Category Archives: War On Terror

Men In England Now A-Bed…

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The tale of the Brits who, despite their government’s best efforts to neuter them, dealt with the terrorist attack in London over the weekend:

Of course, the Brits are lucky it’s a story that’s gone ’round the world; if it were regular street crime, they’d be prosecuted more seriously than the thug.

It’s something to celebrate – and take as a warning. “Progressive” government – in this case, one that strips citizens of their means and right to self-defense, rendering a citizen a subject – is a bigger danger than terrorism.

Anniversary

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I’ve said it before; I knew isomething terrible happened the moment I turned in NPR, and heard public radio personalities trying to ad-lib. Even before I heard the words “airplane”, “terrorist” or “World Trade Center”, I knew something awful was going on; Public Radio people don’t go to the bathroom without a script.

Hard to believe – nobody under the age of 18, officially, was born on 9/11. Some of the soldiers and Marines who’ll be fighting the war that started 18 years ago will have born after the war began. For an entire generation, the war is all of reality.

In case you’ve forgotten:

And say what you will, but Dubya never had a better moment:

After eighteen years, the takeaways are all pretty bad.

Quoting Glenn Reynolds:

One thing I guess I didn’t believe 17 years ago is that America would elect such a feckless President in 2008, and stand idly by while he flushed our global position, and security, down a left-wing toilet. But we did, and we’ll be paying the price for a long time. That said, for the first time I feel like our diplomacy is on a good track, and that — thanks also to fracking — the problems that led to 9/11 are being addressed.

God bless America. We need it.

We were given a moment – against our will – when we, a nation, had to react to what is, in the great, historical scheme of things the norm; barbarity, terror, the imposing of ones will onto others via violence. And for a brief moment, we did react. Positively, effectively, and up to the best of this nation’s traditions. But now, 18 years later, we’re even more tribal than we were after the 2000 elections. Perhaps terminally. I’ll add “both sides are responsible”, but you know that’s largely punching a ticket.

And the great lesson of 9/11 was that, when government lets us down – and it did, and always does – the individual stepped up and dealt with what they needed to. The people below the points of impact in the World Trade Center, far from being the mindless cattle that law enforcement expected people to act like, largely organized their own evacuations from the doomed buildings; there were relatively few dead from among those below the floors with the impacts. And passengers on Flight 93 did what would have been unthinkable years before – utterly contrary to the “conventional wisdom” of the day. And yet 9/11’s greatest institutional legacies are a government that treats people even more like cattle (seen those TSA lines lately?), is more intrusive and hamfisted (wiretap laws and militarized police with greater purview to use force for routine interactions), and just plain bigger and dumber.

And in that? The terrorists did win.

Sorry to say.

Touched By The Concern

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Big Leftymedia is concerned that former ISIS fighters who defected from France to the Caliphate aren’t getting due process:

[Human Rights Watch spokesman Belkis] WILLE:  The trials of ISIS suspects in Iraq are fundamentally unfair. We say this based on sitting through many of these trials over the last two years. And what we see is that defendants do not get any of their basic due process rights granted to them under international law, as well as under Iraqi law. There is absolutely no presumption of innocence when they walk into the courtroom. And many times, defendants are alleging that they have been tortured.

[NPR Middle East correspondent Jane] ARRAF: France doesn’t have a death penalty. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said it would relay its opposition to sentencing the men to death. But it also said it respected Iraqi jurisdiction. The men were handed over by Kurdish Syrian forces to Iraq because the alleged crimes were committed in Iraq and Syria.

Due process is a human right, and it’s be disingenuous of someone who supports Western Civilization to say otherwise.

I’m just wondering where the concern was when ISIS was on the ascendant?

Movie Rights Are Currently On The Table

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The only response to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

It helps when the good guy is a long-serving member of one of the world’ premiere special forces units.

A British Special Air Service (the original model for US Army’s Delta) trooper in town to train Kenyan special forces apparently intervened personally in the Nairobi hotel shooting:

Amid the carnage – orchestrated by terror group al-Shabaab – a lone SAS soldier got tooled up and went in after a request for help from Kenyan security forces, sources said.
Incredible images showed the operator in jeans, trainers and body armour storming through doors and aiding injured, his face covered by a balaclava.
He was pictured operating at the hotel alone. But he was joined in the mission by US Navy Seals, sources said.
An insider said: “UK Special Forces always run towards the sound of gunfire. He was there training and mentoring Kenyan forces when the shout went up, so they went in.
“During the operation he fired off some rounds – it’s a safe bet he hit his target – the SAS don’t miss.
“He is a long serving member of the Regiment, there is no doubt his actions saved lives.”
The incident was today declared over by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and all the attackers “eliminated”.

It’s kind of amazing how often good guys with guns – who as luck would have it happen to be elite British soldiers – wind up involved in these sorts of stories.

It’s Kind Of Amazing…

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…how the big media is doing its best to spin this story – the Administration talking peace with the Taliban after 17 years of war – as a bad thing.

Especially given that when the Administration reversed the Obama-era policy of giving the insurgents a “save the date” card, and cut off all talks six months ago, the same experts were wondering – as they always seem to – what was so wrong about diplomacy.

(There was actually a very good, even-handed story about this on an NPR broadcast last night.  I can’t seem to find it.  I’ll hold off on the conspiracy theories and assume I’m missing something, here…)

Heard On Social Media, 1938

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SCENE:  A group of people are sitting in a cafe in south Minneapolis.  

Harland BERG and a few other people sit around tables, absently drinking coffee and reading the Minneapolis Star when Oscar KJEDELIG walks into the room.  

KJEDELIG:  We need to prevent Germans from caucusing at the Farmer-Labor Party caucuses next week.

BERG:  Er…Germans?

KJEDELIG:  Yes!  Germans follow a crazy dictator who wants to bring world war.

BERG : Well, some certainly do.

KJEDELIG:  “Look at this book!  (He waves a mimeographed copy of a pamphlet entitled “All Germans Want To Start A War”, by…well, it’s hard to tell who wrote it).  Read it and you’ll know everything.

BERG:  Like you do?

KJEDELIG:  Of course.

BERG:  Well, I do speak the language, and did study a whole hell of a lot about Germany and the Germans, and I happen to know that the desire to start a world war is correlated with Germans who live in places where the Nazi Party is in control.  Germans living in Canada, Australia, Chile, and especially places like the Dakotas, Montana, New Ulm Minnesota and so many other places have absolutely no correlation with Germans who want to kjill us.

In fact, we can test it now.  (BERG turns to Will HEINRICH, a first-Generation German immigrant sitting at the next table).  (BERG switches to German) “Hey, da, Willi – wollten Sie eine Weltkrig anizufangen, und “untermench” umzubringen?”

HEINRICH:  Solche quatsch!   Ich habe dreiβig Jahre in Amerika gewohnen!  Ich war im Groβer Krieg im Amerikanischen Heer!

BERG:  So there you have it.  Not that I know anything about Germans.

KJEDELIG:  That’s not what this (waves the pamphlet) says.

BERG:  The pamplhet is wrong.

KJEDELIG:  That’s not what the pamphlet says.

BERG:  It says it’s not wrong.

KJEDELIG:  It says anyone who disagrees is working for the Germans.

BERG:  Of course it does.

KJEDELIG:  Clearly you hate America.

BERG:  Clearlly

And SCENE:

Apropos nothing.

Cognitive Assonance

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When Donald Trump was elected, Big Thinkers with Bylines predicted that he – and the BREXIT movement often associated with him and his rise – would gut US markets.

Apparently not.

They also said that his intransigence would make American foreign policy even more fraught than it had been.

I’n not exactly “tired of winning” yet, but it’s interesting how turning foreign policy and defense over to grownups – people who’ve read enough non-intersectional history to know that coddling bullies just gives you more bullies – is slowly moving some of the world’s needles in the right direction.

 

 

The Pitch Meeting Writes Itself

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Noted in advance:  It’s the Daily Mail, which gives tabloids in general a bad name.

On the other hand, the story’s too good to doubt:  British SAS troopers (the unit Delta is modeled after), ambushed in Afghanistan and running low on ammo, take drastic measures to hold out until help arrived:

An SAS soldier decapitated an ISIS terrorist using only a spade after their unit was ambushed by militants during a patrol in eastern Afghanistan.

The veteran sergeant is said to have cut-off the gunman’s head in one swoop after running out of ammunition during a fierce six-hour gun battle.

After killing him, the elite soldier then used the jihadist’s own weapon to kill more ISIS henchmen.

To make the episode even more movie-perfect, the troopers were rescued by a couple of American attack helicopters, in a scene that reads not a lot different from the climactic scene in Lone Suirvivor.

Daily Mail, schmaily schmail.  I want to believe it.

More Workplace Violence

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Explosion that some are calling a “Failed Suicide Attack” in NYC.

Several people were injured after a device partially exploded inside a tunnel, the New York Post reports.

An officer reportedly told CBS News that cops are looking at a possible suicide bomber, although the situation is said to be “fluid”.

Berg’s Nineteenth Law is in full effect, of course. Nothing  you hear from the mainstream media, much less social media, is worth the pixels they’re printed on at this point.

Dawn Of The Doakes: Droning On

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Army helicopter flying over Staten Island had a mid-air collision with a quad-copter (which the media calls a drone).

Civilians are supposed to fly them lower than 400 feet but since there’s no altimeter, that’s hard to gauge.  The helicopter claims they were slightly above that altitude and maybe they were.  The article expresses alarm because bits of the drone wreckage nearly made it into the transmission housing, could have caused catastrophic failure and crashed the helicopter.

The Liberal response, of course, will be to ban anybody from flying anything that might interfere with helicopters, despite the fact that responsible operators know the rules and where to fly.  But Amazon will be sold out in a matter of minutes, as soon as Sheik Mohammad realizes he can bring down Blackhawks with $100 drones operated by children.  The skies above conflict areas will be swarming with them.  Maybe we need a more robust solution?

Joe Doakes

Maybe more, smaller drones to bring the bigger drones down first?

Mysteries

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

While we’re pondering the right lessons to learn from the Islamist attack on 9/11, perhaps we could take a moment to ponder the right lessons to learn from the Islamist attack on our consulate in Benghazi?

Maybe unarmed guards and compromised e-mail contributed to the attack?  Maybe lying about the cause and pressuring people to remain silent afterwards hinder us from stopping the next attack?  Maybe this is part of the swamp that needs draining?

Joe Doakes

The idea gets my vote.

Grass Grown Over Collapsing Trenches

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It’s 9/11 today, as most of you are aware.

If you’re younger than 34, it happened when you were still in school.  And it shouldn’t blow my mind that people who were toddlers on 9/11 have graduated from high school – but it does.

Put another way – if 9/11 were December 7, we’d be in 1956; the war would have ended 12 years ago; Elvis would be at his peak, Germany and Japan would be back from the stone age and rebuilding their economies, and we’d be on the brink of the space race.  Tempus fugit.  

After the attacks, one of the social undercurrents – which morphed, as social currents do, into comedy that often tried too hard – was the notion that if we gave up our freedoms out of fear of terror, then “the terrorists will win”.

So today, 16 years later, government goons grope us in line at airports (but miss all the dangerous stuff anyway), and we don’t complain because, well, we gotta make our flights; the whole exercise seems designed more to train people to get in line and shut up than to find terrorists.

We fill out paperwork if our bank deposits are too big.  We watch as our police departments turn into playtime special forces teams, chasing after pot dealers and trial skippers with armored cars and assault rifles.  We see our Fourth Amendment gradually being reduced to toilet paper – and, in parts of the country where the people are more amenable to presenting their papers on demand, the Second as well.

And on the campuses where the generation that has the same memory of 9/11 that I have of Barry Goldwater (hint:  I was a toddler) are getting “educated”, people are being badgered into line by social codes imposed by self-appointed cultural police no less zealous than the Wahhabi morality police, enforcing a social code that are no less absurd than the rules, and rulers, in Afghanistan 16  years and one day ago today – enforced (!), in some cases, by people whose only difference from ISIS’s morality police is that they haven’t cut off anyone’s head.

Yet.

I’m less and less sure this nation – or at least it’s self-appointed culturaloverlords – learned the right lessons from 9/11.

By The Roots

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Trump gave a speech in which he explained why he’s changed his mind on pulling out of Afghanistan: it would create a power vacuum and enable the Taliban to sweep in.  Instead, we’re going to stay and kill terrorists until conditions on the ground allow us to leave.  But we’re not going to engage in nation-building.

Great, he’s going to pivot to Afghanistan and focus like a laser on killing terrorists.  Where have I heard that before?

I don’t object to killing terrorists but why aren’t we nation-building?  Because nation-building was proposed as the cure for the root cause of terrorism but it turns out the root cause of terrorists is not poverty or lack of democratic institutions.  Establishing a puppet regime with purple-finger elections and midnight basketball won’t stem the flow of terrorists so we’re not going to waste time and money doing it.

Fine.  If that’s not the root cause, what is the root cause of Islamic terrorism?

I suspect the root cause of Islamic terrorists is radical Islam, even if everybody in Washington is terrified to say it.  Why not fight them?  Because there are different sects with different agendas and different funding, making them hard to find and kill, and the press would crucify you for trying.

But we know one of those sects is Wahhabism.  Which is funded by Saudi Arabia.  Which is run by the Royal Family of the House of Saud who the US protects from domestic unrest with US troops even as the Saudis work to get OPEC to undermine American domestic oil production.

As it sits now, our War on Terror policy is to kill the individual puppets but support the puppet masters even as they attack our economy.  That’s insane.

Forget the terrorists.  Let them squat in their mountains and kill each other.  Close our border so terrorists can’t come here, then go after the root cause.  Go after the money.

Issue drilling and pumping permits to produce oil on leased federal lands which will flood the world market with American oil and depress Saudi incomes.

Declare Saudi Arabia to be a financier of terrorism and seize all Saudi money in American banks.

Pull US troops out of Saudi Arabia to force them to spend their remaining money defending themselves from their own people. If we have any AK’s laying around that we captured in Libya, hand them out to the locals as we’re leaving Saudi Arabia.  Regime change on the DIY plan.

We’ve been fighting a War on Terror since 9-11 by going after street-level terrorists.  It’s not working.  Try something else.

Joe Doakes

Appearances

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Somebody threw an improvised explosive from a moving van onto the lawn at a mosque in Minneapolis at 5:00 a.m. last Saturday.  Blew out some windows, nobody injured.  Governor Dayton is all over this ‘act of terrorism’ which is part of a massive upsurge in violence against Muslims nation-wide, all caused by Trump, no doubt.

Except . . .

Most Minnesotans couldn’t identify a mosque if they were standing in front of one.  Most Minnesotans couldn’t identify an imam if they were standing next to one, nor would they know his daily schedule to target him. Minnesota has no history of violence against Muslims (Catholics, yes; Muslims, no).  IEDs are not a weapon commonly used in Minnesota crimes.  It doesn’t feel like a Minnesota crime.

You know who could identify a mosque, uses terror as a weapon and is familiar with IEDs from the Old Country?  Muslims.  You know who blows up buildings all over the world?  Muslims. You know which Minnesota minority has contributed the most new members to Islamic terror groups?  Muslims. You know which religion has sects utterly devoted to killing each other?  Shia and Sunni Muslims.  This feels like a Muslim crime.

 

If the bombing was a real act of terror, how does the Governor know this was Minnesotans persecuting Muslims?  How does he know it’s not ordinary Islamist sectarian violence?

And what if it wasn’t a real crime at all?  The bombing was carefully timed to avoid hurting people and to do only cosmetic damage. Nobody has claimed responsibility.  There are no suspects.  What if this is another in a long string of hate crime hoaxes? You know who has the most to gain from a hate crime hoax?  I’ll give you a hint: remember the ‘flying imams’ fake hate crime at the airport and who benefitted from that?  Muslims.

The Governor insists this is an act of terrorism committed by cowardly Minnesotans.  I’ve been skeptical since day one and now, we have more evidence it may have been a publicity stunt.  Muslims are complaining Trump hasn’t dropped everything to rush to Minnesota to condemn the bombing.  “He has to come here and at least express his feelings and say this is bad.”

No, that’s precisely what Trump does NOT need to do.  Amazingly, he’s sharp enough to know it.  The press secretary got it right.  It’s a local crime, if it’s a crime at all.  There are no national security implications. There is no federal government component that is being ignored.  This is not a matter for the President.

Listen up, guys. You are not the boss of him.  You don’t get to tell him where to go and what to say.  Acting like you’re so special that the President himself is at your beck and call . . . is the attitude that got him elected in the first place.  And Muslims setting off bombs in America is the reason his ban on travel from war-torn Muslim countries ban is entirely justified.

Joe Doakes

We don’t know much about the bombing – which was nearly two weeks ago – yet.

But Joe articulated a few points that I felt, but couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Dhim And Dhimmer

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SCENE:  Mitch BERG is pumping gas at the corner Superamerica when Polly LITTELL – proprietor of the Facebook page “Makeng Minnessota GRAET AGEN” page, pulls up to the next pump. 

LITTELL:  Merg!

BERG:  Oh, hey, Pollly.  (Eyes the meter on the pump, shakes the handle in a futile effort to get it to pump faster).

LITTELL:  So a MUSLIN cop, Mohammed NOOR, murdered a white woman in South MInneapolis!   It’s terrorism!

BERG:  Er, OK – why do you say that?

LITTELL:  Because it’s in the Koran that THEY are supposed TO attack us when THEY CAN.

BERG:  OK, Polly.  So it was terrorism.

LITTELL:  Yes.  Just like they are told to do IN THE Koran.

BERG:  So this “act of terrorism” involved shooting one woman.  Not his partner.  Not every other bystander, and every cop that responded.  And then, surrendering and apparently following the standard post-shooting process that a non-Muslim, non-terrorist cop would follow.

LITTELL:   Why do you hate America?

BERG:  Naturally

(And SCENE)

Trolling Level: PhD

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There are reports that ISIS’s putative caliph, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, is pining for the fjords.

The Pentagon is treating the reports as unconfirmed.

But that’s not stopping Mattis’s Pentagon from talking some grim, pointed smack with the story:

A spokesman for the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition told CBS News in an emailed statement that, “we cannot confirm this report, but hope it is true. We strongly advise ISIS to implement a strong line of succession, it will be needed.”

Burn.

I’ll Cop To It

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I’m a sucker for this kind of story; Roy Larner, a 47 year old bloke from London, took on three knife-swinging terrorists with his fists, yelling “F**k yoiu, I’m Millwall” (a Brit soccer team):

Now out of the intensive care ward of St Thomas’ Hospital, where he was treated for knife wounds all over his body including his neck, the father-of-one has told The Sun how he reacted when the killers burst into the restaurant shouting “Islam, Islam” and “This is for Allah”.

“Like an idiot,” he told the newspaper, “I shouted back at them. I thought, ‘I need to take the p*** out of these b******s’.”

“I took a few steps towards them and said, ‘F*** you, I’m Millwall’. So they started attacking me.”

No mythmaking needed; Larner is pretty sober about the actual consequences of what he did; he was stabbed eight times:

“It was the worst thing I could have done as they carried on attacking me.

“Luckily, none of the blows were straight at me or I’d be dead.”

Again – such a good thing the British people are utterly disarmed; who knows how bad things could’ve gotten?

Their Finest Hour

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The people of London are a lot more courageous than their city’s government.

Stories are filtering out of London about people resisting their attackers during Saturday night’s terrorist attacks around London.

This from John Holbrooke, a Brit lawyer who’s been covering not only terror, but the way the Brit poltical establishment has been bending over backwards to not, y’know, call it anything of the sort.

And at least we – the people who think Western Civilization, not to mention innocent human life – is with defending have something to be  proud of today.

Good thing the people of London are disarmed, and have to resort to pint glasses (the waste of Brit beer alone is inhumane) and chairs to protect their lives.

Of course, that’s why the attacks aren’t happening in Dallas or Memphis or Bismarck or Jacksonville.

Branding

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Donald Trump called ISIS “Evil Losers” in the wake of the Arianna Grande bombing last night.

Some on the left called the appelation the illiterate interjection of a trained chimp.

Not so much, says Scott Adams, who has over the past two years proven to be the only pundit in American who actually gets Trump.  It’s part of Trump being, as Adams calls him, the Master Persuader.

He’s “branded” ISIS.  And – says Adams – it’s genius:

If you call them monsters, they like it. If you call them ISIS or ISIL they put it on a flag and wave it around. If you call them non-Muslim, it just rolls off their backs because they have Korans and stuff. Almost any other “brand” you can imagine is either inert or beneficial to Loser recruitment.

Loser is different. No one joins the Loser movement. Try at home, with your family or friends, to concoct a more effective brand poisoning than Loser. You probably can’t. Remember, your brand has to fit with future confirmation evidence. The Losers on the battlefield will continue to be losing, so the brand is engineered to get stickier over time. Your alternative idea for a brand solution has to have that quality of future confirmation too. Good luck finding a better persuasion brand.

This is not accidental. President Trump does (laugh if you will) have the best words, at least for this sort of thing. He’s proven it over and over. Just ask Jeb, Ted, and HIllary.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Sequestered

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I’m a pre-operative transgender woman.  I demand entry into this unit so I can shower with young, blonde Norwegian women.  It’s my right.

Kidding aside, it might be a smart move.  Women get to serve which shuts up the feminists.  But they’re segregated, which eliminates sexual harassment.  Plus, it’s easy to reassign an entire unit to safely guard headquarters when the shooting starts, rather than pluck individual grunts out of an integrated unit to cut down on white-knighting.

This way, the politicians can say “Yes, you are equal to men, you can do everything they can do.  Grrrrl power!”  Might be worth looking into for Army units.  You notice they’re not giving the girls any expensive equipment to operate and maintain, like their own aircraft carrier or submarine.  I suspect there’s a reason for that.

Joe Doakes

On the one hand – not so fast.  Norway’s military is already pretty gender-integrated.  Don’t be surprised if you see a female frigate commander sooner than later.

On the other?  The Norwegians’ unit – a section of the Norwegian Army’s Jegertroppen, loosely translated as “Rangers” – is a special forces unit, roughly on part with the Airborne Rangers, and hauling a lot of expensive equipment around isn’t really part of the mission.  The stated mission – having female troops to deal with female Muslim suspects – isn’t entirely daft. And for the unstated, and these days probably tertiary, part of the mission, providing a guerilla cadre if Norway is every conquered again – it makes complete sense.