Among those on the inside of both blogs, it is no secret that 72nd TCS is the screen name in Veteran-American Voices, for short, of former Old War Dog John Werntz. Bill Faith has generously offered to John the opportunity to cross-post [subject to Bill's prior approval] on OWD. The grizzled old mutt, 72nd TCS, is proud and happy to hang around on the fringes of the pack.
He greets his former mates with a cheery yip, and looks forward to sniffing out friendships among the recent arrivals. That said..
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I very nearly choked on this one. From of 3-31, the story bears the title Army's War Funds Can Last Through July, Report Says and is written by Carl Hulse and Thom Shanker.
Please relax and read on. I am not about to launch into my standard rant: Thank you, NYT, for telling the Dems exactly how long they need to stall, plus informing the Sunni insurgents and Al-Q jihadists how long they have to hold out in order to win big. The reporters are doing their job--informing the public about the probable consequences of a presidential veto of the supplemental military appropriations bill now headed into a House-Senate conference.
Parenthetically, I note that the editors of the Washington Post appear not to have deemed the prospect of imminent exhaustion of funds to support the troops to be at all newsworthy. No trace on the front page, nor in the editorials. Ho hum, lookee here, Georgetown basketball is going great guns.
The reporters discuss those consequences at some length, and the prospects may be bright for political opponents of President Bush, who seem to be rubbing their hands in glee, anticipating an American defeat that will be heard 'round the world. But they are exceedingly gloomy for any level-headed patriot who awaits with dread a country sickened by an epidemic of Carterite malaise that, comparatively, would make the post-Vietnam trauma look like robust health. The return to these shores of defense forces, justifiably convinced that they have been robbed of the victory they earned by their magnificent efforts, does not inspire complacency.
Some relevant passages from the Hulse-Shanker article follow.
WASHINGTON, March 30 — The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has estimated that the Army has enough budget flexibility to pay for its military operations through July in the event that a standoff between the White House and Congress over holds up the money the administration says it needs for the war effort. .Actually, the July target is a best-case scenario...
It rests upon congressional approval of various gimmicks of budget sleight-of-hand, shifting funds between accounts and skimping on important purchases and maintenance expenditures to free up additional money. Strictly speaking, existing funds will run out by June 1.
The document, dated Wednesday, said that based on Pentagon figures and estimates, the Army now has enough money to last through May.Meanwhile, the Senate Majority leader, Harry Reid, is still stuck on stupid,taking partisan shots at Bush:...
'This study confirms that the president is once again attempting to mislead the public and create an artificial atmosphere of anxiety,' Mr. Reid said. 'He is using scare tactics to defeat bipartisan legislation that would change course in Iraq.Hagel of Nebraska and Smith of Oregon make it bipartisan? Note that if those two had not defected, the roll-call would have ended in a 49-49 tie, leaving Vice President Cheney to decide the issue.' ...
Two brief notes in closing, both dealing with the sad state of DC politics.
First, hearing the word bipartisan is enough to make the well-informed and even moderately well-heeled citizen fear for the country and clutch wallet and checkbook. Second, the toxic atmosphere chokes us all but our troops -- and the nation's future -- are the main victims.
The abject cowards in Congress who voted for a date-certain pullout from Iraq are going to have blood on their hands one day, and it is my fervent hope that they will face criminal charges for guaranteeing the next, even more horrific 9/11.
Of course, they won't be held accountable. These days, you can literally get away with murder.
That's what the cut-and-run crowd is doing.
By refusing to recognize that Iraq is but one campaign in the greater clash between Western Civilization and unreformed, radical Islam, they are setting the stage for the equivalent of a new Afghanistan under the Taliban--a democracy-free-zone where rag-headed baby killers can plot and plan the next big attack on the United States. By revealing all our secret intelligence intercept programs and undermining our rendition program and the terrorist prison at Guantanamo, they are condemning you and me, or our children and grandchildren, to death. Yes, death.
By doing everything they can just to win the next election--damn national security, even in wartime--they are selling out their country and its citizens.
In today's politically correct, decadent, Euro-weak America, it is not even acceptable to call a spade a spade. Even conservative commentators twist themselves into Gordian Knots to avoid using the AA word, as in anti-American, or the T word, as in traitor, in characterizing members of our government who want America to lose this vital battle.
But that is what they are.
Mark this down, people. Unless the president gets tough and takes out Iran and puts the world on notice that another attack on America will result in nuclear Armageddon for the Irans and Syrias and North Koreas of this world, thousands, if not millions of Americans are at grave risk of being slaughtered.
There WILL BE another 9/11. And this time, it may be thermonuclear. Those sniveling un-American cowards on the left who hate George W.
Bush more than they hate the terrorists or love the United States are doing their level best to tie his hands and undermine every weapon he has against people who want to saw your babies' heads off!
What is it that you don't understand? Go to the internet and type in Daniel Pearl or any of the other victims of the terrorists' butchery and watch the videos.
Listen to the screams of people having their heads sawn from their bodies. Look at the blood. Listen to the perverted calls for Allah's blessing on these barbaric acts.
Then tell me that George Bush is Hitler and Dick Cheney is Satan and the Administration is out of control.
The people who ought to be out of control are the surviving relatives of the next 9/11, who, when their loved ones' bodies are smoking on the ground in a million tiny pieces of charred flesh, ought to storm Capitol Hill with pitchforks and torches and drag out the Frankenstein monsters posing as Senators and Congressmen and deliver some old fashioned justice.
The men and women fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan or serving on the front lines in Korea, or on military bases--active, reserve and National Guard--around the world deserve far better than the worthless bunch of Senators and Congressmen who are Hell bent on selling them out.
And they deserve far better than the foolish, impatient, selfish, mind-numbed citizenry who elected those fools.
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their ilk aren't worthy enough to lick dogshit off an infantryman's boots. And there are a lot of Americans who are just as craven.
If this bunch had been around during the American Revolution, we'd all be drinking tea and eating crumpets. If they'd been in charge during the Civil War, we'd all be slaveowners, drinking mint juleps on the veranda. And if they'd been running things in World War II, we'd all be speaking German and drinking schnapps toasts to the Final Solution for a race that once existed known as the Jews.
I honestly don't understand any of this madness. I am thoroughly disgusted with the left, the Congress, the media and the public. You are going to reap what you have sewn and you are not going to like it.
But, oh, boy, will you deserve it when some Jihadist comes banging on your door with a grenade in his hand.
Gray Dog’s Note: This article is a continuation of thoughts inspired by Rurik’s essay titled originally posted at Old War Dogs in September 2006, and more recently holding its own page of honor at Veteran-American Voices. Actually, this article might be more appropriately deemed a variation on a theme or themes, as it also addresses Rurik’s sentiments in his post titled, In either case, I hope that Rurik’s inspiration has been duly noted and appropriately attributed.
If history is written by the victors, then image is assigned by the vocal. On February 22, 2007, Richard Dick Becker attended a press conference for A Gathering of Eagles. Becker, the brother of Brian Becker, National Coordinator for the ANSWER Coalition, characterized past Conservative and veteran’s counter-protests of ANSWER rallies, as pathetic.
On March 17, 2007 we have both the opportunity and the obligation to dispel that charge. It is the moment to rise above the damning legacy of a “Silenced Majority.” In so doing, we will fulfill the obligation to ourselves and our fallen brothers and sisters to reclaim the honor the “Beckers” of this world would take from us.
For too long, our silence has allowed our foes to establish a national agenda without opposition. We have ceded control of the media and allowed the socialist liberal enemies of America to mold an image of her defenders as the ignoble and ignorant peasantry of our society. We allow them to deny us the respect we deserve, because they tell us it is their right as Americans to do so.
And, when a few of us speak or act in opposition to these pretend Americans, whose grandiose marches and displays of hatred and disdain for the very beliefs and institutions for which we have shed our blood, they call us pathetic.
I've been predicting this for quite a while. I ain't proud or prescient, just observant.
Bush's proposed surge of American troops into Baghdad.With some error on both sides, in the debate between and our own I am obligated to jump in and address a number of misunderstandings. There is sufficient genuine fact on both sides of the Geneva Convention argument to permit honest argument and different conclusions.
See for my view of the future/present.
I have an admittedly myopic view of such things.We allowed this to happen by concentrating on trivial, but fun, crap like Kerry.
Yeah, I know, I know... 'closing the barn door after the horse got out' and all that.
We bloggers write page after page about 'what is wrong', we highlight a few possible fixes, and the obvious goes unnoticed by most.
Just now we have a lame-duck President who seems to have lost his way. There is a single issue that surpasses everything else and it continues to fall through the cracks of our busy lives.
The battle over whether we will become a Spanish speaking Islamic world/nation trumps every other issue!
Gays ignore it, Feminists ignore it, the global warming folks ignore it...and the anti-Kerry folks ignore it.
The list of folks who spent huge amounts of energy and time on issues that simply will not matter (or worse) is scary.
Every single issue is important, mind you, but context matters, and the context has been lost.
We don't know who we are, or who the enemy is.WASHINGTON – As US troops battle Islamic extremists abroad, the Pentagon and the armed forces are reaching out to Muslims at home.Read the whole thing Maybe we'll give veteran's benefits to members of Hezbollah?
There is a message here, and that is that Muslims and the Islamic religion are totally compatible with Western values, says Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England in an interview.
For the past two years, Mr. England has hosted an iftar, the feast that ends the daytime fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, Va. His guests have included ambassadors, leaders of the Muslim-American community, and Muslims who serve in the US armed forces.
President Bush also hosted an iftar at the White House in October, as he has done for several years. Gen. Robert Magnus, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, held one the same month at the Marine Corps Barracks in Washington for defense attachés from predominantly Muslim nations
Beam me up Scotty and start warming up the photon torpedoes.
The shimmer of Enlightenment glowed brightly through the land,
The promise of fulfillment was most certainly at hand,
What started as a flicker, quickly brightened like a flare,
Alas, the poor Enlightened Men were blinded by the glare.
Tolerance and diversity became their clarion’s call,
But the path lit by Enlightenment would lead them to their fall,
Forgetful of their birthright and neglectful of their duty,
Enlightened Men still failed to see our nation’s stately beauty.
A beacon of liberty once shined throughout the world,
A star filled banner stained with blood once proudly flew unfurled,
It now is nothing more than a Common Man’s lament,
A flag that hides in shadows cast long by Enlightenment.
With apologies to Leo Tolstoy.
Black and White, first and last, top and bottom, war and peace: Concepts of opposition and contrast so simple, that a five year old child could understand, yet so elusive to our national leaders.Can anything simultaneously be black and white, or will the blend simply result in gray? Which direction does one travel to be both first and last, or both top and bottom. Or, do you simply stand your ground and remain in the middle of the pack?
Yet as a nation, we seem to both accept this absurd paradox within our military and expect a satisfactory result.
Is it reasonable to expect our military personnel to function with the complete skill set of waging war and peaceful nation building, as if they were each the direct progeny of a union between Ares and Eireen? Bombing and building, killing and healing, guns and roses, war and peace: Simple contrasts or absurd expectations?
Down to the wire, the October Surprise was unleashed upon the Democrats yesterday. Surprisingly it wasn’t launched by the Republicans, but instead the liberal’s very own “useful idiot” John Kerry.
You know, education - if you make the most of it - you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well.If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq,
This site was to be announced next week, but in light of Kerry’s comment and the importance of next week’s elections we hope you will visit what promises to be an exciting place for discourse on the issues of the day.
Participation does require registration, so don’t be shy.
Softly it whispers, parting air,
The edge so sharp, so glistening;
And as it strikes beneath your hair,
Is anyone still listening?
The sword of Islam makes the slice,
And your severed head just rolls;
You’ve made the final sacrifice,
Loyal to your Liberal goals.
When others warned of futures dire,
You made root cause excuses;
You turned your faces from the fire,
Pursued your liberal muses,
Ignoring death-fired feudal fires,
Luring fools to paradise,
Fanatics facing Islam’s spires,
Whose sword above you lies.
Back when we tried to warn you,
You snickered and you sneered;
Imperial fools our view untrue,
Dumb dupes, who only feared.
Your enlightenment would show us
The path to worldwide calm,
So Jihadis would not blow us
All to hell with Islam’s bomb.
And now these decades later,
When Sharia rules our land,
Where Christians, disbelievers,
Feel the wrath of Islam’s hand,
I feel compelled to ask you Libs,
As that blade zips out your light,
Bloodies your precious, do-good bibs,
Might you think it’s time we fight?
The latest Henry Mark Holzer Memorandum.Click to add your name to his mailing list.
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, and from time-to-time since then, it has been said that the day was akin to the one about which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke: December 7, 1941. The comparison is apt—but not completely.And yes, on December 8th and September 12th there was among our people “an implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks.”Despite the similarities, the differences in what followed each of those days are profound and the aftermath of September 11, 2001, may well portend far worse consequences than did World War II for the United States of America.
The esteemed historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, in his The Oxford History of the American People, has written of December 7, 1941:
At the end of this sad and bloody day, 7 December 1941, the 'day that shall live in infamy,' as President Roosevelt said of it, 2403 American sailors, soldiers, marines, and civilians had been killed, and 1178 more wounded.
In Hawaii, nearly 150 planes had been destroyed on the ground, at least six battleships had been sunk or rendered non-operational.
Soon, American air assets in Manila would be destroyed. The Japanese would roll over the Malay Peninsula and take Singapore. Guam and other islands in the Pacific would fall.Hong Kong would be taken. The fate of Bataan and Corregidor would be told by the Death March and hellish prison camps. And more.
Much more.
Morrison, again, about December 8, 1941:
To millions of Americans, whether at breakfast in Hawaii, or reading the Sunday paper in the West, or sitting down to dinner in the East, this news of disaster after disaster, seemed fantastic, incredible. As the awful details poured in, hour after hour, incredulity turned to anger and an implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks.On 8 December, Congress with but one dissenting vote declared a state of war with Japan . . .
. President Roosevelt, in his war message . .
. declared, 'Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization'.
Yes, on December 7th and September 11th there were sneak attacks.Yes, each day was one of infamy. Yes, there were considerable losses of American (and other) lives. Yes, substantial symbols of American power—the Pacific Fleet, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—were destroyed.
Yes, Americans fought back at Pearl Harbor and on United 93. Yes, the news on those days was “fantastic, incredible.”
And yes, then, as now, “Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization.”
But with these comparisons, the picture changes.
In 1941, and for nearly four year after, we saw full mobilization of our great nation’s resources: military, economic, social, spiritual, political.Every sector of our society was engaged.
Men and women volunteered for the armed services.
Women went into factories.
Rationing was imposed.
Religious leaders prayed, and went into combat with their flocks.
Politicians joined hands, giving FDR what he needed to fight ruthless enemies.
Civilians willingly endured shortages and blackouts.
Kids (like me) collected newspapers, tin cans, used fat and grease—all for the war effort.
The radio, newspapers, and magazines supported the war effort, and exercised disciplined self-restraint about what they published.
Celebrities, who hadn’t enlisted, sold War Bonds and entertained the troops.
Images kept patriotic spirits high: Joe Rosenthal’s photo of the Iwo Jima flag raising; MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines; repatriation of emaciated POWs from Japanese prison camps; Patton, with his pearl-handle revolvers; the London blitz; the liberation of Paris. VE-Day.Then, VJ-Day. Times Square overflowing with joy.
And the man-in-the-street, and his wife, and his children, and all other Americans, knew that we were fighting Germany and Japan (and Italy) because, as FDR said, they posed a grave threat to “life, liberty and civilization.”
As do the radical Islamists who on 9/11 showed us a preview of their nihilism-driven corrupt religion’s vision for mankind, and who, before and since, have maimed and murdered thousands of innocent men, women, and children throughout the world.
But after President Bush’s rousing post – 9/11 speech to Congress and the American people, after flags flew everywhere for a few months, after passage of some useful but inadequate legislation, do we see within our country Morrison’s “implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks”?
Sadly, we do not.
Indeed, we see the opposite.
We see a narrow Supreme Court majority, infatuated with the romance of international law at the expense of American sovereignty, giving due process rights to terrorists, ignoring established precedent to nullify military tribunals, and treating irregular enemy combatants as if they were mere burglars to be dealt with by our domestic criminal law system.
We see international busybody organizations inspecting our detainee facility at Guantanamo, and solemnly pronouncing a verdict on our treatment of Islamic murderers who would make American citizens their next victims.
We see those murderers coddled—uninterrupted sleep, prayer time, outside recreation, nutritious food, health care—by a soft administration bent on mollifying these international busybodies and their domestic crybaby cousins.
We see America-hating organizations such as the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Center for Constitutional Rights enlisting thousands of lawyers whose task is to monkey-wrench the terrorist adjudicatory system, as if they were representing O.J.Simpson in a Los Angeles courtroom.
We see leading newspapers disclosing top secret defense information—surveillance, money tracing, secret interrogation facilities—not only with impunity, but to the cheers of America’s left and those in the world who would destroy us.
We see a mostly partisan Democrat Party—in Congress and at the National Committee—playing politics with laws essential to our national security.
We see a weakened Republican president proffering legislation for military tribunals that provides for terrorists process at once unnecessary and dangerous, only to be trumped by the likes of grandstanding Republican Senators McCain, Warner, and Graham, who, not content to provide Islamic murderers with all the due process enjoyed by domestic criminal defendants, want to provide them, as well, with classified information about “sources and methods.” We see this senatorial quartet also determined to prohibit the time-tested “good cop/bad cop” technique of interrogation, sleep deprivation, loud music, dietary manipulations— apparently believing that our military and CIA are dealing with some Chicago street gang, not savages out to destroy us and our way of life.
We see public officials acquiescing to the demands of homegrown Muslim organizations, in an effort not to offend—blinding themselves to that religion’s core belief in jihad, martyrdom, and its ultimate triumph.
We see in America, according to a nationwide Scripps Survey Research poll, that more than one-third of our countrymen suspect the government “assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East.” Worse, if that be possible, is that sixteen percent of those polled attribute collapse of the World Trade Center towers not to the jet planes hijacked by Islamic terrorists, but to agents of George W. Bush who somehow, clandestinely, blew up the buildings.
We see in our colleges and universities an inbred corps of fanatic intellectuals whose life’s purpose is to brainwash the young minds entrusted to their care into believing that the enlightenment, Western values, and the political philosophy that created and sustained our nation are all malevolent, and that Islam, the religion of nihilism and murder, is mankind’s true aspiration.
We, who at the Battle of the Bulge shot captured German troops wearing American uniforms and on Guadalcanal incinerated Japanese defenders with flame throwers, we who firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, we who dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, now send Senators to Washington who fight the president over “harsh” interrogation of terrorists who often have information that can save American lives.
We see the recruitment of radical Islamists in our prisons, aided and abetted by radical Islamic clergy— paid for by the American taxpayer.
We see politicians willing to turn over America’s national security, and perhaps the ultimate survival of our civilization, to unelected judges, responsible to no one, many of whom have been cloistered for so long that they lack an adequate understanding of the real world.
We see the much heralded publication of the Army Field Manual, providing Geneva Conventions protection barring “outrages against personal dignity” like “hooding,” forced nudity, and duct-taping eyes, to Islamic terrorists who behead, dismember, and disembowel captured Americans.
We see, in short, an utter, indeed a frightening, lack of understanding of the principles that animated our creation as the freest most successful nation ever to exist on this earth, principles that carried us through revolution, civil war, world wars, and a cold war.
We see that too many Americans have become ignorant and complacent, and thus broken the faith with those who fought at Yorktown, died at Gettysburg, survived the trenches, landed at Normandy, froze at Chosin, and were imprisoned in Hanoi.
We see our country in thrall to pernicious ideas that have sucked from us the understanding of what we face and the will to face it.
And time is running out.
Unless America wakes up fast—parents, clergy, intellectuals, workers, educators, veterans, celebrities, students—one day, perhaps sooner than later, we will look up and no longer see Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill.”
We will see a Mosque.
______________________________
Henry Mark Holzer, professor emeritus at Brooklyn Law School, can be contacted through his website,
Hamid Mir, a Pakistani, is the only journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, since 9/11.
On the fifth anniversary of the attacks, Mr. Mir was in Afghanistan again, this time to interview Abu Dawood, the new al Qaida field commander there.
Final preparations have been made for an American Hiroshima, Mr.Dawood told him, Mr. Mir said in an interview with Al Arabiya television last week. The attack or attacks will be led by Adnan El Shukrijumah, Mr.
Mir said.
Mr. El Shukrijumah was born in Saudi Arabia in 1975, but grew up in Brooklyn.He was a friend of 9/11 hijack leader Mohammed Atta, and is both a trained nuclear technician and a pilot. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $5 million for his capture.
When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the former al Qaida operations chief who planned the 9/11 attacks was captured in 2003, he reportedly told his interrogators that Mr.El Shukrijumah would be in charge of the next major attack on America.
When al Qaida spokesmen say a big attack is imminent, I take it with a grain of salt. They say that a lot, and I doubt very much that al Qaida has a nuclear bomb, though a dirty bomb (radioactive materials wrapped around a conventional explosive) is within their capabilities.
But I am sure that if Senate Democrats and a handful of renegade Republicans have their way, we will never learn the details of this or any other plot by interrogating captured al Qaida suspects. ...
First, I have some hope for minimal utility of the GC, but no faith in it. For as long as man has fought, he has butchered his enemies, and once the blood is up, it is very difficult to stop the slaughter upon arbitrary command. Perhaps the best book on the subject is Richard Holmes’ Acts of War, the Behavior of Men in Battle, Free Press, 1985.
Remember that British battles from Agincourt to Waterloo culminated in butchery of the beaten. I have always insisted that the only army never to have committed an atrocity is that army which has lost so consistently that it never had an opportunity. And at their first opportunity they will make up for lost time.
Still the GC may have some beneficent influence, so long as we are practical and keep to the proper context.
But let’s examine some of the specific issues invoked by Captain Ed and by Martin.
World War II in Europe.
Yes, Germany did treat its prisoners badly, but then, most countries did so. In Germany’s partial defense, I suggest that the decisive factors were identity of the prisoners and the period of the war. As German ideology was consciously racial, the race of the prisoner mattered.
Poles, Blacks, and particularly Jews had to expect gratuitous criminal treatment. British and non-Jewish, White Americans were at the top of the dung heap. The Germans were even capable on occasion, of acts of compassion.
In 1942 the British legless fighter ace, Douglas Bader was shot down over occupied France, leaving his prostheses behind in his aircraft. The Germans, sportingly, contacted the British and offered safe passage for a British aircraft to deliver a new set of artificial legs for Bader. The RAF did deliver the legs, but dropped them by parachute during the course of a regular bombing mission.
Later the Germans confiscated Bader’s legs when he used them to try to escape.
The Malmedy Massacre of December 1944 is a significant case. While it was a massacre, and clearly against the GC, it was also clearly motivated primarily by tactical considerations.
Peiper’s column was making a desperate drive deep into his enemy’s rear, and his entire operation would have been compromised by the necessity to secure and guard prisoners. It is analogous to the scene in the movie Band of Brothers. when the American paratroops kill their German prisoners, because they could not well secure them nor release them.
It is also the very same situation which led to Ariel Sharon’s massacre of several hundred Egyptian POWs at the Mitla Pass in 1956. The great distinction is that Peiper lost and Sharon won. Operational necessity must always trump ethical niceness.
Yes, British and American prisoners who tried to escape were sometimes executed. One of the standard rules is that to receive POW status, the captive must cease resisting and attempting to escape. Escape attempts leave him liable to penalties including shooting.
Later in the war, treatment for allied prisoners worsened, but that was partially the result of the generally worsening condition of Germany itself. Food was very scarce for the captors too. But even then, Western prisoners were treated better than Russians, and it is a regular observation in accounts by Western POWs that they noticed how much worse the Soviet prisoners seemed to be treated.
The Russians were a special case. First of all, the Soviets had never signed the GC, denouncing it as a bourgeois fraud. Then, according to Stalin’s military law surrender, for any reason, constituted treason and could be punished by death, and not only for the prisoner, but also for his family far in the rear.
When the Soviet prisoners were returned at the end of the Finnish War in March 1940, they were given a triumphant welcome home, with a parade down Nevsky prospekt, and out the other side of town to awaiting boxcars which hauled them all off to the GULAG. During the German War, there were some exemptions granted for those with special excuses, such as air crews shot down over enemy territory - but even then, it was only on an individual basis, and only after a long interrogation by SMERSh. At the end of the war several million returned Soviet POWs were punished as traitors, many shot out of hand, and the rest sent to labor camps where they remained until after Stalin’s death, and this does not include those prisoners who had collaborated.
The Soviets simply had disowned any of their own men who had been taken prisoner. In Late 1941 the Germans captured Artillery Captain Yakov Dzhugashvili, Stalin’s son by his first marriage. The Germans contacted Moscow through neutral Sweden, offering to exchange him for a German captive of equivalent rank.
Stalin dismissed the offer contemptuously, proclaiming I no longer have a son . The Soviets also began their own atrocity policy by executing captured Germans on the very first day of the invasion, before the Germans had time to intiiate their own genocide. One such individuaal was the German fighter ace Wolfgang Schellman, who was shot down on June 22,1941 and immediately executed by the Russians.
The war in Russia was a war between two hostile secular religions, and it is traditional that no quarter is given to the heretics in religious wars.
So a case can be made that the GC did help ameliorate the lot of Western prisoners (except for Jews and Blacks) during World War II. However, even here an important distinction must be considered.
British and Americans were treated better than prisoners from other countries, and this is probably a factor of the fact that American and the UK were in a position to retaliate for mistreatment, while France, Norway and other lands were not. The notorious parachutist order mentioned by Captain Ed is a case in point, which supports his position better thanhe realizes. The order was given by Hitler to execute allied parachutists.
While this order might have been interpreted to include aircrews, it was actually directed mainly at the OSS troops parachuting in to join the French Maquis. The critical factor was Eisenhower’s response; he warned that if the parachute order were observed, he would retaliate by executing equal numbers of German prisoners of equivalent ranks randomly selected from the POW cages in Britain. That would have been a clear violation of the GC rights of those innocent Germans, incapable of having commited any prior violations themselves, but it was still significant and successful.
and proper. Thus we see that the GC has meaning only when it is enforced by credible threat of enforcement by retaliation.
In the Far Eastern Theaters, there was no question of GC compliance by either side in WW II.
During the Korean War both the Korean and Chinese troops were operating under the influence of Stalin Rules, which were willing to grant nothing, while accepting whatever was offered. Thus there still remain unreturend and unaccounted-for Western prisoners from Korea, though the UNO forces treated its captives as humanely as possible. This summation is identical for the Viet Nam War.
We may argue whether this is a function of Communist ideology, or of a totally non-Western civilization, but that is just a detail. Either way, the record suggests that the GC is likely to prove completely irrelevant outside Western civilization. Treatment of each other’s prisoners by the Chinese and Vietnamese during 1979 is also reported to have been barbaric.
And the track record of Islamic treatment of their prisoners supports the notion that this also applies to the Middle East. And there is no positive evidence yet that either moral stance or threats are likely to have much influence. I predict the same paradigm will apply if we find ourselves engaged in serious operations in Subsaharan Africa; they’re just non-Western .
Concerning the exquisite, lingering sensitivity of John McCain to torture. He certainly suffered barbaric torture at the hands of his Vietnamese captors. It is a disgrace that no DRVN official has ever been brought to justice for their violations of the GC, including not only the torture of prisoners, but also the deliberate murder of thousands of civilians in the South.
But somehow that sensitivity does not seem to bother Straight-Talking Johnnie very much when it is to his political or financial benefit to canoodle a little with his former torturers for mutual benefit.
Captain Ed is wrong on a few details, but is right overall. And as I read it, he didn’t say the Germans routinely shot pilots in the Second World War , but rather that they committed atrocities from the beginning.
That is a misunderstanding both of what he said, and of the paratrooper order , (see above) which could have been avoided by maintaining composure.
The Geneva Conventions have not proven to provide any particular protection for American, or other Western, servicemen. The Convention works only when backed by force - not only the supposed force of impotent international law, but by the threat of credible retaliation.
While the optimal solution would be a credible declaration and act of law that we would extend GC rights only to opponents who reciprocate toward us and our allies, I fear our politicians would only use that as an excuse to weasel. perhaps if we were to dump the GC in Lake Geneva, we might move on to a more practical Doctrine of General Reciprocity ; the Iron Law instead of the Golden Rule.
Whether Captain Ed has a military background, I am uncertain, though I believe he has served in the US Navy.
But I do find it troubling when someone suggests silencing someone because his prior military service is not a matter of general public knowledge. By such a standard I would be able to pull rank and silence some guy with greater technical knowledge than me, because all his 22 years of service were spent in training exercises, relief and peacekeeping operations, and never in a real shooting war such as I have experienced. and I would be silenced by Old Dogs such as 1st Cav and Russ who were out at the very pointy end of the tip.
And they, in turn would have to hold their tongues in the presence of the combat dead who cannot speak at all. And Blacks could criticize only other Blacks and Women only other women (nekkid or not), and non-Americans would have no right to opinions about the USA.
And I am utterly contemptuous of allegations that by behaving thus, we would somehow sink to the terrorists' level.
In war or a street fight, it is the agressor who determines the rules of engagement. Churchill did not become Hitler because he authorized the burning of Hamburg. This is a facile sophism which would guarantee that he most ruthless and uncivilized would always win, appling a Gresham's Law to world history.
As someone who dislikes war genuinely and not only aesthetically, I believe that if the cause is at all worth fighting for, then it justifies doing whatever is necessary in order to win as decisively as possible. Otherwise, war becomes just a gross game, and that is the real crime.
The latest Henry Mark Holzer Memorandum.
Click to add your name to his mailing list.
September 15, 2006Put aside McCain’s domestic conduct:
JOHN McCAIN HAS FINALLY BROKEN THE CAMEL'S BACK
According to the Internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia, the idiom “The straw that broke the camel’s back” is, ironically, from “an Arab proverb about loading up a camel beyond its capacity to move.This is a reference to any process by which cataclysmic failure (a broken back) is achieved by a seemingly inconsequential addition (a single straw). This also gives rise to the phrase ‘the last straw,’ used when something is deemed to be the last in a line of unacceptable occurrences. A variation of this idiom is ‘the straw that broke the donkey's back’.
”
Unfortunately, John McCain—together with and his senate acolytes, among them Republicans Lindsey Graham and John Warner—is trying desperately to break the back of America’s struggle with Islamic terrorists . . .and getting closer with every piece of national security legislation he proposes.
At the risk of angering, even alienating, some of my Vietnam War POW friends, I want to make it clear that having suffered the agonies of Communist captivity does not give John McCain, or anyone else, a license to act in a manner inimical to the interests of the United States of America.
Yet that’s what John McCain has been doing for years.
• His part in the “Keating Five bank scandal, which cost countless bank depositors incalculable amounts of money, and some of them their life savings.”
• His partnership with leftwing Senator Russ Feingold to sponsor and enact a federal statute that has throttled free political speech in American election campaigns.
• His organizing the senate cabal euphemistically known as the “Gang of Fourteen,” which made him kingmaker and indispensable to the White House in its nomination of Supreme Court justices and other federal judges—thereby, in a single coup, weakening the President’s appointment power and enabling the senate to filibuster in violation of its constitutional duty to give judicial nominees up or down votes.
”
• His whitewash of poster-girl traitor Hanoi Jane Fonda, whom he characterized as merely a “confused young actress”—thereby insulting many of his POW brothers and others who suffered from her conduct, and further legitimizing her traitorous conduct on behalf of the Communists.
Despite these egregious wrongs, flowing from McCain’s self-absorbed political ambitions, I have tempered my criticism of him in the past out of respect for his ordeal in Hanoi, but mostly because of my affection and admiration for a mutual friend who shared McCain’s torment in that hellhole.
My attitude changed in 2005 when McCain engineered a near-unanimous senate vote to give “enemy combatants” (i.
e., Islamic terrorists) all the protections that the Geneva Convention reserves for prisoners of war, and to prohibit the obtaining of crucially important intelligence by “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
With that amendment, cravenly signed into law by the president, McCain crossed the line—paying lip service to political correctness, but more likely motivated by presidential aspirations.
At the time, The Wall Street Journal correctly observed that McCain’s do-gooder amendment necessarily revealed a flagging commitment to fight the War on Terrorism and assured terrorists that no harm would come to them when captured. That, in the newspaper’s words, the amendment would amount to “unilateral disarmament” in the War on Terrorism. That there was no principled reason for the Untied States not to reserve the ability to do whatever necessary to obtain intelligence necessary to protect our troops and our nation.
The reasons offered in 2005 by McCain and his politically correct colleagues and supporters to abjure cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment did not wash. They were specious, empty platitudes echoing mantras from the left.
But thanks to George W.
Bush’s signature, they have become law.
That’s bad enough.
But worse was the Supreme Court’s June 2006 decision in Hamdan v.
Rumsfeld, ordaining that the president’s structure of military tribunals to try Islamic terrorists was unconstitutional.
To accommodate the reading given that decision by government lawyers, and apparently to satisfy the domestic bleeding hearts and ephemeral international opinion, the president has now proposed new legislation.
Writing in FrontPageMagazine, Janet Levy correctly observes that the president’s proposed legislation “may provide greater protections for terrorist detainees than those extended to American servicemen who defend our country and fight to preserve our rights and freedom.
Bowing to a recent Supreme Court decision that outlawed Bush-created military commissions to try suspected al-Qaeda members, the Bush administration has now agreed to reject those commissions and follow standards of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Enemy combatants, including the alleged mastermind of 9/11, will enjoy the same rights under the law as legitimate prisoners of war.”
Andrew C.
MCarthy, a first-rate lawyer writing yesterday in National Review Online, noted that
“The president’s [now pending] Code for Military Commissions would vest jihadists—unlawful enemy combatants who scoff at the dignity of true soldiers and intentionally target civilians—with a plethora of rights: fair notice of the charges, counsel paid for by the American taxpayers they are trying to murder, the presumption of innocence (notwithstanding they were presumed guilty on the battlefield), lavish discovery of the prosecution’s case, and more.”
That’s bad enough.
But even the president’s abject capitulation to the do-gooders is not good enough for the do-gooder-in- chief, John McCain.
Oh no!
McCain and his camp followers, Graham and Warner— and doubtless others he will soon attract, including the just-saved Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and other Republicans—still aren’t satisfied. Why?
Because under the president’s scheme to accommodate Islamic terrorists, including assassins, beheaders, and other assorted manical killers like the 9/11 mastermind, the defendant—but not his lawyer—would be denied access to some sensitive national security evidence, probably what is called “sources and methods” information.
In sum:
McCain took the president to the cleaners with his 2005 torture amendment, perhaps even emboldening some Supreme Court justices to nullify Bush’s military tribunals in the Hamdan case.
Our country is being disarmed morally and militarily by five of those justices who have not the faintest idea what the real world is like, let alone what war is like, let alone what this war is like.
It is they—Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer—aloof in their ivory tower, who are responsible for the Hamdan decision (three of the five having been appointed by Republican presidents).
There were ways for the government to work around that decision, instead of capitulating to it in the name of popularity, international law and the Geneva Conventions.
Unwilling to leave bad enough alone, grandstanding McCain and his gaggle of sycophants are now trying to provide the murderers whom we are trying to kill all over the world with classified information, on pain of having the charges against them dismissed if there is nondisclosure.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed of 9/11 infamy has become Ken Lay of Enron fame.
Despite the Supreme Court, the president, and McCain and his followers, Islamic terrorists are not prisoners of war.
Nor are Islamic terrorists criminal defendants.
Islamic terrorists are . . .
Islamic terrorists. They are fanatical believers in the worst passages of the Koran. Their mission in life—and death!
—is to convert the infidel or, failing that, to kill him. Us. You and me!
And in that nihilistic mission of death worship, they are being aided and abetted by Americans, elected officials, representatives and senators, Republicans.
In the first sentence of Andrew McCarthy’s National Review Online article, he asks the question “Can the nation afford a President John McCain?” Andy doesn’t answer the question.
But I will.
The answer is “No.”
This nation can’t even afford a Senator John McCain.
Here's one from the Boston Herald that may be of interest, re left-right war debate:
Also, be sure not to be miss the latest addition to the annals of great Boston Globe corrections (George Washington probably didn't sleep here after all):
Best,
Thank you, Jules! Please do keep me on your mailing list.
Dear Friend,I finally understand why appeasement and the Phony War happened in the first place. I see it happening right before my eyes. Back in 1938 and 1939 the Western democracies simply did not have a stomach for a fight.
We’ve begun this conversation across the great rift that is dividing our country, as I’ve begun staking out my positions.It is a conversation full of suspicion, jibes and bitterness. It’s hard to avoid that when tensions are as high as they are, when there is so much at stake. But you asked if I dislike all Democrats or if I harbor a special dislike for one in particular.
I love men and women of all stripes that I’ve encountered -- Arabs, Persians, Europeans, Israelis, Indians, Paks, Armenians, Argentinians, Mexicans, Thais, Malays, military, civilian, right, left, center, religious and heathen. And yes, even Dems and the French. I have loved the time I’ve spent in the company of all of them.Some of them make it more challenging than others.
You ask if I really think we have enemies who want to kill us. I judge them by their words and their deeds....
For the next several days, ink splatters on newsprint, pixilated images wafting through the airwaves and burning brightly on millions of computer monitors will commemorate the emotional events of 9/11. As it is my nature to avoid crowds, I choose to focus on the America that existed on September 10, 2001.
In looking back, it is difficult to contemplate 9/10 outside the context of 9/11.While researching the headlines from our last days of innocence, I expected to find some significant contrast to the news stories of today. After 9/11 and nearly five years into the Global War on Terrorism, I instinctively felt that America had to be fundamentally changed, more focused, perhaps more mature. But, then again, perhaps not.
The following Chicago Tribune headlines from the thirty days leading to September 10th in both 2001 and 2006 tell the story.
2001 - “Immigration deal ‘must be fair,’ U.S.says White House will target lawbreakers.”
2006 – “Why this immigration rights march is brought to you by Miller.”
While the White House has maintained a ‘fair but tough” stance on illegal immigration, no new laws or enforcement of existing laws appears to be imminent.Meanwhile, illegal aliens have become the envy of many hapless sports franchises, by picking up corporate sponsorship from a major beer distributor. After a rough week crossing through arid deserts and swimming the Rio Grande, “It’s Miller Time.’”
“Well, the liberals still have not forgiven Bush for ‘stealing’ the 2000 election.Their hatred is so blinding that they still will imperil our national security in an attempt to undermine our chief executive.”
“Israel still can do no right. It has no right to defend itself.It has no right to exist.”
2001 - “U.S.citizens alerted about possible threat.” Richard Boucher declined to comment on whether the threat came from Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, wanted in the 1998 U.S.
Embassy attacks.
2006 – “Video shows Osama bin Laden meeting with September 11 plotters.”
“I’m waiting for the shrewd investigative reporter to announce that bin Laden has discovered a secret method of traversing the Space/Time continuum.How else does one explain that all headlines continue to report his activities of three to five years ago?”
2001 - “’Rumsfeld poised to dump 2-war strategy. New Goal: Defeat one enemy, repel a second.”
2006 - “Seeing through Rummy’s fantasy.”
“Strategy or fantasy? Have we defeated an enemy or repelled them?The same questions remain unanswered.”
2001 - “North Korea proposes to renew talks with South.”
2006 - “Soldiers exchange shots along border.South Korean soldiers fired back six rounds.”
“Where is the ACLU when you need it? How can anyone worry about nuclear programs at a time like this?”
2001 - “U.S., Israel abandon UN race summit; Powell denounces ‘hateful language’ in proclamation.”
2006 - UN Chief can’t sway Iran; Ahmadinejad and Kofi Annan meet Sunday in Teheran. Little progress was reported.”
“Still the model of diplomatic efficiency, this anti-Semitic gathering of third world tyrants do nothing more than legally evade millions of dollars in NYC parking fines.”
2001 - 9/10: Yankees lead Boston in the A.L. East by 13 games.
2006 - 9/9: Yankees lead Boston in the A.L. East by 9 games.
My research was intended to discover a naïve and narcissistic country five years ago. I am disheartened to admit that I only had to look at today to find it (so who is naive?).It is no wonder that we have not progressed. While we are engaged in a multi-front Global War on Terrorism, Americans at home are unaffected. There are no shortages, rationing, blackouts or shelters.
Instead, we are blessed with a strong economy and abundance as we smugly sit in our comfortable living rooms anxiously awaiting a new season of American Idol.
Except for the men and women of our military and their families and friends, there is no visible sign that America is in a struggle for its very survival. For most Americans, the biggest battle anticipated this weekend is between Peyton and Eli Manning.Are you ready for some football?
While others rightfully remember the atrocities of 9/11, we should be mindful of 9/10. Nothing has really changed.Isn’t it time?
Eric Bogomolny: What year is it? My calendar shows “2006”, but is it?A month ago I thought that it was September of 1939, and Poland (i. e. Israel) was already in the fight for her life, while England (i.
e. USA) was engaging in the Phony War. Back in 1939 the British did not bomb the German factories because they were private property.
Isn't it similar to the way we are trying to avoid civilian casualties now? For that matter, Israelis engage in the Phony War of their own, dropping leaflets before dropping bombs. If they are trying to destroy mobile rocket launchers, doesn't dropping of leaflets defeat the purpose?
Some people would say that the combat our troops engaged in over in Iraq and Afghanistan is hardly phony. The same was true for the combat of the Israeli troops in Lebanon a month ago. Indeed, the combat is very real, but the indecisiveness of both our and Israeli leadership creates a phony war situation.
Now I no longer think that we are in September of 1939. Instead, I think it is one year earlier, September of 1938. With that cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, a.k. a. “peace in our time”, we have just given away Sudetenland.
They were hoping against all evidence to the contrary that they somehow will avoid the war. The British intellectuals did not see any reason to fight the Nazis. The Left in Britain and France conducted propaganda for the Nazis, even after the war was declared.
And in this country there were and still are people who accused the Roosevelt administration in allowing the attack on Pearl-Harbor to happen in order to get America into the war. How eerily similar to the current situation! Many people now refuse to acknowledge the “gathering storm”, as Winston Churchill used to put it, and instead call those who see this gathering storm “war mongers”.
Winston Churchill was called that too. Yet few now question his foresight. So, why can't people see it now?
Is it the lack of knowledge and understanding of history? It's been said that “those who don't learn from their history are doomed to repeat it”. Certainly with the way history is taught in American public schools, there is a little wonder that we seem to repeat history.
My friend's son told me when he was attending high school that the entire World War 2 period was skipped in their course. Their teacher said that World War 2 did not influence life in America enough to study it. Can you believe that!
? Needless to say, that high school was in the ultra-leftist Santa Monica School District that is not in the teaching, but rather in the brain-washing, business.
So, if the government of Czechoslovakia did not have enough will to defend their country back in 1938, do Chamberlain and Daladier deserve any blame for what happened?
The answer is definitely yes. They, along with the rest of the Western world took seriously Hitler's claims about abuse of Sudeten Germans by Czechoslovakian authorities. By the way, isn't it amazing how similar it is to the Western media and many governments taking seriously all the fake allegations about Israeli abuses?
The Brits and the French back in 1938 discouraged the Czechs from fighting and encouraged them to give up. The democratically elected Czechoslovakian government was trying to maintain peace and good relationship with their allies – other democracies. They did not want help from the Soviets, who did offer it: there was no telling where the help from Stalin might lead to.
So, responsibility of the British and the French governments lies in their influence over the Czechs. Similarly, our government should not discourage the Israelis from fighting. We should be honest and open about our support for Israel, world opinion be damned.
We are not gaining any sympathies in “Arab Street” by giving in and getting the Israelis to give in. They just see it as a weakness and use it against us. Why isn't it obvious to people that negotiating with terrorists creates more terrorism?
And now Israelis agreed to Kofi Annan mediating the release of their soldiers. This is obviously a terrible mistake, but we bear partial responsibility for it because we did not openly tell the Olmert's government: “Look, you do what you have to do, and we'll back you diplomatically”. Olmert did botch the war by his indecisiveness, but our discouragement did not help either.
So, what does it leave us with? What year is it? 1938 or 1939?
I can't say with certainty. What I can say is that Churchill's “gathering storm” is upon us once again. It's impossible to predict where the first blow will strike.
Will it be an attack on Israel? Or will they go straight for us? Or, perhaps, will they strike both Israel and us simultaneously?
Just like almost 70 years ago, Russia is playing both sides, but this time motivated not by any particular ideology, but strictly by economic interests. Will the Russians be, ironically, “the capitalists that will sell the rope on which they will hang”? Will the Islamo-fascists make a mistake of attacking Russia, pushing it toward our side?
There have been enough attacks on Russia by Islamo-fascists, including the Beslan massacre of children, that should have brought the Russians to our side already. But apparently that was not enough. It will probably take a nuke in Moscow or St.
Petersburg for the Russian politicians to wake up and realize that their allies are still the same people who were their allies 65 years ago.
What can I do in order to help people wake up? What can I do in order to contribute to victory?
I am older now than my grandpa was in 1941. The US military will probably have no use for an out-of-shape 42 year old guy. I hope that whatever I do as an engineer, as well as writing these articles and participating in demonstrations in support of our troops, helps.
I hope I can contribute to victory even just a little bit. But now it is still a waiting game. So, I am sitting in front of my computer, surfing the web and asking: “What year is it?
”
[Webmaster's note: Please see first: , which inspired this post.]
For at least fifty years now ethnic identity has been at the head of the American agenda. African-American, Hispanic-American or Mexican-American, Asian-American, and gradually Jewish-American, Polish-, Italian-, Irish-, and other Hyphenated-Americans.
The rule is, we must never notice these differences, while remaining always carefully aware of them. We must remember which group is the group of the month and appreciate its unique contributions and specialness, while simultaneously denying that it is in any way different, or that its members can even be detected by appearance, accent, or name. More recently we have discovered Gay-Americans, and even deaf-mutes, and others with congenital disabilities are demanding to be treated as hyphenated minorities.
Even women. Women who are neither disabled nor in any sense a minority often demand their Hyphenated recognition. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the desire of everyone for a special identity, and to have it recognized, just so long as it does not become self-satirizing.
But what is an ethic group? It is not race or skin color, nor is it language, though these features may form a significant part of the formula. Essentially it is a uniquely defining background and shared experience which sets the members of the group apart.
Frequently a part of this experience involves being stigmatized. Essential is a sense of self-identity.
Gradually, I came to realize that I am a Veteran-American.
Am I kidding? Veterans as an ethnic group? How can that be, when they’re all sorts of colors, have all sorts of weird accents?
True. But there is something else. For over half a century, we have been singled out by society, and while once upon a time we were not a minority, but the majority, like the American Indian we have gone from being a majority to a minority in our own land.
Special bond and experience? Of course. Its called war, though even those who served in peacetime share the experiences of training and barracks life.
We have our own special language. Even if our language has dialects special to the World War, Korean, Viet Nam, and Gulf generations, we still understand each other as civilians cannot. We can understand military terms and make sense out of news reports as even the reporters cannot.
And we have an understanding of what war is all about, and what is at stake in politics. There is a mindset which seems to be peculiar to Veterans, characterized by greater sense of self-discipline, and duty, of attention to detail and thoroughness, more attention to old-timey virtues.
Like a number of the acknowledged minorities we have seen our members mistreated because of our identity.
And called ethnic names. Dago ? Nigger ?
Kike ? Use those names at your peril. But Babykiller , Warmonger , Fascist , they seem to be socially quite acceptable.
Veterans are scorned, both by society and by government. Government budgets for caring for wounded and disabled Veterans is always limited, but budgets for the needs of other, civilian ethnics always seem to be limitless. And what company would deny a contribution to an Aids project or to a Rainbow Coalition shakedown?
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