Remember when the Democrats held up “unarmored Humvees” as the greatest crime ever committed against US troops?

It all seems so long ago, now:

Afghanistan is a country the size of Texas, with only a handful of major roads. So when the U.S. military wants to haul gear, supply isolated outposts, reposition forces, or evacuate wounded troops, the first, best and sometimes only option is to do so by helicopter.

Which means that the demand for helos at most U.S. bases far outstrips the supply. And the helicopters that do fly operate under unforgiving and often dangerous conditions, as we saw in Monday’s twin copter calamities, which killed 14 Americans. In short, helicopters are the irreplaceable connective tissue of the Afghanistan war effort — and its potential Achilles’ heel. “It’s our strategic weak point,” a defense official told Danger Room.

Apparently we don’t have nearly enough of them:

For years, commanders have complained that helicopters were the one thing they couldn’t get enough of, and coalition forces in Afghanistan have often had to rely on outsourcing to fill in the gaps. “We definitely don’t have enough helicopters,” British Foreign Office Minister Lord Maloch Brown recently said, before issuing a quick “clarification.”…

Most of what I know about helicopters I learned from reading Colonel Charlie Beckwith’s book about the formation of “Delta Force” and its role in the Desert One raid.  And it put me off of wanting to ever fly in a helicopter.  The main point; helicopters are incredibly fragile, and desert sand and dust makes thingsmuch, much worse.

…Even if more military helicopters are sent to Afghanistan, there’s a much bigger issue: Operating rotary aircraft in Afghanistan can be extremely difficult.

 

Earlier this year, Popular Mechanics reporter Joe Pappalardo spent some time with the wrench-turners who keep the helicopters flying in Afghanistan. “Afghanistan,” he concluded, “is hell on helicopters.” Here’s a list of just a few of the things he noted that can go wrong: Temperature extremes that destroy seals and gaskets; “high/hot” flying conditions that reduce engine performance; dust and sand that ruin rotor blades and clog up hydraulics.

Just saying, Mr. President – whenever you get around to deciding what you’re going to do about Afghanistan…

UPDATE:  Welcome, Instapundit Readers!  It’s been a while!  Glad I finished getting the place cleaned up for ya!

The Obama administration continues to drag its feet, exposing their utter incompetence on yet another front; the war in Afghanistan – ironically the one Obama wanted.

Now he has it. Predictably, his administration is once again resorting to the tiresome practice of blaming the previous administration for their own inability to manage the war Obama campaigned on as the one we should have been fighting.

Now’s his chance…

…to blame Bush.

…again.

On October 18, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows and, in the process of answering questions about Barack Obama’s strategy on Afghanistan, accused the Bush administration of failing to ask the most basic questions about that country and our war there.

Gibbs went on…claiming that a request for troops from General David McKiernan during the final year of the Bush administration “sat on desks in this White House, including the vice president’s, for more than eight months.”

Obama lies. Emanuel lies. Gibbs lies.

In fact, the Bush administration did ask those questions. From mid-September to mid-November 2008, a National Security Council team, under the direction of General Doug Lute, conducted an exhaustive review of Afghanistan policy. The interagency group included high-ranking officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the office of the director of national intelligence, the office of the vice president, the Pentagon, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Its objective was to assess U.S. -policy on Afghanistan, integrating a simultaneous military review being conducted by CENTCOM, so as to present President Bush with a series of recommendations on how best to turn around the deteriorating situation there.

…and the troop requests?

McKiernan wanted more troops–he asked for three additional brigades in the summer of 2008–but he understood that he could have them only when they became available. “McKiernan was making requests down the line,” says a Pentagon official, “and late in 2008 we did have the ability to commit more forces. So we did.” Indeed, Bush sent nearly 7,000 additional troops to Afghanistan before he left office, including one brigade that had been repurposed from Iraq.

Barack Obama is the President of Broken Promises. When he can’t or chooses not to keep his word, he waffles; he lies.

…and is so arrogant so as to think no one notices.

HT Chris F.

Robert Kaplan, one of the best war correspondents working today and, as an “Atlantic” writer, hardly a tool of the GOP, on Obama’s Afghanistan policy.

Kaplan, the author of Imperial Grunts (which sounded some of the first warnings about the impending failure in Afghanistan, back in the day when even John Kerry was a believer), says there’s not much good news on either side of the aisle:

When it comes to foreign policy, Republicans and Democrats are each suspect in their own way. Republicans used to be the party of competence in world affairs. They lost that aura during President George W. Bush’s first six years in office, when he mismanaged the wars both in Iraq and in Afghanistan. The Democrats, for their part, are often accused of being wobbly on national security, lacking both toughness and gumption. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s recent handling of the war in Afghanistan plays to those charges. Being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize will only intensify the perception that he is a weak war leader.

Kaplan’s not only entitled to his opinion about Bush, but given his background in the subject, the opinion deserves a serious listen.

But while people might accuse the Bush administration of bobbling the high-level strategy, Obama’s greater-included sins seem to include a key tenet of basic leadership:

It’s perfectly legitimate for Obama to review Afghanistan strategy and troop numbers. But by calling into question the very strategy that he put into place earlier in the year, when he called Afghanistan the “necessary war,” and promised to properly resource it, Obama is courting charges from the right that he is another ineffectual Jimmy Carter—that other Nobel Peace Prize winner.

But what Obama’s second-guessing of his own strategy in fact suggests is poor policy coordination at the White House. There’s more than a passing similarity between the White House’s hiccups on health care and its confusion on Afghanistan. In each case, the executive branch went forward on an issue without being fully staffed out, or in agreement on the specifics.

Going “Charge!  Er, no, wait, left face and march!” isn’t the kind of thing that inspires confidence.

Furthermore, in this highly networked media age you only get to fire a general once. It’s not like the Civil War era, when Abraham Lincoln could quietly relieve one commander after another until he found Ulysses Grant. Last May, the Obama Administration fired Army Gen. David McKiernan, then the commander in Afghanistan, in a particularly humiliating manner. McKiernan wasn’t a failed general; he simply wasn’t the best man for the job. Yet he’ll forever be known as the first wartime commander to have been relieved of his duties since President Harry Truman fired Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Korea. The Administration chose Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal to take his place. It was during the selection process for the new general that a policy review would have made sense—though only behind closed doors. And the time to roll out a new or adjusted strategy would have been when McChrystal’s selection was announced, so that he could become the face of the new policy.

The Administration had many months, beginning the moment Obama was elected, to recalibrate Afghan strategy. Yet it’s now in the position of publicly questioning the fundamental wisdom of the general it has chosen. The position Obama’s now in is similar to that of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld some years back—appearing not to be listening to his generals. If the president doesn’t agree with his field commander, that’s fine. Just don’t make a public spectacle of it.

Obama still hasn’t learned that life isn’t all a Chicago city council meeting; you don’t get mulligans on the big calls:

Even if Obama does end up making the correct decision on Afghanistan strategy (by which I mean adding troops, since counterinsurgency is manpower-intensive), the public agony over his deliberations may already have done incalculable damage. The Afghan people have survived three decades of war by hedging their bets. Now, watching a young and inexperienced American president appear to waiver on his commitment to their country, they are deciding, at the level of both the individual and the mass, whether to make their peace with the Taliban—even as the Taliban itself can only take solace and encouragement from Obama’s public agonizing.

Oh – and remember all that hope and change Obama was going to bring to our public image abroad?

Obama’s wobbliness also has a corrosive effect on the Indians and the Iranians. India desperately needs a relatively secular Afghan regime in place to bolster Hindu India’s geopolitical position against radical Islamdom, and while the country enjoyed an excellent relationship with bush, Obama’s dithering is making it nervous. And Iran, in observing Washington’s indecision, can only feel more secure in its creeping economic annexation of western Afghanistan. So, too, other allies far and wide—from the Middle East to East Asia, and Israel to Japan—will start to make decisions based on their understanding that Washington under Obama may not have their backs in a crisis. Again, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama only plays to such fears.

As with everything Kaplan writes, read the whole thing.

Kudos to Pakistan’s army, which pulled off one of the most dangerous, difficult missions there is over the weekend:

Pakistan’s army says commandos have caught the last militant who attacked its headquarters and took dozens of hostages.Spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas says the capture Sunday morning brings to an end a 22-hour standoff in the garrison city of Rawalpindi outside the capital.

He says the final militant who was caught is wounded.

The raid involved shooting the terrorist “guarding” the hostages with a suicide vest before he could detonate himself and everyone in the room.  It’s the kind of thing that looks easy on “The Unit”, but we all know better than that.
The good news: they did it (losing two commands, three hostages, and killing four terrorists in the process).

The bad news: it looks like Pakistani commandos are getting lots of practice.

Second observation:  The AP’s slugline for the story, “Pakistan nabs last attacker, ends siege of army HQ”.

Is the end result of an incredibly high-risk commando really a “nab?”

Oh, yeah – and as Roggio notes, it kinda shut down the Pakistani Army for 18 hours in the middle of a war.  Can anyone imagine what’d happen if the Pentagon dropped off the grid for 18 hours?

…more irritating than armchair generals barbering about things about which their only actual knowledge is gathered at second or third hand.

But after forty-five years of reports that the M-16/M-4 series of rifles are M extremely unreliable and susceptible to jamming in any conditions that are less than optimal (Vietnam’s humidity, Afghanistan’s pervasive dust)…:

In the chaos of an early morning assault on a remote U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips’ M4 carbine quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn’t work either.

When the battle in the small village of Wanat ended, nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded. A detailed study of the attack by a military historian found that weapons failed repeatedly at a “critical moment” during the firefight on July 13, 2008, putting the outnumbered American troops at risk of being overrun by nearly 200 insurgents.

…perhaps it’s time for the US military to cut the crap in its procurement system and break down and buy a rifle that leave our servicepeople with an overpriced, underweight club when the heat is on.

Just saying.

…and all of Obama’s voters, that it’s been nine months, and Osama Bin Laden hasn’t been taken into custody yet?

Still at large.  But why?

Wasn’t that supposed to have been dealt with by now?

(more…)

Over at MPR’s NewsCut, Bob Collins – who seems to have become the online conscience of Minnesota Public Radio News – ably sums up the Travis Hafterson story

If the news media here had treated Pvt. Travis Hafterson like a dog, it would’ve been an improvement.

 Hafterson – a 21 year old Marine from Circle Pines – came to Minnesota to seek treatment for crippling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) contracted, the story goes, while on one of his two tours of duty in Iraq.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have included the Corps in his plans – and so after a crew of volunteer mental health professionals and lawyers got him certified for commitment, a group of Marine Military Police caught up with Hafterson virtually at the door to the treatment center, arresting him for desertion.

The alternative online news sources around here who fancy themselves the future of journalism — MinnPost, The Uptake, and City Pages, for example — proved that they can shrug their shoulders as well as the big boys. Of all alternative online sources of news, only Rick Kupchella’s new Bring Me the News “covered” the story.

Kupchella – a former Channel 11 anchor – has indeed covered the story (Here, here and here).

And there’s a lot to cover, if you are indeed a discerning, curious news organization.

PTSD is not something the services like to talk about – especially combat-focused, infantry-heavy services like the Marines.  But PTSD and warfare go hand in hand – and the services have always had a hard time walking the line between denial and treatment; George Patton’s infamous slapping incident first illustrated the military’s schizophrenia on the subject; in the great scheme of things, it’s hard to tell how much the military has improved its approach (UPDATE:  Although, as noted in the comments, they certainly have improved it).

Beyond the obvious?  One factor of PTSD is that it seems to occur far less often in troops that see themselves as being in control of their situations.  Highly-trained elite troops – like SEALS, Deltas, SAS/SBS troopers and the like – that tend to be in situations where they control the initiative of their battles, who tend to be “in control” of their combat situations, are observed to be less prone to PTSD than regular troops.  On the other hand, troops whose situations don’t ooze control have been observed to be more susceptible to PTSD; American “replacement” infantrymen in World War 2, who joined their units alone, usually in the dead of night with no orientation to combat, had frighteningly high psychological as well as physical casualty rates (which was a big part of the reason the US Army dispensed with that system of replacing casualties).

Given that – does it say something about the nature of the war we’re fighting today?  That perhaps just “sending more troops” isn’t the whole answer to Obama’s gathering quagmire in Afghanistan?

Much more later.

An Al-Quaeda suicide bomber succeeds by  – not to make excessive light of the situation – doing what many red-blooded westerners would have encouraged him to do – sticking the bomb where the sun doesn’t shine:

Inside a Saudi palace, the scene was the bloody aftermath of an al Qaeda attack in August aimed at killing Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, head of Saudi Arabia’s counter terrorism operations.

To get his bomb into this room, Abdullah Asieri, one of Saudi Arabia’s most wanted men, avoided detection by two sets of airport security including metal detectors and palace security. He spent 30 hours in the close company of the prince’s own secret service agents – all without anyone suspecting a thing.

How did he do it?

Taking a trick from the narcotics trade – which has long smuggled drugs in body cavities – Asieri had a pound of high explosives, plus a detonator inserted in his rectum.

Upside:  comedy gold for Jon Stewart and Jay Leno.

Downside:  according to CBS, it’s currently un-screenable, short of giving cavity searches to airline passengers.

And as nosy as TSA can be, I don’t think even they wanna go there.

Jon Stewart, last night:

Iran’s been “Put on notice?”  We’ve given Iran the same warning Colbert gives to bears?

It was kind of interesting, seeing the level of…belligerency (?) on the Daily Show?

Because I’d probably be pretty dangerous in the White House…to our most conspicuous enemies.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s continued overt threats to wipe Israel (or any other country for that matter) off the planet coupled with recent intelligence revealing a new nuclear facility would be met with a different tact than our Hippy-Wimp-in-Chief has chosen.

President Barack Obama is offering Iran “a serious, meaningful dialogue” over its disputed nuclear program, while warning Tehran of grave consequences from a united global front.

“Iran’s leaders must now choose – they can live up to their responsibilities and achieve integration with the community of nations. Or they will face increased pressure and isolation, and deny opportunity to their own people,” Obama said in his radio and Internet address Saturday.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is like a young unmedicated schoolchild.

Continued rhetoric without consequences, without punishment, has emboldened him. Just like a young child, repeatedly told “No” but without limits and punishment will turn into a spoiled maladjusted kid, Iran has given the rest of the world the bird.

The fact that the same party that let Osama Bin Laden slip through their fingers occupies Congress and the White House no doubt further stokes the fires of insanity; an opportunity to bully the other school kids while the Principal is on sabbatical.

Jimmy II recently informed Ahmadinejad he’s “breaking the rules” and later this week ratcheted up his teleprompter which in turn threatened Iran’s President with the dark storm clouds of “serious dialogue.”

Chilling.

Does that mean Michelle’s husband will have his publicist produce words with more syllables? That he’ll enlist multiple teleprompters? Employ a laser pointer or a PowerPoint presentation?

Iran’s current leadership has been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of many of our young men and women in Iraq, extending already excruciatingly long tours of duty for our brave young soldiers. Ahmadinejad represents a faction that resents Western freedoms and prosperity and will stop at nothing to destroy us to level the playing field and will not be bargained with or swayed by chit chat.

They have threatened peaceful nations and have shown time and again that they are not to be trusted and at the same time hold their ostensibly peaceful citizens hostage while exposing them to future military retaliation. Every week that goes by they grow in their ability to wreak havoc across much of Europe – and that’s based on what we know.

If I were President, that nuclear facility would be gone today. By lunch. On a Saturday. I’d make a call on the Batline and warn the weekend Janitor. The smoke would be clear by Monday morning.

It’s called a cruise missile, Mr. President, and his ass, up put, should be one.

So it’s a good thing, for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that I’m not President, and am armed only with a laptop whose battery has 19% charge left.

Let’s not make the mistake of thinking Obama’s decision to backtrack on the Missile Defense agreement with Poland and the Czechs had anything to do with Polish public opinion, stabilizing Eastern Europe, or switching to a “cheaper, more effective solution.

No, it was politics:

Purely a Political Decision

• Appeasing Russia, Ignoring Our Allies: President Obama’s decision to abandon plans for basing elements of the U.S. global missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic (the “third site”) is entirely political, designed to appease Russia, but it will leave the U.S. more vulnerable to the threat of ballistic missile attack.
• A Victory for Putin over NATO: This decision is a strategic victory for the Kremlin, which is determined to have a sphere of privileged interest in its region. The U.S. essentially gave Russia a veto over NATO’s support for the third-site defenses in Europe and turned Poland and the Czech Republic into second-class NATO citizens as members whose security is subject to Russia’s whims.
• Nothing in Return: There is scant evidence that Russia will deliver anything credible in return for Obama’s abandonment of the third site, especially with regards to the growing Iranian threat. Russia has already failed to offer any concessions in return for this policy change and is unlikely to support greater U.N. sanctions against Iran later this year.

To be fair, nobody with half a brain expected Putin to actually give up anything for these concessions.

To be fairer, Obama’s administration doesn’t have half a brain when it comes to foreign policy.

• Emasculating America’s Credibility: The Obama plan represents the shameful abandonment of two of America’s closest allies in Central and Eastern Europe, who in the future will have cause to question the integrity and credibility of American promises. A Polish spokesperson called the decision “catastrophic for Poland.”

Shameful Surrender

• The Technology Does Work: The Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic were in fact cost-effective and proven technologies that offer protection from long-range missile attack to both Europe and the U.S. The alternative that Obama will now pursue–sea-based Standard missiles and later ground-based variants–will not satisfy those criteria.
• No Long-Range Missile Defense for Europe Now: America has worked with NATO and European allies to develop Europe’s capabilities against short-range missile attacks, which is hugely important. However, Europe has no capacity to defend itself against long-range missile attacks, while America has limited defenses against long-range missile attacks. This decision undermines the concept of indivisible transatlantic security and enervates NATO’s Article V security guarantees.
• Growing Iranian Threat: Vice President Joe Biden recently said he is now “less concerned, much less concerned” about the Iranian threat. Where does this assessment come from? The Iranians successfully tested a space launcher in February and could have a long-range missile by 2015, and the United Nations confirms that Iran has enough uranium to build a nuclear bomb today.

Weak and Misleading Arguments

• Either/Or? The Obama plan will deal with the more “urgent” threat of short-range missiles, but why must we choose one or the other? The Administration say they do not have new “intelligence,” but rather have made a new assessment of existing intelligence. They say they are deploying “proven” systems, but they ignore technological advances when convenient. They say their plan “enhances” European protection, but that is true only if you ignore long-range threats.
• More Cost-Effective? The Obama team says its plan is more cost-effective, but what that really means is that it’s cheaper: It will cost $2.5 billion instead of $5 billion. It is foolish to shortchange national security to pay for giveaways like the Cash for Clunkers program.
• A Loss Leader: This is a strategic loss, a security loss, a diplomatic loss, and a major loss for America’s prestige on the world stage.

Here’s the big question:  does an American people so short-sighted and trivial enough to elect an empty suit like Barack Obama in hte first place have the attention span to care about the gathering foreign policy disaster that this Administration represents?

Hundreds of years of vassaldom to the Russians, Germans and Austro-Hungarians.

6-7 years under the Nazi jackboot, with millions – millions – dead as they served as a battlefield, a killing field, a death factory, and finally a battlefield again.

Two generations as slaves of the Soviets.

Just saying, all you Obama supporters – P Obama isn’t bringing Eastern Europe the change they were hoping for:

Poles and Czechs voiced deep concern Friday at President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a Bush-era missile defense shield planned for their countries.

“Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back,” the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama’s new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous “gray zone” between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere.

And the Poles’ experiences with being in “gray zones” – like when the Brits and French crossed their fingers behind their backs when promising to protect them from the Germans – isn’t all that good.

Recent events in the region have rattled nerves throughout central and eastern Europe, a region controlled by Moscow during the Cold War, including the war last summer between Russia and Georgia and ongoing efforts by Russia to regain influence in Ukraine. A Russian cutoff of gas to Ukraine last winter left many Europeans without heat.

The Bush administration‘s plan would have been “a major step in preventing various disturbing trends in our region of the world,” Kaczynski said in a guest editorial in the daily Fakt and also carried on his presidential Web site.

There’s a reason many Czechs and Hungarians and Georgians keep photos of Ronald Reagan in their houses; in not a few Polish houses, Reagan’s photo is next to Pope John Paul II’s on the mantelpiece.

And I’m thinking they’re in no danger of moving.

Maybe Kerry was right; we could learn a lot from the Europeans…

To: President Obama

From: Mitch Berg, perplexed peasant

Re: Huh?

Dear President Obama:

About that whole “cancelling missile defense” and “selling out our political allies in Eastern Europe” thing?

Well played, sir.  Seriously.

“This regime (Israel) will not last long. Do not tie your fate to it … This regime has no future. Its life has come to an end,” [Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] said in a speech broadcast live on state radio.

No, no sarcasm here.

That is all.

Not only did Obama sell America’s allies in Eastern Europe down the river, he did it on the seventieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, which completed the final parting-out of Poland’s fledgling democracy in 1939.

There are many areas where I’m willing to chalk Obama’s actions up to stupidity, and the invincible ignorance that follows whenever you put a bunch of Ivy Leaguers in the same place.

But I’m sorry – there was no way in hell Obama and his staff didn’t know the signifiance of 9/17 in Poland.  No f****ng way.

All things considered, I’m happy that Polish prime minister Tusk snubbed Hillary.

Today is the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

You’ve heard a bit about it today, no doubt.  You’ve read a bit about it on this blog over the years.  Along with the fall of the Berlin Wall, it’s the single most pivotal event of my adult lifetime.

And, as my radio colleague/partner Ed Morrissey notes over at Hot Air today, his as well:

While New York City and Washington DC (and Shanksville, PA) are far removed from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, that really only mattered in our sense of impotence as the towers collapsed and the Pentagon burned.  We knew that the terrorists didn’t attack New York City for being New York City, or Washington DC for being Washington DC.  They had attacked America for being America — and that made it all local and personal.

Which is something some Americans – on all sides of our political “aisle” – have forgotten since then.  They didn’t attack cities, or coasts, or electoral blocs; they attacked America.  And all of America responded.

And continues to.

For me?  It wasn’t just an attack.  It was the world sinking back into some very bad habits.  I wrote this on March 11, 2002 – a month into this blog’s life, six months after the attacks.

I grew up in rural North Dakota, not far from the vast fields of Minuteman III missiles, close to the glide paths of the B-52 bombers,. all of which were on alert for my entire cognitive life. I was keenly aware of the presence of all of those first strike targets, forty miles away. And while I may have been one of a minority, growing up around all of that did affect me – there was a long-standing anxiety that my life and the entire world around me could be incinerated in seconds, or irradiated away, without warning.

The Berlin Wall fell about the time my oldest child was born. It would be easy and melodramatic to tell you that knowing my daughter would grow up in a world without that tension hanging over her was a wonderful, liberating sensation – but it’s the truth.

I was driving to work on September 11. I was on 394, by Xenia/Park Place. I’d just flipped over from KQRS’ interview with PJ O’Rourke to MPR’s live coverage of the attacks, without warning. And as the day wore on , and the shock sank in, that exhilaration – covered by the many other emotional layers of an adult’s life – sank away. The threat is different – but it’s still the same.So my kids are growing up in the same world I did, now. The threat is less omnipresent – I dont’ suspect the Twin Cities are high on any terrorist’s hit list – but more visceral. Maybe that’s a good thing – it’s harder for this threat to fade into the background of daily life.

Like Ed, I wanted to do something.  But I was a 38 year old newly-minted single father with a bum knee and a bad eye – not the kind of person the military was going to be bidding for.   I had no job skills the military needed, even as a civilian contractor (unless I got a PhD in usability and human factors – and that wasn’t going to happen). 

The blog was as close as I got to something remotely useful.  I started it five months after 9/11, the very day I learned what a “blog” was and how I could do one. 

But I changed some other things.  I’ve always loved shooting -and I got more diligent about it since 9/11.  I’ve come to believe it’s the duty of a law-abiding citizen to have the knowledge and means to defend themselves, their families, their communities and their freedom.  And while I don’t rationally believe there will be terrorists skulking through that shadows of Saint Paul, ever (even though “domestic terrorism” has bounced off the far corners of my life, once), the knowledge that I can pile a few of ’em up like cordwood if I need to helps with one of the most important things a human can do; replace fear with purpose.  It doesn’t matter if evil wears a turban, s**tkickers or anything in between; the ability to shoot it in the face equalizes a lot.  It’s not fear (I keep having to explain to lefties, who too often just don’t get it); it’s pre-empting fear.

I have also gotten more proactive about making sure government leads, follows or gets out of the way.  In the wake of 9/11, before the blog, I asked my kid’s principals, adminsitrators and other school officials “What would you do if, say, a tank car of anhydrous ammonia blew up at the Empire Builder yard, and a cloud of poison were heading toward the school?”  I was distinctly underwhelmed with their answers – but no moreso than those of the nameless bureaucrats at the World Trade Center who told everyone to stay in place.  I’ve marveled – and found immense comfort – in the stories that showed that Americans do maintain our tradition of not needing authority and officialdom to react properly to events, in ways big (United Flight 93’s passengers’ counterattack) and small but profound (the people in the WTC who organized their own orderly evacuation, long before the firemen got there; absent the thousands of office-dwellers who thought for themselves and took care of each other, the death toll would have been vastly higher). And as best I can, I’ve tried to bring my kids up with the idea that this nation,l it’s ideals, its people and its history, is something exceptional – even more worth defending than it is worth attacking.  Has it stuck?  We’ll see, I’m sure.

So on this eighth anniversary?  It’s a good time to remember. 

And head to the range.  And send the world’s scumbags a message. 

Actually a box of messages.

A Scots judge frees a terminally ill convicted terrorist:

 Scotland freed the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber on compassionate grounds Thursday, letting the Libyan go home to die despite American pleas to show no mercy for the man responsible for the 1988 attack that killed 270 people.

The White House declared it “deeply” regretted the Scottish decision as Abdel Baset al-Megrahi left prison and flew to Libya on an Airbus dispatched to Glasgow Airport.

Scotland’s justice secretary said freeing the bomber was an expression of the Scottish people’s humanity but U.S. family members of Lockerbie victims expressed outrage.

It was “an expression of Scottish values” that al-Megrahi be allowed to return home to die.

Of course, al-Megrahi – who has never expressed the faintest remorse for the murder of almost 300 people, and had to be dragged from Libya under international pressure when his value to Gaddhaffi finally dropped below break-even – never allowed any of his victims the same courtesy.

For those who’ve forgotten:

Many of the victims were American college students visting home for Christmas.

Others were innocent Scots in their homes.

It’s good to know that some Scots have some real values:

Some men outside the prison made obscene gestures as al-Megrahi’s prison van drove by toward the airport.

After the Munich Olympic Massacre in 1972, when the “international community” slapped the few apprehended terrorists on the wrist and let them off with fewer consequences than a German traffic ticket for murdering the Israeli Olympic Team, the Israelis sent hit teams roaming the world to track down and kill the terrorists.  Mossad shot them down like scabrous dogs in the streets, pumping their chests full of lead from contact range; they blew them up in hotel rooms; they bombed their cars.  (Tragically, they killed an innocent Arab waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, in a case of mistaken identity; the person for whom he was mistaken lived on for years – but he can’t have made a whole lot of long term plans).

Just saying.  I don’t give a rat’s ass how terminal this piece of human-shaped mold is.  If what he did doesn’t warrant a midnight date with a JDAM or a silenced bullet in the dark or a garrote, I don’t know what does.

It’s not exactly what The White House said:

White House: ‘War on terrorism’ is over

…but it is the headline that Americans (and GOP strategists) will remember when the next terrorist attack occurs, here or abroad.

“The President does not describe this as a ‘war on terrorism,'” said John Brennan, head of the White House homeland security office, who outlined a “new way of seeing” the fight against terrorism.

So its not the end of the war, just the end of calling it a war…on terrorism.

Are we trading in semantics here, or are these people really that effected by Academentia^®?

What a beautiful setup for a campaign slogan – for the other guys: “Remember back in 2009 when the Obama administration said the War on Terrorism is over?”

I shan’t be surprised.

After all, this is an era when borrowing more money to fix a crisis caused by excessive borrowing can be called a “Stimulus Package” and where Success!!! is declared in the wake of a mismanaged program, using yet more borrowed monies to subsidize the purchase of new cars, mostly foreign, for rather marginal improvements in economy and emissions.

Mr. Brennan’s speech was aimed at outlining ways in which the Obama administration intends to undermine the “upstream” factors that create an environment in which terrorists are bred.

Translation: We intend to give them free health care.

As for the “war on terrorism,” Mr. Brennan said the administration is not going to say that “because ‘terrorism’ is but a tactic — a means to an end, which in al Qaedas case is global domination by an Islamic caliphate.”

“You can never fully defeat a tactic like terrorism any more than you can defeat the tactic of war itself,” Mr. Brennan said.

…and yet we can “defeat” the equally abstruse Global Climate Change?

*Title courtesy of The Hives

Remember when talk of “homegrown terror” was just BushCo talk to scare the sheeple into submission?

Either does Attorney General Eric Holder:

[Holder] told ABC News in an exclusive interview today that he is increasingly concerned about Americans becoming radicalized and turning to terrorism.
“I mean, that’s one of the things that’s particularly troubling: This whole notion of radicalization of Americans,” Holder told ABC News during an interview in his SUV as his motorcade brought him from home to work. “Leaving this country and going to different parts of the world and then coming back, all, again, in aim of doing harm to the American people, is a great concern.”

“In some ways it’s the most sobering part of the day,” Holder said of his morning intelligence briefing, in which he gets the latest report on the landscape of “the organizations, the people who are bound and determined to do harm to our nation.”

But there’s good news:

He noted, however, that the Bush administration “left us an infrastructure that I think is very good,”

[Scraaaaatch]

Oooh, Holder just blew his invite to the MoveOn.org Fashion Week Gala

“The American people would be surprised by the depth of the threat, but also reassured to see the assets that have been deployed around the world,” Holder said, adding that the United States interacts closely with its foreign partners.

Wow.  Something the Administration isn’t blaming on BushCo!

While the anti-neocons in the American left congratulated themselves and The One over the past weeks for meddling excessively in Iran’s internal poliics, Globalsecurity notes that the big winners in the unrest were the Revolutionary Guards:

The re-election appears to have depended on systematic fraud, as alleged by vocal opponents. What it represents is a defeat for Iran’s ruling clerical class, led by such revolutionary luminaries Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani – and a victory for the increasingly powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who are in many ways the real power behind the upstart Ahmadinejad.
The Guards indicated even before the election that they would not allow Ahmadinejad’s challenger, Mir Hussein Mousavi, to succeed. And they are willing to use any means possible, including mass arrests of opposition leaders and the use of military force against protesters, to maintain their grip on power. Iran’s ruling political elite have earned much popular hostility in the last few days, but they appear to have enough military support to withstand the protests for now. Regardless, the Islamic Republic may no longer be able to count on the people’s will to maintain its legitimacy

The result has serious implications for the Iranian people – including continued social repression, economic mismanagement, and the stifling of political dissent – and for the international community, especially the United States. The Guards’ continued political ascent and their military aspirations, including expanding missile and nuclear programs, will pose a new challenge to the Obama administration’s efforts to engage Iran.

The Guards are the kind of groups most dictators set up – a second army to play against the real army, like the SS or the Republican Guards.

June was a good month for ’em…

I saw The Stoning of Soraya M at the Uptown last night.

First things first; it’s a harrowing movie.  As in Passion of the Christ harrowing.

Too harrowing, at this remove, to really write a coherent review.  That’ll come soon.

But do yourself a favor; ignore the NYTimes’ specious review.  The Times writes the movie off as ‘Torture-Porn”.  They hit the point and still it completely; the village men doing the stoning were acting as if they were taking part in pornography.  That is exactly the point.

It’s at the Uptown again tonight.  It’s not the feel-good hit of the summer – I haven’t seen a group walk out of a building looking so emotionally smacked around since the Holocaust Museum.

But it is so good.  An amazing movie.  Go if you get the chance.

…so that world leaders would credit the US with making a clean break with the past eight years, and for trying to make amends.

Yep.  Our image in the world is gonna zoom!

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Barack Obama on Thursday of behaving like his predecessor toward Iran and said there was not much point in talking to Washington unless the U.S. president apologized.

Good thing they don’t hate us anymore.

Huh.  The North Koreans are going to annihilate us again:

North Korea threatened Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map as Washington and its allies watched for signs the regime will launch a series of missiles in the coming days.

I don’t know if this is the “test” Biden mentioned for the Administration before the inauguration or not.  But it’ll be interesting to see how Obama treats this threat:

1. Taking Michelle and the kids to Disneyworld
2. Going to Pyongyang and bowing to Kim Jong Il
3. Focusing on the real problem, Mark Sandford
4. Declaring that troops will be “home by Christmas”, launching a land war in Korea.

Votes?

“…could only have been coined by someone who never had to bet his life on it”.

Fouad Ajami on the folly of trying to expect “diplomacy” in the traditional sense from the Mullahs:

But in truth Iran had never wanted an opening to the U.S. For the length of three decades, the custodians of the theocracy have had precisely the level of enmity toward the U.S. they have wanted — just enough to be an ideological glue for the regime but not enough to be a threat to their power. Iran’s rulers have made their way in the world with relative ease.

The US – whether ruled by benign neglectors like Clinton, dithering dilettantes like Obama, or, within limits, Wilsonian firebrands like Bush II – always serves as any enemy (that’s not actually in the process of conquering you) serves to dictators; providing a boogieman to wave at the people to justify your power:

The Cold War and oil bailed them out. So did the false hope that the revolution would mellow and make its peace with the world.

Mr. Obama may believe that his offer to Iran is a break with a hard-line American policy. But nothing could be further from the truth. In 1989, in his inaugural, George H.W. Bush extended an offer to Iran: “Good will begets good will,” he said. A decade later, in a typically Clintonian spirit of penance and contrition, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright came forth with a full apology for America’s role in the 1953 coup that ousted nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.

Iran’s rulers scoffed.

Ajami goes on to explain why; you really do need to read the whole thing.
Conclusion:

That ambivalence at the heart of the Obama diplomacy about freedom has not served American policy well in this crisis. We had tried to “cheat” — an opening to the regime with an obligatory wink to those who took to the streets appalled by their rulers’ cynicism and utter disregard for their people’s intelligence and common sense — and we were caught at it. Mr. Obama’s statement that “the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as had been advertised” put on cruel display the administration’s incoherence. For once, there was an acknowledgment by this young president of history’s burden: “Either way, we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons.” No Wilsonianism on offer here.

Well, actually, I believe there is.

Remember:  Wilson is known today for his aggressive foreign policy toward US ends; it’s why Bush and the Neocons were called “Wilsonian” after all (like you couldn’t see that coming?).

But there was an earlier Wilson, the one that was in power as the US slid toward war; given to issuing grandiloquent statements and waving around what a “smart guy” he was compared with his predecessor (he’d been president of Princeton, you dumb peasants!) but not really doing a whole lot, trying to keep the US above the war in Europe but getting us inextricably entangled with it, and finally into it (at a time when we were almost comically unprepared for war of any kind)…

I’m seeing plenty of that Wilson on offer.

Obama finally talks, at least, serious about Iran:

Obama condemned the “threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days. ”

“I strongly condemn these unjust actions,” Obama said in a news conference at the White House that lasted slightly less than an hour.

Well, good.  Strong condemnation is better, at least morally, than nudging, winking acquiescence.  As invested as Obama has always seemed (by his standards) in treating governments as equals lest he they be riled by the “ugly pushy American” stereotype he cultivated during the campaign, I gotta confess I’m surprised.

Obama said his message has been consistent, and he shot back at Republican critics who are calling him timid: “Only I’m the president of the United States.”

“Obama” and “Consistent Message” are like “north end of magnet” and “north end of magnet”.

When asked if his strong language on Tuesday was influenced by pressure from such Republicans as Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, Obama scoffed: “What do you think?”

Heh.  It’s not literally a lie.  And I suspect that there’s a poll showing the American people are pretty nauseated by the mullahs, somewhere, that just might be motivating him more than Lindsey Graham.
Look; it’s better than nothing.  Even if it’s all he musters to support the demonstrators Sending aid to Iranian labor unions would be a good step…

…except that Obama is cutting that funding.

Andrew Malcolm in the LATimes on Obama’s audible on a press conference:

Here’s the scary thing for the new White House: the terrifying words “Jimmy Carter” have started appearing in print and on the air, recalling the ex-Georgia governor’s ineptness and…….apparent powerlessness in handling his Iranian (hostage) issues in the late 1970s. That impression lead to 12 years of Reagan-Bush Republican White Houses.

Which has got to scare the Administration.

Of course, Obama can still salvage this one; quite easily, in fact, if he recognizes (unlikely as this is) that the Mullahs are not dealing with him in good faith, and that all of his olive branches (which every Administration since Reagan has presented them, by the way) are being used for basiji riot batons.

Is Obama so committed to the notion of repudiating Bush’s Wilsonian doctrine that he’ll ignore the fact that stoking emnity with the US helps keep the mullahs in power?  And that he’s no less a target for this enmity than Bush or Reagan were?

On the one hand – is Obama “committed” to anything?

On the other – Obama has built his entire foreign policy (to the extent that he has one at all) on the ideal that terrorist theocrat thugs are people too, and deserve just as much respect as the British Parliament.