07.28.10
A nasty fate awaits hundreds of Afghans
. . . and Wikileaks proprietor Julian Assange is responsible.
07.26.10
Re: the Wikileaks caper
Pretty scummy in general to be leaking classified material and giving three major newspapers an multi-week look at all of it. That said, there’s a well-duh quality to much of what is there. Collateral casualties? Covert operations? These are new elements in war?
For BN’s money, the most noteworthy point of the whole set of documents is the reiteration of what we’ve all known all along: the Pakistani ISI is a pretty rotten organization.
At the risk of sounding ethnocentric or xenophobic, it’s still clear that our best allies in the current world war are the most western ones.
05.31.10
Those bastards wanted to spark something like this all along
It seems that that free-Gaza flotilla of “peace activists” which has among its endorsers such humanity-hating monsters as Miguel D’Escoto, Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky, is having its real intended effect, which is to bring Israel once again to the brink of war.
04.06.10
America doesn’t deserve to protect itself to the full extent of its capability
That’s the message of TCM’s new nuclear policy.
09.23.09
The second worst thing
There’s something odd about Afghanistan having become such a controversy, with deteriorating conditions in that country and waning support for our effort there over here, isn’t there? It was the “good war,” the “necessary war,” the one FHers – including TCM – always held up as the alternative to that exercise in “imperialism” and caprice: our toppling of the Baathists in Iraq.
General McChrystal’s assessment is stark. A resolute defeat of both al-Qaeda and the Taliban is going to take an effort we have not yet mustered. A large number of troops, a long time and a thorough understanding of the lethality of jihadism will all be necessary ingredients.
They probably won’t be applied to the situation. TCM, SecDef Gates, the H-word Creature and other regime figures are speaking of reevaluating strategy even as the enemy is giving us hell like we haven’t seen in our eight years of this effort. Political considerations are no small part of this. TCM knows that the moonbat-and-sprout-muncher contingent comprises a significant part of his base, one which can seal his doom if it turns on him. This bunch hates war more than it loves preserving even its own hide; such is the magnitude of its perversion.
So the likelihood is that the Afghanistan will become a quagmire and then fairly quickly descend into defeat – which probably means the Taliban officially taking back over, another, deeper round of destabiliation of Pakistan, a fresh array of opportunities for al-Qaeda, and a generally weaker hand for the United States in world affairs. Take a moment to ponder the endgame of that set of circumstances.
The last war the US and its allies won resolutely was World War II, in 1945. The Korean “police action” ended in a 1953 armistice, the terms of which still make for no small portion of our current troubles. The Vietnam war ground on for years when it didn’t have to, and concluded with the humiliating specter of terrified Vietnamese citizens clinging to the blades of US helicopters lifting off from the US embassy rootop in Saigon, even as the North’s tanks crashed through the gates of the presidential palace. Desert Storm pried Saddam’s fingers off Kuwait, but left him in power, for another decade of making a fool out of the United Nations, appealing to the corruptability of our ostensible allies in Europe, feeding its own citizens into shredding machines and playing cat-and-mouse with the world regarding the state of its WMD program. The Balkans and Somalia were situations that sputtered to humiliating, sloppy conclusions. We stared down the Soviet Union, but socialism of a Marxist variety still breathes down our neck in the personages of the Castro brothers, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il, and, internally, the TCM regime.
Hence, we’re still beseiged by threats. That’s what happens when victory is less than decisive.
“Well, just what does decisive victory look like in an age of unprecedented lethality?” is a legitimate question to ask.
We had a considerable capacity for lethality in 1945, the last time we brought enemies completely to their knees. What we did to achieve what we had to achieve was ugly beyond anything humanity had conceived before it witnessed it. In Germany, it involved razing cities, most notably Dresden, home to some of Christendom’s most exquisite and historic architecture. In Japan, the metropolitan flattening was done with a device that had been tested for the first time the previous year in the US desert southwest, a weapon of such apocalyptic magnitude that its very existence has loomed in the background of the entire world’s daily life ever since.
I look at photographs of mushroom clouds – from those Japanese bombings, but mostly from various above-ground tests that have been done over the years – the way I look at other kinds of pictures of horror in process: F4 tornadoes looming over housing subdivisions, airplanes in mid-crash, sinking ferry boats. What such agents of utter destruction introduce into the human experience is about all a human mind, heart and soul can bear, maybe more that they can bear but for the grace of God.
I no sooner write the previous paragraph than I’m aware of the difference between the other phenomena I cite and nuclear explosions. The tornado is an act of nature, purely a matter of physics and statistical odds. The ones involving man-made modes of transportation – airplanes and ferry boats – are almost always accidents, owing nothing to the ill will of those who assume prime responsibility for the safety of all involved.
Then there is the nuclear weapon. Is an act of evil committed any time one is detonated?
I’ve written about this before, most recently in my last newspaper column. My conclusion is that, in unleashing the necessary force to subdue one’s enemy, motive is everything. There are two basic motives for taking conflict to that level: to commit evil, or to stop it. The decisive level of force itself is morally neutral.
I’m not oblivious to the possibility that I’m coming across harsh or extreme to certain types of readers here. I’m writing frankly about a harsh and extreme subject. What I am seeking to get to in doing so is a solid sense of where the good lies. One has to pursue that, or we’re talking about a world founded on nihilism, in which there is no ultimate good. The logical extension of such a worldview is the futility of any effort to foster good. That requires cynicism, and I have sworn off cynicism with utter resolution.
What will be necessary to win in Afghanistan is resolve and the supporting material wherewithal of a scale the modern American mostly doesn’t consider. It will take that. I’m not speaking of any specific type of weapon or warfare; I’m no expert in that. It must be sufficient to ensure that the enemy can fight no more, though.
Every one of us, every human being on earth, ought to be horrified of war and never forget its cosmic seriousness. It is perhaps the second worse circumstance we can find ourselves in. The first is living in a world in which evil has prevailed.
09.03.09
And TCM is obviously cool with this guy
In case you need further substantiation of green-jobs-advisor Van Jones’s revolutionary Marxist bona fides, listen to what he has to say about minimum goals, maximum goals and “complete revolution.”
09.02.09
Time for one of those pauses to look at the big picture (but not for long; pausing isn’t advisable in an emergency)
Every time I think my alarm and disgust at the regime that has been gripping America’s throat since mid-January can’t ratchet up any further, a few new developments come along, I consider them in the context of all that has transpired, and my alarm and disgust take a quantum leap once again.
The house is on fire. America is being destroyed by the minute.
The very latest development in this process is the upcoming TCM direct address to school children across the country. As with so many of these undertakings, it will be easy for his minions in the state-run MSM and hard-left side of the punditry world to throw up a smokescreen, for TCM will indeed encourage the kids to study hard and strive for academic excellence. This will be beside the point. The key element of this is in the set of questions the students will be asked to answer, and the key question among these is “How can I help the president?”
“How can I hep the president?” Help him do what?
The same question is being asked of the nations painters, writers, musicians and “cool people” by the National Endowment for the Arts. The conference call among them, organized by the NEA, Rock the Vote, United We Serve, and the White House Office of Civic Engagement (how’s that for a creepily-titled instument of totalitarianism?), was moderated by NEA’s Director of Communications Yosi Sergant. He led off by excitedly characterizing his project as a “brand new conversation” and that he and his associates were still ferreting out “what that looks like legally.”
“Help the president.”
Sergant wasn’t shy about spelling out the fact that this was what he wanted the nation’s creative types to band together to do. He enumerated the four big areas of TCM’s emphasis that he wanted the artists to “push”: energy, health care, education, and the environment.
There it is on full display: complete vindication of BN against any charges of hyperbole when warning that TCM and the Freedom-Hater party in control of the administration and Congress and the MSM have a totalitarian mission. This is about propaganda art. This is Stalinism.
I’ve done some posts in the past few days and weeks on some of the other recent developments that have made my hair stand on end. It’s time to see them all as of one piece and let that fully sink in:
Van Jones, the Marxist “green jobs” advisor
Mark Lloyd, the Marxist FCC “Chief Diversity Officer”
John Holdren, the “window-of-maximum-life-quality” science advisor
Harold Koh, the trans-nationalist top legal dog at the State Department
Cass “why-we-need-the-second-bill-of-rights” Sunstein, head of the White House Office on Information and Regulatory Affairs
Ezekiel Emmanuel
A few posts ago, I wrote of tweaking my main website and rebranding my professional work as a writer, musician and teacher. There’s much to consider. I have a lot of long-standing associations and friendships. I am keen to act on more opportunities. Will my forthrightness about what I see happening to our culture and country help me? It’s not likely. I can’t be silent, though. I will not sit idly by and watch what had been the United States of America become Cuba writ large.
One frequent BN commenter said back in the winter, just a few weeks into TCM’s term, “You’re going to hammer him from the get-go, aren’t you. Can’t you give the guy a chance?”
A chance to do what? I saw this coming. I saw it coming over a year ago.
I’m afraid, but I’m not cowed. That’s because I’m not alone. There are millions of Americans who love freedom, and we are finding each other. And fighting back. We have to. We want to sleep at night.
08.20.09
Absolutely jaw-dropping
State organ MSNBC edits video of the gun-toting attendee of the Arizona TCM rally so as to make it impossible to detect his race (African-American) and then uses the footage to launch into a strong implications that armed Caucasian racists are showing up at these events. Mind you, this was during the daytime “hard news” portion of the network’s broadcast hours.
08.13.09
Why we call them socialists
It was alarming enough to learn that the FCC has a “diversity officer,” but dig this: He’s calling for private broadcasting organizations to shore up funding for public broadcasting – not just through taxes like we all pay, but directly.
08.07.09
How dissent is handled in The People’s Republic of Obamica
In Iran, they’re known as the basij. Here in Obamica, we call them the SEIU.
08.05.09
Roger Corman, Ed Wood and William Castle would be proud
Hot Air has a great post on how the new ad by the Freedom-Hater party apparatus makes the anti-socialism citizens confronting Congressmen on recess out to be bug-eyed zombies. All that’s missing is cheesy late-50s trailer music.
08.04.09
Why we call them jack-booted totalitarians – today’s edition
In Castroite Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua they call them Revolutionary Block Committees, those spy-on-your-neighbor organizations designed to root out anti-proletarian casual talk.
Our regime is putting together its own cyber-version of this useful tool of the state / party.
06.10.09
Why we call them jack-booted totalitarians – today’s edition
They want to regulate pay in private businesses.
They want to tell you how fuel-efficient your car must be.
They want to require you to have health insurance.
They want judges who “empathize” with certain demographic groups.
They want more “diversity” in the local programming of radio enterprises.
Now, they want to tell you what to eat and make sure you exercise.
Read the whole thing if you’re in need of a good hurl. It’s full of the stock phrases, bureacratic doo-doo and touchy-feely “guidance” (a euphemism for the feigned pity / actual contempt that is a hallmark of the left) that is taking over American life: nutritional counseling (because we pathetic rubes have no business choosing foods we like and, in any event, since we can’t hit our own asses with a yardstick, don’t know how to fashion a healthy diet), bike paths (you can kiss the day of local municipalities deciding whether they want stuff like that good-bye), and grocery stores in “underserved areas” (which are those places where people can’t get it together enough to hop in a car or on a bus to get to a store, much less start a store to serve the damn area).
Taxes on alcohol and sugar.
I’ll tell you this. Any goose-stepper who comes between me and my hot wings dripping with ranch dressing and my Woodford Reserve manhattan is asking for the barrel of an AK-47 up his nose.
04.15.09
“May,” “could,” and “potential”
Hey, DHS folks: Perhaps you need reminding on this Tax Day that I’m your employer. So here’s the memo: stick to gathering hard intelligence on jihadists and Communists, strictly enforcing our immigration laws, and breaking up sleeper cells. This other hoo-ha ain’t in your job description.
03.31.09
If I’m ever approached by one of these people
. . . I’ll get very ugly. Keep this acronym in mind: OFA.
03.20.09
The scared little Republican rabbits – here’s the list of names
What is the zoological term for a rabbit with no balls?
11.20.08
A perfect case study in wrong
eharmonycom settles a lawsuit by agreeing to post homosexual profiles.
So much for free markets, respect for individuals’ moral codes, the definition of family that served humankind quite well for 10.000 years and still serves all other species well, and sanity generally.
You have to ask yourself why the person bringing the lawsuit didn’t take the entrepreneurial route and set up a matchmaking site for those who see things his way.
Freedom is dying before our eyes without so much as a whimper.
10.29.08
Kudos to the Columbus Dispatch
. . . for strongly condemning what’s been going on in Toledo, which is a foretaste of the Stasi-like means of dealing with those who dare to exercise their constitutional freedoms that we can expect once the FHers institute one-party rule.
10.05.08
It’s his entrails or yours, Senator McCain
The only real problem for me, and all my homies here at BN, being that our freedom, and this Western civilization that has made our lives so liveable, goes down the tubes if you don’t get a clue, and pronto.
This s— of not letting your campaign bring up Rev. Wright is not just suicidal but genocidal.
