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Everywhere else in English Canada gets the day off. Quebec doesn’t take the day off either. Does it make a difference? At 11 am somewhere people will stop shopping in malls and stand around uncomfortably for a moment (not a minute mind you) and then continue what they were doing.

Everyone will be wearing the requisite “falls off the instant you buy it” poppy but how many wear it out of true appreciation for soldiers who died in foreign lands fighting for abstract ideals that they themselves couldn’t understand rather than out of guilt and peer pressure?

I come from a military family of sorts. My father was a war veteran along with several uncles. My great uncle was highly decorated during WWI. Remembrance Day has always been looked up on as a sacred day where I come from - almost on the level of Good Friday. I always hold it in that regard.

However I have become somewhat disillusioned lately with the eagerness of those around me to enthusiastically show their “reverence” in public whilst seemingly missing the larger picture. The most obvious example in my mind are the “I support the troops but I don’t support the war crowd” you know what? Try saying this instead. “I’m an isolationist like the Republicans were in the 40’s. Back then I would have said that we have no business meddling in Germany’s affairs”. Because it’s pretty much the same thing.

Someone I follow on Twitter said yesterday that “it’s easy to support a war when you don’t have to go and fight and get killed” (or something to that effect). You know what else is easy? Cheering for wars we won in the past as being good wars when you already know the outcome. WWII is one that people assume they would “support” because it was against those bad ol’ Nazis. But anyone who reads the history of that conflict (I mean detailed histories not the executive summaries you got in high school) knows just how hard that war was and just how close it came to being lost. Something tells me the “I support the troops but not the war” crowd wouldn’t have been able to stomach it beyond Dunkirk let alone Dieppe, Pearl Harbour, the fall of Singapore, the Bataan Death March, the Blitz, The Battle of the Atlantic, Operation Market Garden, and on and on and on…..

Kathy Shaidle has some thoughts of her own here

Related: The latest big money special effects flick from Hollywood is typical of what most people really think of the military these days

Oh and one more thing: We don’t talk enough about the absolute betrayal of Czechoslovakia any more. Just to refresh your memory

Super Cool Update: Tyler brings the “funny but true”

I wish we had big parades today like the Russians used to where they showed off all their missiles and tanks and guns and stuff. Then other countries would know how badass we are. Unless you’re Darth Maul, an American soldier can kill you before you even have time to wonder what that splashing sound is (note: your intestines + the ground). They’ll kill you even if you are Darth Maul, but you could probably fight them off long enough to shit your pants, so I guess that’s something.

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I can’t believe 8 years have gone by. I remember the day after talking to my wife and saying aren’t you happy Gore’s not the president and Bush is (she was more of a Gore supporter than Bush supporter). She had to concede she felt much better with Bush in the oval office than Gore.

In retrospect I still think it was the better outcome.

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SDA has a post up this morning (also linked to by Kathy) that points out the rather quaint yet sinister tendency of the media to refer to Muslim extremists in somewhat counter-intuitive yet subtly biased manners.

This however is not a new thing I noticed a few years back in the Economist (a magazine that has gone so far downhill I won’t be renewing my subscription this time around.)

From The Economist July 19th 2007:

In the majlis these consist of a rump of Khatami-style reformists and a larger block of people who travel under the “conservative” banner but who are pragmatic in their approach and oppose Mr Ahmadinejad’s brand of what many outsiders have come to call “neoconservatism”.

That’s right you read it correctly. Two years ago the Economist was calling Ahmadinejad a neocon. Read the Original article. if you don’t believe me.

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Shame that this report didn’t make the rounds say just prior to November of last year. Might have put Obama’s misplaced (and partisan) criticism of the surge in an unflattering light.

Whenever I see and hear good news from Iraq I always think back to that day when Patraeus was being grilled by Hillary Clinton and she dismissed his optimism as requiring a “willing suspension of disbelief” in other words she basically called him a liar. Funny how this woman who was so willfully deceptive on this issue is now the Secretary of State.

Via: Hot Air

This does play into my earlier prediction that Obama would be able to draw down troops from Iraq because the war was going so well. So in the end Bush and PAtreus have done him a big favor.

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More on the success of the surge from the weekend WSJ (Might be behind a subscription wall so here’s a snippet:

For the next three years, Donald Rumsfeld and the senior generals pushed a “short-war” scenario, “which was to get a political solution quickly, transition to the Iraqis security quickly, and get out,” says Gen. Keane. “It didn’t work. And why didn’t it work? Because the enemy voted and they took advantage. The fact that we did not adjust to what the enemy was doing to us and the Iraqis were not capable of standing by themselves — that was our major failure. . . . It took us all a while to understand the war and [that] we had the wrong strategy to fight it. Where I parted from those leaders [at the Pentagon] is when we knew the facts — and the facts were pretty evident in 2005 and compelling in 2006 — and those facts were simply that we could not protect the population and the levels of violence were just out of control.”

In late 2006, after the midterm election debacle for Republicans, pressure rose for a quick if dishonorable exit from Iraq. Gen. Keane met Frederick Kagan, who was putting together a report on an alternative strategy for Iraq at the American Enterprise Institute. On Dec. 11, both men found themselves at the White House to push the plan. Congress, the Joint Chiefs, Iraq commander Gen. George Casey and the Iraq Study Group all wanted a fast drawdown. President Bush ignored their advice. Gen. Petraeus was sent out in February to oversee the new, risky and politically unpopular surge.

Even Gen. Keane didn’t expect the new strategy to work so fast. “It’s a stunning turnaround, and I think people will study it for years because it’s unparalleled in counterinsurgency practice,” he says. “All the gains we’ve achieved against al Qaeda, the Sunni insurgency, the Iranians in the south are sustainable” — a slight pause here — “if we’re smart about it and not let them regroup and get back into it.”

Funny the short-war scenario seems to be exactly what Obama was preaching about during the hearings about the surge. See this entry from yesterday and hit the two vids.

The rest here.

Via: Glenn Reynolds.

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You know the war in Iraq is going well when even the New York Times is reporting it.

Two years ago, when I last stayed in Baghdad, Karada Mariam was like the whole of the city: shuttered, shattered, broken and dead.

Abu Nawas Park — I didn’t recognize that, either. By the time I had left the country in August 2006, the two-mile stretch of riverside park was a grim, spooky, deserted place, a symbol for the dying city that Baghdad had become.

These days, the same park is filled with people: families with children, women in jeans, women walking alone. Even the nighttime, when Iraqis used to cower inside their homes, no longer scares them. I can hear their laughter wafting from the park. At sundown the other day, I had to weave my way through perhaps 2,000 people. It was an astonishing, beautiful scene — impossible, incomprehensible, only months ago.

The entire article is here: Back in Iraq, Jarred by the Calm

But here’s another great tidbit:

In the 24 months that her sons were gone, Ms. Salman said she rarely ventured outside. The exception, she said, was when she saw American soldiers.

“Oh, I love them,” Ms. Salman said, brightening in her darkened house. “I always knew I was safe with them.

Related - Is Hillary Clinton willing to retract this statement now? I mean she essentially called Petraeus a liar for saying the surge was succeeding. (FFwd to about 58 seconds to see what I mean)

And this is the clip of Barack Obama that a lot of people should be viewing relevant to his claim to be qualified to be Commander in Chief of a nation at war:

ff to about 3.00 and let it run for a cavalcade of wild generalizations that the results outlined in the NYT article above renders ridiculous and incredibly myopic for someone who is deemed to be presidential material. Namely - Al-Qaeda is stronger now then ever and the surge has only been modestly successful. Then after about 5 minutes of hot air he finally asks a question which it turns out has already been asked and answered (See second clip). Nice job Mr. Future President Windbag.

VIA

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Trust Nick Packwood to succinctly get to the heart of things: Ghost of a flea: Equations for a falling body

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Has it really been seven years already? Seems like only yesterday.

Kathy has some great stuff up on the subject including a graph showing world opinion on who actually carried out 9/11.

Generally the majority believe it was Al-Quaeda but there are some strange numbers. For example more Palestinians believe Al-Quaeda was responsible (42%) than Mexicans (33%). What’s up with that?

more

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And made me feel ashamed that I am not made of “post-Edwardian stuff”

There is still great bravery in the world, still much to aspire to. But I cannot see anything of that post-Edwardian daring in our world, fashioned as it was in the trenches of the War To End All Wars. I have a great fear for what lies ahead of us. If the conflagration comes and our remaining strength should fail then many, many of us will be killed. The ones who survive will only do so through having chosen submission. Our books will be burned, our freedoms thrown with them on to the pyre. Our priceless, irreplaceable treasures of history, philosophy and art plundered and destroyed; at first through through wanton violence and soon thereafter by neglect. Any truth remaining then claimed as a prize of war, as the “science” of the conquerors when it will be no more than barbarous, and sterile, translation….

…If some spark of civilization is to endure, we must imagine a leaderless resistance, a rhizomatic resistance; something closer to Anonymous than the Maquis of wartime France, there will be no friendly power across the Channel, no airdrops of arms, no broadcasts from Bush House.

Read it all. Every last bit of it.

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Commentary has an excellent article on the “surge”, how it evolved and why it’s working. A bit of a long read but well worth it.

Some highlights:

This new and different strategy, now called the “surge” but at one point called by insiders the “bridge,” emerged out of a growing recognition over 2006 that our critics were right about one thing: Our Iraq policy was not working. At the same time, however, and whether knowingly or ignorantly, many of those same critics were insisting that the answer lay in pursuing precisely the same strategy we already had in place. That is, they were telling us that we needed (a) to push Iraqi government officials to come together politically and (b) to train Iraqi troops so that they could take over from American forces. We had been doing exactly these things for a year, and we had been driven to the brink…..

…Some Democrats in the “loyal opposition”–i.e., those who were not simply advocating an irresponsible strategy of defeat and withdrawal–made the same point, but more often they took a different tack. Charging that the administration had no strategy beyond “staying the course,” they proposed instead that the United States pressure the Iraqis to bring the sullen and disaffected Sunni minority into the political sphere. This would siphon support from the insurgency. In addition, the Pentagon needed to accelerate the training of Iraqi security forces to handle more of the load against the enemies of the new Iraq. And the State Department had to lean on Iraq’s neighbors to do more to help.

This counsel seemed maddeningly sensible to us. It was, to the letter, the administration’s strategy at that very moment. Still, exasperating though it may have been to be told that we should do what we were actually doing, this line of criticism also seemed to contain potentially good news. Perhaps, we thought, we could find common ground with these Democratic critics–their number included Sens. Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Carl Levin–and forge a consensus on how to move forward.

On Sen. Murtha:

Mr. Murtha was a veteran of the Vietnam War and a hawk on defense spending–someone generally thought to be at home with the old “Scoop” Jackson wing of the Democratic party. When it came to Iraq, he turned out to be something else. “Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty,” Mr. Murtha summarily declared at his press conference, and now it was time to bring the troops home–as soon as possible, but no later than in six months.

Mr. Murtha was not calling for a gradual transition to Iraqi control. To the contrary, he was advocating the wholesale abandonment of Iraq. As he well knew, moreover, six months would be the fastest possible withdrawal under the most optimistic timetable, with our forces working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to pull out all of the equipment and matériel we had brought in over the previous three years. This was not a brief for haste but rather a recipe for panic.

Unlike those critics who lambasted our policy and then commended it to our attention, Mr. Murtha was presenting an unambiguous alternative. The left wing of the Democratic :arty and its supporters in MoveOn.org had finally found a spokesman with credentials on national security to make the most extreme case for the war’s end.

The media lauded the Murtha plan, but they did not examine it closely. I spent hours with reporters in a futile effort to persuade them to show Mr. Murtha the respect of subjecting his scheme–including his bizarre notion of redeploying troops 5,000 miles away on the island of Okinawa in the Sea of Japan–to the same level of scrutiny they lavished upon administration policy. One key reporter told me, “We don’t scrutinize Murtha’s plan because none of us takes it seriously.”

Inside the White House, we joked bitterly that the only way we could get people to see the flaws in Murtha’s proposal would be to offer it as our own.

The attempts to kill the surge before it happened:

Week after week, the Democrats attempted to use their control of Congress to suffocate the surge in its cradle. Various proposals were advanced to hobble Gen. Petraeus and render implementation impossible. In April, just as the 30,000 new surge troops were entering the country, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared peremptorily: “This war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.”

Read the whole thing here

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We all know that a picture is worth 1000 words. I think this one is beyond that. It captures the entire essence of the war on terror and the hypocrisy of the progressive left better than a 1000 or 10,000 word essay ever could.

The photo was snapped in Berkley at the counter protest against the Berkeley council’s treatment of the Marine recruitment centre there.

See more at Zombie time here.

VIA: LGF (and note the photo in their post which also captures the essence of the other side quite nicely.

Update: Well maybe a picture can’t beat a kick ass poem:

28 But of layte have beyn chaunced to see

29 From Edinburgh to London-towne

30 The Musslemans in burnoose gowne

31 Who beat theyr ownselfs with theyr knyves

32 Than goon home and beat theyr wyves

33 And slaye theyr daughtyrs in honour killlynge

34 Howe do we stoppe the bloode fromme spillynge?”

35 The Bishop sipped upon hys tea

36 And sayed, “an open mind must we

37 Keep, for know thee well the Mussel-man

38 Has hys own laws for hys own clan

39 So question not hys Muslim reason

40 And presaerve ye well social cohesion.”

41 Sayth the libertine, “’tis well and goode

42 But sharia goes now where nae it should;

43 I liketh bigge buttes and I cannot lye,

44 You othere faelows can’t denye,

45 But the council closed my wenching pub,

46 To please the Imams, aye thaere’s the rub.”

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A recent declassified Al Qaeda document shows that the terror group has pretty much collapsed into bickering and desertion and fighting over who owes who money and who has which sniper rifle.

Read it first hand here. But if you’re lazy here’s a snippet for you:

“The Islamic State of Iraq [al-Qaeda] is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar province. Al-Qaeda’s expulsion from Anbar created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight.

“The morale of the fighters went down and they wanted to be transferred to administrative positions rather than be fighters. There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organization.

VIA: lgf: Al Qaeda Documents Show They’re in Big Trouble. Also more here

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High winds knocked out power here this morning (it just returned). So no big post today.

I did catch Kathy and Mike on the Michael Coren show last night. It was all very civil and what was surprising was the whole panel agreed that the complaints against Ezra and Mark were contrary to the intent of the HRC’s.

Mike - has gained some weight! Last time I saw him I was teasing him that he looked like a meth addict. Maybe the camera adds 30lbs? Either that or he has been hitting the gym. Although I would recommend a suit or sport coat for future TV appearances. And stop folding your arms it makes you look too defensive.

Kathy looked great and was remarkably restrained. But then again the show did have an exceedingly polite tone to it.

Most impressive was the woman from the Canadian Free Speech or Civil Rights (I forget the name of the organization as I have her name). She was obviously a left winger but her arguments against using the HRC to police speech and thought were as “cogent” (get it? ha ha) and well articulated as any I have heard from the right.

The lawyer guy made completely spurious arguments and examples and didn’t do anything to disprove Kathy’s contention that lawyers are a major part of the problem here.

Unlike some commenter in Mike’s blog I didn’t have to run out an buy a TIVO to get the show. I PVR’d it on my hd box and watched it after the Leafs game. Considering what passes for hockey these days in leaf land it was a pretty decent palate cleanser.

Update: Welcome Five Feet of Fury folks. For the record Kathy I wasn’t lying - but I am not going to sue you for suggesting I was

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From Kathy Shaidle

My male colleagues in the peace movement included a date rapist, a wife beater and guys with the most hair trigger tempers I’ve ever encountered.Scratch a “progressive” male and you’ll frequently find a poorly adjusted, passive aggressive bully.

As one who swam in that particular cesspool (the “protest movement”- not wife beating and date rape, I had neither a wife to beat or a date to rape in those days) during my time in the Hardcore Punk movement in the 80’s I can certainly vouch for Kathy’s statements. At least the skinheads were overt in their sadistic violence - you could see them coming a mile off. The tendency of the socialist movement to attract disagreeable anti-social types probably explains the 800 variations of Marxist organizations that seem to populate it.

For a pretty accurate example just check out ZombieTime’s latest photo caption of a 9/11 “truth march to power” in San Francisco. There is a surplus of booths for all kinds of communist organizations none of whom can stand each other enough to actually form a united party. That movement might be about collectivism but they sure hate co-operation. And if you don’t believe me read a history of any communist party. The great majority of it will be devoted to schisms and splits and ostracization - followed by disgruntled exiles forming their own “true” version of the party.

The only movement that has more fragmentation is Heavy Metal.

Update: Welcome 5 Feet of Fury crew! For the record I am a former lefty AND former Vegetarian (but still insecure and pushy).

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I almost forgot. Hard to believe that 6 years ago I was watching the whole thing unfold on TV and feeling guilty all day because I couldn’t tear myself away from the TV and I thought I should be working. 6 years later I don’t feel so guilty for that. After all it was the most significant event to occur in my lifetime.

I don’t have a lot to write/say lately partially because of the burn out I am feeling over perpetually swimming in the “outrage pool” 24/7 (see the post just below this one).

But I still am 100% supportive of the US actions in the War on Terror including and especially those in Iraq where it looks like they are finally turning a corner and making headway after years of piecemeal incremental victories. The irony is that by next year the country could be stabilized enough to start bringing troops home thereby handing the incoming Democrat president (if in fact the Dems manage to win) a propaganda coup.

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Al-Qaida is losing its base of operations in Anbar province. Why? Because they are violent thugs. Except now they don’t have any money to bribe people with. Why don’t they have any money? Maybe because the War on Terror is going better than most people think?

“[The tribal leaders] are pragmatic and follow their own interests,” said one western official. “When al-Qaida arrived they had lots of money. Now they don’t, and it is the government that is throwing lots of money at cities such as Ramadi. Also the al-Qaida types tend to come in with the ideology of killing everyone, which does not fit in with the way that tribal types think about fighting. In short, they are pissed off.”

The entire article is worth reading: Iraqi tribes launch battle to drive al-Qaida out of troubled province

Via Tim Blair

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As much as I like Tammy Bruce her quick post on the recent walkout of BC border guards Tammy Bruce: Canadian Border “Guards” Flee Posts After Security Scare omits a critical piece of information that allows her and (so far a few) her commentors to make some glib statements about how guards are supposed to guard the border and maybe they need to put a wall up here etc etc.

Let me do a quick reset for you: Canadian Border Guards are unarmed. They have been protesting this for a long time now and are hoping that the current Conservative government will allow them to carry guns. Normally this wasn’t a big deal but since 9/11 they have been more sensitive to putting them selves in harms way without means of defending themselves.

They currently walk off if they are warned about a potential danger because they feel they have no way of protecting themselves or of being able to a successfully aprehend armed criminals or terrorists who wish to cross the border.

The current Conservative government made some indications during the last election that they would arm border guards. I believe this latest walk off to be a gentle reminder.

Here’s hoping that they get their guns soon.

For the record here’s the quote from the article that makes the situation very clear:

Canada’s border guards are currently unarmed – the Conservative government has promised a 10-year program to change that — and have the right to walk off the job if conditions are dangerous. The guards exercised that right.

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Classic.
Check it out

VIA LGF

Update: Michelle Malkin comes out swinging.

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Some people believe that Al-Qaeda has operatives in the US who have smuggled a nuclear device or at least the material for a dirty bomb into the US.

Dr. Vinnie Huskerfan has been covering the story and believes the source of the information (a Pakistani journalist) to be credible:

.Hamir doesn’t claim Adnan Al-Shukri Jumaa smuggled nukes across the southern border, he uses the phrase “dangerous materials.”

Say’s that Osama has completed the “cycle of warnings.” Under Islamic law, the defender is given three warnings before being attacked. Says that Osama is trying to legitimize his actions with Islamic scholars who criticized him for 9/11.

Once again says “very dangerous materials” have been smuggled over the border. Doesn’t specify what.

Rusty Shackleford had originally reported on this on Sept 12th:

A Pakistani journalist says that his sources in al Qaeda and the Taliban are claiming that nuclear material has already been smuggled across the Mexican border into the U.S. and that an operation bigger than 9/11 will be carried out during Ramadan–which begins later this month.

Reports about Jumaa have been circulating for years. His real name is Adnan G. El Shukrijumah and he is wanted by the FBI. Shukrijumah has long been rumored to be inside the U.S. awaiting orders to detonate a dirty bomb.

Apparently jihadi forums on the Internet are also discussing (and debating) the supposed attack:

Recent reports indicating al-Qaeda’s preparations for a nuclear attack in the United States by al-Qaeda’s alleged nuclear expert, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, has prompted conflicting reactions among Islamists in the jihadi forums:

Proponents of a nuclear attack on the United States reason that American civilians are not innocent bystanders.

[a] forum participant, nicknamed Mohannad Net, says that “we are longing for such an attack to break the back of the American camel…I pray to God that this plan does exist and will be implemented” [2]. The strongest argument comes from a participant with the nickname Sendbad Elmassery who refutes the notion that nuclear weapons are banned, quoting a verse from the Holy Quran that reads, “If ye punish, then punish with the like of that wherewith ye were afflicted”

[those] who reason against a nuclear attack on the United States argue that Islam and the Prophet Muhammad forbade the killing of unarmed civilians, the elderly, women and children. They reiterate that the killing of innocent Muslims by the United States does not justify killing their civilians even if they are infidels, Jews or Christians. They add, “our religion calls for forgiveness and mercy, not random killing. Therefore, such an operation will distort Islam and true Jihad. We must not burden Islam with the guilt of using nuclear weapons. It is better to be martyrs than mass butchers”

Of course there are those who believe it to be a conspiracy:

In between these two perspectives, there is a third party that believes that the nuclear attack is a conspiracy organized by Israel and directed by the United States [6]. They argue that the September 11 attacks were carried out without anyone uncovering the plot prior to perpetration. In this case, however, the nuclear plot has already been revealed, which would not have happened if it were a true plot organized by al-Qaeda.

Interestingly they don’t believe 9/11 to be a conspiracy. Read more of that report here.

Source: Internet Haganah

UPDATE: Hot Air has more and there are some good comments which cast doubt on all this.

Technorati Tags: war, terrorisn, al-qaeda, dirty bomb, nuclear, jihad,

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When I first heard about the “torture techniques” that the CIA wanted to be able to use (belly slapping, shirt grabbing, sleep deprivation etc) I couldn’t help but thinking that it sounded an awful lot like mild hazing rituals as opposed to torture.

Now Mary Katharine Ham provides the video proof.

It would be highly disturbing if everyone wasn’t laughing hysterically.

Sadists.

Technorati Tags: torture, CIA, Mary Katharine Ham,

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