Posse Incitatus

Memorial Day 2007

One of the strange things about the reportage of the war in Iraq is how much emphasis is placed on American losses.

"Grim milestones" keep flashing by as the media trumpets that our war dead have reached nice round numbers, but what about the context?

Our enemy is so brutal, so steeped in elemental evil that any kind of moral equivalence borders on the insane.

Wretchard notes that we are talking about an organization that tortures people simply for the sport of it. 

In past conflicts, these atrocities would be trumpeted across the land, to help rouse people to the danger we face and to remind them that those that fall in this conflict do so in a righteous and noble cause.

Instead, we are told that the deaths of our warriors are senseless, or for oil, or to cement a dictatorship, or some other claptrap.

Our prayer this Memorial Day is that this country survives in such a state that 50 years hence, the graves of our recently fallen heroes will be strewn with flowers and flags and children will read of the great war in Iraq and wonder what madness possessed the media.

Buddy, you jacked the wrong car

Via the hated Instapundit we have a rather unusual story of succesful self-defense right here in Michigan:

A robbery and crime spree aided by an unloaded gun came to a halt late Thursday when the gunman met more than his match: a gun with bullets.

Charles Parker Jr., 18, of Detroit was killed when a 53-year-old man pulled out a 9mm handgun and shot the teen, who was armed with an unloaded .22-caliber handgun.

What is noteworthy is not that the criminal was stupid enough to attempt armed robbery with out a bullet handy, or that an armed law-abiding citizen thwarted it.

No, what is unusual is the tone of the article.

The victim is clearly identified as such and no effort is made to apologize for the attackers, who outnumbered him four to one.

[Question to Tim Lambert:  How would the absence of guns in this scenario have made self-defense more possible than it actually was?]

Can it be that after years of countless examples and first-hand experience, even reporters are coming to figure out that armed citizens are part of the solution to violent crime?

Every year, the Michigan State Police are required by law to publish a summary of violations by concealed pistol licensees within the state.  You can see them here.

This is a veritable gold mine of information on people with concealed carry permits.  One can see the raw numbers, sliced and diced every which way on how law-abiding armed citizens behave.

The fact is, they behave very well indeed.  All of this is anathema to the gun-control crowd, but for those who are still capable of rational thought, it is worth taking a look at.

The conclusion to this piece is priceless:

After the shooting, police questioned the 53-year-old man and released him, noting that he had a valid concealed weapons permit.

Then they gave him back his gun.

Indeed.  Carry on, citizen.

Is it progressive, or is it Sauron?

The Posse has been perusing the collected works of J.R.R. Tolkien (we've been a fan since grade school) and recently we've had the time to sample the excellent History of Middle Earth series.

As we were working our way through the Origins of Orcs and other sundry items in Volume X, Morgoth's Ring, we came upon this passage about the seduction of evil:

To wean one of the God-fearing from their allegiance it is best to propound another, unseen object of allegiance and another hope of benefits; propound to him a Lord who will sanction what he desires and not forbid it.

Immediately we were reminded of the "mainline" Protestant churches' recent embrace of leftish (and perhaps more properly, hedonistic) causes in preference to actually spreading the Gospel.

Of course, these organizations are not consciously trying to corrupt their believers, yet the end result is the same: a coarsening of society, a dilution of the core message of Christianity and a weakening of the Faithful. 

Tolkien was referring to Sauron's corruption of Numenor; but it is every bit as applicable to the modern world.

Which just goes to prove what a clear understanding "the Prof" had of good and evil.

The limits of "interfaith dialogue"

The Posse was amused to see this item in Opinion Journal's Best of the Web about an interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Norwegian Christians that proved unable to stage even a good-will soccer game.

The sticking point was the presence of women in the game.  The Imams wouldn't have it, as the female ministers would be violating the Islamic stricture against male-female interactions.

Of course to play without the women was equally unacceptable for the Norwegians, since it would effectively be a renunciation of the female priesthood.

The lesson of course is that such dialogs are useless  It takes little sacrifice for either side to compose a bland statement of vague cooperation and good will - the problems arise when some sort of action must be taken.  In this case, even recreational sports proved too difficult.

At some point, Western intellectuals will have to accept that there are simply points of irreconcilable disagreement between Islam as it is now taught and Western liberal societies.  Either women are deserving of equal rights or they are inferiors who should keep to their place and serve men.

No about of dialogue or discussion can alter this.  At the end of the day, the woman may leave the house or she man not;  she may uncover her face or she may not; she may be legally beaten or killed by her husband or she may not.

We have many times noted the cowardice of the modern left, but nowhere is this more apparent than in their abdication of any sort of interest in the plight of women under Islam.

It's all well and good to shout the "Vagina Monologues" from the safety of a liberal college auditorium, but let's see them do something truly "challenging" - and perform it in Riyadh.

CliCHE Guevara

You've seen them before: The far left rabble-rousers marching at immigration rallies, waving pickets bearing Spanish slogans, flying Mexican flags, and demanding citizenship for the millions of illegal aliens who live in the United States.  They oppose protecting our borders, cracking down on businesses that hire illegals, and requiring the illegals to "earn" their citizenship in any way, shape, or form.

What do many of these protestors have in common with your average extremist La Raza types and also with no small number of naive Caucasian college students?  They regard Che Guevara as some kind of virtuous revolutionary icon, as evidenced by his ubiquitous face -- on T-shirts, bumper stickers and posters tacked to dorm room walls nationwide.  There's even Che "wallpaper" for PC screens.  That's why I call him "CliCHE Guevara."

No one ever maintained that young people possess a great deal of maturity or discernment, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist (or much research) to learn that Che Guevara was, to put it mildly, a major scumbag and thug.  The sad thing is, not everyone wearing a Che T-shirt is young.  Some of them are just blindly anti-American and in denial about their hero.

It's been said you can judge people by the company they keep.  And as even your average college freshman knows, Che was a good buddy of Infidel Castro.  The two were partners in repression, intolerance, torture and random killing -- regrettably, maladies that persist to this day in Cuba, long after Guevara's death.

Peruvian-born author Alvaro Vargas Lloysa exposed Guevara for the paranoid, merciless tyrant he was in his recent book, "The Che Guevara Myth."

The book describes an entry in Guevara's diary from 1957 revealing his cavalier attitude toward using violence and murder to deal with those he perceived as a threat to the revolution.  Guevara shot Eutimio Guerra because he suspected him of passing on information: "I ended the problem with a .32 pistol, in the right side of his brain...His belongings were now mine."

Llosa writes, "At every stage of his adult life, his megalomania manifested itself in the predatory urge to take over other people's lives and property, and to abolish their free will."

Che was the architect of Cuba's forced labor camps and concentration camps, where Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and other Cubans suffered and died.

Guevara is suspected of executing hundreds of innocents in the 1950s and 1960s before firing squads, some for simply refusing to give up their belief in democracy.  And there was no death bed confession or remorse with this evil man.  In his will he praised "the extremely useful hatred that turns men into effective, violent, merciless and cold killing machines."

Gee, what a swell guy! Where can I get a T-shirt?

VETOED

Finally, the President got a backbone and sent that defeatist Democrat stunt into the trash bin - where it was long overdue.

The Posse has longed for this administration to take a stronger line with its critics since the Plame foolishness first popped up.  Had the president done so, Congress might still be in GOP hands.

Still, better late than never.

The Dems' next move is not certain.  The conventional wisdom is that a new "clean" bill will rapidly move forward and that the radical left, having had its moment in the sun, will retire from the fray.

We think otherwise.

The left is this close to defunding the war.  The Pentagon has already had to make adjustments and with even minor legislative delays, the US military will find readiness funds rapidly dwindling.

This is the ultimate dream of the far left: the Air Force reduced to bake sales to fund its bomber purchases.  And now it is so close!  All Speaker Pelosi has to do is drag her feet ever so slightly and the entire BusHitlerCheneyBurton War Machine will grind to a halt.

Oh, the temptation...

After all, Madame Pelosi did take her sweet time to send the conference report on to the White House.  Why else would she do that if not to further erode cash reserves?

On the other hand, the damage the Dems are doing to themselves is considerable.  Outside of the Daily Kos fever swamps, outrage is slowly building.  This is uncharted territory.  Never before has Congress tried to lose a war that was still in progress.  South Vietnam was hung out to dry only after US troops were gone.  Now we see an actual, boots-on-the-ground betrayal in progress.

One senses that among the veteran Democratic politicians who are more interested in self-preservation than ideological grandstanding, that there is growing disquiet.  These are the ones who will cross over and join the suddenly re-united GOP in getting the clean bill through.

The votes are not the problem.  Time...is of the essence.  Or, to quote Khan in similar circumstances:

"Time is a luxury you do not have, Admiral."

The Posse grows again

The Posse is pleased to announce the addition of Santos to our blogging crew.  A noted expert on cinema, he is also a (like everyone else here) a casual shooter.