Can we once and for all destroy completely any lingering prejudice against Vietnam Vets?

I belong to a small private Website dedicated to Governor Sarah Palin, http://americawantssarah.ning.com (AWS). In it I am a member of a group named ‘Brotherhood 2’ (BH2). This group is dedicated to certain topics, one of which is to work for destroying completely any lingering prejudice against Vietnam Vets. The question has arisen, ‘Is this possible’? I think it is, but not particularly and not in isolation.

The destruction can be accomplished if we include it in a movement already occurring in America to change some ugly aspects of our country, restoring her to her former greatness and beauty. Most of us in sites like AWS concentrate on political and governmental alterations that are needed. With many of these I agree. But there are cultural changes that are necessary as well. My list follows of the worst of these in my view. I am certain the reader will be able to add many more.

1.) Education. I want our children to be able to read, write, calculate, think, and have basic knowledge when they leave school. The situation right now is dire. Let me give you an example. For a while I had a side job of performing physical examinations of people applying for New York State disability. Within weeks two similar men came to me for this. The following conversation was had with each, both 18-year-old white males. Here is how it went: Why are you here? What is your disability? Cannot read. Have you been in school? Yes. High school? Yes. Did you graduate? Yes. Was it an academic high school? Yes. Did you get a diploma? Yes. Did the school know you could not read? Yes. And they gave you a diploma anyway? Yes. And now you want disability for life because of this, that you cannot read? Yes. Get out of my office right now. Go to a bookstore and buy a book on teaching yourself to read. Have someone get you started. You should be ashamed of yourself. Disability denied.
2.) Religion. In my faith (Episcopalian) a Presiding Bishop (Head of the USA Church) was recently ordained. In her ordination address she spoke at length of feeding people. She made few mentions of Jesus, God, or religion. My reaction to this speech was: Your Grace, I thought McDonalds did a pretty good job feeding people. I do not see it able to lead services on Sunday, however. What about the church?
3.) Music. Rap is not music. Punk rock is not music. In the concert hall plunking various randomly selected keys on a piano ‘prepared’ with thumbtacks stuck into the strings is not music. Are you kidding me?
4.) Art. A Crucifix stuck in a bottle of urine is not art. Smearing pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary with feces is not art. These ‘artistic expressions’ should be dumped in a garbage can, not displayed anywhere.
5.) Architecture. Buildings that are giant Wheaties boxes without the printing are boring. Do architects get paid for this lack of talented expression? Why?

Many Americans want these cultural horrors and others changed along with the political alterations advocated by Governor Palin and leaders like her.

But there is an intermediate area between politics and art where bad things need rectifying as well. In my view, chief among them is our attitude towards our service men and women who fought in the Vietnam War. What we did to these Vets was a national sin, a national disgrace. The country has already intuited this because it is treating those who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan with the respect and honor they deserve.

This movement of changing America back to its magnificent self is slow but real. Witness the prominence of Governor Palin and Representative Bachmann, the sites like AWS, the groups like BH2. But the movement cannot just go forward. It has to regress to rectify the abhorrent treatment of the Vietnam Vets that they experienced when they came home. They were spat upon (literally), derided, mocked, employment was denied them. In every possible way they were abused. Some had their lives darkened forever because of this national rage. So the movement will have to do what it can to erase this mistreatment and treat the damage done to these warriors. Some of us are forming a group tentatively named, ‘Asking Forgiveness’. Asking Forgiveness of the Vets for the obloquy heaped on them. I believe we can work at this plea for forgiveness as part of the movement to restore America to its former greatness. Whether in this new group, Asking Forgiveness, or simply in day-to-day utterances of us all we can start the process. As in obtaining forgiveness of any sin on a personal level–I must be sorry for what I did, I must restore what I destroyed to the best of ability, I must seriously try not to repeat the sin in the future–I believe America must follow these admonitions in asking forgiveness of the Vietnam Vets. The country is already following the third one, as witnessed by our treatment of the veterans from recent wars, as I pointed out. Now we have to go back to admonitions one and two: Experience sorrow, and treat the wounds the country has caused. Like the movement in which this religious experience is embedded movement will be slow towards accomplishing the cleansing of the terrible besmirching that was heaped on these people. But it can be accomplished: We can once and for all destroy any lingering prejudice against Vietnam Vets. Both they and we will be purified when we do.

Comment by Jack Keel 4 hours ago

Debrah is my personal nurse Dick. you bet I love her!!!

Comment by Dick Lanham 5 hours ago

Delete CommentMy thanks are to you debrah~ for all of the great posts on BH2, your loyalty to the US, and your faithfulness to our service men and women. I should bet Jack feels the same way. Best, Dick

Comment by debrah~ 8 hours ago

I thank both of you gentlemen for bringing this forth. We can never again forget our military or treat our soldiers the way our Vietnam soldiers were treated.

Comment by Dick Lanham 11 hours ago

Delete CommentI wept, again, at what you went through, Jack, both there and here. Wept in shame and in sorrow. I think the country has learned a lesson, to treat our current warriors as the saviors they are. But my heart is still sore at what happened to you and to your generation of servicemen. Thank you for your kind comments. All my best always, Dick

Comment by Jack Keel 16 hours ago

I want to first to thank Dick for his wholehearted effort to rectify the wrongs done to my brothers and sisters in arms, particularly those serving right now. Thank you Dick, you are a man amongst men and a true patriot.The fact that I served in Vietnam as a support soldier for the Army did not shield me from the harsh realities of those who were pursuing the enemy aggessively, they sought the enemy, engaged him and won the battles. Our running around out there brought us under intense scrutiny by that same enemy, the difference being we didn’t go out of our way to engage him, the enemy did that for us.

For both the combatant and the non combatant who saw war, all we wanted was to be accepted back as fellow countrymen afterward. We were denied any valor, we were openly shunned by society, by our former friends and yes by our own families.

Not so much for the horrible things that happen in war but for all the failures of the command structure from the commander in chief on down to company level grade officers. Mistakes were made in tactics and rules of engagement. Progress was being measured in body counts, not strategic points taken and held.

The day to day dictates from the white house overruled any good judgement from the general officers, the pussilanimous joint chiefs and their fear of having the Soviet Union or China escalate the battle clouded their judgement.

Both of those protagonists were directly supporting and often had their own troops in Vietnam engaging in the North Vietnamese battles as ‘advisors’.

Conventional training methods were applied to a guerilla war, that put the enemy at an advantage, it was only after using their tactics that the tables were turned and we became the hunter rather than the hunted. Loose fiscal policy and a corrupt South Vietnamese government led to frustration and further American engagement.
I really can’t blame the South Vietnamese government totally, hell they were getting mixed signals from at least three different levels of American government.

Allied relationships were a bit tarnished with the assassination of President Diem and later President Kennedy, an inauspicious beginning for both countries.
As soldiers we were ‘guests’ of the Vietnamese people, then we were expected to both protect and to kill those people.
They wore no uniform, carried no identification to identify them as friend or foe. Some irregulars indeed wore uniforms but seldom during the day were they seen. The North was diciplined, uniformed and very dangerous.

Our patrols were sent out to ‘seek and destroy’ the enemy, those poor souls were often the victims of booby traps and ambushes without ever seeing the enemy who hit them and simply disappeared. Their bodies stacked up nevertheless and they were exploited by the duplicitous news media, the same media that our enemy monitored. Those tactics wore on our minds and Americans retaliated harshly at suspected enemy, if it looked or acted like the enemy it must be. Such tactics with our casualties mounting led to not taking chances, any movement out of the ordinary signaled an impending attack on Americans and resulted in agressive retaliatory actions.

Unless you were in the line of fire you have no idea of the mental strain to be the bait on search and destroy missions, and that is just what you were, bait, rambling around until you bumped into the enemy and took multiple casualties for your effort. That hardens you to the point that it is better to give than receive.

War is a kill or be killed proposition, the Marquess of Queensberry rules do not apply to life and death decisions, the armchair pundits don’t understand and never will.

Upon arrival home from duty we were often at the end of our commitment and simply released from active duty into the society from which we’d came, unprepared for the hostility and rejection. With physical and mental scars we were the pariahs of society, unable to get work from employers, many of us went back to school for our secondary educations, once again we were in enemy territory. Campuses and classroms were very unfriendly and unkind to veterans, we tried to look and act like normal people, but most vets can spot another in a crowd, their bearing and language were a dead giveaway, it gave us away to the other students.

I can only speak of my own experiences in school, only two of us in my class were Viet Vets, our identification as training under the GI Bill declared us to all our classmates. We were surrounded but isolated, thoughtless questions were asked that were too personal and too painful to answer, I withdrew to that little place in the mind where nothing gets out, so did Ernie, my buddy. I have been bluntly asked if i took a life and will answer here, it is between me and my maker because I surely tried.

The draft was still going on and so was the war, most of the classmates we had were there on a deferrment to avoid being drafted, then the system was changed to the lottery, one kid got such a low number that he asked what should I do? My response was go to the Air Force recruiter and see if you can get in, don’t wait for them to draft you.

At the time draftees went into both the Army and the Marines, he was accepted by the Air Force and went. Even though we have moved on, the legacy of that war still follows and haunts us. All I ask is for the current warriors to never be treated as less than second class citizens.

Thank you so much Dick, and AWS for giving us the platform to air these issues.

God bless and protect America and it’s warriors.

Comment by Dick Lanham 22 hours ago

Delete Comment

Facts About the Vietnam War, Final Thoughts

 

1.)  This will be the last post here by me in this series.

2.)  Most likely no one reading it ever needed the insight of the series in the first place: That America acted malevolently towards our veterans of the Vietnam War, and that we as a nation must earn the forgiveness of those men and women whom we so viciously mistreated.

3.)  If there is a person who does not understand that, perhaps he might consider applying for a file clerk’s position in George Soro’s office.

4.)  My stopping should not be interpreted that I believe the job is over.

5.)  It will not be finished in my lifetime.

6.)  It may never be finished, unfortunately.

7.)  Clearly, the mistake America made in its depraved action was to confuse the war with the warrior.

8.)  To me, there was and is no question that the Viet Nam War was a mistake from beginning to end.

9.)  It was largely based on an error in logic of John Foster Dulles.

10.)               For this fallacy, 50,000 Americans died.

11.)               I wonder where Dulles went to school.

12.)               No matter where that was, I wonder what he studied. ?Ballet for beginners.

13.)               His reasoning eventually informed the strategy of LBJ, who used to hold conferences with his staff in the bathroom while he had a bowel movement.

14.)               Surely, this must take the prize for the most tasteless arrogance in American history.

15.)               Equally arrogant was his determinations of which targets to bomb, what harbors to mine, etc.

16.)               That would be equal to me telling a thoracic surgeon where to put the sutures in a heart-lung transplant.

17.)               But the Vietnam War was only one in a series of military blunders of the country in recent decades.

18.)               George H. W. stopping at the city limits of Baghdad in the Kuwait War was another.

19.)               Why was he protecting Saddam Hussein? So he could gas a few more Kurds?

20.)               Although this does not seem to be discussed much, had George H. W. killed Saddam then, there never could have been a thought later that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. That is to say, there never would have been a reason for George W. Bush to invade Iraq in the Second Gulf War.

21.)               And Afghanistan. Had we invaded it on 10/11, that would have made sense.

22.)               As to the objection that a war then and there meant we should have had to fight on two fronts, well, we did that pretty nicely in WWII. Not only on two fronts—against Germany and Japan—but also against Italy and various other lesser members of the Axis.

23.)               But we procrastinated in Afghanistan. Years later we got serious. Years later we are still there. For what? Unless we make Afghanistan the 51^stState (now that is a bizarre thought), as soon as we leave, and we shall have to leave sometime, the terrorists that we chased out of the country, and that are the stated reason for our being there in the first place, will hop on the next plane for Kabul, from whatever slum they occupy in Somalia or Yemen.

24.)               Having said all this is not to indicate that I am not against war.

25.)               If a country invades or otherwise harms us, most certainly we should defend ourselves.

26.)               But we should do so as renowned strategists (like Sherman and Patton) believe.

27.)               If the enemy drops a 100-pound bomb on us, we should drop a 5-ton bomb on him.

28.)               For every combatant he fields, we should counter with 100 American warriors.

29.)               The duration of the war should be thought of in terms of days or weeks, not years.

30.)               Centuries ago, Sun Tzu in The Art of War (c. 6^th Century BC) observed that civilian populations cannot tolerate drawn-out conflicts. Why have we not learned this ancient lesson?

31.)               What about collateral damage? What about women and children of the enemy getting killed?

32.)               Well, if the enemy hides behind the skirts of women, as al Quaeda does, women will get killed.

33.)               If our armed forces ‘protect the little woman’, as our rules of engagement seem to insist, then we risk the shooter behind the parapet of her dress putting a bullet into one of our boys’ heads.

34.)                A double bind, if there ever was one.

35.)               But why do women allow their skirts to be shields in the first place?

36.)               For that matter, every terrorist has a mother. Why did she not teach him from when he was in diapers that he was not to disrespect her or any other women and should love and protect children not use them as weapons of war?

37.)               These women are doing their part to abet the terrorists.

38.)               As to children, ask any Viet Nam Veteran whose buddy was killed by a kid with a grenade in his pocket if the death is any different than if an adult sniper had caused it.

39.)               No one who had not been in war (as I have not) can possibly imagine what it is like.

40.)               But those of us who escaped combat are not fools.

41.)               We can see to an extent what war is and what it does. And we can understand that it is the worst activity of life, never to be undertaken without the gravest of reasons.

42.)               And it seems that finally the country is learning to distinguish the soldier from the conflict.

43.)               Our treatment of veterans of Iraq and of Afghanistan is a whole lot better than what was meted out to the Vietnam Veteran.

44.)               We now seem to realize that our service men and women may have the same notions as we do, that the war they are fighting is unnecessary and was avoidable. Nevertheless, they fight. That is their duty. That is what they signed on for. And they do their duty irrespective of private opinions as to the wisdom of it all.

45.)               What do the men on the front-line need from us? Support and respect.

46.)               What do those in staff headquarters need from us? Support and respect.

47.)               What do the nurses in field and other hospitals need? Support and respect.

48.)               What does the driver of the 4-star general deserve? Support and respect.

49.)               Is this fair, to treat them all equally? In a way, no; but life is not fair.

50.)               Besides which one of the first lessons I learned when I was inducted into the Army from the National Guard was this. No matter who you are in service, no matter what your position, if push comes to shove, and we need you to fire a rifle at the enemy, you WILL fire a rifle at him, women excepted. (Not that all of them take the exception.)

51.)               However, I think we owe our warriors more than base-line support and respect. Whatever their needs are should be supplied them 3 times over.

52.)               Will that cost the country a fortune? Of course it will. So what. They deserve it.

53.)               Besides we could save a ton of money, not to mention the lives and limbs of our kids, by not fighting wars launched by those who cannot think straight and directed by the déclassé on toilet seats.

54.)               Stopping this series of Facts About the Viet Nam War is not to be interpreted as my giving up trying to earn the forgiveness of that war’s veterans. There are just better ways to spend time and energy in doing so right now. I hope you will keep on seeking their forgiveness, too, in your own way.

55.)               Thank you for reading this and the previous posts about this national shame.

 

 

A Marylanders Thoughts On The Ground Zero Mosque

(The following entry is by Bruce O’Hara. Bruce is a brilliant political analyst who founded the URL http://americanwantssarah.ning.com, of which I am a proud member. He sent this entry by email and I suggested we post it here. He agreed. Hope you like it as much as I do. RJL)
The demise of Western man will then be complete, when he chooses to accept the slap of the bully without a whimper. The bully will then know that he has won against a frightened, cowering opponent.

This is what the building of a victory mosque overlooking the rubble of Ground Zero will represent to Islam. What a coincidence that it’s scheduled opening is 9/11/11, the tenth anniversary of that heinous attack on America.

The main function of the Constitution is to protect American citizens from the possibility of the Federal government becoming tyrannical.

Over the years, the Extreme Left has whittled away at Constitutional rights, they have scorned the Constitution and the Founders, they have called it a “living breathing” document to justify their Extreme Left Jurists mandating changes that could never be accomplished through Constitutional Amendment proceedings. Try telling your banker that your mortgage contract is a “living breathing” document.

Yet these same Extreme Leftists, and their global political bedfellows, the muslim jihadists, will beat anyone over the head with our own Constitution to achieve their goals. The Constitution used as a hammer to destroy the very freedoms that it was intended to protect.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact. According to the arguments posted by Americas Extreme Leftist proponents of the Ground Zero mosque, the U.S. would have been powerless to stop the building of a “Nazi Gentlemens Political Club” next to the Capital Building during WW2. After all, the Constitution guarantees the right to assemble.

The Extreme Left cares nothing for the Constitution, but they know that you do. Therefore, their argument smarmily goes, you are a hypocrite if you don’t agree to give Constitutional rights to every cause, even if it is self-destructive. This argument has been used, quite effectively, to advance their socialist agenda over the years. They take your Patriotic love and respect for the Constitution and use that to brow beat you into accepting things that the Constitution does not require you to accept. It’s worked for years.

The Extreme Left, also, in this case, piously exclaim that they are for freedom of religion. No one is denying muslims freedom of religion. We are arguing the placement of a building. Does it strike you as strange that the people who have used separation of church and state for the last 50 years to limit your freedom of religion, conveniently use that argument when it advances a muslim cause? The Extreme Left have made it eminently clear that they despise YOUR religion, spitting, and worse, literally, on it’s most sacred precepts, on TV and in all other popular culture media. This done with gleeful, impish, enjoyment at the hurt and harm that it causes you, your family, and your beliefs. In fact many of them openly call your religion evil, be it Christian or Jewish, they mock the existence of God, and disparage anyone who believes in Him as ignorant and superstitious, even portraying you as dangerous terrorists who believe in a fictional “ghost in the sky”. Some on the Extreme Left have openly declared Americas Christians as being more dangerous to our country than muslim extremist jihadists. For decades they have publicly portrayed you as people of limited intelligence, unlike they, the enlightened ones. Indeed, it can safely be stated that they have waged ideological war on you and your beliefs during those decades.

Isn’t it also strange that the ones who have worked to silence your church bells as offensive, for instance, have no such problem with the muslim call to prayers that will be broadcast by loudspeakers five times a day over the muslim killing fields of The Twin Towers? What clearer declaration of victory and superiority could there be?

There is irrefutable, factual evidence that Imam Rauf, the originator of the Ground Zero mosque project, is solidly aligned with worldwide jihadist interests and causes. That he has substantial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose main tenet is to destroy the West from within. In other words, he is far from a “moderate” muslim in search of universal brotherhood. To the contrary, he is openly and blatantly attempting to erect an insult that the entire muslim world will understand and applaud. He will be their hero.

And your State Dept is paying for Imam Raufs current trip to Moslem countries. They tell us it is for outreach purposes to the muslim world, and he is prohibited by the rules of the program from soliciting funds for the mosque. Oh, OK. This being the guy who has refused to disclose where funds for the mosque, to date, have, or will come from. Yeah, I’m OK with this. I like salt rubbed in my wounds by my own Govt, which is currently run by an Extreme Left Administration. They think we’re the bad guys here. Anything feel upside down and backwards about that to you? Are you offended that they think you stupid and unworldly enough to swallow this?

Though I admire, on the one hand, the intrinsic good motives and sense of fairness that some American proponents for the mosque operate under. I can’t help but believe they have not researched the Imam in this instance to determine his motives. Either that, or they know, but are too cowardly to stand up because of the well known barbaric tactics of the jihadists. Which only encourages the continued use of those tactics, as obviously, they work to cower, and eventually subjugate their enemies.

There is speculation amongst some, that the Planning Board members, whose names and home addresses are a matter of public record, voted unanimously for the mosque, fearing physical retribution for a negative vote from muslim extremists. Seems they fear jihadists more than they do Christians, putting the lie to whom is actually most dangerous to Americans. The thought of your own beheading over a wrong vote must throw considerable weight into the decision making factor.

Once again, as always, the Extreme Left sides against America and the majority of her citizens. Once again, ignoring all facts as irrelevant, they call anyone who cites such facts despicable names, and disparage their intelligence. As if only cowards and turncoats have the mental capacity to understand all of the nuances of this issue.

When, in reality, such smear tactics against their fellow citizens simply sublimate the true cause of their stand, which is either mortal fear, or a desire to aid our enemies in the fundamental transformation of our country. I believe it to be the latter. The Extreme Left, from the President, on down to his lapdog media, and the majority of appeasing Extreme Leftists in America, stand against you, and aid and abet those who consider you their enemy.The Extreme Left undermine, and strenuously fight, any attempt to protect us and our way of life, right down to our honor, our traditions and our history.

Those are my thoughts on the Ground Zero mosque, I am against it.

FYI :

Pamela Geller, the popular blogger and columnist who publishes the acclaimed AtlasShrugs.com blog , The Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI) and SIOA, will be hosting a rally against the Ground Zero mega-mosque, in New York City, on September 11, at 2pm, at Park Place, between Church Street and West Broadway.
The confirmed list of speakers includes 9/11 family members; former U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton; former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; the Dutch Parliamentarian and freedom fighter Geert Wilders; Gary Berntsen, a candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York; Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, which has filed suit to stop the Ground Zero mega-mosque; Ginny Thomas, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife; Michael Grimm, a candidate for Congress from New York’s 13th district and a 9/11 first responder; and journalist Andrew Breitbart.

Thank You,
Bruce O’H.
9/15/10

‘Plan B for Iraq’

[Caution: What follows is quintessentially Realpolitik. Not for the squeamish.]

Ralph Peters published an article with the above title in ‘Armed Forces Journal’ in November 2006. The article is a part of his latest book, Wars of Blood and Faith. Mechanicsburg: 2007, a collection of his columns. The article presents alternatives to the then current plans for Iraq of the Foreign Relations establishment, if their ideas (which I shall call ‘Plan A’) do not work out. Despite the title, Colonel Peters actually has several Plans the Establishment can consider as fallback positions: B, C, D, and E. The following is a sketch of them.

Plan A. (The Establishment) The Iraqis elect a representative government and its police and armed forces can keep order. Obviously Plan A is as much hope as strategy. Peters only gave it a 50/50 chance of success. If it did succeed, and Iraq needed our help around the edges, then he would have us keep troops there for a generation, if needed. If the hope or plan did not work out, we should not be afraid to think boldly of what to do next. Here are his suggestions.

Plan B. (Peters) We should begin withdrawal of our forces, NOT relying exclusively on the wishes of the military command on the ground (who in gung-ho spirit might want ‘one more chance’). We should leave with guns ablaze, pointed at all factions that contributed to the failure.

Kurdistan would be an exception. Our troops would stay there to protect them and for emergency use in the region. Also we should keep our airpower intact to prolong the civil war (between Sunni and Shi’a) that will ensue when we leave; prolong it by making sure neither side quickly wins, and making certain that the country is not invaded by nearby states.

We should prevent the Turks from warring against Iraqi Kurds. In payment, Turkey would get for free a geyser or two of oil from the Kurds in southern Iraq. Our oil could be protected in a number of ways, one of which would be to occupy a portion of Iraqi oil fields. If the Iranians begin to interfere (should the Shiites start to win) we should bomb their nuclear sites.

American influence is the area would increase when we leave and civil war breaks out in Iraq, as the smaller Mideast states, viewing the bloody conflict, would want our protection even more so than now.

Finally, Iraqi would become Al Qa’eda’s Vietnam as Sunni al Qa’eda hates the Shiites more than they hate us. And this might lead Iraqi to be Shiite Iran’s Vietnam, as well.

Plan C. (Peters) ‘Upend the chess board.’ Make an alliance with Iran. Offer it the leadership of the central and southeastern Iraq. (Persian Iran has been at odds with the Arabs long before Mohammad and would jump at the chance. RJL) The quid pro quo: Iran abandons its quest for a nuclear bomb and promises to defend the Kurds.

What about Israel? The fight in the Mideast is not between Muslims and the Israelis or the Muslims and the Americans but between Shiites and Sunnis. Iran would be so busy destroying the Sunnis it would have little time left for seriously bothering with Israel. In the long run, Iran would destroy itself in trying to expand. We should choose a side and stick with it. Here, the side would be the Shiites. We should also protect the Gulf States. Kill Assad and isolate Syria. Shield the Kurds. Make nice to Turkey. The overall result would be that the Mideast would concentrate on the Mideast and not on terrorism elsewhere.

Plan D. (Peters) As with Plan C, we ‘trade’ with Iran: The Persians get Shiite provinces of Iraq. It watches our backs as we invade Syria, not to occupy it, only to throw it into confusion. Iran protects the Kurds. We buy Iran-Iraq oil to shove Saudi Arabia into financial crisis. Wahhabi terrorism therefore sinks. We possibly invade Saudi oil fields, making them into a fiefdom to be held for a revised, less irrational Saudi Arabia. The Sunnis can fight over Mecca and Medina all they wish.

Syria’s turmoil deprives Sunnis of aid, putting al Qa’eda into more difficulties, fighting other Muslims to hold onto Iraq, or try to at least. The war of Iran and the Arabs takes pressure off Israel.

Plan E. (Peters) Go. Get out of the area—virtually completely. Keep the bases in Kurdistan. Protect our sources of oil. [Protect Israel. RJL] Otherwise, let the Mideast wage any kind of war on itself it wants to. No military action on our part should be taken other than to achieve these limited ends. When it is all over, come back and ‘pick up the pieces’.

I liked and recommend this book. The same for all of his work, including the novels, written under the name ‘Owen Parry’. I hope you will, too.

A Conversation About The United States, Iraq, and Afghanistan

Jack Keel is a good Friend of mine on http://americanwantssarah.ning.com. He is a warrior who saw the worst of the worst in Viet Nam. His insights into that war and America’s recent military and political history are brilliant. He has kindly allowed me to reproduce here a conversation we had by email about America’s current involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. I cannot thank him enough for this, for his service in combat for all Americans and for my freedom and safety, and for his astute observations about our country. I wish he were our Secretary of Defense. I sincerely hope he will have an important position in that Department after the next election. Jack: Let me ask you a military question, if you will allow me to. Do you think we should be in Afghanistan? Do you think we should get out of there right now? There seems to be more and more opinion that this war is wrong and should be abandoned. The point is made that in 4 years we defeated Germany and Japan, but in 9 years cannot defeat a bunch of camel riders with rags on their heads. You have been there and done that, which I have not, as you know; so that is why I am asking and will respect your opinion. If you prefer not to tell me your opinion, I shall understand and that will in no way interfere with our friendship. Thanks. Best, Dick

R

I don’t mind at all. Only if we are there to win. No nation building, no fucking reparations, nothing!!! We lose sight of why we are there. Also Americans don’t have a clue of what the enemy is doing or capable of doing. We correctly label them as a bunch of camel riders and dismiss them as impotent. Far from it. “I’ll tell you what war is all about, you’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.” Gen. Curtis LeMay
I’m afraid LeMay was right but we treat absolute war as a criminal endeavor and prosecute it like a bunch of damned girl scouts.
I want to remind all that  the United States has only declared war against foreign nations five separate times in it’s history, each upon prior request by the President of the United States. In 1787, the phrase “make war” was changed to “declare war” in order to leave to the Executive Branch the power to repel sudden attacks but not to commence war without the explicit approval of Congress. Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution says “Congress shall have power to … declare War”.    WWII was the last time a formal declaration of war was issued under the guides of the U.S. constitution.
December 8, 1941 against Japan,  December 11, 1941 against Germany, June 5, 1942 against  Bulgaria,  Hungary  and  Romania . Every battle since WWII has truly been unconstitutional. We have been fighting proxie wars as peace keepers for the damned UN since 1945, not allowed to win a single one but rather to capitulate to UN auspices where they partition or install a Communist regime in power. I believe in stopping the advance of both Fascism and Communism, that includes Islamo-Fascism. The war powers act stripped Nixon of waging war in Vietnam, we won, but the Democrats surrendered that war. So yes we Americans lost that war but yes we Communist Americans won that same war, you decide who to call Communist.  When Bush was elected he never enjoyed any positive media repertoire, it was hard core commies against him and all he stood for.
The attack on Kuwait threatened our national security when Saddam invaded Kuwaite, the focus being on keeping the Straits of Hormuz open and the shipping lanes open, that left Iran un fettered to side with Iraq and the UN boys to play their food for oil scam, Saddam Husein should have been taken out in ’90 but the half assed general Colin Powell in charge was working for UN interests not ours. So we get a pusillanimous truce where that raghead taunted every day, and built up his arsenal with UN slush money.  The attack on 9-11 was a direct result of mollycoddling those cocksuckers. Bush asked for and got the sanction of congress to invade, it was not a declaration as it should have been. Both the legislative and the executive branch abrogated their constitutional responsibility.
When it became obvious that it wasn’t a rout  like  in ’90 the Congress welched on their end of the deal, they denied that they had authorized the invasion, claiming Bush lied,. No they lied just like they are lying today. With what I have seen in my short life, most Americans don’t deserve to be protected, they want someone else to cover their sorry asses then they’ll do everything in their power to malign, denigrate and undermine the military effort.
Bring every American home from every foreign theater, let those whining surrender monkeys in Europe fight for their own freedom. Like wise here get us out of that Communist, Islamist ridden United Nations, cut all ties with them. Now who will fight to protect this country? Not me, I’ve done  that and the fuckers just spit on me and threw human shit at me for a thank you. Fuck them!!!

We can win,  all it takes is Americans doing the job, not this kind of traitorous son of a bitch amongst us. Where are those Americans? Oh I forgot, they are sucking on something black!!!
God help me, I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel about my neighbors.

All the Best,

Jack

Jack: Thanks for sending me your thoughts about Afghanistan and other
countries. Here is what I think. Tell me where you think I am wrong:
1.) 9/11 occurred.
2.) The perpetrators were in Afghanistan.
3.) We should have gone after them.
4.) But then it was held that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
5.) So to avoid another 9/11 or worse, we went after the WMD’s.
6.) (Not sure why we could not have gone into Afghanistan AND Iraq,
but we did not. Let us assume that was a rational decision, for the
sake of argument.)
7.) No WMD’s were found in Iraq. Why? Probably it will be a long time
before we know the answer. Possibly never. They might never have
existed. (Hard to believe). They are sequestered some place in Iraq.
They were shipped off to another Sunni ‘depository’, maybe Syria.
8.) When no WMD’s were found we should have left Iraq.
9.) Then gone into Afghanistan after the Al Qae’ da.
10) When Al Qae’da was driven out, we should have pulled the troops
out and brought them home

That is what I think. As I said, where do you think I am wrong?
Thanks. Best, Dick

Good points Dick, I agree those particular perpetrators were in Afghanistan. We had ample reason to strike back in Iraq: Salman Pak / Al Salman

Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility at Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations.

The Salman Pak biological warfare facility was located on a peninsula caused by a bend in the Tigris river, approximately five kilometers (km) from the arch located in the town of Salman Pak. The facility area comprised more than 20 square km, and might have been known as a farmers (or agricultural) experimentation center. The peninsula was fenced off and patrolled by a large guard force. Immediately inside and to the east of the fence line were two opulent villas: the larger built for Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the other for his half-brother, Barazan al-Tikriti. A main paved road ran through the center of the Salman Pak facility/peninsula.

Plans were made in the mid-1980′s to develop the Salman Pak site into a secure biological warfare research facility. Dr Rihab Taha, head of a small biological weapons research team, continued to work with her team at al-Muthanna until 1987 when it moved to Salman Pak, which was under the control of the Directorate of General Intelligence.

Located at the facility are several buildings. The probable main research building at the site is a modern building, composed of twenty four rooms, housing a major BW research facility. Using current technology the research area alone had sufficient floor space to accommodate several continuous-flow or batch fermenters that could produce daily sufficient anthrax bacteria to lethally assault hundreds of square kilometers. Adjacent to the research building is a storage area which contains four munitions type storage bunkers with lightning arrestors. Two of these bunkers have facilities for storage of temperature sensitive biological material. Approximately a mile down the road from the research area is a complex US intelligence believed to be an engineering area. One building in this complex was thought to contain a fermentation pilot plant capable of scale up production of BW agents. A construction project comprising several buildings was begun in early 1989 adjacent to the engineering area, and was near completion in 1990. This new complex was assessed as a pharmaceutical production plant. As such, this facility would have an extensive capability for biological agent production.

Salman Pak, located 30-40 km SE of Baghdad, engaged in laboratory scale research on Anthrax, Botulinum toxin, Clostridium, perfringens (gas gangrene), mycotoxins, aflatoxins, and Ricin. Researchers at this site carried out toxicity evaluations of these agents and examined their growth characteristics and survivability.

Equipment-moving trucks and refrigerated trucks were observed at the Salman Pak BW facility prior to the onset of bombing, suggesting that Iraq was moving equipment or material into or out of the facility. Information obtained after the conflict revealed that Iraq had moved BW agent production equipment from Salman Pak to the Al Hakam suspect BW facility.

The Qadisiya State Establishment [aka Al-Qadsia], involved in the program to produce Al Hussein class missiles, is apparently located nearby, along with the Al-Yarmouk facility which according to some reports was associated with the chemical munitions program [and which other reports place at Yusufiyah.

Iraq told UN inspectors that Salman Pak was an anti-terror training camp for Iraqi special forces. However, two defectors from Iraqi intelligence stated that they had worked for several years at the secret Iraqi government camp, which had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995. Training activities including simulated hijackings carried out in an airplane fuselage [said to be a Boeing 707] at the camp. The camp is divided into distinct sections. On one side of the camp young, Iraqis who were members of Fedayeen Saddam are trained in espionage, assassination techniques and sabotage. The Islamic militants trained on the other side of the camp, in an area separated by a small lake, trees and barbed wire. The militants reportedly spent time training, usually in groups of five or six, around the fuselage of the airplane. There were rarely more than 40 or 50 Islamic radicals in the camp at one time.

There is evidence that Saddam shipped his budding nuclear arsenal to Iran and Syria, then there is Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds, WMD’s ???
I’d say yes they were under any and all conventions. He had already demonstrated his use of wmd’s there was no reason to believe other wise.
Ever hear of Gerald Bull or Project Babylon?

I almost went to Kuwait just before Saddam invaded, my buddy Mike went over to Kuwait for J.R. Kellog and couldn’t go the work due to the Irag-Iran war he came back to where I was working. I shelved the idea because nobody could provide security.
After Iraq invaded Kuwait and the ceasefire was signed by Saddam Hussein the UN allowed it’s weapons inspectors to be kicked out of Iraq in direct violation of the terms of the ceasefire agreement signed by Saddam Hussein after being kicked out of Kuwait. As a direct result of ineffectual UN resolutions, the inability to enforce the established no-fly zone protecting the Kurds and the subversion of the food for oil program resulted in the United States having to take decisive action.
Saddam Hussein had ample time to dismantle and move his WMD’s out of Iraq and into neighboring hostile countries, probably Syria and Iran thanks to the UN and it’s corruptable leadership(Kofi and Kojo), not to mention the complicity of at least 3 of the UN’s voting member countries in the scandalous affair.

Russia was a prime target of the report by the Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, the 623-page report alleged that “Russian companies received almost one-third of oil sales under the program,” worth some $19 billion. Well after the 18-month investigation Russia has announced it will hold it’s own investigation. What happened to our UN friend from Canada, Maurice Strong?

Maurice Strong

George Galloway W/Saddam

Strong who hasn’t been heard from since he admitted to recognizing his signature on a $1-million check from deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to Tongsun Park to Cordex, a now defunct company once run by his son, Fred, after having first denied any knowledge of the check.

Park, from whom Strong admits he took advice on North Korea, met with then-Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz of dances-with-crooks fame, who gave him $1-million cash in a cardboard box to be used in the embattled regime’s campaign to win favourable treatment from the U.N.

A few days later, Park deposited the money in the Housing Bank-Jordan in Amman. He then wrote a check on the same account to “Mr. M. Strong” in the amount of $988,885, which was used to buy shares in a financially troubled, family-controlled oil company–shares that Strong himself had an option to buy.”

Last we heard Maurice Strong , who is a former under-secretary-general of the United Nations is alive and well in Taiyuan, China.

Strong is in the safety zone through his connections to the powerful Desmarais family of Montreal-based Power Corp. .

George Galloway was referred to US prosecutors by a Senate committee that said there was “probable cause” to believe that he lied to Congress about his role in the UN Oil-for-Food scandal. The decision came after the discovery by Senate investigators of a payment of $150,000 in Iraqi oil proceeds to the MP’s now-estranged wife, Amina Naji Abu Zayyad.

Investigators also traced $446,000 in Iraqi oil money to the respected MP’s anti-sanctions Mariam Appeal, originally set up to pay for medical treatment in Britain of an Iraqi girl suffering from leukemia.

Mr Galloway has always strenuously denied receiving lucrative “oil allocations” from the Saddam Hussein regime. But the Senate panel discovered that a Jordanian middleman, Fawaz Zureikat, had transferred Iraqi oil proceeds both to Ms Abu Zayyad and to the Mariam Appeal.

A UN inquiry traced a separate series of payments totalling $120,000 to Ms Abu Zayyad from the company of a British-Iraqi businessman.

Galloway is kept untouchable by an anti-war reputation fawned over by a liberal British and American media.

George Galloway should be extradited from Britain and Maurice Strong from China by the United States and face trials for their corruption, along with Kofi Annan.

There is too much cover up in the US Congress, the UN and our British and Canadian allies for me to believe there were no WMD’s. They were taking kickbacks, covering their asses and pointing fingers at Bush, meantime Americans were killing and being killed under the bullshit ROE’s established by the Bush administration to mollify that Sunni son of a bitch Sayyid Muqtad al-Sadr, then they put a deposed leader who had been hanging out with another enemy in Iran to lead in Iraq.

Damn the spineless pentagon and their nation building, damn the Congress, every one of them for not doing their jobs.
Worst of all damn them for cutting and running just like they are in Afghanistan. Once again it goes back to the UN and the progressives (Communists) in our government.
Al Qae’da, what WTF is Al Qae’da? Just a bunch of terrorists, I know if a scorched earth policy was adhered to by declaring war on any country harboring them that they wouldn’t be welcome for two reasons. The locals would have reason to fear retribution and the fact that they would be hunted down and exterminated. Pull every damned American from every operating theater around the world, let those pricks in DC fight their own battles and let those so called allies fight their own too. I support the troops and the true protection of our nation and way of life, but this is pure bullshit to fight and not ever win. Look at the Stats Dick, sure our allies get an occasional casualty, but the allies seldom pull combat roles, that role is reserved for Americans, the rest is bullshit posturing for political reasons, we have had some horrific American losses compared to our ‘allies’. Give the enemy nothing, that means absolutely nothing. They are not now nor ever will be our friends.  If our allies fit that label fuck them too!!!

Warmest Regards

Jack

Well, Jack, your reply validates what I, an amateur, thought. I thank you for it and for the tremendous time and talent it took to write it. Now what to do. I think as much exposure as possible is needed for this thread. I can post it on my blog. We can ask ChristaB (Clio) to post it on her blog The Bold Pursuit. We can make a blog and post it on AWS, if Bruce would be willing. Let me know what your thoughts are for these postings. Then, I suggest, we try to find ways to distribute this as widely as possible. It seems to me that, having all of the information, we should have just bombed the Iraqi facilities to smithereens. Would that not have been a more efficient way to deal with the problem than the war we chose with the deaths of our service people and expenditure of our money to do what in Iraq is not at all what Bush said he intended: To ‘free’ the people, to create a democracy? Ralph Peters has said it clearly, the people and countries in the Mideast do not want our ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy. For millennia they have opted for, essentially, a strong King to rule them. Why are we trying to change the apparently unchangeable? Our government’s role in all of this is to protect America. Eliminating any and all WMD’s that may be used against us was therefore mandatory. The political changes we envision are not mandatory, not at all a part of our government’s job. Doing what we did in Iraq is like buying a Maserati to shop at the grocery store. A beat up Chevy would do the trick, and probably do it better. As to Afghanistan, it looks like our war aims were accomplished years ago; i.e., we got rid of Al Qae’da and their helpers, the Taliban (who have now returned while we did what? in the country). Right now it seems we are waging a war to wage a war. We have no clear war aim. We are not using overwhelming force to inflict our will. We are not pursuing a plan to fight furiously and rapidly and then get out, a strategy military theoreticians have counseled for centuries. I vote to get out, fast, now. Let the Afghanis rule themselves. Again, anything they do that is against our national interest should be brutally, rapidly eliminated with all force and equipment necessary. If you like I can contact ChristaB for her thoughts about posting this on her blog and contact Bruce for his ideas about posting this on a new blog for AWS. As for me, I am ready to put this whole thread as is on mine. Thanks again for this marvelous analysis. When Governor Palin becomes President Palin and she brings Ralph Peters into the Department of Defense, as I hope she will, I think Jack Keel should accompany him. Best, Dick

Dick, I and many other free bloggers have put this out many times to the choir since the onset. Nobody cares except a few of us. Even faced with undeniable and provable facts the populace will go into denial and attack the messenger

Our reward is life threats from the muzzies, hate from the leftists and tons of hate mail.   Enough!!!

Post it  for informative purposes if you like, most of the information I have here has already been posted on the internet many times, send it out as E-mail too if you like.

The fact is nobody gives a rat’s ass that the lack of strategy, the lack of resolve and the lack of leadership is killing Americans. They proved that to me in the last two elections.

They still are blindly led to believe the UN is a peace keeping organization. What a blatant lie!!! The UN has destroyed the African continent, left us with North Korea and the problems facing us and Israel.  The US is becoming another South Africa with the invasion from the South and Middle East. I look at the media bias and the sentiment of the world as Israel tries to keep arms and ammunition from reaching it’s sovereign soil to kill innocent men, women and children and they are condemned for in in public opinion. Americans are totally ignorant to the threat because they have never been personally threatened. Even the so called Jewish community, go ahead and biblically turn that other cheek, they will cut your throat and do a victory dance in the street.
We went from protecting our strategic interests to nation building. I have no idea what the ultimate strategy is for the Middle East, I suspect it is the One World Order trying desperately to subject the world of Islam to their rule. The recognized body carrying out the auspices of that One World rule has been the UN with the U.S. being used as it’s prime fighting force. The UN  has interceded in Gaza, in Lebanon, Syria,  Greece and Jordan when the  Hamas and Hezbollah have been driven to ground and are about to be destroyed.
The UN has supplied Hamas since the founding of Israel under the pretext of a Palestinian state with so called humanitarian aid under the guise of UNWRA.
Immediately after the Arab-Israeli hostilities of 1948 where Israel established it’s independent sovereignty, Nationhood!! Emergency assistance was provided by international organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, League of Red Cross Societies and the American Friends Service Committee.
In November 1948, the United Nations established the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees (UNRPR) to extend aid and relief to Palestine refugees and coordinate efforts of NGOs and other UN bodies. UNWRA began it’s operations  on 1 May 1950. That’s 60 years of funding islamist terrorism Dick.

There is no such thing as a Palestinian unless it is an Israeli !!! Since when have exiled Jordanian, Syrian  and Egyptian  interlopers and rejects banished as trouble makers from their own countries been granted the territory taken and held by Israel and given sovereign status? That’s as offensive as Obama telling me to take in a family of wetbacks and declaring them as family members, Fuck Him!!!
Two groups of people with the same resources living side by side, one successful,  productive and peaceful the other non productive, vengeful, destructive and murderously violent living with the explicit sanction of the UN under it’s funding and it’s protection.
Constant attacks against Americans, their facilities and our interests by the OPEC countries(Islamist and Communist Venezuela) go unheeded, as ‘oh they are criminal assaults’. Bullshit!!!
They declared war on the United States with the formation of OPEC, Carter let them have their way in Iran and catered to their whims until Reagan was inaugurated, they knew that  Reagan would  glass that desert over and they released the hostages.
No retribution, no punishment and no apologies, we’ve been at war with Iran since 1979 or earlier.

October 23, 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon under the CIC of “Ronaldus Magnus” himself,  241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel and three Army soldiers, along with sixty Americans injured, representing the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima of World War II, the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States military since the first day of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War, and the deadliest single attack on Americans overseas since World War II. In addition, the elderly Lebanese custodian of the Marines’ building was killed in the first blast. The explosives used were equivalent to 5,400 kg (12,000 pounds) of TNT. In the attack on the French barracks, the eight-story ‘Drakkar’ building, two minutes after the Marine attack, 58 paratroopers from the 1st Parachute Chasseur Regiment were killed and 15 injured, in the single worst military loss for France since the end of the Algerian War. The blasts led to the withdrawal of the international peacekeeping force from Lebanon, where they had been stationed since the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization following the Israeli 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

That’s right we gave the MFr’s a pass for killing ours and allied troops. Where were the balls of Congress and the Presidency? In the warm hand of  UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, that’s where!!!    The sooner we wake up to the fact that the UN and all of Islam as well as our own Congress are the enemy the better.

We have to protect the nation, that cannot be done with a bunker mentality, the treatment of acts of war as misdemeanors, treating the enemy as misguided children of Allah and trying to change an imbued hatred instilled from birth by the cult of death. I refer to Curtis LeMay and his all too true philosophy.

“I’ll tell you what war is all about, you’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.” Gen. Curtis LeMay

Don’t send in a single American to fight unless you intend to win at any cost, don’t ever tie that fighters hands with bullshit rules and either win or never go in the first place.

In guerrilla warfare there are no non combatants, most Americans are going to wake up to that fact in their own streets. You might assume I have a strong dislike for certain factions, you are right.

I don’t mind sharing at all, I can’t post this because I’ll use verbiage that offends the populace by lapsing into the vernacular!!!

Thanks for all your kindness Dick

Best wishes,

Jack

Warning from The Netherlands

(This post was sent to me by Bruce O’Hara, one of the Founders of http://americawantssarah.ning.com. Bruce is a Friend and a talented political analyst who kindly gave me permission to reproduce it here.) This Will Give You Cold Chills! Geert Wilders is a Dutch Member of Parliament. In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: Who lost Europe ?’ Here is the speech of Geert Wilders, Chairman, Party for Freedom, the Netherlands , at the Four Seasons, New York , introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem . Dear friends, Thank you very much for inviting me. I come to America with a mission.  All is not well in the old world.  There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic.  We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe.  This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West.  The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe .  Then, I will say a few things about Islam.  To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem . The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks.  But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world.  It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration. All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen.  And if they are, they might regret it.  This goes for the police as well.  It’s the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children.  Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead.  There are mosques on many street corners.  The shops have signs you and I cannot read.  You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity.  These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics.  These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe .  These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe , street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city. There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe .  With larger congregations than there are in churches.  And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region.  Clearly, the signal is: we rule. Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam , Marseille and Malmo in Sweden .  In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim.  Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods.  Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims. Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils.  In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims.  Non-Muslim women routinely hear ‘whore, whore’.  Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin. In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin ..  The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity. In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves.  Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels , because he was drinking during the Ramadan. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II.  French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya , Israel .  I could go on forever with stories like this.  Stories about Islamization. A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe .  San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now.  Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century. Now these are just numbers.  And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate.  But there are few signs of that.  The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France .  One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks.  The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate.  Muslims demand what they call ‘respect’.  And this is how we give them respect.  We have Muslim official state holidays. The Christian-Democratic attorney general is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority.  We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey . Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots.  Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus.  I call the perpetrators ‘settlers’,  because that is what they are.  They do not come to integrate into our societies; they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam.  Therefore, they are settlers. Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries.  Moreover, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored. The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet.  His behavior is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized.  Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem.  But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages – at the same time.  Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed.  Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza.  If it is good for Islam, it is good.  If it is bad for Islam, it is bad. Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion.  Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins.  But in its essence Islam is a political ideology.  It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person.  Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life.  Islam means ‘submission’.  Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia.  If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies. Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam ‘the most retrograde force in the world’, and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran.  The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor.  I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times.  I support Israel .  First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz, second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense. This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam’s territorial advance.  Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines , Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan , Lebanon , and Aceh in Indonesia .  Israel is simply in the way.  The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War. The war against Israel is not a war against Israel .  It is a war against the West.  It is jihad.  Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us.  If there would have been no Israel , Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest.  Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming. Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities.  But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values.  On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam.  They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed.  The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning.  It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination.  If they can get Israel , they can get everything.  So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a ‘right-wing extremists’ or ‘racists’.  In my country, the Netherlands , 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II.  And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat.  Yet there is a greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing.  The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine.  An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America – as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs.  With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome , Athens and Jerusalem . Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts.  My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives.  All throughout Europe , American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish.  My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians.  We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe ‘s children in the same state in which it was offered to us.  We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams.  Future generations would never forgive us.  We cannot squander our liberties.  We simply do not have the right to do so. We have to take the necessary action now to stop this Islamic stupidity from destroying the free world that we know. “Please take the time to read and understand what is written here. Please send it to every free person that you know, it is so very important.”

DAB [extended]

I belong to a small, private website that supports Sarah Palin, (http://americanwantssarah.ning.com). It allows members surprising latitude in their creation of blogs on the site, no matter what the topic. One of the most outrageous of these was a blog about a rollerblading group. This is an account of it, including recent events, which occurred after the last posting on AWS.

The group began when a Friend on the site sent me an angel to watch over me when I skated. (I am an avid rollerblader. It is my drug of choice.) I perched the angel on my shoulder when he arrived and we skated away. He was interested in the blading and also in the Erie Canal, along which I skate. I told him everything I knew about both. Eventually he decided to try blading himself, so he went to the Heavenly sports store when he got home and bought skates. When he came back to earth we skated together at every opportunity. He wanted to know about earthly things from me. I wanted to know about Heaven from him. But first I wanted to know about his name when I found out that angel’s names are complicated. His is ‘Arnold-who-was-sent-by-Nance [my friend]-to-watch-over-Dick-when-he-was-skating-but you-can-call-me-‘Arnold’-if-you-wish-but-Up-North-[what creatures there call Heaven]-they-call-me-‘Arnie-and-you-can-too-if that-is-more-convenient’.

So ‘Arnie’ it was. A second friend from AWS, Sharon, sent me a beautiful white owl on a skateboard. She thought the owl might like to blade. The owl’s name was ‘Blossom’. (That is it. No long rigmarole like angels are encrusted with.) I took Blossom to the animal sports store and got blades for her, and she joined Arnie and me. After a while Blossom suggested we start a rollerblading club. We agreed and let her pick the name. Being resourceful and mannerly she took the initials of our names, with hers being last, and thus DAB was born.

We had our first business meeting. We invited Lewis Carroll from Up North (their name for Heaven) and my 3 imaginary friends from childhood (Earl, Tickes, and Derders) and Nance and Sharon. All of them came. The first order of business was to make Nance and Sharon Honorary Members of DAB and the second order was to agree that anyone who liked to blade could become a DAB member just by asking. Blossom and Arnie elected me Secretary-Treasurer of the group and of a treasury without money, which suits us fine. One day Blossom referred to me as a poor human as I was not a beautiful owl like her, and the name stuck.

Ronnie became our first addition; although he was never an official member, more an adjunct.  (He is an angel friend of Arnie’s. They play computer games and chess Up North). Even though he is not official, he, along with Arnie, gives us advice; e.g., as to the proper pronunciation of French, which they learned when The Boss sent them to Paris in the 17^th Century to deal with a problem so sensitive neither Arnie nor Ronnie are allowed to talk about it, even to identify what it was, to this day. (‘The Boss’ is one of God’s names Up North; see below for more.)

Angels can change size and shape. When Arnie first came here he made himself small enough to ride on my shoulder. Usually he is bigger. There is a picture of him on the My Photos of My Page on the AWS site labeled ‘Arnie’. Ronnie is in the picture too, but we did not know his name at that time of the upload.

But there were ‘real’ additional members.  Amanda, the angel of dragon flies, who plays (and often beats) Arnie and Ronnie in computer games, but refuses to play chess: “Too boring by half,” she says, and with her IQ, I can believe it. Then there is Reggie, angel of grasshoppers. And LP. LP is Blossom’s Little Pal, a small brown owl. He likes to go by his initials. Next to join was RE. RE is Richard Elephant. He started out in recent life as a skateboarder like Blossom, but changed back to the rollerblading that he did in the past, when I showed him the blades I had been keeping for him and had recently shined. (RE and I were friends long ago, but got separated due to one thing or another. Never hard feelings, though.) When he came back into my life (really, now DAB’s life), he said that if Little Pal can be called by his initials, why cannot he be called RE? We thought he had a good point. So that is what we call him. The newest member of the group is Gertrude, a monkey who, like Blossom, started out a skateboarder but rapidly changed to roller blades when she tried them out. RE is crazy about her and wants her to sit on his back while he blades. But Gertrude will not let him. How could she skate from up there? Another good point.

When we started acquiring more members, I wanted to change the name of the group. Blossom, a true conservative, was adamantly opposed. ‘DAB’ it was and ’DAB’ it was to be. She stamped her talons. She did permit me to append ‘[extended]’ to ‘DAB’, so now that became our new official name.

For a while the police were interested in us. It was not that angels, owls, and a human were a group. O, no. This is New York, after all. Far stranger things than that happen all of the time. No; what interested the cops was our rollerblading. They had not seen that for so long they thought we must be terrorists. Somehow, eventually, they became disabused of that notion. We did not like it when they lost interest because when they had it they made recordings of us. A friend of mine in the Police Department secretly gave me the tapes, which enabled me to publish our goings on for AWS for a while.

Probably our most interesting activity while we bladed was listening to Arnie tell us about God and Heaven. Here is what we learned. God is called ‘The Boss’. He is also ‘The Best Guy’. Being The Best Guy, naturally, he wants only Good Guys in Heaven with him. As I said, Heaven is known to the cognoscenti as ‘Up North’. So, circularly, if you are a Good Guy you get into Heaven, er, Up North. And anyone Up North is a Good Guy, except God of course, Who is The Best Guy.

Now being a Good Guy has nothing to do with sex. A guy Up North is the same as on earth, a person.  Also you do not have to have been a Christian to be a Good Guy. You just have to have helped your neighbor. For example, Einstein, an indifferent Jew, was a Good Guy, and, hence, is Up North. Mozart was not a whiz bang Roman Catholic, but he definitely contributed to humankind, so he is a Good Guy and Up North, as well.

What happens Up North. Well, not everyone plays computer games and chess. Einstein is still discovering natural laws. (He does not bother with metaphysics. In the Late Medieval Age an agreement was reached—still in effect, even Up North–that scientists only deal with the observable [broadly defined] and priests and such deal with religion and such. St. Thomas Aquinas is a Good Guy and he and Einstein are best of friends. But they do not intrude upon each other’s territory: Physical laws for Albie (what Einstein is called Up North); St. Thomas (he is too dignified even Up North for a nickname) sticks with more rarified thoughts. Arnie does not know how many new laws and mathematical equations Albie has come up with or the number of additional books of theology St. Thomas has produced, but both must be in the thousands. But Albie’s real love is to discover a TOE. This bothered a lot of us on earth as we thought Good Guys did not have bodies like we do down here, but Arnie explained that TOE is not a toe (confusing to distraction Blossom’s poor human), but TOE is a Theory of Everything, an idea that makes Relativity (what Albie made his living on earth inventing) and Quantum Mechanics (mostly worked out in the 1920’s and 30’s) hang together, which they definitely do not. Relativity has to do with Big Things (larger than a molecule) and Quantum Mechanics has to do with Little Things (a molecule or smaller). Albie still has not cracked that nut. Blossom’s poor human asked Arnie since The Boss knows the answer, as He knows everything, why does He not tell Albie how the two theories mesh? Arnie was incensed, “What, and spoil all of Albie’s fun. The Boss would never consider such a thing.” The poor human was abashed. Mozart is still at it, writing symphonies and string quartets and quintets and operas and other Heavenly music, pun intended. He has now about 500 symphonies under his belt (only 41 while on earth) and scads of chamber works. Arnie does not know how many exactly.

So you do not have to be a Christian to get into Up North, but Arnie says you did not even have to be a human to get in. Lots of animals are Good Guys. So, guess where they end up: Up North. Even plants can be Good Guys. But, wait, Arnie says, you do not even have to be alive. Pallas Athene is a Good Guy and she is in Heaven. We wanted to know how this could be. Arnie explained, Well nothing exists that was not in God’s Mind to begin with. So if Pallas Athene was a big gun in, say the 5^th Century BC in Greece, she had to have been in God’s Mind before. God only imagines Good Guys. Hence she automatically was a Good Guy when the Greeks thought her up. That is why she is now Up North. QED. (Blossom’s poor human, abashed again; although he did think that were he a religious Greek in, say, the 400’s BC, Pallas Athene would certainly have been his goddess of choice.)

That got us to God’s Love. Arnie says that God loves all kinds of things, from each blade of grass to Redwoods, from zygotes (what an egg is called immediately after it is fertilized by a sperm) to grown ups, even those who are soon to die in the next millisecond. (Personally I think God also loves even inanimate things, like the Grand Canyon, since they can be so beautiful, just like He is. But I always forget to ask Arnie if this is true or not.)

So that is the story so far of DAB [extended]. But not the end. We are an organic and dynamic group. We keep adding new members. And we are always moving, blading. And having fun. Which The Best Guy wants for everyone, all the time.

Respectfully submitted by Dick, Secretary-Treasurer (Treasury still empty.)

Milky Way and the Big Bang

The Image above was taken by the Planck Telescope of the European Space Agency published in Nature, July 8, 2010. The complete Milky Way is the white plate seen on edge. The background radiation of the Big Bang is shown in the bluish surround. At the request of a good friend of mine, I posted it on his blog (The Brotherhood) of a site (http://americanwantssarah.ning.com) that we belong to. The posting drew a lot of comments about how the Big Bang and Evolution (which I did not mention) contradicted creation stories in the Bible. My comments here are partly a reply to some of these criticisms and partly to another friend’s observations on President Obama’s directive to NASA to assure the Muslim community that it had contributed greatly to science and technology.

Assuming there was a Big Bang this has nothing to do with God. God being God can do anything He likes except create a contradiction. If He wanted to start us all off with a Bang, that is His business. Many scientists do not believe in God, some do. Darwin to his dying day was a believer and church-goer. The difficulty some religious people contemporaneous with him had was that the Theory of Evolution made impossible a literal belief of the creation verses in the Bible. No good scientist I ever heard of did his science to prove that God does not exist, an impossibility at any event. That would be like devoting oneself to growing sugar cane to show that Ford 150s are the best selling vehicle in America. Science has nothing to do with religion This whole matter was debated and resolved in the Late Medieval Ages during the beginning years of universities, mostly at the University of Paris. There followers of Aristotle clashed with theologians who, too, like some commentators on the blog, believed in the literal truth of the Bible. These clashes in the 12th and 13th Centuries were eventually resolved in the Aristotelians’ favor, as by the 14th Century the Parisian professors had to swear to teach Aristotle and an Islamic commentator on Aristotle, Averroes. ['Averroes' is the name used in the west for Ibn Rushed, 1126--1198. He is one of the two Muslim natural philosophers--the title given to scientists then--popularly remembered today, the other being Avicenna, Ibn Sīnā, 980--1037.] At that time (the 14th Century) there was an agreement–still in force–that scientists stuck to the observable (broadly defined) and that theologians were responsible for metaphysics and religion. So the swirl of comment in the 19th Century about Darwin’s science has a history. As to my good Friend M’s comment [about President Obama's NASA directive], Islam did have a 500 year period of scientific eminence, which was to mostly to preserve Aristotle and Plato and other classic authors for later use in the Renaissances (there were a couple of them). That 500 year period ended in the 15th century. President Obama are you listening? The period of distinction of Islamic science ended in the 15th century. There are 2 major reasons for this: First there is a strong tradition in Islam against abstract learning. Knowledge to be pursued had to be in the practical interest of Islam, and since Islam knows no distinction between religious and civic law, all learning had to contribute in a way that would be epistmologically incompatible to scientific and other endeavors in the west. (What practical effect does acquiring estimations of the size of the proton or of facts about Mozart’s 21st Piano Concerto have?). The second reason for the decline was that the Muslims never established the kind of universities and other types of schools started in the 12th Century (in Bologna), added to in the 13th and following Centuries, and still going on today in non-Muslim societies in which knowledge could be acquired, systematized, preserved, and protected against the depredations of anti-intellectuals. Madrases were and are only theological institutions. For NASA now to devote itself to assuring Muslims that they are just as good at science and technology as are we (which as a society they clearly are not) is as condescending, as is the racism and sexism of affirmative action. What affirmative action does is re-institute Jim Crow and the degradation of women. It intimates that blacks and women are not good enough to compete in a white, manly world. They need a helping hand. (A new version of the white man’s burden.) Grades low? Does not matter, in you go anyway to, say, the Harvard Law School. Not publishing any law review articles once you get there, Barry? Not to worry. We shall make you Editor of the Law Review so you will not feel badly about yourself. Blacks and women not good enough? Oh, yeah? First of all the brightest person I ever knew was a black girlfriend of mine in our freshman year of college. (We were crazy about each other but her family would not let us get together because I was white.) Second, you had better not have let any such talk of the little woman needing some aid from us men around my Mother or her sisters. Any of them would have knocked your block off. The women of AWS [the website in which these comments were initially posted] do not need me to speak for them, but my guess is that, if any of them had heard such talk, she would have elbowed my Mother aside to throw the first punch.

Dick Lanham

Posted originally on http://richardjlanham.wordpress.com