Saturday, June 25, 2005
We need to be in this thing to win.
Will we Americans have what it takes to win the war on Terrorism? The signs are not good. I think the writer Austin Bay pretty much hits it on the head. Here is his article.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Who are the real stars in our world today?
For many years Ben Stein has written a bi-weekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.
Ben Stein's Last Column...
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein
Ben Stein's Last Column...
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Thank God for blogs - We need to hold our "Leaders" accountable.
Subject: Paul Galanti Letter to Senator Durbin
Senator Durbin,
As one who was held in a North Vietnamese Prison for nearly seven years and whose definition of torture and bad treatment is somewhat at variance with yours, I deplore your senseless comments about alleged "barbaric treatment" at our terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo.
Your remarks comparing Guantanamo to the regimes of Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot are outrageous. I tried to think of why a rational human being could make such an outlandish statement but I keep coming up short. I thought I'd seen it all when Howard Dean performed his infamous scream in Iowa but your diatribe yesterday eclipsed Dean's moment of Hannibal Lecter lunacy. And your moment of pique will be infinitely more damaging to members of our Armed Forces serving in harm's way.
I noted, when searching for your contact information, that the first item Google came up with was al Jazeera's joy at your comments. You, sir, for having aided and abetted the enemy in time of war, have been relegated in my mind to the status of Jane Fonda and your colleague, John Kerry as contemptible traitors.
I hope not too many of our valiant members of the Armed Forces have to suffer for your stupid comments. Shame on you.
This is copied to the Chicago Tribune's Letters Editor. It is blind copied to my family members from Illinois and to several military blog groups to which I subscribe.
Sincerely,
Paul E. Galanti
Commander, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
21 Maxwell Road
Richmond, VA 23226
804.359.6366 (h)
pgalanti@comcast.net
http://www.nampows.org/pgbio.html
Senator Durbin,
As one who was held in a North Vietnamese Prison for nearly seven years and whose definition of torture and bad treatment is somewhat at variance with yours, I deplore your senseless comments about alleged "barbaric treatment" at our terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo.
Your remarks comparing Guantanamo to the regimes of Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot are outrageous. I tried to think of why a rational human being could make such an outlandish statement but I keep coming up short. I thought I'd seen it all when Howard Dean performed his infamous scream in Iowa but your diatribe yesterday eclipsed Dean's moment of Hannibal Lecter lunacy. And your moment of pique will be infinitely more damaging to members of our Armed Forces serving in harm's way.
I noted, when searching for your contact information, that the first item Google came up with was al Jazeera's joy at your comments. You, sir, for having aided and abetted the enemy in time of war, have been relegated in my mind to the status of Jane Fonda and your colleague, John Kerry as contemptible traitors.
I hope not too many of our valiant members of the Armed Forces have to suffer for your stupid comments. Shame on you.
This is copied to the Chicago Tribune's Letters Editor. It is blind copied to my family members from Illinois and to several military blog groups to which I subscribe.
Sincerely,
Paul E. Galanti
Commander, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
21 Maxwell Road
Richmond, VA 23226
804.359.6366 (h)
pgalanti@comcast.net
http://www.nampows.org/pgbio.html
Monday, June 20, 2005
While we sleep peacefully here in the states....
Following is a story that touched me. It gives a brief picture into what life must be like over in Iraq.
To all,
Jackal is the son of long-time friend Jacques - a fellow retired Marine aviator and leader of Hughes Aircraft's stellar radar development efforts. Like father, like son.
SF, Wally
24 May 2005
Flying Angels
Today started out like almost every other day for me since I have been in Iraq. I got up at 0400, took a cold shower, and used my headlamp to dress in the dark so as not to wake my roommates. I walked just over a mile to the squadron hangar to receive the day's flight brief. I did not have time to eat breakfast as the chow hall had not yet opened. I picked up a nutrition bar laying on my desk and a bottle of water so I could eat and drink something before I went flying as I didn't know if I would be back before lunch or not. I grabbed my flight equipment, M-16, and my emergency assault pack and proceeded to my helicopter. We pre-flighted the aircraft, started up, and taxied for take off. I assumed that today flight would be like yesterdays, and similar to the day before. Moving people and supplies from one part of Iraq to the other. We call it 'Ground Hog' day, after the movie starring Bill Murray. Every day starts to seem the same here. However, today was not like the others. Today was different. Today was real.
Our mission today was to extract Army soldiers from the field. They had been conducting operations to quell insurgent activities in their area of operations. Our Operations department had briefed us that the soldiers had been out patrolling for over two weeks. I knew the soldiers would be tired, dirty, and more than likely a little ripe! I also knew the soldiers would be very appreciative on getting a helicopter ride back to their base camp as they could get a well deserved hot meal and a shower. As a Marine, I like to give the Army a hard time. The Army seems to enjoy giving it right back at me. This is just good-natured professional rivalry. Every service likes to think they are the toughest, smartest, and best-looking troops in the world. I was looking forward to making a few pointed remarks to my fellow warriors over the intercom system and listening to their replies. However, I never got the chance.
Our mission was changed while in route. The extract was cancelled. Instead, we were to land at their base camp and pick up five 'Angels.' An 'Angel' is the brevity code we use to describe the deceased. Instead of picking up hungry and tired soldiers, we now were going to be flying out the same soldiers who were just recently sharing a laugh with their friends. The five Angels were carefully loaded on our aircraft one at a time. The Commanding Officer of the unit we were supporting helped load the Angels himself. He walked past the cockpit, and reached out his hand, as the senior pilot gave the Commanding Officer his hand in return. A quick squeeze of the hand, between two strangers, and two different services, over individuals we Marines never had the pleasure to meet. However, in that quick instant, the Army and the Marines Corps were one in the same. Fellow warriors had died! The simple squeeze of the hand between the two Officers let the Army know we understood their sorrow.
After the Angels were loaded, we completed our Take Off Checklist and began our departure from the camp. The unit stood at attention, over fifty rigid soldiers, saluting their fallen comrades as we exited the landing zone. I would be lying if I told you I did not shed a tear as I transitioned to forward flight. The Army was paying its last respects to their friends and brothers in arms. I was honored to have been a witness to this magnificent display of devotion. It is this dedication, commitment, and brotherhood, which make me proud to serve in our Armed Forces. Though the five Angels on our aircraft will never know it, they were sent off with dignity and honor. However, something tells me they do know!
LtCol Jacques "Jackal" Naviaux II
Commanding Officer
HMM-764
Al Asad, Iraq
To all,
Jackal is the son of long-time friend Jacques - a fellow retired Marine aviator and leader of Hughes Aircraft's stellar radar development efforts. Like father, like son.
SF, Wally
24 May 2005
Flying Angels
Today started out like almost every other day for me since I have been in Iraq. I got up at 0400, took a cold shower, and used my headlamp to dress in the dark so as not to wake my roommates. I walked just over a mile to the squadron hangar to receive the day's flight brief. I did not have time to eat breakfast as the chow hall had not yet opened. I picked up a nutrition bar laying on my desk and a bottle of water so I could eat and drink something before I went flying as I didn't know if I would be back before lunch or not. I grabbed my flight equipment, M-16, and my emergency assault pack and proceeded to my helicopter. We pre-flighted the aircraft, started up, and taxied for take off. I assumed that today flight would be like yesterdays, and similar to the day before. Moving people and supplies from one part of Iraq to the other. We call it 'Ground Hog' day, after the movie starring Bill Murray. Every day starts to seem the same here. However, today was not like the others. Today was different. Today was real.
Our mission today was to extract Army soldiers from the field. They had been conducting operations to quell insurgent activities in their area of operations. Our Operations department had briefed us that the soldiers had been out patrolling for over two weeks. I knew the soldiers would be tired, dirty, and more than likely a little ripe! I also knew the soldiers would be very appreciative on getting a helicopter ride back to their base camp as they could get a well deserved hot meal and a shower. As a Marine, I like to give the Army a hard time. The Army seems to enjoy giving it right back at me. This is just good-natured professional rivalry. Every service likes to think they are the toughest, smartest, and best-looking troops in the world. I was looking forward to making a few pointed remarks to my fellow warriors over the intercom system and listening to their replies. However, I never got the chance.
Our mission was changed while in route. The extract was cancelled. Instead, we were to land at their base camp and pick up five 'Angels.' An 'Angel' is the brevity code we use to describe the deceased. Instead of picking up hungry and tired soldiers, we now were going to be flying out the same soldiers who were just recently sharing a laugh with their friends. The five Angels were carefully loaded on our aircraft one at a time. The Commanding Officer of the unit we were supporting helped load the Angels himself. He walked past the cockpit, and reached out his hand, as the senior pilot gave the Commanding Officer his hand in return. A quick squeeze of the hand, between two strangers, and two different services, over individuals we Marines never had the pleasure to meet. However, in that quick instant, the Army and the Marines Corps were one in the same. Fellow warriors had died! The simple squeeze of the hand between the two Officers let the Army know we understood their sorrow.
After the Angels were loaded, we completed our Take Off Checklist and began our departure from the camp. The unit stood at attention, over fifty rigid soldiers, saluting their fallen comrades as we exited the landing zone. I would be lying if I told you I did not shed a tear as I transitioned to forward flight. The Army was paying its last respects to their friends and brothers in arms. I was honored to have been a witness to this magnificent display of devotion. It is this dedication, commitment, and brotherhood, which make me proud to serve in our Armed Forces. Though the five Angels on our aircraft will never know it, they were sent off with dignity and honor. However, something tells me they do know!
LtCol Jacques "Jackal" Naviaux II
Commanding Officer
HMM-764
Al Asad, Iraq
Sunday, June 19, 2005
So what happens if we pull up stake and go home? (Read on)
Listed below in an excellent article by David Limbaugh, a syndicated columnist. He hits the nail on the head. The enemy of this war on terrorism will not stop if we pull out of Iraq or Afghanistan or any other conflict area of the world. Hopefully our country's political structure will come to this realization before it is too late. May God bless America.
Coddling the enemy
David Limbaugh
June 17, 2005
How can we successfully prosecute the War on Terror when one of the two major political parties in our nation seems to have no concept of the nature of the war or the enemy we are fighting?
What the Democratic Party leadership obviously fails to recognize is that we are in a war of global reach, and there's no end in sight -- literally. And our enemy would be no less committed to our destruction if we immediately withdrew from Iraq or gave every Gitmo prisoner daily bubble baths.
It is mystifying, maddening and outrageous that people like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are demanding a date certain that we will withdraw from Iraq. It's as if they believe we can turn this war on and off with a spigot simply by removing our troops from Iraq.
Even apart from the monumental waste of American lives and resources, and the catastrophic consequences for Iraq, democracy and the Middle East our precipitous withdrawal would cause, we must understand that pulling out of Iraq will do nothing to end the enemy's war against us. Indeed, such a move would doubtlessly embolden the enemy, encouraging them to hit us harder because they would know we don't have what it takes to endure this war.
Democrats scoffed before when President Bush and others said that if we weren't fighting the terrorists in Iraq we would be fighting them somewhere else. They can laugh all they want, but it happens to be true. To suggest that enemy forces in Iraq are merely Iraqi insurgents, as opposed to part of an international band of terrorists, including Saddam's Iraqi holdovers, and terrorist imports from Iran, Syria and every other imaginable place, is sheer folly.
The Iraqi people themselves have embraced freedom and democracy, as they demonstrated in spades by their historic turnout at the polls despite the risk to their lives in doing so. Iraq happens to be the primary venue of the War on Terror currently because international terrorists -- extremist Muslim fanatics -- have enormous incentive to prevent the development and spread of democracy there and elsewhere in the Middle East. If it can blossom there, it can blossom anywhere -- and that doesn't portend well for their vision of a global Muslim theocracy.
Given these realities, the Democrats' call for a specific withdrawal date from Iraq is incomprehensibly reckless. What American or Iraqi benefit can they conceivably imagine from our telegraphing such a date?
Has this once honorable party completely forgotten what happened on 9-11, when we were attacked without provocation -- before we attacked Iraq, by the way? Do they think the terrorists will declare a cease-fire even if we cede Iraq to them?
If they truly understood the nature of the enemy, would they coddle them as if they were their pet criminal defendants on the mainland of the United States? Would they insist on mischaracterizing -- to the detriment of America's image and the demoralizing of our troops -- the conditions at the prison camp at Guantanamo?
It is hard to overstate the egregiousness of Dick Durbin's suggestion that we are torturing and abusing prisoners comparable to the Soviet Gulags, and worse, implying that we are doing so as a matter of Bush administration policy.
Bulletin to Dick Durbin and like-minded America-bashing appeasers: These enemy combatants are not criminal defendants; they are not criminals at all. They are part of an incorrigible war enemy. But they are unlike any enemy we've faced before, because they are unattached to any nation state that could be made to surrender. Their cause transcends rationality and will survive the fall of any nation.
If Democrats understood the nature of the enemy, they would know that it is not only not unreasonable for us to hold terrorist enemies in perpetuity, but utterly mandatory. These people -- those of them we can confirm through military tribunals are indeed enemy combatants -- can never be released back into the world as long as this war continues, and there's no reason to expect that it will end in the next 50 years.
I'm completely serious about this. Whether we like it or not, the war is going to continue as long as there are significant numbers of Muslim extremists in the world to prosecute it, and there will be, irrespective of whether we do everything we can -- short of converting to a Muslim theocracy -- to make them like us.
Besides, the Gitmo prisoners, in effect, have the keys to their own jail cells because it is their allies in terror who will decide when to quit waging war against civilization. Until that happens, we cannot afford to give them liberty and a license to come back and kill us.
In moral terms, there is no comparison between us and the enemy, and it would be most helpful if the minority party in the United States would quit feeding the lie that there is.
Coddling the enemy
David Limbaugh
June 17, 2005
How can we successfully prosecute the War on Terror when one of the two major political parties in our nation seems to have no concept of the nature of the war or the enemy we are fighting?
What the Democratic Party leadership obviously fails to recognize is that we are in a war of global reach, and there's no end in sight -- literally. And our enemy would be no less committed to our destruction if we immediately withdrew from Iraq or gave every Gitmo prisoner daily bubble baths.
It is mystifying, maddening and outrageous that people like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are demanding a date certain that we will withdraw from Iraq. It's as if they believe we can turn this war on and off with a spigot simply by removing our troops from Iraq.
Even apart from the monumental waste of American lives and resources, and the catastrophic consequences for Iraq, democracy and the Middle East our precipitous withdrawal would cause, we must understand that pulling out of Iraq will do nothing to end the enemy's war against us. Indeed, such a move would doubtlessly embolden the enemy, encouraging them to hit us harder because they would know we don't have what it takes to endure this war.
Democrats scoffed before when President Bush and others said that if we weren't fighting the terrorists in Iraq we would be fighting them somewhere else. They can laugh all they want, but it happens to be true. To suggest that enemy forces in Iraq are merely Iraqi insurgents, as opposed to part of an international band of terrorists, including Saddam's Iraqi holdovers, and terrorist imports from Iran, Syria and every other imaginable place, is sheer folly.
The Iraqi people themselves have embraced freedom and democracy, as they demonstrated in spades by their historic turnout at the polls despite the risk to their lives in doing so. Iraq happens to be the primary venue of the War on Terror currently because international terrorists -- extremist Muslim fanatics -- have enormous incentive to prevent the development and spread of democracy there and elsewhere in the Middle East. If it can blossom there, it can blossom anywhere -- and that doesn't portend well for their vision of a global Muslim theocracy.
Given these realities, the Democrats' call for a specific withdrawal date from Iraq is incomprehensibly reckless. What American or Iraqi benefit can they conceivably imagine from our telegraphing such a date?
Has this once honorable party completely forgotten what happened on 9-11, when we were attacked without provocation -- before we attacked Iraq, by the way? Do they think the terrorists will declare a cease-fire even if we cede Iraq to them?
If they truly understood the nature of the enemy, would they coddle them as if they were their pet criminal defendants on the mainland of the United States? Would they insist on mischaracterizing -- to the detriment of America's image and the demoralizing of our troops -- the conditions at the prison camp at Guantanamo?
It is hard to overstate the egregiousness of Dick Durbin's suggestion that we are torturing and abusing prisoners comparable to the Soviet Gulags, and worse, implying that we are doing so as a matter of Bush administration policy.
Bulletin to Dick Durbin and like-minded America-bashing appeasers: These enemy combatants are not criminal defendants; they are not criminals at all. They are part of an incorrigible war enemy. But they are unlike any enemy we've faced before, because they are unattached to any nation state that could be made to surrender. Their cause transcends rationality and will survive the fall of any nation.
If Democrats understood the nature of the enemy, they would know that it is not only not unreasonable for us to hold terrorist enemies in perpetuity, but utterly mandatory. These people -- those of them we can confirm through military tribunals are indeed enemy combatants -- can never be released back into the world as long as this war continues, and there's no reason to expect that it will end in the next 50 years.
I'm completely serious about this. Whether we like it or not, the war is going to continue as long as there are significant numbers of Muslim extremists in the world to prosecute it, and there will be, irrespective of whether we do everything we can -- short of converting to a Muslim theocracy -- to make them like us.
Besides, the Gitmo prisoners, in effect, have the keys to their own jail cells because it is their allies in terror who will decide when to quit waging war against civilization. Until that happens, we cannot afford to give them liberty and a license to come back and kill us.
In moral terms, there is no comparison between us and the enemy, and it would be most helpful if the minority party in the United States would quit feeding the lie that there is.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Woman receives Silver Star for Valor in Iraq
Another great story about our fighting women and men in Iraq. :-)
Monday, June 13, 2005
Thank goodness for the Wall Street Journal
I loved the June 10, 2005 article entitled "12,000 Heroes". It tells about the fact that the media carefully covers the casualty figures on a daily basis. They make estimates about the number of Iraqis killed by coalition action but they don't track or even try to estimate the number of Iraqis killed by insurgents.
Then it says the new Iraqi government is stepping in to fill the role that no western human rights group considers worthy enough to cover. The article goes on to say:
" Now the government of Iraq has gone and done that favor for itself. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr released statistics last week showing that some 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by insurgents in the last 18 months. Of these victims, the overwhelming majority have been Iraqi Shiites, indicating that what al Jazeera and friends call the "resistance against U.S. occupation" is in fact a jihadist and Baathist attack against the country's democratic government. "I have not seen any 'resistance,'" Mr. Jabr told the Washington Post. "There is terror, and all sides have agreed that anyone raising guns and killing Iraqis is a terrorist."
Too bad some of our own politicians can't show as much moral clarity. Too bad, too, that every time we magnify every U.S. misdeed in Iraq, real or fabricated, we turn our gaze from the real source of the country's misery."
If you want to read some "real" news I highly recommend you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal On-line addition.
Then it says the new Iraqi government is stepping in to fill the role that no western human rights group considers worthy enough to cover. The article goes on to say:
" Now the government of Iraq has gone and done that favor for itself. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr released statistics last week showing that some 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by insurgents in the last 18 months. Of these victims, the overwhelming majority have been Iraqi Shiites, indicating that what al Jazeera and friends call the "resistance against U.S. occupation" is in fact a jihadist and Baathist attack against the country's democratic government. "I have not seen any 'resistance,'" Mr. Jabr told the Washington Post. "There is terror, and all sides have agreed that anyone raising guns and killing Iraqis is a terrorist."
Too bad some of our own politicians can't show as much moral clarity. Too bad, too, that every time we magnify every U.S. misdeed in Iraq, real or fabricated, we turn our gaze from the real source of the country's misery."
If you want to read some "real" news I highly recommend you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal On-line addition.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Good site to see Current War Progress
If you want some positive news from the front Chrenkoff is the guy to read. All the detail you could want. What a refreshing change from the biased information on the main line media. Enjoy. Bob
Baby Boy born to my Nephew in Iraq
Just wanted to let you know that my nephew's wife just gave birth to a healthy 8 pound baby boy, second child, while my nephew is fighting in Iraq. Father and son both named Keith. Congrats Keith senior, wherever you may be tonight. Keep safe. Uncle Bob
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Step two of the blog learning curve...
Here is a story about the military unit that my nephew, Keith, is in. My family and I are extremely proud of him.
The first of hopefully many entries....
Hello world. My name is Bob and I am trying to figure out how this blogger tool works. I have a website called www.braveheartsremembered.com or www.braveheartsremembered.org where I try to put positive messages about our military and refute some of the garbage intended to hurt our military personnel or our efforts in the war on terrorism. The only feedback I have really received on my site so far is that it is not very current, thus my attempt at blogging. This may end up replacing my site effort but for now we will have both.
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