Up on the ancient mound of Armageddon, we could see Nazareth to the east, Mount Tabor, and the pass down to the Mediterranean. We were surrounded by, in fact atop the scene of many ancient and terrible battles. It wasnt for nothing John of Patmos in his cave settled on Armageddon as the place where the world would end. It had been doing that on a regular basis there for centuries.
The sky was afire, blood red and terrible overhead. It looked great, very apocalyptic. But Garo needed someone to shoot amid the ancient wreckage of 16 cities, and I needed someone to quote. I caught a flash of black in the corner of my eye, a caped figure bounding across the old fallen stones at some distance.
Look, its the Angel of Death, I said. Lets go get him.
By the time we ran him down in among some rocks, he had taken the form of a long-haired, heavily tattooed, Bible-quoting car park attendant from Albuquerque. I asked if he was here waiting for the End Times, for the Great Final Battle between Good and Evil. He gave me a look like I didnt get it, and said, Thats been going on for some time. Its going on all around us. You just cant see it.
Garo and I gave each other a look. It was a time of relative contentment, prosperity, no trouble on the horizon. In the much-fought-over Holy Land, it looked like peace was possible between Israelis, the Palestinians and even the Syrians. Religious violence seemed to have expired in Ireland. Even the millennial terrorist attacks that scared off the expected mass pilgrimage had failed to materialize. It was all a lark. Trouble, violence, slaughter all things of the past. We were having a good time. But our tattooed friend up on the ancient tel at Armageddon was right. The battle was raging.
Janet Napolitano former Arizona governor, now overmatched secretary of homeland security will forever be remembered for having said of the attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit: The system worked. The attackers concerned father had warned U.S. authorities about his sons jihadist tendencies. The would-be bomber paid cash and checked no luggage on a transoceanic flight. He was nonetheless allowed to fly, and would have killed 288 people in the air alone, save for a faulty detonator and quick actions by a few passengers.
Heck of a job, Brownie.
The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administrations response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism man-caused disasters. Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York a trifecta of political correctness and image management.
And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term war on terror. Its over that is, if it ever existed.
Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term asymmetric warfare.
And produces linguistic and logical oddities that littered Obamas public pronouncements following the Christmas Day attack. In his first statement, Obama referred to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an isolated extremist. This is the same president who, after the Ford Hood shooting, warned us against jumping to conclusions code for daring to associate Nidal Hasans mass murder with his Islamist ideology. Yet, with Abdulmutallab, Obama jumped immediately to the conclusion, against all existing evidence, that the bomber acted alone.
More jarring still were Obamas references to the terrorist as a suspect who allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device. You can hear the echo of FDR: Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor.
Obama reassured the nation that this suspect had been charged. Reassurance? The president should be saying: We have captured an enemy combatant an illegal combatant under the laws of war: no uniform, direct attack on civilians and now to prevent future attacks, he is being interrogated regarding information he may have about al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and immediately lawyered up. At which point surprise! he stops talking.
This absurdity renders hollow Obamas declaration that we will not rest until we find all who were involved. Once weve given Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, we have gratuitously forfeited our right to find out from him precisely who else was involved, namely those who trained, instructed, armed, and sent him.
This is all quite mad even in Obamas terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.
The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.
The president said that this incident highlights the nature of those who threaten our homeland. But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as extremist(s).
A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali, and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and they are openly pledged to wage war on America.
Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war, indeed, refuses even to name the enemy jihadist is a word banished from the Obama lexicon turns laxity into a governing philosophy.
#3
Bush would promise them violence. Obama threatens that he can't stop the Israelis forever.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/01/2010 14:12 Comments ||
Top||
#4
For many years during the cold war, I had allied officers with whom I would have social contact often comment about their concerns on America's constancy about policy. The complaint was we never had a constant course, and veered not just every 4 or 8 years, but more like every 2 or 3 depending one events. But that was then, when the question was veering....
Now, i suspect they think we are no longer constant about fundamental things. No are we to be trusted, nor are we wealthy anymore, just presumptious....
Via Puppy Blender
...The prosecutors made novel use of federal criminal statutes, including charging the contractors with heavy mandatory minimum sentences for use of firearms (i.e., machineguns) in the commission of a crime of violence. The dismissal is long overdue and, given the thoroughness of Judge Urbinas opinion, seems unlikely to be overturned on appeal (or, for that matter, perhaps even unlikely to be appealed).
#1
I read this and I could not forebear to shout out to the television: "You mutherf*cker..."
From the AP reporter Matt Apuzzo covering the proceedings via News Hour*
This is a big win for the security guards. And -- and they had felt like they were going to be able to prove their innocence at trial, regardless of the evidentiary issues. They felt like this was a legitimate firefight. This was -- they were acting in self-defense.
But, at this point, we will never know. It appears we will never know whether this was a -- self-defense, whether they were ambushed, or whether this was a massacre.
We knew by law they were innocent of all charges, Matt; that the government is s'posed to prove these men committed crimes.
This "reporter" needs an
objective lesson in objectivity.
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.
