Category Archives: War On Terror

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.

It’s Only A Matter Of Time

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Sweden’s analogue to the WaPo is calling for cars to be banned to prevent terror attacks.

Cars and other vehicles “have turned into deadly weapons”, and should be banished from cities to stop attacks like the one in Stockholm from happening in future, according to Aftonbladet editorialist Eva Franchell.
Crackdowns on immigration or extremist ideology are not the way forward when it comes to terror prevention, according to the veteran journalist, writing after Friday’s terror attack in Stockholm left four people dead.

Instead, it is cars — which she calls “effective murder machines” — that Franchell says “must simply be removed from city centres and places where people gather, if people are to be protected in future”.

Vehicles are “easy to steal, and so nothing has been able to stop their advance”, writes Ms. Franchell.

Precisely.  If you get rid of the cars, then they’ll have no weapons.

Just like banning selective fire AK-series assault rifles prevented the massacres at Bataclan, Brussels, and Charlie Hebdo.

But it‘s just the Swedes, right?

Well, yeah.  But the way American leftists genuflect to our idiot Scandinavian cousins, it’s only a matter of time before some Bernie Brah suggests the same thing.

Tomayto, Tomahto

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Trump gave a speech [last week] referring to problems caused by immigrants in which he mentioned “what’s happening last night in Sweden.”  But nothing happened [last] Friday night in Sweden so the media are giving him a hard time about it.

 Oops.  The immigrants didn’t riot in Sweden until Monday night.  

 Look, it’s no big deal, it was a minor staff error.  The speech he gave Saturday was meant to be given Tuesday, they’re just out of order, that’s all.  Simple mix-up, could have happened to anybody. 

 And you’re missing the point:  Sweden is a nice, clean, civilized country.  Sweden let in a pile of immigrants who aren’t assimilating.  The immigrants are causing problems such as a massive spike in sex crimes.  We should learn from Sweden’s example and reconsider our own immigration policy before we suffer similar problems.  What’s controversial about that?

 Joe Doakes

Rhetorical question, right?

Anger!

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SCENE:  Mitch BERG is stopped at a light on University Avenue.  He sits, window rolled down, waiting for the green.

Avery LIBRELLE pulls up next to BERG is a city bus.  The window is cracked open.

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!  Dona’d Trump’s immigration moratorium is pure racism!

BERG:  Was it racist when Obama barred immigration from Iraq?

LIBRELLE:  No, and..

BERG:  And remember – these immigrants are from the same countries Obama has spent the last years bombing and droning, likely in violation of all manner of law in the process.

LIBRELLE:  Trump has been. doing all sorts of unconstittions……

(But BERG has rolled down his window and driven away)

(And SCENE)

Another Gun-Free Zone…

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…another terrorist attack:

On Tuesday afternoon, the FBI confirmed the motives of the recent shooting attack at Fort Lauderdale Airport in Florida. The assailant, Esteban Santiago, claimed to carry out the attack in the name of the Islamic State.

During Santiago’s bond hearing, FBI special agent Michael Ferlazzo confirmed that he did carry out the attack in the name of the Islamic State, according to CNN. At this point, it is not yet clear if he is linked with the terrorist group or if it was a lone-wolf, IS-inspired attack like dozens of others that have recently taken place (Nice, France, Berlin, Germany, Orlando, FL, etc.).

While Florida is a shall-issue state, all civilian carry is banned in Florida airports.

Which is why Santiago was unable to carry out his attack, and nobody died.  Right?

Democrat Rule

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What happens when you count the dead over the past sixteen years in Chicago – which hasn’t had a Republican, much less conservative, mayor in several generations?

You get more blood and gore than our two official war zones, that’s what.

What do you suppose would happen if the mainstream media and Hollywood covered Democrat failures like they covered George W. Bush’s mistakes?

“But Mitch!  You heard the President last year – Chicago’s violent crime wave is happening because people can buy guns in Indiana.”

If that were true, then why isn’t Indiana awash in blood, too?

No, for some reason Indiana  –  and, for that matter, most of Illinois – has a fraction of Chicago’s violent crime rate.   Of course, the feds have been derelict in their own job, opting out of the business of prosecuting “straw buyers” – who, along with theft, provide most of the guns used by Chicago’s gangs.

Maybe some of the gun movement’s shrill scolds can whitesplain us why the US attorney for Northern Illinois hates black people…

Those Who Can’t Possibly Learn From History Are Doomed To…

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Remember yellowcake? 

 The story was that intelligence agencies had learned Saddam Hussein was trying to buy yellowcake uranium to build nuclear weapons to use against the United States, which would have posed a threat to our national security, so we had to go to war against him to prevent him from using weapons of mass destruction on us.

 The entire international coalition shared the intelligence evidence as did select members of Congress including John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, both of whom supported the war based on that intelligence assessment.

 Except – no yellowcake.  Turns out the intelligence was faulty.  Nobody should have relied on it, much less gone to war over it.  Bush lied, people died.

 Fast forward a decade.  Portions of the intelligence community believe Russia hacked into the DNC computers but portions of it do not, the evidence is unclear, the motive is unknown, the result on the election is impossible to prove.  But some idiots in Congress are ready to start a war over this?  And not just war with some two-bit tin pot dictator, war with a nuclear nation whose conventional military forces dwarf ours? 

Insane.  Literally, not sane.  Should be locked up as a danger to themselves and all the rest of us.

 Joe Doakes

Knowing some of this might come from reading military history.

But you can count liberals who read military history on one hand.

You Expected Precisely What?

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SCENE:  Mitch BERG is in his garage, puttering with his snowblower. 

Avery LIBRELLE walks into the garage, drinking a bottle of kombucha.  

BERG:  Uh, hey, Avery.  To what do I owe the…

LIBRELLE:  I needed a place to throw the empty bottle.   Hey – Trump was elected by the Russians!

BERG:  Well, it seems that the Russians were trying to do something about our elections, via propaganda, and perhaps online skulduggery.

LIBRELLE:  It just proves that Trump was not legitimate.

BERG:  Well, I’m sure the DNC hopes people believe that.  But there’s no evidence they were doing it to benefit Trump, specifically.  More to generate chaos.  Putin is a former KGB guy.

LIBRELLE:  Don’t give me your crazy acronyms.  That’s racist.

BERG:  Whatever.  Intelligence people use chaos as a tool; out of chaos comes opportunity.  If an American government needs to use its poltiical capital fighting internal questions about its legitimacy – which seems to be Putin’s goal, and seems to be working so far, at least among our chattering classses – then it’s less likely to be able to intervene in Syria, or take serious action re ISIS, or marshal any political will to protect Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia.

LIBRELLE:  Bla bla bla.  America’s intelligence agencies say it’s a smoking gun!

BERG:  A smoking what?

LIBRELLE:  Oops. A smoking microaggression.

BERG:  No, they don’t.

(But LIBRELLE has already scampered away, leaving the empty kombucha bottle on BERG’s garage shelf).

(And SCENE)

 

Drip Drip Drip

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The authorities insist there is no evidence the Ohio State attacker had a membership card from ISIS.  Another member of Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolf Muslim Terrorists.

 Seriously, how many “lone wolves” does it take to make a pack?  Can’t anybody in the media admit there’s a pattern to this violence?

 Joe Doakes

Not just a pattern – a motivator.

ISIS is specifically targeting people in the west who are susceptible to being teased into becoming martyrs to do exactly this sort of thing, via their online and media outreach.  Their website and (very slick) magazine show would-be martyrs how to carry out mass shootings (likely including San Bernardino, Orlando and, quite possibly, Saint Cloud), vehicle attacks (like Nice, France and of course OSU), IEDs (like the Boston Marathon), and, well, stabblings.

So  yes – it’s an asynchronous pack.

And we know that the only response to a pack is a bigger, better, and still more civilized pack.  Which at least some people in Ohio get.

Ömertä

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The GERMANS are losing control of the streets?  The Italians never had any, the French are too arrogant to want any, but the GERMANS can’t keep people in line?

 Sure, migrants get a pass.  Their Lives Matter.  But if a citizen shot one, you know the entire weight of the government would land on his head.

 This can’t continue.  I suspect the next step will be immigrants stir up enough animosity that local police begin to look the other way as reprisals occur.  The police will shrug and say “We have no witnesses, what can we do?”   Word will get around – stay out of that town, they’ll beat you to death – and migrants will move to Austria, Norway, etc. 

 Joe Doakes

People are mindless, bovine herd animals – until they’re not.

Shocked. Shocked, I Tell You.

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I held off talking and writing about the Cascade Mall shooting on Friday, where a man the media immediately and hopefully desdribed as “Hispanic-looking” killed five at a Macy’s.

LIke any good Mitch Berg, I observed Berg’s 18th Law (“Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event – a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything – should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident.  It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to “scoop” each other even on incorrect facts.”), believing with sickening certainty that the shooter would be a Muslim with extremist sympathies, and believing in a somewhat more sarcastic vein that the shooter would be a Democrat.

And while we’re still technically under the boundaries of Berg’s Law, I just have to say;  Check:

A suspect in a mass shooting at a Washington state mall is arrested in Oak Harbor, Wash. (Twitter/Gerry Oliver)

Island County Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Hawley told reporters that he spotted Cetin near the suspect’s home in Oak Harbor, around 30 miles due west of the mall. Hawley said he immediately recognized Cetin as the suspect, turned his patrol car around and arrested Cetin without incident.

Arlan Cetin is an immigrant from Turkey.   While I may be a deplorable conservative, I do know Turkey is not “Hispanic”.

And although it’s premature to make the jump, the FBI is not ruling out terrorism.

And, er, check on the third point:

I’ll insert the usual disclaimers:  the vast majority of Muslim immigrants are perfectly fine people and good Americans.

Hillary voters, on the other hand…

 

Neerja Bhanot

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It was thirty years ago today that Neerja Bhanot won India’s highest honor for bravery in peacetime, the Ashoka Chakra Award when her jetliner, Pan Am Flight 73 from Mumbai to the US, was hijacked by terrorists from Abu Nidal, who were specifically targeting Americans.

Wikipedia takes up the story:

After 17 hours, the hijackers opened fire and set off explosives. Neerja Bhanot opened one of the doors. Although she could have been the first to jump out of the aircraft and flee to safety when she opened the door, she decided not to and instead started helping the other passengers to escape. Neerja was shot while shielding three unaccompanied American children from a hail of bullets of the hijackers. Out of a total of 41 American passengers, two were killed during the hijacking. A child on board, then aged seven, is now a captain for a major airline and has stated that Neerja Bhanot has been his inspiration and he owes every day of his life to her. 

I’m including the story partly due to its historical value…

…and partly to counter the notion that the cultural left continues to push – the idea that the individual is helpless in the face of adversity, to say nothing of aggression, without “the village” – the suffocating fog of government there to protect and validate them.  This thesis is trashed on a nearly-daily basis.  Faced with imponderable evil, against the most daunting odds, ordinary people do the most extraordinary things.  To attempt to has always been considered one of the greatest virtues of mankind.

And I’m here, in part, to keep reminding you of that.

So that, more importantly, you can remind others of that.