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Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Assorted
1. Soldier turns PR expert.
Beware the specialist who ventures beyond his demonstrated expertise:
A Florida church's plan to burn Korans on Sept. 11 isn't doing the troops in Afghanistan any favors, Gen. David Petraeus said Monday.Hundreds of Afghans protested Monday in Kabul over the decision by the Gainesville, Fla.-based Dove World Outreach Center to burn copies of what Muslims consider the word of God.
Petraeus said he's concerned that the protests could spread across the country.
"It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan. It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community," Petraeus said in a statement provided to Fox News.
Trouble is, whether or not such incidents occur, the Taliban, HAMAS, Hizbollah, and similar forces will act as if we were doing that and far worse.
We cannot conciliate persons who believe that it is God's wish that we be converted, subjugated, or slaughtered. Our only hope of gaining the upper hand against such forces is to persuade the hypothetical majority of temperate Muslims to disown them -- indeed, to ally with us in the effort to extirpate them. And we cannot do that until those hypothetical temperate Muslims realize that, far from preparing to back down and make concessions to Islam and shari'a, we're getting angrier and more resolute -- that we're on the verge of whipping out the really big guns and laying "restraint" aside.
Cultural confidence is the key to any such posture. Demonstrating that confidence is an unmistakable message to those who believe us weak. In short: Pile those Korans high, douse them with kerosene, and apply a match.
Memo to General Petraeus: You're in the field to kill those bastards, not to make them giggle. You've demonstrated the former expertise in the recent past. Let's see more of it, and faster. Besides, in the current economy it's unwise to be changing trades so precipitously, n'est-ce pas?
2. Rights abusers? Nous?
The Obama Administration's perfidies are many, but high on the list is its recent denunciation of the United States to the United Nations as an abuser of human rights because of Arizona's SB 1070:
Two weeks ago, the Obama administration issued a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council on alleged human rights abuses by the United States. In what marks an unprecedented act of elitism and arrogance by the political class in Washington, our own federal government has complained to a corrupt international organization about the purported sins of Americans....For example, the Obama administration criticized Arizona’s new illegal immigrant law in the report. In effect, our own federal government has complained to foreigners that Americans who favor controlling the border are would-be human rights violators. How it would be a human rights violation for the U.S. to try to control its border—as does every advanced nation—is left unexplained. But regardless of what one thinks of the Arizona law, Americans should be concerned that the federal government is criticizing before the corrupt U.N. the states and people it is supposed to represent.
Well, yes. Especially since the model of "human rights" the Obamunists have adopted is explicitly anti-Constitutional and socialist:
The White House is also attempting to redefine human rights. In the American context, human rights constrain the power of government to control the individual. They are limitations on the government’s ability to censor us, govern us without our consent, prevent us from practicing religion as we see fit, take our property, take our arms, etc.Socialists on the other hand reject these individual rights and talk instead about communal rights, group rights and rights to material goods and services. This basically involves hijacking the human rights moniker and using it to justify a larger government that redistributes wealth.
By bragging about Obamacare in its report to the U.N., and criticizing the U.S. for deficiencies in housing, jobs and healthcare for minorities, the Obama administration has essentially adopted this collectivist view of human rights.
However, because the executive branch of the federal government has essentially unbounded latitude to speak for the United States to other nations, there's little we can do about it short of evicting the Obamunists from power, our next opportunity for which is more than two years away. Until then, the most pernicious of all Cabinet departments will be empowered to slander the very nation whose international interests it was created to protect and advance.
3. September lack-of-surprise.
The Democrats are sensing a large setback come November 2. All the polls indicate that Republican strength in both houses of Congress, and in a number of state legislatures, will increase dramatically after the mid-term elections. In consequence, the Punditocracy has been nattering about the probability of an "October surprise" or two, that might tilt the electorate back toward the status quo.
But a surprise one expects is no surprise at all. More, a number of figures on the left are already heating their irons in the hope of staving off electoral disaster:
- Obama is composing a huge tax-breaks-for-business bill;
- In recognition of the massive shift of corporate donations away from the left, he's also getting ready to propose additional relief for homeowners in mortgage trouble;
- On the class-warfare / beggar-thy-neighbor front, Robert Reich wants to raise the top income tax rate to 90%;
- To motivate the black racialists, Uber-racialist agitator Al Sharpton has been ranting that once a state senate seat has been held by a black man, it has to remain in black hands;
- And of course, the Pretender-In-Chief himself is whining about his his opponents are treating him.
The Internet has changed everything. It's no longer possible to conceal anything substantive about oneself, if one has ever dared to disclose it. It's also no longer possible to disavow one's prior statements or positions, at least not without an elaborate explanation of increased understanding or changed principles that a listener might or might not accept. And "surprises" have become the hardest of all political gambits to make truly surprising.
November 2 is only 56 days away. We shall see.
Comments
I don’t agree with burning the koran. However intentionally or accidently it is very much like building a mosque at ground zero. That is it is an unnecessary provocation and it is their 1st amendment right. I am certain Obama and mayor Bloomberg will come out anyday to support the right to burn the koran.
The problem with Obama’s tax breaks for business is that they have strings attached to require things that may well be unconstitutional. Requiring union participation, providing greater benefits to minorities and targeting areas of the country who have supported democrats. In fact this is just a quid pro quo. We need a special prosecutor.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/07/2010 at 10:34 AMThe actions Obama is talking about taking to soften the upcoming sledgehammer freedom vote, of course, are camouflaged to hide the unconstitutional, socialistic motives behind them, like a flasher pervert hides behind a coat.
Obama’s nanny state regulations, incidentally, have forced a luncheonette in Buffalo, NY run by a friend of mine to close. With all those regulations that reduce profits, he came in last year at a 40 grand loss and taxes still owed.
This mole in the White House; I have no more patience for his prattle and schemes. Obama needs to be unceremoniously removed from the place so even the cocktail partiers in Brentwood can’t hear the ice clinking in the Chevis they’re drinking over his screams.
Of course, the way he most fears; to cease being a national pest, is to be pulled by the body part Michelle most detests. Have no fear, if it’s me doing the pulling, it’ll be with pliers and many ObamaTears; the listening challenged pair; those waxy ObamaEars.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/07/2010 at 02:34 PMI read the words of General Petraeus and my heart sank.
Here, exactly, is what ails us in the West….the vain hope that appeasement and “playing nice” will deflect barbarous ideologues from their stated aims.
In those few words he illustrated perfectly why we are losing and will continue to lose this fight for civilisation.
“Black Jack” Pershing, he ain’t.Posted by KG on 09/07/2010 at 05:01 PMI’ve found the occasion on which I disagree with you to be very rare, Mr. Porretto, and if I do, I usually keep it to myself out of respect. After all, this is your house…
If you’ll indulge my polite attempt to point out a fact, however, it occurs to me that a major portion of a COIN strategy is by replacing your forces with indigenous forces over time, by building alliances with locals and the friendly government that you installed, and by using these alliances to prevail over the insurgency. You need the locals to be won over, both hearts and minds and actions, and to fight against the insurgency, themselves, for no insurgency can survive without the assistance of the people.
The people of whom I speak, who’s assistance we need so badly, are all Muslim.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/07/2010 at 06:19 PMKG - General Pershing was a smart man. Knowing that, I’m not too certain that he wouldn’t be on Petraeus’ side on this one. Yes, Pershing did some things in the Phillipines that were pretty hard-core, and pretty anti-Islam. However, he was doing so within the bounds of a predominately Christian nation, in a scenario when all of his allies in the fight were also Christian (read, not the type to be concerned or offended by disparaging and offensive acts against Islam).
All is fair in war, so I cannot say that what Pershing did was wrong. In fact, anything you do within the bounds of more or less everything outside of genocide is fair play when war is involved. But what sort of a tactician would insult the religion of his enemy when it is the same as that of his greatest ally in the fight?
Certainly not Black Jack Pershing. I’ve read up on the man, and I can gurantee you that he would never have been so stupid as to do what he did in the Phillipines if the friendlies there were also Islamic.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/07/2010 at 06:42 PMGoober, fair points.
But the COIN strategy will fail because we are not dealing with a rational enemy.
“hearts and minds” will not, cannot work where radical islam is concerned. We can win over-say-70% of the population and the radicals will simply terrorise them into submission after we leave.
The only solutions are to break Afghan society utterly, to destroy it so comprehensively that they will be too busy scrabbling for a living to mount any kind of operation against the West or to contemplate hosting islamic radicals again, or to pull out and quarantine the West from muslims.Anything else is mere talk and wishful thinking. And a recipe for defeat.
Posted by KG on 09/07/2010 at 07:20 PMYou also said, Gooner: “The people of whom I speak, who’s assistance we need so badly, are all Muslim.”
What assistance? If they’re Muslim then the commands contained within the Koran explicitly prohibit them from assisting us. In fact those commands require them to kill us.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/07/2010 at 07:26 PMI could hug you for the first item. Either we are free men or we are slaves. We went to Iraq to prove it.
For better or worse we are in Iraq for nation-building. A fool’s errand, to be sure, but as such, I think I must defer to the General and to the bind in which our troops find themselves as ambassadors/protectors. If we were in Iraq to conquer it, then by all means, grant me to set the first match to the misbegotten missive from the vile prophet.
However, inasmuch as Islam is not separate from its global-political aspirations it has set itself up for certain oppositional political speech that necessitates aggrieving its religious sentiments. That’s where I say, “wow, sucks to be you,” and go about searching for a match.
Posted by Joan of Argghh! on 09/07/2010 at 07:51 PMMemo everybody (not just generals):
At some point (which is becoming increasingly clearly denoted), self-indulgent chardonnay soliloquising actually becomes cowardly, treasonable and collaborative with the enemy. Time to suit up, people.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/07/2010 at 07:53 PMTo the commenters on Mr. Porretto’s piece:
My idea of the perfect evening would be to sit down in a comfortable chair in a quiet room surrounded by all of you, and listen to you talk. Mr. Porretto, of course, would also be invited. Rach
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/07/2010 at 09:57 PM“...we are not dealing with a rational enemy.”
Precisely. If they were, THEY would have already taken care of their extremists (we went to war to stop ours). In fact, if Islam was rational, its extremists wouldn’t exist.
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“...we are in Iraq for nation-building. A fool’s errand, to be sure.”No, and yes. No, because Iraq itself has proven it cannot build a nation unless compelled to do so by a monster (most recently, Sadaam) whose mien is more lethal than the country’s divisions. Iraq has to grow out of this need first…
...which is why, yes, it’s a fool’s errand - because we are not monsters.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/07/2010 at 11:07 PMThe best way to stop a toddler from biting other children is to bite them. Gently of course but sufficiently to impress them that it hurts and then they will understand the message that they should not bite. In my opinion when dealing with people not under our constitution and it’s protections we shouldn’t feel obligated to treat them any better then they treat us. I don’t think we will succeed in winning hearts and minds in Iraq or Afghanistan. Certainly some people will befriend us but not most and not enough to make them allies or converts to democracy. I think we are wasting our time, money and lives over there. I recognize the dilemma we are facing with Islamofascist worldwide but the lack of good choices does not mean we should pursue bad ones. At least we chouldn’t pursue the bad choices that cost the most in terms of money and lives.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/07/2010 at 11:14 PMBaron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna gets it:
Eisenhower Warns Against Planned Burning of Mein Kampf(I really hope I didn’t mess that link up!)
Posted by KG on 09/08/2010 at 05:05 AM
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