YGBSM!!

In yet another display of why the United Nations is the most useless organization on the planet, North Korea was selected to chair the UN Disarmament Conference.  Seriously?  Seriously????  The nation that is constantly having ships turned back for carrying arms to trouble spots around the world, the nation that helped Iran in gaining ballistic missile technology, the nation that withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty after the International Atomic Energy Agency found it in non-compliance with its safeguards, the nation that shelled a South Korean island last November, killing 2 people?  That North Korea?

Yeah, that one.

Making History

How bad is the economy?  The following chart from the Joint Economic Committee says it all:

The current Administration has taken a recession and through its incompetence turned it into a depression.

Hat tip: Power Line

The Longest Armistice

 

25 June 1950... sixty-one years ago today, North Korean forces invaded South Korea, pushing their way through almost the entire country, only to be halted outside the port of Pusan (the 'Pusan Perimeter').  Thus began a three year conflict in which eventually 1.8 million American military fought North Korean, Chinese, and Russian forces, resulting in 33,686 Americans killed and 8,176 missing in action.

 

The war's devastation wasn't limited to physical property or military forces. Between 245,000 to 415,000 South Korean civilians lost their lives between 1950 - 1953.

The Korean war also marked the first instance of jet aircraft engaged in combat.  Chinese MiG-15s initially ruled the air as they faced WWII fighters like the P-51 Mustang and F4U Corsair, but the arrival of the F-86 Sabre brought eventual Allied air superiority.

Korea was the first proxy war between Western democracies and Communism.  It was the first direct conflict between US and Chinese and Russian forces (although most people know that Chinese troops fought on the ground against UN forces, few know that Soviet Air Force pilots flew the MiG-15s against Western air forces).  Despite being a direct casus belli, their participation was ignored due to the fear of confronting three nations in a nuclear war.

Today the two Koreas technically remain in a state of war, the fighting halted by the armistice signed on 27 July 1953.  Hostilities continue to flare up, the most recent being the North Korean shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010, resulting in 2 military and 2 civilian casualties. US military members have been killed since the armistice signing as well, the most memorable instances being the murder of a EC-121 reconnaissance crew in 1969 and two Army officers hacked to death at Panmunjom in 1976.

It's not Alan Alda and MASH over there.  It remains a hostile place in which one of the belligerents now holds nuclear weapons--and has no compunction about proliferating that technology.  It is currently undergoing the second transfer of power from father to son, except this time no one knows if that will occur gracefully or bring about a violent regime change. While the world concentrates on the Islamic extremists bent on bringing sha'ria or death to the rest of the world, North Korea continues to be a festering sore.

Imagine how different the world would be today if President Truman had listened to General MacArthur about pushing the Chinese back to China instead of firing him? Will we be asking a similar question years from now about President Obama and General Petraeus?

Chalk Up Another Success for the President and State Department

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has surrounded himself with anti-American advisors.

Several of Karzai's close friends and advisers now speak of a president whose doors have closed to all but one narrow faction and who refuses to listen to dissenting opinions. They say people allowed to see the president are vetted by an inner circle of religious conservatives who belong to a nonviolent wing of Hizb-i-Islami, a radical Islamic group whose relentless attacks on American soldiers forced the U.S. to withdraw from bases in northeastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces.

The group's leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was once an American ally but has since been declared a terrorist by the United States.

And why, you may ask, would Hekmatyar be declared a terrorist?

According to testimony from Guantanamo prisoners, Hekmatyar sheltered Osama bin Laden for nearly one year after the collapse of the Taliban regime in 2001.  From his bases in Kunar and Nuristan provinces, Hekmatyar kept bin Laden safe until sometime in 2003 when he helped the al-Qaida leader escape to Pakistan, where he was killed by U.S. commandoes last month.

This behavior would seem to indicate that President Karzai is a very astute observer of American politics.  He knows that the current Administration is in the process of throwing him under the bus in its haste to prove its antiwar fidelity to the Left before elections in 2012.  Being a survivor, he is beginning the process of reintegrating the Taliban back into Afghanistan because our State Department has made it clear that the U.S. will not have a permanent presence in Afghanistan after 2014 (and won't be around to protect his ass afterward).

Thus, everyone will have what they want:  The Afghans will have the Taliban back in charge; the Left will have thrown victory away in another war; the Democrats will have more money to spend as they drive the defense budget downward and shed more and more forces because, after all, we're no longer in any wars (except for Libya... oh wait, that's not a war--at least according to the President's interpretation of the War Powers Act).

The bottom line: all of our sacrifices in that place will be for naught thanks to our own incompetence.

I Feel So Much Better Now, Don't You?

AP reports that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that his country "isn't afraid of making nuclear weapons, but doesn't intend to do so."  I'm so glad he cleared that up for us.  Don't you feel reassured?

Passing of An American Hero

Chief Master Sergeant Norman Crawford, USAF (ret) passed away last Thursday, 16 June 2011, at the age of 83.  Chief Crawford enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1945, and retired in 1978 after surviving the Korean War and Vietnam.  He continued serving the United States as a civil servant, finally retiring in 1993.  He was married for 60 years and had 5 children, 17 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren.  At his funeral today, his family and friends gathered to celebrate his life, telling his story and reminiscing about his legacy.  The church was filled to the rafters, and both tears and laughter flowed.

Chief Crawford is an American hero.  He didn't win the Medal of Honor or become a household name--he just served his country, leaving his family for years at a time for duty in numerous shit holes around the world.  He did what so many veterans do--quietly serve as long as they can, and then continue to give and lead until they pass from this side to the other.  There are fewer and fewer Chief Crawfords in the world, whether they served in the U.S. military, Canadian Forces, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and so on.  They were the sheepdogs, the 'rough men who stand ready in the night' as George Orwell called them.  They stood the watch, fighting when necessary, so that others could live free. Others follow in their footsteps, using the examples of those before them to guide their way.  To those who have gone before, to those currently in harm's way, and to those yet to come, we say 'Thank you."

God speed, Chief.  You will be greatly missed.

Entangled Minds

Just returned from the annual International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA) conference in Las Vegas (hence the lack of posts).  This year's conference was one of the best yet, with exceptional speakers and useful data.  It was good to see old friends and meet new ones.  If you aren't stretching your mind with new concepts and ideas, then you're stagnating and falling behind in the continuing evolution that is life.

We'll All Soon Wish They Hadn't Stopped Freon Production

The American Astronomical Society reports that we are likely headed for a period of low solar activity. This could equate to a new 'Maunder Minimum' (also known as the 'Little Ice Age' in Europe).

“If we are right,” Hill concluded, “this could be the last solar maximum
we’ll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space
exploration to Earth’s climate.”

Not to mention things like food production, habitation, etc.  I'd stock up on fur if I were you.  Be prepared for global warming cultists to claim that no amount of cooling will be able to overcome it--or that it is all just postponing our certain day of reckoning.

Hipocrisy - Thy Name is Russia

Russia managed to get China and four of the 'Stan' countries to declare that US missile defense is a danger to international security.  This, coming from the country that had missile defense online and deployed before the United States did (and continues to have it deployed to this day), maintains a long held tradition in which Russia whines about the US doing something while doing the very same thing itself.  Apparently Moscow doesn't want its client state Iran to worry that the ballistic missile and nuclear technology its buying will go to waste by not being able to start Armageddon in celebration of the arrival of the Mahdi.  Now that's customer service!

Compare and Contrast

 

Hat tip: No Sheeples Here

Quote of the Day

The American Dream, 2011: You pay four bucks a gallon to commute between your McJob and your underwater housing to prop up a spendaholic, grabafeelic, paramilitarized bureaucracy-without-end bankrupting your future at the rate of a fifth of a billion dollars every hour.

~ Mark Steyn 

Culture and the "Other"

In today's Toronto Sun, Salim Mansur highlights one of the key components as to why democracy has had such difficulty gaining a foothold in the Arab world.  In his article, Arab World A Relic Of History, Mansur  indicates that the 'Arab Spring' is degenerating into the 'Arab Inferno.'

The problem is culture. Arab culture, despite tremendous changes that have occurred elsewhere in the world, remains resilient in adhering to traditional values of patriarchy and the tribal order of father (leader) knows what is best for his tribe or nation.

Arab culture is not alone in this regard.  All other cultures have gone through this phase of the tribe (or clan) being the focal point of society.  But where they have proceeded on to development of the nation state and democratic representational government, Arab culture has yet to develop that aspect on its own (without it being forced upon itself from the outside--witness Iraq).

For democracy to work, the prerequisite is a culture in which the people recognizes the “other” — irrespective of how the “other” is defined in terms of ethnicity or religion or gender — as equal, and their interests and aspirations as legitimate.

This recognition of the “other” is missing in Arab culture. The “other” is merely tolerated in a subordinate status and since the “other” in the modern context is unwilling to be consigned indefinitely into an inferior position, the result is the repeated cycle of rebellion and repression in Arab history.

It is the age old problem of "the stronger horse" in Arab culture -- you are either the leader or led.  It is the incubator of Islam.  In order for there to be lasting peaceful relations with the rest of the world, both Islam and Arab culture will require a Reformation.  Until that occurs, expect continued conflict both within Arab states (as their people cannot be cut off from Western influences) and between Arab states and the West itself (as Islam continues to drive them to extend its hegemony to the rest of the world).

Hat tip: Instapundit

Shari'a and American Islam - What the Numbers Say

Andrew McCarthy has another great article at National Review Online on radical Islam. In "The Coordinates of Radicalism," McCarthy asks the question, 'What is it that radicalizes Muslims, including American Muslims?'

Here is the unsettling but sedulously avoided truth: What radicalizes Muslims is Islam.

Political correctness requires that we becloud this simple truth with a few caveats that, in most any other context, would be regarded as distractions by sensible people. So it is necessary to say that there is more than one interpretation of Islam. We must further note that the fact that Islam itself is the radicalizing catalyst does not mean that all, or even most, Muslims will become radicals. But here is another disquieting truth: Even the terms “radicalization” and “radical Islam” get things exactly backwards. The reality is that the radicals in Islam are the reformers — the Muslims who embrace Western civilization, its veneration of reason in matters of faith, and the pluralistic space it makes for civil society. What we wishfully call “radicalism” is in fact the Islamic mainstream.

So where did he get this incredible idea?  Why, from data, of course.

These are the principal takeaways from an important study just competed by Israeli academic Mordechai Kedar and David Yerushalmi of the Center for Security Policy in Washington. As detailed in a just-published Middle East Quarterly essay, “Shari’a and Violence in American Mosques” (available here), the authors’ “Mapping Sharia” project surveyed 100 randomly selected mosques across the United States. Onsite, fully 81 percent of the mosques featured Islamic texts that advocate violence. In nearly 85 percent of the mosques, the leadership (usually an imam or prayer leader) favorably recommended this literature for study by congregants. Moreover, 58 percent of the mosques invited guest lecturers known for promoting violent jihad.

(Well, I'm sure sitting in a church for 20 years listening to your minister declare, "God damn America!" has no affect on your outlook, either.)  As McCarthy points out in his article, the data does not account for those Muslims who do not attend a mosque, so we have no idea as to where they stand on shari'a and violence, but it is not a good sign that over 80%  of the mosques surveyed support violence against non-Muslims, and does not bode well for successful Islamic integration into the American cultural melting pot (you know, that culture where everyone is free to follow their own faith--or not--and no one gets killed for not believing in Islam... or being gay... or having sex out of marriage...).

Of course, I'm sure that none of this is real as the study was conducted by 'evil Jooos!!!'   Go read the whole article here.

The Longest Day

 

June 6, 1944.  160,00 Allied forces land on the beaches of Normandy, France, or behind the German lines.  More than 9,000 are killed or wounded to establish the beachhead that would lead to the liberation of Europe from Nazism.

They are called "The Greatest Generation."  They came from all walks of life, willing to give up their lives so that others could be free.  The tradition continues to this day... Americans from all walks of life, volunteering to fight in distant lands, willing to give their lives so that others can be free.

The bottom line when it comes to our military is that they are all the 'Greatest Generation'.... from Valley Forge to Kandahar.  They carry on, and sometimes pay the ultimate price so that we don't have to.

To absent companions...

Apologies For Posting Hiatus

My apologies for not posting recently, but I was out of the country on business and was unable to post.  Your irregularly scheduled blogging will now resume.