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

Category: Historical

  • Reality Bites

    This not really news to most. A Muslim says that we will be attacked.

    Osama bin Laden’s deputy warned Wednesday that America faces not individual terrorists or groups but an international community of Muslims that seek to destroy it and its allies. He was delivering a 28-minute videotaped eulogy to slain al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

    The rest of the article is a sort of rant.

    Here’s the thing. If we are to face this threat where should we start? Mind you I have no inside info, but we do have a starting point.

    The survey found a strong correlation between the presence of severe violence-promoting literature and mosques featuring written, audio, and video materials that actually promoted such acts. By promotion of jihad, the study included literature encouraging worshipers to engage in terrorist activity, to provide financial support to jihadists, and to promote the establishment of a caliphate in the United States,

    This may well be the time when freedom of religion bites us on the ass. Folks I simply don’t know where to draw the line. The article linked above has merit, but still I dunno where the line really is. That Sharia law is creeping in our direction is a simple fact. If you need further citations I will try to provide.

    Okay… It’s hard also to divorce what this current regime here is doing, but I’ll stick to ‘what is’ rather than ‘what might be’. We have a real threat folks.

    Added: My opinion is NOT the opinion of the staff and management of TAH.

  • Road Trip – Two Civil War Battle Sites

    Just rolled back in from a road trip. Think of this as a snapshot rather than a dissertation.

    Gettysburg and Antietam.

    If you don’t know about either there are many resources available on-line.

    I won’t bore you with MY pictures, again there are plenty available. Some are moving and horrible, but capture moments simply impossible before the camera was invented.

    What I CAN do is offer an impression or two based a first visit after a fair amount of reading and studying.

    Gettysburg: Standing on Little Round Top looking down into The Devil’s Den… Surprising! Pictures and maps do NOT make clear the proximity.

    Antietam: Looking down at Burnside’s Bridge from the position of the Confederates… Shocking.

    Overall that was the surprise for me at both. My minds eye was expecting some epic scale at both places to justify the number of casualties, but no!

    I’ll be reflecting on this trip for years.

  • Seems Appropriate to me?

    War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
    John Stuart Mill
    English economist & philosopher (1806 – 1873)

    Okay, maybe just a little bitter here that it is STILL true.

    People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
    George Orwell
    I’ll leave you with one more.
    Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
    George Santayana

  • I Have a Purple Heart

    I was an Army brat the first few years of my life. I have vague memories (or memories of memories?) of several Army posts; in Georgia, in Arizona, and another place or two. Then my dad was deployed to some place called Korea in 1950.

    Three additional memories are a bit more vivid – the day we were notified he was Missing in Action and, sometime later, that his remains had been recovered, and finally, his funeral. I wasn’t allowed to go.

    I have a Purple Heart.

    He is buried in our home town, and there’s a small memorial in the city park there with his name inscribed. I visit both as often as I can. Even though I was only five or six at the time and will be 65 in about a month I still miss him. I have pictures and memories, and…

    I have a Purple Heart.

    For many others, like myself, Memorial Day has a face.

    I’m heading up to Gettysburg shortly so a line from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address comes to mind easily:  “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion”

    So don’t wish me a happy Memorial Day because…

    I have a Purple Heart.

  • All’s Well That Ends Well

    Sorta…

    Forty years later.
    Vietnam hero cures an old Rutgers wound

    Forty years ago, he attempted to pursue a law degree upon his return from Vietnam and rehabilitation in veterans’ hospitals. He’d been through hell, and the last place he expected to face more of it was in academia. But the climate in the late 1960s and early ’70s was often inhospitable to those who had served in Vietnam, even the most highly decorated.

    Academia – Then and now?

    Because of opposition to the Vietnam War and an antipathy toward those who served, Christian said, the faculty made a circus of his attempt to earn a law degree. “If I got a grade that was marginal, they would release it to the newspapers and news media,” he said.

    Christian said certain of the deans had disputed the existence and severity of his war injuries, many of which are not obvious. “I was asked by the administration to disrobe in front of the student body because they didn’t think I was a disabled veteran,” Christian said.

    “At the time there was no Americans With Disabilities Act and there was no Privacy Act,” he said. “They couldn’t touch the politicians, but they could touch a war hero.”

    He said some faculty members would post lists of purported Vietnam heroes – lists that would include North Vietnamese names.

    I haven’t vetted this story, Jonn or someone else with more ready resources can do so. I can personally vouch for the atmosphere in many colleges back then and that’s why I decided to post this.  Consider this a history lesson if nothing else.

    Update:  Thanks to those who filled in the blanks, so to speak. Even I remembered the name, but this IS TAH.  So I added the caveat.

  • Day of Catastrophe

    Nabka Day – The Palestinian Day of Catastrophe this year even has some fireworks of sorts.

    Via The Jerusalem Post:

    Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday responded to the events of Nakba Day, particularly attempts to infiltrate Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, saying “we are determined to defend our borders.”

    Netanyahu stated that he had instructed the IDF to act with restraint, but to stop all attempts at infiltration and challenges to Israel’s sovereignty.

    In a separate and almost laughingly ironic story:

    Syria condemned on Sunday Israel’s “criminal activities” in the Golan Heights,Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon where Israeli forces had fired to disperse pro-Palestinian protests.

    Israeli troops shot at protesters in three separate locations to prevent crowds from crossing Israeli frontier lines.

    There’s a background piece over at the American Thinker:

    What is the disaster Nakba Day commemorates? Nothing less than the day on which Israel Declared Independence in 1948. And to add insult to injury, the Palestinians commemorate their national disaster day every year to coincide with Israeli Independence Day, around 15 May.

  • Thirty years ago today

    March 30, 1981, John Hinckley asked actress Jodie Foster for a date by shooting President Reagan. She declined, but Reagan went down in history as the first president to survive an assassination attempt…well if you don’t count the time Squeaky Fromme forgot to chamber a round in her Colt M1911A1 when she tried to shoot Gerald Ford.

    Hinckley remains in St Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC after the courts finding him not guilty by reason of insanity.

    Of course the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, named for James Brady, the Reagan staffer who was the other shooting victim that day, is using the anniversary of the event to push for more gun control instead of better enforcement of current laws.

  • Kuwait celebrates victory in the first war against Hussein

    Kuwait parade

    Stars & Stripes reports on the parade marking the 20th anniversary of the end of Saddam Hussein’s bloody occupation of their country and the liberation by a coalition of nations.

    On Saturday, tens of thousands of people, from children to heads of state, lined a stretch of highway outside of Kuwait City for a two-hour military parade of nations from the coalition forces that in 1991 repelled Saddam Hussein’s invading army.

    Tanks, troops, armored vehicles, helicopters and barrel-rolling fighters jets streaming red, green and white smoke – the national colors – passed in formation before Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and other dignitaries including Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 1991, and Spain’s King Juan Carlos.

    It was a spectacle rarely seen in the world today. Saudi, Kuwaiti, French British, and other troops joined the relatively small contingent of roughly 175 Americans thundering down the road and above the grandstands.

    For my battalion, 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry, our second crossing into Iraq from Saudi Arabia began at about noon (local time) on February 24th, 1991 and ended several hundred miles away on Highway 1 outside of Kuwait City on February 28th at 8:30 in the morning. For what happened in the interim days, you can read Tom Clancy’s “Into the Storm” which featured the exploits of 1/41 in Desert Storm.