Secretary Mattis responds to an interview request from a high-school student. The interview is worth reading and more informative than much of what appears in the adult press.
(via Lex)
Terrorism
Summer Rerun: Sleeping with the Enemy
Why has the western world shown such loss of will in defending itself from radical Islamic terrorism? Why, indeed, do substantial numbers of peopleparticularly those who view themselves as intellectualsendlessly make excuses for belief systems and terrorist movements whose values are completely at odds with their own stated valuesand even romanticize these systems and their followers? I think some clues can be found in a forgotten novel by Arthur Koestler.
The Age of Longing
Hydie sipped at her glass. Here was another man living in his own portable glass cage. Most people she knew did. Each one inside a kind of invisible telephone box. They did not talk to you directly but through a wire. Their voices came through distorted and mostly they talked to the wrong number, even when they lay in bed with you. And yet her craving to smash the glass between the cages had come back again. If cafes were the home of those who had lost their country, bed was the sanctuary of those who had lost their faith.
Through her friend Julien DeLattre, Hydie is introduced to a number of Paris intellectuals and and East European emigres. Members of the former group are mostly in denial about the danger of a Soviet attack…many of them have indeed convinced themselves that Communist rule wouldn’t be all that bad. For example, there’s Professor Pontieux (modeled on Sartre)…”He did not believe that the Commonwealth of Freedomloving People had solved all its problems and become an earthly paradise. But it was equally undeniable that it was an expression of History’s groping progress towards a new form of society, when it followed that those who opposed this progres were siding with the forces of reaction and preparing the way for conflict and warthe worst crime against Humanity.” Vardi, another intellectual, says that if he had to choose between the (American) juke box on one hand, and Pravda on another, he isn’t sure which he would pick.
Madame Pontieux, modeled on Simone de Bouvoir (with whom Koestler had a brief affair) is less ambiguous about her choice among the alternatives. “You cannot enter a cafe or a restaurant without finding it full of Americans who behave as if the place belonged to them,” she complains to an American official. When the Russian emigre Leontiev suggests that France would not survive without American military support, pointing out that “nature abhors a vacuum,” she turns on him:
“I am surprised at your moderation, Citizen Leontiev,” Madame Pontieux said sarcastically. “I thought you would tell us that without this young man’s protection the Commonwealth army would at once march to the Atlantic shore.”
“It would,” said Leontiev. “I believed that everyone knew that.”
“I refuse to believe it,” responds Madame Pontieux. “But if choose one must I would a hundred times rather dance to the music of a Balalaika than a juke box.”
(The French intellectuals Koestler knew must have really hated juke boxes!)
Julien is romantically interested in Hydie, but she is not attracted to him, despite the fact that he seems to have much to recommend hima hero of the French Resistance, wounded in action, and a successful poet. On one occasion, she tells him that she could never sleep with him because they are too similar“it would be like incest”..on another occasion, though, she tells him that “what I most dislike about you is your attitude of arrogant broken-heartedness.” Parallel to Hydie’s loss of religious faith is Julien’s loss of his secular faith in the creation of a new society. He does not now believe in utopia, or any approximation to same, but he does believe in the need to face reality, however unpleasant it may be. Hydie argues that the Leftists of their acquaintance may be silly, but at least they believe in something:
“Perhaps they believe in a miragebut isn’t it better to believe in a mirage than to believe in nothing?”
Julien looked at her coldly, almost with contempt:
“Definitely not. Mirages lead people astray. That’s why there are so many skeletons in the desert. Read more history. Its caravan-routes are strewn with the skeletons of people who were thirsting for faithand their faith made them drink salt water and eat the sand, believing it was the Lord’s Supper.”
At a diplomatic affair, Hydie meets Fedya, a committed Communist who works for the Soviet Embassy. She is powerfully attracted to him: things get physical very quickly and, from Hydie’s point of view, very satisfactorily. (Fedya is one of Koestler’s best-developed characters. His boyhood in Baku is vividly sketched, and Koestlerhimself a former Communistdoes a good job in showing how a political faith can become core to an individual’s whole personality.)
What to do about North Korea
The North Koreans launched a new two stage missile, which signals more escalation of their part.
The two-stage missile launched Tuesday by North Korea will be classified by US intelligence as a brand-new missile that has not been seen before, US officials told CNN.
The first stage of the missile is believed to be a KN-17 liquid fueled missile, which is well-known to US intelligence and has been previously launched by North Korea.
Ahead of Tuesday’s missile test, US satellites had seen evidence the KN-17 missile was being prepared for launch.
But at some point prior to launch, the North Koreans attached a second stage atop that missile.
The focus now is on the capability of that second stage, and how it technically contributed to making Pyongyang’s latest test its first ever intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch.
The next step will be the development of a solid fuel missile which could be launched with little warning.
The trajectory was high and short but the second stage could be programmed to go much longer range.
It is apparent that the US policy going back to Bill Clinton and his “Deal” to stop the Norks nuclear program, has been a complete failure, like so many of Clinton’s deals.
On Oct. 18, 1994, Clinton approved a plan to arrange more than $4 billion in energy aid to North Korea over the course of a decade, in return for a commitment from the country’s Communist leadership to freeze and gradually dismantle its nuclear weapons development program, according to The New York Times.
The “complex” deal was to de-escalate the situation on the Korean peninsula, where the two Korean nations never negotiated a peace treaty after the Korean War ended in armistice in 1953.
“This agreement is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the safety of the entire world,” said Clinton in 1994. “It’s a crucial step toward drawing North Korea into the global community.”
The drawing-in never happened.
I can only imagine what Hillary Clinton would do if she were President. The mind boggles at the thought.
British People Need Guns
https://www.funker530.com/footage-london-cops/
Solid work by the cops in London. Once the coppers show up the jihadis are dead dirt in seconds.
Notably the terrorist idiots were wearing fake suicide-bomb vests. The cops closed with them and killed them at close range without regard to their own safety.
But the cops cannot be everywhere. When seconds count, even with the best of intentions, the police will always be minutes away.
In the USA we have, thank God, the Second Amendment. These dirtbags would have run into citizens carrying firearms, not pint glasses or bare fists.
The Brits need to gun up.
There will be lots more like this.
How Can We Deal With Terrorism in the West ?
Terrorism struck in London last Saturday night and PM Theresa May says, “Enough is enough “
Does she mean it ? Probably but that does not mean anything useful will be done.
Two thirds of British Muslims would not report a plot to police.
The same poll revealed that over half of all British Muslims think homosexuality, the very act of gay sex, should be illegal in Britain. Another 23% want to tear down British common law and replace it with Islamic Sharia. Moreover, 39% believe that wives should always, without exception, obey the commands of their husbands; 31% of Muslim also believed that men (not women of course) should be legally permitted to practice polygamy and marry more than one wife.
That doesn’t sound like assimilation. How about America ?
Minnesota Somalis sound pretty much the same.
‘Is it right to kill someone who insults the prophet?’
“Yes,” said the bearded man with the animated personality. “Because when you, every day you face frustration. And you know, every day you have, uh, you’re mad, or somebody says that, and you feel hate your soul. You could do anything you wanted. If you committed suicide, you don’t care, because your heart, your heart is telling you, ‘I don’t want to live no more,’ because you couldn’t take that much hate. Or you, you kill someone.”
The Center for Security Policy released a poll Tuesday that should give all Americans pause. The results show that a startling number of American Muslims, our fellow citizens, agree that violence is a legitimate response to those who insult Islam. A full majority of 51% “agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.”
According to the just-released survey of Muslims, a majority (51%) agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.” When that question was put to the broader U.S. population, the overwhelming majority held that shariah should not displace the U.S. Constitution (86% to 2%). …
Even more troubling, is the fact that nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, “It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.”
A full 25% of those polled agreed that “violence against Americans here in the United States can be justified as part of the global jihad.”
What do we do with this ?
Spengler (David Goldman) has some suggestions.
Sherman and Sheridan suppressed sniping at Union soldiers by Confederate civilians by burning the towns (just the towns, not the townsfolk) that sheltered them. In other words, they forced collective responsibility upon a hostile population, a doctrine that in peacetime is entirely repugnant, but that in wartime becomes unavoidable.
I have read a lot about Sherman and his way of dealing with a hostile population was hang snipers and burn the villages that supported them.
Collective punishment has gotten a bad reputation from the Germans in World War I and World War II. They would round up innocent civilians and execute them to punish guerilla attacks in the area. I am not advocating anything like that.
Israel demolishes the homes of terrorists.
“The police are going deeply into the Arab neighborhoods [in Jerusalem], which has not been done in the past,” he said. “We will demolish terrorists’ homes. We are allowing our forces to take strong action against those who throw rocks and firebombs. This is necessary in order to safeguard the security of Israeli citizens on the roads and everywhere.”
Palestinians may consider children expendable but houses are more precious. How would we implement such a policy ?
Many mosques have been used to store weapons and plan attacks.
This is certainly the case in Israel.
The 38-page report includes photographic evidence of weapons being stored under pulpits and elsewhere in mosques during December and January’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. It notes that Israeli troops fighting Hizballah in Lebanon, U.S. troops fighting terrorists in Iraq and even Palestinian Authority officials in the West Bank have encountered similar practices.
How about in the US ? Mosques have been shown to teach violent extremism.
The mosques in the US are largely funded by the Saudis which promote the Wahhabi extreme version of Islam.
Firm figures are elusive, but estimates are that the Saudis fund up to 80% of American mosques, at least in part. And their goal is the same here as it is elsewhere in the world where Islam must compete with other religions: to prevent Muslims from integrating into the host society.
If a terrorist is shown to have attended a mosque, that mosque should be closed.
The terrorists are also winning a psychological war in Europe. They identify police informants and force them to become suicide bombers. That is why so many are “Known Wolves.”
These attacks, in other words, are designed to impress the Muslim public as much as they are intended to horrify the western public. In so many words, the terrorists tell Muslims that western police agencies cannot protect them. If they cooperate with the police they will be found out and punished. The West fears the power of Islam: it evinces such fear by praising Islam as a religion of peace, by squelching dissent in the name of fighting supposed Islamophobia, and by offering concessions and apologies to Muslims.
Demolishing or closing some homes and a few mosques might signal more resolution than speeches by politicians. Deporting a few families would also be salutary.