This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Adios, Kofi the Boob

    Kofi Annan couldn’t help but endear himself further to the anti-American wing of world opinion. Blaming the US and our President for his own greed and complacency, Annan warned, hypocritically, I might add, that “The Security Council is not just another stage on which to act out national interests”.

    I guess it’s the stage where we act out our personal interests, instead. Like Security Council members who were paid off to protect Hussein’s regime from the inevitable. When a great, lumbering oaf like the UN under Annan has refuses to act as they’ve refused to act against Hezbollah, as they’ve refused to act in support of the refugees of Darfor, as they refused to act to save Rwandans, as they’ve refused to act to wrestle Somalia from the al-Quada warlords, as they let Bosnians and Kosovars languish under their respective oppressors.

    I think it’s just a little bit strange that Annan relied on the United States, soley, to bring peace to the world in his early years, in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, East Timor, etc. while the rest of the world joyfully tagged along with just enough support to call it a UN mission, but when a real threat has raised up, and huge amounts of cash was exchanged, the UN suddenly draws up in the fetal position and then criticizes the US for acting with a cobbled-together coalition.

    Shame on you, Kofi. How many people have died for your legacy of peace at any cost? 

    Jules Crittenden has the transcript translation of what Kofi meant to say. Funny stuff.

  • Why now?

    Why are we just now finding out about the Secret Service tapping Princess Diane’s telephone conversations? Drudge seems obsessed with it for some reason. Sinces I’ve been away from a computer and the news as a whole (visiting my Air Force son on the Florida Gulf Coast this past weekend), I’m just shocked that the incompetent Clinton Administration expended that much effort surveilling a popular culture figure like Diane while known criminals roamed free around the world without so much as sideward glance from those knuckleheads.

    It’s no wonder that Sandy Berger, in his relaxed-fit Dockers raided the National Security Archives. This is the kind of stuff that should have the American people thinking “hmmm”. What right-thinking voter would want to let the gang that can’t even see straight have the White House again?

  • Arabs states contemplate MAD

    An AP story assures us that the Arab states who are contemplating their own joint nuclear program to oppose Iran’s program are just to insure peace in the region.

    We get quotes like this one;

    Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, told reporters after the closing session that the group did not want to be “misunderstood,” saying its aim “is to obtain the technology for peaceful purposes, no more no less.”
        “Gulf states are not known for seeking hegemony or threatening power, they seek stability and peace,” he said.

    Stability and peace, huh? Then why are they allowing Iran to get out of control now? Why haven’t the peaceful Arab states brought the hammer down on Hezbollah? These peaceful Arab states don’t even curb their own populations from entering into the fray in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet we’re to believe that they want nukes for peace?

    Imagine the oil-rich sheiks holding the world hostage to their oil prices under a nuclear umbrella. Or a nuclear exchange between Saudi Arabia and Iran with missiles crossing the Persian Gulf tanker traffic.

    Maybe it might be easier and safer for the Arab states to get on board with the rest of the world and stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons instead of trying to enter into a mutually-assured destruction scenario. We’ve already seen what price these regal savages put on the lives of their subjects – as long as the leadership of these kingdoms are safe, none of their “common folk” will never be safe.

    ADDED: Maybe if the Arabs stop some of this from happening, I’ll believe they want peace;

    Mohammad Abd al-Hamid Srour moved missiles across southern Lebanon under cover of a white flag. Hussein Ali Mahmoud Suleiman used the porch of a private home to fire rockets. Maher Hassan Mahmoud Kourani dressed in civilian clothes, hid his Kalashnikov in a tote bag and stored anti-aircraft missiles in the back of a green unmarked Volvo. The three men, all members of Hezbollah, were captured by Israel during last summer’s war.

    Now their videotaped interviews form part of a remarkable report by retired Lieutenant Colonel Reuven Erlich of Israel’s Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. Relying heavily on captured Hezbollah documents, onsite and aerial photography and other first-hand evidence, the report shows how the Shiite group put innocent civilians at risk by deliberately deploying its forces in cities, towns and often private homes.

    Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, has accused Israel’s military of “indiscriminate warfare” and “a disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians.” Mr. Erlich demolishes that claim, and in the process shows the asymmetric strategy of Islamist radicals.

     

  • Democrats’ oppositon; common sense

    From today’s Washington Times, a story from Donald Lambro about Obama’s threat to Hillary’s run at the Presidency;

     “Barack Obama is a threat to Hillary, but only if he makes a contrasting case against her,” said Democratic adviser David Sirota, a top strategist in Ned Lamont’s come-from-behind Democratic primary upset over Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who went on to win the general election as an independent.
        “If it’s a popularity contest between two well-known Democratic politicians, then he isn’t much of a threat. But if he starts campaigning on the issues of the Iraq war, on economic issues in contrast to Hillary, who voted for the war resolution, opposed calls for early troop withdrawals and supports free-trade issues that have destroyed jobs here, then he’s a real, major threat,” Mr. Sirota said.
        These Democrats say he has the political talent and grass-roots appeal to overtake Mrs. Clinton in a party that is hungry for new leadership.

    If this is really the case, and I have no reason to doubt it, the threat isn’t from the opposition of the two prospective candidates, it’s from a lack of a common sense among Democrat voters.

    They seem to be convinced that the majority of Americans are actually behind them after squeaking by Republicans in the midterms – something they should have been able to do over the last four elections if you believe their rhetoric.

    They actually believe that Americans are generally opposed to tax cuts and free markets. They actually believe that Americans don’t think the war against terror is neccessary.

    Regardless of their party or political proclivities, Americans usually act in their own self-interests, not, as Democrats would have us believe, as some huge generous ATM for the world. Americans are much more worried about their own families, their own take-home pay, their own retirement than they are about that piece of crap “framework” of Pelosi’s.

    I know Democrats are convinced that they got some huge mandate in November, and if they still continue to believe that for the next two years, the American voters will hand them their collective ass.

    ADDED: Read John Fund’s opinion piece in the WSJ on Pelosi and the challenges to ethics promises pre-campaign.

  • The growing threat

    Taking his cue from the Democrats and the islamofacists, Kim Jong Il has decided to start making demands on the US, too. Since the paranoid North Korean strong man thinks the US may have nukes in the South, he’s decided he won’t participate in negotiations to reduce his threat to the region with his missiles thought to be assembled with baling twine.

    It’s been said that the American people always get the government they deserve. In this case, the American voter has been hornswaggled into electing a government that has broadcast a defeatist message. In response, every tinpot dictator in the world is taking the opportunity to take swats at us.

    It is reminiscent of the post-Reagan years when every blowhard with a forum was calling George Bush a wimp. Even nickel-plated Manuel Noriega thought he could get away with ignoring a local popular election of a President that wasn’t his choice for the job and killing a US Marine and his wife. Forced into a corner, GHW Bush launched an invasion of Panama and eight months later had to send troops to Saudi Arabia to push Hussein out of Kuwait.

    All because the media and the Democrats in Congress tried to defeat a Republican in the court of world opinion. This President is getting backed into a corner, too. Not only by impudent third world maniacs, but also at home with stupid and ill-conceived study groups that can’t shoot straight, Congressional Democrats who talk out of both sides of their mouths, and second-guessing Congressional Republicans rushing to the Left and calling themselves moderate.

    The media is calling for bipartisanship which is really a call for moving the whole country Hard Left and moving our troops out of the Middle East just to vindicate their morally bankrupt 60s anti-war policy.

    So what’re all of these rocket surgeons going to do when George W. Bush explodes into action, when he’s forced to neutralize the Korean threat, the Syrian threat, the Iranian and the Venezuelan threat with the force of arms? Worse yet, what’ll they do when he doesn’t do anything?

  • Whistling past the graveyard

    An AP story records how bad the Iraq Study Group’s report really is;

    “This report is a recognition of the limitation of American power,” said Abdel Moneim Said, head of Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic studies in Cairo. “In the short term, America will highly suffer the loss of its reputation and credibility in the region.”

    The only limitation to American power is the extent to which we’ll endanger non-combatants. If we had the same disregard for human life as the jihadists, they’d all be smolder piles of ashes by now. And as far as suffering the loss of our reputation and credibility; there’s something worse than being the “Great Satan”? We lost our reputation and credibility in the region back when Jefferson started battling the Barbary pirates.

    Mustafa Bakri, an outspoken critic of the U.S. and editor of the Egyptian tabloid Al-Osboa, told a state-run television show that the report indicated “the end of America.”

    Now that’s really whistling past the graveyard. It’ll take more than a bunch of Iron Age savages to bring this country and this culture to it’s end. We’ve withstood much worse than anything this odd collection of goat ropers can dish out. That statement alone ought to make the Administration pull out all of the stops for about a month over there. The insertion of about two more combat brigades complete with aerial support ought to teach the Arab Street a thing or two about our limitations.

    The Iraq Study Group’s report was the top headline in many Arab newspapers on Thursday, including the Egyptian opposition daily Al- Wafd, which declared: “Bush confesses defeat in Iraq.”

    AP must be writing news stories in Egypt, too.

    “Al-Qaida must smell victory, but its a negative victory that comes from the defeat of America in Iraq,” Said of the Al-Ahram center said.

    In Jordan, Al Arab Al Yawm editor-in-chief Taher al-Adwan suggested that Iran could “fill the vacuum” in neighboring Iraq if Arab countries don’t step up and counter U.S. failures.

    “Will the noise of this bullet (the report) reach the Arab capitals, especially the neighboring countries … to push them to formalize a unified Arab position toward Iraq and fill the vacuum by Iraqi national forces who are against the occupation and the Iranian influence,” he wrote.

    So I guess there are some Arabs who see the danger in our premature departure. Let’s hope other Arabs hear them through the caucaphonous prehistorical chants of their “leaders”.

     

  • Giddy alert

    I just found out I’m going to be a grandfather around August or so. I’ll try to keep the giddiness to a minimum, though.

  • Troops rate ISG report

    I hope Rowan Scarborough doesn’t mind me using quotes from his article in the Washington Times today to illustrate what I said yesterday;

    “What we’re not winning is the nation building,” said retired Marine Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong, the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command when the U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein. “The troops know exactly what they’re doing and they know basically that in 14 out of 18 provinces, that they are winning the war on the ground.”

    That’s exactly right. Since the jihadists have been largely unsuccesful in killing American troops in large numbers, they’ve switched to killing civilians since it’s too expensive manpower- and ordinance-wise to directly engage US warriors.

    “If you are in a small unit in Iraq, you are so tied to your buddies right next to you and the next mission and getting it right and trying to survive that you don’t have time to think of grand strategy,” the retired lieutenant colonel [Charles Krohn] said. 

    Troops have little time to think about what politicians say. Politicians are in the business of talking, warriors are in the business of doing.

    “From what I have seen, they are a lot of white-haired politicos with zero military knowledge and experience,” said the soldier, who asked not to be named. “I hope that it will be politely shelved and Bush will rely on those that have some idea what they are talking about. The only effect this will have on the troops, assuming that it’s ignored, is a slight dip in morale.” 

    That’s the whole problem with Democrats from the git-go. Since Truman, Democrats have tried to politicize combat and dictate to warriors how to fight their wars. Since Tzun Tsu, every military philosopher and historian has warned against politicians getting in the way of warriors who are at the bayonet point of foreign policy. It lost the ’52 the ’68 and the 80 election for Democrats and they’ll lose their chances in ’08, too, as long as they think they fight our wars for us.

       Â