#1
I thought the democratization occurred in 1791. The Second Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791, as part of the first ten amendments comprising the Bill of Rights.--A fundamental freedom to prevent tyranny by an-out-of-control government and to protect the country from threats by foreign invaders.
[Dhaka Tribune] Hats off to our law enforcement agencies on another successful raid.
The killing of Gulshan attack criminal mastermind Tamim Chowdhury as well as two other hard boyz in a coordinated and precise operation is a major step towards rooting out militancy in the country.
The success of Operation Hit Strong 27, along with the July 26 raid on a Kallyanpur building, has shown that Bangladesh is taking the threat of terror very seriously, and our law enforcement agencies -- the counter-terrorism and transnational crime unit, RAB, and police -- are more than up to the challenging task of hitting back at terrorists.
This is tremendously reassuring for the public, and goes a long way toward restoring faith in our institutions.
Now, let us build on this success and truly put an end to terror and militancy in Bangladesh. As shown by Operation Hit Strong 27, we have the capability as well as the capacity to do so. All that is needed is the political will to take the battle to the terrorists.
It is a pity that Tamim, a Bangladeshi-Canadian, could not be captured alive, as it is possible that useful information could have been obtained from him. However, there is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened... there is good reason to believe there was no other recourse, and the shootout that ensued after law enforcement officials tried to enter the three-storey house necessitated the killing of Tamim and his two accomplices.
Outcomes of such raids are hardly ever perfect, but we have no reason to think more force was used than was needed in yesterday’s operation.
The entire nation was shaken after the horrific attack on Holey Artisan Bakery on July 1. Clinical and professional operations of this nature, then, are the need of the hour to root our hard boyz from our society, and to ensure the safety of the public.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/29/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
I'm hoping that someone is going through and reestablishing his actions and circle of acquaintances for all that time he was here in the West.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
08/29/2016 17:10 Comments ||
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h/t Instapundit
...We were coyly told that the little island of Ventotene off Naples was where, in 1941, a prisoner of Mussolini’s had written the visionary manifesto that looked forward to building, after the war, a "United States of Europe". What somehow got omitted was that Altiero Spinelli was a Communist (the Today programme merely described him on air as a "Fascist prisoner", although, lest this be misunderstood, that was edited out of their online report).
We were not told that Spinelli’s Ventotene Manifesto proposed that his future government of Europe should be quietly assembled by its supporters over many years; and that only when all its pieces were in place would those supporters summon a convention to draw up a "Constitution for Europe", which would finally reveal to the European people just what they had been up to.
#1
I am slowly working my way thru Churchill's The Second World War and if there's one thing I got out of the 1919 to 1936 time period is "No more war".
Maybe the empire-builders in Brussels co-opted that desire into making one big happy (EU) family.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/29/2016 13:18 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Yep. Plan for no war for a minimum of 10 years.
[PJ] No matter how extreme the future revelations of Julian Assange and others turn out to be, the truth about the Clinton Foundation is already clear. Whatever its original intentions, this supposed charity became a medium to leverage Hillary Clinton's position as secretary of State for personal enrichment and global control by the Clintons and their allies. We also now know--as the Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel made clear in her recent oped--why Hillary decided to hide all her emails on her "infamous server."
To my knowledge, nothing like this has ever been done in the history of the United States government. It calls to mind, if anything, the United Nations' scandalous Oil-for-Food program in which millions were siphoned off from a plan to feed Iraq's children during the war.
It could even be worse, because of the national security implications. The Clinton Foundation and the State Department were commingled to such an extent we may never know the truth, certainly not before the election since that same State Department has refused to release Hillary's official schedule before then.
This means, quite simply, that the United States of America has abandoned the rule of law. Maybe we did a while ago. In any case, we are now a banana republic--a rich and powerful one, at least temporarily, but still a banana republic.
The election of Hillary Clinton--our own Evita--will make the situation yet more grave. Consider something so basic as how you raise your children in a country where the president is most probably an indictable criminal and most certainly a serial liar of almost inexhaustible proportions. What do you tell them? What do their teachers tell them? A far cry from George Washington, isn't it? What does this say about our basic morality and how does that affect all aspects of our culture? The fish, as they say, rots from the top.
Equally importantly, what does our government do as further actionable information emerges as it inevitably will? The Department of Justice, as we have seen, is already corrupt, unable to indict those in power, indeed colluding with them aboard airplanes. The same personnel will undoubtedly be in place. Can we rely on congressional oversight for justice and/or a potential impeachment? What if the Democrats control the Senate?
In the far less serious Watergate era, Republicans like Howard Baker stood up against Nixon. Democrats, however, cling to power the way they accuse Republicans of clinging to their guns and religion and will no doubt avert their eyes, pretending, with their friends in the media, that nothing out of the norm is happening. But plenty is and will. Look to Sweden for the future of America. And with expanded entitlements and immigration, Syrian and otherwise, don't look for a Republican revival in 2020. Those days will be long over.
"A republic, if you can keep it," Benjamin Franklin reportedly said when emerging from the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Yes, it may be apocryphal, but so are many important statements that are true in concept.
Some very hard hitting and insightful comments follow the article.
#1
I guess we will have a ring-side seat whether we want to or not. At some point we may have to chose up sides whether we want to or not--much like a Civil War scenario. What surprises me is that there is not more widespread outrage across the country with the unvarnished corruption. The attitude is "I'm doing this, getting away with it, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it." The only varnish provided is that provided by the MSM. They spent a great deal of time covering up cat scat. My 95 year old mother-in-law, who grew up in Europe prior to WWII and a survivor of the Holocaust, said the present times feel a lot like pre-WWII Europe and the Nazi rise to power.
#3
Those in power often do not anticipate "unintended consequences." They tend to figure they have everything arm-chaired and under control whereas the reality is much different.
#5
It took four terrible Emperors to get Rome beyond the point of no return. Depending upon where you count we've still got a terrible President or two left after this election.
Of course Rome had more history and might have had a stronger foundation than the US so its hard to tell.
[Breitbart] NEW YORK CITY, New York -- Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who served for more than two years as the director of President Barack Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), leveled explosive charges against the President and his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an exclusive hour-long interview with Breitbart News Daily on Friday.
Specifically, during an exclusive interview about his book The Field of Fight, Flynn said that Obama and Clinton were not interested in hearing intelligence that did not fit their "happy talk" narrative about the Middle East. In fact, he alleged the administration actively scrubbed training manuals and purged from the military ranks any thinking about the concept of radical Islamism. Flynn argued that this effort by Obama, Clinton and others to reduce the intelligence community to gathering only facts that the senior administration officials wanted to hear--rather than what they needed to hear--helped the enemy fester and grow, while weakening the United States on the world stage.
"The administration has basically denied the fact that we have this problem with ’Radical Islamists,’" Flynn said during the interview. "And this is a very vicious, barbaric enemy and I recognize in the book that there is an alliance of countries that are dedicated basically against our way of life and they support different groups in the Islamic movement, principally the Islamic State and formerly Al Qaeda--although Al Qaeda still exists. The administration denied the fact that this even existed and then told those of us in the government to basically excise the phrase ’radical Islamism’ out of our entire culture, out of our training manuals, everything. That was a big argument I had internally and I talked a little bit about it in the Senate testimony that I gave two years back."
Later in the interview, Flynn was even more specific, calling out Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for not wanting to hear all the facts about what was happening in the Middle East--only some of them.
#4
I don't know who he voted for. None of my business. I can however say that, nothing I've seen that he has written or said appears to be anything but entirely accurate. Only my opinion of course.
Unfortunately, no one in our feckless congress seems capable or will to 'level explosive charges' against our Kenyan master and his regime.
[Nat Interest] The last two administrations have followed a bipartisan policy of constant war. Unfortunately, the consequences have been ugly: every intervention has laid the groundwork for more conflict.
Yet the architects of this failure claim that all would be well if only Washington had acted more often and more decisively. In their view, the problem is not that America goes to war, but that it doesn’t go to war nearly enough.
This approach is based on the belief that Washington is capable of solving every international problem. If only unnamed bright people implemented theoretically brilliant strategies backed by unidentified resolute citizens, terrorism would be suppressed, ISIS would be defeated, Russia would be compliant, Iraq would be successful, Syria would be peaceful, Libya would be united and China would be respectful.
Alas, our experience suggests that such people and policies don’t exist. Otherwise, why would recent military operations have turned out so badly? If the right conditions for success weren’t present in the last fifteen years, why should we expect them to occur in the next fifteen?
The biggest problem is the belief in immaculate intervention. More troops should have stayed longer, more bombs should have been dropped, and more no-fly zones should have been established. Advocates rarely bother to explain the practical requirements and consequences of those policies.
For instance, no intervention is more universally criticized by serious foreign policy analysts than the Iraq invasion. That war triggered widespread sectarian conflict; caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis; wrecked the historic Christian community; spawned Al Qaeda in Iraq, which morphed into ISIS; and empowered Iran.
The official neoconservative line, however, is that the war was a great success won by President George W. Bush. Victory was squandered by President Barack Obama, who withdrew U.S. forces.
Yet Bush, with troop levels at their highest, providing maximum leverage, was unable to win Iraqi consent to a status-of-forces agreement, essential for any U.S. garrison. Had Washington attempted to force Baghdad to accept continued occupation, U.S. troops would have been targeted by Shia extremists as well as Sunni terrorists.
The only way America could have blocked the rise of ISIS and ousted Iraq’s sectarian regime would have been to intervene militarily, with potentially disastrous consequences. There was no domestic support for such a course after the Bush administration’s earlier failed promises and unrealistic predictions.
Intervention in Libya, it is said, would have worked if only the West had intervened to nation build. Yet people the world over want to rule themselves. Having overthrown the Qaddafi government, victorious Libyan forces wouldn’t have welcomed a U.S. occupation force. There is no reason to believe the results of such an effort would have been any better than in Afghanistan or Iraq.
In Syria, contend committed interventionists, America should have acted against Bashar al-Assad. He would have been overthrown, the Syrian Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would have taken charge, and ISIS would never have emerged. It’s a great story, but overlooks the rise of sectarianism after America overthrew Iraq’s secular dictator. Defenestrating Assad would have merely triggered the next stage of a bitter struggle for control.
Nor was there domestic U.S. support for greater involvement: opposition to air strikes was overwhelming when the administration tossed the issue to Congress. Belief that halfhearted involvement would have led to swift victory by so-called moderate insurgents ignored the latter’s consistently disappointing experience.
In Afghanistan, a continued U.S. military presence is supposed to allow the Kabul government to create a stable, efficient, honest democracy in Central Asia. Yet the Afghan authorities are losing ground after fifteen years, despite support from tens of thousands of allied military personnel and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars. Keeping a few thousand combat personnel on station will only slow the collapse of a government known mostly for corruption and incompetence.
#1
Kinder and gentler are the recipes for perpetual war. Sherman is correct - War is hell. Don't hide the fact. Avoid if at all possible, but if not make sure the people on the other side experience that hell, if for no other reason to deter those who might want to play the game.
[Daily Caller] Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis warned the next U.S. president against engaging in isolationism, explaining that maintaining a role in the chaotic Middle East is the only way to fight terrorism.
The Middle East is currently "experiencing the most turmoil since the end of the Ottoman Empire -- that’s the World War I time frame -- and it’s getting worse," said the 40-year Marine Corps veteran, while speaking at Washington State University Tuesday. "At the same time, U.S. influence in the region is at its lowest ebb in 40 years."
Mattis said that while military experience isn’t necessarily required for the presidency, it is crucial that whoever occupies the White House is able to resist America's "always present appetite for isolationism."
If anyone is familiar with the Middle East's problems, it is Mattis. The retired general spent 40 years in the Marines, much of that in the Middle East itself. Mattis' hardened, yet sober, view on the region would eventually earn him the top job at U.S. Central Command.
#2
Is this the one and same James ""I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you all"-Mattis? He was sacked in a very chicken $hit manner by the WH; they sent him an unexpected note (no face-to-face) from left field. Apparently he pissed off the civilian warfighters (sarc)contingency, Susan Rice, etc. This was a part of the purge by Obean.
#3
Mattis said that while military experience isn’t necessarily required for the presidency, it is crucial that whoever occupies the White House is able to resist America's "always present appetite for isolationism."
The general seems to forget the principle of war known as 'economy of force'. We no longer have a million man Army to spread around the world. You have to pick your fights and not let others pick them for you. To paraphrase Fredrick the Great - he who defends everything, defends nothing.
#4
Although I respect the General, I really don't understand his message here.
In the caffeine induced clarity of this Monday morning...even I realize that we (Obama and Bush) lost this war. We can't jump back in at this point and win it with more "influence", advisers, or strategic air power.
However, we can take time, learn our lessons, rebuild a military and intel capability that can win wars in the ME as well as confront and contain the strategic threats...to include our first priority - stopping the clear and present illegal narcotics danger flowing across our southern border.
We are not there either in capability or national will. No need to rush back in to the ME at this point. We have fish to fry closer to home.
#5
Middle eastern conflicts should be viewed through the lens of hundreds, possibly thousands of years of history. Let them continue to slug it out. If they get out of their lanes, push them back in. The entire region [less Israel] isn't worth a pale of camel piss.
Part and parcel of that Alt-Right CRAZY CAT LADY meme is advertising scientific studies about the fact that hormonal birth control makes women act and smell different — act less sexy — during the most fertile days of their monthly cycle.
Making this study popular study is a huge indictment of feminism in general and first-generation feminists in particular. It is intended as such. Such offensive but hard-truth lines are intended as an opening move of a seduction routine for career women on the “cat lady track”.
That Hillary as a “first generation feminist” is parroted by Milo Yiannopoulos in a Presidential-candidate address citing that birth-control study shows that the Alt-Right is living in Hillary’s head rent-free.
It was Hillary’s Megyn Kelly moment.
That Trump, who Hillary accuses of being Alt-Right, recognizes that point goes without saying.
Trump is going to use this “Hillary the CRAZY CAT LADY” meme for all that is worth between now and election day.
#1
But she has no cats. There is no room in her life for cats. She is a power-hungry narcissist with a sense of entitlement like Obama. The meme will have to be changed to CRAZY FAT LADY.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Nat Interest] The last two administrations have followed a bipartisan policy of constant war. Unfortunately, the consequences have been ugly: every intervention has laid the groundwork for more conflict.
