Posse Incitatus

A particularly vicious form of rich guilt

Roger L. Simon and Austin Bay both point to an article by David Ignatius on the rather affluent nature of Britain's home-grown Jihadists.

The Posse concurs with their assessment of Bin Laden and his rich-kid ilk.  Most of the leading terrorists aren't as the meme goes "mired in poverty" but rather are sons of privilage that suffer from boredom and self-loathing.

A similar dynamic is at work in the West, where pampered college professors and their sheltered offspring imagine themselves oppressed and issue countless calls for revolution.  To their dismay, the hard-working lower classes ignore them.

The left's response to this has been even more anger, sometimes hidden, sometimes vented openly.  After the presidential election, it came out in the open.

We believe a great part of this anger comes from the fact that many of the left have so little sense of challenge or accomplishment.

Middle class Americans now are the equivalent of the mega-rich of the past.  Indeed, the amenities, life expectancy and creature comforts of your average Generation Y slacker compare favorably with the luxuries of Cyrus the Great, Cleopatra or even a 19th century railroad tycoon.  Certainly in the field of medical care there is no comparison.

Partly we believe this is a crisis of manhood, or, perhaps more correctly, adulthood, since women are equally affected.

In the past, the passage from the carefree days of childhood into the seriousness of adulthood took place earlier.  Indeed, childhood itself was hardly carefree.

The West is now wealthy enough that middle income children can be treated as royal heirs in terms of responsibility and hardship.

Idle hands are of course the Devil's playground and Ol' Scratch has been very busy over the last half century.

Thus many of our young people - craving adventure or some sort of challenge to show their worthiness - turn to radicalism.

Certainly that was part of what motivated John Walker Lindh.  Boredom, a quest for spirituality and accomplishment took him from Marin County to the Hindu Kush.

Reading some of the leftist websites, it is not hard to imagine similar journeys taking place.

Unlike the wealthy Arabs described above, the West can have this comfort - that the disease seems to mitigate its own symptoms.  The same idleness that fuels bitter anti-American diatribes and burned flags also acts as a check against positive action.

Meanwhile, the left craves the draft

Captain Ed has a great takedown of a typically moronic New York Times Op Ed by Stanford Professor David Kennedy in favor of a military draft.  [Remind us never to send our kids to Stanford to study history.  They will learn nothing.]

While we greatly respect and admire the Captain (particularly his traffic volume), an article of this monumental stupidity requires a full-length fisking.

THE United States now has a mercenary army. To be sure, our soldiers are hired from within the citizenry, unlike the hated Hessians whom George III recruited to fight against the American Revolutionaries. But like those Hessians, today's volunteers sign up for some mighty dangerous work largely for wages and benefits - a compensation package that may not always be commensurate with the dangers in store, as current recruiting problems testify.

Of course this is manifestly false.  Mercenaries are motivated solely by personal gain and advancement.  American soldiers are first and foremost patriots.  The oath of allegiance is to uphold and defend the Constitution, not to recieve pay in exchange for service.

The rule for most of American history was to use volunteers.  They are motivated and enthusiastic - exactly the kind of people one would want to defend one's nation and freedom.

To put it another way, using this definition anyone who does any job for pay without compulsion can be considered a "mercenary." 

Of course bringing up the Hessians is even more egregious.  The Hessians weren't "recruited" by George III.  They were bought by him from German princes.  True mercenaries are traded like any other commodity.  They serve only their commanders and can switch sides at a moment's notice.  They are also often bought off by the highest bidder.

Is he suggesting that if Osama Bin Laden offered a big enough bag of money our forces would change sides?

Neither the idealism nor the patriotism of those who serve is in question here.

Really?  You just said they served "largely for wages and benefits."

This is a typical weaselling move from a leftist coward who hates our military but fears to come out and admit it.

The profession of arms is a noble calling, and there is no shame in wage labor.

Ah, wage labor.  Unlike salaried positions, where the very notion of shame is nonexistant.  Did he curl his lip when he wrote this?

But the fact remains that the United States today has a military force that is extraordinarily lean and lethal, even while it is increasingly separated from the civil society on whose behalf it fights. This is worrisome - for reasons that go well beyond unmet recruiting targets.

Yes, and why is it separated?  Could it be the anti-war movement has so undermined the notion of patriotism and service for country that only greed and compulsion are left?

One troubling aspect is obvious. By some reckonings, the Pentagon's budget is greater than the military expenditures of all other nations combined. It buys an arsenal of precision weapons for highly trained troops who can lay down a coercive footprint in the world larger and more intimidating than anything history has known. Our leaders tell us that our armed forces seek only just goals, and at the end of the day will be understood as exerting a benign influence. Yet that perspective may not come so easily to those on the receiving end of that supposedly beneficent violence.

Hidden within all this pap is the fact that the good professor considers it deeply troubling that his nation is the preeminent world power.

He would no doubt prefer it if the United States spent less on defense and say, Communist China was the global hegemon.  Yes, that would be far less disturbing because we know that Chinese Communist violence is far more "beneficent."

This is a recurring theme with leftists:  They wish weakness upon their country.  They wish someone, anyone else was stronger.

And then they wonder why people question their patriotism.

But the modern military's disjunction from American society is even more disturbing. Since the time of the ancient Greeks through the American Revolutionary War and well into the 20th century, the obligation to bear arms and the privileges of citizenship have been intimately linked.

False.  For much of history the hated mercenaries that Professor Kennedy describes earlier were the norm - and they served well outside the body politic.

Perhaps the good professor would care to read up on the armies of Enlightenment Europe - vagabonds and petty convicts who served out of coercion and fear.  The brutal discipline that sustained them reached its apogee under Frederick the Great.  These were not citizen-soldiers, they were automatons, trained killers whose only law was that of their commanders.

That is why the princes of Hesse-Kassel could so easily ship their unused regiments 3,000 miles away to fight in a war they held no direct stake in.

Remember, this idiot claims to be a history professor and yet so far, every single one of his facts is wrong.

It was for the sake of that link between service and a full place in society that the founders were so invested in militias and so worried about standing armies, which Samuel Adams warned were "always dangerous to the liberties of the people."

Indeed, which is why the standing armies of the day were all-volunteer.  It took the supreme cataclysm of the Civil War to bring conscription into play and it was abandoned for a half century.

Many African-Americans understood that link in the Civil War, and again in World Wars I and II, when they clamored for combat roles, which they saw as stepping stones to equal rights. From Aristotle's Athens to Machiavelli's Florence to Thomas Jefferson's Virginia and Robert Gould Shaw's Boston and beyond, the tradition of the citizen-soldier has served the indispensable purposes of sustaining civic engagement, protecting individual liberty - and guaranteeing political accountability.

Actually, the importance of the Civil War was the access to arms.  This is a right the left doesn't like to talk much about, but as Machiavelli and Jefferson would both point out, a disarmed populace is a subject populace.  We doubt the professor want to go there, though.

That tradition has now been all but abandoned. A comparison with a prior generation's war illuminates the point. In World War II, the United States put some 16 million men and women into uniform. What's more, it mobilized the economic, social and psychological resources of the society down to the last factory, rail car, classroom and victory garden. World War II was a "total war." Waging it compelled the participation of all citizens and an enormous commitment of society's energies.

Interesting.  We wonder if the professor is saying he would like to say government propaganda films and the internment of suspect ethnic groups?  Somehow, we highly doubt that the good professor would like to see the same climate of patriotism (and the same contempt for those who were defeatists).

But thanks to something that policymakers and academic experts grandly call the "revolution in military affairs," which has wedded the newest electronic and information technologies to the destructive purposes of the second-oldest profession, we now have an active-duty military establishment that is, proportionate to population, about 4 percent of the size of the force that won World War II. And today's military budget is about 4 percent of gross domestic product, as opposed to nearly 40 percent during World War II.

This makes his earlier unease about the size of our military budget in paragraph three seem trivial. 

Yes, we have a big military, but we're hardly spending anything on it.

The implications are deeply unsettling: history's most potent military force can now be put into the field by a society that scarcely breaks a sweat when it does so. We can now wage war while putting at risk very few of our sons and daughters, none of whom is obliged to serve. Modern warfare lays no significant burdens on the larger body of citizens in whose name war is being waged.

Again, a bald-faced lie.

We'd like to see the evidence that nobody is "breaking a sweat."  If that were the case, there would have been no Congressional debate and the War on Terror wouldn't have figured prominently in the presidential election.

What the professor's real beef here is that we can fight and win without heavy casualties - and for a defeatist, that is a hard pill to swallow.

This is not a healthy situation.

It is if you happen to be in the military.  High casualty rates are generally considered unhealthy.

It is, among other things, a standing invitation to the kind of military adventurism that the founders correctly feared was the greatest danger of standing armies - a danger made manifest in their day by the career of Napoleon Bonaparte, whom Jefferson described as having "transferred the destinies of the republic from the civil to the military arm."

Funny, Napoleon didn't wage his wars with volunteers, did he?  Is the professor familiar with the term Levee en Masse?

Napoleonic France also spent a very high percentage of its GDP on the military.  But at least everyone served equally. 

Some will find it offensive to call today's armed forces a "mercenary army," but our troops are emphatically not the kind of citizen-soldiers that we fielded two generations ago - drawn from all ranks of society without respect to background or privilege or education, and mobilized on such a scale that civilian society's deep and durable consent to the resort to arms was absolutely necessary.

"Some?"  "Some?!"  How about everyone who hasn't drunk the anti-war Kool-Aid?

The professor is also obviously ignorant of the reason the "privilaged classes" aren't serving:  They've been told by their professors that the military is evil, homophobic and chock full of baby-killers.

So we assume that the good professor will push for full ROTC presences on all American campuses to rectify this.

Leaving questions of equity aside, it cannot be wise for a democracy to let such an important function grow so far removed from popular participation and accountability. It makes some supremely important things too easy - like dealing out death and destruction to others, and seeking military solutions on the assumption they will be swifter and more cheaply bought than what could be accomplished by the more vexatious business of diplomacy.

What the hell is he talking about?  Are our forces randomly roaming the globe, free of any government control?  Again, the picture he paints is utterly at odds with reality:  US troops are rarely deployed and only after agonizing debate.

And since when is diplomacy more "vexatious" than war?  Does this idiot assume that we could have had Saddam Hussein step down and Iraq embrace democracy through negotiation alone?  What kind of twit history professor believes that diplomacy always works?

Now the next paragraph is key.

The life of a robust democratic society should be strenuous; it should make demands on its citizens when they are asked to engage with issues of life and death.

What he is saying is that war isn't unpleasant enough.  The anti-war movement hasn't gained enough traction and the problem isn't that their cause is weak, it is that there hasn't been enough suffering.

So what we need is for the government make us all suffer.  That will get the anti-war movement really rolling.

The "revolution in military affairs" has made obsolete the kind of huge army that fought World War II, but a universal duty to service - perhaps in the form of a lottery, or of compulsory national service with military duty as one option among several - would at least ensure that the civilian and military sectors do not become dangerously separate spheres.[emphasis added]

Ah yes, so he wants a draft, but not one that actually makes people fight.  The Posse can't help but wonder what those other options would be - and whether they'd be necessary in peace time.

As the good Captain point out, military necessity and national security are always less important than social engineering to the left.

Now watch:  He's going to twist Clemenceau's quote.  How original.

War is too important to be left either to the generals or the politicians. It must be the people's business.

What a poser.

The Abyss

Ever since the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, the Posse has believed that worse was yet to come.  We looked about us at the complacency and prosperity of the 1990s, the utter fatuousness of the political debate and the pathetic nonchalance of the Clinton administration and we knew that even though we rested, our enemies did not.

On that bright clear September morning in 2001, when the world stood rooted in place and gazing with astonishment - and joy for some, horror for others - one of our coworkers remarked that our prediction had come true.

Since that day, we have sometimes had the sensation - a strange feeling, starting at the base of the skull and spreading around the back of our head - that the Abyss was only a few steps away.

This notion doesn't come often.  Since the reelection of George W. Bush, elections in Iraq and success in Afghanistan, the fits (if you will) have become less common.

Still, every now and then we feel a cold touch on the heart and it seems as though our hair is standing up because we sense that the Abyss - that place of darkness that threatens to consume all light and civilization - is very real and very close.

The anti-war movement denies that it exists, but it does.  For centuries it dominated the world with wars, feuds and death.

It has been banished in our small corner only for a half century, and most have already forgotten about it.

This morning we read our patron saint Roger L. Simon who linked to this two-part translation of Orianna Fallaci.  Part one.  Part two.

The creeping feeling of doom returned.

The Abyss is close.

The Posse does not believe that Europe will surrender to Islamofascism.  Some parts, perhaps, but not all.

We have no better words to describe it than to say it is a vision:  A vision of camps, genocides and a return to 1930s militarism.  Europe possesses the resources and the technology, it needs only the will.  Backed into a corner, under siege from within and without, the Posse can easily see the chanting, anti-American "peace activist" masses returning to the homicidal militarism of their past.

To us, Germany's protestations of pacifism are nothing more than a reformed alcoholic staying away from demon rum.  One sip is all it takes to fall of the wagon.  The successors of Charles the Hammer and Don John of Austria will not easily succumb to the Islamic tide.

There.  The moment has passed.  The Abyss recedes.

Back to sleep.

Feeding on the dead - profiles in cowardice

The Posse is often surprised by the depth to which the anti-war left will sink.  At this point, we shouldn't be, but our innate (and some would say inane) belief in patriotism and love of country blinds us to how much hate swells within the hearts of the left whenever they see the US military.

Today's amazing exhibit of this trend can be found in Pennsylvania, where the Lt. Governor set a new standard for low-class politicking.  (Hat tip:  Blackfive)

Where does one get the notion that it is socially acceptable and electorally wise to come uninivited to a military funeral and then casually inform the grieving family that their loved one's sacrifice was in vain?

One of the great dangers of having a sympathetic media and insulated worldview is that it deadens one's sense of reality.

James Taranto explored this phenomenon in regards to the doomed Kerry campaign, an exercise that really should have collapsed of its own weight long before November.

In this case, we belive a similar dynamic is at work.

Having read and believed the tripe spewed by Michael Moore, having bought into the Kerryesque myth of the peace-loving fighting men and women who are at the same time baby-killers, Lt. Gov. Katherine Baker Gnoll probably thought she was making a shrewed move.

Are not military family members who bitterly blame the administration for their losses celebrated?  Has not John Kerry shown that true heroes hold their medals and comrades in contempt?

Unfortunately for Democrats (and fortunately for our country) disrespecting the fallen has not yet attained an electoral majority.

One other aspect of this behavior bears comment as well:  the sheer cowardice of it.

The same people who idly toss around the slur "chicken hawk" think nothing of showing their "bravery" by picking on grieving widows and mourning family members.  Indeed, having examined the matter for the last few years, the Posse is now able to describe what the anti-war left clearly believes count as courage:

1. Avoid military service at all costs.  Even after your nation has been attacked, a draft is worse than anythign else.

2.  If you do serve, seek to shirk your duties at the earliest opportunity.  Use any excuse, whether it be "consciencious objection" or sexual perversity.

3.  When speaking out against the war, anyone who disagrees with you is "crushing dissent."  Remember that "freedom of speech" means "freedom from criticism."

4.  Since heckling and denigrating service members carries with it the risk of physical harm, it is better to wait until they are dead and concentrate on their widows and family members.

5.  Always, not matter whether you are urging murder, mutiny or slandering an entire generation of service members, say you "support our troops."

Ambush at the changing table

Little Erin has managed a feat that eluded both of her older sisters.  Early this morning (in the predawn darkness no less) she cleverly feigned a movement.  You know the kind.

We dutifully trotted over to the changing table and began detoxification procedures and - behold!

There was nothing there.

As we blinked at the relatively unspoilt diaper before us, she suddenly unleashed a hail storm of nastiness - an onslaught we managed to deflect only by the reflexive and timely use of a baby wipe.

Having accomplished her task, she returned to blissful slumber, leaving us the unsavory task of decontaminating the changing table and finding her a new outfit.

Ah the joys of parenting.

The Posse has tried to instill in the Three Fs in our youngins:  Faith, Family and Freedom.  We delight in teaching the younger Posse members about patriotism, love of country and of course the proper use of firearms and the joys of archery.

Indeed, we were almost overcome with pride when the middle daughter, Darth Vader Princess (that's what she calls herself, honest) solemnly intoned that little Erin was too small to use the existing toy guns.   Later, maybe, she could have a little one.  But not yet.

Princess Vader is some authority on toy guns; before her third birthday she was laying ambushes on her mother with a Star Wars blaster.

A chip off the old block, one might say.

The bombings will continue until morale improves

The Posse took a brief respite today from the scented world of diapers and baby powder and one of the first things we learned is that more bombs have gone off in London.

No casualties reported, but none are really needed.  Terrorism isn't about attrition or inflicting militarily significant losses, it is about morale.

Throughout history, military operations have rarely been as deadly as popular myth make them.  Armies usually broke well before being wiped out.  Units fighting to the death are the exception rather than the rule, which is why so much is made of those units that did fight to the last man.

For terrorists, body counts are simply a way to get attention.  Having achieved disruption in London, no further deaths are required:  Al Qaeda and its sympathizers can accomplish their political objectives with smoke bombs and firecrackers. 

The British are unlikely to fold, but that isn't obvious to the casual observer.  Even now the mainstream British press hesitates to use the term "terrorist" and the BBC is busy wringing its hands over offending its World Service listeners.  These are precisely the indicators of weakness that attrack more terrorism.

Contrast that with America's fierce (if temporary) display of unity and grim resolution after 9/11.  Indeed, much of the "sympathy of the world" was inspired by cold fear on the part of our enemies.  America's immense power meant that it could accomplish a great deal of destruction in a short amount of town and the scope of the attack led many to fear that Cowboy BusHilter might well resort to "nook-u-lar" retaliation.

While the US is still being tested, it has far more credibility than some of the allies.  That is why Iraq and Afghanistan are so important.

Particularly of note was the House resolution to stay the course in Iraq.  As expected, a substantial portion of the Democrats voted against it, still insisting that one can be defeatist and patriotic at the same time.

UPDATE:  It isn't clear if these bombs misfired or were meant to be symbolic.  Either way, the point stands.

Terrorism feeds on weakness.

New Junior Posse member

The Posse is pleased to present our newest junior member, Erin.

Erin was born early Sunday morning and weighs six pounds, eight ounces and is 19 1/2 inches long.  Both she and her mother, Sithkitten, are doing fine.  We expect them to come home to the ranch tomorrow.

Posting will resume when feeding and diaper changing permit.   

More on torture from a moron

Via the hated Instapundit, we learn that Andrew Sullivan has once again decided to whine about how America's decision to interrogate captured terrorists by the mildest means possible somehow mean we've lost our moral capital.  Interesting discussion over at the Volokh Conspiracy.

The Posse is reminded of our earlier post on how to deal with unlawful combatants:  just shoot them.

The more we hear half-hearted hawks like Sullivan whine and moan about it, the more we think that maybe summary execution isn't such a bad idea.

If nothing else, we could close Gitmo and not have to worry about anyone we released coming after us again.

Call that a win-win.

The Fifth Column strikes

[UPDATED and expanded]

The Posse was unavoidably offline for the past couple of days and what news do we find once we return to the 'net?

Two revelations that should deal a body blow to the conventional anti-war line about terrorism.

The London bombers were British-born and they died in their attacks.

This is the great nightmare of Europe:  Home-grown suicide bombers, a truly active Fifth Column working against the state that has sheltered, fed and housed them.

The Belmont Club is all over this and offers the usual incisive commentary that ironically forced Wretchard to to reveal his identity.

Key quote:

Although the public is being asked to oppose any "backlash against the Muslim community" one of the nagging questions will be how people in the 22-year old age range could have created a bomb factory and planned a suicide attack from this "run-down, mixed-race area dotted with red brick terraced houses" without anybody noticing, especially since the bomb factory may have been "near the Leeds Grand Mosque". As a rule, people don't go from being totally innocent and unmotivated persons to being committed suicide bombers armed with high explosives without passing through any intermediate stages.

Of course, this passage is eased by the moral equivalence and outright hatred of the West sponsored by the "anti-war" movement.

Once idiots like Ward Churchill publicly call for murder within the ranks of the infidel's military with impunity, what is to stop others from taking matters farther?

The West has been fighting this war with one hand tied behind its back.  Given the mismatch in military and economic power, that one hand may be enough.  But should it not, the second hand will come out, and it will be far more damaging to the enemy - and those that aided them.

UPDATE:  Having a little more time to survey the blogosphere, we couldn't help but laugh at the latest bout of foolishness from "professor" Juan Cole - and its hilarious takedown.

The lesson here is not only that pompous academics are usually wrong and annoying to boot, it is that they are part of the problem in dealing with the very real danger of Fifth Column activities.

Cole's advice was remarkably wrong-headed and dangerous.  The immediate aftermath of a crime is critical to follow-up leads, secure sources and protect evidence from further damage.  The longer the wait, the greater the danger the trail can grow cold.

Thus Cole's immediate assertions that home-grown terrorists couldn't be involved was stunningly stupid.  All possibilities must be explored before an answer can be determined.  This is the foundation of the scientific method and the core reason for the venerated "academic freedom."

If certain possibilities are to be excluded on the basis of sentiment, sensitivity and blind arrogance, all pretence to the protections of "academic freedom" are forfeit - and the core principles of modern scholarship have been abandoned.

More to the point, Cole's myopia and typical left-wing cant obscures the very real danger that the next set of recruits won't be Muslims by emigration or birth, but enraged converts seduced by the likes of Ward Churchill and Juan Cole.

For these people, the goal is the creation of more like John Walker Lindh, affluent Californian and traitor to his nation.

He already has his own cheering section, and is ready to take his place in the pantheon of blood-soaked leftist American heroes, like cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Note the symmetry:  The World Socialists are here defending a religious fanatic - a member of perhaps the most reactionary ideology in the world today.

Radical Islam is the antithesis of Marx, yet his deluded devotees are flocking to make common cause with them against the hated West.

As Taliban Johnny found, socialist platitudes are nice, but Paradise is forever.  No one is going to strap on explosives and shoulder a rifle for universal health care or to save Social Security.  For that level of devotion, only 72 virgins and the blessing of the Almighty will suffice.

As is often the case, the Posse must now return to the recurring theme of "chicken hawks," the derisive and pointless insult hurled by anti-war activists with nothing better to say.

Though we have little inclination to surf the gutters of online leftish thought, we're pretty sure that at least someone has compared the British bombers favorably to the "chicken hawks" of the right.

How long until disaffected white teens decide that for the love of Gaia, Allah and hatred of Bush that this is a calling they need to take up?

Sure, trashing Seattle and putting cops in the hospital can be fun, but they don't effect much change.

Of course, like the other forms of Islamofascism, recruiting in this manner would ultimately be self-defeating.  The resulting backlash would see a purge of the limp-wristed tolerance and make McCarthyism look like a spelling bee.

Then again, leftists are used to being on the wrong side of history.  Why should they make a change?

The Posse at the movies: Gunner Palace

Last night the Posse rented Gunner Palace, a film much spoken of on the 'net, but not particularly favored by the mainstream press.

The reasons for this should be pretty obvious:  It doesn't fit in with the agree-upon template that all is lost in Iraq, that the war was a lie, etc.

To be sure, the film is not a warblogger's dream, either.  Many of the soldiers are discouraged, not sure why they are there and skeptical of the ultimate success of their mission.

They are also determined to succeed and portrayed not as poor, illiterate dupes but competent and very human professionals.  One cannot reconcile the images of the artillerymen-turned-MPs laughing and playing with orphans, smiling and playing with children and singing a variety of heartfelt songs with the anti-war notion that they are ruthless babykillers.  The Abu Ghraib crew these folks aren't.

One item of interest to us was the change that took place over the course of the film.  The early raids are abortive and seemingly pointless.  Later, near the conclusion of the film, the nighly expeditions bring in actual contraband.

Also significant are the remarks of the Iraqi translators, who are risking their lives and those of their families to help the Gunners.  They do it because Americans are the "good guys," and that they want a better Iraq.  One of them distills the whole experience to a struggle between those who want to live in peace, and those who can imagine only war.  A better description of the terrorists is hard to find.

The DVD has a slew of deleted scenes that add additional insight and were obviously cut to keep the focus and flow of the picture.  They are all worth viewing.

As there was a sale at our local DVD rental joint, the Posse plans to have additional reviews upon other items we've been meaning to watch.

In the meantime, follow the advice of Blackfive, the Mudville Gazette and the rest of the Milbloggers and watch "Gunner Palace."  It's worth it.