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

Category: Antiwar crowd

  • Ayers; no longer the unrepentent terrorist

    In a New York Times op-ed, Bill Ayers denies he’s an unrepentant terrorist – not the unrepentant part, the terrorist part.

    The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.

    Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.

    So finely parsed isn’t it?  He plays the victim just like he did the night I heard him speak a few weeks back in DC. Then, as in this editorial, he claimed to be a victim of a media frenzy. The casual victim of the right-wing hate machine. You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet;

    I have regrets, of course — including mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else.

    […]

    The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.

    We — the broad “we” — wrote letters, marched, talked to young men at induction centers, surrounded the Pentagon and lay down in front of troop trains. Yet we were inadequate to end the killing of three million Vietnamese and almost 60,000 Americans during a 10-year war.

    The real regret isn’t about the people who died because of the Weatherground’s action – the real regret is in the realization that they really couldn’t do anything to stop the war. I wonder if the dipshits in the modern anti-war movement understand that?

    Regardless, let’s look at some of WU’s projects, shall we? On March 6, 1970 a bomb went off in Greenwich Village accidentally. The bomb was an antipersonnel type bomb – they’d added roofing nails to the package of explosives, and it’s intended purpose was to kill NCOs and their dates at the Fort Dix NCO Club that night. Theodore Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins were killed in the explosion. Cathy Wilkerson and Kathy Boudin survived the blast (because they were several floors above it).

    Kathy Boudin was arrested a decade later for the 1981 Weatherman Nyack, New York Brinks armored truck robbery which resulted in the murders of two policemen and an armored truck security guard. At that point,  Boudin was a member of the May 19 Communist Organization, along with several other former members of WU including David Gilbert, Samuel Brown, Judith Alice Clark, and Marilyn Buck.

    The fact that the Weather Underground, as an intact organization, didn’t kill anyone was purely accidental – they were bumbling Keystone terrorists, but terrorists, nonetheless. The intent was there – and of course, Ayers justifies that intent by waving the bloody shirt of US troops killed and Vietnamese killed. But, the truth is; Ayers and his merry band of dipshits planned to kill MORE American troops on our own shores – and he’s unrepentant about that.

    They bombed the Pentagon, the US Capitol and the State Department – they didn’t kill anyone purely by accident – only because they were incompetent boobs. Remind you of anyone?

    ADDED: Don Surber writes that Ayers is a liberal’s dream;

    Thus we see the perfect liberal.

    He never takes personal responsibility for his actions.

    He is always the victim.

    And he hides his true identity.

    In his case, he hates America, and he hates capitalism.

    Ziggy send a link to Michelle Malkin about a community organizing group’s auction which offers a dinner with Bill and Bernadine house. Ziggy would like to see one of ya’all win the auction and spend the evening sticking your finger in Ayers’ eye.

    More from Jules Crittenden.

  • Mugged by reality

    A few weeks ago, the barren hags of Code Pink were celebrating the win of their candidate, Barack Obama, as the end of all war. Today, they’re not so sure;

    While Obama is busy trying to convince us that a cabinet made up of the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush administrations is really change, the anti-US crowd is beginning to wonder if they’ll really have a voice. The Boston Globe‘s Joan Vennochi  wrote yesterday that in order to be a FOO (Friend of Obama), you had to have been an enemy first;

    John Kerry’s fate illustrates the new political order under President-elect Barack Obama: Reward your enemies, not necessarily your friends.

    Hillary Clinton, Obama’s tough primary opponent, became Obama’s choice for secretary of state; Kerry, an avid Obama ally, was passed over. Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, is also a former rival. Yesterday, Obama named Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, another primary challenger, as his pick for commerce secretary.

    What’s next, Dennis Kucinich as secretary of labor?

    Before that, Obama stood behind Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat turned Independent who campaigned hard for Republican John McCain. With Obama’s blessing, Lieberman retained a prestigious committee chairmanship.

    If you’re Kerry, you’ve got to be feeling a bit like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – thrown under the Obama bus, while ex-rivals climb merrily aboard.

    Apparently, there’s room under that bus for all of those gullible jackasses on the Left who thought that Obama was serious about change.

  • The War Against Terror, in case you forgot

    It’s been easy to forget that the war against terror is actually a war against terror the last few years while Iraq and Afghanistan became (and still are) political footballs. With the Left trying to call the war “imperialistic” and “immoral” they seem to forget that there are folks out there trying to kill us all. The action in Mumbai last week has brought that home to those of us who remain sane. While IVAW and World Can’t Wait (the Maoist-rooted communist organization) were protesting the war in San Francisco, innocent people were dying in Mumbai for no other reason than to shock the world. Gateway Pundit writes that the death toll may reach 300 after scores of bodies were found stacked in some of the hotel rooms.

    At least four of those killed were Americans. Not American spies, or American military personnel, but just Americans. Alan Scherr and his 13-year-old daughter Naomi were probably the same types who were protesting in San Francisco (Washington Post);

    Alan Scherr was an art professor with a comfortable life in the Maryland suburbs, but he spent 25 years studying Transcendental Meditation in a quest for something more. The search took him and his family to Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, where they shed their old life in Silver Spring and meditated in the complex of a New Age mystic.

    Rabbi Gavriel N. Holtzberg, 29, and his Israeli wife, Rivka, 28 were apparently bound with telephone wires before they were executed in the Mumbai Jewish Center (Washington Post);

    “They were killed,” whispered Yeshiva boys just out of school, holding scooters and book bags.

    Grown men turned and strode away, suddenly tearing up.

    “I don’t understand how this works,” said Yosef Rodal, 18, a yeshiva student who said Gavriel Holtzberg was a distant relative. “How do bad things happen to good people?”

    Four peaceful people murdered purely for the shock value – no military goals, no tactical advantage. Just mass murder – and the 200 known dead weren’t enough. The only terrorist captured alive claims they were going for 5,000 dead (Daily Mail);

    Azam Amir Kasab, 21, from Pakistan, said the attacks were meticulously planned six months ago and were intended to kill 5,000 people.

    He revealed that the ten terrorists, who were highly trained in marine assault and crept into the city by boat, had planned to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel after first executing British and American tourists and then taking hostages.

    Well, no they weren’t really highly trained – anyone can pull a trigger and pull pins on grenades. A highly trained force would have gotten out alive after killing a lot more people. As Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive wrote last night these ten people were “not much more than chimps with an evil purpose”. Curt at Flopping Aces says they’re just run-of-the-mill cowards.

    Does anyone think that ANSWER or World Can’t Wait or Not In Our Name are going to protest the people who sent the ten chimps out to kill innocent people? Not on your life. A few days ago, I got to listen to the same types defending Bill Ayers’ domestic terrorist activities as a logical result of American foreign policy. They damn sure aren’t going to condemn foreign terrorists.

    In fact, The Nation finds a Pakistani to condemn American and Indian State terrorism as the reason for the attacks. In between rants about ‘Hindu facism” and in the typical sleight-of-hand language of the terrorist apologists in this country to which we’ve become accustomed, Humayun Gauhar writes;

    Group terrorism is a last-resort cry of a people long oppressed. Poorly armed, in utter desperation, they turn their own bodies into bomb delivery systems for lack of cannons, missiles, Predator drones and helicopters armed with Hellfire Missiles, fighter jets and bombers that State Terrorists have. They don’t have Daisy Cutters so they make ‘Improvised Explosive Devices’. India is one of the biggest State Terrorists of them all. Pakistan is the biggest victim (and sucker) of both State Terrorism and group terrorism, a hapless country that always becomes a frontline state in a superpower imperialist adventure gone wrong in return for millions of ingrate refugees to share scare food with and thousands of foreign terrorists and freedom fighters pushed in by the failure of State Terrorism.

    So as long as it remains perfectly legitimate to kill innoncent people in large numbers to make a point, we can’t expect the Left to engage in meaningful discussions about how to defend ourselves since everything we do in that regard seems to be the wrong answer. If we can’t agree that there’s no rational justification for murdering innocents, I guess there’s nothing to talk about.

  • IVAW causes First Casualty in SF (Updated)

    Preaching to the choir, the Iraq Veterans Against the War took their worn and tired message to San Francisco for their performance recreation of what they call “First Casualty” which refers to the truth being the first casualty of war. They disrupted “Black Friday” shopping in Union Square for two hours before their press conference.

    Actually, it’s just a way to meet hairy-legged hippie chicks. I mean they can’t be serious. (You can click these pictures for a larger view)

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  • Anti-war clowns feel cold slap of reality

    Obama was their hope, he was their change. The far Left tossed Hillary Clinton aside and stalked Nancy Pelosi because they weren’t quite as anti-war as the moonbats had hoped. Obama was the hope – but now, not so much.

    The World Socialist Web Site laments the appointment of Robert Gates to another year at the helm of the Pentagon as the absolute betrayal of the Left by Obama;

    Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination over Senator Hillary Clinton in large measure because he appealed to the same antiwar sentiments that had propelled the Democrats to their victory in the 2006 congressional elections. His mantra throughout the primary campaign—a rebuke to Clinton and other rival Democratic candidates who had voted for war in the Senate—was that he would end the war in Iraq, “a war that should never have been authorized and never been fought.”

    Now, with the retention of Gates at the Pentagon, and the widely reported offer of the State Department to Clinton—as well as the selection of a slew of pro-war figures for lesser national security positions—Obama is reassuring the military, the intelligence agencies and the ruling elite as a whole that he will be firmly committed to the defense of US imperialism, including clinging to every inch of territory and every drop of oil secured by the Bush administration’s criminal aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    I’ll tell them right now, that no honorable person can take the oath of office and do what the Left expects of him. Before they got their cold slap of reality, Obama got one, too. That anti-war stuff worked on the BDS sufferers in the Democrat Party, but it didn’t work in the general election. Obama hardly mentioned the war after he won the primaries. He knows what the Left won’t accept – Americans don’t want to suffer another post-defeat period like we did after Vietnam.

    So, in a related piece, someone named Dee Knight writes that the key to ending the war is veterans and currently-serving military personnel;

    Whether President Obama plans to live up to the promise or not is beside the point, especially for the GIs: they want to go home and they don’t want to wait. We should look closely at this. We need to assess the mood of the GIs and their families. We should not expect it to be uniform, but we can be sure there will be a surging mood to get out of Iraq . And a lot of GIs will want to get out of Afghanistan – or stay out of it – at least as strongly. This mood could take many forms: petitions, sit-downs, AWOLs, etc.

    The vets’ and resistance movements should encourage the idea that the GIs can and will end the war NOW. And we should demand that the new president not only bring the troops home, but also:

    Make a serious effort to heal the wounds of the vets who were forced to fight there;
    Help vets get jobs and education;
    Grant unconditional amnesty to those vets and resisters who are either in exile or jail/brig/stockade, or suffering the long-term effects of less than honorable discharges.

    Granting amnesty to the criminals isn’t going to help the folks who’ve done their job. It won’t “heal their wounds” or help them get jobs and education. If one single event turned veterans against Jimmy Carter and the Democrats it was when Carter gave amnesty to draft dodgers. Many haven’t forgiven the Democrats since (it was what turned me away from Democrats). But the anti-war crowd has found their voice and rebuilt the momentum they lost after Vietnam. They’ve learned that they need a continuity of their movement beyond their political goals.

    The Left’s refusal to turn loose of their anti-war blather at this point only reinforces our continued need to support the legitimate and proven VSOs as well as the new arrivals like Gathering of Eagles, Move America Forward and Eagles Up. Our side used to condemn them for not speaking up against the Clinton Wars, we’d be just as hypocritical if we didn’t continue to support the troops during an Obama Administration. The anti-war clowns are planning anti-war activities in the Spring and we need to continue to show up, to be seen and to be heard supporting the US war against terror.

    This blog will continue in that endeavor – and we’ll continue to point out the idiots and ass clowns who try to undermine the morale and good order and discipline in the military.

  • Deserter applies for asylum in Germany

    Meet Andre Shepard, the latest in a short line of deserters from the US military. Shepard is unique in that he has applied for asylum to Germany. Asylum. As if he’s persecuted in his own country, instead of being one of the unique few who’re allowed to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Why did he desert? Well, because he had a revelation of sorts;

    Andre Shepherd, 31, who served in Iraq between September 2004 and February 2005 as an Apache helicopter mechanic in the 412th Aviation Support Battalion, has been living in Germany since deserting last year.

    “When I read and heard about people being ripped to shreds from machine guns or being blown to bits by the Hellfire missiles I began to feel ashamed about what I was doing,” Shepherd told a Frankfurt news conference Thursday.

    “I could not in good conscience continue to serve.”

    He was a mechanic in a support battalion (he’s not a flight line helicopter mechanic) that HEARD about people being ripped to shreds. Just ordinary people walking down the street minding their own business were suddenly being ripped to shreds for no apparent reason. Well, see that’s not all;

    The specialist was posted to Germany in 2005 where he undertook desk jobs, but he gradually began questioning the justification for the Iraq war and began worrying he would be sent back to serve there….

    He was worried he MIGHT be sent to Iraq. And he wasn’t even performing in a role that would have directly ripped perfectly innocent people walking down the street minding their own business. Actually his unit, the 412th Aviation Support Battalion, did go to to Iraq and they returned to Germany in September – but he didn’t know that when he deserted.

    So, instead of absconding to The Netherlands, or Spain, or Turkey, where his “asylum” application might have been seriously considered, Shepard is staying right in Germany, a country that has never accepted applications for asylum from Americans. Most likely because he has a fraulein in Germany whom he doesn’t want to take his eyes off for a second, lest she abscond with the next guy in uniform she meets.

    There’s always an ulterior motive for these guys, it’s never as simple as their conscience – and it usally relates to thoughts from their “other head”.

    Hat tip to someone for the tip.

  • More phony soldier BS

    Yeah, yeah, I know. The whole purpose of milblogs is to elevate the opinion Americans have of our military members…I’ve been lectured on that recently. Several times. However, our military members come from our own society. When our culture is sick, some of the members of our military – a very small percentage…less than .001% – are going to be bad actors.

    When I was a NCO, one of our tenets was to never ignore a deficiency, whether it was low vehicle fluid levels, a dirty weapon, some doofus walking down the street in November with his uniform sleeves rolled up and his hands in his pocket or a cigarette butt on the ground.

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  • Anti-war groups fear pro-war Obama cabinet

    I picked this up from some people I don’t normally agree with over at The Common Ills. Well, I do agree with them on may things concerning IVAW, but their post today pointed me towards a Paul Richter piece in the LA Times entitled “Antiwar goups fear Barack Obama may create hawkish cabinet“. The anti-war clubs think they put Obama in office and they seem disturbed that Obama is moving away from them;

    The activists are uneasy not only about signs that both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates could be in the Obama Cabinet, but at reports suggesting that several other short-list candidates for top security posts backed the decision to go to war.

    “Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning,” said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of the 54-chapter Iraq Veterans Against the War.

    The activists — key members of the coalition that propelled Obama to the White House — fear he is drifting from the antiwar moorings of his once-longshot presidential candidacy. Obama has eased the rigid timetable he had set for withdrawing troops from Iraq, and he appears to be leaning toward the center in his candidates to fill key national security posts.

    The Common Ills thinks they were foolish to believe him in the first place and foolish to make the war their central case against Hillary Clinton;

    …an IVAW contingent already embarrassed themselves publicly in Denver. They staged a protest at the Democratic Party convention. They were getting press attention inside the convention because — as the press gas bagged — wasn’t Barack the alleged ‘anti-war’ candidate and here was IVAW protesting him. Phones were buzzing, it was going to be the big story. And Team Obama was being asked to comment. So Team Obama sent Tall Tales from Texas out to the protest to make a lot of meaningless remarks that sounded like promises but were nothing more than standard ‘rap session’ b.s. (“I know where you’re coming from,” said Barnes.) They bought into that crap hook, line and sinker. And gave interviews where they were excited about Barack (the War Hawk!) and he was going to do this or that and maybe they’d be onstage tonight during his big speech and . . . . It was all so thrilling people might pee their pants!

    Reality check, they were punked and everyone knew it right away (including the press — not always notorious for grasping reality immediately) except IVAW.

    They stopped their protest and there was no story (certainly nothing that would embarrass Barack). Barack turned them into props for the 2008 election.

    I said the same thing and several times since. While Code Pink declares that they ended the war in Iraq by electing Obama, while IVAW chirps about meetings with Obama’s staff, they still don’t realized they’re just being strung along. They threw Hillary Clinton under the bus for her vote in 2002, so now they get her for Secretary of State. And they’re also getting the Senate Majority Leader who wrangled the vote for the war in Iraq and the airline bailout for his wife’s industry in 2001 – Tom Daschle – in the Obama cabinet. Even King of the Dolts, John Kerry, is being considered for a posting. From the Richter LA Times piece;

    “It’s astonishing that not one of the 23 senators or 133 House members who voted against the war is in the mix,” said Sam Husseini of the liberal group Institute for Public Accuracy.

    Not really astonishing – I’ve been saying all along that they were being played by Obama. I remember that Jon DeWald, the IVAW’s new intellectual spokesman, came here and explained how this was a genuine gesture on the part of the Obama campaign. So who gets the last laugh?

    Would they be better off with Hillary? Not as far as the war is concerned, but at least they knew where she stands on a issue, she wouldn’t necessarily intentionally lie as Obama apparently has done.

    Kevin Martin, executive director of the group Peace Action, said that although Obama had campaigned as an agent of change, the president-elect is “a fairly centrist guy” who appears to be choosing from the Democratic foreign policy establishment — “and nobody from outside it.”

    “So, in the short term, we’re going to be disappointed,” he said. “They may turn out to be all pro-war, or at least people who were pro-war in the beginning.”

    So, all that Hope and Change stuff is out the window. So Code Pink and IVAW get tossed under the bus – not that it’s a bad thing. I also get word that ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice applied six months ago for protest permits in DC for March 21st and the protest is still on. From a blogging standpoint, an Obama presidency is looking like good for business.