Ummm...I hope that's sarcasm. Besides the fact that it took almost TWO WEEKS to get a ship of this type to Haiti, having been berthed at Chesapeake Bay.
After all the Katrina critique of the goverment (I'm not specifically writing of the 'Bush-bashing'), where's the criticism of our government on the abominably-slow response of our military to a disaster zone only 700 miles off our shore?
We were supposed to get underway Friday at 1800 but were delayed. There are two diesel powered electrical generators on the ship and when they went to fire one up, neither would start. So they placed a temporary generator on the deck and wired it up.
Electricians worked all night and we shoved off the pier around 1000 Saturday with only that external power. Because of that limited power and how this old ships wiring is configured, we didnt have any communications. None. The Skipper and the ships master were communicating on satellite phone and a hand held maritime radio. The Navy sent a big ship full of people out to sea with no comm THATs how serious the Navy is about getting the Comfort into Haiti ASAP.
Remember this the next time the Dem committee recommends cutting the Navy budget to pay for their 'Spend & Awe' campaign to generate government & special interest jobs.
#2
If there's a conservative in the White House the media blames him (even when he couldn't do anything anyway without the local footdragging officials).
If there's a liberal in the WH - then blame the navy.
#3
Yeah, the people that got this thing down there despite dealing with all the problems that faced them impress me. You can blow it out your ass if you've got a problem with me being impressed by them.
#4
I'm impressed. Getting a ship that size and complexity from "no power, people, or supplies" to seaworthy and out isn't like the movies - you can't just hop in, fire up the engines and go.
#5
Don't get me wrong I am impressed. Given that Murphy and his prophet Finagle will be lurking in the backround whenever something this big is taken from cold to hot. But a ship like this is an asset. And a priceless one at that given the untold amount of good will it can generate for the US in a situation like this. One would think that vessels like this would have all of their major systems checked on a regular basis. Generating plant started and checked, main engines fired up, communications equipment checked, desalination equipment run etc. Or has money been taken out of the budget for stuff like that?
#6
Ummm...I hope that's sarcasm. Besides the fact that it took almost TWO WEEKS to get a ship of this type to Haiti, having been berthed at Chesapeake Bay.
I've helped put two ships from mothballs into active service when I was with Military Sealift Command. There's always problems.
The Comfort is a 34 year old converted oil tanker. When it sits in the Baltiimore area, there's a civilian-mariner skeleton crew; just enough of a military detachment to make sure the medical equipment is maintained.It doesn't get fired up and sent cruising around all that often. There isn't the money.
Factor in medical corps that are severely stretched (we have almost 20% of our officers and 10% of our enlisted deployed from this small command) and that they're being pulled from all over the country to staff this thing, it is impressive.
#2
The market is down over five percent in three days. Whether the market goes up, down or sideways is irrelevant, just like its current valuation, pumped up as it is by the Mother of All Bailouts.
#3
Opinion from Floyd Norris in NYT: Could this have been avoided? Yes it could. If.
¶ If the Fed had shown a lot more contrition for its errors of monetary policy and regulation.
¶ If the banks had shown similar contrition, and accepted the idea that people who as a group almost sank the financial system did not deserve to return quickly to mega bonuses.
¶ If Goldman Sachs, in particular, did not insist that it never needed a bailout and was never in danger of collapse.
¶ If the Obama administration had chosen to exclude people with ties to the past errors.
#4
The market is down because of Obama's bank bashing speech in Ohio and because the Democrats are waffling on re-confirming Bernanke. Admittedly, Bernanke is not so great, but he's better than the liberal academics Obama would pick as an alternative.
Obama plans on spending the next few months attacking Wall Street, the banks, and business in general as a way to regain popularity. All he'll succeed in doing is increasing unemployment and trashing our 401K's.
So I repeat: Barry - kindly shut your marxist mouth.
#7
increasing unemployment and trashing our 401K's The Dems haven't done anything to increase employment, and nothing the Republicans seem to be about is likely to do that either. 401K's were thoroughly and comprehensively trashed well before the 2008 election & show no signs of recovering in the next 8 years or so. The recent stock market gains are FAKE. Real economic improvement will be contingent on breaking the stranglehold the financial industry has on the larger economy, and the larger economy itself starting to produce things people want to buy (fraudulent financial instruments are excluded).
#9
Fannie Mae. Of course it's not. There are many more factors besides GSE's contributing to the current financial mess. I have found fingerprints of both parties over all of them.
#11
Jerry Pournelle said it better than I ever could: The big problem is described by Peggy Noonan in today's WSJ [23 Jan 2010] : people see the parties now as the Nuts -- Democrats -- vs. the Creeps -- Republicans. Both parties have been captured, the Creeps by the Country Club crowd who think they have an hereditary right to rule and to the spoils of election, and the Nuts by a bunch of political theorists who dig Marx or his intellectual descendents allied with the union leaders who just want more and provide much of the ground game power.
Who can blame the union leaders? If the government is going to tax and spend, the logical position is "Don't tax me, spend on me, and I'll vote for you." The problem is that what the nation needs is people who do NOT directly benefit from government, and don't vote for a party for what they can get out of it, but for what it will do for the country. That's a hard position to take if you're unemployed and your health care runs out and you can't afford COBRA and your kids are sick. Even if you know better, even if you know that in the long run we can't exist by having government workers be the only people with secure employment and a real income, the temptation to take something from the government -- hell I paid taxes for all those years -- and vote to continue, or simply to get into the secure employment sector, is enormous.
What is needed is a restructure, taking the power to Do Good as well as to Tax and Spend out of Washington and handing it back to the States, where the inevitable result of tax and spend is bankruptcy. We can afford to have California and Michigan go bankrupt. We cannot afford to have the Federal Government collapse in an big Atlas Shrugged spasm. Ayn Rand didn't tell us what happens after you trace the sign of the dollar in the air; but it wasn't likely to be pretty. Think of Detroit writ large, only the regulators continue to be on the payroll and are now desperate to raise their department budget through fines and closer enforcement. Anarchy ain't pretty; degenerate democracy is even less so.
In other words, what is needed is that the Democrats stop being run by the Nuts, and the Republicans understand that the purpose of government isn't to let the Creeps run riot, and the only way to do that will be to really believe in transparency and subsidiarity and to understand that each man really is the best judge of his own interest; to return to a point when each election isn't so vital, you can afford to lose one, and the professional politicians are tamed down to where they used to be. That won't be easy. The natural course for a professional politician is to become a rapacious wolf and offer the voters more than his opponent can offer: in other words to promise largesse from the public treasury, and I don't give a damn about Snopes debunking that phrase: democracies really can't survive if the elections turn out to be contests for largesse from the public treasury, and that has been known since Aristotle and Cicero.
Without a party organization the tea party movement will go to hell. It's going to have to build a party structure because we aren't going to stand down from the mad era of Americans with Disabilities Act and No Child Left Behind: and it's going to take more than just deregulation. Some things have to be regulated. Anti-trust is important. Things too big to fail ought not exist, and that has to be fixed. It won't be easy. The Nuts and the Creeps will make common cause to stop any such movement.
#13
And I believe this is the third massive banking system meltdown we've had since 1980. The first of those was well-hidden, but took 15 years to recover from.
#14
I have found fingerprints of both parties over all of them.
Whether you like it or not, its all partisan. To wish it away is about as realistic as the socialist utopia. You're stuck with the political class you have, short of a real bloody revolution, for the near future. We have to address the financial situation with the pols we have. The choice is between those who engage in petty larceny and those who engage in grand felony theft.
#15
You're stuck with the political class you have, short of a real bloody revolution, for the near future. We have to address the financial situation with the pols we have. I don't believe we are stuck with the political class or the pols we have. We still have elections, don't we?
#16
Your election choices are still controlled by parties and the laws and regulations they've put into place. And they do know how the play them. They're not going to disappear over night or in four years or eight years. You can chip away, but wholesale replacements are not going to happen as fast as many want.
#2
Penguin I believe tipper wants us to revisit the even-now topical content contained therein:
Amid all the noise and posturing, nobody proposes enhancing the one thing that actually worked well on that awful day. What appears to have worked, was the initiative and resourcefulness of common men and women. This may be hard to credit, or even to perceive. Throughout the 20th Century, the trend in our culture was monotonic, toward ever-increasing reliance on protection and coddling by institutions, formally deliberated procedures and official hired guns... none of which availed us at all on September Eleventh. Rather, events that day seem to suggest a reversal, toward the older notion of a confident, self-reliant citizenry.
Why do many Pakistanis spend more time celebrating Islamic history of regions outside India (especially Arabian), the ummah, and seem to show more concern in what is happening to their brethren in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir?
The Mughals and the Muslim population of the subcontinent weren't all that bothered by the whole concept of the caliphate. As rulers they did not, or only superficially, recognised the Ottoman caliph. The Mughals, though Central Asian by decent, were deeply entrenched in the political and social traditions of the subcontinent and so was their Muslim polity.
Also, till even the reign of the last great Mughal ruler, Aurangzeb, there are only a handful of documented episodes involving any serious physical clashes between the Hindu majority and their Muslim counterparts. Compared to the communal violence between the two groups in India, and the drummed-up anti-Hindu sentiment in Pakistan in the 20th century, relations between the two communities were largely harmonious especially during the reigns of Akbar and Shahjehan.
Thus, the roots of the modern-day Hindu-Muslim antipathy lie not in the distant past, but a mere hundred and fifty years back in history; or soon after the failure of the 1857 rebellion started jointly by disgruntled Hindu and Muslim soldiers against their colonial British masters.
As the British became a lot more imposing after the failed rebellion, they also began introducing a greater number of modern ideas and technology, some of which, like democracy, suddenly awakened the Muslims to a stark reality which they had simply not been aware of. The idea of majority rule suddenly made the Muslims realise that they were actually in a minority.
As the region's Muslims finally resigned to the fact that the age of Muslim kings was as good as over, a number of Muslim scholars and reformers emerged and attempted to undermine the Muslims' minority status. Both conservative as well as liberal reformists, though disagreeing on a number of issues, agreed that to supplement their community's sudden minority status, the Muslims of the region must now start identifying themselves as citizens of the worldwide Muslim ummah.
Soon, as India entered the 20th century, conservative Muslim scholars also started reshaping Muslim history of the region. To them Mughal kings in general, and Akbar in particular, became arch villains, mainly for their liberal views' and detachment from the Turkish caliphate, which, according to these scholars, led to the downfall of Islam in India.
Of course there was nothing academically or historically sound about such theories, and such scholars simply failed to look into the obvious political and economic reasons behind the fall of the Muslim rule, but the emotionally-charged claims resonated with a Muslim milieu ruing its lost status.
The rewriting of the history of Muslim India by such scholars soon saw the Muslims of India talking more about ancient Muslim conquerors (mainly Arab), and gleefully celebrating plunderers like Mehmood Ghaznavi and Muhammad Ghori, all the while downplaying Muslim rulers who had made India their home and played a leading role in uniting the region as a distinct and diverse empire.
As the British began introducing limited democratic reforms, a section of Hindu extremists too, excited by their majority status rose to glorify their own new heroes. And even though the Indian National Congress remained above such extremism, the Muslim League, however, at the behest of Muhammad Iqbal (and not Jinnah), gave a more intellectual context to what the conservative Muslim thinkers were propagating.
To Iqbal, Indian nationalism that propagated a joint Hindu-Muslim struggle against the British (and of which Jinnah too was once an advocate), was contrary to the concept of a united Muslim ummah. So, was Iqbal's articulate tirade a Utopian critique of nationalism that only ended up in generating a struggling dystopia?
The legacy of communalism in India and anti-Hindu sentiments in Pakistan are a product of two main historical events: The suddenly discovered majority fascism amongst the extremist Hindu fringe, and the Utopian intellectualisation of the Muslims' minority complex who were asked to look outside India for inspiration and somewhat ignore the brilliant legacy of (the supposed Hindu-friendly') Muslim rulers of the region. Ironically, the Congress, too, fell for this Utopian interpretation by supporting the Khilafat Movement, which the Muslim League did not back.
But today in Pakistan Muslims comprise a huge majority. So why do many Pakistanis spend more time celebrating Islamic history of regions outside India (especially Arabian), the ummah, and seem to show more concern in what is happening to their brethren in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir, while drowning out the havoc being perpetrated by fellow Muslims inside their own country?
If we study the recent trend of reactionary thinking and of denials doing the rounds, we will notice it is largely the vocation of the urban middle-class. In an era of populist democracy (mostly associated with the urban working class and the rural peasantry), the middle-class feels itself to be a minority.
Thus, it can be suggested that this class too seems to be suffering from the kind of minority complex of the early 20th century. Perhaps that's why, comparatively speaking, it is this class that is today enthusiastically responding to all the retro-Islamic paraphernalia, anti-democracy sentiment and empty, rhetorical muscle-flexing based on glorified fables and myths of Muslim power' doing the rounds in drawing rooms the popular media and cyber space today.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/24/2010 11:09 ||
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#1
Frankly I don't give a damn Nadeem F. Paracha just keep your snot nosed,Muslim Glory boys at home.
#2
Thus, it can be suggested that this class too seems to be suffering from the kind of minority complex of the early 20th century. Perhaps that's why, comparatively speaking, it is this class that is today enthusiastically responding to all the retro-Islamic paraphernalia, anti-democracy sentiment and empty, rhetorical muscle-flexing based on glorified fables and myths of "Muslim power" doing the rounds in drawing rooms -- the popular media and cyber space today.
This is exactly what guys like Mark Steyn have been saying all along. The jihadis are mainly comfortably middle-class (and above) individuals looking to find themselves via the Koran. Jihad isn't caused by poverty - it's caused by affluence.
[Asharq al-Aswat] Political circles in Lebanon are talking about one thing; the recent statement made by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in which he announced his intention to form a commission to abolish political sectarianism. As soon as Berri revealed his plans, people began to voice their opinions whether to support, warn against or reject his idea. Lebanon is a sectarian country par excellence; it was founded on the concept of sectarianism and it still embraces it. There are well over 20 official sects in Lebanon and their geographic distribution is plain to see. Every major Lebanese sect has its own paper, radio station, television network, sports club and a main male or female singer.
This is the reality of the situation in Lebanon. Sectarianism is a fundamental part of life there. The famous singer Ziad Rahbani was not exaggerating when he wrote his famous song 'Ya Zaman Ata'ifiya' [Age of Sectarianism], as it faithfully portrays the state of Lebanon.
The Christians in Lebanon are afraid of the aforementioned proposed commission and believe that abolishing political sectarianism would somehow be at their expense. They believe they would lose out the most as a result. Christians are completely convinced that their numbers in Lebanon have decreased dramatically as a result of many Christians migrating because of feelings of fear and injustice. They claim that Christians hold no more than 25 percent of the country's administrative positions. The independent state of Lebanon did not pronounce in its declaration of independence dividing the senior posts such as president, prime minister or parliament speaker amongst different Lebanese sects. However, it was this "readiness" for political sectarianism that made Lebanese leaders transform it into an unwritten law and custom.
After the conclusion of the Taif Agreement in 1989, political sectarian divisions became part of the ruling system. The Maronite church today says that sectarianism has to be removed from our souls before being removed from the constitution. This is not feasible; sectarianism cannot be ultimately removed from our souls at all. However, people can be protected against its negative impact through [constitutional] texts.
Another problem that affects the credibility of this proposal for abolishing political sectarianism, despite its significance, nobility and worthiness, is the fact that the person presenting this proposal is Nabih Berri, who has been known, (like all other politicians), to favour his sect and province to a large degree. He would insist on granting all kinds of administrative vacancies, over which he has jurisdiction, to his own people. As a result, some people are asking "Why doesn't Nabih Berri first adopt this proposal himself by creating a sectarian balance around him?"
Lebanon has only just recovered from the crisis of the formation of parliament and the amalgamation with sectarianism, euphemistically referred to as the "National Accord." Not enough time has passed for the government to prove itself and there are priorities [to be addressed]. Many people are trying to observe the dimensions and possible impact of this proposal because in one way or another, it is bound to affect other parts of the Arab world.
"Lebanization" is a phenomenon that has turned into a political term and we can see it clearly in Iraq, Yemen and Sudan. We fear it might spread to other suitable parts of the Arab world. Political sectarianism appears in fragile communities that are incapable of transforming into equal and just societies for many different reasons. But, in the end, it is a sick phenomenon that requires immediate and decisive treatment.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/24/2010 00:00 ||
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Al Qaeda does one thing extremely well: killing Muslims. Between 2006 and 2008, only 2 percent of the terror multinational's victims were Westerners. The rest were citizens of Muslim countries. Even as al Qaeda claims to be their defender.
I've long complained that we fail to capitalize on al Qaeda's blood thirst in our information operations. Al Qaeda (as well as the Taliban and other insurgent groups) slaughters Muslims -- yet we let the media flip the blame to us.
Last weekend, a Pentagon insider passed me a no-nonsense study recently released by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. "Deadly Vanguards: A Study of al Qaeda's Violence Against Muslims" is exactly the kind of work our analysts should produce -- but rarely do. Using exclusively Arabic-language media reports and including only those incidents for which al Qaeda proudly claimed responsibility, this scrupulously documented study explodes the myth of al Qaeda as a champion of Muslims:
* Between 2004 and 2008, only 15 percent of al Qaeda's victims were Westerners, and that number skewed upward because of the Madrid and London attacks.
* Between 2006 and 2008, a non-Westerner was 54 times likelier to die in an al Qaeda attack than a Westerner.
* "Outside of the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, 99 percent of al Qaeda's victims were non-Western in 2007 and 96 percent were non-Western in 2008."
Bravo to Scott Helfstein, Nassir Abdullah and Muhammad al-Obaidi for producing this supremely useful report. Now the question is: Will we use it?
The propaganda skills of our enemies eclipse our timid, lawyer-ridden information operations. In the Muslim world, we get blamed even for al Qaeda's proudest massacres of Muslims -- while Pakistanis blame us for Taliban suicide bombings. As this report documents, we possess facts that could be wielded as weapons. But we're no more willing to fight an aggressive information war than we are to wage a serious ground war against our enemies.
Personally, I was astonished -- and delighted -- that this hard-headed report came out of West Point, the most politically correct major institution in the US Army, now dedicated to the proposition that killing our nation's enemies is so yesterday. Is there new hope for the stumbling Long Gray Line?
Back to al Qaeda: Our porcine intelligence system doesn't bother to ask the basic question of why al Qaeda kills Muslims so avidly. (Even conservative Muslim scholars are questioning al Qaeda's practices.) The answer's as clear as a sunny day in the desert: Al Qaeda fully reflects its Saudi parentage. Neither the Saudis nor al Qaeda cares a whit about individual Muslims. They only care about Islam.
I've seen, in country after country, how the Saudis sacrifice the well-being and human potential of countless Muslims in order to prevent them from integrating into local societies and to promote the dour Wahhabi cult that has deformed Islam so horribly: purity matters, people don't. Likewise, al Qaeda is happy to sacrifice any number of Muslims to promote its neo-Wahhabi death cult. The al Qaeda serpent may have turned on the Saudi royals, but their differences are a matter of degree.
Meanwhile, we imagine that our passivity and "tolerance" are virtues. We fail to capitalize on al Qaeda's horrendous record, while our government protects the Saudi-funded extremists who poison American mosques. (Our leaders blather about "freedom of religion," ignoring the fact that there's no freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia. Can't we prohibit religious funding from states that don't themselves exercise tolerance? We're being idiotic, not virtuous.)
We continue to hear endless nonsense from Washington about how "soft power" is so much more effective than military force. OK, show us. Three good men at West Point have given us a powerful information weapon against al Qaeda. Will our leaders have the sense to use it?
#1
An excellent article. I just wish that Peters did not conflate the role of Wahhabist theology (which is obscurantist and near-mystical) with the muscular main-line ideology of Islamism. Al Qaeda has very little 'Saudi parentage'- it came out of Egypt and the MB/EIJ. Personally, I think that is a big deal in figuring out how to combat such an ideology, but maybe I am picking nits?
#2
this scrupulously documented study explodes the myth of al Qaeda as a champion of Muslims
Peters generic usage of the term Muslim is as ignorant as Obama reaching out to the Muslim World. AQ is a Sunni syndicate with clearly stated goals. One is to overthrow the Asian governments that dont completely subscribe to an Islamic theocracy. Also vanquish all western military and influences of modernity from their soil. And finally annihilate the Shia. And of course killing Jews along the way is just what they do. When their Holy handbook doesnt fully endorse their tactics they find a turban to write some loopholes. So according to AQ if Shiites get slaughtered well theyre really not Muslim anyway. And if a fellow Sunni gets caught in the crossfire hey theyre a martyr. Its doubtful a study like this will have much influence one way or the other.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By Ralph Peters
