Category Archives: Iraq

Trump To Military: ‘The Democrats Don’t Want To Fight For The Border Of Our Country’

Democrats, Donald Trump, Homeland Security, Iraq, Military, War

Truer words were never said by an American president to American troops:

“You’re fighting for borders in other countries, and they don’t want to fight, the Democrats, for the border of our country.”

That was President Donald Trump to the men STILL in Iraq.

Naturally, there was no coverage of the December 2019, presidential visit to Iraq.

Also of interest:

… the highly educated officer corps dislikes Mr Trump, while 47% of the enlisted ranks, largely without college degrees, back him. But as the military services draw from an ever-narrower demographic pool—southern recruitment has soared over the past 40 years, while that from the north-east has plummeted—its attitudes could grow more unrepresentative.

MORE.

Why President Trump Has Struggled To Interest Voters In Ending America’s Futile Wars

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Middle East, War

“The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost most Americans nothing.” says The Economist. Relatively few Americans have been personally touched. “That is why they continue.”

For once, the left-liberal magazine credits President Trump for trying to bring an end to what are “unproductive conflicts” [to put it mildly].

… [the] country has been remarkably unscathed by two decades at war. Iraq and Afghanistan vets represent much less than 1% of the population. America lost eight times as many soldiers in Vietnam, in less than half the time, when its population was two-thirds the current size. The number of recent wounded is correspondingly modest and most have been looked after with immense skill and no expense spared, as is right. Otherwise, few Americans have been touched by the conflicts at all.
… the wars have been funded by debt. Most Americans have had little reason to think their country is even at war. And lucky them because war is hell. But this disconnect helps explain why the country’s civil-military relations are as distant as they are. It also helps explain how America came to be locked in such long and largely unproductive conflicts in the first place. Its voters started to reckon with the rights and wrongs of the Vietnam war—then demand accountability for it—only after they felt its sting. By contrast Donald Trump, who almost alone among national politicians decries the latest conflicts, has struggled to interest voters in them—or indeed end them.

Though mostly wrong on the details, the president raises an important question of the long wars. What have they achieved? After thanking Mr Butler and Mr Dwyer for their service on Veterans Day (a ritual neither wounded man greatly enjoys, incidentally), their well-wishers might want to ponder that.?

MORE.

* Image courtesy The Economist.

NEW COLUMN: Mueller And Mohamad Atta: Fake Intel Runs Through Prague, Part 1

Democrats, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iraq, Republicans, Russia, THE ELITES, The Establishment

NEW COLUMN is “Mueller & Mohamad Atta: Fake Intel Runs Through Prague, Part 1.” It’s now on WND.COM and The Unz Review (longer version).

And excerpt:

No, the moral of the Mueller inquisition is not that the Left is incorrigibly corrupt and morally and intellectually bankrupt, although this is certainly true.

And, no. It’s not that the Republicans are meek, more eager for swamp-creature tenure than to save the country. However much state power flaccid Republicans capture, they quickly come to heel when Democrats crack the whip.

The moral of the Mueller inquisition, at least one of them, concerns the alphabet soup of acronyms that stands for the Permanent Security State—FBI, DOJ, DIA, DHS, CIA, NSA, on and on. That this intractable apparatus’ impetus is liberal is hardly new. What is counterintuitive to many is that the Permanent Security State’s modus operandi comports perfectly well with both Republican and Democratic administrations, alike.

When it comes to subverting an “America First,” sovereignty-centered, populist platform—the duopoly acts as one. Have not fans of Mr.  Mueller kept reminding us that the man is a loyal Republican? And he is—Mueller’s a Republican stalwart of the managerial class. (By the way, Mueller fans can find “Mr. Mueller-face earrings and Mueller devotional candles on Etsy, the e-commerce equivalent of a hippie grandmother’s attic.”)

To make sense of the Russia Monomania and the Mueller time we all served, it is essential to grasp the anatomy of American state power.

In particular, to comprehend the mass hysteria that is the war on Trump, it’s crucial to trace the contours of that other war, “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” and the way it was peddled to the American public.

The manufacturing of Fake News by the Deep State, circa 2017, is of a piece with the anatomy of the ramp-up to war in Iraq, in 2003. Except that back then, Republicans, joined by many a diabolical Democrat like Hillary Clinton, were the ones who dreamt up Homer Simpson’s Third Dimension in Iraq.

Fact: The Steel Dossier, which launched the Mueller inquisition, was as fantastical a fabrication as were the documents that fed the Bush administration’s will to war.

As it is, intelligence report-writing is more art than science; more flare than fact. It’s executed by many of the same, tinny, dogmatic, ex-CIA feminists whom we see plonked in CNN studios, ponderously pontificating about Our Russian Enemy.

From the CIA to CNN, the youthful talking heads (and their shapely keisters) have only ever gone from a swivel chair at the Langley headquarters to a seat in a CNN studio, in New York City.

It’s not at all unfair to conclude that the “intelligence” these cartoon characters produced as CIA or FBI agents is as intelligent as their commentary in the TV studio.

PRAGUE AGAIN?

Did no one but this writer have PTSD-related flashbacks when Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, was floated during the Mueller madness?

During his testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, the bewildered Michael Cohen—a tragic figure, really—was asked in all seriousness whether he had liaised with “Kremlin officials” in Prague. “I’ve never been to the Czech Republic,” Cohen shot back.

Curiously, Prague is umbilically linked to another notorious intelligence hoax. …

... READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Mueller & Mohamad Atta: Fake Intel Runs Through Prague, Part 1.” It’s now on WND.COM and The Unz Review (longer version).

UPDATED V (2/27019): A Pair Of Motor-Mouth Faux Conservatives: Explaining What Makes Ben Shapiro & Meghan McCain ‘Crass Pragmatists’

Foreign Policy, Individual Rights, Iraq, John McCain, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Neoconservatism

On WND.com, the new column is “A Pair of Motor-Mouth Faux Conservatives.” On the Unz Review, it’s “What Makes Ben Shapiro & Meghan McCain Crass Pragmatists.”

An excerpt:

Ben Shapiro is an anti-Trumper, who continues to assert baselessly that “the future of the Republican party is anti-Trump.”

Fox News, generally pro-POTUS, persists in exposing Deplorables to Shapiro’s twitter travails and spats with a left that, in turn, doesn’t know left from right—for Ben is no rightist; he’s a neoconservative media-pleaser.

In this farcical tradition, Ben was asked to comment on the election of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, whom Rush Limbaugh—he knows a thing or two—calls the female Barack Obama.

Since winning the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th congressional district, Cortez, a hard-core socialist, has been the toast of the town.

True to type, Shapiro failed to come up with one principled argument against Cortez’ socialism. All that came through was:

“It doesn’t work.” Socialism doesn’t work.

Not a word did wonder boy utter about the very crux of the matter. The rights-violating underpinnings of socialism is what makes socialism and its attendant political platform both an economic wrecking ball and plain wicked.

Another popular fount of conservative philosophy is Meghan McCain. She’s as conservative as her father, John McCain, from whom she got a dynastic leg-up in the menagerie of morons that is mainstream media.

On “The View,” a very vulgar program, Meghan made a similar non-case to the one mouthed by motor-mouth Shapiro:

“Name one country that socialism has ever worked” (sic) she blurted. (Translated: “Name a country where socialism has worked.”)

In her defense, we should say that everyone knows Meghan is no Michael Oakeshott. The problem being that Ben is considered the very embodiment of Russell Kirk, a classical conservative, and the intellectual father of American conservatism, may it rest in peace. …

… READ THE REST.  On WND.com, the new column is “A Pair of Motor-Mouth Faux Conservatives.” On the Unz Review, it’s “What Makes Ben Shapiro & Meghan McCain Crass Pragmatists?”

Whatever floats your boat.

UPDATE: In “The historical revisionists,” Vox Day upbraids “Ben Shapiro for trying to speech police Pat Buchanan for telling the truth about American history.”

Also via Vox Day:

Because Shapiro is an evil little fraud. He’s terrified of debate with anyone who isn’t a left-wing halfwit. He’s a midwit, a gatekeeper, and a media construct who has been relentlessly pushed on American conservatives since he was in junior high. Any Christian or conservative who considers himself a Shapiro fan is a naive fool who has been taken in by the propaganda program. The same thing goes for Jordan Peterson.

These heavily promoted wormtongues do not speak the truth, they do not believe what their fans think they believe, and their objectives are to protect evil by distracting and confusing those who would otherwise stand against it. William F. Buckley. Glenn Beck. Ben Shapiro. Jordan Peterson…. when are conservatives going to stop falling for these obvious frauds?

UPDATE I (7/30): Fox News’ “The Story” discusses socialism. The debate is purely pragmatic (cost analysis); no mention of principles, namely the infraction of individual rights involved.

UPDATE II: Another cost analysis by Guy Benson. Rights? What’s that? 

“Brutal: Examining Ocasio-Cortez’s Painful Answer on Funding Her Socialist Utopia.”

UPDATE III (8/12): A Primer on Israel Firster Ben Shapiro:

Ben Shapiro: Alt-Left/Big Con Celebrity Extraordinaire” By Jack Kerwick

UPDATE IV (8/15/018):
Evil Twin:

UPDATE V (2/27019): Reparations argumentation a la Ben.

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