Let’s keep it brief.
I snagged this pic from my homie Vermontaigne. You may know him from media outlets such as the Conservative Commune and his Twitter feed. Read his blog and follow his tweets.
Archive for the ‘Foreign doings’ Category
Great News–Lovable Fresh Faced Moppet Set To Become US Ambassador To England
Posted by KingShamus on December 9, 2012
The least diplomatic person in the fashion world is about to become an American diplomat. Makes perfect sense.
Two years late, give a warm hug to a million brain cells short.
In 2010, we set up an interview with the Syrian leader’s wife, Asma al-Assad, a Western-educated former banker and a woman with a reputation as a force for reform in the Middle East. Like many at that time, we were hopeful that the Assad regime would be open to a more progressive society. Subsequent to our interview, as the terrible events of the past year and a half unfolded in Syria, it became clear that its priorities and values were completely at odds with those of Vogue. The escalating atrocities in Syria are unconscionable, and we deplore the actions of the Assad regime in the strongest possible terms.
Shorter Nuclear Wintour: Sorry I believed the Assad Regime’s bullshit and then published it verbatim in my bubble-headed fashion magazine.
I know Anna Banana put out this little half-assed apology back in June, but it’s become a tad more interesting given that the Vogue Meanie-In-Chief may be getting a new job.
There’s a rumor in Washington that the United Kingdom may soon be welcoming a very stylish emissary. According to a report by Bloomberg News, Anna Wintour, the powerful editor of Vogue magazine, is being considered by President Obama for the prestigious post of U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
I know a lot of us wanna tee off on this Ambassador Wintour thing like it’s a huge outrage. It’s understandable; I kinda wanna go ballistic too. But the more I think about it, the more I think this more annoying than anything else.
After all, what is an ambassador, really? I know we’d like to think of them as thoughtful diplomats who understand all the foreign-type gobbledeegook that the rest of us forgot in World Cultures class. Unfortunately, a person usually gets the job because she donated the biggest chunk of cash to the winning presidential candidate. The late Christopher Stevens seems to have been one of the few ambassadors who actually understood the language, customs and culture of the country he was assigned.
More importantly, an ambassador’s job involves kissing ass. This isn’t a quality one would normally associate with Anna Wintour. But think about it this way: If Vogue and Wintour can figure out a way to grovel in front of Dictatorette Asma Al-Assad, surely striking an obsequious pose for England shouldn’t be too difficult.
So yeah, floating the Wintour ambassadorship trial balloon is indicative of the Obama Administration’s habitual unseriousness. It’s governance by D-List niche celebrity, of the type President SolidGold Wonderful seems particularly fond of. Oh well. It’s Barry’s presidency and I guess he’s allowed to run it like an America’s Next Top Model episode.
Besides, if we’re going to get annoyed over something here, how about the injustice of poor mistreated Sarah Jessica Parker not getting her own ambassadorship?
More, Slightly Related Kinda: Here’s a picture of Anna Wintour’s favorite power-couple taking in the Parthenon, in Athens Greece.
Even Better: Here’s Jim Geraghty.
I suppose we’re expected to believe Wintour has distinguished credentials, qualifying her to represent the United States to one of its closest allies, beyond her political affiliation or contribution. And I suppose we’re also to believe that Anna Wintour has risen to the standard of proven excellence in the U.S. State Department’s mission in representing this country abroad.
Never mind Wintour being the most-qualified person to be our next ambassador to the U.K. or France; she’s probably not even the most qualified Obama bundler for the job.
Just like Joe Biden is the smartest most able vice-president Barack Obama could’ve picked.
Posted in Domestic Happenings, Foreign doings, Media Silliness | Tagged: Anna Wintour, Asma Al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad, Queen Rania >>>>> Asma al-Assad, Vogue Magazine | 6 Comments »
Good Thing We Got Mean Old Egyptian Dictator Hosni Mubarak To Relinquish Power
Posted by KingShamus on November 24, 2012
Because newly-minted Egyptian dictator Muhammad Morsi is totally not becoming the new dictator of Egypt.
With a constitutional assembly on the brink of collapse and protesters battling the police in the streets over the slow pace of change, President Mohamed Morsi issued a decree on Thursday granting himself broad powers above any court as the guardian of Egypt’s revolution, and used his new authority to order the retrial of Hosni Mubarak.
Mr. Morsi, an Islamist and Egypt’s first elected president, portrayed his decree as an attempt to fulfill popular demands for justice and protect the transition to a constitutional democracy. But the unexpected breadth of the powers he seized raised immediate fears that he might become a new strongman.
B-b-b-but…youth and revolution and Facebook and stuff.
This #ArabSpringFail has been brought to you by President Barack Obama, who insisted that the relatively reliable American ally Hosni Mubarak get the hell out of Dodge. Why? Because he wasn’t down with the new-fangled 7th century Koran-thumper lingo those Islamofacist hep-cats are all jazzed up about these days.
But hey, maybe we should see how this Egyptian Dictatorship Version 2.0 thing works out before we judge it. I mean, what democratic reform movement doesn’t start out with numerous charges of sexual assault carried out against women counter-protesters and end with legalized female circumcision? That’s how George Washington did it when he wrote the Constitution all by himself back in 1492. And if you dispute that fact, you hate the Founding Fathers. Why are you chugging the anti-American haterade, hater?
I wonder what Mona Eltahawy, the brave defender of free speech when it lines up with her brand of delicate soft-focus socialism, thinks of the enlightened Egyptian autocrats sanctioning genital mutilation for Egyptian girls. It’s sad that full-time PLO apologist and part-time Columbia University professor Edward Said isn’t alive today. He could’ve written a beautiful 20,000 word propaganda piece about why the Muslim Brotherhood was completely justified in sending out the rape-squads to deal with those lippy female protesters at Tahrir Square.
At least President Barack Obama finally recognizes his error in supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and is now doing everything he can to stop the creation of a new dictatorship in a vital part of the Middle East.
UPDATE: Linked by the great Bob Belvedere! He asks a very good question:
How long will the pyramids last?
I’d say it all depends. Does Not-Dictator Morsi value tourist dollars? The only reason anybody outside the Middle East gives a shit about Egypt is the archaeology. World opinion–and a lot of cold hard cash–would turn very heavily against the Muslim Bothering Brothers if they vaporized the Sphinx in a fit of Islamodouche pique.
On the other hand, the Taliban turned the Bamiyan Buddhas into piles of rubble. Nobody cared. Sure, there were some weak outcries and some concern troll pooh-poohing over the loss of priceless works of megalithic art. But that was pretty much it. There are plenty of wackos in the MB who want to finish the job of cleansing Egypt of it’s pre-Islamic history the same way the Taliban did in their country.
Egypt is more connected to the world than Afghanistan was or is today. That means there might be enough relatively sane Islamists who know just how valuable the Pyramids are to the nation. Hopefully that is enough to save Egypt’s national treasures.
Posted in Foreign doings, Politicians behaving badly | Tagged: Arab Spring, Egypt, Facebook Revolution Is A Sick Joke, Muhamad Morsi | 5 Comments »
What Israel Faces
Posted by KingShamus on November 20, 2012
Maetenloch over at Ace of Spades gives us a little of that perspective stuff I keep hearing about these days.
I wonder how Perth Amboy, Hempstead, Mahwah or Manhattan would react if they had to live under the threat of 275 rockets and mortars in the five days since lead Hamas dirtbag Ahmed Jabari was given an unexpectedly awesome dirt nap. Ponder the possible reaction of those sleepy little burgs if they had to deal with 451 separate rocket/mortar attacks in the last 8 months. Does anybody think there would be any talk of ‘proportionality’ if Americans were the ones getting explosive devices thrown at their homes and workplaces?
If it was happening in the States, Andrew Cuomo would be talking to his dad about getting some Bonnano crime family goombas to push a few buttons on the terrorists. In an instant, Nurse Bloomberg could deploy his sign language interpreter to bore the shit out of Hamas. It’d be fun to see Chris Christie waddle for the TV cameras in his action-man fleece bellowing for Obama to give him nuclear launch codes.
But instead, it’s Israel, so nobody cares.
In fact, the world eagerly awaits the opportunity to cluck it’s tongue and make concern-troll noises when and if Israel prepares to put boots on the ground in Gaza.
Whatever.
Easiest Prediction Ever: The entire panoply of kleptocrats, military strongmen and anti-democratic monarchs in the Middle East will publicly condemn the Israelis if they invade Gaza, while in private many Arab regimes will wildly celebrate the violent de-fanging of the Iranian-backed, Turkey-supported Hamas.
Fuck the international hater’s chorus. The bankrolled anti-Semites, the Islamo-Nazis and the thumbsucker Left all need a hefty dose of reality. Do what has to be done, Israel.
Do it fast, do it effectively and finish it.
Once Hamas is gone, maybe then the Gazans will be ready for peace. Perhaps then the Gazans see the stupidity of letting a terrorist group represent them. Hopefully Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt will see that it doesn’t stand a chance in a ground war with Israel and will face reality rather than indulge their idiotic United States of Islamic Caliphate fantasies.
Posted in Foreign doings | Tagged: Gaza, Israel | 3 Comments »
America’s Ongoing Foreign Policy Debacle Starts At The Top
Posted by KingShamus on September 29, 2012
First, the US delegation decides to stick around for one of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speeches at the UN, and then the highest-ranking US diplomat at Turtle Bay takes a powder when Israel’s Prime Minister gets up to speak. Instead, UN Ambassador Susan Rice chose to attend a luncheon in which she wasn’t even the highest-ranking American diplomat.
Hey Israel: We’re right behind you!–except when we’re asked to make the most perfunctory and purely symbolic gesture supporting you when we’re seen by the popular kids in the international community, then we can’t be bothered to help ya’all out so good luck with those Iranians, hope you’re missile defense systems are all up to date–See, we’re right behind you!
And in other good news, we’re getting to the bottom of the 9/11 Benghazi attack. Sorta.
“Let’s be clear, these protests were in reaction to a video that had spread to the region,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Sept. 14.
Secretary Clinton, during the transfer of remains ceremony the same day: “We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with. It is hard for the American people to make sense of that because it is senseless, and it is totally unacceptable.”
The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations continued this spurious and completely uninformed messaging: ”Based on the best information we have to date … it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video.”
Now, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says that the 9/11 attack was not only carried out by terrorists, but it was also pre-meditated. So much for that “spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video.”
What Obama attacked Romney for — speaking before the facts were known — is precisely what the administration wound up doing for the subsequent two weeks.
Let’s be really clear. We won’t know what happened in Benghazi until President McFundraises AllTheTimeski is out of office. In the meantime, intrepid reporters will look for more pressing news stories to look into, like Nicki Minaj’s possible new reality show that she may one day decide to start up sometime in the future perchance. The Obamaphile Media will do nothing to risk their preferred candidate boss’re-election.
Report on the SEIU’s astro-turfed Romney protests? Nah.
Investigate Obama’s unilateral imperialism in Yemen? Too much trouble.
Take note of a massive Romney rally in Toledo, Ohio? Nope.
Discuss how has-been 80′s singer Madonna thinks the President a black Muslim? Pass.
Correct the absurdly rigged pro-Obama polling results? Wouldn’t be prudent so close to November.
If the court stenographers aren’t going to look into that stuff, you can be sure as shit they’re not going to press Barack Obama on his blatant lying about anti-American violence in the Middle East. No, the press and the Democrats both want us to think of Obama as a foreign policy genius. After all, the President ordered the hit on Osama bin Laden. Hell, the way he talks about the killing, it’s like he was the operation’s trigger-man. Through Barack-asswards logic, having SEAL Team Six blow a hole in the al-Qaeda leader’s skull means Obama is the omnicompetent master of international relations.
But just because Chris Matthews and the rest of the MSM wants to make babies with Barack Obama doesn’t mean we have to fall for Bambi’s nonsense.
Also, even though Mitt Romney can’t or won’t successfully pin the blame for our failing foreign policy on the President doesn’t mean we can’t.
America is a pathetic joke in the eyes of many bad actors around the world. Barack Obama has no way to combat this. In fact, the President has done much to make our status as a punchline happen.
For this national humiliation alone, Obama cannot be allowed a second term.
Ambassador Christopher Stevens is dead and Muslim terrorism is alive.
Posted in Domestic Happenings, Foreign doings, Media Silliness, Politicians behaving badly | Tagged: Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Barack Hussein Obama | 6 Comments »
The US Doesn’t Have To Fix The Middle East
Posted by KingShamus on September 23, 2012
Super news–Our great friend and ally Pakistan is showing America a lot of love lately.
Reports say more than 17 people have died as demonstrations against an anti-Islam video erupted across Pakistan, a day after protesters tried to storm the US embassy in the capital, Islamabad.Tens of thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets across the country after the government called an impromptu public holiday to let people protest under the banner of “Love the Prophet Day”.
In Karachi, armed protesters among a group of 15,000 fired on police, killing two officers, as at least 10 protesters died in the violence. The crowd also burned six cinemas, two banks, a KFC and five police vehicles.
Crowds armed with clubs and bamboo poles converged on the Firdaus picture house, “smashing it up and setting furniture ablaze”, according to Gohar Ali, a police officer.
Witnesses said a separate rampaging crowd stormed the Shama cinema, notorious locally for showing films considered to be pornographic.
It’s awesome that the Pakistani government isn’t doing anything to encourage these violent demonstrations against America, like giving people the day off so they can violently demonstrate against America.
That would just be crazy.
But we can all take solace in the fact that the US government is reacting with a strong response defending our free speech rights. I’m sure we’re not releasing any obsequious apologeties. Right?
Ummmmmm.
What you’re about to see is, essentially, an official statement of patriotic disapproval, not from the Defense Department but from State. They’re spending $70,000 to air this on Pakistani television in the naive hope that the lunatics who were throwing rocks at the embassy in Islamabad this morning and who are planning massive — and state-sanctioned — “protests” tomorrow might be placated. It’s a hostage video, with American diplomats in Pakistan and American soldiers in Afghanistan as the hostages.
I’ll be honest. I was very much prepared to go off on a diatribe about the Obama Administration Debacle, but why bother? The America-hating campus Marxoid that runs our executive branch and the bloated repellent shyster that runs our State Department are playing exactly to type. The last few days have just confirmed that Barry and Hill-Dawg are the Wonder Twins of arrogant leftist incompetence. Form of–a spineless bedwetting doucherocket! Shape of–a tubby know-nothing nepot!
So fuck it. It’s just American prestige, American power and–most importantly–American lives that are being lost here. The Washington DC press corps will kindly show us the numerous ways that this is all Mitt Romney’s fault. Not the President who has been in office for the last 3+ years. Not the President that lovingly constructed an apologetic cow-towing prostrate foreign policy. No, it’s the guy criticizing St. Barry of The Holey Consulate that is to blame for this roiling catastrophe.
Hey, look over here–it’s another very convenient fall guy.
What are we supposed to do? Why does the Middle East continue to hate us, even though we give them billions of dollars through aid and trade? Why do Muslims despise America, even as many of them are enriched by the United States?
It all started in the Harry Truman Regime. Back in the day, paleo-Al Qaeda sleeper agent Sayyid Qutb infiltrated the US through our notoriously porous Colorado teaching college border and promptly started hating American society. Although he despised pretty much everything in the States, he really hated the influence black people had on our popular culture, our ‘loose’ morals and the fact that women’s fashions weren’t limited to a giant burlap sack. Qutb’s virulent racial intolerance, lifestyle diktats too puritanical for even the most hardcore 17th century Puritan and his bug-eyed rape-panic at the sight of a nude female ankle were transferred to the greater Islamist movement and has been ever since.
Even though Sayyid Qutb’s direct influence on modern Muslim cultures isn’t always visible, his writings seem to pervade many facets of Arab/Islamic society. The ‘demonstrations’ we’ve seen over the last week are informed–at least in part–by Qutb’s negative interpretation of the West. If he is the Big Bang Pile of Fail at the center of the modern hardcore Islamist movement, then works like Milestones and Islam and the Problems of Civilization makes up the background radiation stench that permeates far too much 21st century Koranic interpretation.
As sad as all that is, you know what’s even more tragic? That I, or anyone else in the West, have to give one withered shit about anything a provincial needledick goatfucker like Sayyid Qutb has to say about any goddamn thing. It should fill every sentient American’s heart with immeasurable sadness to think that the premier example of Middle Eastern intellectual sterility affects us in any way whatsoever. In a just world, Qutb and his ideological brood–Paleolithic animals like Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mahmoud Ahmadinijad, Mohamad Morsi, Hassan Nasrallah and whoever the hell is leading Pakistan at the moment–would be little more than bizarre museum curiosities in need of an occasional thermobaric curbstomp to keep their idiocy from spilling out from beyond the borders of their hate-filled rat-hole.
I don’t know about you, but after over ten years of fighting the seemingly endless tide of atavistic idiots that radical Islam produces, being able to ignore that entire region sounds pretty freaking awesome. Do we dare to dream of a day when you or I won’t have to know the difference between Shias , Sunnis, Sufis, Yazidis, Druze, Wahhabis, Alawis or Salafists? I think we can. Nay, I know we can.
In fact, I think it is America’s long term interests to put as much strategic, diplomatic, military and spiritual distance between us and the Middle East as we possibly can.
But How, KingShamus?
First things first, no more paying countries that hate us or our allies. None. Nothing. Not one thin dime.
Egypt wants to be the leader of a new pan-Arab Islamist psycho state? Fine. Do it without our billions of dollars. Do it without our generous food aid. Do it without selling us your overpriced overrated cotton.
“But what about the influential Egyptian religious maniacs who want to destroy the Pyramids because they’re pagan pre-Islamic idols?”, you ask.
I can’t care anymore. It’s their country. If they want to obliterate their only real industry, it’s not our problem. If we can live without the Bamiyan Buddhas, we’ll somehow muddle through without King AhmenTutenAhkanwhatever’s monument to the power of captive labor. Besides, we can always build more pyramids. We’ve pretty much mastered the ‘constructing large-scale simple geometric shapes’ technology.
Let’s also make this point clear. When a natural disaster strikes in any of the terrorist countries, guess which superpower no longer has to lift a finger to help? You guessed it, the good ole USA, that’s who.
Did an earthquake just annihilate a third of your country? Good luck digging yourself out from under the boulders, Ayatollah Nosehair. Did a drought just kill off your precious date crop? Have fun asking Vladimir Putin for help. Did a brutal infectious disease strike your major population centers? Try praying six times a day and see if that does any good.
Our assistance is clearly not wanted. That’s cool. We should recognize when we and our ugly ungodly money are not wanted.
Speaking of people I never want to have to care about again, to hell with Afghanistan and all the various Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and every other hateful jerkoff tribe in that particularly virulent cesspool. Let’s leave. The sooner the better.
It’s not like our military failed. The US didn’t lose the war. We destroyed al-Qaeda’s base of operations and turned most of the Taliban into fly ash. In fact, we fought the war with both hands tied around our back and still won it.
The miscalculation we made was trying to grant a nation of bloodthirsty morons an actual working civilization. Oops. Our bad. Never again should we make the mistake of thinking they’re capable of understanding consensual governance, the rule of law or the right of women not to get acid thrown in their face.
“But what if a terrorist organization or regime reconstitutes itself in Afghanistan?”, you concern-troll.
What about it? I know one thing. We won’t send ground troops. A hundred snarling Afghan poppy farmers aren’t worth a single American soldier or Marine. Instead of wasting our most precious resource on Afghanistan, we take the tried and true ‘nuke the site‘ from orbit approach. Maybe not with actual nukes, but then again, maybe with. Everyone should understand that all options are open and that America’s new foreign policy will be based around the very simplistic but very explodey Rubble Don’t Make Trouble platform.
In fact, everything that goes for Afghanistan goes double for Pakistan. The American government should recognize that the Afghanistan-Pakistan border doesn’t really exist. The two countries have been the United States of Stubborn Dysfunction for decades now. We thereby reserve the right to blow up stuff in AfPakiCrap with impunity.
I also don’t care that AfPakiCrap has nukes. If it looks like they’re going to use them, we should nuke their bombs first. That shouldn’t be too hard. We can put a man on the moon, construct a massive continent-sized highway system and give Lady Gaga a platinum-selling music career, but we can’t find AfPkaiCrap’s one and only source of national pride? Besides the thrill of sending Stone Age assholes back to the actual Stone Age, India will be so grateful to us they’ll probably increase their Hot Bollywood Actress exports to America by a thousand percent.
As great as all that is, the big enchilada is freeing ourselves from foreign oil. Barack Obama says we can cut our imports in half in a decade. Mitt Romney says North America can be completely energy independent in ten years. Both are noble goals. Being that Premier Soetero thinks crony capitalist subsidies to solar panels companies and the wondrous energy potential of pond scum are the way to ween ourselves off imported petroleum, America should go with Mitt’s more ambitious plan.
Once we do that, watch as the Saudi sheikhs and their support for Wahhabist nit-wits slowly but awesomely recede from our circle of giving a damn. It will be a particularly satisfying flavor of schadenfreude to watch the entire Persian Gulf revert back to the sewer it always was. When King Flopsweat al-GreaseSpot goes bankrupt and has to become just another nihilistic Bedouin with a Koran stuffed down his pants and eight whining brides to feed, it’ll be real hard for him to subsidize a pack of international jihadist clerics.
As soon as we free ourselves from Middle Eastern conflict oil, our entire foreign policy changes for the better. If the Sunnis and the Shias want to continue their millennium-long mutual suicide pact, by all means go ahead. If the Egyptians want to conquer Libya, it’s no skin off our teeth. If Syria wants to get lippy with Turkey over water rights, the thing to do is get a comfy chair, heat up some Jiffy-Pop and watch the fireworks. Those wars will no longer matter to us. In fact, we should arm the losing side in any future internecine Middle Eastern conflict just to make sure they fight to a long, painful and costly tie. As long as all the players understand that Israel is our heavily armed homeboy who has carte blanche to punch any spill-over violence back into the terrorist country sandbox, it’ll all work out fine.
“B-b-b-but what about Europe’s relationship with the Middle East?”, you whine in full Council on Foreign Relations mode.
If Europe wants to sit at the grown-up table, they can figure it out for themselves. If they like being scared every time Mullah Donkeyball Pedophile sneezes, that’s on them. Let them figure out how to get their energy. Let them figure out how to talk their mewling accommodationist bullshit to people who just want them dead. I keep hearing how much smarter and more sophisticated Europe is when compared to us. For once in my life, I’d like them to prove it. Put up or shut up, assholes.
Look, I have no doubt this plan will piss off a lot of people, both inside and outside the US. Obama will cry about how wrong it is to show intolerance to the Middle East, the glorious land that invented and perfected tolerance. The Saudi lobby in Washington DC will pay off their tree-humper stooges in the environmental movement to whine about fracking or offshore oil rigs or polar bears. RINOs will try to split the difference and only give terrorist countries half a gazillion dollars every year.
But when we’re knee deep in jobs, as energy independent as we’ve ever been and blissfully ignorant of everything from Morocco to Kyrgyzstan, you’ll thank me.
Posted in Domestic Happenings, Foreign doings, Politicians behaving badly | Tagged: Apologies To The Militant Islamists, Oy Vey, Pakistan | 7 Comments »
Who Could’ve Foreseen The Highly Unlikely Scenario Of Terrorism At The US Consulate In Benghazi?
Posted by KingShamus on September 14, 2012
Not the US State Department, apparently.
According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.
Eight Americans, some from the military, were wounded in the attack which claimed the lives of Mr [Chris] Stevens, Sean Smith, an information officer, and two US Marines. All staff from Benghazi have now been moved to the capital, Tripoli, and those whose work is deemed to be non-essential may be flown out of Libya.
Hilary Clinton got the proverbial 3:00 AM phone call and promptly mashed the ‘hold’ button.
And she’s supposed to be the adult in the Zero Admenstruation.
I mean, everyone knows that when you need somebody to lead a nation’s foreign policy team, the obvious choice is a former hack lawyer/First Lady/socialized health care legislation writer/serial adultery enabler/one term junior US senator.
But let’s not pick on Hill-Dawg. This is her first try at being Secretary of State. In the upcoming Biden presidency, Madame Clinton will do better at playing dress up in the big girl pants suits.
Instead, why not take a look at the empty chair in charge of this calamity?
Remember when Pantscrease Obama promised America smart diplomacy back in 2008?
“Smart’ must be only having four local clowns manning the security detail at your consulate. In Libya.
U.S. officials told reporters on Wednesday that the Benghazi consulate had “a robust American security presence, including a strong component of regional security officers.” And indeed, one of the four Americans killed was a former Navy SEAL, Glen Doherty, who was “on security detail” and “protecting the ambassador,” his sister Katie Quigly told the Boston Globe. Also killed was an information management officer, Sean Smith. The fourth American who died has not yet been identified. Yet Baja described a very different picture from his visit on Tuesday morning, even remarking at how relaxed the scene was when he returned to the consulate building a short while after leaving Stevens, in order to collect the mobile phone he had accidentally left behind. “The consulate was very calm, with video [surveillance] cameras outside,” Baja said. “But inside there were only four security guards, all Libyans—four!—and with only Kalshnikovs on their backs. I said, ‘Chris, this is the most powerful country in the world. Other countries all have more guards than the U.S.,’” he said, naming as two examples Jordan and Morocco.
This is officially where the wheels come flying off for President Zero.
Shitty economy at home, dead Americans abroad and nothing–NOTHING–to show from our obsequious scraping to the wretched stinking scum of the Earth. Nothing has been gained from the Obama Admenstruation’s foreign policy except the laughing contempt of the Islamo-fascists.
By the way, just in case you buy into Obama’s nonsense, the followers of hardline Islam will never stop hating us. Never. Why? Because our culture represents nothing less than an existential threat to shari’a. The economic dynamism, technological superiority, military might and frantic boisterous culture of America is the death knell of 7th century Koranic zealotry and the adherents to this ideology know it in their bones.
It’s well past time for us to recognize extremist Islam’s obstinate refusal to join the civilized world. The last ten years have made this obvious. The last twenty four hours merely confirms what we all know. Rationalism, free inquiry, dissent, religious freedom, women’s rights, the free market, meritocracy; these concepts may as well be from an alternate universe for the ardent Islamist.
Muslim extremists, unlike the Sanity-Based Community, often pray for their own death.
Perhaps it’s time for the men and women of the American armed forces to grant them their wish.
The problem is that Barack Obama cannot or will not see what he needs to do.
Sniffing the Muslim Brotherhood’s jock, letting Iran’s Green Uprising come and go with a bored yawn, giving Israel the hot tongue and cold shoulder treatment; all that was supposed to buy the United States a whole bunch of new friends in the Middle East.
Instead, we’ve become a goddamn joke.
On the campaign trail, when Joe Biden is pumping his working class guy drag act, he likes to bust into the “General Motors is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead!” chant. I for one think it’s great that Mister Big Fucking Deal gets to spike the football. It gives the vice president something to do besides shove play-dough up his nose and get lap dances from random biker scabs.
Since Team Barry likes pithy slogans, here’s a new one to roll out on the campaign trail:
Chris Stevens Is Dead And Islamic Terrorism Is Alive.
How did I do, Obamsters?
MORE: Watch the video the State Department made about Chris Stevens to introduce him to the people of Libya.
I would probably not agree with Chris Stevens’ politics. I get the feeling that he was probably a liberal. In light of what has happened, partisan differences are irrelevant.
What shines through the video, and what many people who knew him attest to, is his desire to spread goodwill. He cared deeply about his mission. He ardently wanted to help the people of Libya during a chaotic time in their history.
What did the Obama Administration do to support Chris Stevens? What did they do to create the conditions for the ambassador to succeed? The Obamatons sent this educated, cultured gentle man into a nest of vipers armed with little more than a stern countenance.
Let that sink in.
Our government sent one of our best and brightest–a person dedicated to peace–to his death. For what? On a wild goose chase to find pockets of humanity in a sea of terrorists, radicals and human putrescence.
I challenge anyone to find a thousand Libyans worth one Chris Stevens.
RIP, Chris Stevens.
Posted in Foreign doings, Politicians behaving badly, RIP | Tagged: Benghazi attacks, Chris Stevens, Libya, Smart diplomacy | 8 Comments »
Guardian Writer–”I Wish My Mother Had Aborted Me”
Posted by KingShamus on August 16, 2012
The pro-choice movement: They thirst for death.
An abortion would have absolutely been better for my mother. An abortion would have made it more likely that she would finish high school and get a college education. At college in the late 1960s, it seems likely she would have found feminism or psychology or something that would have helped her overcome her childhood trauma and pick better partners. She would have been better prepared when she had children. If nothing else, getting an abortion would have saved her from plunging into poverty. She likely would have stayed in the same socioeconomic strata as her parents and grandparents who were professors. I wish she had aborted me because I love her and want what is best for her.
Abortion would have been a better option for me. If you believe what reproductive scientists tell us, that I was nothing more than a conglomeration of cells, then there was nothing lost. I could have experienced no consciousness or pain. But even if you discount science and believe I had consciousness and could experience pain at six gestational weeks, I would chose the brief pain or fear of an abortion over the decades of suffering I endured.
An abortion would have been best for me because there is no way that my love-starved, trauma-addled mother could have ever put me up for adoption. It was either abortion or raising me herself, and she was in no position to raise a child. She had suffered a traumatic brain injury, witnessed and experienced severe domestic violence, and while she was in grade school she was raped by a stranger and her mother committed suicide. She was severely depressed and suicidal, had an extremely poor support system, was experiencing an unplanned pregnancy that resulted from coercive sex, and she was so young that her brain was still undeveloped.
Nihilism disguised as selflessness.
Beyond that, look at the amazing speculative leaps Lynn Beisner makes in order to prove her point. If the mother had aborted Ms. Beisner, she asserts that her mom probably would’ve been better off. In the next paragraph, she runs through the long laundry list of reasons why her mother was in really awful shape at the time she was pregnant with Ms. Beisner.
Well, since we’re playing “What if?” counter-factual history games, what makes Beisner think it all that likely that her young abused brain-damaged depressed rape victim mother would’ve finished high school in the first place? A person with that many strikes against them–and a truly tragic personal history to boot–is far more likely to drop out of high school then to finish with a diploma, regardless of whether the person has an unplanned pregnancy or not. That means no college. It also means no ‘feminism or psychology or something’ to help her cope with her extremely difficult circumstances.
Now it’s true that Beisner’s mom had a horrible life before she had her child. Let us suppose that her life was made more difficult by taking an unplanned pregnancy to term. Concede for a moment the idea that caring for a child under less than ideal circumstances was a substantial burden on Mommy Beisner.
The fact remains that the writer Lynn Beisner lives and breathes because, even though her mother was ill-suited to the role of parent, she still decided to give her daughter a life. Isn’t there even a speck of nobility to be found in that act? Even if Beisner’s mother was a train-wreck, the fact remains that she cared enough to bring her child into the world. While it might be a mundane occurrence, it’s still an amazingly selfless thing to do for another human being.
Sadly, Ms. Beisner isn’t done pwning herself.
The world would not be a darker or poorer place without me. Actually, in terms of contributions to the world, I am a net loss. Everything that I have done – including parenting, teaching, researching, and being a loving partner – could have been done as well, if not better by other people. Any positive contributions that I have made are completely offset by what it has cost society to help me overcome the disadvantages and injuries of my childhood to become a functional and contributing member of society.
Conservatives are often accused of reducing people down to dry statistics. But what has the theology of abortion done here? Beisner is asserting that her life is pretty much meaningless. She is, in her own words, a net loss. That’s about as reductive as it gets.
It is said that a liberal is a person who won’t take their own side in an argument. Beisner’s thesis is the barren withered endpoint of the pro-abortion movement: ”We support infanticide because we are pointless.”
This is far beyond just giving women reproductive ‘choice’. This Abortion Above All Else philosophy argues against humans and everything they do. Work, being a good parent, romantic love; all these things are to be reduced down to a finite quantifiable value which can be used to determine whether a person made a positive contribution to the world. Because Ms. Beisner clearly hates herself, she sees her own life as something unworthy of her mother’s initial sacrifice to give birth to her daughter.
Are the people within the pro-abortion movement prepared to look at their own lives with the same kind of self-loathing criticism? Is the anti-life cause ready to apply Ms. Beisner’s criterion for judging a ‘good’ life to themselves and everyone else? If Ms.Beisner’ essay is any indication, the answer is a very chilling yes
Posted in Domestic Happenings, Foreign doings, Media Silliness | Tagged: Lynn Beisner, Pro-life, The Guardian | 16 Comments »
China: The Baby-Killers We’ve Decided To Do Business With
Posted by KingShamus on May 9, 2012
Baby-killers?
Yes.
Some enterprising types in China have found a profitable use for that country’s super-abundance of tiny corpses:
Thousands of pills filled with powdered human flesh have been discovered by customs officials in South Korea, it was revealed today.
The capsules are in demand because they are viewed as being a medicinal ‘cure-all’.
The grim trade is being run from China where corrupt medical staff are said to be tipping off medical companies when babies are aborted or delivered still-born.
Still-born? Riiight.
Read the rest. Right now.
I’m sure Barack Obama will get right on this outrage. He’s such a staunch supporter of human life, after all. COUGHBarryIsCoolWithInfanticideCOUGH.
Look, I get the America has made deals with some shady characters over the years. Foreign policy and international relations are tricky. You often don’t get the luxury of working with people who share all or even most of your values.
But, I mean, selling dead babies processed into boner drugs?
Fuckin’ really, China?
Putting lead in our toys wasn’t bad enough, huh?
Well, one thing is for sure–You ChiComs have cornered the market on utterly indefensible depravity. Congratulations, assholes.
Also: Eat shit and die, Maoists.
Or maybe we’re the disturbed ones here. Check out the high-larious hi-jinks in the latest ‘Funny Or Die” video sketch
Funny: Mitt Romney has the shadiest pro-life record of any GOP presidential candidate since Gerald Ford. Everyone–his allies and enemies alike–is gonna have to take homeboy at his word when he talks about being anti-abortion. Yet even a squishy moderate like Mitt gets turned into repressive right-wing sexual fascist by the Hollywood Left. Amazing, when you think about it.
But leave it to Smitty to have the best take on this:
What a creepy, sick, Orwellian world these feminists live in. Remind me again why any mature, masculine male would want to be in the same room as these abattoir-vaginas, much less offering them any essence to destroy? I guess I should say “choose to destroy”.
Well said.
We should rightly condemn China on the human flesh pills horror show. This is infanticide, pure and simple. Moreover, it’s infanticide the ChiComs have sanctioned and encouraged. They’re the textbook definition of abject moral failure.
But we here in the enlightened United States are not so far off. Significant chunks of the populace are cool with embryonic stem cell research. By the looks of the video, lots of people in America think a child-hating anorexic harpy like Kate Beckinsale yukking it up about abortion-on-demand is totally rad.
Posted in Domestic Happenings, Foreign doings | Tagged: Abortion, Mmm mmm mmm China kills babies, Pundit & Pundette, Smitty_One_Each, The Other McCain | 7 Comments »
President Barack ‘Dog Meat’ Obama Is An Admitted Dog Meat Eater Who Has Eaten Dog Meat
Posted by KingShamus on April 19, 2012
So it turns out that David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s campaign hatchetman, posted a tweet that many folks took as a shot at Mitt Romney. Specifically, the tweet was an oblique reference to the story of how Romney once transported his dog in a pet crate on top of his car during a family trip. No doubt it was pretty clever to for Ax to ding Romney with this embarrassing anecdote. Everybody knows that any tale Gail Collins has made a fetish out of reporting on is edgy comedic gold.
Then the right-wingers on Twitter pointed out in sarcastic detail how Barack Obama has some skeletons in his closet when it comes to man’s best friend.
Let Joe and Mika and some other hapless MSNBC stooges fill you in.
In summation, Romney treated a dog poorly once.
At least Mittens wasn’t thinking about which side dish and wine would go best with his Irish Setter spare ribs.
Not surprisingly, this kerfuffle lit up the twitterverse and the larger blogosphere. Ace had a laugh at Obama, Devourer of Dogs. Manhattan Infidel posted a great satirical interview with the clearly endangered First Pet. James Taranto threw his kibbles and bits into the fray. Frank quipped some quips about the story (sample–”Dog bites man – not news. Man bites dog – news. President bites dog – BEST NIGHT OF TWITTER EVER!!!”). Jim Treacher has been cracking on Axelrod and Co. for almost two days now, throwing in the inevitable, and inevitably hilarious, ‘Downfall’ clip to boot.
Don’t get it twisted, though. Not every conservative has been having fun at Blood-Pudding-Hound Obama’s expense. Newt Gingrich told Sean Hannity that focusing on the “Obama Eats Dog” story is ‘junk’. He would prefer the Right to focus on big ideas and big issues.
The former speaker is almost impossibly wrong. First, look at Axelrod’s twitter timeline. He deleted the tweet that started this fight, which means he knows he screwed the pooch. Homeboy wouldn’t memory-hole a tweet unless he knew it was a self-inflicted wound.
Another thing to note is that while Americans hate to hear about dogs being mistreated, eating canines is really weird to most people in the United States. Granted, there is already a liberal thumbsucker defense of Obama eating a dog in Indonesia (“IT IS THIER CULTCHERR, MAAAAAAN!!!!!!!111111111eleventy!!!1!”) but that’s only going to work for people already invested in Team Obama. The rest of the country is going to be deeply creeped out at the idea of the President scarfing down a fido-burger.
Besides all that, why does Newt–or any other conservative–think this is an either/or proposition? Why can’t the Right offer data-driven substantive criticism of President Obama’s disastrous policies while simultaneously busting on Schnauzer Skirt Steak Barry’s inherently strange biography and ideology? Thinking that the conservative movement can’t walk and mock progressives at the same time is antiquated.
It’s not 1978 anymore. There isn’t a monolithic leftist media vice-grip on mass communication. The conservative movement doesn’t have to carefully craft the picture perfect message in the hopes that a Fairness Doctrine-era news organization will deign to pick up on it.
Let the free-market thinkers think. Let the libertarian linkers link. Most importantly, let the conservative stinkers well…not stink per se…but mercilessly mock everything about Obama and the lunatic left. At a moment when our hapless President would rather talk about anything other than his pathetic failure of an administration, it would be foolish for the Right to put limits on its messaging.
Posted in Chuckles, Domestic Happenings, Foreign doings, Politicians behaving badly | Tagged: Barack Obama Has Eaten Dog Meat, Dog Meat, Leave Barack Obama Alone!, Mitt Romney, Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Barack Hussein Obama, Newt Gingrich | 11 Comments »
Security Getting A Little Too Friendly With Bar Refaeli
Posted by KingShamus on April 18, 2012
Because a 26 year old Israeli supermodel is an obvious security threat.
She is currently enjoying a trip overseas which has included a visit to London. But things have gone a little awry for jetsetter Bar Refaeli, who claims she was violated by a security officer at an airport.
The Israel supermodel tweeted about the ordeal to her fans, explaining that a female officer went a little too far with a routine patdown.
…’I got a security “patdown” by a woman at the airport that made me feel very uncomfortable and left no doubt about her sexual preferences,’ she wrote on the social networking site.
The article is sorta coy about what airport this occured in–I’m assuming it’s Heathrow or some other airport in Britain–so I dunno if we can file this under ‘Tales Of The Overzealous TSA”.
For purely diagnostic purposes, I’ll post a pic of Ms. Refaeli just to help us understand how this travesty of justice happened.
Yeah, this is a very mysterious case.
Perhaps further research is necessary.
Posted in Foreign doings, Media Silliness, The Posts of Morale | Tagged: Bar Refaeli, Security Patdowns, The Daily Mail | 7 Comments »
Asma Al-Assad: Pretty. Vacant. Fascist.
Posted by KingShamus on March 16, 2012
Syria’s most chic Baathist continues her charm offensive all over teh intertubes.
Twitter closed down a string of accounts purporting to be authored by the Syrian president and the first lady, emails reveal.
A senior aide to Asma al-Assad, Fares Kallas, took issue with the site over 11 accounts. Half of the accounts using the first lady’s name and all but one of those using the president’s name were closed down.
The author of one account, @Syrianpresident, described it as a “parody account” and said it had attracted 2,500 followers.
Kallas wrote to Twitter complaining that this and other accounts were “fraudulent Twitter accounts purporting to be the president of Syria and the first lady of Syria and we would like to officially request for these accounts to be removed or suspended. We believe that each of the following are clearly intending to mislead people via impersonation rather than act as spoof/humorous accounts.”
Twitter told the Assad office: “We do suspend accounts that are clear attempts at impersonation,” but added: “Twitter users are allowed to create parody, commentary and fan accounts.”
How does Asma Al-Assad have clout to get a bunch of parody Twitter accounts closed? Syria’s First Dictatorette must be more powerful than we thought. I for one would like to have Twitter shutter the tweet-handles of Daily Kos, Keith Olbermann and Barack Obama for starters. I mean, if we’re just terminating obvious lame joke accounts, we should start with the biggest ones.
Here’s an even better question: When does Vogue Magazine do another breatheless fashionista airbrushing tough-minded profile of Mrs. Assad? Last year the style mavens were all a-flutter, gushing over the greatness of Asma. Now…eh, not so much. Must be the stench from all those massacres that’s harshing Anna Wintour’s fan-girl crush on the First Lady of Syria.
The problem here is that no matter how many Givenchy frocks and how much luxe make-up you put on the wife of a paranoid murderous, freedom hating, minority-bashing jack-booted socialist dickbag, she’ll still be the wife of a paranoid murderous, civil rights hating, minority-bashing jack-booted socialist dickbag. It’s impossible to separate the two. I understand that Asma looks terrific in Chanel sunglasses and Italian couture, but does anybody really understand how she gets her clothes? They’re not running a March of Dimes over in Damascus. The Assad regime is pretty much the blueprint for a multigenerational Middle Eastern kleptocracy.
As the great amateur sociologist PJ O’Rourke once wrote, “It’s always tempting to impute/unlikely virtues to the cute.” Asma Al-Assad, to be frank, is a knock-out. She’s in her mid-thirties, but she looks like she could be ten years younger. Her English is spoken with a genteel British lilt. She is blessed by great genetics–and some help from an expensive personal trainer, no doubt–to have a runway model’s physique. Her golden wavy tresses and girlish smile give her an air of sun-kissed youth leavened by a cultured aesthetic. It would be hard for even the most rock-ribbed cynic to resist Mrs. Assad’s numerous charms.
But that doesn’t mean the West shouldn’t at least try to see through the beautiful facade. Asma’s husband Bashar al-Assad is a brutal dictator who has spent the twelve years of his rule torturing and killing his own people. His latest acts of oppression and slaughter are the systematic crackdowns associated with tyrannical socialism. His government stands shoulder to shoulder with America’s worst enemies. Asma is inextricably linked to the Syrian terror state, whether or not we want to acknowledge it.
Moreover, in judging Asma Al-Assad, we should look at her actions, not by her wardrobe. When faced with derision on Twitter, what did Asma do? She didn’t defend free speech rights. Nor did she just ignore the parody accounts, which would probably have been her best choice. No, she used her influence to silence voices of dissent against her husband’s murderous regime. Mrs. Assad’s first instinct was to muzzle criticism of the Syrian government.
In other words, the beautiful style maven beloved by Western elites for her luxurious elegance used a tactic straight out of the How To Trample Free Speech Like A Good Baathist playbook.
Naturally, all this means that Sarah Palin is a Nazi because she criticized Democrats. Asma Al-Assad is just a misunderstood angel.
UPDATE: Turns out the (fake) President of Syria is a fan!
It’s always nice to have celebrity admirers. [sarc/]
Posted in Foreign doings, Politicians behaving badly | Tagged: A New Kind Of Twitmo?, Asma Al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad, Kleptocracies of The Fashionable And Trendy, Queen Rania >>>>> Asma al-Assad, Syria, Twitter, اسماء الاسد | 5 Comments »
Fun With Afghanistan Debacle Headlines!
Posted by KingShamus on March 15, 2012
Matt Drudge, you magnificent bastard.
Haha.
Good to see the President showing his usual steadfast dedication to the important issues of the day. Watch for tomorrow’s itinerary when our glorious leader will give the Chicago Bears tips on their upcoming NFL draft. Spoiler Alert: Barry thinks the O-line needs some help.
On a completely unrelated and truly unimportant aside, the total metaphysical boning of America is just about done vis-a-vis Afghanistan. That metastasizing tumor masquerading as a country is a clogged toilet wrapped in a cesspool baked in a donkey’s asscrack cloaked in an illiterate mujahedeen’s armpit. The mission to democratize these jag-offs has not succeeded. Hell, the mission to just get these miserable bastards to not molest their children or throw acid on their women’s faces or not turn themselves into human grenades has been a complete disaster.
Fuck them. Fuck their stupid tribal grievances. Fuck their rampant corruption. Fuck their crybaby nonsense. Fuck their wildly overblown sense of cultural superiority. Fuck their childish whining sense of entitlement. Fuck them hard.
Enough is enough.
The problem here is that both George Bush and Barack Obama have failed to figure out some important facts over the last ten years. America has gone with the Underpants Gnome Theory of Third World Country Democratization. Like scrotum, here’s the plan in a nut-shell:
Phase 1: Conquer The Country
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: DEMOCRACY!
See? When looked at from that perspective it’s obvious this great plan should’ve worked out. Right?
You wanna know what’s missing in this brilliant tripartite strategy?
Massive death tolls, obliteration of several urban areas, vast destruction of Afghan infrastructure and property, liquidation of important economic instruments, humiliation of the Afghan people and the annihilation of those members of society that believe in ideologies that allow the harboring of international terrorists bent on killing American citizens and wrecking our society.
There. Now I fixed it.
That plan should sound familiar. It was the guiding principle that worked in Germany and Japan during and after World War II. In fact, the post-war reconstruction and rebooting of both the German and Japanese cultures has worked out so well that neither country has even considered an offensive war for sixty-seven years.
Do you remember the last time you heard a peep out of either of them? No? These countries made sabre-rattling smack-talk an Olympic sport in the first part of the 20th century. Now they can’t wait to shut the hell up and not get bombed again. Why? Because they’re now docile. They’ve turned their backs on imperialism and embraced conquering the world the new-fashioned way, through economics.
But we didn’t do that in Afghanistan.
Instead, we routed the Taliban only to let them play hide-n-seek in Pakistan. We gave every village warlord with a harem of prepubescent catamites a forum to vent his spleen over the burning of his precious holy book. We tolerated the poppy fields and the pay-offs and the puffed-up pre-modern honor systems and the kickbacks and the vendetta killings and all the assorted scumbaggery inherent in traditional Afghan society. We let Hamid Karzai, our hand-selected well-upholstered puppet and a wretched piece of human filth not fit to tie our shoes, dictate to us the terms of our embarrassment.
This is what our billions have bought us. This is what our incredible investments in military superiority have won us. This is what the sacrificed lives of the most precious resource we have–our military men and women–have gained us.
Fuck, don’t go with my plan. I know it’s a harsh and brutal way to win a war. I understand how certain facets of 21st Century America might not be ready for such a drastic step. I also realize that the steps we could’ve taken in 2001 probably cannot be employed today.
Instead, go with the Bing West model. Forget about democratization. Just focus on killing the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Haqqani Network and any other entity that wants to re-establish international terrorist organizations in Afghanistan. Do that, regardless of borders or hurt national feelings, and we would at least accomplish something meaningful.
Instead, we slowly and inexorably drift into abject surrender. Our feckless incompetent president won’t allow a hasty retreat to mar his re-election campaign. The defeat and humiliating withdrawl will come in 2013. Obama will then wring his hands and fret over the loss of what he once called our most important war.
I realize this is a trite observation, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true–If a war is important enough to fight, it’s important enough to win. If we won’t or can’t fight to win, we shouldn’t fight at all. All we can do is pray that somebody in this Administration figures out that most basic lesson.
Posted in Domestic Happenings, Foreign doings, Politicians behaving badly | Tagged: Afghanistan War, al-Qaeda, Drudge Report, Haqqani Network, Matt Drudge, Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Barack Hussein Obama, NCAA Brackets, Sports, Taliban | 4 Comments »
Moamar Khadafi–Dead
Posted by KingShamus on October 22, 2011
Operation Soaring Donkey Punch has reached it’s bloody end.
Libyans rejoiced and the world breathed a collective sigh of relief Thursday at news of the death of ousted leader Muammar Qaddafi, but details of his capture and killing remained in dispute.
His convoy was hit by NATO airstrikes but not destroyed. And he later was captured alive in his hometown of Sirte. However, numerous reports — often contradictory — continue to surface about how he was captured and how he ended up dead, apparently from a bullet.
A U.S. Predator drone was involved in the airstrike on Muammar Qaddafi’s convoy Thursday in the moments before his death, as he tried to escape Sirte, a U.S. defense official told Fox News.
The official said the drone, along with a French fighter jet, fired on the “large convoy.” A French defense official earlier said about 80 vehicles were in the convoy — the official said the strike did not destroy the convoy but that fighters on the ground afterward intercepted the vehicle carrying Qaddafi. He was later killed, reportedly in the crossfire between Qaddafi supporters and opponents as he was being transferred.
Arab broadcasters showed graphic images of the balding, goateed Gadhafi – wounded, with a bloodied face and shirt — but alive, as he was pushed around by a crowd of revolutionaries. Later video showed fighters rolling Qaddafi’s lifeless body over on the pavement, stripped to the waist and a pool of blood under his head.
Much as I’d like to think this is an unalloyed good, the horrifying undignified death (Warning-It’s graphic gory video of a dead dictator) of Khadafi probably generates more questions than it answers.
First, Barack Obama brought us to this war against the Libyan psycho-regime. What exactly did our President’s Maghreb adventurism get us? The Coalition of the Swilling’s Tree Hugging Sister makes a disturbing point.
What I am appalled by is an American President who can tout “American Leadership” in a statement patting himself on the back for what was basically the assassination cream-on-top of a patently illegal operation to begin with. Leadership would have BEEN calling out to Iranians on rooftops desperate for encouragement.
Obama couldn’t lead himself to the men’s room.
So, is that what our proud military’s for? To flush out the easy-target dirtbag of choice, who can then (eventually) can be pulled out of a pipe by a random hodgepodge of “Freedom Fighters”, beaten to a pulp and summarily executed there on the shoulder of the highway, all the while we can claim no boots on the ground and no blood on lily white hands?
Read the rest.
Remember how President Nobel Laureate painstakingly worked to get Congressional approval for the Libyan War? How about all those trips to the United Nations to discuss why Khadafi had to be removed from power? Do recall how many agonizing months we delayed our military operations in North Africa just to make sure we had all of our legal and Constitutional ducks in a row?
Yeah, me neither.
But you gotta give it up to the Obama Administration–at least they’re not spiking the football.
“We came, we saw, he died.”
Hey American progressives, I give you your glorious avatar: A corpulent hack lawyer/former junior US Senator/former First Lady waddling her overfed frame into a fawning media appearance so she can giggle about killing the leader of another country.
Speaking of idiots, The Daily Kos is in full-on hopeful puppy dog mode.
The world will soon move on to other matters, forgetting Libya ever existed. But as trite an observation as it might be, getting rid of Gaddafi is likely to be the easy part in Libya’s hopeful transition to a better, more democratic future.
Amazing. This is the same guy who spent most of the Dubya years in high dudgeon over ‘illegal wars’ and the ‘imperial presidency’. How Kos–and the rest of the progressive movement–used to righteously thunder on and on and on about the alleged abuses of power from the evil American Warlord Premier Bush. Naturally, when Barack Obama refuses to get Congressional authorization to use force and then subsequently pushes through some half-assed quickie UN Security Council resolution against Khadafi, it’s all good in the hood.
Granted, Kos is a little concerned over how the post-Khadafi transition will look. He frets about the hard part still to come. But basically, summarizing his and the broader left-wing’s position on Libya is simple: “Mission Accomplished”.
The dissonance between liberalism’s anti-war rhetoric during the Bush Administration and the left’s more recent fawning accolades for their Glorious Warrior President should put a massive dent in their neo-pacifist credibility for a generation. No more can progressives claim the moral high ground. By hitching their wagon to the newly butched-up Democrat Party, they have demolished the notion of a viable American anti-war movement. It should now be clear that the Dubya era crying over Iraq was not done out of principle, but instead out of a vulgar partisan hate for Bush.
But perhaps I’m being too harsh on our progressive colleagues. On second thought, lets let bygones be bygones and give the Left a warm welcome to the Paul Wolfowitz/Donald Rumsfeld/Darth Cheney Axis of Neoconservatism. You libs are a little late to the shin-dig, but whatevs. Be sure to give William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer a shout-out at the beer pong tournament.
(BTW–I’m not linking to Kos’ site. You can find it for yourself.)
Swinging back over into the real world, there are going to be actual-factual consequences that America will have to deal with in the wake of Khadafi’s death.
Qaddafi was not America’s friend, but the vision of U.S. troops pulling Saddam Hussein from a spider hole in Iraq did persuade him that having America as an enemy was not smart. So he gave up his drive to develop nuclear weapons and coughed up useful intelligence on how that project had been organized. He stopped financing terrorism — as far as we’re aware. He did continue oppressing his own people. Both the Bush and the Obama administrations pretty much gave him a pass on that.
If the Great Arab Revolt — “Arab Spring” is a hopeful, not descriptive term — ends up only removing Qaddafi and, from neighboring Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, a despot who was, nonetheless, a reasonably pliant client of the U.S., and if Iran’s theocrats remain in power and manage to save the Assad dynasty in Syria while continuing to use Hezbollah to control Lebanon and sponsoring Hamas in Gaza, the lesson will be clear: It is more dangerous to be America’s ally than its enemy.
Such a lesson will carry long-term strategic consequences. If there are strategic planners in the current administration, now would be a good time for them to start worrying.
Egypt has been allowed to drift into a Muslim Brotherhood/military coalition government. Turkey has become more and more Islamist over the last decade. Now Libya will get the chance to replace their brutal dictator with…what, exactly? The chances of finding Jeffersonian democrats, Madisonian constitutionalists or even FDR-ite liberals amongst the Libyan freedom fighters are negligible.
Instead, it is very likely that Libya will be allowed to fall into the hands of al-Qaeda sympathizers and other hardline Sunni Muslim theocrats. That’s great if you’re a Islamist radical; not so great if you’re an Egyptian Copt, a Libyan Jew, an American anything…or pretty much anybody else.
But according to President Obama’s logic, America simply had to help throw out Khadafi, even though our short and long term interests would’ve been better served by keeping him around. Meanwhile, Bashar al-Assad still hasn’t taken a laser-guided thermobaric curbstomp. The Iranian mullahs, who somehow managed to keep power even after the 2009 Persian uprising should’ve shown America just how brittle the Tehran theocracy really is, have yet to be shown the business end of a J-Dam.
It would be a far better and much more stable world if our real enemies were punished for their actions. But then again, is stability really what Obama is seeking to create in the world? His actions in Libya suggest he has some other goal in mind.
In any case, Moamar Khadafi has been put to death at the hands of the people he brutally oppressed for decades. There is a certain ironic justice to the mad Colonel’s inglorious termination. Even though there are many troubling ambiguities, his execution rids the world of a mass murderer and large-scale terrorist sponsor. He has the blood of countless people on his hands, both in Libya and across the globe. Pan Am Flight 103 was simply the most direct assault on US citizens that Khadafi ordered against America.
The planet is a far better place with Khadafi roasting on a spit in Satan’s special nuclear fire dictator barbeque pit. Regardless of America’s domestic political situation, the death of the crazy Colonel is still a day to be celebrated. What happens next is a mystery, what happened this week should at least give some relief to the people who were impacted by Khadafi’s evil.
Posted in Domestic Happenings, Foreign doings | Tagged: Moamar Khadafi, Operation Odyssey Dawn, Operation Soaring Donkey Punch | 11 Comments »
September 11th, 2001–A Decade of Grieving and War Intertwined
Posted by KingShamus on September 11, 2011
On September 11th 2001, ordinary Americans were caught in the horror of al-Qaeda’s monstrous sadism. The victims of the 9/11 attacks were a more or less random sampling of people from a broad spectrum of life in the States. While none of them could’ve known that they would be murdered by pure human evil that day, many men and women rose up and became America’s first heroes in the war against radical Islam.
One of them was Betty Ong.
The 45-year-old flight attendant was on American Airline Flight 11, the first of two that crashed into the World Trade Center. During the hijacking, Ong hid in the back galley, picked up a crew phone and bravely called the airline reservation desk.
“The cockpit is not answering their phone,” Ong said during the hijacking. “There’s somebody stabbed in business class and we can’t breathe…somebody’s got mace or something.”
The call lasted 23 minutes. Ong spoke calmly, giving important details of the chaotic last moments.
The 9/11 Commission declared Ong a hero.
Indeed.
Here is the phone call she placed–in the midst of the hijacking, with murder surrounding her and in danger of being killed by terrorists–telling authorities what was happening on her flight.
And then this valiant woman was gone.
What did the 9/11 attacks cost us? We can talk about the trillion dollars that simply evaporated from the American economy in a single morning. The destruction of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was meant to be a symbolic demolition of the United States’ economic and military dominance. But as important as these things are, they pale in comparison to the human price America paid on that day.
Think about the hopes and dreams of the three thousand people who died on that day. What did Betty Ong want for her life? Was she saving for a house or new car? Did she want to get married? Were children in her plans? Did she have career aspirations? These are questions that seem so banal, at least for the living. Tragically, they cannot be answered when it comes to Ms. Ong–or anyone else who died because of Osama bin Laden’s perverse ideology.
Three thousand people are no longer with us, which means three thousand sets of families and friends were victimized on September 11th. Those people who had a connection to the 9/11 victims not only had a part of their lives ripped away from them, but they had a part of their future destroyed as well; the weddings that didn’t happen, the children that won’t be born, the birthdays that have become a time of mourning. When seen from that perspective, the 9/11 attacks take on an almost unthinkably barbaric and inhuman dimension.
It was Osama bin Laden and his followers who decided to make war against us in this fashion. It was bin Laden, one of the most extreme adherents of a religion that has trouble reconciling itself to democracy, human rights, free market economics and the rest of modern civilization, that elected to use large scale terrorism on the United States. America did not seek out this fight. The fight was brought right into our home. We had no choice but to bring war upon bin Laden and all those that would stand with him. We have no choice but to continue to fight against all who follow in al-Qaeda’s path.
On this day, we should mourn. We should mourn for those who had loved ones taken from them. We should mourn for our country and all that it lost on that day. But we should also celebrate the men and women that gave their lives in order to save us. We almost never think of our neighbors and coworkers as potential heroes. As it turns out, the 9/11 attacks showed us that America is full of people who will rise in the face of unimaginable danger to help others.
At one of the darkest moments in this country’s history, there were many like Betty Ong who put themselves in harm’s way in order to do the right thing. During the worst attack on America’s soil, there were citizens that sacrificed their own lives in order to save the lives of others. These folks were not sports icons, blowhard politicians or members of the celebrity class. Our fallen 9/11 heroes were in fact ordinary Americans who were placed into unspeakable situations and performed extraordinary feats of selfless bravery.
On this day of sadness and pain, we should leave some room in our hearts for wonder. Hopefully we never stop marveling at the feats of our fallen champions from September 11th. The valorous dead deserve our remembrance and our reverence. We owe them far more than we can ever repay.
Update I: Robert Stacy McCain shares his rememberences of 9/11. He also knows who the real enemy is.
Update II: Manhattan Infidel posts a poignant piece about his 9/11. The Infidel speaks a hard but necessary truth:
What happened that day makes me angry. It still makes me angry. To call Islam Medieval is an insult to the middle ages. Islam is pre-medieval. It is stone age. It is barbaric.
Read the whole thing.
Update III: Karen Howes of the terrific Eastern Right has this to say:
May we always continue to be Americans.
Amen, Karen. Amen.
Update IV: Matt of the Conservative Hideout has some thoughts about American unity.
Update V: Chris Wysocki of WyBlog reminds us that we still need patriots.
Update VI: Edge of the Sandbox is annoyed at Muslim imams getting invited to places they don’t really belong. Preach on, sister.
Update VII: The Crack Emcee gives us the enduring strength of George W. Bush. He kept us safe and we ended up hating him for it.
Update VIII: David Wong of Cracked.com tells the story of how “Loose Change” poisoned the 9/11 tragedy.
Update IX: Right Hand Man of the superb Sentry Journal talks about heart.
Update X: Angel of Woman Honor Thyself honors those taken from us on 9/11 with a heart-wrenching piece.
Update XI: CG Hill takes a look at his September 13th 2001 reaction and fisks it.
Posted in Foreign doings, Domestic Happenings | Tagged: September 11th 2001, Betty Ong, Ten years after 9/11 | 12 Comments »
