harmonicminer

Today I watched the graduation from Marine boot camp of my son’s closest friend, at MCRD in San Diego.  I’ve known the new Marine since he was 11 or so.  He looked really, really thin.  No surprise there, of course.  The nature of boot camp is that the drill instructors see to it that the recruits are always moving, rarely resting, and given little time to overeat.   They learn to eat really, really fast.

What is remarkable about anyone who enlisted after the events of Sept 11, 2001 is that all of these enlistees know that they are probably going to war, and they have chosen to do so voluntarily, out of patriotism and the desire to serve their nation.  There are no draftees in the US military, and the great majority of those now serving enlisted after 9/11.

The Marines of Company A, who graduated today, formed an impressive looking group.  To quote the Secretary of Defense, who spoke to them in person today (probably the closest I’ll ever come to a cabinet member), these Marines are “the tip of the spear.”  They go in first, into the toughest situations, and then they do it again next week.  And in this world, often the week after that.

An officer who spoke mentioned a recent group of over 100 Marines who were due to cycle out of the Corps, having honorably served their terms of duty, whose Company was scheduled next to serve in Okinawa.  At the last moment, when that Company was unexpectedly ordered to Afghanistan, these Marines re-enlisted to stay with their Company in this challenging assignment.  This is not uncommon Marine behavior, I’m told.

These young men who graduated today deserve our thanks, and our admiration.  They deserve any support we can give them.  Without men such as these, down through time, we would not have a nation.

My son’s friend had other options.  He is a bright young man (he tested VERY high on his ASVABs), and could certainly have gone to college.  Academically, he is college material.  In fact, I tried to talk him into taking the ROTC route through college and into a military career.  But he wanted to do it this way, and I can’t fault his decision.

Heartfelt congratulations to Private Justin Howell, USMC.

The next time you get a chance to take a shot at a future conqueror, take it. No, lefty nitwits, I’m not talking about taking a shot at the next Republican president-elect. I’m talking about people whose overweening ambition makes them think they have the right to conquer the world.  By definition, no US president qualifies, because all have left office, willingly or not, without coercion, and gone home to write their memoirs, if they lived long enough. 

No, I’m talking about a Hitler, or a Stalin, or a Mao, or….  well, you get the idea.  Kaiser Wilhelm, without whom World War I would probably not have occurred as it did, is one such, though that seems not to have been immediately obvious to Annie Oakley…  a dead shot if there ever was one.  Although after WWI started, she seems to have caught on quickly enough about the Kaiser’s character.

THERMOPYLAEHILLBILLY: Annie Oakley and Kaiser Wilhelm II

Where would we be today if Annie Oakley had just a little more to drink in 1889? Kaiser Wilhelm II was the Reich’s new leader and had a box seat to watch Oakley at the Berlin Charlottenburg Race Course. She was appearing with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and had cleaned her Colt 45 the night before. Annie announced that she would shot the ashes off any man or woman’s Havana cigar. Normally her husband Frank Butler come out of the audience and her speech was just for show.

She never expected anyone, including Kaiser Wilhelm II to take her up on her offer and here came the Kaiser out of his box seat. Oakley had made her dare, there stood the Kaiser and she couldn’t back down. So as she measured her distance the Kaiser took out a cigar and started puffing. The German police thought it was a joke until the Kaiser took up his position. The Kaiser told the police to get out of the way.

Annie Oakley, American sharp shooter, raised her pistol, aimed and blew the ashes off Kaiser Wilhelm II cigar. Had she missed the woman from Cincinnati may have prevented the First World War 25 years later. When World War I started Annie wrote the Kaiser asking for a second chance. Silence followed……………

What If Diaries » What if Annie Oakley had shot Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1889?

One chilly November afternoon in 1889, a fur-coated crowd assembled in Berlin’s Charlottenburg Race Course to enjoy a performance of Buffalo Bill’s Wild Wild West Show, which was touring Europe to great popular acclaim. Among the audience was the Reich’s impetuous young ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had been on the throne for a year. Wilhelm was particularly keen to see the show’s star attraction, Annie Oakley, famed throughout the world for her skills with a Colt. 45.

On that day, as usual, Annie announced to the crowd that she would attempt to shoot the ashes from the cigar of some lady or gentleman in the audience. “Who shall volunteer to hold the cigar?” she asked. In fact, she expected no one from the crowd to volunteer; she simply asked for laughs. Her long-suffering husband, Frank Butler, always stepped forward and offered himself as her human Havana-holder.

This time, however, Annie had no sooner made her announcement then Kaiser Wilhelm himself leaped out of the royal box and strutted into the arena. Annie was stunned and horrified but could not retract her dare without losing face. She paced off her usual distance while Wilhelm extracted a cigar from a gold case and lit it with flourish. Several German policeman, suddenly realizing that this was not one of kaiser’s little jokes, tried to preempt the stunt, but were waved off by His All-Highest Majesty. Sweating profusely under her buckskin, and regretful that she had consumed more than her usual amount of whiskey the night before, Annie raised her Colt, took aim, and blew away Wilhem’s ashes.

Had the sharpshooter from Cincinnati creased the kaiser’s head rather than his cigar, one of Europe,s most ambitious and volatile rulers would have been removed from the scene. Germany might not have pursued its policy of aggressive Weltpolitik that culminated in war twenty-five years later.

Annie herself seemed to realize her mistake later on. After World War I began, she wrote to the kaiser asking for a second shot. He did not respond.

Annie Oakley, the Butterfly Effect, and You

In the late 1800s, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was a dazzling display of horsemanship, gunplay and other cowboy skills. One of its acts involved the sharpshooting of the great Annie Oakley. Dubbed “Little Sure Shot,” Oakley had an amazing routine – she would shoot out lit candles, for example, and the corks of wine bottles.

For her grand finale, she would shoot out the lit end of a cigarette held in a man’s mouth at a certain distance. For this, she would ask for volunteers from the audience. As no one ever volunteered, she had her husband planted among the spectators. He would “volunteer” and they would complete the dangerous trick together.

Well, during one swing through Europe, Oakley was setting up her finale and she asked for volunteers. To her shock – and the surprise of everyone involved with the show – she got a real volunteer.

The proud young Prince (soon to be Kaiser) Wilhelm bravely stepped down from among the spectators, strode into the ring and stuck a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Reportedly out late the night before enjoying the local beer gardens, the unexpected appearance of this famous volunteer unnerved her. But the show must go on.

She took aim and fired… putting out the cigarette, much to Wilhelm’s amusement.

Thus, she also created one of historians’ favorite “what if” moments. What if her bullet went through the future Kaiser’s left ear? Would World War I have happened? Would the lives of 9 million soldiers and 6.6 million civilians have been spared? Would Hitler have risen from the ashes of defeated Germany? All sorts of questions come to mind…

Many historians think that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, leading to the Soviet Union, would not have occurred without World War I to weaken the Czar (who was made by Lenin and Stalin to seem rather a nice fellow, by comparison).  Nazi Germany is difficult to credit as a likely outcome of a Germany that didn’t fight in WWI, because no great German angst would been present about a non-existent Treaty of Versailles, and no not-quite-imperialistic Kaiser would have tolerated Hitler in the feckless way German proto-democracy did.  In any case, without the agony of the post-war years, Hitler would have been only another anti-Semite, with no way to get traction with the German public at large.

World War II is hard to imagine without World War I.  Germany simply wouldn’t have had the drive to do it, absent the peculiar circumstances of the end of WW I.  At most, Japanese imperialism might have been a problem…  but strong British Empire, not weakened by WWI, would have been in a clear position to oppose Japanese aggression in China and elsewhere, and probably given the Emperor so much to consider that attacking the USA would have been a very low priority.

So imagine a 20th century without two world wars, without a cold war, indeed, without communism, which would have meant no Korean War, no Vietnam War, etc.  Imagine a still-strong British Empire still ruling the waves, shipping around the world the incredible output of American industry.

I know that cultural trends are present in history.  But I’m also pretty sure that without specific deeds by specific people, everything would have been different.

All of which occasionally leaves me wondering, in a much more pedestrian way, what deeds or words of everyday folk can sometimes have an effect that is seemingly far disproportionate to their obvious impact?

Hope springs eternal, I suppose. The major media continues to hope that the public has the memory of gerbil… or maybe a lobster. I suspect, however, that the Democrats may discover that the voting public has the claws of a lobster come this November.   Nevertheless, when you ordain a president based on hope, I suppose no one should be surprised if you evaluate his efforts from the standpoint of hope.  But hope is about all you have, despite your opinion that after Two big wins, a presidency <is> transformed for Obama:

Two big wins for Barack Obama at home and abroad — a historic health care bill and a new arms treaty with Russia — have injected sudden momentum into a presidency that had been looking beleaguered.

Well, yes, the health bill was historic, in the sense of a politically suicidal Congress ramming something through that 70% of the public really didn’t want, with naked bribery that would be illegal if a anyone else did it.

“What a week here,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs wrote on his twitter feed, as Obama concluded a new strategic arms reduction treaty in a call with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday.

What a week indeed.   As far as can be determined at this time, the cuts to which Russia agreed are in the area of strategic weapons only.  That means that battlefield and tactical nukes aren’t affected…  and Russia has a great preponderance of those.  It is those weapons that are a bigger threat to Europe, former Soviet satellites, and the Middle East, since they are all Russia has to counter its relative weakness in conventional weapons, compared to its Cold War heyday (though Putin is building up again, and fast, to try to recover the conventional strength that Yeltsin squandered, from their point of view).  Russia has plainly signaled its intent to use its possession of the main oil pipe into Europe (in the Georgia invasion) to control the Euro-powers.  Russia wants to regain its superpower status.   Putin is not a peace maker, unless it temporarily serves his larger purpose, which is expansion and power.

Biggest concern:  will Russia use this to get the USA to make cuts that matter, while Russia simply decommissions aging technology that may not be working too well anyway?  Second biggest concern:  how much of that aging nuclear technology and fissile material will be safely decommissioned into secure storage, and how much will mysteriously evaporate into the ether, maybe showing up on the black market?

It is risible that Putin and Medvedev would agree to ANYTHING that they didn’t believe strengthened them and weakened the USA in relative terms.  The US media (and, I fear, the US State Department) don’t seem to grasp the distinction between a piece of paper and actual peace.  North Korea has agreed to all kinds of things, and the media have hailed the negotiations that produced the agreements, and then had abrupt memory loss when North Korea reneged, leading to calls in the media for more negotiations.  Review the definition of insanity.  The Soviet Union, we now know (based partly on KGB files opened to the public after the collapse of the old regime), bent most arms agreements we ever made with them, when they could.  Putin regrets the passing of that brutal state, and is doing his best to emulate its power-grasping tendencies.

Putin has been busy rehabilitating Stalin in the minds of the Russian public.  Does anyone actually think that Putin/Medvedev are signing agreements either out of fear of US nuclear preemption (about as likely as the US nuking Mexico), or out of altruism and the desire for international amity (maybe they should get Nobel Prizes)?  If you are one who harbors either belief, I have a nice property with an in-ground swimming pool in Siberia that I’d love to sell you.  The pool isn’t heated….  but with global warming heating up Siberia, all you really have to worry about is rampaging polar bears looking for an ice floe to surf on.

No doubt Obama supporters will claim that the new agreement has strong verification protocols built in.  Maybe.  But Russia is a big, big country.  Obama has been busy cutting our space program, our military and our intelligence agencies.  Exactly what resources will he use to verify that Russia isn’t holding out the same way the Soviets did?  Those agreements had “verification” built in, too.

In six days, two of the biggest projects of Obama’s presidency came to fruition after months of painstaking work, transforming the image of an administration that had swung hard but failed to connect on big agenda items.

He has STILL failed to connect on the government takeover of health-care.  Don’t confuse holding hostages with hitting home-runs.

In any case, the public really hasn’t evinced much concern about Russian nukes lately, though doubtless the media will try to pump this “achievement” up into something deserving of the prematurely awarded Nobel Peace Prize.  I suppose my problem with this is simple:  Obama has not built up any trust in his ability to tell our friends from our enemies.  He is captive of the moral equivalence view that American objectives are no worthier than Russian ones.   At bottom, he does not believe in American exceptionalism, so he cannot defend American interests with a whole heart.  After all, we’re no better than anyone else.

By Friday, Obama could savor the spectacle of the pundits he frequently decries, switching from a “this presidency is over” mantra, to hailing him as a conquering domestic president and a global statesmen.

Yeah, and come next November he could be savoring that lobster we talked about. The claws, that is.  Now, that would be a change worth hoping for.

It seems now that it has become common for Russia To Spend More on Purchasing Arms Abroad.

The Ministry of Defense is looking at the armory and equipment produced by foreign manufacturers. After the war in August 2008, there were many discussions about purchasing Israeli unmanned aircraft systems. The systems were purchased without much buzz. Shooting equipment for some of the Special Forces departments is purchased abroad. Recently it was reported that a Mistral-class helicopter carriers may be purchased in France.

I’m especially interested in the notion of Russia buying arms from Israel.  Just consider what it would mean if Israel became a major supplier for Russia.   Israel is known for making cutting edge weapons systems, both in small arms and more high-tech items.  It would be very interesting if Russia became dependent on Israel for some items it found essential for its own military.  That would be bound to affect the Russian participation in Middle East matters….  and Russia’s recent slightly harder stand towards Iranian nukes may be evidence of that.

It bears watching.

Only a few comments to make.

General Petraeus is a great general, in a dozen different ways.

The injured serviceman, and his family, are incredible examples of why the USA is still free.

But that is no guarantee for our future, if a time comes when such people are no longer to be found among us.

It would be more likely that we would find such people if the media reported more stories like this, instead of the constant anti-military drumbeat that is all too common.  The media has reported on precious few of the heroes of the last 8 years…  to its great shame.

The AP has decided to print the photo of a young marine as he is dying, despite the expressed wishes of his family and the Secretary of Defense that the soldiers privacy be respected and the photo not be released. The AP is doing this in the name of “journalistic realism” and “telling the real story of the Afghan war.”

The AP reported that the Marine’s father had asked – in an interview and in a follow-up phone call — that the image, taken by an embedded photographer, not be published.

The AP reported in a story that it decided to make the image public anyway because it “conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.”

The photo shows Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, who was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in a Taliban ambush Aug. 14 in Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, according to The AP.

Gates wrote to Thomas Curley, AP’s president and chief executive officer. “Out of respect for his family’s wishes, I ask you in the strongest of terms to reconsider your decision. I do not make this request lightly. In one of my first public statements as Secretary of Defense, I stated that the media should not be treated as the enemy, and made it a point to thank journalists for revealing problems that need to be fixed – as was the case with Walter Reed.”

“I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard’s death has caused his family. Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right – but judgment and common decency.”
……………

Morrell said Gates wanted the information about his conversations released “so everyone would know how strongly he felt about the issue.”

The Associated Press reported in a story about deliberations about that photo that “after a period of reflection,” the news service decided “to make public an image that conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.

“The image shows fellow Marines helping Bernard after he suffered severe leg injuries. He was evacuated to a field hospital where he died on the operating table,” AP said. “The picture was taken by Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson, who accompanied Marines on the patrol and was in the midst of the ambush during which Bernard was wounded. … ‘AP journalists document world events every day. Afghanistan is no exception. We feel it is our journalistic duty to show the reality of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is,’ said Santiago Lyon, the director of photography for AP.

It is the policy of essentially every mainstream news organization, including the AP, NOT to print photos that show the reality of abortion, and what aborted unborn human beings look like.  They won’t show what aborted human beings look like after being aborted at 9 weeks, or 15 weeks, or 24 weeks, or 30 weeks.  It would be “too disturbing,” it seems.  But they will show other, equally or even more distubing photos without apparent restraint, whenever it fits the news agenda of the day. 

Some newspapers won’t even run print ads paid by pro-life organizations if they tell the truth too accurately about abortion, and they may even object to accurate descriptions of abortion, let alone photos of the killed human being that results from it.  I would go further with this…  but you already know it’s true, don’t you?  Because you have just about never seen a picture of an aborted baby in any major newspaper, newsmagazine or network TV broadcast, have you?  But you have routinely seen bodies piled high in Holocaust photos, people being shot in the back of the head in executions by totalitarian regimes, and many other horrible, but true, events.

The cognitive dissoance is stunning, because on the one hand the mainstream media buys into the lie that aborted babies aren’t really people, just some kind of thing that could have developed into one…  and on the other hand, it is apparently more disturbing to them to show a photo of an aborted fetus than to show the murder of someone they DO accept as a full human being.  I guess it’s just too disturbing to show a photo of the death of a non-person.

It seems that photographically telling the truth about abortion is NOT on the news agenda….  but showing the last moments on earth of a mortally wounded soldier IS.

Pray for the family of the deceased soldier, as their pain is increased by this barbarous decision.

Thousands of uncatalogued pathogens found at US lab

With three days left in spring cleaning season, a US army lab that works on the world’s deadliest pathogens has turned up uncatalogued vials of Ebola, anthrax, plague and other pathogens – 9220 of them to be precise.

The laboratory is the same one where anthrax researcher Bruce Ivins worked before he committed suicide last year. The US government suspects Ivins was behind the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, and studies showed that the anthrax used in the attack was “directly related” to the batch stored at the lab.

The discovery of the uncatalogued vials raises questions about whether anyone would notice if some of the lab’s pathogens went missing.

“A small number would be a concern; 9200 … at an institution that has been the focus of intense scrutiny on this issue, that’s deeply worrisome. Unacceptable,” Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University, told the Washington Post.

If you see some guys in white lab coats selling vials of “special fragrance” at the swap meet, I suggest you find someplace else to shop.  I’m not sure if this is scarier than missing Russian suitcase nukes, but it’s at least competitive on the scare-o-meter.  Does anybody think that the anthrax-spreading misanthrope is the only geek with a big brain and a tiny moral center? 

There are days when I wonder if the human race is just too stupid to live.  Then I’ll buck up a bit, and start feeling less pessimistic.  But not long after that, I’ll hear a bunch of people, who should know better, waxing rhapsodic about the wonderfulness of government mananged healthcare for the future.  It reminds me, as if I needed reminding, that the innumerate and the illiterate have no defenses against technocrats, their natural predators.

If the missing Russian nukes, the Iranian nukes, the North Korean nukes, or the pathogenic terrorists don’t get us, then it’ll be the nanotech that does it, when the first self-replicating machine (originally designed to “eat waste at toxic waste-dumps”) turns the entire Earth into a gigantic orbiting pile of staples — covered, incidentally, with Ebola spores.

I’m sure they’ll be very useful to someone (the staples, that is).  I expect that the Intragalactic Council on Emerging Technology (ICE-T) will have a LOT of reports to fill out.

ARKANSAS’ LONE JIHADIST: HOW ALONE IS HE? (much more at the link)

Here we have a new case of an individual U.S. citizen who committed an act of terror in the name of his ideology (Government officials have called it inaccurately a “political and religious motive”) against U.S. military targets. Do we see a pattern here? Are we witnessing a repeat and copycats? In fact, as we review several previous cases, from the Miami cell case, to the Fort Dix Six, the Georgia two, the New York Four, the Virginia Paintball network, and many other cases, we’re witnessing the surge of a phenomenon we have been warning about. I have repeatedly coined it Mutant Jihad, including in my book Future Jihad. Two important elements are to be taken into consideration: One is the fact that in many of these cases, U.S. military personnel and targets have been on the short list of these “homegrown terrorists.” If you study the repeated targeting process of these urban Jihadists, they systematically focus on military deployment inside the United States. In a sense, even as the perpetrators are separate, dispersed, and not connected, their targeting seems war-like: attacking the enemy’s forces on the homeland. The second element to be taken into consideration is the clear fact that in all these cases, without exception, we’re seeing one ideology: Jihadism. Despite various levels of understanding and sophistication, the cells and lone wolves who were involved in the terror acts, legitimized their action under the label of “Jihad.”

When relatively perfunctory Christians are re-energized, they tend to give more money, act nicer towards their families, and maybe volunteer more. New converts to Christianity simply do not become violent. The exact opposite is true.  The comparison of Christian fundamentalism to Muslim fundamentalism is one of the most dishonest things done in our Left media.

But too many American and British mosques and imams preach ways of thinking and feeling about what it means to be a good Muslim that boil down to jihad. I wish it wasn’t true. But it has been pretty well documented, though not well covered in the major media.

A question: how many Muslim groups immediately issued unconditional condemnation of the murder of the soldier at the recruiting office, and denied that such actions are any part of being a good Muslim?  Google it.  See if you can find even one.

In contrast, pro-life groups around the USA immediately and unconditionally condemned the murder of Tiller the Kansas abortionist.

Maybe the imams will save their statements of condemnation of the murder for the mosque attendees.   Yeah, that’s it.

In the meantime, I guess our military recruiters had better start showing up for work in full battle-rattle.

I rarely quote an entire post by someone else, but this is so clearly argued that I have nothing to add. The major media’s failure to provide this kind of analysis is another reason it deserves to go extinct.  From Caroline Glick

Like it or not, the United States of America is no longer the world’s policeman. This was the message of Barack Obama’s presidential journey to Britain, France, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Iraq this past week.

Somewhere between apologizing for American history – both distant and recent; genuflecting before the unelected, bigoted king of Saudi Arabia; announcing that he will slash the US’s nuclear arsenal, scrap much of America’s missile defense programs and emasculate the US Navy; leaving Japan to face North Korea and China alone; telling the Czechs, Poles and their fellow former Soviet colonies, “Don’t worry, be happy,” as he leaves them to Moscow’s tender mercies; humiliating Iraq’s leaders while kowtowing to Iran; preparing for an open confrontation with Israel; and thanking Islam for its great contribution to American history, President Obama made clear to the world’s aggressors that America will not be confronting them for the foreseeable future.

Whether they are aggressors like Russia, proliferators like North Korea, terror exporters like nuclear-armed Pakistan or would-be genocidal-terror-supporting nuclear states like Iran, today, under the new administration, none of them has any reason to fear Washington.

This news is music to the ears of the American Left and their friends in Europe. Obama’s supporters like billionaire George Soros couldn’t be more excited at the self-induced demise of the American superpower. CNN’s former (anti-)Israel bureau chief Walter Rodgers wrote ecstatically in the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday, “America’s… superpower status, is being downgraded as rapidly as its economy.”

The pro-Obama US and European media are so pleased with America’s abdication of power that they took the rare step of applauding Obama at his press conference in London. Indeed, the media’s enthusiasm for Obama appeared to grow with each presidential statement of contrition for America’s past uses of force, each savage attack he leveled against his predecessor George W. Bush, each swipe he took at Israel, and each statement of gratitude for the blessings of Islam he uttered.

But while the media couldn’t get enough of the new US leader, America’s most stable allies worldwide began a desperate search for a reset button that would cause the administration to take back its abandonment of America’s role as the protector of the free world.

Tokyo was distraught by the administration’s reaction to North Korea’s three-stage ballistic missile test. Japan recognized the betrayal inherent in Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s announcement ahead of Pyongyang’s newest provocation that the US would only shoot the missile down if it targeted US territory. In one sentence, uttered not in secret consultations, but declared to the world on CNN, Gates abrogated America’s strategic commitment to Japan’s defense.

India, for its part, is concerned by Obama’s repeated assertions that its refusal to transfer control over the disputed Jammu and Kashmir provinces to Pakistan inspires Pakistani terror against India. It is equally distressed at the Obama administration’s refusal to make ending Pakistan’s support for jihadist terror groups attacking India a central component of its strategy for contending with Pakistan and Afghanistan. In general, Indian officials have expressed deep concern over the Obama administration’s apparent lack of regard for India as an ally and a significant strategic counterweight to China.

Then there is Iraq. During his brief visit to Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon, Obama didn’t even pretend that he would ensure that Iraqi democracy and freedom are secured before US forces are withdrawn next year. The most supportive statement he could muster came during his conversation with Turkish students in Istanbul earlier in the day. There he said, “I have a responsibility to make sure that as we bring troops out, that we do so in a careful enough way that we don’t see a complete collapse into violence.”

Hearing Obama’s statements, and watching him and his advisers make daily declarations of friendship to Iran’s mullahs, Iraqi leaders are considering their options for surviving the rapidly approaching storm.

Then there is Europe. Although Obama received enthusiastic applause from his audience in Prague when he announced his intention to destroy the US’s nuclear arsenal, drastically scale back its missile defense programs and forge a new alliance with Russia, his words were anything but music to the ears of the leaders of former Soviet satellites threatened by Russia. The Czech, Polish, Georgian and Ukrainian governments were quick to recognize that Obama’s strong desire to curry favor with the Kremlin and weaken his own country will imperil their ability to withstand Russian aggression.

It is not a coincidence, for instance, that the day Obama returned to Washington, Georgia’s Moscow-sponsored opposition announced its plan to launch massive protests in Tblisi to force the ouster of pro-Western, anti-Russian Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

And as for Russia, like Iran, which responded to Obama’s latest ode to the mullahs by opening a nuclear fuel plant and announcing it has 7,000 advanced centrifuges in operation, so Moscow reacted to Obama’s fig leaf with a machine gun, announcing its refusal to support sanctions against North Korea and repeating its false claim that Iran’s nuclear program is nonaggressive.

Finally there is Israel. If Obama’s assertions that Israel must support the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state, his declarations of support for the so-called Saudi “peace plan,” which requires Israel to commit national suicide in exchange for “peace” with the Arab world, and his continuous and increasingly frantic appeals for Iran to “engage” his administration weren’t enough to show Israel that Obama is sacrificing the US’s alliance with the Jewish state in a bid to appease the Arabs and Iran, on Tuesday Vice President Joseph Biden made this policy explicit.

When Biden told CNN that Israel would be “ill-advised” to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, he made clear that from the administration’s perspective, an Israeli strike that prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power is less acceptable than a nuclear-armed Iran. That is, the Obama administration prefers to see Iran become a nuclear power than to see Israel secure its very existence.

AMERICA’S BETRAYAL of its democratic allies makes each of them more vulnerable to aggression at the hands of their enemies – enemies the Obama administration is now actively attempting to appease. And as the US strengthens their adversaries at their expense, these spurned democracies must consider their options for surviving as free societies in this new, threatening, post-American environment.

For the most part, America’s scorned allies lack the ability to defeat their enemies on their own. India cannot easily defeat nuclear-armed Pakistan, which itself is fragmenting into disparate anti-Indian nuclear-wielding Islamist and Islamist-supporting factions.

Japan today cannot face North Korea – which acts as a Chinese proxy – on its own without risking a confrontation with China.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia last August showed clearly that its former republics and satellites have no way of escaping Moscow’s grip alone.

This week’s Arab League conference at Doha demonstrated to Iraq’s leaders that their Arab brethren are incapable and unwilling to confront Iran.

And the Obama administration’s intense efforts to woo Iran coupled with its plan to slash the US’s missile defense programs – including those in which Israel participates – and reportedly pressure Israel to dismantle its own purported nuclear arsenal – make clear that Israel today stands alone against Iran.

THE RISKS that the newly inaugurated post-American world pose for America’s threatened friends are clear. But viable opportunities for survival do exist, and Israel can and must play a central role in developing them. Specifically, Israel must move swiftly to develop active strategic alliances with Japan, Iraq, Poland, and the Czech Republic and it must expand its alliance with India.

With Israel’s technological capabilities, its intelligence and military expertise, it can play a vital role in shoring up these countries’ capacities to contain the rogue states that threaten them. And by containing the likes of Russia, North Korea and Pakistan, they will make it easier for Israel to contain Iran even in the face of US support for the mullahs.

The possibilities for strategic cooperation between and among all of these states and Israel run the gamut from intelligence sharing to military training, to missile defense, naval development, satellite collaboration, to nuclear cooperation. In addition, of course, expanded economic ties between and among these states can aid each of them in the struggle to stay afloat during the current global economic crisis.

Although far from risk free, these opportunities are realistic because they are founded on stable, shared interests. This is the case despite the fact that none of these potential alliances will likely amount to increased support for Israel in international forums. Dependent as they are on Arab oil, these potential allies cannot be expected to vote with Israel in the UN General Assembly. But this should not concern Jerusalem.

The only thing that should concern Jerusalem today is how to weaken Iran both directly by attacking its nuclear installations, and indirectly by weakening its international partners in Moscow, Pyongyang, Islamabad and beyond in the absence of US support. If Japan is able to contain North Korea and so limit Pyongyang’s freedom to proliferate its nuclear weapons and missiles to Iran and Syria and beyond, Israel is better off. So, too, Israel is better off if Russia is contained by democratic governments in Eastern and Central Europe. These nations in turn are better off if Iran is contained and prevented from threatening them both directly and indirectly through its strategic partners in North Korea, Syria and Russia, and its terror affiliates in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For the past 16 years, successive Israeli governments have wrongly believed that politics trump strategic interests. The notion that informed Israel’s decision-makers – not unlike the notion that now informs the Obama administration – was that Israel’s strategic interests would be secured as a consequence of its efforts to appease its enemies by weakening itself. Appreciative of Israel’s sacrifices for peace, the nations of the world – and particularly the US, the Arabs and Europe – would come to Israel’s defense in its hour of need. Now that the hour of need has arrived, Israel’s political strategy for securing itself has been exposed as a complete fiasco.

The good news is that no doubt sooner rather than later, Obama’s similarly disastrous bid to denude the US of its military power under the naive assumption that it will be able to use its new stature as a morally pure strategic weakling to win its enemies over to its side will fail spectacularly and America’s foreign policy will revert to strategic rationality.

But to survive the current period of American strategic madness, Israel and the US’s other unwanted allies must build alliances with one another – covertly if need be – to contain their adversaries in the absence of America. If they do so successfully, then the damage to global security induced by Obama’s emasculation of his country will be limited. If on the other hand, they fail, then America’s eventual return to its senses will likely come too late for its allies – if not for America itself.

Marine Freed after Rape Conviction Overturned

Amazingly enough, it took Marine Sergeant Brian Foster 10 years to get his conviction heard by an appellate tribunal. That’s 10 years behind bars for allegedly raping his wife, a crime he has always denied committing.

The appellate court noted that, at the trial of the case, there was no forensic evidence of rape, Foster and his wife continued to have intercourse for years after the alleged attack and the allegations came in the middle of a contentious divorce and custody case.

The Marine Corps blamed a large backlog of cases and “judicial negligence” for the long delay in hearing Foster’s appeal. Military prosecutor Col. Tom Umberg said, “This injustice should have been resolved in 18 months.”

Interestingly, this article about Foster’s case refers to his wife Heather Foster living in the Denver area with “her” two sons (San Diego Union-Tribune, 3/14/09). Those would appear to be “his” two sons as well.

The article says Foster intends to continue in the Corps until his retirement. What he plans to do regarding his sons is not mentioned.

Sergeant Foster should get reparations, not just easy time until retirement. I continue to be dismayed at the way our military sometimes unjustly accuses its own, with a suspicious smell of PC assumptions that they are guilty until proven innocent.

Having been a roadie in a former life, and occasionally still being forced to function in that capacity, this looks like just the thing to help me manage those heavy flight cases for mixers, full size keyboards, etc.

In an article showing pictures of a medical clinic in Afghanistan, and signs with operating hours and lists of services provided by US military medical personnel, Michael Yon makes a very important point, rebutting charges of cynicism in putting up such signs with English translation, and offering lots of great observations about the overall situation. A key graph:

At a moment when much of the Islamic world is suspicious of the U.S., publicizing the positive changes that Western nations have provided is essential. The enemy advertises cutting off heads, or attacking innocent civilians in India, or blowing up a train in Spain. They smile when blowing up tourists in Bali, and dance as buildings fall. We smile when babies recover and the children of illiterate shepherds and subsistence farmers learn to read. You have to be willfully blind not to know the difference between the good guys and the bad guys in this place.

What would you guess is the literacy rate in Afghanistan? Click the link above, read the article, and try to reconnect your jaw to the rest of your face.  Understand that we are in this for the long haul, and if Obama will fight that war, and invest in that society, you’d better support that aspect his policy, whether or not you voted for him.

And whenever you get a chance, put a stake through the heart of moral equivalence argumentation.  Most of the time, we ARE the good guys in the world (which is what makes our occasional failures so remarkable, and so attention getting), and if we give that ambition up, we die, first by abdication, and later, by national assassination, which will be all we deserve.

Storing food and water yet? How about body armor?

A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.

The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned Wednesday of economy-related riots and unrest in various global markets if the financial crisis is not addressed and lower-income households are hurt by credit constraints and rising unemployment.