In Douglas MacArthur’s famous testimony to Congress about the end of his service in east Asia, he commented that, if one were to compare Japan’s development toward self-government to a child’s development toward adulthood, the Japanese were about 12 years old. The Japanese didn’t much like that, and despite his previously high approval ratings, a pre-speech plan to build a large statue to him, and his foundational work on Japan’s postwar refounding, there’s not very much there to memorialize him.
If I were to base my opinion of the Iraqis off of stories like this, I’d say that they were about 3. And if I were to base my opinion of the whole Iraq endeavor off of a couple of paragraphs from the story, I’d think we were best off bombing the place to oblivion and leaving these people to their just desserts.
“I come before you here seeking your forgiveness,” Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond was quoted as saying. “In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers.”
The commander also read a letter of apology by the shooter, and another military official kissed a Quran and presented it to the tribal leaders, according to CNN.
So 19 Arab Muslims hijack planes and kill thousands of Americans, and I’m subjected to endless lectures from Arab groups on the evils of racial profiling; one American shoots holes in a Koran and an American soldier has to kiss a damned Koran? Bull Shiite.
Perhaps, ultimately, this is all worth it. But I often think that Victor Hanson is correct that the Arab world has much more to fear from the American street than we do from the Arab street. More temper tantrums like this, and we might end up spanking the little babies.
Apollo posted this at 1:19 AM EDT on Monday, May 19th, 2008 as Iraq
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In the fight against Radical Islam its tough to ignore this story from that conservative rag The New York Times. Apparently young Iraqi’s are becoming disillusioned with Islam and the culture of hate and violence it spreads.
Money quote:
“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”
Is this young generation of Iraqi’s our hope for the future? Are the radical clerics and Al Queda murders achieving exactly the opposite of their intentions?
Its almost like someone once told us that this would happen. I guess sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.
Jamie posted this at 4:22 PM EDT on Friday, April 11th, 2008 as Iraq
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Speaking today, Obama engaged in one of the cheapest, dumbest forms of gotcha politics I’ve seen from a candidate this cycle. At the same time, he showed a level fo ignorance that is amazing coming from someone in 2008:
Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties.
As for the first sentence, McCain misspoke yesterday and almost immediately corrected himself. Whoopty do. I do not, and no reasonable person can, believe that a small and quickly corrected verbal slip up should be the subject of a legitimate campaign attack. That Obama would lower himself to this seems to me a sign of complete desperation to distract people from Wright. Surely this is a new low for someone who has made elevating the tone such a big part of his campaign.
As for the second sentence, my jaw dropped. The Iraq-Al Qaeda connection wasn’t particularly strong, it wasn’t enough to go to war over per se (and since that wasn’t one of the major reasons we invaded, this is a red herring by Obama), but it cannot truthfully be said that they had no connection. For Obama to peddle misinformation is almost as galling as the lowness of his attack on McCain.
Apollo posted this at 10:10 PM EDT on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 as Iraq, Audacity of Hype
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Vigilante justice is never preferable but, under some circumstances, it can easily be justified and even applauded:
Meanwhile, in the wake of a suicide bombing on Sunday near Falluja in Anbar Province, local tribesmen burned the house of the young suicide bomber’s family and prevented a female cousin from collecting the bomber’s head for burial.
In the attack on Monday, a suicide bomber in the village of Hajaj near the northern oil refinery town of Baiji entered a communal hall where a feast was under way, observing the end of the seven-day mourning period for the uncle of a high-ranking security official in the Salahuddin provincial government. The bomber detonated his explosive vest, demolishing the hall.
Seventeen people were killed and 11 wounded, according to a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
The level of anger on Monday in Albo Issa, the village where the Sunday bombing took place, laid bare the intensity of the blood feuds and vengeance killings that often characterize the violence in the provinces. As women keened in the courtyard and men sat somberly in a separate house, family members talked about those they had lost.
“After this crime, we will never allow any of those people to stay in our area,” said Mohammed Hadi Hassan, 20, whose father was killed. “Not even their women and children. We will not permit anyone with such an ideology to stay in our village.”
Blow yourself up with a bunch of other people and your family’s house gets burned down. Not the most perfect kind of justice, but it’s heartening to see that most Iraqis appear to have had it with al-Queda scum.
Tom posted this at 4:06 PM EST on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 as Iraq
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From VDH, I learn that Ricardo Sanchez is now calling for American retreat from Iraq. Asking Ricardo Sanchez what we should do in Iraq was on my to-do list right behind asking Maginot how to defend against the Germans. Reading the transcript reminds me of all my rants about how mediocre has been American generalship:
[While allowing terrorists to take control of large portions of Iraq] I saw firsthand the consequences of the administration’s failure to devise a strategy for victory in Iraq that employed, in a coordinated manner, the political, economic, diplomatic and military power of the United States.
Harry Truman had it right that the buck doesn’t stop until it gets to the president. If a Lieutenant General gets to pass the buck for the failure of American forces under his command, then no one short of the Oval Office is responsible for anything. Unbelievable.
Our Army and Marine Corps are struggling with changing deployment schedules that are disrupting combat readiness training and straining the patience and daily lives of military families. It will take the Army at least a decade to repair the damage done to its full-spectrum readiness, which is at its lowest level since the Vietnam War. In the meantime, the ability of our military to fully execute our national security strategy will be called into doubt, producing what is, in my judgment, unacceptable strategic risk.
I have seen this trope peddled by Democrats, and I called it “gobstoppingly jawdropping“, but to see a retired general say, in effect, “We must run away from this fight so that we’ll be prepared for an unforeseeable potential fight in the future” is…gobstoppingly jawdroppinger. I just don’t understand that sort of mindset. Perhaps if these people were saying “We’re going to have a war with China in five years,” then this would be warranted. But they’re not. What is the likelihood that there will be a more important use of military power in the next ten years?
Whatever the priority of the people who use this line of reasoning is, it is not American victory. It makes me presume that, wherever the next fight will be and whatever might be at stake, they’ll just use the same rationale for running away again. The purpose of the military is not “full-spectrum readiness”, whatever the hell that means, it’s killing America’s enemies. Judging by the fact that only one American general, Petraeus, was advocating a more aggressive use of American force in Iraq, I have a feeling that Sanchez’s ignorance regarding the military’s raison d’etre is widespread among those with stars on their collars.
Read that piece from Sanchez. At the very least, you will no longer be nagged by the question, “How did Iraq get this bad?”
Apollo posted this at 5:39 PM EST on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 as Iraq, Running with the antelope
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This is gobstoppingly jawdropping. If there was any doubt that the Democrats are tying their political aspirations to American defeat, it should be gone by now. After a couple of really crappy years, we’ve finally pulled things together. The chances of us leaving a peaceful Iraq is getting stronger by the day. So of course the Democrats want to put stupid timetables on spending. Why?
Democrats say defense dollars should be used to bring troops home and repair the readiness of the armed forces…
Yes, that’s why we pay taxes. To fund retreats, and keep our military ready. So that the next time we deploy somewhere, they’ll be even more ready to retreat. Because that’s what the military is for. It’s not for killing terrorist and fighting until we win. It’s for retreating.
That the Democrat party has become the party of American defeat should be the crowning achievement on the Baby Boomers’ long list of shame.
Apollo posted this at 11:26 PM EST on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 as Iraq, The Democratic Congress
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