Those five Taliban? Why, they’re just pussycats…

The New Neo Posted on by

…according to the LA Times.

They’re really moderates, you see. And they’re old, very very old (43-47).

All that shouting and cheering you hear from the Taliban in Afghanistan at their release? They’re just happy to see that the old guys will get a little breath of freedom before they’re put out to pasture.

We also know that being in prison for twelve years usually cures people of whatever hatred ails them. That’s true of most prisoners who are in for violent crimes, and for jihadis. Especially for jihadis, actually, whose worldviews are so brittle they’re among the easiest to “turn.”

The LA Times also has a bridge in Brooklyn it wants to sell you. One in San Francisco too, orange-colored. Actually, many many bridges, all going very cheap. You can pay in three easy installments, and they will throw in a blender…

But enough silly-fun. No matter how low you think the press has become, you have to adjust your opinion of them still lower. A couple of days has given them a chance to regroup and find their bearings after being thrown by Obama’s egregious and outrageous prisoner swap, and the narrative is emerging: Bergdahl is an unfairly maligned soldier who served with honor. He was a prisoner of war in Afghanistan. Republicans favored the trade Obama was to make before they criticized it. Their criticism reflects their hatred of the president and their reflexive disapproval of everything he does. And the Taliban Five are just kindly old grandpas.

[NOTE: Thomas Joscelyn at the Weekly Standard applies a corrective to the LA Times’ article:

All five of the released Taliban leaders were deemed “high” risks to the U.S., its interests, and its allies by Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO). President Obama’s own Guantanamo Review Task Force evaluated the five and concluded that they should be held indefinitely under the laws of war. There was bipartisan resistance in Washington, including from leading Senate Democrats, to releasing the five, because of the dangers they pose. There was also significant opposition within the U.S. military and intelligence community to releasing them. Tellingly, these are the five jihadist leaders the Taliban wanted back the most and the Taliban celebrated their release, saying that the release of its “five senior leaders” from U.S. custody brought “tears of joy.”

Read the whole thing, and realize just how debased the Times has become. There is literally nothing they will not say to defend Obama.

Also, it appears that the article was written mainly by two stringers, “Times staff writer Bengali reported from Mumbai, India, and special correspondent Baktash from Kabul.” “Baktash” appears to be Hashmat Baktash, who’s been writing for the Times since 2010. I can’t find out much more about Baktash (those of you who are members of LinkedIn probably can), but he seems to have graduated from high school in 2004, which would probably make him about 28 now, and 16 years old when the Taliban Five were first incarcerated in Guantanamo. I’ve noticed a tendency for MSM newspapers to use a lot of stringers and young people in their reporting, which I’m sure saves them money.]

[ADDENDUM: Scott Johnson at Powerline points out a New York Post article detailing Obama’s plans to use the idea that Gitmo prisoners have “reformed” in order to justify their releases:

One al Qaeda suspect captured in Afghanistan is considered reformed because he took up yoga and read a biography of the Dalai Lama. Another is eligible for release because of his “positive attitude.”

And one longtime detainee, a former bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, is now harmless because he’s going to start a “milk and honey farm.”

The Periodic Review Board already helped clear 78 of the remaining 149 prisoners for release, documents show, and has scheduled more hearings for this summer.

It is no surprise to learn that these plans are in the works. I would expect nothing less of Obama.]

[ADDENDUM II: Thinking about it, I have a gut feeling that this “the prisoners are virtually harmless” approach could be effective if the MSM gets behind it. And indications are that the MSM will get behind it.

I watched how Benghazi was defanged in various ways, and that was very effective. If these five guys don’t march into Times Square and detonate an atom bomb, the evil they do will occur far away and not be directly or immediately connected to anything here, sort of like Vietnam after our withdrawal of funds in the mid-70s. Out of sight, out of mind.

If more military personnel are kidnapped (and they may not be), Obama can just exchange more Gitmo prisoners for the hostages. Gitmo has been so demonized that many people will applaud its closing. A great many people in the US are so tired of hearing about war and terrorists that they’ll be only too happy to get them off the front page. Unless something big happens here again, which the terrorists may be too smart to try, the US would really like to be a giant that just goes back to sleep.

Apologies for my pessimism. I hope I’m wrong.]

Top dog?

The New Neo Posted on by

Britain’s biggest, anyway:

bigdog

Okay, okay, there’s a bit of a trick angle there to accentuate Freddy’s gargantuousity (and yeah, I know it’s not a real word). But here’s one that isn’t a trick, and he’s still plenty big:

bigdog2

Great Danes don’t tend to live all that long, by the way. But long enough to eat their owners out of house and home.

And to all you dog-lovers: don’t attack me, I like dogs.

I guess “plus size” now means positive integers rather than zero or negative ones

The New Neo Posted on by

“Curvy” models unite, you have nothing to lose [emphasis mine]:

Inga Eiriksdottir began modeling in her native Iceland when she was just 14 years old. But as her body changed, the modeling industry didn’t change along with her. Although she had appeared in campaigns for brands like Dolce & Gabbana and Max Mara and had worked with esteemed fashion photographers including Patrick Demarchelier and Steven Meisel, her agency, Ford Models, switched her over to its plus-size division when she was 21 years old. The 5’10” Eiriksdottir was a size 6 at the time…

For those of you guys who don’t know what a size 6 is, it’s very very tiny. And to be a size 6 at a height of 5’10” is to be a really skinny person.

I assume Eiriksdottir (LOVE those Icelandic names!) is now a bit bigger than a 6. But only a bit. She’s 30 now, and here’s a more recent pic of the barely-zaftig Inga:

inga

And here’s a video of another plus-size model, who’s not exactly going to break any chairs when she sits down. Who says I don’t give you some cheesecake now and then?

Personally, I think part of the current rise of the plus-size model has to do with the success of the TV show “Mad Men” and its un-thin star (I refuse to call her fat, because she’s not) Christina Hendricks.

They were for Bergdahl before they were against him: those terrible GOP flip-floppers

The New Neo Posted on by

Expect to read a lot more articles like this one in your friendly neighborhood MSM, entitled “The Bergdahl boomerang: GOP lawmakers who long urged a rescue now sour on the idea.”

The article isn’t quite as lopsided as the headline would suggest. For example, it has a few passages that take into account the fact that the actual Bergdahl deal featured some circumstances the GOP hadn’t bargained for, and that some Democrats are upset and changed their minds too. But the piece is obviously meant to stir readers who are Democrat loyals to have sentiments exactly like this one in the comments section, first in line when I happened to look just now: “It’s the same old story; the GOP supports something until Obama does it, then they oppose it.”

This is the line that the MSM has agreed would work best as an approach to the Bergdahl release, that and the one that goes something like “Republicans are attacking a soldier, so they’re hypocrites when they say they care about the military.”

When the Bergdahl deal first broke, the MSM was as blindsided as everyone else and their first reactions were more honest and more critical of the administration. Oops! Now that they’ve had time to stop, digest, regroup, confer, and get their talking points straight, they’re more united on the themes they think will be most effective in deflecting criticism from Obama and reflect most poorly on Republicans.

I don’t think most of you need reminding, but these are just some of the things that changed between the time politicans were supporting some sort of deal for Bergdahl and the time the details of the actual deal came out:

(1) Much more about Bergdahl’s desertion (not to say possible defection) has come out, proving that he walked away willingly, and knowingly put his comrades at risk in searching for him.

(2) The identities of the prisoners in the exchange, five of the worst detainees at Gitmo, if not the worst.

(3) The security arrangements for those prisoners after their release—that is, practically none, or laughable ones.

(4) Obama’s flouting of the laws that govern notice to Congress when releasing Guantanamo prisoners.

(5) Obama’s ignoring the counsel of military and intelligence experts on the dangers of this move.

Have I left anything out? It’s as though a person has agreed that getting a nice new car would be awfully nice, and then when the car is delivered he discovers that (a) it’s a lemon, and the seller knew it’s a lemon; (b) it has a bomb attached to it that will go off when the ignition is started; and (c) he will have to pay the seller a billion dollars. The person receiving the car might even respond by flip-flopping and say hey, wait a minute, I don’t really want that car after all, if that’s the deal I have to accept to get it.

But it would be too late; the deed was done without consulting him. And then it’s time to call him a hypocrite.

Catholic priests and sexual abuse rates

The New Neo Posted on by

Let me make this clear at the outset: one case of child sexual abuse by a Catholic priest would be one too many. Priests and all other clergy are in a very special position of both trust and power that makes the betrayal of children under their wing especially heinous.

However, there’s nothing special about the Catholic clergy in terms of their incidence of abuse, at least so far as we can tell. Perhaps the most special thing is that people can blame whatever abuse has occurred by priests on their vows of celibacy, although if it’s correct that rates of abuse by Catholic clergy versus rates of abuse by clergy of other denominations do not differ, then it’s illogical to think that celibacy has anything to do with the phenomenon among priests. What might be most “special” about the Catholic Church versus others is that the Catholic hierarchy is more obvious and attempts to deal with abuse have been more visible.

If you don’t believe me about the statistics, take a good look at this, this, this, this, and this.

You can find tons more articles in that same vein. But I have yet to see a single one that offers any evidence to the contrary, although I can’t say I’ve spent countless hours researching this. And yet, “everybody knows” that priests have an especially high rate of abuse, right?

The rogue Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

Having observed Obama just about every day now for at least six years, I’ve come to some firm conclusions. And here’s a quote with which I concur [hat tip: Artfldgr]:

But to Obama and his core supporters, he’s not a rogue. To them, he’s a principled man achieving what he set out to achieve. It’s all about ends and means. Not all ends are worth all means in the radical’s book, but some ends are worth any means to achieve them. From the day that Obama sought his first public office in the Illinois Senate, representing that sliver of east Cook County bordering Indiana, through his carefully planned Senate campaign, to his presidency, his means are fluid, but his ends are unshakeable.

Radical leftists don’t give thought to what the “enemy” thinks about what they say (Rule #12). They only think about what those they wish to convince to their cause believe…

Obama ignores public opinion polls for the most part. Unlike previous Democrat presidents like Bill Clinton, he has no desire to be liked. The adoration of his core supporters means power to him, people who will do what he needs done. Personal loyalty is earned by commitment to the cause, and that loyalty is just as easily lost.

That coldness about other people, the viewing of them as merely a means to an end, useful or not useful for his purposes, is one of Obama’s most salient characteristics. In fact, it was clearly present in his very first political act at the beginning of his very first political campaign at the local Chicago level, the behavior that should have given everyone the willies but somehow didn’t: his treatment of Alice Palmer. Jokes about Obama’s throwing people under the bus aren’t really all that funny, because of what they imply about his ruthlessness. That’s why it’s always puzzled me that people perceive him as affable or likeable. It’s an impression I’ve never gotten, and that’s on a visceral level (boy, I’ve been using that word “visceral” a lot lately) as well as an intellectual one.

What are Obama’s purposes? His own self-aggrandizement, for one, but he’s so convinced of his marvelousness that, as the quote indicates, he doesn’t really need people to love him or even like him. He has plenty who adore him, and he adores himself. What he needs is power for its own sake, plus power in the service of the leftist agenda which he definitely espouses. That agenda is composed of, but hardly limited to: reducing America’s status and power in the world, helping third-world countries gain more power (including, if necessary, Islamist fundamentalist third-world countries), making people in this country more dependent on big government and therefore on the Democratic Party, taking from the rich to give to the poor. His favorite tactics include Alinsky’s rules, harming his opponents, smearing his opponents, lying, fostering envy and hatred between races and classes, and expanding executive power to get around limitations placed on him by the Constitution. This is what makes him seem “rogue” at this point to a lot of people, but he’s only “rogue” if you look at him in terms of conventional presidents. If you look at him in terms of tyrants, he’s not rogue at all.

[NOTE: The word “rogue” has two general meanings. The first is a person who is dishonest or immoral. I guess Obama fits that bill. The second meaning is a person “who causes trouble in a playful way.” I see nothing playful about Obama, although I suppose he’s “playful” in the sense of playing the long game.]

[NOTE II: This is slightly off-topic, but it’s a good article about something I’ve written on many times in the last few years, the makeup and background of Obama’s security advisors, who are politically-oriented PR hacks.]

The Obama administration…

The New Neo Posted on by

…pisses on Democrats in Congress and tells them it’s raining:

But the administration had a way to go to placate Democrats, some of whom said senators were not soothed on Tuesday by an appearance by Dennis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, at a private weekly party lunch. Mr. McDonough, people familiar with the meeting said, told lawmakers that the administration had been in touch with officials on Capitol Hill before the prisoner exchange, when nearly all of those in the luncheon had not been consulted, including Ms. Feinstein…

I think one of the worst defenses the White House has tried out is that they didn’t trust Congress not to leak, and the Taliban had threatened to kill Bergdahl if the information got out. And yet these were the same Congressional leaders whom they had told about the Bin Laden operation months in advance.

The lie is so transparent it is absurd (why would the Taliban care?), and it is profoundly insulting to Congress, including prominent members of Obama’s own party. Nor does it explain why Obama couldn’t have given them a heads-up a few minutes before he made his announcement, at the very least.

The reason they were not told is crystal clear: they would have objected vociferously, and Obama couldn’t risk that.

I was wondering…

The New Neo Posted on by

…whether anyone who served with Bergdahl in Afghanistan is defending him.

The answer appears to be “no”:

To date, not a single member of Bergdahl’s platoon has come forward to say that he was a loyal solider who was captured while he was doing his duties.

I bet they’ll manage to find one and trot him/her out, though. And somehow that will invalidate the unanimity of the others.

[NOTE: Here’s a pretty good summary of the Bergdahl incident so far.]

The Bergdahl exchange defense emerges

The New Neo Posted on by

The best defense is a good offense, and after a couple of days of initial scrambling the administration and its defenders have fastened on their approach to defending Obama on Bergdahl.

It consists of the following:

(1) Trying various lies on for size: we did it for this reason; no, we did it for this reason; well, actually, it was for this reason…

(2) How dare you slander/libel Bergdahl this way, a brave fighting man who has suffered greatly? You must hate our troops, unlike President Obama.

(3) Those who served with Bergdahl and are criticizing him are “swiftboating” him unfairly, just as the Swift Vets did to Kerry (who is now Secretary of State, by the way, in an interesting historical harmony). This charge of “swiftboating” has the effect of simultaneously dissing Bergdahl’s former colleagues in the military and Kerry’s as liars.

(4) You are flip-floppers! Why, some of you have changed your minds! This ignores the fact that a person could have been in favor of a Bergdahl rescue deal without being the least bit in favor of this Bergdahl rescue deal, so much worse than anyone previously had contemplated.

(5) There’s plenty of precedent for exchanging prisoners of war, and that’s all this was. This ignores the fact that there is absolutely no precedent for giving up five enemy combatant prisoners of this magnitude to obtain a hostage—not a prisoner-of-war—who went AWOL, deserted, or defected voluntarily to the enemy. Especially when hostilities are still ongoing.

The sad thing, the very sad thing, is that these sorts of approaches have worked in the past, and they may work now.

D-day: 70 years

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following is a repeat of a previous post from the 65th anniversary of D-day. I have added some new commentary in brackets to update.]

Today is the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the Normandy landings in WWII. Here’s a video with a few grainy clips of the Allies wading ashore:

I wonder how many people under forty, either here or in Europe, now know or care what happened there. The dog barks and the caravan moves on, and all that.

The world we now live in seems so vastly different, including the relationship between the US and western Europe. But make no mistake about it; if threatened in a way that finally gets their attention, Europeans would be counting on us again. And I have little doubt that our armed forces would be up to the task; the question is whether our government would [in the five years that have passed since I wrote this post, I have gotten to the point where I have little doubt that our government would not be up to the task, and I’m beginning to doubt whether our armed forces would, either, because of the way it’s been hamstrung under Obama].

But back to the D-day landings. About thirty-five years ago I visited Omaha Beach, site of the worst of the carnage. A quieter place than that beach and those huge cemeteries, with their lines of crosses set down as though with a ruler, you never did see.

omahacemetery.jpg

But the scene was quite different in 1944. The D-day invasion marked the beginning of the end for the Germans.

The weather was a huge factor, and the Allied commanders had to make the decision knowing that the forecast for the day was iffy and the window of opportunity small. For reasons of visibility and navigation (maximum amount of moonlight and deepest water), the invasion needed to occur during a time of full moon and spring tides, and all the invasion forces had already been assembled and were at the ready. To postpone would have been hugely expensive and frustrating, but to go ahead in bad weather would have been suicidal.

This is how bad the weather looked, how difficult the decision was, and how much we owe to the meteorologists, who:

…were challenged to accurately predict a highly unstable and severe weather pattern. As [Eisenhower] indicated in the message to Marshall, “The weather yesterday which was [the] original date selected was impossible all along the target coast.” Eisenhower therefore was forced to make his decision to proceed with a June 6 invasion in the predawn blackness of June 5, while horizontal sheets of rain and gale force winds shuddered through the tent camp.

The initially bad weather ended up being an advantage in other ways, because the Germans were not expecting the invasion to occur yet for that reason:

Some [German] troops stood down, and many senior officers were away for the weekend. General Erwin Rommel, for example, took a few days’ leave to celebrate his wife’s birthday, while dozens of division, regimental, and battalion commanders were away from their posts at war games.

In addition, there was Hitler’s personality and his reluctance to give autonomy to his military commanders:

Hitler reserved to himself the authority to move the divisions in OKW Reserve, or commit them to action. On 6 June, many Panzer division commanders were unable to move because Hitler had not given the necessary authorization, and his staff refused to wake him upon news of the invasion..

This didn’t mean that the beaches were not heavily fortified and manned, especially Omaha:

[The Germans] had large bunkers, sometimes intricate concrete ones containing machine guns and high caliber weapons. Their defense also integrated the cliffs and hills overlooking the beach. The defenses were all built and honed over a four year period.

The number of Allied casualties was enormous. Reading about it today makes one appreciate anew what these men faced, and how courageously they pressed on despite enormous difficulties. This is just a small sampler of what occurred on Omaha Beach at the outset; there was much more to come:

Despite these preparations, very little went according to plan. Ten landing craft were lost before they even reached the beach, swamped by the rough seas. Several other craft stayed afloat only because their passengers quickly bailed water with their helmets. Seasickness was also prevalent among the troops waiting offshore. On the 16th RCT front, the landing boats found themselves passing struggling men in life preservers, and on rafts, survivors of the DD tanks which had sunk. Navigation of the assault craft was made more difficult by the smoke and mist obscuring the landmarks they were to use in guiding themselves in, while a heavy current pushed them continually eastward.

As the boats approached within a few hundred yards of the shore, they came under increasingly heavy fire from automatic weapons and artillery. The force discovered only then the ineffectiveness of the pre-landing bombardment. Delayed by the weather, and attempting to avoid the landing craft as they ran in, the bombers had laid their ordnance too far inland, having no real effect on the coastal defenses.

These obstacles and unforeseen circumstances were extraordinarily costly in terms of the human sacrifice that occurred that day. Note that I use the word “obstacles and unforeseen circumstances” rather than “mistakes.” Today, if the same things had occurred (particularly if under the aegis of the Bush administration), they would be labeled unforgivable errors rather than the inevitable difficulties inherent in waging war, in which no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Another historical footnote is the following passage from Eisenhower’s message to the Allied Expeditionary Forces: You are about to embark upon the great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. It’s another sign of how times have changed; the word “crusade” has become verboten.

In his pocket, Eisenhower also kept another statement, one to activate in case the invasion failed. It read: Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.

The note was written in pencil on a simple piece of paper, and is housed in a special vault at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library & Museum in Abilene, Kansas, a bit of thought-provoking fodder for an alternate history that never occurred—fortunately for all of us.

And the hits keep coming

The New Neo Posted on by

There are so many revelations coming so fast in the Bergdahl story that I can’t keep up with them and still manage to do a few other things, such as visit with people and have dinner.

So I’m putting up this thread for readers to post links to breaking stories if they want to, and to discuss them. Right now I just read this one, a good example of how—despite my supposed lack of surprise about whatever outrage Obama commits—he still manages to outrage me:

The deal to free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban detainees held by the U.S. military nixed a broader effort by the Department of Defense to include other U.S. citizens held by the Taliban and its allies, according to a top congressional aide.

The Department of Defense had a “broader goal” of including Caitlan Coleman of York , Pa., her baby who was born in captivity and her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, in a deal to free Bergdahl, said Joe Kasper, chief of staff to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who sits on the House Armed Services Committee.

Among Americans held captive is Warren Weinstein, a contractor from Rockville, Md., who was abducted in 2011 in Pakistan and is detained by al-Qaeda militants aligned with the Taliban.

“The DoD was looking at this in the whole scope of things, to deal with these people as well,” Kasper told USA TODAY in an interview Thursday. “Instead of five for one, why not five for five?”

The following quote made me think, WTF?:

Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the State Department, said Thursday the idea of negotiating for the release of hostages was never seriously discussed. “It is longstanding U.S. policy not to make concessions to hostage-takers,” Hard said.

So what did we just do for Bergdahl? Oh, I see, he wasn’t a hostage so they weren’t hostage-takers:

The exchange for Bergdahl was consistent with that policy because he was “a combatant detained in the course of an armed conflict,” and “not a hostage,” Harf said. “His status as a missing or captured soldier is distinct from someone who, for example, may be a civilian hostage.”

No, he wasn’t “a combatant detained in the course of an armed conflict.” He purposely walked off the base, after sending his stuff (like for example his uniform) home, and either intentionally or accidentally fell right into the arms of the waiting Taliban.