Iraq: Christians on the Run
Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts
Monday, December 13, 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Comment Of the Day
.
All those Harvard,Princeton,& Yale educated Obamacrats got outmaneuvered by Iran?
Of course they did.
That stupid lady with the Idaho college degree warned us not to trust them.
portlandon on May 17, 2010 at 3:48 PM
from Hot Air
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Finest Links in All of Christendom
Jo-Joe Politico writes about the acid rain scare of many years ago. He thinks a nostalgic walk down World Catastrophe Avenue might help us form the proper approach to cap and trade. And why haven’t the hole in the ozone layer and overpopulation ended civilization yet? Also from J-J P this quote, “QUESTION: "Wouldn't that drive private insurance out of business?" MR. OBAMA: "Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If -- if private -- if private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical." Are you intelligent enough to understand what he tried to slip by you in that statement?” Joe gives the answer. He also has an enjoyable post about some of our troops in Iraq. Included are a bunch of photos whose captions convey something of the mind set of a returning vet.
Pat from And So It Goes In Shreveport got to see Clapton live recently. I’m jealous but it makes sense that her boyfriend would take Pat rather than me. She has John Boehner’s radio address from Saturday. Boehner, who snuck in a reference to Ohio, is giving the Republican’s rebuttal to The Light of Chicago. Then there is a frightening post that deals with the breakdown of the American moral fabric. There is a YouTube clip that is a profane rap song performed by the godson of a member of the legislature. Thankfully Pat balances the insanity with a funny song from Hoagy Carmichael at the end. I feel that much of the moral decay that disgusts us has grown by lefties working so hard for so long to weaken and devalue the institutions we have always used to conserve and pass on values. There has been endless attacks on the family structure, on religion and churches and synagogues and endless attacks on so many other nurturing institutions such as the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts. Lefties rend and destroy (when they’re not taxing people near to death).
Obama’s adoption of the Bush indefinite detention policy, against which he campaigned so loudly and with such hypocritical posturing of moral superiority, has caused Pundit and Pundette to write about Obama’s inveterate lying and give some good links to more. Pundette gives a quote from V. D. Hanson that I can’t pass by without sharing: “Sometimes the past is simply airbrushed away. Barack Obama has a disturbing habit of contradicting his past declarations as if spoken words did not mean much at all.” Then Steve Goodman gives us ‘Red, Red Robin.’ He starts out a bit intense but ends up light, joyful and happy. Then P & P have a post that expresses anger at the passage of the cap and trade bill in the House. And this is joined with some reflections on degenerate trends in pop culture. As I said above, the institutions that preserve and transmit morality in our culture have been attacked, weakened and debased. Congress is a great example. Congress has degenerated into a collection of whores scrambling to see who can sell out the most. Cap and trade has been designed to make a lot of money for some members of congress and for those who bribe them. I wonder who kids see as role models these days. There aren’t any famous people who would be considered notable for the good they do. Ink and air time seem to be reserved for money makers and whatever ‘personalities’ the press thinks are cool or strange enough to draw some viewers. Obama is treated like he’s some kind of moral paragon but I don’t know of one case in which he actually did something because it is the right thing to do. He has done very well for himself, his family and those who have given him money or helped him politically. But those are all either morally neutral or immoral acts.
Pat from And So It Goes In Shreveport got to see Clapton live recently. I’m jealous but it makes sense that her boyfriend would take Pat rather than me. She has John Boehner’s radio address from Saturday. Boehner, who snuck in a reference to Ohio, is giving the Republican’s rebuttal to The Light of Chicago. Then there is a frightening post that deals with the breakdown of the American moral fabric. There is a YouTube clip that is a profane rap song performed by the godson of a member of the legislature. Thankfully Pat balances the insanity with a funny song from Hoagy Carmichael at the end. I feel that much of the moral decay that disgusts us has grown by lefties working so hard for so long to weaken and devalue the institutions we have always used to conserve and pass on values. There has been endless attacks on the family structure, on religion and churches and synagogues and endless attacks on so many other nurturing institutions such as the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts. Lefties rend and destroy (when they’re not taxing people near to death).
Obama’s adoption of the Bush indefinite detention policy, against which he campaigned so loudly and with such hypocritical posturing of moral superiority, has caused Pundit and Pundette to write about Obama’s inveterate lying and give some good links to more. Pundette gives a quote from V. D. Hanson that I can’t pass by without sharing: “Sometimes the past is simply airbrushed away. Barack Obama has a disturbing habit of contradicting his past declarations as if spoken words did not mean much at all.” Then Steve Goodman gives us ‘Red, Red Robin.’ He starts out a bit intense but ends up light, joyful and happy. Then P & P have a post that expresses anger at the passage of the cap and trade bill in the House. And this is joined with some reflections on degenerate trends in pop culture. As I said above, the institutions that preserve and transmit morality in our culture have been attacked, weakened and debased. Congress is a great example. Congress has degenerated into a collection of whores scrambling to see who can sell out the most. Cap and trade has been designed to make a lot of money for some members of congress and for those who bribe them. I wonder who kids see as role models these days. There aren’t any famous people who would be considered notable for the good they do. Ink and air time seem to be reserved for money makers and whatever ‘personalities’ the press thinks are cool or strange enough to draw some viewers. Obama is treated like he’s some kind of moral paragon but I don’t know of one case in which he actually did something because it is the right thing to do. He has done very well for himself, his family and those who have given him money or helped him politically. But those are all either morally neutral or immoral acts.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Victor D. Hanson on Iran and Obama
It is sad to contemplate, but Obama lacks the temperament, knowledge and desire to do anything but screw up foreign affairs. The remainder of this post is two quotes from VDH's column yesterday at Pajamsmedia about how clueless Obama is about what is happening in Iran.
"It’s a personal thing that interferes with Obama’s ego, and messianic personal diplomacy. Obama himself is not comfortable with those abroad who emulate American values and seek to have the freedoms and rights we take for granted. The post-colonial industry mandates that the Other is a perpetual victim of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and racism with justified grievances. Only elite American intellectuals of singular insight and empathy understand the calculus of the oppressed, and so, through apologies, accommodations, and concessions, they alone on our behalf can deal with an Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Ortega, Castro, Morales, Nasrallah, etc. But when we see a purple-finger election, a statue of liberty at Tiananmen, or the current Levi-clad, cell-phoning, English-placard-carrying Iranian grassroots resistance, all the above is rendered null and void. Obama wants to rise above his country; but when his country is not held in disrepute (as is true among the Iranian people), he is an actor without a role.
"People abroad really do prefer freedom and true constitutional government to autocratic grievance mongers who loot their country and brutalize the free. In such conditions, old-fashioned Americans, often inarticulate and perhaps clumsy, but honest in their belief in the universal appeal of human freedom, do better than all the nuanced Kennedy School intellectuals (e.g. They laughed at the reductionist “Tear Down This Wall” and “Evil Empire” and apparently preferred “No Inordinate Fear of Communism”). So a deer-in-the-headlights Obama wonders, ‘Wait, why aren’t they shouting the boilerplate ‘Death to America!’ and invoking, like I did, 1953 and the CIA crimes? Don’t they know the things that we did to them and I apologized for? Don’t they see that I am as separate from the US of the 1950s as they are? What’s this grass-roots rejection of an anti-Western, anti-colonialist indigenous Iranian government all about? (cf. his moral equivalent comparison of Mousavi to Ahmadinejad as equally anti-American)."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"4) He’s addicted to the ossified Iraqi paradigm of “Bush intervened and caused a mess” (Free Iraq is apparently still equivalent to Saddam’s Iraq), so “I don’t want to follow his lead” (as if vocal support now is the same as shock and awe then). Somewhere in stone a lie is chiseled “Iraq made Iran stronger”. He doesn’t see the footnote: “But if Iraqi democracy survives, it fuels emulation in neighboring Iran and does more to undermine the theocracy than all the F-22s in the world”. Who knows-if Iranian freedom spreads, some nut might praise Bush’s commitment to Middle East freedom in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, and not Obama’s apologetics at Cairo? (Free Shiites in Iraq are far better for Iran than either oppressed minorities under Saddam, or Saddam’s opportunistic dictatorship). Bottom line again: Obama needs to forget Ahmadinejad and talk daily with Maliki.
"OR
"5) His entire anti-Bush foreign policy is then in trouble. We’ve heard for eight years a cheap slur of “neo-cons” did it, not that in the dangerous world abroad there are no good choices, but supporting freedom is usually the better alternative if one must choose. If a peaceful democratic revolution succeeds in Iran, then what happens with “outreach” to Putin, Chavez, and Hamas? The new liberal realpolitik insisted that we don’t offer moral judgment, and was framed instead by winning the hearts and minds of tyrants through humbling ourselves and meae culpae. But if these democracies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and an Iran (?) were to succeed, then what? You would not go to Chavez and promise first to talk about shared colonial racist oppression, but rather say to the Venezuelan people, “We stand with you in your struggle to achieve freedom and dignity and to join the other democracies of Latin America”? That is not just in the cards, and so Iran, is well, a monkey-wrench.
"For now, watch the Iranian army and police. If one battalion bolts, then . . ."
"It’s a personal thing that interferes with Obama’s ego, and messianic personal diplomacy. Obama himself is not comfortable with those abroad who emulate American values and seek to have the freedoms and rights we take for granted. The post-colonial industry mandates that the Other is a perpetual victim of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and racism with justified grievances. Only elite American intellectuals of singular insight and empathy understand the calculus of the oppressed, and so, through apologies, accommodations, and concessions, they alone on our behalf can deal with an Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Ortega, Castro, Morales, Nasrallah, etc. But when we see a purple-finger election, a statue of liberty at Tiananmen, or the current Levi-clad, cell-phoning, English-placard-carrying Iranian grassroots resistance, all the above is rendered null and void. Obama wants to rise above his country; but when his country is not held in disrepute (as is true among the Iranian people), he is an actor without a role.
"People abroad really do prefer freedom and true constitutional government to autocratic grievance mongers who loot their country and brutalize the free. In such conditions, old-fashioned Americans, often inarticulate and perhaps clumsy, but honest in their belief in the universal appeal of human freedom, do better than all the nuanced Kennedy School intellectuals (e.g. They laughed at the reductionist “Tear Down This Wall” and “Evil Empire” and apparently preferred “No Inordinate Fear of Communism”). So a deer-in-the-headlights Obama wonders, ‘Wait, why aren’t they shouting the boilerplate ‘Death to America!’ and invoking, like I did, 1953 and the CIA crimes? Don’t they know the things that we did to them and I apologized for? Don’t they see that I am as separate from the US of the 1950s as they are? What’s this grass-roots rejection of an anti-Western, anti-colonialist indigenous Iranian government all about? (cf. his moral equivalent comparison of Mousavi to Ahmadinejad as equally anti-American)."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"4) He’s addicted to the ossified Iraqi paradigm of “Bush intervened and caused a mess” (Free Iraq is apparently still equivalent to Saddam’s Iraq), so “I don’t want to follow his lead” (as if vocal support now is the same as shock and awe then). Somewhere in stone a lie is chiseled “Iraq made Iran stronger”. He doesn’t see the footnote: “But if Iraqi democracy survives, it fuels emulation in neighboring Iran and does more to undermine the theocracy than all the F-22s in the world”. Who knows-if Iranian freedom spreads, some nut might praise Bush’s commitment to Middle East freedom in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, and not Obama’s apologetics at Cairo? (Free Shiites in Iraq are far better for Iran than either oppressed minorities under Saddam, or Saddam’s opportunistic dictatorship). Bottom line again: Obama needs to forget Ahmadinejad and talk daily with Maliki.
"OR
"5) His entire anti-Bush foreign policy is then in trouble. We’ve heard for eight years a cheap slur of “neo-cons” did it, not that in the dangerous world abroad there are no good choices, but supporting freedom is usually the better alternative if one must choose. If a peaceful democratic revolution succeeds in Iran, then what happens with “outreach” to Putin, Chavez, and Hamas? The new liberal realpolitik insisted that we don’t offer moral judgment, and was framed instead by winning the hearts and minds of tyrants through humbling ourselves and meae culpae. But if these democracies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and an Iran (?) were to succeed, then what? You would not go to Chavez and promise first to talk about shared colonial racist oppression, but rather say to the Venezuelan people, “We stand with you in your struggle to achieve freedom and dignity and to join the other democracies of Latin America”? That is not just in the cards, and so Iran, is well, a monkey-wrench.
"For now, watch the Iranian army and police. If one battalion bolts, then . . ."
Monday, August 11, 2008
Hitchens on Iraq
Below are a couple of excerpts from a piece by Christopher Hitchens in Slate on 8-11-08. It's title is Iraq's Budget Surplus Scandal . . .. subtitle Why Do We Have Such A Hard Time Hearing Good News from Iraq.
Yes indeed, Iraq should pay for its own reconstruction. But, just before we all join hands on this obvious proposition, may we take a moment to apologize to Paul Wolfowitz? Of all the many slanders hurled at this advocate for Iraq's liberation, probably none was more gleefully bandied about than his congressional testimony that Iraq's recovery from decades of war and fascism could be self-financing. Now the opponents of the intervention are yelling that Iraq ought to be opening its bulging wallet right away.
. . . . . . . .
I think we should be glad that the luridly sadistic and aggressive Saddam Hussein regime is no longer in power to be the beneficiary of the rise in oil prices and thus able to share its wealth with the terrorists, crooks, and demagogues on its secret payroll. I think we should also be glad that its private ownership of Iraq's armed forces, and its control over a party monopoly called the Baath, has been irrecoverably smashed. Iraq's resources are no longer at the disposal of an aggressive, parasitic oligarchy. Its retrained and re-equipped army is being deployed, not in wars of invasion against its neighbors and genocide against its inhabitants, but in cleanup campaigns against al-Qaida and the Mahdi Army. An improvement. A distinct improvement.
It is in no spirit of revenge that I remind you that, as little as a year ago, the whole of smart liberal opinion believed that the dissolution of Baathism and militarism had been a mistake, that Iraq itself was a bottomless pit of wasted dollars and pointless casualties, and that the only option was to withdraw as fast as possible and let the inevitable civil war burn itself out. To the left of that liberal consensus, people of the caliber and quality of Michael Moore were describing the nihilist "insurgents" as the moral equivalent of the Minutemen, and to the right of the same consensus, people like Pat Buchanan were hinting that we had been cheated into the whole enterprise by a certain minority whose collective name began with the letter J.
. . . . I still reel when I remember how many supposedly responsible people advocated surrendering Iraq without a fight.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
So, yes, major combat operations appear to be over, and to that extent one can belatedly say, "Mission accomplished." If there is any Iraqi nostalgia for the old party and the old army, it is remarkably well-concealed. Iraq no longer plays deceptive games with weapons of mass destruction or plays host to international terrorist groups. It is no longer subject to sanctions that punish its people and enrich its rulers. Its religious and ethnic minorities—together a majority—are no longer treated like disposable trash. Its most bitter internal argument is about the timing of the next provincial and national elections. Surely it is those who opposed every step of this emancipation, rather than those who advocated it, who should be asked to explain and justify themselves.
Yes indeed, Iraq should pay for its own reconstruction. But, just before we all join hands on this obvious proposition, may we take a moment to apologize to Paul Wolfowitz? Of all the many slanders hurled at this advocate for Iraq's liberation, probably none was more gleefully bandied about than his congressional testimony that Iraq's recovery from decades of war and fascism could be self-financing. Now the opponents of the intervention are yelling that Iraq ought to be opening its bulging wallet right away.
. . . . . . . .
I think we should be glad that the luridly sadistic and aggressive Saddam Hussein regime is no longer in power to be the beneficiary of the rise in oil prices and thus able to share its wealth with the terrorists, crooks, and demagogues on its secret payroll. I think we should also be glad that its private ownership of Iraq's armed forces, and its control over a party monopoly called the Baath, has been irrecoverably smashed. Iraq's resources are no longer at the disposal of an aggressive, parasitic oligarchy. Its retrained and re-equipped army is being deployed, not in wars of invasion against its neighbors and genocide against its inhabitants, but in cleanup campaigns against al-Qaida and the Mahdi Army. An improvement. A distinct improvement.
It is in no spirit of revenge that I remind you that, as little as a year ago, the whole of smart liberal opinion believed that the dissolution of Baathism and militarism had been a mistake, that Iraq itself was a bottomless pit of wasted dollars and pointless casualties, and that the only option was to withdraw as fast as possible and let the inevitable civil war burn itself out. To the left of that liberal consensus, people of the caliber and quality of Michael Moore were describing the nihilist "insurgents" as the moral equivalent of the Minutemen, and to the right of the same consensus, people like Pat Buchanan were hinting that we had been cheated into the whole enterprise by a certain minority whose collective name began with the letter J.
. . . . I still reel when I remember how many supposedly responsible people advocated surrendering Iraq without a fight.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
So, yes, major combat operations appear to be over, and to that extent one can belatedly say, "Mission accomplished." If there is any Iraqi nostalgia for the old party and the old army, it is remarkably well-concealed. Iraq no longer plays deceptive games with weapons of mass destruction or plays host to international terrorist groups. It is no longer subject to sanctions that punish its people and enrich its rulers. Its religious and ethnic minorities—together a majority—are no longer treated like disposable trash. Its most bitter internal argument is about the timing of the next provincial and national elections. Surely it is those who opposed every step of this emancipation, rather than those who advocated it, who should be asked to explain and justify themselves.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Surrender Donkeys
A couple of weeks ago I saw a moronic Democratic politician on TV. He had a very self satisfied air as he argued against the war in Iraq. He seemed to feel that, to prove the war wrong he needed only to show that people had died or been injured, period. And I think this is at the core of all of the lefties’ arguments: nothing is worth fighting or dying for so if someone has fought or died their cause is wrong. Most of them dress it up fancier but this is the core. They are antiAmerican only accidently: they would be against anything that would require bother or sacrifice. And they wouldn’t speak against jihadis because that might cause them bother or sacrifice. They are perpetual children trying to act like adults without knowing how.
By this measure we lost WW I and WW II. We had many dead and wounded in each: a sure sign it wasn't worth it. I guess the significant question to this guy is: "Where can I surrender and can I do it faster than Hillary or Barry?"
By this measure we lost WW I and WW II. We had many dead and wounded in each: a sure sign it wasn't worth it. I guess the significant question to this guy is: "Where can I surrender and can I do it faster than Hillary or Barry?"
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Political Benchmarks
What, specifically, are the much referred to political benchmarks? Opponents of the war routinely say the war is lost because of lack of political progress. But I never hear specifics. They seem to imply that if such and such has not been done by some hallowed date it is a sure sign of defeat. They seem to be knowledgable about some international, intergalatical set of standards by which one can prove the situation hopeless. Is there some such thing written in stone and kept in a vault in Geneva? To me it seems laughable to imagine that a country could transform itself from brutal dictatorship to a vibrant democracy in five years, yet, this seems to be the standard seriously proposed by the critics of the war.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
At Least Code Pink Quit Screaming at Daddy
The Americans that I have heard talk about torture and the Iraq war have tended to focus on the 3 or 4 cases of waterboarding by the CIA. I have heard no moral outrage about the widespread and horrific torture visited on Iraqis by Iraqis. This leads me to reflect that: 1. They are just looking for a way to work out their own little internal dramas about George Bush. And/or 2. They might think that them there backwards foreigners just aint important enough for them to take notice of. Code Pink really doesn't care about humans being tortured they just want to keep up that unresolved argument with daddy that they have transfered to George W. Their opinion on moral issues is about as useful as the nuts who can only talk about UFOs, cutting taxes or building 7.
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