond a certain point, the will of the people is observably not permitted.  Now, I have no sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood, but I have to question the idea that it is wise to make it so abundantly clear to everyone, particularly those who are quite willing to turn to violence, that there is absolutely no benefit to participating in a democratic system.

It’s only a matter of time

I expect it won’t be long until something this happens in an American shopping mall.  And considering the active link between the jihadists in Somalia and the Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it happens at the Mall of America.

At least 22 people are reported to be dead and more than 50 injured as a gun fight continues between police and armed men at a shopping centre in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. One witness claimed gunmen told Muslims to stand up and leave and that only non-Muslims would be targeted when they opened fire at the upmarket mall of the Westlands district around midday today.

At least two dozen people, wounded and dead, were wheeled out on stretchers and in shopping trolleys by security guards, while others were seen walking out of the building, clutching bloodied clothing around their injuries. Locals and tourists who were out shopping on the sunny Saturday in Kenya ran screaming from the building and cars were left abandoned as attackers threw grenades and fired AK47s.

It’s just one more reason to carry, in the unlikely event that you are a reader here who doesn’t carry already.

That was easy enough

Last week, Chelm Wiseman insisted that I and others were wrong about Israel’s support for American intervention in Syria and repeatedly insinuated that our doubts about the supposed Israeli non-interest in American military action in Syria was somehow anti-semitic.

Here are some selections from his comments. The response to the third is mine:

  1. You have only supposition to support they accusation that Israel is in
    favor of a Syria war. If Israel is not behind it then it follows that
    the “elite Jews” are pursuing their own interest (like all elites
    everywhere) not Israel’s. 
  2. You are seeing what you want to see here. This supports my point. The
    fact that they even have to phrase it like this indicates that there is
    not clear support from the Israel. They are not putting obstacles in the way of a US strike? Not exactly an ringing endorsement.
  3. Yes, but there is no source for that either and it comes after a
    statement about Israel deliberately trying to stay on the sidelines of
    the debate. NYT is not a friendly source for Netanyahu, so they can not
    be relied upon to portray him accurately. Stop pretending that they are.

    “I caught you out blatantly misrepresenting the NYT article,
    Chelm. And I can, and will, easily find reports of the Netanyahu
    government’s support for American military action in Syria from other
    sources, so banking on the NYT misrepresenting the Israeli government’s
    position was an unwise move on your part.”

And here is a report from Reuters on Tuesday:

Israel wants to
see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad toppled, its ambassador to the
United States said on Tuesday, in a shift from its non-committal public
stance on its neighbor’s civil war.

Even Assad’s defeat by al
Qaeda-aligned rebels would be preferable to Damascus’s current alliance
with Israel’s arch-foe Iran, Ambassador Michael Oren said in an
interview with the Jerusalem Post.

His comments marked a move in Israel’s public position on Syria’s two-and-1/2-year-old war….

“We
always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who
weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran,” Oren
said in the interview, excerpted on Tuesday before its full publication
on Friday.

Note that this is a move in Israel’s public position.  Its private position remains unchanged from before: it wants Bashar Assad to go and it wants America to make that happen. Now, there is nothing wrong with the Israeli position. It may well be in the Israeli national interest; I’m certainly not in any position to judge that. The problem is with those American Jews and their Christian Zionist allies who seek to elevate the Israeli national interest above the American one.

And if it is intrinsically anti-semitic to be pro-American, well, there are an awful lot more anti-semites out there than I had previously imagined.

Obama openly aiding Muslim terrorists

This action is unlikely to help convince those who believe the man is still a secret Muslim that they are incorrect:

President Obama waived a provision of federal law designed to prevent
the supply of arms to terrorist groups to clear the way for the U.S. to
provide military assistance to “vetted” opposition groups fighting
Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Some elements of the Syrian opposition are associated with radical
Islamic terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, which was responsible for
the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville,
Pa., in 2001. Assad’s regime is backed by Iran and Hezbollah.

The president, citing his authority under the Arms Export Control
Act, announced today that he would “waive the prohibitions in sections
40 and 40A of the AECA related to such a transaction.” Those two
sections prohibit sending weaponry to countries described in section
40(d): “The prohibitions contained in this section apply with respect to
a country if the Secretary of State determines that the government of
that country has repeatedly provided support for acts of international
terrorism,” Congress stated in the Arms Control Export Act.

“For purposes of this subsection, such acts shall include all
activities that the Secretary determines willfully aid or abet the
international proliferation of nuclear explosive devices to individuals
or groups or willfully aid or abet an individual or groups in acquiring
unsafeguarded special nuclear material,” the law continues.

 “The law allows the president to waive those prohibitions if he
“determines that the transaction is essential to the national security
interests of the United States.”” Either Obama is lying and arming terrorists is not in the national security interests of the United States, or worse, those interests are in direct opposition to the national security interests of the American people.

Vladimir Putin on Syria

It is tragic when the ruthless leader of Russia makes considerably more sense, and better expresses American national interests, than the President of the United States:

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every
reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition
forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who
would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are
preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in
foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in
America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world
increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying
solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan
“you’re either with us or against us.”

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling,
and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw.
Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war
continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw
an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would
want to repeat recent mistakes.

At least Mr. Putin has given us a head’s up on what could be the next international false flag: a highly improbable inflammatory attack on Israel by either Iran or the Assad regime that isn’t in response to a US assault on Syria.

Meanwhile, our elected leaders demonstrate that Idiocracy was, indeed, prophetic:

“I almost wanted to vomit,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez, (D-N.J.) told CNN. 

He so totally wanted to hurl. So, we should, like, TOTALLY invade Syria. Because Holocaust. Duh.

“Putin’s NYT op-ed is an insult to the intelligence of every American”
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) September 12, 2013

No, Mr. McCain, your presidential campaign was an insult to the intelligence of every American. And the fact that you still have a political career at all is testimony to the corrupt nature of the U.S. political system.

A blast from the past

This was the column I wrote the day after 9/11 that launched my recently concluded op/ed career as well as this blog.  It has its flaws, but in light of the references to the NSA and even Syria, it is a fairly prescient warning of the events of the subsequent twelve years, as well as of the freedoms we have lost during that time.

Yield no more freedom
September 14, 2001

In response to a number of questions inspired by last week’s column, we were working on a piece related to PC security, specifically the sort offered to one’s e-mail communications by various encryption technologies, when we were interrupted by the horrifying events of Tuesday. The fatal hijackings and subsequent media response has been difficult to dismiss from our mind, so we have tabled the usual technology review for a week in favor of some reflections on these recent events.

One of the many troubling aspects of the hijackings is the brutal demonstration that we, as a people, have received very little of the security we were promised in return for the many violations of personal freedom and civil liberties that have been enacted over the past decade. We would go so far as to raise the question if this had not been a fool’s bargain, wherein we have given up something of precious value in return for … arguably, nothing. It is bad enough that we allow the FBI to filter our e-mails and record our keystrokes, that we permit the National Security Agency to intercept every electronic communication floating through the aether, but it is even worse that we have done so without realizing that which we hoped to gain.

Just as the drug war has not reduced the amount of illegal drugs used in this country, the sacrifice of our civil liberties on the altar of national security has not brought us security. Keep this in mind, as the inevitable drumbeat begins for more sacrifices, as the calls begin for Americans to give up even more of their hard-won freedoms. National security cannot seriously be cited any longer in the attempts to ban personal encryption technology, not when, as WorldNetDaily reported yesterday, far better forms of communications encryption have already been delivered to terrorist-sponsoring states like Syria with the full approval of the previous administration.

It is said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but that vigilance must be applied within as well as without. A thousand suicide bombers could not destroy America, but America is quite capable of destroying itself in the pursuit of any number of false idols, among them wrongheaded and illusory notions of security at any price. Individual privacy, like private property, is one of the foundations of our freedom, and it must not be thrown away out of fear. Anonymous cell phones or encrypted e-mail missives could be used by a terrorist, true, but the same is also true of a razor blade or a flight simulator.

What our leaders must realize is that personal technology is not a foe, but a powerful ally. The enemy we face can be subdued and contained by soldiers, bombs and a strong national will, but it cannot be ultimately defeated through conventional war. But satellite transmissions and the Internet know no borders, nor does the concept of freedom. Our enemies recognize this, which is why they fearfully denounce every sign of American influence as decadence, because they well know that they cannot raise another generation of suicide warriors if that generation is allowed to partake of the dangerous and forbidden fruit of freedom.

Some have protested that America must not strike back, that doing so will only perpetuate the “cycle of violence,” that others will only rise up to replace those we strike down. But this is demonstrably untrue, as no German ever rose up to replace Hitler, nor does a Japanese war party trouble us today. It is appropriate for a nation to fight a war in its own defense, especially when war has been openly declared upon it. But in doing so, we must resolutely resist the call to sacrifice that which makes the United States of America a country worth defending – our inalienable rights and our individual freedom.

Obama turns to the Jews

The New York Times reports that because the American people have made their opposition to the war clear, Obama is using the Jewish lobby to lean upon Congress:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel
lobby in Washington, plans to dispatch 300 of its members to Capitol
Hill on Tuesday as part of a broad campaign to press Congress to back
President Obama’s proposed strike on Syria, the group said Monday….

 Mr. Obama and his secretary of state have repeatedly invoked Israel in their arguments for a strike. The White House has reached out to Aipac, as well as to the Anti-Defamation League and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who held a conference call on Monday to discuss lobbying strategy.

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York, said five members of Congress had called to consult with him in the past four days.

“There’s nothing sinister, nothing conspiratorial, nothing wrong with the lobbying arm relating to Israel and the Middle East supporting the president on this issue,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director. “You don’t need a phone call from the prime minister to understand that Israel’s interest is with the United States taking military action because it’s a message to Iran. You don’t have to be a nuclear physicist to figure out where Israel stands.”

Abe Foxman can tell himself that there is nothing wrong if he likes. But the fact remains that Obama is openly attempting to use the Jewish lobby to supersede the clearly expressed will of the American people to leave Syria alone. And my impression is that it would not be good for the Jews in America for that lobby to demonstrate that Congress is, as some observers have put it, Israeli-occupied territory.

Israeli diplomat Zvi Rafiah is correct to be concerned: “We should not be the one that pushes the American people to do or not do anything they want or don’t want.”

The ADL’s Foxman may be right to say “Israel’s interest is with the United States taking military action”. The problem is that it is clearly not in the American interest, and AIPAC, the ADL, and the Conference of Presidents are demonstrating that organized Jewish opinion cannot be trusted to put American interests ahead of Israeli ones.

Again?

Obama’s proposed Syrian adventure is turning out to be, as some suspected, yet another war on behalf of Israel:

The dirty little not-so-secret behind President Obama’s much-lobbied-for, illegal and strategically incompetent war against Syria is that it’s not about Syria at all. It’s about Iran—and Israel. And it has been from the start.

By “the start,” I mean 2011, when the Obama administration gradually became convinced that it could deal Iran a mortal blow by toppling President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a secular, Baathist strongman who is, despite all, an ally of Iran’s. Since then, taking Iran down a peg has been the driving force behind Obama’s Syria policy.

Not coincidentally, the White House plans to scare members of Congress into supporting the ill-conceived war plan by waving the Iranian flag in their faces. Even liberal Democrats, some of whom are opposing or questioning war with Syria, blanch at the prospect of opposing Obama and the Israel lobby over Iran.

In light of the overwhelming public opposition to any military attacks on Syria, it looks as if we’ll soon find out if Congress is truly Israeli-occupied territory or not.  At some point, I hope more reasonable Jews will point out to their elite counterparts that being seen to have ruined the US monetary system and attempting to turn the US military into the world’s largest mercenary force is really not “good for the Jews”.

Watching the elite Jews go about methodically overplaying their hand in the United States strikes me rather like reading the Bible and reaching the part where the Israelites go whoring after pagan gods again despite getting their posteriors very soundly and violently smacked as God allows the Assyrians or whoever to invade them and slaughter their armies. You find yourself thinking: again? Seriously, you’re going to do this again? What is wrong with you?

It’s not that I don’t understand the temptation. Israel’s leaders quite reasonably see this as a win-no lose situation. If the great military power defeats Syria on Israel’s behalf, Iran is weakened and Israel wins. If it screws up and loses, then Israel isn’t any worse off than it was… in military terms.

But what they’re failing to enter into the equation is that American tolerance for being used in this manner is going to run out eventually.  The Jews have already worn out their welcome in Western Europe and Russia. (Seriously, the level of anti-semitism I have observed from the UK to Eastern Europe is off the charts by US standards and that’s not even counting the Muslims.) Neither China nor Japan appear to be susceptible to their patented form of influence-peddling. And yet, many elite Jews appear to be determined to treat their safe haven of America with all the care and respect that a wildcat mining company with 25-year mineral rights to national parkland treats the environment.