…like “we” face in Iran, I was in high school.  The people of Poland – Slavic, but very westernized; devoutly religious, but with a small-“l” liberal history; communist for a generation, but against the will of most of the people; a vassal state subservient to a nation most Poles hated with a viscerality that’d curl most Americans’ nose hair – were demonstrating, and eventually rioting, for freedom.

Like the Iranian people, the Poles were ruled with an iron fist by a despotic ruling clicque that was unpopular withthe people – but the people only had so much say in matters.  The candidates in their “elections” were carefully vetted by the rulers; those that stepped out of line – foreigners or domestics – were jailed and harassed.  Assemblies of dissidents were attacked by gangs of government goons; Iranians are besieged by Basiji, Poles were pummeled by the ZOMO.

Of course, historical parallels are an intoxicating mirage; they’re almost inevitably a small island of attention-getting, synchronous factors among a sea of differences.

One key difference:  There was, in Poland, one institution standing between the demonstrators and the Russians; one institution whose focus was more nationalistic than on the ideology (whether communist or western), that could step in to buffer the Polish state from suffering what the Czechs did in 1967, and the Hungarians in 1956 (and it seems hard to believe that more time has passed since the Solidarnosci era than passed between Budapest and Gdansk). The Polish Army – subservient to the Soviets, but with a long history of Polish nationalism – stepped in and ruled the country as a de facto military dictatorship until Communism started to crumble; like Franco’s rule in Spain, it arguably prevented a much worse Communist takeover, and – again, arguably – paved the way for Poland’s relatively stable democracy.

There is, to my knowledge, no such force in Iran today.  The Shah actually built the Iranian Army to fill that role, thirty-odd years ago; it seems likely the mullahs have purged any such impulses from the military.   Indeed, the Iran/Iraq war served much the same purposes for rulers on both sides; Hussein and Khomeini used the war to affirm their respective grips on power.

And on the other side?  After the 1980 elections, Ronald Reagan led an unlikely coalition to covertly smuggle aid to the Polish labor movement; Margaret Thatcher worked with NATO to set up the pipeline; Pope John Paul II, nee Karol Wojtyla, a Pole, openly used the Catholic Church (to which over 90% of Poles belong) to subvert the communists, and surreptitiously made it part of the underground railroad of covert aid; Layne Kirkland of the AFL-CIO – nominally a sworn political enemy of Reagan’s – made the union contacts that closed the circle and got the money through.

Aid came from all over, thirty years ago; foundations sprang up to scour for donations big (the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters) and small (I ponied up $20) to send to the Polish workers.

But George W. Bush, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, did no such thing (according to Michael Ledeen) to get aid to the Iranian labor movement, and Obama seems unlikely to start.  Indeed,what precious little Bush seems to have earmarked to support democracy in Iran may have been erased.
And when it was time for an American president to call the despots’ bluff?

One American president went to Communism’s front door and threw down:

Does anyone see Barack Obama calling a dictator’s bluff?

Don’t get me wrong; the time isn’t always right for all of the actions above.  Had Reagan given the same speech at the Brandenburg Gate in, say, 1981, it would have been a very different thing.

But can anyone imagine Barack Obama going to the Brandenburg Gate and saying anything other than “present”?

Can you imagine him challenging the mullahs like that?

Convince me.

Does anyone know of a way to send financial help to the dissidents in Iran?  Back in 1980, Solidarnosc took donations (and I got one of the cool T-shirts out of the deal).

Anything like that today?

Reports are still congealing, but 2-3 have been injured in a shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.

Israel responds:

The Consulate General of Israel in New York City called the reported shooting “disturbing” and said it seemed “someone didn’t internalize the message.”

One could say that.

Hey, good thing Washington DC all but bans civilian gun ownership, and is dragging their feet on Heller; goodness knows how bad it could have been.

John Falls, in Outside Online, writes one of the better reports I’ve seen on how counterinsurgency war is won in the Third World, in his dispatch from Jolo Island, in the Philippines, as he accompanies a group of US Special Forces and, mostly, Filipino Marines in an extended battle with Abu Sayaf.
It rarely looks like a Chuck Norris movie:

As I learned on Jolo, the campaign was noble in principle and often hilarious in practice. Traveling with a minimum force of 20 Filipino marines and several Green Berets, we would speed back and forth on Jolo’s paved road like a platoon of armed elves, delivering chairs to cheering schoolkids and visiting adult learning centers. One particularly sweat-drenched day, we headed out to an isolated hamlet called Sitio Lavnay for the turnover of a new well, one that would bring clean drinking water to 125 desperately poor families. The heavily guarded ceremony featured local VIPs in little plastic chairs, several roaming chickens, and 100 villagers gathered in the stifling heat. It opened with an acoustic version of Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing,” blasted into the jungle on a boom box, and only got worse.

After the Muzak overture, the speeches started. A lean, clean-shaven Green Beret admonished the villagers to “take ownership of the resource,” while the marine-battalion commander thanked the dignitaries for their hard work. Unfortunately the speeches were delivered in English and translated into Tagalog, a language the assembled Tausug couldn’t really understand. During the ribbon cutting, a mongrel dog drew the event to a close by taking a leak on the podium.

But for all the ham-fisted production value, the villagers still lined up patiently to thank the soldiers. The most important event that day went little noticed. After the ceremony, the chief, a handsome man in black jeans, slipped a Filipino officer a single sheet of paper with a carefully typed list of needs. It was exactly the kind of act Sabban’s counterinsurgency doctrine was designed to elicit.

Yes, as a matter of fact I do suggest you read the whole thing.

Journalist, cause celebre, Fargo North/Concordia(Moorhead) alum and former Miss North Dakota, Roxana Saberi, came back to Fargo on Saturday for the first time since being freed from quasi-legal kidnapping in Iran:

The 32-year-old Saberi was greeted at the Fargo airport by a crowd of well-wishers and “Welcome home, Roxana” signs. Saberi, fighting back tears, said she was surprised at the emotions she felt.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever really cried in public,” she said.

Gov. John Hoeven and Rep. Earl Pomeroy were among the officials who met her after she stepped off the plane Saturday afternoon.

North Dakota is a very small place.  Even Fargo – by far the largest city – reflects a lot of the state’s small-town past.  And when I say “small town”, it’s more than just the fact that the towns are, y’know, small.  The place is isolated; small North Dakota towns are little tiny islands of civilization on a huge ocean of soil that, until recently, isolated people almost as effectively as water.  And ironically in such a huge, sparsely-populated place, privacy is almost impossible to come by; in a small town, or even in a big city populated by people who mostly come from smaller towns, everyone knows everything about you, good or bad, sometimes before you know it yourself.

Now, it’s not the same place it was when I grew up; many of the smaller towns, the old railroad whistle stops between the bigger cities, are drying up and blowing away; the internet and ubiquitous communications have come a long way in connecting even the most remote outposts to the outside world.  And you know the place is getting more cosmpolitan when Microsoft is among the the state’s biggest employers, and especially when the state’s long string of blond-haired, blue-eyed Scandinavian and German-descended beauty queens are joined by someone of Farsi-Japanese descent.  Things are obviously changing; perhaps that sense of never having any personal space is changing with it; I don’t honestly know.

But while I’m not qualified to speak for Ms. Saberi, it’s that lack of privacy – the sense that everyone is privy to your business, whatever it is – that drove, maybe still drives, a lot of us who leave the place.   Because the downside is, you’re never alone.

Of course, when things get ugly – when your town is flooding, when your daughter is missing, when catastrophe strikes you from out of the blue – the upside is, you’re also never alone. 

At any rate, welcome back, Ms. Saberi!

…this may be just as ominous.

If George Washington and Thomas Jefferson could visit America in 2009 they would call the Chinese attacks Acts Of War.

Russia, the Peoples Republic of China, Iran and others will soon have a cold dose of reality that in awaking the American sleeping giant Cyber attacks can run two ways.

Update Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate

For those of you who think Nan Pelosi, despite her being speaker of the House and a longtime powerful figure in the Democratic Caucus, only dipped her toe into the torture issue?

Bon appetit! (it’s a video with audio).

Obama is going to keep the military tribunals. The ones he campaigned against.  The ones the hard-left took out second loans on the Volvo to try to bring pressure against.

Obama administration officials — and Mr. Obama himself — have said in the past that they were not ruling out prosecutions in the military commission system. But senior officials have emphasized that they prefer to prosecute terrorism suspects in existing American courts. When President Obama suspended Guantánamo cases after his inauguration on Jan. 20, many participants said the military commission system appeared dead.But in recent days a variety of officials involved in the deliberations say that after administration lawyers examined many of the cases, the mood shifted toward using military commissions to prosecute some detainees, perhaps including those charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The more they look at it,” said one official, “the more commissions don’t look as bad as they did on Jan. 20.”

And we have a “Most Transparent Administration Ever!” alert:

Several officials insisted on anonymity because the administration has directed that no one publicly discuss the deliberations.

Prediction: when lefties say they’ll discontinue military tribunals, it means that halfway into their term they’ll have Citizens Committees carrying out drumhead trials and executions on the street.

The good news?  Roxana Saberi, Fargo native, former Miss NoDak and NPR reporter, held for three months in an Iranian prison on apparently-bogus espionage charges, will be released soon:

Saberi, a 31-year-old who was born in the United States and who has reported for the BBC, National Public Radio and other media, was detained in the Islamic state more than a month ago.

The perhaps not so good news?  She may have been released because the Obama Administration gave the Iranians what they wanted (emphasis added):

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that Tehran immediately release the journalist during a news conference on Thursday at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.

She earlier said the United States planned to invite Tehran to a conference on Afghanistan, in a first overture to Iran.

The United States is reviewing its isolation policy on the Islamic Republic, including whether to open up a low-level diplomatic office there.

On the one hand, good thing that Saberi’s been released.

On other other; if indeed the release was accompanied by big concessions from the US, that’s probably not a great precedent.

UPDATE:  My NARN cohost Ed Morrissey at Hot Air (thanks for the link!) notes:

The Bush administration also made overtures towards Iran on Afghanistan on a similar basis; the holdup wasn’t a lack of US invitation, but Iranian recalcitrance on accepting a more public connection with the US on the issue.  The Bush administration had conducted talks with Iranian representatives on Iraqi security on several occasions over the last few years, so this isn’t exactly a new concept, and wouldn’t have triggered Saberi’s release.

There may still be a stinking concession at the heart of this, but the Afghanistan conference won’t be it.

I could have written more clearly. 

The US and Iran have been talking – on some low, diplomatic level or another – for years.  Every administration has had some sort of dealing with Teheran.  And Ed notes correctly that we have worked with Iran on things like Afghanistan in the recent past, and that the Afganistan meetings aren’t a quid pro quo for releasing Saberi.

My biggest concern – let me write it clearly this time – is this: given that Tehran’s mullas have always acted (as any government normally will) in Iran’s government’s interest, and that the Iranians have just gotten away with kidnapping an American (ten days after Obama’s inauguration, in fact), is the old ’70s-’80s tactic of grabbing Americans back on the table as a means of exacting concessions from a weak, inexperienced president?  Just like 30 years ago?

Time will tell.  But I don’t think this is a good start.

Remember for the past eight years?  When “Rendition” – grabbing a terror suspect and sending them quasi-legally to a country with more casual laws about coercion and suspects rights, was the subject of boundless ire?  And even a Meryl Streep JDAM of a movie?

No?

Either does The One’s Attorney General:

Cautioning Holder that any potential investigation into the Bush administration’s torture program could result in Democrats being roped in, “Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Richard Shelby of Alabama pressed Holder on the CIA’s ‘rendition’ program that moved terrorism suspects from one country to another,” reported Domenico Montanaro with MSNBC.“Didn’t that happen during the Clinton administration?

“Yes, Holder said.

“‘How many did you approve?’ they asked.

“Holder said he’d check the record.”

Despite frequent condemnation of the practice around the world, rendition — the secret capture, transportation and detention of suspected terrorists to foreign prisons in countries that cooperate with the U.S. — remains in the CIA’s playbook, thanks to a Jan. 22 executive order issued by President Obama.

Given The One’s reversals on Guantanamo, coercive interrogation and tribunals, expect to see…:

1. A media/administration campaign showing that terrorists are bad people who don’t deserve due process, and
2. Hollywood movies that show terrorists killing Americans, possibly (although this is unlikely) without the aid of secret vatican orders or groups of rural fundamentalist Christians.

Count on it.

Just by way of tying up loose ends- Jeff Kouba at TvM links to last Saturday’s inteview on the NARN with Michael Yon.

Ed and I got to spend a half-hour talking with Yon, who may be the best single war journalist (in the classic sense of the term) working in the world today, a guy who’s spent more time in Iraq and Afghanistan than most soldiers and Marines.  His perspectives are very much worth a listen.

With all this talk of torture of late it would be easy to overlook the fact that American forces, often at their own peril, have taken extreme measures to minimize civilian and even combatant casualties in defense of our interests around the world.

Last week’s standoff between pirates and the U.S. Navy in the Indian Ocean ended famously with three sniper shots, as a drone watched overhead. In 2008, French special forces captured six pirates on land after ransom had been paid. “There were four helicopters involved,” The Independent reported at the time. “A sniper [in a Puma helicopter] shot out the motor of the pirates’ four-wheel drive vehicle. A second helicopter [a Gazelle] then landed nearby, allowing the six pirates to be arrested” — without any casualties.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) uses helicopter-borne snipers to take out drug-running boats. They are accurate enough to knock out engines without harming the crew or damaging fuel tanks. “The driver just threw his hands up,” concludes the description of one such action in Men’s Vogue, after all three engines were disabled with three shots.

The latest installment in technology designed for the precision required for this policy: behold our latest Hot Gear Friday Installment, the Autonomous Rotorcraft Sniper System

Sniping from a chopper currently takes tons of skill and training. But ARSS is literally point-and-shoot for the operator on the ground, using a videogame-type controller. The software makes all the necessary corrections, and the system should ensure first-round kills at several hundred yards. The secret is in the control system and stabilized turret (on the right in the picture above), which is currently fitted with a powerful RND Manufacturing Edge 2000 rifle specifically designed for sniping work, using the heavyweight .338 Lapua Magnum cartridge.

HT Dr. Dave

Obama’s National Intelligence Director, Admiral Dennis Blair, wrote a little memo recently and it was edited by Obama administration staff for the sake of brevity.

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country”

Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past,” he wrote, “but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.”

A spokeswoman for Admiral Blair said the lines were cut in the normal editing process of shortening an internal memo into a media statement emphasizing his concern that the public understand the context of the decisions made in the past and the fact that they followed legal orders.

It would appear brevity and full disclosure cannot exist in the same room in the Obama administration.

The CIA waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed over 250 times.

As former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey pointed out last week, half of the U.S. government’s knowledge of al-Qaida’s structure and activities is the fruit of enhanced interrogation.

…which is to say torture – let’s not mince words

That information let the U.S. and other governments foil numerous 9/11-style operations, saving hundreds if not thousands of innocent lives.

The torture of terrorists, not babies, not harp seals, not your neighbors, not your friends…saved innocent lives.

We understand that people have legitimate concerns about the U.S. being involved in torture. But enhanced interrogation — a reasonable (but now rescinded) response to the deadliest of threats to our homeland — should be seen for what it is: a tough, but effective, way to save lives.

War on Terror Scorecard: Obama 0, Terrorists 1

ApplePieMom is the mother of a recently-deployed serviceman, and the proprietor of a new, eponymous, blog that is probably already on Janet Napolitano’s watch list.

And she wants to see red on Friday:

Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing red every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called red-blooded Americans, and are also acknowledged as the “silent” majority. While we receive precious little media coverage that gives voice to this position, we are showing our
 love for our troops, our country and our homeland in record breaking numbers. When asking a soldier, “What can we do to make things better for you?” the first answer is, “We need your support and your prayers.” Americans, like you, me, and many of our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of us want to offer this support. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops, starts this Friday by wearing something red and continues each and every Friday, sending a visual message that they may see or hear about overseas.

I suppose it’s more tactful than a “kill ’em all and let G-d sort ’em out” T-shirt.

Please help me get the word out: if every one of us will share this message with acquaintances, co-workers, friends, and family, I have no doubt it will not be long before the USA is covered in red on Fridays. It will let our troops know the “silent” majority is on their side more than they realize. Let’s lead this visual effort, silently, respectfully, and with dignity, just by wearing something RED FRIDAY.

Count me in.

…on politics with one of this blog’s regular comment meats, one “Angryclown”, it’s nice to know that his heart is in the right place (play the embedded video at the link).

Kudos, Angryclown.  The free world salutes you.

Let’s make sure we’re clear on one thing; while I emphatically do not support President Obama’s policies, administration, or style of leadership, when America and its people are in jeopardy I very much do want him to succeed.  Politics is supposed to end at the shoreline; to those who’d do us harm singularly or as a nation, we should be behind the President.  I even wanted Jimmy Carter to succeed in dealing with the Iranians – I was as Democrat as a 16-18 year old kid could be back then, and even I didn’t much like him, but I wanted to know that we had a capable, responsible person at the helm.
The corollary, of course, is that the President needs to do the job.

A friend forwarded this email, from the son of a friend of his, a US Navy sailor based in Virginia Beach VA (the Navy SEALs’ east-coast home) over the weekend. I present it without edits, redacting only the parties to the email by request, adding a few clarifications in square brackets.

From: XXXXX XXXXX
To: XXXXX XXXXX
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 7:25:25 AM
Subject: A SEAL friend of the mine sent the real Somali pirate story…

…and it frankly sounds about right.  BHO is “Barack Hussein Obama”, ROE is “Rules of Engagement”, RIB is “rigid inflatable boat”, “Raggies” is ragheads (a pejorative term for Muslim terrorists)…

The account is one from a Rear Admiral Lou Sarosdy, and it’s been making the rounds on the Internet. I took the time to confirm that Sarosdy exists (he does, and ran in some pretty serious company in his day):

Having spoken to some SEAL pals here in Virginia Beach yesterday and asking why this thing dragged out for 4 days, I got the following:

1. BHO wouldn’t authorize the DEVGRU/NSWC SEAL teams [The Navy equivalent of the Army’s “Delta” counterterrorism/hostage rescue group] to the scene for 36 hours going against OSC (on scene commander) recommendation.

2. Once they arrived, BHO imposed restrictions on their ROE that they couldn’t do anything unless the hostage’s life was in “imminent” danger

3. The first time the hostage jumped, the SEALS had the raggies all sighted in, but could not fire due to ROE restriction
4. When the navy RIB came under fire as it approached with supplies, no fire was returned due to ROE restrictions. As the raggies were shooting at the RIB, they were exposed and the SEALS had them all dialed in.
5. BHO specifically denied two rescue plans developed by the Bainbridge CPN [Captain] and SEAL teams
6. Bainbridge CPN and SEAL team CDR [commander] finally decide they have the OpArea and OSC authority to solely determine risk to hostage. 4 hours later, 3 dead raggies
7. BHO immediately claims credit for his “daring and decisive” behavior. As usual with him, it’s BS [Bainbridge Ship].

So per my last email thread, I’m downgrading Oohbaby’s performance to D-. Only reason it’s not an F is that the hostage survived.

Read the following accurate account.

Philips’ first leap into the warm, dark water of the Indian Ocean hadn’t worked out as well. With the Bainbridge in range and a rescue by his country’s Navy possible, Philips threw himself off of his lifeboat prison, enabling Navy shooters onboard the destroyer a clear shot at his captors, and none was taken.

The guidance from National Command Authority, the president of the United States, Barack Obama, had been clear: a peaceful solution was the only acceptable outcome to this standoff unless the hostage’s life was in clear, extreme danger.

The next day, a small Navy boat approaching the floating craft was fired on by the Somali pirates, and again no fire was returned and no pirates killed. This was again due to the cautious stance assumed by Navy personnel thanks to the combination of a lack of clear guidance from Washington and a mandate from the commander in chief’s staff not to act until Obama, a man with no background of dealing with such issues and no track record of decisiveness, decided that any outcome other than a peaceful solution would be acceptable.

After taking fire from the Somali kidnappers again Saturday night, the on scene commander decided he’d had enough.

Keeping his authority to act in the case of a clear and present danger to the hostage’s life and having heard nothing from Washington since yet another request to mount a rescue operation had been denied the day before, the Navy officer, unnamed in all media reports to date, decided the AK47 one captor had leveled at Philips’ back was a threat to the hostage’s life and ordered the NSWC team to take their shots.

Three rounds downrange later, all three brigands became enemy KIA and Philips was safe.

There is upside, downside, and spinside to the series of events over the last week that culminated in yesterday’s dramatic rescue of an American hostage.

Almost immediately following word of the rescue, the Obama administration and its supporters claimed victory against pirates in the Indian Ocean and [1] declared that the dramatic end to the standoff put paid to questions of the inexperienced president’s toughness and decisiveness.

Despite the Obama administration’s (and its sycophants’) attempt to spin yesterday’s success as a result of bold, decisive leadership by the inexperienced president, the reality is nothing of the sort. What should have been a standoff lasting only hours, as long as it took the USS Bainbridge and its team of NSWC operators to steam to the location, became an embarrassing four day and counting standoff between a ragtag handful of criminals with rifles and a U.S. Navy warship.

Biased?  Sure – military people often are when it comes to the right and wrong way of doing their jobs.  Filter accordingly (and, given the nature of the subject, at your own peril).

The President  – a guy with a paper-thin resume at everything but “community organizing”, with virtually no record even in the Senate – is new at the job…

…and that’s fine, and something “we” warned “you” about, and – let’s be fair – not really the issue here.

The Somali pirate story, which the Administration spun as a major victory and vindication of our naif President, would seem to have been more a lucky bobble that broke the right way, thanks to some commanders that knew when to creatively ignore, or at least circumvent, the President’s orders.

On how many issues will we – and He – get that lucky?

BLAH: If it looks too good to be true, it most likely is.  While “CPT Sarosdy’s” email recaps points that have appeared in other media sources, it’d appear that the email itself was a hoax.  I tried to verify this before running the post yesterday – but several rounds of Google searches on the article (looking for references to Sarosdy and searching for various parts of the email’s lede and key parts) produced no hits.

In other words; I did make an effort to verify the email before posting it. It obviously missed.

What was the term Dan Rather used?  Fake but accurate?

I apologize.

…like the corners of my mind.  Faded bits of  wishful thinking, of the way…Harry was.

It’s been exactly two years since Harry Reid’s Baghdad-Bob-In-Reverse moment.
How’s that foreign-policy mojo working for you, Harry?

Don’t we call that “defeatbagging”, these days?

Yesterday President Obama released Bush administration memos on terrorist interrogation techniques in the interest of transparency and with a blatant disregard for national security.

Clearly, as unsavory as some of these techniques must be (I don’t want to know how sausage is made either) we have been kept safe here at home for some time since 9/11 and there have been several foiled attempts at savagery on the part of terrorists in Western nations – without a doubt in part due to our more aggressive attempts to gather, intercept intelligence and connect the dots to protect our interests – and save lives.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod says President Barack Obama spent about a month pondering whether to release Bush-era memos about CIA interrogation techniques, and considered it “a weighty decision.”

Whatever happened to when in doubt, keep your mouth shut – or in this case, keep the file cabinet locked. Whatta ya say Obammy that we err on the side of maintaining national security, not eroding it? Is that too much to ask?

What possible purpose could be served by advertising our most top-secret techniques for gleaning information that has probably saved lives?

A former top official in the administration of President George W. Bush called the publication of the memos “unbelievable.”

“It’s damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama’s action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are,” the official said. “We have laid it all out for our enemies. This is totally unnecessary. … Publicizing the techniques does grave damage to our national security by ensuring they can never be used again — even in a ticking-time- bomb scenario where thousands or even millions of American lives are at stake.”

“I don’t believe Obama would intentionally endanger the nation, so it must be that he thinks either 1. the previous administration, including the CIA professionals who have defended this program, is lying about its importance and effectiveness, or 2. he believes we are no longer really at war and no longer face the kind of grave threat to our national security this program has protected against.”

This should come as no surprise to those of us who warned you that a man that “served” in public office for less than two years is not a suitable choice to lead this nation. But disregard the Incompetence Theory^™ for now. Is it possible that Barack Obama holds his liberal agenda above all else, without regard for the consequences to our nation or it’s people?

Preposterous you say? Case in point: an $800 Billion stimulus package that will only raise our nation’s already untenable debt, devalue our dollar, and with no hope or precedent to show that such a plan has any hope of stimulating anything – save half our nation’s Hopey Changey dreams of a world without pain – or gain.

Not to mention the fact that our economy is showing signs of stabilization – and without any assistance from the not-yet-implemented “stimulus.”

And why release this now – are all other issues solved? Does Obama know that we are now somehow immune from attack?

Obama did not act on an arbitrary timeline. There was a deadline in a court case with the ACLU on Thursday. It had been extended, but the ACLU was not going to agree to another.

Ah, the ACLU. Well at least now we know who’s in charge.

Or, is this Barack Obtumor’s way of relieving the non-existent guilt of a nation not-sorry for having the audacity to protect it’s law-abiding citizens from being deep-fried in jet fuel in his or her 88th-floor office?

No, it’s a sophomoric President force-feeding an ever-angering nation a far-far-left (we warned you) agenda that flies in the face of his promise of Change^®.

…and leaves us a little less safe than we were on Wednesday.

When the word got out that President Obama was being fairly hands-off on the Captain Phillips crisis, some conservatives complained.

Not I.  I figured if there is a situation a President needs to delegate, this one – a fast-breaking crisis on the razor’s edge of life and death – is the one.  It should be the kind of situation where a President – and the next several echelons below him – say “we’ll seek a diplomatic solution, but you, the commander on the scene, need to use your discretion; you’ve trained for this sort of thing your whole career.  If there’s a threat to the hostage, you use your discretion, and I’ll back you on it”.

And if that’s how Obama would have handled things, I’d have nodded and said “Good job, Mr. President”, not that anyone cares.

But that’s apparently not how it happened:

Late last week, when it did not want it to appear that the president was acting like a cowboy, the Administration was content to say that Obama was taking a low key approach to the pirate hostage drama, leaving the decision making to others and perhaps hedging against a bad result.

So far, so good.

But once news of Phillips’ rescue reached the United States, the Administration was quick to try and claim at least a share of the credit for the president.

Was it the President’s handlers who did this?  Likely enough.  It’s Obama’s staff and minions and Congressional support that are the bulk of the problems with this Administration in the first place.

It is not quite shameless exploitation – presidents always get more credit, and blame, than they likely deserve for events that happen under their watch – but it is playing politics.

As a legislator, President Obama had the luxury of taking both sides of an issue to position himself politically. But as president, especially in matters of national security, the president does not have that luxury, and he cannot seek it. Perhaps with more experience, President Obama will be able to chart a course and be willing to accept the consequences of his decisions, good and bad. But in the events of the last week off the coast of Africa, President Obama showed himself to be not yet ready to act decisively before knowing how the political winds will blow.

Bill Clinton was accused of the same thing – but then, the “threats” he faced (the ones that weren’t bomb attacks that resolved themselves instantly, anyway) were all to his political power, not the nation.

…when the last American merchantmen were seized by pirates, polite society was a lot more polite than today.  Paradoxically, impolite society was a lot rougher than today, in a lot of ways (depending on where you were, yadda yadda bla bla bla).

And so it was considered the height of manners for gentlemen to be armed – to carry some kind of personal protection, a firearm or a sword or whatever – to protect themselves and theirs from life’s ugly exigencies.  It was their responsibility.

Back around the same time, cargo ships were almost invariably armed as well.  Piracy was a real, constant threat on many of the world’s key trade routes; the richer the trade route, the more dangerous the threat.  Some merchantmen – the British and Dutch East Indiamen, which traded between Europe and South/Southeast Asia, were basically warships with cargo holds, due to the threats they faced from pirates both indigenous (the Horn of Africa was a hotbed of piracy then as now) and official (“Privateers” were pirates hired out by nations to do the dirty work of screwing with their enemies’ commerce).

It was their responsibility.

Now, with the Navy’s successful rescue of Captain Phillips and the expungement of three pirates, and the Obama Administration’s threats to attack pirate strongholds ashore (is that where Osama Bin Laden’s been hiding?), the pirates are threatening to ratchet up the violence.  Which, by the way, more or less belies the notion that they’re just in it for the money, as some were saying last week.

Some of the world community’s been getting the vapors about this.  But the past offers at least part of the solution today.

Just as it is the duty of every real American to own and be proficient with a firearm, merchant ships need to be armed; merchant crews need to meet skiffs full of thugs with gunfire.  If they are in it for the profit, hard targets are a drag on the market,with ships as with people.  If they’re not, then it’s war  anyway.

With piracy as with economics 101 – if you subsidize bad behavior, you’ll get more of it. Ransoms – as the US discovered in 1803 against the Barbary Pirates of the western Mediterranean – merely create more pirates looking for the big payday.  It was only when Thomas Jefferson broke with pure libertarian tradition and built a Navy and Marine Corps to track down and kill the pirates that the threat abated (and it was only when the “international community” in the 1840’s launched a concerted effort to crush them that they went away for good).

Military spokespeople say the the SEAL snipers took only three shots to kill the three pirates yesterday.  It’s the kind of thing that you roll your eyes over when you read it in a Tom Clancy novel.
But yes, SEAL/Delta/Marine snipers are that good:

Asked how the snipers could have killed each pirate with a single shot in the darkness, Gortney described them as “extremely, extremely well-trained.” He told NBC’s “Today” show the shooting by the snipers was ordered by the captain of the Bainbridge after the pirates “exposed themselves” to attack.Military officials were widely praising the snipers for three flawless shots, which they described as remarkable, coming at night and from the stern of a ship on rolling waters.

Yeah, that’s pretty praiseworthy…

For six years, I’ve had to listen to lefties barbering about the supposed butchery of civil liberties under Bush.  They are never, of course, able to actually specify any civil liberties being denied American citizens, but no matter; they’re on a roll!

Among the few who do attempt to answer the question, the common thread seems to be something along the lines of “Bush wants to do away with Habeas Corpus”.

Now, I think it’s become nearly axiomatic; when a liberal issues a group defamation of conservatives, there will either be some such behavior in the recent past, or there will be that exact behavior – beknownst or otherwise to the speaker – in the near future.  So axiomatic is it that I am going to coin “Berg’s Seventh Law of Leftyblog Behavior” to taxonomize it.[*]
…well, take a read:

The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight.In a court filing, the Justice Department also asked District Judge John D. Bates not to proceed with the habeas-corpus cases of three detainees at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Afghanistan. Judge Bates ruled last week that the three — each of whom says he was seized outside of Afghanistan — could challenge their detention in court.

So the new law is: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are projecting”.
(more…)

I’m not the one to gainsay President Obama’s performance in the Somali hostage crisis that ended yesterday with three dead pirates and a rescued captain.  I imagine the President believes he has a lot of diplomatic eggs to balance in thinking of taking these sorts of actions (even though the pirates don’t represent a country).

But Jeff Emanual has no problem speaking up:

Philips’s first leap into the warm, dark water of the Indian Ocean hadn’t worked out as well. With the Bainbridge in range and a rescue by his country’s Navy possible, Philips threw himself off of his lifeboat prison, enabling Navy shooters onboard the destroyer a clear shot at his captors — and none was taken. The guidance from National Command Authority — the President of the United States, Barack Obama — had been clear: a peaceful solution was the only acceptable outcome to this standoff unless the hostage’s life was in clear, extreme danger.

The next day, a small Navy boat approaching the floating raft was fired on by the Somali pirates — and again no fire was returned and no pirates killed, thanks again to the cautious stance assumed by Navy personnel due to the combination of a lack of clear guidance from Washington, and a mandate from the Commander in Chief’s staff not to act until Obama, a man with no background of dealing with such issues and no track record of decisiveness, decided that any outcome other than a “peaceful solution” would be acceptable.

After taking fire from the Somali kidnappers again Saturday night, the on-scene commander decided he’d had enough. Keeping his authority to act in the case of a clear and present danger to the hostage’s life, and having heard nothing from Washington since yet another request to mount a rescue operation had been denied the day before, the Navy officer — unnamed in all media reports to date — decided the AK-47 one captor had leveled at Philips’ back was a threat to the hostage’s life, and ordered the NSWC team to take their shots.

All’s well that ends well.

But as Emanuel describes it, it had every opportunity not to end well.

Ah, well.  As Vice President Biden told us, there are all sorts of crises spooling up for The One.  Hang on.

Of course not all of the world’s intractable problems can be solved by sending in the commandos.

But it’s nice to know that when when we need to – no matter who our leader is…:

Right before his rescue, Richard Phillips, the 53-year-old captain of the Maersk Alabama, was being held in a capsule-like lifeboat in the Gulf of Aden. The pirates, armed with AK-47s and small-caliber pistols, were pointing the rifle at the captain, Vice Admiral William E. Gortney said at a news conference in Washington. The situation amounted to “imminent danger,” the vice admiral said, noting that the Navy had standing orders from President Obama to attack if the captain’s life were in jeopardy.

A little after 7 p.m. in Somalia (which is seven hours ahead of Eastern time) , U.S. special forces aboard the U.S.S. Bainbridge shot and killed the pirates from 25 to 30 meters away, the vice admiral said, and pulled the captain from the water…

…“I’m just the byline. The real heroes are the Navy, the Seals, those who have brought me home,” Phillips said, according to John Reinhart, the Maersk Line president and chief executive. A Navy photograph showed Mr. Phillips shaking hands with the commanding officer of the Bainbridge.

…that we can.