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.
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.
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.
I dunno how practical this thing is. Even if it was chambered in 9mm, this thing would probably kick way too hard to aim accurately. I can also imagine how cleaning and maintenance would be a pain in the ass.
Also, I don’t give a shit. Who gives a damn whether it’s practical? This beast is just the sort of wildly unwieldable, basically untenable firearm that the United States has fallen in love with since the nuclear warhead. Give the American gun buyer market five years to get to know the AF and we’ll make an Olympic medal event based around it.
The AF2011-A1 emanates unadulterated liberty, oozes every flavor of awesome and is forged from the stuff of pure win.
Update: I sorta beefed on crediting where I got the video from. This magnificent Youtube clip is courtesy of Theo Spark. While you’re there, check out his tasteful dignified look at a particular piece of St. Patrick’s Day-themed swimwear. I mean, it’s green so….um….yeah. Mildly NSFW warning for showing some skin and also for being completely awesome.
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 airbrushingtough-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/]
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.
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.
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.
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 marvelling at the feats of our fallen champions from September 11th. The valorous dead deserves 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.
Ya know that thing that Obama said would happen unless we raised the debt ceiling by August 2nd? Well, it still happened.
Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s on Friday downgraded the United States’ credit rating first time in the history of the ratings.
The credit rating agency said that it is cutting the country’s top AAA rating by one notch to AA-plus. The credit agency said that it is making the move because the deficit reduction plan passed by Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough to stabilize the country’s debt situation.
…S&P said that in addition to the downgrade, it is issuing a negative outlook, meaning that there was a chance it will lower the rating further within the next two years. It said such a downgrade to AA would occur if the agency sees less reductions in spending than Congress and the administration have agreed to make, higher interest rates or new fiscal pressures during this period.
I know this is going to shock some folks out there, but it seems that TurboTax Timmy once again made a boo-boo in his normally trustworthy calculations.
April 19th, 2011-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said Tuesday there is “no risk” the U.S. will lose its top credit rating amid a new analysis that revised its outlook on American debt to “negative.”
In another similar risk-free move, I decided to go without the condom. The way I figure it, when will I be in Haiti again?
Speaking of foolproof plans, remember the trillion dollars we absolutely had to spend on the 2009 stimulus package in order to avoid an economic collapse ? It’s a good thing we did that because the jobs report that came out yesterday was, in a word, AWESOME.
U.S. stock futures fell Thursday after a report that the jobs market remains stagnant.
The government said that the number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits for the first time last week rose to 400,000 from 398,000 the previous week. The increase was slightly less than Wall Street’s estimate of 405,000 claims.
Stocks have been volatile this week because of concerns that the U.S. economy is weakening. Manufacturing, consumer spending and hiring by private companies are each below what typically signifies a healthy, growing economy.
Glass half empty: Unemployment remains sky high.
Glass half full: The ever-growing number of FUNemployment participants means there are more folks to share in the excitement of collecting food stamps, selling off family heirlooms at pawn shops and getting drunk on weeknights without the hassle of going to some buzzkill job the next day.
See? It’s all about accentuating the positives.
Let’s move on to more cheerful international news. The Chinese government, which from now on will be referred to as ‘America’s Co-Signer’, is super-stoked about the US credit downgrade.
“China, the largest creditor of the world’s sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets,” Xinhua said.
China also urged the United States to apply “common sense” to “cure its addiction to debts” by cutting military and social welfare expenditure.
“The US government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” Xinhua wrote.
It’s always a blast when the scumfuck statist asshole ChiComs lecture the US about fiscal responsibility. Next up: The Sudanese give America a stern talking-to about race relations and Dominique Strauss-Kahn wags his finger at the States over the evils of sexual harassment.
This massive debt stuff is just the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it? Not only is it crippling the economy and putting our grandkids into fiscal slavery, it’s also a national security threat. If China had a rage-boner to do something imperialistic, like fomenting a hot war on the Korean Peninsula or invading Taiwan, could America really do much to stop it?
But hey, it’s not a total loss. A fun time was had by all at Barry O’PartyHearty’s birthday bash.
President Obama and his A-list pals danced barefoot in the East Room on Thursday night, after dining in the dramatically lit Rose Garden to celebrate his milestone 50th birthday. Obama Foodorama was told by guests who attended the “fabulous” but “casual” five-hour barbecue for more than 200 people that the President “let down his hair” and literally danced for hours, finally leaving his own party shortly before midnight.
Stevie Wonder gave a “surprise” performance during the celebration after dining with the President and First Lady Obama, leading the crowd in a soulful rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Wonder’s hit “You and I” was the President and Mrs. Obama’s wedding song. Guests included Jay Z; Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson; Chris Rock; hoops legends Charles Barkley and Grant Hill; Whoopi Goldberg; Dallas Cowboys Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith; Steve Harvey; and actor Hill Harper. He’s one of the President’s closest chums from Harvard law school, and star of CSI: NY. Jazz great Herbie Hancock and his ensemble played four songs; R & B singer Ledisi dazzled the crowd with two selections.
Look, I’m not gonna get on Team Bamster’s case for having a birthday party in the President’s honor. Obama is an undersmart over-entitled brat of a man after all. Not giving our widdle baby POTUS a celebrity-filled celebration would’ve just led to a whiny tear-soaked temper tantrum. The foot-stamping in the West Wing would’ve been monumental. So you’ll get no complaint from me about this fabulous bar-b-que soiree.
No, it’s more annoying to think about the glitteratti that populated Obama’s birthday party.
Look at the cavalcade of clueless morons on display. Back in 2008, these sports and entertainment megastars were the first to tell us just how fucking rad Obama was going to be as God-King President of The Whole World America. Tom Hanks made a man-crush video thinly disguised as an endorsement. Chris Rock was a big Obama supporter and continues to flack for his BFF, saying the Tea Party are a bunch of small bratty children who are also racists. Whoopi Goldberg uses her perch on The View to spout pro-Bambi talking points at every opportunity.
These celebutard assholes are always on hand to pump up their high-powered buddy and tear down opposition to Obama’s reflexive nanny-state socialism. Meanwhile, as the swells do the Electric Slide at the taxpayer’s expense, the feedback loop of epic failure stemming from Obama’s policies stacks up like cord wood. The disconnect between the fantasy land inhabited by these entertainers and the reality of St. Barry’s repellent ideas could not be more stark.
The famous folks at Barack Obama’s b-day party love to lecture the rest of us about our political choices. They think because they can dribble a basketball or make pretend on camera, they have carte blanche to tell us how to think. Meanwhile, the entertainment community’s track record of picking winners is pathetic.
In 2008, the song and dance troupe and jockstrap aficionado caucus made their feelings heard. These rich-without-merit douchenozzles got to pick our President for us. Look at their decision–a sanctimonious hopelessly corrupt socialist ratbag who has done everything in his power to wreck the economy. Thanks a bunch, celebrity jag-offs.
To be frank: Eat shit, Hollywood. Blow yourselves, pro athletes. In fact, all of you should get fucked in the dookie-hole with a dirty rubber sideways with no lube, you useless sleaze-ridden pack of brainless bootlicking sycophants. You suck at politics. You suck at life too. You worthless hacks who contribute next to nothing in society besides shitty movies, unlistenable music and out-of-wedlock children don’t get to give normal folks constant third degree couch lectures from your insulated mansions.
No. In 2012, just stick to what you’re actually good at–which ain’t much, you dickstains–and let the republic sort out who should lead us. You picked America’s boat-anchor. You chose the Alinskyite Marxoid that has driven us to default and rampant unemployment. Now own your stinking wretched incompetence, sit the hell down and shut the fuck up.
In my defense, I’ve been drinking heavily in the hopes of putting out a beer review for the weekend. Also, my review of Bing West’s “The Wrong War” should be done soon so I haven’t been completely playing hookey on the ole bloggerino.
To get your mind off of Barack Obama’s Regime of Fail–and my own lameness–here’s a cool Australian blogger GregoryNo6 making fun of his country’s boneheaded socialist crapweasel leader. It’s just nice to know America isn’t the only country with an anti-patriotic windowlicker running the ship of state as hard as he can into the rocks. Go ahead and check homeboy’s website out. It’s good.
Matt over at the wondrous Conservative Hideout brings us this week’s episode of “Climate Change Believers Are Stupid”.
For the latest, here is some evidence that not only is there no warming, but we might be headed for another “Little Ice Age.”
What may be the science story of the century is breaking this evening, as heavyweight US solar physicists announce that the Sun appears to be headed into a lengthy spell of low activity, which could mean that the Earth – far from facing a global warming problem – is actually headed into a mini Ice Age.
The Little Ice Age was a period of human history that lasted from approximately 1300 to 1870. It’s impacts were incredibly significant in ways that we do not recognize.
I want to show everybody something.
Just a picture to get a sense of scale.
Note the size of the Sun. Now note the size of the Earth. Common sense tells us that what happens on that fiery ball of raging nuclear fusion is going to have a far greater impact on the world than almost anything we humans could do to our planet. A lack of sunspots will do much more to the temperature of this planet than any amount of CO2 we could possibly pump into the atmosphere.
The climate change warmist cult, being part of the larger environmentalist kook fringe, will most assuredly blow this evidence off. They’ll play the ‘Oil Companies Are Funding This Study!’ game or more likely simply ignore it all. But then again, they love tossing out all sorts of contradictory evidence when it suits their aims.
How many truly spectacular natural disasters have we seen over the last decade? Tsunamis, hurricanes, outbreaks of tornados, earthquakes: Mother Nature has thrown just about every kind of weapon she has in her Arsenal of Killing The Shit Out Of Us. Yet even with all that, the enviro-dorks insist that the Earth is a delicate flower in need of constant protection, impossibly light footsteps and–most importantly–lots of freedom hating human-unfriendly big government solutions to keep Terra safe from the evil predations of Mankind.
Wrong. Earth is not a vestal virgin in need of a socialist chastity belt to keep her pure. Instead, the world is a smoking hot yet incredibly moody ex-wife on an eternal meth binge, armed with a loaded MAC-10 and just waiting for you to say something about her thighs so she has an excuse to pump a few rounds into your sorry ass. There’s nothing you can do to change her mind about your uselessness. You know that at some point she’s going to shoot you. It’s just a matter of when and what extremity she decides to hit.
We don’t need to protect the Earth from a whole lot. If anything, we could use some protection from her.
Now, am I arguing against protecting the environment? Hell no. There are perfectly reasonable clean water regulations and air quality rules we should be following. We can even debate some–and I mean some–broader international ecological standards, as long as it’s in the context of proper Constitutional boundaries and our national sovereignty. But the world is not going to be destroyed because a few Americans want to drive gas-guzzling SUVs.
Lightbringer Barry is just a generous soul after all.
President Barack Obama’s administration recently threatened to veto the defense budget, citing “serious concerns” over provisions that limit the U.S. missile defense know-how that the White House is permitted to share with Moscow. This is the sort of information that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in his earlier days, would have assigned his spies to steal. Through its single-minded pursuit of “resetting” relations with Russia, the Obama administration may simply be willing to hand over this information and, in doing so, weaken U.S. national security.
We’ve only been working on missile defense since the Reagan administration. But after decades of research and billions of dollars invested, our super-genius president wants to just give our nuclear shield to our bosom frenemy Russia. Great.
Read on.
Only two days after issuing the veto threat — and as Obama tried to warm Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to U.S. missile defense plans at the G-8 Summit in Deauville, France — the House of Representatives passed the defense bill. It included the provision that the president’s team finds so offensive: Section 1228 requires that no funds can be used to provide the Russian Federation with sensitive U.S. missile defense technology.
Wrap your mind around that for a tick. Obama had to be restrained from giving away our Star Wars program by legislative mandate. Not by his own common sense. Not through a cold-eyed assessment of Russia’s capacity to hurt our long-term security. None of that worked for Prezident SuperGenius. Nope, it took specific legislative language telling our spectacularly doltish community organizer in chief not to shoot the country in the balls.
Obambi-’Wait, you mean I can’t just hand over our major strategic nuclear advantage to my new BFF Dmitry Medvedev? What a congressional buzzkill.’
Amazing.
This act of congressional prudence did not come out of nowhere. The Senate debate over New START raised questions about what the Obama administration may have promised Moscow regarding U.S. missile defense plans. The debate stemmed from the treaty’s preamble, which linked offensive and defensive weapons, and a Russian unilateral statement that stated ratification of the treaty was conditional on whether the United States made improvements to its missile defense systems. In a treaty about reducing offensive weapons, it was clear the Russians required the Obama administration to include U.S. defenses in the bargain.
People on the left like to call Obama a progressive. Question-how progressive is it that St. Barry of The Sacred One-Sided Olive Branch wants to take American nuclear policy back to the early 1990′s? Domestic politics, technology and our relationships with the countries in the nuclear club have all changed, but the President is still rocking the intellectual equivalent of Doc Martin boots, grunge flannel shirts and a Soundgarden cassette tape.
With that issue still unresolved, Congress discovered that the administration has been working on a missile defense agreement with the Russians and that Moscow had requested that the United States share with it loads of sensitive U.S. missile defense technology and operational authority as part of that deal. In the administration’s eagerness to please the Kremlin, it may just oblige.
Just say no, Obama. Go ahead and stand up to those tough meanie-head Russians. It’s not that hard. We’ll all hold your hand and talk you through it. Better still, once it’s done nobody on the Right will give you any shit about it. In fact, you might get a few unexpected pats on the back from some conservatives.
Say, why is giving Russia our missile defense secrets such a bad move?
Russian assistance has contributed to the progress made by Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Should the United States share critical information about its missile defenses with the Russians, a Russian entity — official or otherwise — could pass that information along to Tehran, enabling the Iranians to capitalize on the weaknesses in the U.S. system.
The Iranians are long time valued customers of the Russian SuperMarket Of ExplodeyFunBargainBasementKaboomCraters. Once they get our missile shield technology, what’s to stop them from selling it to the Iranians? ‘Ya know, we’ve made billions off of you ‘shroom cloud-happy Shiites buying our stuff, but we’re not gonna stock the shelves with American missile defense secrets, because that would be wrong.’
If anybody buys that scenario, they’re just as stupid as our cretin President.
All this panicky talk is aggravating. I mean, Iran’s nuclear program isn’t really making a lot of progress lately. Besides, they can’t hit us with an ICBM anytime soon, right?
The sea-based Aegis system is supposed to complement the GMD system in defending the homeland against long-range missiles by 2020, but the intelligence community continues to estimate that Iran will have an ICBM by 2015.
So let me get this straight. Obama wants to give Russia our missile shield so that they can then sell it to the Iranians, who will then understand our defense systems’ weaknesses. All of this occurring right around the time that Iran will have made a missile capable of hitting American soil.
Anybody want to draw up the articles of impeachment yet?
Everyone wishes they could turn back the clock sometimes, and it turns out Barack Obama is no different.
He got the date wrong by three years when he signed the guestbook at Westminster Abbey today on his official visit to the UK – despite apparently asking the dean what day it was.
As a tough election looms next year and he faces criticism for his handling of the financial crisis, perhaps Mr Obama wished it was indeed May 24, 2008, when he was still a rising superstar.
I’m gonna cut the Teleprompter Reader-in-Chief some slack. Every January, for the first couple days I find myself writing the date with the last year. Like, ‘January 5, 2010′ instead of ’2011′. I usually start dating stuff correctly by the end of the first week of January. The thing is, we’ve all made that mistake.
In January.
Dating stuff with the last year.
Not three years ago.
2008. Two Thousand And Eight.
Really, Barry? Really?
[/facepalm]
Fuck, since I ripped the headline format off of Hot Air, I’ll swipe Instapundit’s joke for the finish:
They said if I voted for John McCain, we’d get a confused half-senile Constitution-stomping warmonger for President…and they were right!
I snagged the original link off of The Daley Gator, who pretty rule when it comes to this kind of stuff. Thanks, guys.
So they found a big stash of porn in Osama bin Laden’s compound. I thought the whole point of terrorism was supposed to be religious or something, but apparently the terrorists are like cafeteria Muslims — they don’t subscribe to the whole Islamic tenet of clean living and instead just adhere to the blowing-up-infidels part of the religion.
It seems one of the biggest goals of Islamic terrorists — besides pointless murder and mayhem — is to have absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. We have bleeding heart liberals who automatically side with America’s enemies, but the terrorists are dead set on giving even those people absolutely nothing to hold onto. You can search and search for the terrorists to have any redeeming qualities, and the best you’ll come up with is something like, “Well, one time they only kicked a puppy when they easily could have stomped it to death.”
They’re just pointless, useless enemies — far more one-dimensionally vile than anything you’d find in the most hackneyed fiction. And that’s a big problem for us.
America has been in a slump for a long time. We just can’t get our act together and be the shining city on the hill we used to be, and I think a big part of that is terrorists. Not terrorism; terrorists — in that they are our big enemy right now. The fact is, to achieve great heights, America needs a great villain to overcome, and as long as our big enemy is a bunch of primitive thugs servicing themselves in barren compounds, we’re going to be stuck in a rut.
Here’s a quibble: What if a sizable minority of Americans–oh, say 21%– simply refuses to show up when a real enemy actually emerges?
Even worse: What if the American public recognizes the next supervillain, but the political class is too corrupt and addicted to power to figure it out?
In the post 9/11 age, Westerners have tried to explain why Islam has taken such a violent turn. From full-throated terrorist apologias to more sober hard-eyed analyses, America and her civilizational cousins have examined the reasons for violent jihad. Great debates have been had over the last ten years. September 11th was a wake-up call for many Westerners. While many of us are still asleep, the US conservative movement has at long last decided to examine the deeper motivations and passions that drive Islamic fundamentalism.
While this process of examination has been beneficial, sometimes it is necessary to listen to Muslim dissidents themselves. They will often tell you far more of the story than you’d likely get from other sources. That’s why Raymond Ibrahim’s translation of a Khaled Montaser piece is pretty important.
We Muslims have an inferiority complex and are terribly sensitive to the world, feeling that our Islamic religion needs constant, practically daily, confirmation by way of Europeans and Americans converting to Islam. What rapturous joy takes us when a European or American announces [their conversion to] Islam—proof that we are in a constant state of fear, alarm, and chronic anticipation for Western validation or American confirmation that our religion is “okay.” We are hostages of this anticipation, as if our victory hinges on it—forgetting that true victory is for us to create or to accomplish something, such as those [civilizations] that these converts to our faith abandon.
And we pound our drums and blow our horns [in triumph] and drag the convert to our backwardness, so that he may stand with us at the back of the world’s line of laziness, [in the Muslim world] wherein no new scientific inventions have appeared in the last 500 years. Sometimes those who convert relocate to our countries—only to get on a small boat and escape on the high seas back to their own countries.
There’s a lot of truth to digest there.
First, it is important to note that there are Muslim scientists and thinkers doing important work. They study and invent and innovate not in Damascus, Jakarta or Tehran but in London, Frankfurt and Chicago. This indicates that there is no genetic or racial basis for the lack of ‘Islamic inventions’. It is the culture of Muslim-majority nations that is stifling.
The West in general, and America in particular, is the only place where a Muslim can safely use his mind to create something other than yet another jihadist ideology or violent terrorist organization. If you’re a clever Muslim who wants to invent something in the United States, chances are that the fast-thinking Farouk will be rewarded for his hard work and labor should his innovation actually perform. The same cannot be said for the vast swath of kleptocracies that riddle the Middle East. The man with a plan in the Islamic sphere will most likely see his good idea stolen by the thieves that man the important government posts or ignored by religious fundamentalists. There’s really no reason for the intelligent person to even bother trying, so he doesn’t.
That five hundred year failure rate has to gall many hard-core Muslims. While the mongrelized infidels in America and Europe have dominated the world with rapidly changing technology, vibrant expansionist pop culture and wild commercial success, Muslims live off the fruits of Western intellectualism but cannot hope to emulate it in their own homelands. According to the Koran, it is Muslims that have the truth–and more importantly, God–on their side. For Islamic supremacists, having God in their corner should’ve meant that they would be blessed with inventions and innovations. They should’ve been the winners of progress, not the debauched kaffir West.
Consider another irony. Even many of the Islamic sphere’s bad ideas come from us. The Ba’ath party that dominated Iraq and continues to oppress Syria is merely an Arab facelift for a German socialism. Bashar al-Assad is basically Erich Honeker with a much funnier name and a slightly more brutal secret police organization.
More to the point of Montaser’s article, Islam’s constant seeking of Western validation–specifically through the conversion of Westerners to Islam–speaks to the inherent weakness of the faith. We in the West sometimes think that Muslim expansionism is a sign that the Western world or that Judeo-Christian values are in decline. But what does it say about Islam when the only way they can feel good about themselves is if some Eurotrash brainfart or American half-wit starts praying to Mecca five times a day?
When you always have to have the approval of others, you are doomed. The same is likely true for the supremacist version of Islam. While non-Muslims cannot do much to make that collapse happen, we can encourage those voices who criticize the backwardness of modern Islam.
I snagged the link from Kathy Shaidle’s Five Feet Of Fury, who directed me to Jihad Watch, which got me to Raymond Inrahim’s post. Thanks to all.
That’s how Andrew McCarthy characterizes the Obama administration’s policy towards dealing with terrorism and terrorists. Here’s more from his piece.
The Lawyer Left is the core of the president’s base. From its legions, Obama recruited his attorney general, the top lawyer in his State Department, and many of his administration’s most influential voices. Its signal achievement has been to make a legal and political hash of terrorists’ detention and interrogation. It has become far easier and cleaner to kill the enemy than to capture and squeeze him for intelligence purposes.
This is an extraordinarily problematic situation. As I’ve conceded before, my principal concern about candidate Barack Obama was that, in his maddening solicitude toward anti-American Islamists, he would abandon the fight against Islamist terrorists. I’ve been delighted to be proved wrong about that. Considering where I feared he’d come out, it seems downright ungracious to complain that we are killing when we ought to be grilling.
Nevertheless, given that our concern here is national security rather than good manners, we have to complain — at least about the policy, if not to its application in bin Laden’s case.
…President Obama is enjoying counterterrorism success by slipstreaming behind Bush-era policies and exploiting the afterclap of the CIA’s Bush-era interrogation program. But the well is running dry. Unless we replenish it with new interrogation intelligence, the days when we can identify previously unknown terrorists and thwart their plans are numbered. You can’t rely on killing every terrorist when you don’t know every terrorist.
Read the rest.
In the essay, McCarthy is quick to add that he believes Osama bin Laden had to die. He argues–rightly, I think–that the potential intel we lost by killing OBL was outweighed by the sheer necessity of his death. Bin Laden had to go, no matter what he might’ve been compelled to tell us during a friendly chat with a few of our intel officers at Guantanamo Bay.
McCarthy’s larger point…that we’re killing potential sources of valuable intel because the Administration doesn’t want to have use enhanced interrogation techniques…is particularly important. Obama’s propensity to “kinetically de-live” (Hat-tip, Manhattan Infidel) terrorists rather than question them is ultimately counter-productive. By all means turn the big bad guys, the living symbols of fundamentalist jihad, into corpses. That’s better than good in my book. However, there has to be a limit to how many terrorists you can afford to simply rub out.
For instance it probably would’ve been easier to kill Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the number 3 guy in al-Qaeda and the chief planner behind the 9/11 attacks, rather than capture him alive. No transporting a live human who could give you trouble en route, no potential rescue attempts by his buddies and no messy issues involving the methods used to pry intel out of his brain. KSM catching a JDAM-induced curb stomp would’ve been Kool and the Gang for most of the American public. It would’ve also taken away the need to question KSM. Naturally, you can’t put a pile of soon-to-be fertilizer into a stress position and expect it to talk.
But killing Khalid Sheik Mohammad would’ve also denied the Americans a large chunk of data. Most importantly, KSM was the man who gave up the name of the Osama courier. That vital piece of intel eventually led SEAL Team 6 to kill Osama bin Laden. Taking KSM alive was an important component in the nation’s long-term security plans.
The thing is, capturing high-value targets sorta implies that we’ll interrogate them. Interrogating them means making tough choices about what methods of questioning are used on what detainees. All the labyrinthine decisions and ethical dilemnas that George Bush faced have not gone away simply because the current president has decided to avoid painful quandries unless he absolutely cannot dodge them.
Complexity. Hard choices. Nuance. Ambiguity. All things that Team Obama assured us the President could handle and handle much better than Dubya. Has St. Barry actually figured these things out, or has he just decided to yet again vote ‘present’? Sadly, signs point to the latter.
I dislike Obama’s domestic agenda as much as any other sane human being, but on this issue I gotta give it to the President. Most striking is the nerve Obama displayed. There were only about a thousand things that could’ve gone wrong here. From faulty intel to equipment failure to poor planning, this mission could’ve gotten off track and ended in disaster. If that happened, it could’ve easily metastasized into a Jimmy Cartereqsue clusterfuck. A foul-up in Abbottabad could’ve effectively ended Barack Obama’s presidency.
Think about how Obama handled this situation, then compare it to how Bill Clinton handled similar circumstances. In 1998, Bubba threw some Tomahawk missiles at what he thought was bin Laden’s headquarters. He hit some tents and little else. By contrast, the President was presented with good verified intel, then sent a team into Pakistan and made sure SEAL Team Six got their man.
There were huge risks to the operation–potential damage to American prestige, possible negative political ramifications–and Obama still gave this mission the green light. Congratulations to the President for bucking up his courage and doing the right thing.
2: A Superpower Got A Much Needed Win
SEAL Team Six did something truly spectacular. From a military perspective, they killed the man responsible for 9/11. Osama bin Laden was also the head–at least from a spiritual perspective–of the most dangerous international terrorist organization in the world. This will have some effect on al-Qaeda’s future operations.
The slaying of the bin Laden dragon also gave America some much-needed swagger. The Afghan War has been seen as morass where our military has so far played for a costly blood-soaked tie with the Taliban/al-Qaeda/Islamist insurgency. While the US public hasn’t been screaming for a pull-out, there is a level of exhaustion creeping into people’s minds. Giving Osama a third eye settles a score America had with the al-Qaeda leader and with the Afghan War itself.
Beyond that, the American people were hungry for a win. Anemic economic growth, high unemployment, high gas prices and the creeping shadow of inflation have been a part of the daily lives of Americans for a quite a while. These pocketbook issues create downward pressure on the morale of US citizens. For a few days, folks can rally and celebrate the fact that our military finally scored a clear, unadulterated victory against an opponent that has slipped the noose for over a decade.
3: Don’t Expect Many Changes
Just how much day-to-day command of al-Qaeda…and international terrorism in general…did Osama bin Laden have at the time of his death? That has yet to be conclusively discussed, but signs point to not so much. The terrorist leader’s safehouse was apparently not wired for the internet or telephone. Bin Laden has to rely on couriers to send and receive messages. Barring new revelations about the connectedness of al-Qaeda’s top dog, it seems like Osama really wasn’t in the loop as much as he may have been ten or even five years ago.
That tells me that the Afghan War will continue to frustrate American patience. I’m currently reading “The Wrong War” by Bing West. One is struck by just how little Osama bin Laden figures into the daily problems involved in winning the Afghan conflict. Like an evil djinn from an old Arabian myth, Osama created massive chaos that has taken on a life independent of its malevolent architect. The death and misery that bin Laden helped bring to Afghanistan will sadly live on long after Osama’s corpse has sunk lower than whale shit.
In America, the killing of Osama bin Laden does not alter the reality on the ground. In my travels yesterday, I tried listening in to people’s conversations about the death of Osama and talking to them about it. In contrast to the spontaneous celebrations that occurred around the country, folks I ran into were basically happy that al-Qaeda’s leader was dead, but they weren’t overwhelmed by it either. What I saw was a quiet joy and a somber hopeful attitude.
What I gather is that the killing of bin Laden is a tremendous one-time event in the course of American life. As great as Osama bin Laden’s demise is–and it truly is an awesome accomplishment for Barack Obama and especially for our military–it doesn’t change the problems that have crowded into American life. Unemployment will not suddenly shrink back to five percent. The choking threat of inflation has not magically receded to manageable levels. The cost of energy and fuel have stubbornly failed to take precipitous drop in the last 24 hours.
The President scored a great victory for himself and for America, the country he leads and the nation he is basically ambivalent about. The problem for Barack Obama is this victory will not have a huge lasting impact on his political fortunes. Circumstances in Afghanistan are probably not going to change all the much from killing bin Laden. Also, Obama can’t blow a hole in Osama bin Laden’s skull every week until November 2012. These facts suggest that, while this is a large political game changer right now, OBL’s death cannot turn around Barack Obama’s poll numbers for very long. The President’s popularity is based on negative factors that cannot be changed with one grand event.
Update: AceOFSpadesHQ poster CAC does a nice break down on the “Osama is Dead” bounce Obama has received. Click the link to check out his snazzy chart, and here’s a cool quote.
Obama has received an average bounce- including the WaPo moonland poll, of about 6.6.
Yep, 6.6. Mind you there is time for more rescue polls, but the driving concerns for Americans aren’t in Afghanistan/Pakistan right now. They haven’t been there in nearly a decade.
President Obama in fact received a larger bounce at the end of last year thanks to the tax cut extension agreement with Republicans than he has so far [for] killing bin Laden.
Yeah, the MSM are gonna want to play this as the Great Obama Re-Election Clincher, but the numbers simply don’t bear this out.
As much as I am now embarrassed to admit it, if you had asked me 48 hours ago whether Osama Bin Laden would ever be brought to justice I would have probably answered “no.” Like many Americans I had all but abandoned hope that we would ever capture or kill the 9/11 mastermind, and had resigned myself to the idea he would die an old man thumbing his nose at us from some comfortable cave in Waziristan. Well, I can happily report that I completely underestimated the skill, courage, and perseverence of America’s military. And, almost as happily, I can report that I also completely underestimated the capacity of America’s erstwhile “peace community” for turning on a dime and embracing the kind of all-American xenophobic flag-waving bloodlust they only recently decried. So today I stand proudly with my new friends of the formerly antiwar left in a mindlessly jingoistic salute to President Obama for an extralegal military assassination well done.
Yes, it’s true that some pre-January 2009 antiwar activists have remained morally and logically consistent in their opposition to America’s military presence in the Mideast; but, thank God, it appears now they were only a tiny, insignificant minority. Recent events have happily made clear that the antiwar movement of 2001-8 was overwhelmingly dominated by a vast silent hypocritical majority of craven political opportunists awaiting a Democratic administration to gleefully celebrate the covert execution of a man whom, until 28 months ago, they would have described as a “tragic civilian casualty.”
Who is to credit for this rebirth in American national unity? First and foremost, we must cite the leadership of President Obama. Like many Americans – and the Nobel Peace Prize committee – I naively feared he was actually serious when he initially proposed shutting down Guantanamo, trying detainees in American civilian courts, and prior consultation with the international community. Little did I know that this untested young Commander-in-Chief would muster the courage to read his weekly Gallup numbers and, in one daring unilateral extra-judicial targeted hit job, toss aside every single idiotic foreign policy principle of his election campaign. Perhaps most satisfyingly, it was a mission made possible thanks to information extracted by methods he previously banned as “illegal torture.”
Pardon me if I take some time to do a little sack dance for a bit.
Fuck you Osama. Fuck you with a red hot 5.56 round in your rat-bag cowardly cerebral cortex. You got a little too comfortable in your Pakistani chill out pad. You didn’t think America was still hot on your heels. You believed your own mistaken assumptions about the US, that we were cowards that would give up after a long chase. It gives me great pleasure to know that it was this fatal error in judging American resolve that contributed to your violent, bloody and well-deserved demise. Ace of Spades said it best when he headlined his piece celebrating your death “Osama Bin Ladin Loses Popularity and 30cc of Brain and Skull But Mostly 30cc of Brain and Skull”. The only sad part is that we can only kill you once, Osama.
And now…it’s over. What is the best part of Osama bin Laden’s death? Let us count the ways. Certainly it is gratifying to think about the mind-killing panic that had to have flashed through bin Laden’s once-complacent mind as the SEALs broke into his compound. To know that he felt even a small measure of the terror he put into the hearts of the victims of the 9/11 attacks as bullets flashed into him is a dark comfort.
It’s also encouraging to know that it was US troops who pulled the trigger; that our military men were the ones who finally took out this virulent cancer masquerading as a human being. What a shoddy way for it to have ended if it was one of our proxies to have done this instead of us. It is far better to know that the last thing bin Laden saw was American soldiers, wearing American uniforms and an American flag, putting the final nail in Osama’s coffin.
Another thing that makes bin Laden’s death sweet is the knowledge that his eternal reward is not Paradise. He promised his followers that death through jihad would bring them instantaneous access to janna, the Islamic heaven. How ironic that for Osama there will be no grand lush gardens awaiting him in the afterlife. Seventy two virgins won’t be ready to service bin Laden’s sexual appetites. For the death, torture, misery, oppression and hatred he spread across the globe Osama bin Laden has earned a far hotter destination.
All these things are to be celebrated. But once you get beyond those visceral emotions, a more somber feeling emerges. It is the wish and prayer of many that Osama bin Laden’s death brings solace to the families of his victims. For twenty years, OBL has had a hand in torturing or killing thousands of people, not just in America but around the world. For the most part, the people bin Laden murdered were not military personnel. In large measure, they were innocent civilians engaged in the routine of their daily lives. From Afghanistan to Bali to Tanzania to Manhattan, bin Laden preyed upon the weak, the unsuspecting and the innocent. He was an international bully who picked fights with blameless people for his sick ideology
Al-Qaeda may still be limping along in decentralized franchises. Ayman al-Zawahiri might’ve assumed leadership of whatever remains of bin Laden’s terrorist organization by now. No doubt they are planning other attacks in retaliation. None of those things change with bin Laden’s death.
However, the mastermind of misery for many in the United States and the rest of the world is now sinking to the bottom of an unnamed ocean in an unmarked location, unmourned by all but the most depraved and repellent corners of human society. His rotten schemes of terror can bring death and woe no more. Hopefully, that will somehow soothe the losses suffered by those that lost family and friends because of bin Laden’s evil.
