Because one Israeli soldier pulls a stunt that’d have done Jack Bauer proud.

Or deeply full of angst and regret, in season 6-7 terms.

(Via Joel Rosenberg/Twitter)

1999 through today:  Hyperdramatic narcissistic anarchist fops attack Starbucks.

Today:  Palestinian sympathizers attack Starbucks.

I never go to Starbucks; it’s somewhere down below DunnBros and Caribou, when I do coffee-shop coffee at all. 

But I’m tempted to go now, just on principle.

I had to touch on another incongruity from Victor Davis Hanson’s excellent piece last week on the ironies of 2008.

All that talk about how paranoid and “unconstitutional” Bush’s measures in the war on terror were?

You might not be hearing so much about that:

Bush’s Texas-twang explication that he kept us safe for seven years was laughed at, especially by a suave ex-Harvard Law Review editor Barack Obama on the stump. And then what?Are we now in February to see no more Patriot Act? At least FISA overturned? Couldn’t we shut down the Gulag Guantanamo by January 25? (as easy as getting out entirely from Iraq by “March 2008” as promised once by Obama?)

Or now are all these once so clear-cut issues “problematic” and “raise concerns”? The irony? Compared to what Lincoln, Wilson, FDR or Truman did during wartime, George Bush was a constitutional purist—and the former all had conventional enemies in wartime, not stealthily terrorists who entered our shores to murder 3,000 Americans.

Of course, it’

The issue was never empirical, never historical, but simply political most of the time. Once Bush was wounded over Iraq, his opponents smelled blood and jabbed at anything they could. Most current Senate civil libertarians voted for both the ‘that was then, this is now’ Iraq war and the Patriot Act, and oversaw the CIA and FBI as much as Bush did.

A President Obama will not revoke all, or even most, of Bush’s supposedly unconstitutional measures. Why? Because he knows they did not end our civil liberties but most assuredly helped to keep us safe.

In short, the media will grow silent as the issue now suddenly disappears—as we probably keep wiretapping and holding enemy combatants and terrorists in detention…

Gonna make a note to look back on this in a year or two.

…of telling the US it couldn’t win in Iraq, Time Magazine needed to MoveOn to something new.  Something as rife with change as the Obama administration.

Like telling Israel it can’t win.

The more things change, the more we hope.

Last week, as Israel began its ground offensive, National Public Radio ran an interview with  a “Norwegian Doctor” who sounded as if he might have been Mike Malloy, or maybe Vanessa Redgrave.  They introduced the fellow as a “doctor”, without elaboration, as he fiercely and horrifically condemned the consequences of Israel’s attack.

I thought I smelled a rat.

I’m fairly sure the rat was this guy:

International media reports, including those from the BBC, CBS, CNN and FOX’s sister station Sky News, present Gilbert as an ordinary doctor.But a look at his record shows that Gilbert, 61, is a political activist and member of the Norwegian Maoist “Red” party, and he has been involved in solidarity work for the Palestinians since the 1970s. He has criticized the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders for refusing to take sides in conflicts.

Gilbert volunteers at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza with the Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC), an aid organization funded by the Norwegian government, and he has been interviewed by the media on a variety of issues. Israeli government officials have said Hamas hides weapons in the hospital where Gilbert works.

I’m ashamed to be Norwegian-American today.

While the carnage at the Taj Hotel was the focus of world attention during the bloodbath last Thanksgiving weekend in Mumbai, the Nariman House synogogue was apparently the main target:

A senior police official, told [Indian website] DNA on condition of anonymity, that the interrogation of Mohammed Amir Iman Ajmal (aka Kasab) revealed as much. Just before entering the city, the terrorists’ team leader, Ismail Khan, briefed them once again about their targets. “But Khan briefed Imran Babar, alias Abu Akasha, and Nasir, alias Abu Umer, intensely on what to do at Nariman House,” the officer said.

When asked during interrogation why Nariman House was specifically targetted, Ajmal reportedly told the police they wanted to sent a message to Jews across the world by attacking the ultra orthodox synagogue.

I’ve been scouring the Hindi leftymedia for demands that India “respond proportionally” by attacking a mosque and a hotel. I seem to have found nothing.

…the “War on Terror” would involve flying planes into Afghan skyscrapers.
…The “American Revolution” would have been restricted to raising illegal taxes on the Brits in 1775.

…The Union would have had to stick with bombarding Confederate forts.

…We’d have had to have just retaken Kuwait and leave Hussein in power to be deposed over a decade later (oops)

…We’d have had to have to restrict ourselves to torpedoing German ships throughout the World War II.

..We’d have had to have to bomb a Japanese harbor and go home.

Colonel Joe Repya tells of a message he received from Ali – a former Iraqi Army officer whom Colonel Repya first captured (during Desert Storm in 1991) and then sponsored to come to America as a refugee in the nineties.  Ali lives today as part of Dearborn, Michigan’s large Iraqi population.

And he’s not happy:

Ali told us of massive demonstrations in the streets of Dearborn following the shoe throwing incident in Baghdad. Unfortunately, we never saw reports in the main stream media about these demonstrations. Why? Because these demonstrators were showing support for President Bush. They were angry that after giving freedom to 25 million Iraqi’s that a member of the press in Iraq would insult the Iraqi people with his shoe throwing escapades. They were also angry that the American media gave the incident so much air time.

Maybe they just needed to get ahold of Jon Stewart and Tina Fey, America’s News Gatekeepers.

Joe Galloway (via Michael Yon) asks us to remember…:

Even in hard times, this is the holiday season and a time when thoughts turn to home and family and dinner tables covered with food and gaily wrapped presents and bright lights.Save a moment amid the celebrations to give thought to the hundreds of thousands of men and women in uniform in far-flung parts of this world who won’t be sitting down to dinner with their families.

More than 170,000 men and women of our military will spend their Christmas and New Year’s in Iraq and Afghanistan, where killing and dying never take a day off.

Oh, Uncle Sam will do his best to see that most of them sit down to a special dinner of hot turkey and dressing and all the trimmings, and even in the most remote outpost some soldier or Marine will jury-rig a tree of sorts with decorations of sorts.

But it’s a hollow celebration for a lonely soldier so far from home and loved ones, and lonely, too, at that dinner table back home where a chair stands empty at the head of the table.

Galloway – the dean of American war correspondents – remembers more than a few such Christmases:

Another memory is of Thanksgiving in the Saudi Arabian desert in November of 1990. I’d signed up to go eat turkey and trimmings with some unit, somewhere out among the sand dunes, when I was called to board a bus with two dozen other reporters and photographers…I stepped off literally in the middle of nowhere. A tall captain of artillery stepped up and saluted: “Mr. Galloway, we are C Battery, 1st Battalion, 21st Field Artillery. We call ourselves The Falcons and you will understand why far better than anyone. We provided fire support for the 7th Cavalry at Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang.”

I stood there unable to say a word, tears rolling down my cheeks. Then I knew that somewhere in that cold, forbidding institution that is an Army, there was both a memory and a heart, and that heart was as tender as my own.

I’ve never had so fine a Thanksgiving dinner as that one in an Army mess tent in a cold, windswept desert; never enjoyed the company and camaraderie so much as I did then and there.

Hope this Christmas has you awash in good company and fellowship – and thankful for what you have.  As tough as times are, it could be a lot worse.

…that mangles facts and context.

A few weeks back Michael Yon wrote a piece about US and NATO special forces working and fighting in Afghanistan.

Here’s what he wrote:

U.S. and Afghan soldiers in Zabul Province give high marks to the Lithuanian Special Forces, who like to ride these captured Taliban motorbikes to sneak up on, and chase Taliban fighters. The “LithSof” are on their way to becoming living legends: Both Afghans and Americans report that the Taliban are afraid of the Lithuanians. Stories about them are filled with dangerous escapades and humor.

Americans say that the Lithuanians are sort of a weaponized version of Borat, who think nothing of sauntering around a base in nothing but flip-flops and underwear. “They look like mountain men. They never shave, sometimes don’t bathe, and often roll out the gate wearing nothing but body armor and weapons. Not even a t-shirt,” an American soldier told me. The Lithuanians may be a little bit nuts, but the Americans love to have them around because Lithuanians love to fight, and when you need backup, you can count on them.

The typical American reader might not know that there are Lithuanian Special Forces.  Given the state of American education, many Americans migh think Lithuania is the church formed by “Martin Lithuan” after he posted his 95 theses.

I might have been the former (certainly not the latter), but for having read brief passagein Robert Kaplan’s “Imperial Grunts” about Lithuanian Special Forces in 2003 earning nods from our “Green Berets” for bringing a pregnant cat with them to Afghanistan (soher kittens could kill the mice that plague the military camps).

Still, Yon is pretty clear:

That contrasts starkly with many of the NATO “partners.” Maybe when your country spends almost a half-century with the Soviet boot on its neck, its first generation of free soldiers know what freedom is worth — and that you sometimes have to fight for it.

Not clear enough for some in the Lithuanian media, who seized on the “Borat” stuff and ignored the obvious respect Yon showed their countrymen.

Yon Lpretty explicitly clarified things, of coursre:

To: Aitvaras [Lithuanian Special Forces] Commander
From: Michael Yon

Sir,

The words I wrote about Lithuanian Special Forces were meant as the highest praise. Yet I understand that those words have been widely misinterpreted in Lithuania. One Lithuanian journalist contacted me saying that normally a gigantic story in Lithuania spawns around a 100 comments on their website, but that this one about my commentary on Lithuanian Special Forces has gotten well over 400 comments.

A number of U.S. military personal have reached out to me privately in defense of Lithuanian soldiers. My long time readers realize that my reference to LithSOF being a “weaponized version of Borat” was tongue-in-cheek. I did not realize that there are so many Lithuanian readers of my work, or how some might take offense to those four words, when the rest of the story was clearly very complimentary of LithSOF.

Read the whole thing, and rejoice; myopic media aren’t just an American phenomenon!

Er, wait.  Not “rejoice”. “Cancel your subscription,wherever you are”.

That’s what I meant.

For those days when Swiftee and Anti-Strib are just too damn oblique and tactful, Cigar Mike at Babalu gets specific:

They don’t want to admit it. They like to say things are more dangerous here today than they were pre 9/11, but the fact is they are so full of caca that they will come up with some other inane argument (stolen from Noam Chomsky) to say something to the contrary. They’re tearing down their Obama altars since they are pissed that not enough “progressives” have been appointed to the cabinet, and will continue to blame Bush for everything including the festering sores on their bodies.

If only Mike would learn to open up and express himself.

Mike, of course, directs us to Peggy Noonan, who is – well, less obstreporous, but makes a similar point:

She notes:

This is an argument that’s been around for a while but is newly re-emerging as the final argument for Mr. Bush: the one big thing he had to do after 9/11, the single thing he absolutely had to do, was keep it from happening again. And so far he has. It is unknown, and perhaps can’t be known, whether this was fully due to the government’s efforts, or the luck of the draw, or a combination of luck and effort. And it not only can’t be fully known by the public, it can hardly be fully known by the players at all levels of government. They can’t know, for instance, of a potential terrorist cell that didn’t come together because of their efforts.

To some extent both sides have to swim through weed-choked hypothetical ponds – Bush’s critics will be right, to some extent, in saying “you can’t know what might have happened!”.

But we know what did not happened – the thing that has happened to countries that tried to steer a “moderate” course on the issue – nations like India and Indonesia, who’ve been pummeled by terror strikes since 9/11. 

The thing that everyone sincerely believed would happen, inevitably, about this time seven years ago.

If Obama does as well, it’ll largely be due to Bush’s efforts, unpopular as they turned out to be (in 51% of the US, at least temporarily).

Wrong again Mr. Jimmy. Best consult with your National Suckurity team before you follow through on that particularly obtuse ambition.

The Air Force’s airborne laser program passes yet another test, proving “unproven” missile defense once again. The question is not whether we can get it to work, but whether we can afford not to.

Americans should be very afraid of Obama because the bad guys are not. The greatest threat: a rogue nation with new found nuclear weapons capability and the ability to launch said lode ballistic. EMP over NYC. Our best new hope of defending against said threat: the technology that Major B.O. wants to cancel.

Missile Defense Takes Off

This week, Boeing and the Missile Defense Agency announced another successful test — the first ground test of the entire weapon system integrated aboard the aircraft, including the firing of a high-energy laser through the ABL beam control/fire control system. Earlier tests had unit-tested other components of the system, particularly the ability to find, track and target missiles in flight.

A campaign promise that actually should be broken. This is not the time for a wuss in the White House.

Mumbai cops cop a “CTU” riff in interrogating the lone captured gunman:

Indian police interrogators are preparing to administer a “truth serum” on the sole Islamic militant captured during last week’s terror attacks on Mumbai to settle once and for all the question of where he is from…

Repressing the rights of terrorists? 

Don’t they know the US is the worst in the world at stripping civil liberties from terrorists?

One of the more frustrating aspects of the Columbine shooting was the reports that the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team waited for four hours before entering the school. They were worried about bombs; the police’s SOPs said, essentially, that it was better to leave the students and staff inside the building on their own than to risk police lives to a potential bomb threat.

It doesn’t impugn the courage of any officer, or the integrity of the Jeffco SD, to say that when in doubt, police procedure left the citizen on his or her own – but I can’t imagine the frustration and horror that the parents outside must have felt, as the hours ticked by, knowing their kids were inside the building, not knowing if they were alive or dead but knowing that there were a whole lot of cops in battle rattle waiting in the assembly area not rushing in to save them.

Of course the horrific toll among New York’s first responders on 9/11 showed that astounding bravery is a common trait among American cops and firefighters. When the “standard operating procedure” is to go in and do what they’ve been trained to do, the police, fire, paramedics and other first responders in the US – and, I suspect, most of the world – step up and do the job.

———-

But when I saw reports like this one from Mumbai – that the Mumbai police froze under fire from the terrorists during last week’s terror attacks – I thought about a couple of lessons that smart people learned from the wave of mass shootings in the US, among other places.

1. You can not count on the police to save you from even petty street crime, much less this sort of systematic assault.
2. When you leave both raw courage and standard procedure out of the equation, remember – the police aren’t soldiers. They are trained to uphold the law; to maintain control of situations where they generally have the advantage. Police do not train to fight pitched firefights against disciplined, motivated, military attackers – not even the SWAT teams.
3. The only places on earth that are truly remotely safe from this sort of assault are the places where terrorists know that death (to them) doesn’t necessarily wear a uniform and drive in a plainly-identifiable car; places where the civilian population aren’t soft targets, like sheep in a pen. Nearly every mass-shooting in the United States in recent years has happened in places where the civilian isn’t allowed to have the means to self-defense at hand; schools, malls that are posted “no guns“, New York subways, colleges that are “gun-free zones” and the like.

Indians – individual Indians, anyway – seem to be learning all of these lessons; Sebastian D’Souza, the photographer who got so many portfolio-worthy shots of the gunmen as they carried out their mayhem, famously wrote:

The gunmen were terrifyingly professional, making sure at least one of them was able to fire their rifle while the other reloaded. By the time he managed to capture the killer on camera, Mr D’Souza had already seen two gunmen calmly stroll across the station concourse shooting both civilians and policemen, many of whom, he said, were armed but did not fire back. “I first saw the gunmen outside the station,” Mr D’Souza said. “With their rucksacks and Western clothes they looked like backpackers, not terrorists, but they were very heavily armed and clearly knew how to use their rifles…

…

The militants returned inside the station and headed towards a rear exit towards Chowpatty Beach. Mr D’Souza added: “I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera.”

Mumbaiian blogger Amitabh Bachchan’s post on his reaction to the attack has been getting a lot of attention (emphases added); like a lot of Americans when faced with this sort of unreasoning malice, he’s taken a sensible precaution and drawn a metaphorical line in Mumbai’s beach sand:

My pain has been the sight and plight of my innocent and vulnerable and completely insecure countrymen, facing the wrath of this terror attack. And my anger has been at the ineptitude of the authorities that have been ordained to look after us. I have simply loved and endorsed the sentiments expressed by one of those that came on for comments on the Arnab reportage, Suhel Seth. They were strong, precise and most apt. And of course I have had the greatest pride in those from the forces that have and continue to fight for our freedom. Brilliant officers and police personnel have laid down their lives for us. I can only but salute them and respect their sincerity in the call of duty.

The response needs to be much more than symbolic:

I have been at the receiving end of a million calls and an equal number of sms’s the whole day to come live on TV or on the print media to express my views on the current situation and am being lured by words such as ’we need you to speak to express solidarity and for the people to maintain their calm’.

This is disgusting !! I will NOT do that. TELL ME AND ORDER ME INSTEAD THAT WE REQUIRE FOR EVERY INDIAN TO GET UP AND WALK INTO THE FACILITIES WHERE THE ACTION IS ON AND I WILL BE THE FIRST TO WALK. But, please do not ask me to come and make sloppy statements that will do nothing more than create viewer interest in said particular channel ! I respect what the media is doing in serving the nation with its continuous information bulletins and I admire the brave and diligent manner in which they have devoted themselves to the cause. But what they expect me do I find against my ethics and want to be excused from it…

…As an Indian, I need to live in my own land, on my own soil with dignity and without fear. And I need an assurance on that.

And at the end of the day, one person is responsible for that assurance:

I am ashamed to say this and not afraid to share this now with the rest of the cyber world, that last night, as the events of the terror attack unfolded in front of me I did something for the first time and one that I had hoped never ever to be in a situation to do.

Before retiring for the night, I pulled out my licensed .32 revolver, loaded it and put it under my pillow. For a very disturbed sleep.

The responses in his comment section and the Indian (and other) media have been the sort of thing that any American Second-Amendment activist is well used to hearing. Bachchan responded in a way that’d do any of us proud:

The act of pulling out my revolver is a symbolic metaphor, a figure of speech, to demonstrate my complete loss in faith in the system and in the governance, in providing me, a citizen of India, with my rightful sense of security. It is to demonstrate that now I shall have to personally look after my family and myself and not depend on the state. A state that is just so miserably incapable of protecting its citizens…

…For too long we have remained the servile submissive nation. There has been no strong adjective to describe our character.

I’d love to interview Mr. Bachchan on the NARN one of these weekends.

The lessons should be obvious:

1. Every citizen in a truly free society should have not only the right, but the means to ensure their own security.
2. Indeed, it should be considered a duty, alongside voting and jury duty, for every citizen in a free society to be competent, equipped and capable of defending him/herself and his/her family from whatever disorder threatens them.
3. No society that infringes those rights and responsibilities is really “free”, other than the “freedom” the coop of chickens enjoys as long as someone else keeps those foxes away.

Citizens in any “free society” should be a pack, not a herd or flock.

(Via Collins)

Michael Yon on the story of the year that the Mainstream Media will not report – Dthe outbreak of peace in Iraq:

When the war was on full-steam there was so much to report that it was impossible to keep track.  And now that peace is breaking out, it’s equally impossible to keep track of all the progress.  There’s still focus on the attacks, most of which are directed against Iraqis, not us.  And so this “mission” was more like an armed errand to remove some concrete barriers between neighborhoods.  

Naturally, read the whole – long – thing.

Note to all you liberals out there:  If you forget history, you are condemned to repeat it. 

Let’s look back a bit, here.  I remember in 1998, discussing Libertarianism (the party and, more importantly, the philosophy) with some lefty friends of mine.  They were, to be charitable and understated, guffawing at the notion of running a government first and foremost on strict constitutional principles, erring always on the side of freedom and liberty.

Two years later, when John Ashcroft was sworn in as Attorney General, these same people were suddenly very libertarian – provided that the “liberties” in question were the freedom to burn the flag, make statues of the Virgin Mary out of dung, and see breasts on statuary during news conferences.  This sudden (and oh so sincere) concern with liberty was transferred after about 2003 in toto to two major demographics:

1. Suspected terrorists
2. People in the US receiving calls from suspected terrorists overseas.

(The left remained silent on the civil liberties of gun owners, conservative talk show hosts, and the data privacy of plumbers who dared to ask questions of their overlords).

But now the left holds nearly-untrammeled sway on the levers of federal power (and if Norm Coleman loses the recount, it won’t be trammeled at all).  And I think things are going to be changing soon.

News stories I think we’ll see before too terribly long – say, along about 2010:

Conservatives Decry “Preventive Executions”

Washington (AP) – As the Obama Administration institutes its’ “Audacity of Death” policy on accused terrorists, liberal pundits defended the Administration’s news appraoch.

The policy, which would allow the State Department to execute accused terror suspects without trial, FISA warrants or notification of any sort of oversight, have drawn flak from conservative critics, although they have broad approval from the Democrat-dominated Congress in an election year.

“It’s just like a bunch of conservative pantywaists to whinge and moan about the “rights” of terrorists”, said Paul Begala.  “I think it’s because they secretly want to be stuck in a toilet stall with Osama Bin Laden and Larry Craig”.

And I expect to see this comment in my comment section shortly thereafter:

PlacqueMonger Says:
November 16th, 2010 at 9:34 am

You neo-nutzies are sooo soft on terror!  What happens – your’re are now longer in power, and soddenly you want to go all soft on terrorr?

Terrrrrorrrists have no rightsts.

Am I being hyperbolic?

Well, doyyy.

But given the way the left seems to toss sweeping statesments of principle down the memory hole when confronted with reality…

Now, as Mr. Obama moves closer to assuming responsibility for Guantánamo, his pledge to close the detention center is bringing to the fore thorny questions under consideration by his advisers. They include where Guantánamo’s detainees could be held in this country, how many might be sent home and a matter that people with ties to the Obama transition team say is worrying them most: What if some detainees are acquitted or cannot be prosecuted at all?

That concern is at the center of a debate among national security, human rights and legal experts that has intensified since the election. Even some liberals are arguing that to deal realistically with terrorism, the new administration should seek Congressional authority for preventive detention of terrorism suspects deemed too dangerous to release even if they cannot be successfully prosecuted.

…I really don’t think I’m being that far out of line.

We’ll see.

Oh, yes we will.

The war in Iraq lost the interest of the American media about the time it ceased to be usable as a cudgel against the Bush Administration and, by extension, the McCain Campagin.

Watch for that to continue with this bit of news:

U.S. deaths in Iraq fell in October to their lowest monthly level of the war, matching the record low of 13 fatalities suffered in July. Iraqi deaths fell to their lowest monthly levels of the year. Eight of the 13 Americans died in combat, most of them in northern Iraq where al-Qaida and other Sunni insurgent groups remain active. The U.S. military suffered 25 deaths in September and 23 in August…

The sharp drop in American fatalities in Iraq reflects the overall security improvements across the country following the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida and the rout suffered by Shiite extremists in fighting last spring in Basra and Baghdad.

But the decline also points to a shift in tactics by extremist groups, which U.S. commanders say are now focusing their attacks on Iraqi soldiers and police that are doing much of the fighting.

Which was what we were aiming for – right?

That Mac has softpedalled the success of the Surge – and Obama’s opposition to it, and the Dems’ continuous denials of success and attempts to gundeck the Surge’s gains – is one of the big failings of his campaign.

…but then, some are more interesting than others:

“O God, humiliate Bush and his party, O Lord of the Worlds, degrade and defy him,” Abu Yahya al-Libi said at the end of sermon marking the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr, in a video posted on the Internet.

Libi, a top al Qaeda commander believed to be living in Afghanistan or Pakistan, called for God’s wrath to be brought against Bush equating him with past tyrants in history.

The remarks were the first from a leading al Qaeda figure referring, albeit indirectly, to the U.S. elections. Muslim clerics often end sermons by calling on God to guide and support Muslims and help defeat their enemies.

But…why?

…militant postings on al Qaeda-linked websites typically discuss Obama in terms of his race, or his religion and foreign policy. Some forecast a racial crisis dividing the United States if he wins. Others say his planned phased withdrawal from Iraq would be a boon to al Qaeda’s affiliate and give it a base for Middle East expansion.

What?  No…but…no, not really.  Would it?

The blast walls that criscrossed Baghdad to contain car bombs and other terrorist acts are starting to come down:

“They protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks,” said Adnan, 39, a vegetable seller in the once violent neighborhood of Dora, who argues that the walls now block the markets and the commerce that Baghdad needs to thrive. “Now it is safe.”

The slow dismantling of the concrete walls is the most visible sign of a fundamental change here in the Iraqi capital. The American surge strategy, which increased the number of United States troops and contributed to stability here, is drawing to a close. And a transition is under way to the almost inevitable American drawdown in 2009.

There are now more than 148,000 United States troops in Iraq, down from the peak of around 170,000 a year ago, and President Bush has accepted the military’s recommendation to remove 8,000 more by February.

It sure is a good thing for the Democrats that the economy tanked before this news could get out, isn’t it?

 Last June, democracy won a huge victory when the Supreme Court ruled for the plaintiff in the Heller case. 

As a human rights advocate (the Second Amendment being merely one right among many that needs to be jealously defended), I had been looking forward to the decision with anticipation and trepidation for quite some time. 

To the point where I basically had posts written for both contingencies – a win, and a loss.  Both posts were written, for the most part, weeks in advance. 

Naturally, we – Americans and human rights advocates – won, and I ran this jubilant-yet-defiant-to-the-point-of-belligerent post.  I’m still proud of that one.

I’ve had people ask me – “so, what did you write in case we lost?”

I remembered that question as I was cleaning some old stuff out of the Drafts folder this morning. 

Here – a little bit of alternative history written for a much uglier state of mind:

Fascism Wins.  Freedom Kicked in the Groin.  For Now. 

By a X to X vote, the Supreme Court of the United States today ruled in the Heller case that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution is exactly the opposite of what the founding fathers intended; that a right “of the people” means “the National Guard”, not “you and I”. 

Y’know – how rights “of the people” to assemble only refer to Congress, and how freedom of speech and the press only mean the news media.

As a result of today’s ruling, the District of Columbia’s gun ban – like most gun control measures, a racist conconction intended to keep all those brown-skinned people from running amok in the nation’s capitol – stands, and will return us in deed if not in thought to the days when black people had a separate, unequal justice system…

 

…with hints of much, much worse…:

…shall carry forth for the moment unabated. 

As Gary Miller notes in his Categories list – Western Civilization; it was a helluvva run.

Oh, this is not the end of the war over the Second Amendment.  The orcs control much; many cities still pay fealty to the notion that a disarmed, docile citizenry is a safe one.  This is far from the end.  The movement of Real Americans who support our God-given rights is large, and sure – if I have anything to say about it – to take this as a wake-up call.

The big lesson?

Your rights are only as secure as your ability to bring political power to bear can make them.

The SCOTUS’ decision was a loathsome one, and a bad day for America:

And as Churchill noted, one does not forge victory from defeats:

And yet Americans – real Americans, the ones that are rendered nauseous by this decision, as opposed to tin-pot authoritarians like Heather Martens and Wes Skoglund – are all about fighting back against adversity, against horrible odds…

 

…and prevailing.  Much hard fighting remains.

The orcs will take this as a cue to continue and redouble their assault on the God-given rights of the law-abiding American.  It is inevitable; it is the way of the orc to feed on your freedom.

 But we – the Americans who’ve fought long and hard to keep this issue on the national radar – have to cinch up our belts and get back into it.  We’ve won much in the past ten years; “shall-issue” is now the law of the land in most of the US; even unabashed liberals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton fear the might of the NRA.

Damn right.  Let’s show the bastards what fear at the polls really is.

To the pike with the enemies of freedom.  (Speaking rhetorically, of course). 

God Bless America.

NOTE:  This blog seeks dialogue.  However, if you wish to defend the SCOTUS’ decision, you will need to make it a very, very good one to avoid having  your comment deleted or mutilated for my amusement.

Nice to see that it’s just a rhetorical curio.

Democrats deliberately dishonor those that protect and provide their right to be…(I’m sorry, can someone please help me here in the comments section with a suitably disparaging descriptor…I’m at a loss for words, hard as that may to believe). 

Even Barack Obama, who opposed the Iraq troop surge, has finally acknowledged its success. But some of his fellow Democrats in Congress apparently remain unconvinced. Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin teamed up to block a vote on a bipartisan resolution “recognizing the strategic success of the troop surge in Iraq” and thanking our men and women in uniform for their efforts.

Even Obama, presumably their new messiah, is better than that, essentially admitting his error in judgement without admitting his error in judgement. How thick can these people be to not at least acknowledge the political ramifications of not resolving to express gratitude for our troops?

By late 2006, Iraq was gripped by sectarian chaos. Insurgents and death squads were killing nearly 3,000 civilians per month, and coalition forces were sustaining more than 1,200 attacks per week.

Under General David Petraeus, who relinquished command of U.S. forces in Iraq on Tuesday, sectarian bloodshed has almost entirely abated, daily attacks have fallen to 25 from a high of 180 in June 2007, and overall violence has declined by more than 70%. In July, U.S. combat deaths were lower than in any month since the beginning of the war. All of the troops sent to Iraq as part of the surge have now returned home and are not being replaced.

And our Congress, now dominated by Democrats can’t muster the fortitude to simply say “Thank you.”

(Insert above descriptor again here please – our friends at KAR are really good at this sort of thing – Assnozzles comes to mind?)

Citing General Petraeus by name, the resolution, which is sponsored by Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman and Republican Lindsey Graham, “commends and expresses the gratitude to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces for the service, sacrifices, and heroism that made the success of the troop surge in Iraq possible.”

The Senators — allies of John McCain — had hoped to attach the resolution to a defense bill under consideration this week. But Mr. Reid wouldn’t allow it. Democrats have often claimed that while they may oppose the war in Iraq, they wholeheartedly support the troops. That’s a defensible position, and this resolution honoring our soldiers and Marines for a job well done gave them a chance to back up their rhetoric. Yet they still balked.

The reality is that success in Iraq has confounded the political left, which placed a huge political bet on our defeat. Senator Reid famously declared the war lost in April 2007. Joe Biden introduced a resolution opposing the surge. And Hillary Clinton said the reports of progress in Iraq required “a willing suspension of disbelief.” In the Democratic narrative, our troops in Iraq are victims of a lost cause, not heroes. They’re allowed to get maimed and killed, but not to succeed.

Democrats: so don’t acknowledge victory in Iraq. You wouldn’t know it if you saw it any way. Don’t acknowledge George Bush, General Petraeus or John McCain. No one expects you to change your stance on the initiation or management of the war in Iraq.

But for the troops, at least say “Thank You.” you…(again, please help me in the comments).

[/rant]

If you are reading this and are or have ever served our country in the armed forces, please know that my family is profoundly grateful and exceedingly proud of your service and sacrifice.

So why did Obama demand that the Iraqis gundeck the Bush Administration’s (and General Petraeus’) Iraq withdrawal plan?

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops – and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its “state of weakness and political confusion.”

“However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open.” Zebari says.

Though Obama claims the US presence is “illegal,” he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the “weakened Bush administration,” Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.

While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a “realistic withdrawal date.” They declined.

So let’s get this straight; he’d rather hold off the withdrawal and claim the credit than bring the troops home?

Yow.

This looks impressive: five former Secretaries of State speak out on US/Iranian relations:

Five former secretaries of state, gathering to give their best advice to the next president, agreed Monday that the United States should talk to Iran.

Well, that sounds like an august, authoritative body!

Which SecStates are we talking about, here?

The wide-ranging, 90-minute session in a packed auditorium at The George Washington University, produced exceptional unity among Madeleine Albright,

SCREECH.

Albright?

The worst SecState since Warren Christopher, was a failed diplomat in two administrations?

Colin Powell,

An extreme disappointment.

Warren Christopher,

With Albright, the mixed doubles team at the “Most Impotent Hamsters Ever To Represent This Country Overseas” tournament.

Henry A. Kissinger

Er,yeah.  Successful, yes, largely, but is his legacy of morally-compromised realpolitik something we want to suck up to?

and James A. Baker III.

Er…yeah.  One out of five ain’t bad.

Whew.

A few years back, a mass of bloggers participated in the “2996 Project”, writing blog commemorations of each of the victims on 9/11.

Sheila got Michael Pascuma, and did her usual amazing job, then and now.

Me?  Well, I never got the invite, but I took one anyway – Ann Nicole Nelson, of Stanley, ND.  Practically a neighbor in that big wide-open place, and she looked like she’d not gotten a writer (I was gratifyingly wrong).

I wrote about Ms. Nelson two years ago.   I was honored – and a little overwhelmed – to see her mother left a comment way back when.

Remember.