Baa-baa Black Sheep
Three incidents embody, in their own ways, what the West values most of all. I'm just trying to figure out what it is. The Independent reports the French government has recalled the former pride of its Navy until it can find a breaker's yard willing to touch it.
President Jacques Chirac ordered the hulk of the decommissioned carrier to be towed back to France from the Indian Ocean after the official French state watchdog declared the old ship to be a 27,000-ton piece of "industrial waste". ... Following yesterday's ruling by the Conseil d'Etat in Paris, the Clemenceau will be towed back to the Mediterranean, incurring, once again, multimillion euro "compensation" charges for passing through the Suez canal. The ruling is a triumphant vindication for Greenpeace and three other ecological groups which had protested from the beginning that the export of the Clemenceau broke European Union rules. The French government insisted that the Clemenceau was still a warship, despite the fact that it had been de-commissioned from the French fleet in 1997. Greenpeace, and others, said that the ship was industrial waste and contained far more asbestos than the French Navy had admitted. ... The minister announced on Monday that she was taking legal action against a French contractor which had stripped the aircraft carrier of asbestos in when it was in Toulon.
The Clemenceau is not the only piece of unwanted industrial waste. In America, university officials are struggling to find something shoddy enough to name after Pappy Boyington. In From the Cold reports:
According to World Net Daily, the (University of Washington) student body recently rejected a proposed memorial for WWII flying ace (and Washington alumnus), Lt Col Gregory "Pappy" Boyington.
Boyington, who attended the university from 1930-1934, gained fame as a Marine Corps fighter pilot during the Second World War. After a stint with the famed American Volunteer Group (the famed "Flying Tigers") in China, Boyington commanded Marine Fighter Squadron, the legendary "Black Sheep." Lt Col Boyington shot down 26 Japanese aircraft in aerial combat over the South Pacific, making him the leading Marine ace of the war. Shot down on a combat mission, he spent 20 months as a Japanese POW before being liberated in 1945. For his heroism, Boyington received the Navy Cross and the Congressional Medal of Honor.
According to minutes of the meeting, student senator Jill Edwards said she didn't believe a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce." Another senator, Ashley Miller, said the school already had many monuments that honor "rich white men." As a compromise measure, another member of the senate amended the resolution, removing a clause that referred to Boyington's 26 aerial victories, saying that the Marine pilot should be honored for his service, not his killing of others."
All is not lost however, In From the Cold notes that "that the federal government recently gave the university $5 million to build a new bioengineering research facility, and another $12.4 million to fund a "science of learning" center." That, and the fact that Boyington is UW engineering graduate might -- just might -- justify naming the new facility the "Gregory Boyington Bioengineering Research Center". If all else fails they can rename the old ROTC building after him.
The USS Iowa might best be renamed the "Flying Dutchman" after the ghost ship doomed to sail around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa forever. "The (San Francisco) Board of Supervisors rejected a plan last year to bring the historic ship here and turn it into a museum and tourist center. The main objection appeared to be that the Iowa was an instrument of war". As in Boyington's case, there's hope that future generations may get to see the Iowa yet, provided the powers of political correctness can be appeased. To "address concerns surrounding the battleship museum, which include its financial feasibility, its cost to The City and the unequal treatment received by gays, lesbians and people of color who have served in the military ... part of the museum would include an education project focusing on the contributions of gays, lesbians and ethnic minorities in the military. And the group would offer to hold an annual peace conference on the battleship -- the kind in which the Iowa once participated when it was sailing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt around the world to negotiate the agreements to officially end World War II."
Commentary
One of my problems, and it's only a niggling one, was that the 'peace' meeting from which USS Iowa conveyed Roosevelt was the Teheran Conference -- at which Operation Overlord was confirmed. It may come as surprise to some, but the end of World War II was not achieved by President Roosevelt sailing around the world concluding little UN-type treaties. But since it was the first wartime summit attended by that man of surpassing gentleness, Joseph Stalin, I suppose the Left might regard his presence as transforming that place of dark designing into a "cathedral of peace". I mention this small detail because it is the best way to enter into the spirit of absurdity with which USS Iowa's memory is being treated. Let me close this discussion with a reading from my favorite September 11 poem, perhaps the one we truly deserve.
Wage Peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble.
Breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red-wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
Breathe out sleeping children and fresh mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out life long relationships intact.Wage peace with our listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothing pins, clean rivers.Make soup.
Play music; learn the word "thank you" in 3 languages.
Learn to knit: make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries.
Imagine grief
as the outbreak of beauty or gesture of fish.Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.Never has the word seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.
81 Comments:
The Peace Now picketer caries the sign saying “War Has Never Solved Anything”.
The response might be:
- Revolutionary War – providing us indepence from Great Britain
- Civil War – freeing the slaves and preserving the union
- World War II – defeating fascism
- Cold War – defeating communism
We owe a lo to those who fought in combat to preserve our liberty.
Gene Felder
2680 Park Avenue
Laguna Beach CA 92651
Gene@Felders.Net
949-939-7257
www.FelderLaguna.Blogspot.com
That poem is an ode to the concept "wishing makes it so." Wage peace, indeed.
This is where I fault Bush and company. He has not led, and our fractious nation needs a leader. Not a dictator, but a leader. Someone who can speak and by his words command the ear of decent men and women. Someone who has a glimmer of poetry--noble poetry--in his soul.
Churchill was a leader. He had stern poetry, in spades: "We have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy." (From Churchill's speech to the Canadian Parliament, December 30, 1941.)
I wish our president had such poetry, such relish for words, commanding words, in him. But then again, wishing doesn't make it so.
Wretchard quoted Judyth Hill: "Make soup."
Ah there's my problem- all this time lost waging peace with the wrong weapons. For years I advocated the 3-pronged strategy- "Hold hands. Make soup. Sing Kumbaya." Turns out all I needed do was just make soup. Many thanks Judyth for showing us the way. Time to go find my crockpot!
sirius sir
Let them be turned out--just serve the purpose. Turn them out, reelect them, I don't care--politicians are not idols to be enshrined.
Do something, though, other than just react, and that half-assedly.
Greenpeace must be enjoying what revenge they may after the infamous events of the Rainbow Warrior incident in New Zealand. I wonder if Greenpeace manages to ragtag Saudi and Iranian oil tankers or if their unquenchable acrimony is only a colonial power thing.
“part of the museum would include an education project focusing on the contributions of gays, lesbians and ethnic minorities in the military. And the group would offer to hold an annual peace conference on the battleship” ---barf
Why don’t we invite the Taliban for a counter protest? We must accommodate extreme views, particularily extreme revisionism. First off, the ship is a huge way of putting in a building, a wharf, a hole in the water where otherwise no tourist attraction might stand. I am sure that it is considered in WWII that San Fransisco was the largest jump off point to the Pacific conflict. Why the virulent left must piss on anything that doesn’t enbrace their perversions and need to be loved by children I’ll never understand. Why must everything be about them and their holes? What about honoring the Men who made their deviance possible? My vote is to ship it to Iowa.
1. arigatoo gozaimasu
2. minfudluk
3. merci beaucoup
Already there. Oh wait!
4. gracias
Haha, not bad.
P.S. We ARE waging peace, this is what that looks like. If you think you can achieve peace by unilaterally refusing to fight an agressive, hostile, evil opponent, you are in for a surprise. Ask the 100 million killed by communism. Or any of the many inhabitants of mass graves around the world.
In the 1920s, reflecting the continental mood of the post-Great War period, a group of students at Oxford pledged never to bear arms for their King or country. What would become known as the "Oxford Pledges" became a trend in the West and an estimated 40% of American college students took a similar pledge.
Unfortunately, it was not that 40% of Americans that was relegated to clean up the mess that they partially provoked, convincing dictators that could act at will. Doubly unfortunate is the fact that neither will these fools clean up the messes they are provoking.
The narcissistic and short sighted prance about while while the strong men die.
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. [Therefore, whoever wishes for peace, let him prepare for war.] Flavius
Vegetius Renatus (5th Century C.E.). "Epitoma Rei Militaris."
"Maybe it comes down to this: one way to relieve pressure on the federal budget from military spending would be to defend only those cities that have demonstrated appreciation for the sacrifices of the American fighting man, past and present. Any city or community that acts as San Francisco and the U of Washington have acted should be left to their own devices once the fit hits the shan."
Unfortunately, they fall under the "Canada rule" - namely, any state too stupid to defend itself, but borders the US, must be defended for our own protection.
Then there's the corollary to the Canada rule: Any state thus protected (i.e. Europe) then lapses even more into helplessness and depravity, thereby becoming not only non-helpful, but an overall net loss.
The original autobiography by Lt. Col. Gregory "Pappy" Boyington is very interesting. His experience with the Flying Tigers (AVG) is great including his flying exhibition for Madam Chang and the crash landing in the grave yard - and the retrieval of aircraft (quite humorous). As is his "dishonorable discharge" from the Flying Tigers (a civilian operation).
Boyington's account of the 224 (Boyington's Bastards or Black Sheep) including the real man who is nick named "Col. Lard" is great. As is his final dog fight and POW account. Do not miss the rice bowl of wine incident that restarted his drinking habit.
Here, for your affliction, is my 9/11 poem. I wrote it a year to the day...
What seemed to be the center is a void
So purely nothing, without boundaries.
No wonder my desire frames itself
Around the measureless and unmetabolized.
*********
It is not only men who thrust.
There is the knowledge lust, it
Takes hold of all of us some way,
Demands to understand
The smallest ‘why;’
But is never satisfied
To hear explained away
The fathomless September sky,
That it never was a blue expanse at all.
__________________
Thanks, as always for the synthesis. The breath-taking ignorance of a student who could claim that a Medal of Honor winner did not embody the values of her school's students gives one pause...and then you meet the smart ones, many of them in the military, and you know the future doesn't depend on Pappy's old school or its second-rate students. If there are any remaining family, I hope they refuse to let Pappy's alma mater near him. They don't deserve heroes because they don't understand them.
I wonder if San Fran is one of the ports to be taken over by the United Arab Emirates?
Great chance for some
"Cultural exchange"
on the Iowa, with the UAE folks learning all about Gay contributions then and now.
"Inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out."
Stuart fullerton.
Right.Like Clinton.Him you may accept
Now I ungerstand what all those 56 % or so in USA need.Noble poetry in soul of their president.
You do not need man who can save USA in war of 1400 years,you need romantic
soul full of.......
Where are those people from 1940?
I remember enough,however,only today I understood where they are.They changed in stuarts fullertons,cindis sheehans and similar creatures.
Mine soul is sad.25 more years and I am glad I shall be gone.
Another article should be considered: Plans for Draft Dodger Memorial Revived which I think rounds out the discussion.
Back in the early 70's it was proposed that the carrier USS Yorktown - the second of that name - be put on display in Norfolk, VA as a museum. Perhaps reflecting the superficial popularity of the "peace" movement of that time, Norfolk rejected it as "an eyesore". The Yorktown was built there.
Charleston, SC took the ship, gratefully, and now it is a major attraction. In fact, it is the only reason I can think of to go to Charleston.
For every Univ of Wash or Frisco there are a dozen or more towns and institutions who think just the opposite.
Perhaps half the country has descended into a mass of self-induced confusion that would prove to be fatal, except...
... the other half of the country longs for an excuse to just kick some ass.
"When you put your hand into the mass of goo that used to be your buddy's face, you'll know why we fight!" Gen'l George Patton
Today's friendly, soup-loving, Kumbaya-singing folks cut off the heads of girls; force girls to burn to death for trying to escape their burning dorm without veils; consider themselves God's Chosen Righteous People, superior to ALL others; believe they have THE MOST PERFECT legal-social system in the world, and therefore WANT NOTHING from non-Muslims, except submission TO THEM, enslavement to them, conversion to their way, or DEATH!
I vote to refurbish the USS Iowa! I'll re-enlist for 6 to help run her!
jsallison: Was thinking the same thing... But if we took all that money for things like bridges to nowhere in Alaska and huge holes in the ground in Boston we could dig one hell of a canal!
Unfortunately, the Islamic facists look upon the Boyington and Iowa issues and seek weakness. But if only the MSM would change their emphasis just a bit, OBL would be pondering:
1. The President of the U.S. is a former fighter pilot.
2. The President's main rival in his own party is a former attack bomber pilot.
3. The President's father, a former President himself, and a former attack bomber pilot, still goes skydiving for fun.
4. The Vice President of the U.S just shot someone during recreation.
5. And the reason we can afford to turn the world's largest existing battleships into musuems is that we have so many weapons that are far, far deadlier.
Nietzsche called it ressentiment: the small-minded having their revenge on the great-souled.
Cutler:
Re: Canada rule - the country isn't too stupid to defend itself, just governed by politicians who are too cynical.
Gene Felder:
The ultra liberal Toronto Star several years ago published a letter from one of their wooly headed readers on simliar topic "war has never created democracy". The paper actually published (to my complete surprise) my very short response. "Germany, Japan".
Oh, my. I'd forgotten that piece of drivel: "Act as if armistice has already arrived" indeed. She left out the critical "Cover your eyes with your hands/and chant 'La la la' at the top of your lungs."
It's a fortunate thing for us that heroes don't do what they do for the recognition of it - we're not a nation of Kerrys, obsessed with our Purple Heart paperwork, and Cindy Sheehans, so in love with our camera-face that we'll sacrifice our own children's memory to that ignoble cause, but a nation of Todd Beamers and Molly Pitchers, only punctuated by the occasional Kerry and Sheehan. Bush isn't going to spend his retirement brooding over the praise he deserved but didn't receive; he's going to go cut brush on his ranch by day and sleep soundly by night, knowing that he did what needed to be done to fulfill his duty to the American people he swore to serve.
I'm growing maudlin. Thanks a bunch, Wretchard, for highlighting the benightedness of these people.
Jane,
A friend of mine made the observation that, in his post 9/11 visit to New York, Bush looked like a defeated man until he began speaking to the New Yorkers, and they spoke back to him with a tremendous growl of fury that lifted him up and affirmed that spark in him that wanted to smash the people who had done that thing. It strengthened him and gave him the resolve to do... something.
Then he had to go back to Washington and figure out what that something would be, and it had to something which could be sold to the Democrats, the French, the media, world opinion, etc. It was whittled down into something that would sound good to those New Yorkers, but in practice, would be far less than it ought to have been.
It is good that Bush has that spark in him that can be blown to flames at times, but what we need is a man who is an inferno unto himself. Someone who can lead the country, and face down the critics of our self-assertiveness. Bush is, after all, a compassionate conservative, which is to say, he's predisposed towards the half-measure.
Be not afraid. What you are noticing is drift, made possible by success and security. It is the drift of perspective--an effect of amnesia. It will not be determinative.
Thankfully in general, but sadly for those who will die, the world stands ever ready with its mnemonics.
America will remember, in the end. She will have no choice.
(In fact, it might even be desirable to protect these zones of naivete. Cultural shires of pinched perspective might not be as worthless as some assume. I can't be sure of this, of course, but then again, neither can you.)
"Re: Canada rule - the country isn't too stupid to defend itself, just governed by politicians who are too cynical."
It takes a population too willing to believe in their superiority to the knuckle-dragging Americans.
Another senator, Ashley Miller, said the school already had many monuments that honor "rich white men."
This sort of sh!t infuriates me.
We don't honor Martin Luther King Jr. because he was black, we honor him because he was a Hero.
We don't honor Dorrie Miller because he was black, we honor him because he was a Hero.
We don't honor Rosa Parks because she was a black woman, we honor her because she was a Hero.
What shame and disgrace those who have died heroes must feel for us who live in this Together, but Not Equal time.
Opps, I forgot, religion is taboo, so there is no Heaven for them to look down from. How comforting for today's bigots.
StargazerA5
My fiance's seventeen year-old brother is of similar material, and has bought into the "wage peace, make love not war" mindset, as so many young people do. This past Christmas I attempted to engage his worldly opinions in debate, and, instead of argument, he quoted Bob Dylan at me.
His position was, in fact, Kantian, though I doubt he knew it. When he rhapsodized on the evil of war, or the unnecessity of violence, or the imperative to love each other, he was making a universalist argument. If everybody acted this way, he would assert, the world would be a better place.
"Ah," I said, "but that's the point. In a world that still has violent men, Bob Dylan's a pussy, and he will die."
Believe it or not, that sunk in. I heard him repeating this to his friend a couple of days later, and I saw them both nodding sagely as if this were the best-kept secret in the world. And then I realized it. Perhaps it was.
But I also realized something else. There is still something beautiful, something lasting, about the sentiments and wishes of innocence. Something worth tolerating, and something worth protecting. They may never be practicable, these longings, but, up to a point, they still have value.
I do not consider innocence to be an enemy of mine. Nor, however, do I want it to rule. So long as it doesn't, I do not mind protecting it.
Don't give up in SF entirely just yet. Remember that flight #93 was SFO bound and the "let's roll" posse was made up of many Bay Area residents. One of those brave men was Mark Bingham. One would look at his profile and maybe determine that he was a typical left coast liberal--UC Berkeley grad, gay. He was also built like a brickhouse and a rugby player, certainly two traits that contributed to them overpowering the terrorists. This is an example of the Bay Area rising to the occasion as far as I'm concerned.
That USS Iowa episode was embarrassing, but that oppositon was led by councilman Tom Ammiano who is nothing more than a gay activist posing as a politican. I think he was playing to his constituency (ironically I live in his district) and the rest of the council simply did not care either way. It reminds me of a particular Simpson's eposide where there's a gay pride parade.
parade marcher:"we're here, we're queer, get used to it!"
Lenny: "I AM used to it"
As a poster here once put it (I paraphrase from memory): Utopian day dreaming and pacifistic posing are the way many people choose to pass the time when this capitalistic system provides everything they wish for with minimal effort on their behalf.
I think that explains much of the lunacy that is associated with
SF.
Remember 13.2% of us did not vote for Kerry, and we still have our guns--at least until 1-APR.
If anything, I would have expected the objections to honoring Boyington to focus on his drinking and womanizing. He certainly didn't fit the "rich white guy" profile. Of course expecting these folks to actually familiarize themselves with him by way of reading a biography is asking rather a lot given prior experience...
re: rich white man.
To be properly re-educated, you must understand that all heroes are rich white men, serving their rich white man agendas. However, all those in the military are poor blacks, whose only way to get out of the ghetto was to die for rich white men.
The mutual exclusiveness of contradictory scenarios does not bother those who feel rather than think. Just as Arabs believe both that 9/11 was a Zionist plot and that it was a great victory for Islam, the Left has no affinity (nor use) for logical consistency. For them, to emote is to speak truth.
A simple two-word definition of leftism: to feel.
It doesn't occur to them that Roosevelt's 'peace conferences' could only have taken place after years of horrific war.
In a similar vein, a San Francisco city councilman explained yesterday that the elimination of standing armies would reduce to prospect of war, ignoring completely that it was disarmament and the appeal of appeasement that allowed cancerous regimes of the 30's to metastasize into an existential threat to civilization.
"But I also realized something else. There is still something beautiful, something lasting, about the sentiments and wishes of innocence. Something worth tolerating, and something worth protecting. They may never be practicable, these longings, but, up to a point, they still have value."
"I agree, the innocent are to be protected.
It's the subversive and the useful idiots that are contemptible."
Re both:
There is unfortunately no clear line between the two groups. The Oxford pledgees were not pro-fascist; they were merely idealist fools - that helped get people killed.
Innocence and idealism that is bought with ignorance is not a virtue. The young Chinese Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution were "innocent" and idealist also, that's part of the reason they were so dangerous.
Whit and Cutler bring up good points, about subversion and useful idiots and the danger of ignorance.
Innocence can be manipulated, and utopian mass movements are started in such a way.
This 'truth' is the ultimate qualifier to my statement that 'innocence is not an enemy of mine.' Alloyed innocence can be very dangerous indeed.
What I was thinking of was the ignorance, innocence, and irresponsibility of the Shire, and of youth. Jill Edwards and Ashley Miller, to me at least, fall into that category.
Richard,
Way off with the threads.
Get Down!
Fellas, quit bitching about Canada. First, the military is being presently expanded. Second, if you were a Canadian, could you clearly identify what we need more military for? Our only threat of invasion is from the south, a military with which we can't compete. As for overseas, many Canadians want to play a responsible role. But someone, guess who, needs better to lead us in defining a new role for international forces in bringing the gap into the core, if i may use Barnett's terms. When that happens, and you get no response, then you can bitch. In the meantime, we throw enough money around without knowing what it's for.
I was in Seattle this week and noticed they have an ordinary parking garage downtown: the so and so Memorial Garage it is nicely called. I've never seen that before, and i'm not sure what it says about these naming games that we've gotten to the point of naming parking lots. Maybe that's all that's left that lefty Seattle considers suitable memorials for dead white males?
Why is it that those who offer themselves as worldly, empathetic sophisticates are the last to realize that a willingness to concede, compromise and concilliate at every turn* is perceived as weakness and an invitation to violence and aggression in other parts of the world?
* Or the sort of cloying, pandering, shallow sensitivity passed off as enlightened multi-culturalism.
whit wrote:
"All week, the BBC has been featuring the scurrilous UN report claiming torture at Guantanamo and calling for it to be shutdown.
How much longer must we tolerate the luncacy?"
It will have to be tolerated as long as it continues. The US long ago lost the moral high ground. We have fallen so far we now get to watch Cheney et al claim that drinking beer at lunch means no alcohol was involved in the 'incident' and that prisoner abuse at Abu Gharib was an isolated occurance engaged in by folks at only the lowest rank and....the list goes on.
the basics ingrediants for a successful 21st century are cheap energy and cheap water.
The work on both fronts is rapidly advancing and will be mostly developed within the next five years.
What we're talking about now is who profits/benefits/flourishes as a result.
The Moslem world is currently positioning themselves to gain the maximum benefits from technological advances. Indeed, when the cost of water desalinisation and transport drops to such levels as to make it ecomically possible to turn the deserts of all the world green --then the Moslems will indeed have gotten more than they bargained for.
It does look like the west is positioning themselves to get the least benefit but then we are talking about a divided history coming -- in which ... some will go to the stars and some will remain on earth.
This is also the context in which the reformation began in Europe in the early 1500's. Some in time would go to the new world and some would remain.
It is well to remember that God loved Abel's offering better than Cains and Issac loved Esau better than he loved Jacob. Both Esau and Cain were hunters and yet the line Israel goes through Seth and Jacob.
How will politics change when GWOT veterans return to the US and begin entering the political arena, especially the federal ones?
How also will our culture change when these men and women are at the helm? I wonder if its only a question of what gear their memetic steam roller will be in when it quashes the bafflingly assinine simian exhaust that substitutes for discourse.
Several milblogs have asserted the ambition for candidacy awhile ago.
It would be helpful to know if anyone of these heros are being fielded in 2006?
Beerskis at lunch, prior to carrying loaded weapons in the field.
Then it's, back to the Ranch, for that "cover" cocktail, before the Sheriff's Deputy is allowed access.
Who'd have ever thought.
Ash,
Having a beer at lunch very possibly had no effect at all. There is no way that you can say, accurately, that it had any effect. If the shooting occurred an hour after lunch, the alcohol was already processed (depending on metabolism, size, food in the system, etc.). Anything up to an hour (again, depending ...) there would be some decreasing affect, but if it was only one beer, it would be pretty minimal. You're letting your bias show.
rat
What's your blood alcohol at the moment?
exheldrvr,
Bias? Well, one tries to give him the benefit of the doubt but the whole delay thing, Karen Armstrong presenting to the press "no alcohol, just Dr. Pepper" followed by Cheney saying "no alcohol involved, but I had beer at lunch" coupled with the Sherriff getting turned away that evening while Cheney was having dinner and cocktails and forced to return for the interview the next day does lead one down the path to skepticism. Things are bad enough for the Veep mistaking his friend (acquaintance) for a bird but maybe pounding back beer while gunslinging would give him more cred with the good old boys...at least he would have an excuse.
Lower than the VP's, after his post shooting cocktail.
Blood alcohol at the time of the shooting would depend entirely on the amount of beer drinken, earlier.
Heading back to the Ranch for a "stiff one" prior to meeting with the Deputy, not at all the behaviour that is called for, after a shooting.
Drinking before the shootin', drinking after the shootin'
Seems like a whole lot of drinkin' goin' on
I'm from Stockton, California. The San Joaquin delta harbor in Stockton asked to house the Iowa after San Francisco turned it down. Upon hearing that Stockton WANTED the ship, and upon the introduction of legislation by Representative Pombo that Stockton should get the ship, Feinstein promptly introduced counter-legislation that any city wanting the ship should be forced to submit a bid. The underlying mentality seems to be that if San Francisco doesn't want the ship, no one in California should be able to have it, even if it would be a tourism boon for a county with the highest unemployment rate in the state (San Joaquin County).
I cannot even put into words how infuriated I was by this. I still entertain hopes that this nearly legendary vessel may take up residence in my city, and that I might one day walk the same decks as so many who have served our nation with honor.
This poem written in September 2001, addresses innocents who don't understand sin by inaction.
If evil does not make you angry, you are not truly alive.
Cowards
You passed by
on the other side.
"We’re not
our brothers keeper"
you cried.
Thought death
was distant.
No threat
to your soft life.
You thought
to escape death
across blue ocean.
You saw evil
devil come
into your home
on dark September morn.
Led by immoral coward
you feared getting hurt.
You tried to assuage your guilt
by apologizing for what
you hadn’t done.
None of you
free of guilt.
Your bloody hands
you try to hide.
You feared death.
Dying a little at a time.
Guilty by inaction
you let innocents die.
Their blood is on
your hands.
You failed to act
in time.
Bosnia…Russia…Rwanda
Congo…Afghanistan… India
East Timor… Ceylon…Burma…
Iraq…Sudan…Libya.
Will you repent?
Put on sackcloth?
Blizzard of
WTC ashes?
© Presbypoet, September 28, 2001
This is nothing new. Plenty of people during the Civil War wanted peace at any price.
During the 60's "better red than dead" was said by many.
Clearly Dhimmihood is nothing new. History is one of my obsessions. Paying off barbarians only works for a while, is a very important lesson.
Today's question:
Are we willing to pay the price in blood for freedom?
exhelo,
What was Navy Policy on drinking beers one or two hours prior to piloting an aircraft?
Commercial pilots attempt to fly drunk, some get by Security screeners, I'm sure.
I know in the Army, we didn't slam a couple of brews with our C-Rats on the way to the Range.
"Fellas, quit bitching about Canada. First, the military is being presently expanded. Second, if you were a Canadian, could you clearly identify what we need more military for? Our only threat of invasion is from the south, a military with which we can't compete. As for overseas, many Canadians want to play a responsible role. But someone, guess who, needs better to lead us in defining a new role for international forces in bringing the gap into the core, if i may use Barnett's terms. When that happens, and you get no response, then you can bitch. In the meantime, we throw enough money around without knowing what it's for."
Truepeers, I respect your point of view, but no dice. At the very least, I'd be satisfied with just sitting back and shutting up. Unfortunately, we see neither the inclination to help friends 'for the sake of it' nor even the realist pov of "not in our interests, better to freeload." I'd understand the latter, though I wouldn't respect it. Instead I see cheap moralizing and active sabotage, ICC, bans on landmines, et al.
It'll take more than the close election of a 'compassionate-compassionate Conservative' in the wake of some of the worst financial scandals in the Western world, only on the desperate promises that he'll carry on -most- of Trudeau's legacy. Recognizing you personally are one of our greatest friends, your country isn't at the moment.
Aristedes, I like your qualifier.
Though I wonder, are we tempted to respect such innocent not because it has any intrinsic value, but because we wish we enjoyed such a simple outlook? Bentham’s [I think] proverbial ignorant, but happy pig? Perhaps I'm projecting my own feelings.
A week ago, in a class on contemporary ethics, I found myself debating a girl who proclaimed her a pacifist. At this point, I bowed out, because I saw we were on two different planets and I deplore most pacifists. The Professor, who’s surprisingly smart for an Irish socialist, gave the cliché response: “What about World War II?” Her response: “Oh, but if you’re attacked…,” thereby refuting her previous argument. After 9-11, a number of prominent pacifists gave the same sort of deer in the headlights non-answer.
This ability for doublethink, to hold and realize two completely contradictory opinions, is surely dangerous. Unfortunately, the Professor cautiously praised her principles, and neglected to point out her contradictions, even as I saw he was struggling with such a dimwitted response.
I’m glad you responded more forcefully and I’m also glad your nephew is still salvageable. :P
"It'll take more than the close election of a 'compassionate-compassionate Conservative' in the wake of some of the worst financial scandals in the Western world, only on the desperate promises that he'll carry on -most- of Trudeau's legacy. Recognizing you personally are one of our greatest friends, your country isn't at the moment."
Perhaps, I'm just bitter. It IS a step in the right direction, but we've got a long way to go... Good luck up North, friend.
Naval aviation policy was "12 hours from bottle to brief", which applied even if you had only a single beer. That had a very large safety factor built in, and was related to much more than whether or not the alcohol would affect reaction time; it also took into account night vision (which is affected over a longer period of time than reactions), and the potential for hypoxia (increased potential after consuming alcohol).
The equivalent in this issue would be whether it would be appropriate to drive under those circumstances. It is pretty clear to me that (assuming he had one beer at lunch) he probably wasn't anywhere close to the point where it should be considered an issue. I acknowledge that having a beer at lunch in the middle of a day of hunting leaves him open for this type of criticism; however, I believe that the criticism is unfounded.
"Truth" via the Haifa Street Stringer,
Patriot Murtha,
Cheney "Scandal,"
Keep up with the latest Antique Media Topic of the day:
Tune into 'Ratblogger tm.
Cutler wrote:
"in the wake of some of the worst financial scandals in the Western world"
I'll say you sound bitter! Pray tell how does this rise to such a high standard of scandal? Ad agencies billing and getting paid for little to no work and kicking back some cash to the 'party'? oh my. Isn't that just a normal way of doing business with the US federal government 'cept its legal.
Aristides, 9:38
Had you not sullied the innocence of your future brother in law, he could submit himself for consideration to become one of the lucky 72.
"Pray tell how does this rise to such a high standard of scandal?"
Probably the same way that Niger becomes Nigeria? The most awfullest lie ever told since FDR proclaimed neutrality?
Truepeers, I take it all back.
Having to deal with nitwits like Ash and IOTM, I respect that you haven't yet imploded.
Cutler, what you say is fair enough, though you are a bit too harsh on Harper's Conservatives. Their election campaign was not inspiring to serious conservatives but then of course it was not these votes that were being hunted. Still it's just too far to go to say Harper promised to maintain most of Trudeau's legacy.
We will have to wait and see what kind of government we now have; early signs not so good: Harper is as much as a pansy on the cartoons jihad as the American government.
Anyway, while what you say is fair enough, there remains something serious to defend in my point. We can be as eager as beavers to help our friends out, but the sober and serious among us still need to have some idea how we can seriously help and not just make symbolic gestures. And on this question, there really has to be more of a sense of direction in the US which there isn't at the moment, understandably enough because of your own internal divides and doubts about your ability to continue leading the world Bush-like towards greater transformations in the name of democracy and freedom.
I certainly won't defend those in Canada or the US who would outlaw war with things like the ICC, Landmines treat, etc. But war is an evil that must be engaged responsibly, and i should like to know what you would consider responsible from a Canadian p.o.v.
As for Ash and IOTM, i knew the last guy claims to be Cnd., but i'm sorry to hear about Ash who sounded like so many blue state Americans to me. Anyway, IOTM may be in a purely legal sense a Canadian citizen, but in truth he's nothing but a crazy man; and just because there are a lot of crazed heretics in a certain place does not mean they define the place. The place has a history, a tradition tried and tested against reality. However many the fantasy ideologies among us, what is truly Canadian is what is proved in the laboratory of Canadian history. In this sense, IOTM's ideas are no more Canadian than my cat's. And what is a man but what he will love and defend? Ask him what he loves about Canada and see how far he can go in making positive statements beyond defining himself as against xyz.
I was born and bred in America so you can't write me off simply as a Canadian. The Canadian adscam scandal sure was no good but as scandals go it really does pale in comparison to the corporate crud occurring in America (Enron, Worldcom ect.) and US government contracts do often seem to flow to those well connected and active in the ruling party.
LOL
The funny thing is that Boyington was not a white guy - he was an American Indian.
aristides 9:38
That was a lovely post A.
I am a U of W graduate and I am especially hot about those fools in the student senate who would deny tribute to Pappy Boyington. But then your post reminded me that Pappy fought so that that kind of innocence - for that is what it is - could exist. I just wish that the university would stop encouraging that kind of mindless multiclturalism - as though Pappy's "whiteness" was his main attribute. The Japanese he fought against were killers - were they, however good because they were "brown" and "other". Multiculturalism is just so asinine.
(Somewhat OT)
Desert Rat,
I thought this would be of interest to you, as it seems to support many of your contentions about the "War on Terror":
"The Logic of the 'Peace Process'" by Angelo M. Codevilla
http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/winter2005/codevilla.html
Jamie Irons
Truepeers: My fault, I thought Ash was a Canadian.
"Anyway, IOTM may be in a purely legal sense a Canadian citizen, but in truth he's nothing but a crazy man; and just because there are a lot of crazed heretics in a certain place does not mean they define the place. The place has a history, a tradition tried and tested against reality. However many the fantasy ideologies among us, what is truly Canadian is what is proved in the laboratory of Canadian history. In this sense, IOTM's ideas are no more Canadian than my cat's. And what is a man but what he will love and defend? Ask him what he loves about Canada and see how far he can go in making positive statements beyond defining himself as against xyz."
I actually have a question for you, unrelated to Canada per se, but more identity and related to what you say. Personally I'm still chewing on it, though I don't think it really matters to what we should do: Is a country or religion the meaning of its basic tenets, or the sum of its current parts?
For examples, is transnational socialism and multiculturalism anti-Western, or is itself an evolution of Western civilization [which would be ironic for the supposed anti-cultural imperialists who promote it]? A semantic chicken or the egg type question, but what do you think?
jamie,
thank you
It is always interesting when the smart people start coming to the same conclusions I have.
I am sure there are other perspectives, but that article did, as you said,
" ... support many of your contentions about the "War on Terror": ... "
doug,
when you comin' down off brokedick mountain?
I thought it was going to be about the kayak and training for your voyage to sonia's island.
Instead, it seems, you are up in the hills, lookin' for that Whiskey River to take your mind.
Desert Rat,
You're most welcome, and I'm glad you found the article helpful.
Let me add, too, that I very much appreciate your son's service, and please give him a heartfelt "Thank you" from me.
(What became of the lovely Sonia?)
Jamie Irons
knucklehead, Cutlers statement was "in the wake of some of the worst financial scandals in the Western world" and it is in this context that Worldcom and Enron apply.
you wrote:
"The fact that big companies have bigwigs that hobknob with government officials, and that they get government contracts, is hardly suprising and automatic indicator of malfeasance."
While this is true I am sure you are aware of the powerful interest money plays in US politics. A candidate simply cannot get elected without tons of money and few have the personal resources to run on their own. This affects the dynamic of the politicians relationship to the electorate.
"The funny thing is that Boyington was not a white guy - he was an American Indian."
Red River,
But I heard he spoke with forked tongue.
---
'Rat,
I figured if she could be that attractive to all the men here while going both ways, maybe I should just cave to the cultural imperative to go bi bi, and maybe I'll be peeling chicks off left and right?
...plus, I'll be ready to submit when the inevitable Islamist Peace Movement takes over.
Gives a whole new meaning to the Command:
Attentehut!
(or however the RoPniks pronounce it)
Baa Baa Sheep Indeed!
"The Logic of the 'RoP Process'"
by
IMon LSD
I really think the term
"Explosive Interview" should be avoided in these harrowing times.
---
H Hewitt would know.
GUYANA
Four jobs I had:
1. English literature, Spanish teacher,
Forms 1 – 4, Guyana
The student I like to remember now was the most botheration then…13-year old Philbert.
Philbert talk like a radio. Non-stop. I set work for them children to do in class. Philbert mouth going full speed like it energize with that rabbit battery.
He say, “And boy, I race up the neighbour mango tree. I pick them mangoes. If you see how they ripe and sweet. I full me bag. When is time to come down, boy…the neighbour waiting at the bottom with a dawg.”
2. In a office in Jamaica
I didn’t do nothing the whole day long. The Boss Lady [a Guyanese] was a control freak...
---
http://dykedietlife.blogspot.com/
I thought Martians were warlike, you sure you didn't mean Venus?
Men are from Mars,
Ash is from Uranus.
Doug, your copious posts usually get me to scroll on by but that last made me laugh out loud.
Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman were convinced that they would have to take the fight to the Confederacy to win the Civil War. If they were not aggressive, and the war would drag on too long, many bad things would occur:
- Confederacy more likely to obtain recognition and aid from foreign countries
- Democratic Party anti-war sentiments would undermine & perhaps end the war effort
- A greater number of Union and Southern soldiers would be killed and wounded
According to Gen. Sherman the war effort should destroy the resources that allowed the enemy to sustain its warfare. The concept is total war.
Currently the United States and its allies are engaged in a War on Terror against Islamofascists. We should want to shorten the war likely reducing the overall deaths and casualties. If we were to follow Gen. Sherman advice that the war effort should destroy the resources that allow the enemy to sustain its warfare, what would we do?
Gene Felder
2680 Park Avenue
Laguna Beach CA 92651
Gene@Felders.Net
www.FelderLaguna.Blogspot.com
"What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Why then, war would come to them."
-Bertolt Brecht, in a poem directed at French pacifists on the outbreak of WWII
"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
Does quoting Trotsky make me a fully credentialed neo-Con?
I'm hurt that you ignore me,
but heartened that you appreciate me.
Oh Bother!
CUtler,
"Is a country or religion the meaning of its basic tenets, or the sum of its current parts?"
-i think you understand a country best in terms of its founding events and constitution, and for a religion, in terms of its founding revelation. This is true of all institutions: we can only really know them in terms of their emergence and then in terms of how their founding scene or text is renewed as the contexts in which it finds itself change.
So you understand, e.g., USAmerica in terms of the Revolution and the Constitution, and Christianity in terms of the life of Christ, his passion, resurrection, and the consequent revelations of those who created the church: Paul on the road to Damascus coming to an understanding of why faith in a redeeming resurrection was necessary.
If you think in terms of "the sum of its parts" you run into the problem that every nation or religion is constructed of more basic forms or institutions, the most minimal being those that founded language and sacrificial ritualism which are in turn best understood in terms of theories of their origin in the moment that first distinguished human from animal. You can ascribe all the culture you see in America to the legacy of these minimal institutional origins; it is harder to identify what is specifically American or Christian unless there is a clear link to a particular founding scene or event of American or Christian history.
As for tenets, these are pretty foundational to a nation if we think in terms of constitutional principles that justify, after the fact, a political transformation - like a revolution - that was motivated less by a pre-existing vision of the nation to come, as by a resentful rejection of an unbearable status quo. One cannot build a nation on resentment, so once the old is irredeemably rejected, new principles for a new founding have to be developed.
However religious tenets are better understood as secondary to the revelations from which they are abstracted. Christian tenets were not first formulated to serve as the basis for a new religion; rather they were derived from the life of Christ, from Christ's own revelations, and from the revelations that founded the faith in his resurrection.
"is transnational socialism and multiculturalism anti-Western, or is itself an evolution of Western civilization"?
-i think of Marxism and multiculturalism as products of a secularized Christianity that has lost touch with faith in the transformative personhood of Christ. Without this faith that encourages personal humility, patience, and morality in the face of our trials in an imperfect world, the Christian vision of a final apocalpyse that will overcome our differences and unite us in a heavenly kingdom of perfect reciprocity is corrupted into a worldly ideology that loses touch with the reality that conflict must remain a fact of life and cannot be overcome by fantasy ideologies that will only lead us to greater violence than more realistic or humble forms of faith.
The distinction between what is owed Caesar and what is owed God has been lost in the process of secularizing Christianity and the tranzi and multiculti ideologies have become attempts at building the kingdom of heaven on earth. So i would say they are definitely products of the western tradition, but they are also anti-western, in the sense that they are self-destructive of the concrete nations and particular (historical) revelations from which they first emerged.
Thank you for leaving me plenty to chew on Truepeers.
Also, thanks for previously suggesting those works on victimology, parts of them were good reading this summer.
Dedicated to "Wage Peace":
For the WTC Jumpers
"WHEN THE DEVIL HAD FINISHED ALL THE TEMPTING HE LEFT HIM, TO AWAIT ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY"
-Luke 5:13
He came back,
This time for me.
On the 110th floor I was so close to God
I could almost grab his beard.
Never before has heaven been this close to hell.
I can feel its fire on the floors below
Raising ash and paper and smoke
Thick as Satan’s laughter.
At the window, shattered,
I look for salvation and he tempts me,
Dares me to jump,
Whispering a psalm in my ear
He spits as he speaks:
“He will bid his angels watch over you.
With their hands they will support you.”
I mumble “Amen,”
Close my eyes and sense the rush of air.
I cannot breathe until I finally feel
Those hands of angels
Hard as cement against my face.
by Doug Seubert
The Jumpers of 9-11
Continuing to tear our hearts out.
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