Conservative Donnybrook

Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered tenuous support for issuing the purple heart to any military person suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.  While I am sure that many of our Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors suffer from the horrific realities of combat, the wound is not the same as taking a bullet, losing an arm or a leg, etc….

I am reminded of the field hospital scene in the movie Patton:

Patton: What’s the matter with you?
Soldier: Well, I… I guess I… I can’t take it anymore.
Patton: What did you say?
Soldier: It’s my nerves, sir. I… I just can’t stand the shelling anymore.
Patton: Your “nerves”? Well, hell, you’re nothing but a God-damned coward.
[Soldier starts sniveling]
Patton: Shut up!
[Slaps him, once forehanded, then backhanded on the rebound]
Patton: I’m not going to have a man sitting here crying! In front of these brave men who have been wounded in battle!
[Soldier snivels some more, and Patton swings a vicious forehand slap, knocking his helmet away]
Patton: Shut up!
[to the doctors]
Patton: Don’t admit this yellow bastard. There’s nothing wrong with him. I won’t have a man who’s just afraid to fight stinking up this place of honor! You will get him back up to the front.
[to soldier]
Patton: You’re going back to the front, boy. You may get shot, and you may get killed, but you’re going back to the fighting. Either that, or I’ll stand you up before a firing squad. Why, I ought to shoot you right now, you…
[pulls his service automatic. At that, the doctors leap forward and hustle the soldier out of the tent. Patton keeps shouting at the soldier’s back]
Patton: God-damned bastard! Get him out of here! Take him back to the front! You hear me? You God-damned coward!
[Takes deep breath]
Patton: I won’t have cowards in my army.

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The leader of Al-Qaida in Iraq is reported to have been captured!

UPDATE:  It now appears the Iraqis got it wrong.  They captured someone that looked similar and with a similar name.  Whoops.

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In the finale of a weeklong homage to Mother’s Day, Code Pink has asked women to appear at an anti-military rally in Berkeley prepared to cast spells, do rituals, and impart wisdom in order to end war. Friday will be “Witches, clowns and sirens day.”

Reportedly, harpies, shrews and harridans are feeling left out. Phone calls to the National Organization for Women asking for a reaction to being left out of Code Pink’s Friday rally have been unreturned.

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As I was writing my latest post, I kept thinking about the American Civil War (War Between the States, if you insist) and the practice of parole. During the Civil War, prisoners of war were regularly paroled on the condition that they would not then take up arms in the war again. Of course, not every person who accepted parole acquitted himself with honor, but many did.

Today, American servicemen are prohibited from entering into parole agreements. The Code of Conduct for the Armed Services states, “I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.” In some ways this makes sense, and the refusal of special consideration from the enemy is the source of honor for American war heroes like John McCain.

The idea of parole is built on honor. Essentially, it is a gentleman’s agreement that “if I let you go, you’ll just go home and stop fighting.” Of course, the flipside is, “if you don’t agree, I can keep you in captivity until the cessation of hostilities or until this position is overrun and I can no longer keep you.”  Each side benefits as long as each side upholds his end of the bargain. It seems to me that when the United States is engaged in a war against a foe that possesses honor, American soldiers should be able to accept parole agreements and the United States military should be free to extend parole to enemy combatants.

Maybe I am simply fantasizing about a set of conditions that can never occur. Certainly, the idea of parole has been demonstrably repudiated by the likes of Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi. And, clearly, our war with Islamic extremists (or probably any other religiously motivated enemy) would not qualify for this sort of treatment as we have already seen that they will not treat our soldiers with honor when they are captured. But it seems that parole might be an option with some enemies. On the other hand, there could be the feeling that those who are captured are showing a lack of brotherhood with their fellow countrymen by making deals with the enemy. I guess I’m just thinking out loud. Should soldiers be allowed to accept parole?

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Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, a former detainee of the United States military who was once housed at our facility at Guantanamo Bay, was released to the custody of Kuwaiti authorities on November 3, 2005. He, along with four other codefendants, was tried in Kuwait:

The defendants pleaded innocent when the trial opened in March. Their lawyers argued there was no evidence to convict them and that Kuwaiti courts had no jurisdiction to try them because they had not done anything illegal in Kuwait.

Defence attorneys also said testimonies provided by the US could not be used in a Kuwaiti court because they did not have the signatures of the detainees or interrogators.

The Kuwaiti court found all five of the men innocent as charged and they were released.

On April 26, 2008, three suicide bombers detonated themselves in Mosul, Iraq killing nine innocents and injuring 31 others. Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi was one of the terrorists in the attack.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International is calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay and the repatriation of the detainees there. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 enemy combatants are currently held at Gitmo. I don’t relish the idea of 500 radical terrorists making their ways to Mosul and Baghdad and Kirkuk. The potential death toll in killed bystanders is just too high.

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The old saying is: “Yeah, but what does that have to do with the price of bananas?”

Well, when it comes to oil, a lot. OPEC’s president says oil could hit $200 per barrel. The problem, of course, is that the price of everything which is shipped (which is pretty much everything other than online services) is affected by the price of oil. I recently reported on a trucker revolt in downtown Indy. Those revolts have been spreading throughout the country. When trucking companies are hit with high oil prices, does anyone think they absorb the cost? Of course, they don’t. That cost gets priced into the goods we buy.

Last year, we hit $100 per barrel for oil and, at that time, the price of unleaded gasoline was nearly $3 per gallon. When (note I did not say if) the price of oil hits $200 per barrel, gas prices will likely be $6 per gallon. I drive a fuel efficient import (made in Marysville, Ohio before anyone gets all kooky and talking about how they bought a Ford, which was built in either Canada or Mexico, tells how I should support American cars) and the other day my 12 gallon tank cost me over $40 to fill up, with $50 bills not far off. Those sorts of bills used to be reserved for the SUV driving populace. Forty dollars used to be my entire budget for gasoline for an entire month. Consider this: semi trucks typically have 300 (some have 325) gallon tanks.  At $4.16 for a gallon of diesel, which is a decent price right now, it would cost the average trucker nearly $1,250.00 to fill ‘er up.

I used to work at the fuel desk at a truck stop (third shift - drank tons of coffee), and it was a gigantic sale when someone spent $300 to fuel their truck. Now that would get them about two truck stops down the road. I understand their angst and realize that if nothing is done, we’ll soon feel their pain.

Diverting grain to be used to create fuel is not the answer. First, it is extremely expensive to accomplish - more than to drill for oil, or buy from the Middle East. And, second, it drives up the cost of almost every food item, which of course impacts poor people, who spend more as a percentage of their income on food, disproportionately.

Surprisingly, Barack Obama, who seems to be clueless whenever he begins to talk about actual policies as opposed to grand ideas like change, is somehow opposed to relieving the consumer from the burden of government taxes on fuel. Hillary, at least, gets it. McCain has been out front on this issue. But even McCain’s plan is a stopgap measure. First, a hiatus on the gas tax would eventually impact our roads, which the tragedy in Minneapolis teaches us are in a deplorable state. But, second, that sort of relief, while welcome, is temporary. The real problem is that demand has far outstripped supply and OPEC refuses to pump more oil.

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Public enemy number one is Iraq has to be the radical terrorist, Muqtada al-Sadr.  He is the head of a militia hell bent on imposing a theocracy in the region sympathetic to Iran.  He constantly either threatens United States soldiers or outright attacks them.  His Mahdi Army is estimated to have 60,000.  This horde is made up of armed members just waiting to be unleashed on an innocent public and against U.S. interests.  It is well past time to deal with this unstable element.  If al-Sadr wants a fight, we should oblige him. 

The Iraqi government has been held hostage by the threat of violence from the Mahdi army.  The United States military has been reluctant, to the point of pandering to the mad man, to engage it.  So what are our options?  We could either submit to al-Sadr’s wishes and withdrawal from Iraqi leaving her in a worse state than when we arrived, allowing an Islamist theocracy to emerge or we could fight this war we engaged in and win it.  The United States military knows where the bulk of the Mahdi Army militiamen are located.  In fact, they have been busy building a wall around a large concentration of them in the Baghdad slum known as Sadr City.  Another contingent was recently battled in Basra by inept Iraqi regulars, many of whom either surrendered or defected with arms to al-Sadr’s cause. 

My suggestion:  lay siege to these and other well-known Mahdi Army areas.  Seal off the areas; no one gets in and no one out without first submitting to a full strip search.   In conjunction with the saying of siege, al-Sadr should be assassinated as quickly as possible, where ever he may be.  Once the area is sealed and al-Sadr eliminated, the fighters should be granted two days to surrender or face massive aerial bombardment.  The two days should be granted in order to allow women, children and other innocents to escape the coming onslaught.  After the areas have been reduced to glass and ashes, a thorough sweep of the ruins should be conducted by United States soldiers to capture any remaining weapons caches. 

War is ugly, war is hell.  But if we are going to fight one we should also win.  A war should never be fought unless it necessary and is fought to be won as quickly as possible.  The elimination of public enemy number one and his group of crazed lunatics will place the United States one foot closer to getting out of this conflict.

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The sister of a friend - the sister an editor at National Review and the friend a burgeoning attorney - clued me in to Irving Kristol’s wonderful collection of essays, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. 

In a foreboding essay entitled “American Intellectuals and Foreign Policy,” written in 1967, the “godfather of neoconservatism” explains “the extraordinary inconsistencies of intellectuals on matters of foreign policy”:

So it is that many intellectuals are appalled at our military intervention in Southeast Asia, on  the grounds that, no matter what happens there, the national security of the United States will not be threatened.  But these same intellectuals would raise no objection if the United States sent an expeditionary force all the way to South Africa to overthrow apartheid, even though South Africa offers no threat to American security.

Now for the taxidermy: replace “Southeast Asia” with “Iraq,” “South Africa” with “Darfur” and “overthrow apartheid” with “end genocide.”  You get:

So it is that many intellectuals are appalled at our military intervention in Iraq, on the grounds that, no matter what happens there, the national security of the United States will not be threatened.  But these same intellectuals would raise no objection if the United States sent an expeditionary force all the way to Darfur to end genocide, even though Darfur offers no threat to American security.

Samantha Power, Obama’s former leading lady on foreign policy issues, comes to mind.

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Can we assume that other eminently high-minded persons will soon be submitting GOP applications?

Playwright David Mamet explains why he is no longer a “brain-dead liberal.”

Martin Amis jettisons his liberal naivete and looks unflinchingly at Islamic terror.

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I received this in my email inbox earlier today.

Does this seem like a marine whose morale is lacking? Or who doesn’t believe in the mission? To me, this seems like a guy who has a good handle on his situation. I’m pretty sure that poor hadji didn’t understand a word that was said to him. Wear your seatbelt. Don’t run with scissors. And, drink milk. Sound advice. We are clearly only there to help.

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For those of you who have not heard, anti-war protesters interrupted Cardinal Francis George’s Easter homily yesterday. Here is what happened:

The individuals involved were arrested and face battery charges as well as felony trespass charges. As a Chicago Catholic I can only say I wish one good Catholic man would have jumped up when this began and put these fools in their place. Preferably physically, to show them that force can bring a decisive end to intolerance and hate. As well as to bring it all to a quick end.

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. . . to many, like Cindy Sheehan, it’s been Five Years:

(from the San Francisco anti-war protest yesterday)

Get it?

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WASHINGTON, DC—As you may have heard, there were protests here today to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. I, your intrepid reporter from the Conservative Donnybrook Washington Bureau, humbly bring the story to you.

My reporting activities began this morning, as I was walking through McPherson Square on the way to work. Some people with oddly-colored hair were milling around. One guy was wearing a polar bear costume. There were no more than a couple dozen protestors around. I continued up Vermont Avenue alongside 20-odd folks who were carrying a large prop that I didn’t bother to look at, and one of them shouted, “Wake up, America!”   Continue Reading »

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Mr. Benson over at Prairie Pundit has a great analysis of the Colombia-Venezuela-Ecuador situation.  He cites an intriguing article and offers a wonderful wrap-up analysis.

UPDATE: The Prairie Pundit has now been added to “Blogs We Read.”

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I’m a guy who likes to get to the bottom line, to simplify things. Here’s an article discussing four papers that is crying out for my brand of simplification.

You can entirely skip the first three paragraphs which are mainly a catalog of how smart the author of the papers is. The first paper’s topic analyzes the effects of political assassination on countries. The second paper discusses the effect that individual leaders have on a nation. The third paper discusses the effect of centralized coordination of corruption in a nation. And, finally, the fourth paper analyzes whether it reduces corruption to manage spending projects from the top.

It is the first two papers that I’d like to summarize. As I read it, George W. Bush is going about the process of democratization all wrong. Apparently, when autocratic leaders are assassinated, the countries they were running tend to become more democratic. So, instead of invading all these countries in the Middle East, we should just be rubbing out their leaders, thereby Bringing Democracy to the Region™. At least, that’s the message I get from the first two papers.

I’d like to see him do some research into whether in cases where Democracy fails to take hold after a single assassination, does it help to bump off the successor? I mean, is the process of Democratization iterative?

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Here is a classic debate from Firing Line history where Buckley demolishes Noam Chomsky and makes him look stupid. Charmingly.

Buckley’s line toward the beginning of this exchange where Buckley offers to take up Chomsky’s digression and then peeks over at him with a bit of a wink and sparkle in his eye is priceless.

Chomsky debate: Part I and Part II

And, as it turns out, this seems to be fairly topical.

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I’m sure this Muslim nation will be the greatest of friends with the United States. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and all the other UN-believers should give themselves a little pat on the back. I’m sure this won’t come back to haunt us.

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If Christoph Luxenberg is correct, there are going to be a lot of really pissed off suicide bombers in Paradise!

Perhaps, that why they have turned to retarded women to deliver the terrorists’ evil payloads.

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Why in Heaven’s name do politicians and military personnel give out information on the United States’ war strategies?  Hell, I knew when and where additional troops (the “surge”) would hit the ground in Iraq.  If I did, the enemy sure did and they used it to their advantage by moving locations, laying low and stashing weaponry. 

The President today refused to comment on troop reductions.  Nancy Pelosi did however comment saying ”The president’s Iraq policy will result in the same number of troops committed to an endless war in Iraq at the end of this year as were there at the end of 2006.”  This statement makes it seem as if all of the “surge” troops will be withdrawn by year’s end.  WHAT THE F#@K?!  Is Nancy trying to win this war and keep the enemy off balance or are is she more interested gaining political points from stalwart anti-war supporters regardless of tipping off the enemy to our strategies?  This constant running of the lips is not limited to democrats and republicans, generals and other  commanding officers have open their mouths too.  This is a lot like yelling to your friend with a bullhorn while hiding in a game of kick the can. 

Remember, loose lips sink ships.  So, shut up already!   

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The shock to me is not that the Iranian navy antagonized three American ships in the Persian Gulf but that they were permitted to do so by the U.S. Navy without meeting a watery grave.  Dropping boxes into the water near U.S. ships and giving the impression that those boxes were mines (”We are coming at you and you will explode in minutes”) demonstrated Iran’s desire for death and destruction.  So, the question I ask is why weren’t they sent to the bottom of the gulf?  I am glad to hear that the commander ordered the sailors to battle stations and weapons trained on the Iranian aggressors.  I simply wish those weapons had been used and those horrible blue boats were destroyed. 

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