The West is fooling itself when it comes to Islam in the Middle East
“All of us here today understand this: We do not fight Islam, we fight against evil.” ~George W. Bush
“We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam,” ~Barack Obama
Surely we are not at war with Islam. If we were, we’d kill everyone who professed the Muslim faith. The problem with Obama’s and Bush’s statements is that they lead many to underestimate the level to which Muslims in the Middle East and Asia support the jihadists. Throwing out statistics that show only a small percentage of Muslims are responsible for the destruction wrought is a bit like saying that because less than 1% of Americans serve in the US Army, only 1% of Americans support the US military. People fail to realize the power of both the “our team” mentality and religion, especially in parts of the world where the people have little hope in this world and nation states have been shamed in war by America and Israel.
Many people throughout the Muslim world gain satisfaction when the US suffers a setback at the hands of extreme Islam. Otherwise, the extremists could not exist to the extant that they do. Polls throughout the Muslim world show that Muslims in the Middle East support the actions of the jihadists. Most Muslims, even those living is Western countries, support Sharia Law, which is fundamentally at odds with Western values. In a poll of 9 countries, Turkey was the only nation in which a majority of the people said that Sharia should not comprise the law in entirety, or be a “source of legislation.” Pakistanis, despite the billions of military and domestic aid poured into their country by the US, continue to despise Americans. Most Pakistanis also wish that bin Laden was not dead.
People shocked at the recent Egyptian election results should study some history. I’ve long said that Egypt was the spiritual center of jihadism, not Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia made good fodder for the Left because of oil. Egypt, in the poll cited above, had the highest percentage of people that believed Sharia should be the sole root of law.
The Muslim countries that have in recent years received the most American aid are Pakistan and Egypt. Approximately 25% of the money used to fund the Pakistani army comes from American aid. The top recipients of US foreign aid in 2011 are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and Egypt in that order. Egypt has routinely ranked among the top nations in the world in the number of dollars given to it by the American government.
There appears to be an inverse correlation between the positive views in a country when measured against the amount of US aid provided to it. The argument of course is that America is trying to show these countries that the US is not the enemy. This method of appeasement is failing. In a poll published by the Washington Post shortly after Mubarak stepped down, 79 percent of Egyptians viewed the US negatively, with 20% saying they have a positive view of the US. This is a sharp decline from the Bush years when 30 percent of Egyptians viewed the US positively.
The problems in giving countries like Pakistan and Egypt lots of money are macrocosmic of what I saw happening in local projects in Afghanistan. The money will always find its way into the hands of America’s enemies because they are the most ruthless, devious and aggressive portions of those societies. They also in many cases have a monopoly on violence, something the state usually lays claim to–if it is not a failed state. In Afghanistan the people were not “all in” for the Americans. They really didn’t care that much, at least in areas far from Kabul, if the insurgents blew up a few American Imperialists. They’d take five bucks to plants a bombs and be on their way. In one fell swoop they’d made a month’s wage, killed some infidels, impressed the locals with their “bravery”, and maintained a semblance of national pride.
Egypt’s Mubarak held the forces of Islamic jihad at bay with the only weapon that works against it: Decisive brutality. As with Saudi Arabia, Egypt was a police state, as much because of the extremists as Mubarak. Only with extreme vigilance could the Egyptian government survive. Frankly, Mubarak may have been the West’s only hope in Egypt, but starry-eyed Westerners with a Democracy fetish ran him off, unleashing a hoard of militants, radicals and young men electrified with a rage whose dynamo was built in 1967 and 1973 during the humiliating defeats of the Egyptian Army at the hands of the Israelis. The effect of these defeats upon the Arab psyche cannot be overstated.
The Arab Spring has generated nothing resembling Western democracy and displays brilliantly the weakness of Democracy itself: People can vote for any horrific idea they choose. Hitler was democratically elected. Muslims have voted and acted exactly how we should have expected them to. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists now hold power. The Salafists in Egypt hold the same views as al-Qaeda and Hamas. Christians are trying to leave the country, fearing for their safety.
The revolutions in Egypt and Libya were hardly induced by only few extremists. In fact,it seems the revolutions enjoyed the backing of millions upon millions of extremists. It is the same sort of thing we saw in Nazi Germany. Many Germans were not Nazis or did not take part in the actual fighting. But most of them wanted to see the Nazis win. And so it is with Muslims in Libya, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. The Muslims there overwhelmingly want to thrash Israel and the United States in any manner they can. If the terror proxies can trounced by the hyperpower or the Jewish state, we can of course expect the “innocent” population of “moderate” muslims to melt back into the woodwork.
Islam unifies people against Israel and the West. As Mark Steyn writes in his book, America Alone, the draw of Western “McWorld” to the average Arab male is vastly overstated. Secularism is about as un-motivational as a Rosie O’donnell workout video. It is meaninglessness and provides no promise of power or life after death, no cloak of righteousness; something that means far more to a poor 23 year old man in Cairo than does the promise of flipping burgers.
Now Israel has a monstrous number of problems on its hand, all coming to bear at once. Iran wants the bomb and is not far off from getting it. Egyptians are muttering that they want the Camp David Peace Accord “adjusted.” 20,000 surface-to-air missiles are missing from Qaddafi’s stockpiles. The current American president’s negative comments about Netanyahu were caught on an open mic.
The vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East are not jihadists or terrorists. But most of them support the actions of extremist Islam when those actions are directed against Westerners or Israelis. Our money and McDonald’s cannot possibly fill the same void that is filled by Islam. And Democracy, as with any form of government, is only as good as the people that comprise it.
So what is the answer? Does America have to kill every last Muslim? Not any more than it had to kill every last German or Japanese. America has only to decisively defeat the front-line troops of Jihad. But decisive victory may no longer be something the West is capable of, despite its overwhelming superiority in almost every facet of military and economic might.
The Arab Spring has not created Arab states that are more stable or less violent. It has provided kindling for another 100 years of Jihadist immolation. Our children’s children will see The Long War continue.
The Age of Envy and Whining
America and Europe are now reaping what has been sowed for the last 50 years in Western society. Our psychiatrists, parents, teachers and even religious teachers inundated us with our “specialness”, carried on about the uniqueness of each person, and generally robbed us of any sense of bad and good, success and failure, better and best.
Liberals accuse conservatives of being slaves to corporate greed. Greed is taking more than one deserves or needs at the expense of others. In the cases where greed has damaged America, such as the housing industry, our country paid the price. But it was not only corporations and banks that were greedy. The people who purchased homes with variable rate mortgages while working low wage jobs were also greedy. It is not only the rich that are greedy. Most people who are doing well are not being greedy. They are receiving the just benefits of hard work, education, frugal and wise spending, and paying their dues.
Growing up, I didn’t have much. I lived with my grandmother until I was 7 years old. My grandfather died when I was 5, and my grandmother had a tough time supporting me, but she never complained. A hard life was just the way the world was, to her. She lived through the Depression and her family and my grandfather were all blue-collar: welders, mechanics. They never asked for a handout, not once. That’s not to say that if friends offered to help out with some work that needed to be done, or offered some extra food for the pantry, that my grandparents would not have accepted it. Only that you never would have seen my grandfather carrying a sign protesting the well-to-do. I do not make a mythical hero of my grandfather. He was human and possessed a withering temper at times. But he was never brutal, only steadfast when pushed. He even held a streak of racism, common in his day. He was from New York and didn’t like Jews, as I remember it. But the man worked like a horse. He was in the machine shop every day, coming in with grease-stained fingers. Our sink held a good supply of Lava soap, but his fingers were never free of darkened creases. He would sit up at night and carve, draw, or sharpen his knives at the kitchen table, or any other form of “tinkering” you can think of. He never complained that he had to support his grandson. I would sit on his lap during the sessions of tinkering, or perhaps be ordeed by my grandfather to stand on a stool behind him and scratch his head. An avid outdoors-man, rifles adorned the walls, suspended on the antlers of trophy game. Later, it was not uncommon at all for me to carry a rifle in the woods alone at the age of 10 or 12 years old. I think this is why my favorite books growing up were Where the Red Fern Grows and Summer of the Monkeys.
I never remember envy directed at the rich. My grandparents had it much tougher than any of the Occupy Wallstreet crowd. They grew vegetables in a garden, washed clothes by hand, and had no microwave. They did not have a designer child at 40. They had four sons. They also had a girl, who passed away to God when she was less than two years old. Life was this: Grandfather goes out to the shop to work all day on machine parts that people brought to him to fix. He also repaired firearms. Grandmother cooked and cleaned and cared for the children. Grandfather endured Maine’s blistering winters, working outdoors, wrapped in a wool jacket and hat. The family car was an Oldsmobile Delta 88.
There was Hee-Haw and Lawrence Welk at night. A TV boxing match maybe. A trip to Pat’s Pizza, or maybe over to Dysart’s truckstop or the 95er. This was life and it was accepted. There was no time to envy. There was certainly no time to march up and down the street carrying declarative and mocking signs. The idea of recruiting once’s children to take part in protests would have repulsed both of my grandparents.
You earned what you worked for. If you did not work for it, you did not earn it. If something was given to you without your labor, it was because of the good graces of the giver, not because the receiver deserved it. I’m trying to imagine my grandfather having the time to protest economic injustice.
No one was special “just because”. You were special because of what you did. You did not search for yourself–you made yourself. Pat Farnsworth, the owner of Pat’s Pizza, and good friend of my grandfather, worked for about 70 straight years at his restaurant. He sold 250,000 pizzas a year. He began his restaurant with $150. He never thought of retiring, right up until he passed away at 93 years old in 2003. He never felt the government owed him a thing but freedom. Let him do his thing, and Pat would put his nose to a grindstone until he succeeded. That was America. Pat had a fighter’s heart. In his 80s, he was mugged by two young men as he closed up shop and stepped outside his business holding a sack full of the day’s earnings. the men pepper-sprayed him and thrashed him about. But he fought back and they ran off empty handed. Pat was a millionaire when he passed away. No one who ate at Pat’s Pizza during my grandfather’s day hated or envied Pat for his success. They wanted to learn his secrets, they wanted to be like Pat.
Now, the Occupy Wall Street types cry about “fascism” and “police state” when they get pepper-sprayed after refusing to comply with lawful police orders. Pat and my grandfather would have fully endorsed the pepper-spraying of people camping outside their businesses and homes for months. They would go on working and the Occupiers would go on whining.
Our horrendous ideas on parenting are partially responsible for the cretinous complainers, with their IPads and Powerbooks, sporting their Ralph Lauren glasses, protest signs (with poor spelling) exclaiming the injustice they face, and a lot of time spent not filling out applications. This is the “A” for effort generation. You tried (sort of). And you’re breathing. So the system owes you, but you owe the system nothing. It’s like expecting a car to run without putting fuel in it. Or maybe we just expect everyone else to buy the fuel for our car.
America was made, as Max Weber stated, on the Protestant Work Ethic. That, more so even than Democracy was America’s secret. Now, our secret is how much we can get from the system, not how much we can accomplish before we die. We must game the system until the system cracks, and then blame the system.
To all you Occupying cry babies: Until your calluses have calluses, until you’ve earned your Master’s degree in something other than Art History, until you’ve gone into the military as a well-paid officer, don’t complain. Walk into the local recruiter’s office with your Bachelor’s degree, sign up as a 2nd Lieutenant, have the US government pay for your college loans and find out what real responsibility looks like. Until then–shut up.
Pax Americana
Liberals have very little sense of proportion. As the War on Terror rages on, the average liberal believes that America is exercising its subliminal fascist tendencies. The problem is, media coverage does not give us a clear picture of what’s going on in the world. While I believe that the fight against fundamentalist, militaristic Islam is an important one, it is not the only fight that America is engaged in and these other fights are not over oil or religiously motivated as liberals like to believe . Readers should do some research into what’s going on in South America, specifically Columbia. US Special Forces routinely train Columbian police and military units to fight against the communist FARC. Car bombs, kidnappings (Columbia has more kidnappings than any other country) and murder is routine in Bogata’.
So, media coverage gives many a sense of intensity that simply didn’t exist before television. The truth is that the world is more peaceful than it has ever been. Another problem is the liberal adoration of tribal man. This is a derivative of Rousseau’s ”Noble Savage”, the belief that tribal man is or was much more peaceful than the “warlike” modern man. Even very educated people spout this absolute non-truth.
Not only has civilization and education reduced violence and war, but American military supremacy reduced interstate wars and incidents of genocide after WWII. As Dr. Steven Pinker outlines in this video, all evidence points to a more peaceful world. Tribal man is and was much more violent than Western man.
The major problem with the liberal world view is not that they want peace, but that they fail to recognize it when it is upon them, and so wish to tear down one of the major reasons for that peace: the American Leviathan, which induced Pax Americana.
We can and must do better
President Obama’s chance has come and gone. Americans must ask themselves, what exactly has President Obama done to improve America’s standing in the world. His disastrous economic policies will be his most enduring legacy. His foreign policy is nonsensical and erratic, at times pleaded for the forgiveness of America by her enemies, only to undertake the Libyan War campaign that didn’t have an iota of the necessity of the Iraq War and undertake the surge in Afghanistan that proved a failure. This, after his primary campaign message was that America got involved, too often, in places it shouldn’t.
American confidence and productivty are at an all-time low. And all the Democrats can do after almost 4 years in the White House is blame Bush. They have to do better than that, and so does our country.
I urge everyone to consider carefully what is happening to our country. Has Obama Care in any way made most American people’s lives better? We are very close to sliding over a tipping point with our debt. Don’t think it can’t happen. This is not a scare tactic.
I have faith, that if America elects someone whom returns to common sense economic policy, policy that from the beginning of our history been the engine of American greatness, we will recover and it will be within less than 2 years. The President who lowers taxes, lowers Federal spending and decreases regulatory burden will not have to blame Obama because that President will be basking in the glory of success, not constantly defending his failures.
Welfare States: What the Hell they good for? Absolutely nothin’
The recent speeches by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and NATO General Anders Fogh Rasmussen highlight Europe’s growing dependence on American military power. Europe is withering. Suckling on the teet of the American hegemon, Brussels has enjoyed the protection of the world’s greatest power and yet at times has been so critical of American interventionism that many Europeans resemble the two grumpy old men from The Muppet Show, Statler and Waldorf, hurling insults from afar and yet never failing to buy tickets and watch the show.
- What a crappy show these Americans put on!
We must ask what Europe’s welfare state has bought them. A reluctance to spend on defense could be understood if in fact Europe’s quality of life were significantly better than Americas, but it’s not. Europeans should ask their respective governments how high taxes, hyper-regulation, and an impoverished military industrial complex manifestly makes Europe stronger, it’s people safer or happier.
Alexander in the Af-Pak War
America no longer has the will to fight and win wars. If our enemies are able to weather our airstrikes, we are wholly unprepared at nearly every level to place sufficient pressure on fanatical guerrillas whom find war a preferable state to peace. Never in history has an army enjoyed such a monopoly on firepower and mobility as does America, and yet been so unwilling to use it.
We are blessed by the geographical bulwarks of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and cursed with partisan demagogues in Washington who know little of military history or the culture of war. Perfectly willing to start a war, the politicians don’t want to hear what it takes to win it. No matter how much data multi-million dollar computer networks feed those in the Pentagon and Congress, few of the recipients of that data can feel our wars; the data crunchers and politicos can know the wars, but the visceral sensations of ground commanders and grunts will always be beyond them, as thus we can assume that almost all of their decisions will prove inadequate. When war does not fit into comfort zones or proffered theories, many believe we just need to try harder to make the theories work. Few would question the theories themselves lest horrible answers become truths.
Washington’s elites are safe when we lose. The 25 year old squad leader in Afghanistan is not.
The quaint mythologies of counterinsurgency theorems have us following a Yellow Brick Road paved by Non-Governmental Agencies and State Department aid money. We hoped that Oz was a place where suicidal zealots laid down their rifles and stopped making bombs in exchange for a school house and a new pair of shoes. When the curtain was thrown aside to reveal the Wizard, we saw his bloody hand raised skyward, grasping the severed head of the school teacher. And even when the sheer brutality and power of the Taliban terrorist revealed itself, we refused to believe what we saw. We prefer to think that all men want peace, that brutality doesn’t work, and that killing cannot be the answer. Convenient dreams for those in Washington whose greatest daily danger is a Tweeted revelation of sexual misconduct. We question ourselves whereas the men of old, seeing the world more clearly than do we, quickly identified the problem and dealt with it. Swimming is oceans of information, we find it more difficult to choose proper paths, but the ancient warriors of yore, though lacking technological aids—perhaps because he lacked those aids—instinctively discerned human psychology.
Enter Alexander The Great. Imagine for a moment that future technologies could spring the Macedonian king back to life and the modern social and political delusions that prevent decisive victories in war have vanished by the wayside. Now place Alexander in command of history’s most powerful military and charge him with defeating the insurgency in Afghanistan. First, we’ll have to listen to Alexander give us a history lesson. Contrary to revisionists whom extol the invincibility of Afghans fighters, Alexander was never defeated by the people inhabiting the land we now call Afghanistan. And then he would tell us that his tutor, Aristotle, wasn’t about giving peace a chance; the father of Western philosophy implored young Alexander to force Hellenistic ethnic supremacy upon the world of the barbarians.
To the Neo-Alexander, defeating the Taliban begins with an offer to meet insurgent leadership at the bargaining table. And here’s the offer: Submit or die. This language resonates with the Taliban at a far deeper level than does the current Coalition Force offers of reintegration and power sharing. A reasonable man, Alexander offers the Taliban their religion and way of life in exchange for their weapons. The sovereign lines of the Pakistani border mean nothing. They are semi-porous membranes that hold back American power and allow insurgents to move freely to and from their safe havens in Pakistan. In response to each suicide bomber making his way from Western Pakistan, Alexander orders biometric identification through DNA testing, and using covert CIA intelligence cells seeded throughout Pakistan, identifies the village from which the suicide bomber originated. The Macedonian orders B-2 bomber and Reaper drone strikes on all known Madrassas in the village. No apologies are offered for civilian casualties. The retributive strikes are timely and painful. The suicide bombers quickly transform from heroes to sources of great pain in the villages. Soon, being a suicide bomber is disgraceful, not honorable.
The terrorists resort to using their greatest weapon: The media. In response, all media embeds are ordered to leave Afghanistan. Journalists stream into North and South Waziristan, hoping to document American atrocities. Members of the Haqqani Network set up ad hoc repeater stations, hoping to broadcast propaganda from small, handheld Motorola VHF radios. America counters by dropping electromagnetic pulse bombs at random intervals into the tribal areas. These weapons destroy any modern electronic equipment, leaving journalists to their pens and notebooks and Haqqani insurgents to courier communications.
As for terrorist infiltration along the Pakistan border, Alexander knows that not every infiltrator can be stopped. However, it is possible to make crossing into Afghanistan too painful a gamble. Areas along the border are declared free-fire zones. Approximately 5 kilometers on each side of the border are free-fire; that is, since the areas are assumed cleared, anyone in those areas can be fired on. The 5 kilometer range allows for ranges of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and Haqqani Network rocket fire, such as which killed two American Soldiers at FOB Salerno in May of 2011 (with no punitive action taken by the US military out of respect to our Pakistani “friends”).
Entire villages will be held accountable for the actions of individuals that live within them. Villagers in Afghanistan always know what goes on within the village. Villages where US forces are attacked will be subject to curfews and those found to be involved in insurgent activity shall be given a field trial by US military officers and if found guilty, executed. Special Operations night raids and air assaults will be constant in areas infested with Taliban, al-Qaeda and Haqqani fighters. Protests by villagers about the night raids will be ignored, as most of these protests are spawned by agitated insurgents. The cooperation of local villagers is the goal, but America under Alexander will place the safety of her troops and the destruction of the insurgency above the safety of villagers. Civilian casualties will be avoided when possible, but local Afghans will need to provide intelligence and information to American forces in order to ensure that America kills the right people. Otherwise, the insurgents will merely use civilains as living shields. Cooperation will help both the Afghans and America. The “sanctity” of the people will no longer be assumed; entire populations can be just as evil as individuals. The terrorists will be held to the same standards that the US military is held. All war crimes will be prosecuted in the field if possible.
The shrines of dead al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters will be closely monitored by payed CIA informants. Sympathizers who come to venerate terrorist grave sites will be followed, and at a convenient time, interviewed and their biometric data entered into a huge data base known as BATS–Biometrically Automated Toolset. These people will be placed on watch lists, denied entry to US bases, and denied the possibility of serving within Afghan government security forces for 5 years. Individuals assessed to be of a higher threat level shall be denied access and government work on a permanent basis.
Alexander will reward the friends of America. India, the largest democracy on Earth, will be provided special trade rights. She has earned it. A full embargo of Pakistan will commence. We have treated our enemies better than our friends in hopes that our goodwill would bring them to our side. But they mistook our goodwill for weakness. Those who fought bravely beside us, such as Britain, did not get 4 billion dollar rewards, such as did Pakistan.
Every chance will be given to those in the Federally Administered tribal Region of Pakistan to formally surrender Siraj and Jallaludin Haqqani, the familial leaders of the Haqqani Network. America will make war for a better peace denied her by maniacs. Letters will dropped in each village in North and South Waziristan, telling the inhabitants to give up their weapons and submit to searches of their residences. Aggressive actions taken by Pak military units will result in 5,000 lb GBU-28 Penetrator Bombs being dropped on all Pakistani nuclear missile sites, which have been carefully tracked by the National Ground Intelligence Center and the National Geospatial Agency for years. Alexander–a genius at war–knows that this war will escalate. All wars escalate. But no one can out-escalate the United States Military.
Villages not wishing to submit to search will be given 24 hours notice to evacuate. Then the village will be razed by Fire Support Teams (FIST) utilizing 155 mm Howitzer fire and B-52 Arc Light strikes and tactical airstrikes under the guidance of Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) teams. Not only will there be no apologies for these actions, Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) units will broadcast images of the destruction to other villages, warning them of the implications of resistance.
Anything less than the above guarantees an American defeat in Afghanistan. If our leaders cannot do what Alexander would do, they should save the blood of our Soldiers and Marines and bring them home. And they should never again begin or escalate a war for political gain if they don’t intend to win it.
Lebron James and Lindsey Lohan. And we wonder why we’re moving in the wrong direction.
Alex Jones explains why America is moving in the wrong direction. Keep drinking the Kool-aid America. By the way: I think Alex Jones is a nut, but he makes some good points.
Oil spill bullying
When I began writing my novel in 2006, my original concept of the main character, Craig Looms, was him being like a cousin of mine, whom I grew up with. My cousin was the target of constant bullying from other kids. Oft times, I was forced to defend him from these other kids. I was a small kid with a big mouth. I too experienced bullying, but I didn’t sit back and take it the way others sometimes did. I did everything I could to make the bully look stupid. I’d make fun of him in front of the class, tease him about his inability to pronounce words while reading aloud, mock his apeish movements. And guess what? They stopped the bullying. But I knew when the fight was over. I never bullied weaker people, and all of this led to a life-long hatred of bullying. And not just the school yard variety.
My cousin on the other hand, was obese, un-athletic, lacking in hygienic instinct and hickishly unpolitical.
My concept of Craig Looms morphed over time. Originally I wanted to show that when someone is picked on, they are more likely to abuse power if they every gain it, because of all the wrongs that have been done to them. Not only do their own wrongs feel justified, they learn to enjoy the sadism just as their own tormentors did. This is what I saw with my own cousin. On several occasions ,when a small group of knuckle-dragging bullies taunted and tormented him, and even resorted to physical violence, I’d step in to protect him. Mostly it usually just took me standing behind him with my arms folded. I had a rather nasty reputation as someone who was willing to fight.
When the bullies backed off, many times my cousin would immediately begin making things worse. One time, while I stood behind him, the bullies suddenly becoming shy and timid, he threw a raw egg at one brute, covering his pants in yolk. I grabbed him and drug him back to the house. I think I may have slapped him around a bit.
This whole BP oil thing brings much of this past to my mind. Now I know it will outrage some that I can view BP as being the victim in any of this disaster, but I think the politicians and our own public are going way too far. Recently, during congressional hearings on the spills, Republican Pep Joseph Cao of Louisiana suggested that an BP executive kill himself:
Americans are really disappointing me with their words during this spill. What happened to the classic American stoic? The person who rolls up his sleaves, stops pointing fingers after the problem has been identified, and gets to work. Yeah, we get it. BP spilled some oil. Saddam Hussein didn’t get nearly this much attention when he loosed the taps to his wells in the Persian Gulf, creating the largest spill in history. And he lit over 600 wells on fire. Imagine the carbon foot print… But leftists can rarely bring themselves to be critical of America’s enemies, so they let Saddam off the hook.
The politicians have read the political grafitti. Now they’re piling on and punching BP in the gut while the American people hold the oil company down. With each punch, the bully-politicians look for the approval of public. Who can land the most vicious blow? Who can prove they have the biggest cajones? It’s a pack of jackals on a wounded elephant. And oh what an easy target, Big Oil. Every news organization, every politician every pundit–except maybe Rush–is taking their free shots while they can get them. It’s quite pathetic and stands in contrast to past American generations
America–stop whining. Always consider the historical context here. If you destroy BP–which you probably will–you’ll only hurt yourself. Stop embarrasing yourself. You even went overboard with BP Exec Carl-Henric Svanberg’s “Small People” comment. Is there anything more disgusting than refusing an apology? That’s what the man was doing.
I guess there is one thing more disgusting: Enjoying your victimhood.
Rome never really fell
It evolved from within. And what it became led to the Dark Ages.
They’re not assimilating–we are….
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=az1YD_O3PXz4
Perhaps after we bomb the Dome of the Rock we should ask to build a Catholic church there. Even if this is completely legal, the Muslims know exactly what it demonstrates. This isn’t about bridging gaps between America and Muslims. It’s about symbolic dominance.
Karzai defaults to Islam’s standard excuse: It’s America’s fault
It’s no surprise. Afghan President Hamid Karzai now thinks America intends to dominate the AfPak region and believes the US poses a threat to peace between the Taliban.
It’s as old as the resentment the high school loner without a girlfriend has for the school’s quarterback. When you can’t get the job done yourself, blame the shining star.
I believe Karzai’s been co-opted. He stole the election, and President Obama recently told him that the needed changes to Afghanistan’s central government aren’t coming quickly enough. Karzai senses that American patience–and firepower are coming to an end, and now he needs to start hedging his bets. He’s shaking hands with Iran’s Ahmadinejad now and that’s never a good sign.
This is why I’m not a classic Neo-Conservative. I don’t think we can change culture with war, at least not a Western style of war. We could change it if we were willing to be brutal, but we’re not. Rome proved the that the pen is only mightier than the sword if the sword remains in the scabbard.
It’s time to admit that Afghanistan is no different from all the other countries is the Middle East, except for Israel (the only fully functioning democracy in the region and the one most picked at by liberals…strange eh?). It rejects wisdom, clings to myth, and is quick to blame others for its failure.
Karzai stole his election, but we’re stuck with him. But we don’t have to go down with his sinking ship.
America gonna fall anytime soon? Yeah right.
There’s lots of fashionable talk about America falling. Been fashionable since we were born. Chicks dig it.
Charlie Daniels uses his bardic skills to say what I think:
Recent Comments