Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani a/k/a Abu Shahid; Muntasir al-Jibouri; Abd Al Hadi; Al Zarqawi; Abu Laith al-Libi

Do you recognize the above names? You should. All of these men are Al Qaeda leaders killed or captured in Iraq by Coalition forces (except for Abu Laith al-Libi, who was killed in Pakistan). These are only some of the Al Qaeda fighters and leaders put out of action by the so-called "Bush war for oil" (or whatever other cutesy name the left is calling it now). To repeat, we are killing and capturing Al Qaeda. [For those of you who watch the "Today Show," Al Qaeda is the group that committed the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.]

All of these men would still be alive and well [and planning more attacks] if we had listened to Barack Hussein Obama and followed his advice at the start of this war.

These men will be replaced by other terrorists and terrorist leaders. Those terrorists will plan and plot more attacks. The United States will need to kill and capture them. Will Barack figure this out in time to stop the next wave of terrorist attacks? Does he deserve another chance to get it right? He can't simply throw the terrorists under the bus like he does with his supporters, family members, campaign workers, donors and advisors.

Or will he try to negotiate with them? Will there be a series of one-on-one meetings between Obama and the next group of Al Qaeda leaders? Will we see Al Qaeda visiting the White House over the next "8 to 10 years"?

Mike Ramirez 7-22-08

I was reminded of these dead Al Qaeda leaders when I saw this Mike Ramirez cartoon posted at Lucianne.com. This cartoon is not simply a picture of what "might have been." This cartoon depicts what will happen in Iraq and/or elsewhere if we entrust the war on terror to Barack Obama.

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

It's one thing to dislike Bush, it's one thing to hate America. But it's quite another to hate America so much you reflexively take the side of any genocidal psycho who comes along.


In their terminal irrelevance, the depraved left has now adopted the old slogan of Cold War realpolitik: like Osama and Mullah Omar, Saddam may be a sonofabitch, but he's their sonofabitch.


Mark Steyn

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran [Nero, gay marriage]

PIONEER: The self-contradictory concept of same-sex
marriage has caught on in the decadent West with amazing
rapidity. About the only precedent I can find for it is
inauspicious: hostile chroniclers report that the Roman
emperor Nero "married" a boy (who, however, had been
surgically, er, altered for the purpose) and in later
marriage took the role of bride himself (though without
alteration). Usually dismissed as demented, it appears
that Nero was merely ahead of his time.

Joe Sobran - January 2004

Quote of the day - Dick Morris [Gas prices, gas taxes]

In fact, liberals basically don’t see much wrong with $5 gas. Many have been urging a tax to achieve precisely this level, just like Europe has done for decades.

Obama said that he was unhappy that there was not a period of “gradual adjustment” to the high prices, but seems to shed few tears over the current levels. After all, if your imperative is climate change, a high gas price is worth 10 times a ratified Kyoto treaty in bringing about change.

Dick Morris - July 15, 2008

Niall Ferguson; War of the World; Part III; PBS; Cold War; Cuban Missile Crisis; Guatemala, Bosnia

Click here for my notes on Part I and Part II of Niall Ferguson's documentary.

In Part III of this maligned documentary, Ferguson explodes myths and explores little known facts about the Cold War.

• Ferguson reveals that JFK's seeming success in the Cuban missile crisis was not such a success after all. JFK agreed to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey in exchange for Kruschev's withdrawal of missiles from Cuba. (Conservatives have known this for decades, but nobody has ever paid attention before.) Ferguson further reveals that Kennedy wanted this deal to remain secret.
• The documentary mentions the Guatemalan coup of 1954, in which the Soviet puppet government was removed. Ferguson shows some film in which evidence of the regime's Soviet ties was revealed.
• Ferguson downplays the role of Nixon's Chinese diplomacy, stressing that U.S. efforts to court China resulted in the growth of China as a superpower (including China's role in backing the Kmehr Rouge in Cambodia and the subsequent killing fields).
• In discussing Soviet recruitment in the third world, the documentary refers to "third world Lenins" that followed the Soviet lead - while showing film of dictators like Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi.
  

Ferguson repeated the usual obligatory moonbattery about CIA backed regimes in South America killing thousands of their citizens and he downplayed the role of Reagan and Thatcher in winning the cold war against the Soviet Union. Ferguson's theory credits (who else?) Gorbachev. This is to be expected from almost any PBS documentary. But he adds much that the left in this country would not like. Any history that confirms old conservative Cold War theories can't be all bad.

Ferguson also discusses the Bosnian civil war from the early 1990's. But he fails to credit the centuries old influence of Islam in this long suppressed struggle.

Ferguson attributes the 20th century War of the World to economic conditions and ethnic strife occurring on the fault lines of competing or declining empires. He references Poland, Cambodia and Bosnia as examples where these conditions led to some of the worst such violence of the century. He then points to the modern day middle east as an example in which history may repeat itself.

In fact, the Islamic world meets most of Ferguson's criteria. If we think of the Islamic world as an expanding empire and substitute religion for ethnicity, we have the recipe for a repeat of the worst slaughter of the 20th century. Everywhere Islam borders another religion [India, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Israel, Kosovo], brutal war exists. Ferguson missed this point.

As he did in Parts I and II, Ferguson lumped Hitler, Stalin and Mao into one group. This treatment contrasts with the MSM/DNC, who spent more than half a century trying to place their ideologies on the opposite ends of the political spectrum (with Reagan always a little closer to Hitler while we never quite heard who the leftist politicians were close to). We must think of totalitarianism like Ferguson instead of simply using one form of it (Nazism) as a handbag to swing at Republicans.

Ferguson's perspective contained the obvious, obligatory anti-Americanism, but that may have been simply the price Ferguson paid for the documentary to see the light of day. The documentary is worthwhile if one already has some knowledge of the 20th century and can place the relevant facts into context. If one can remember how the MSM/DNC tried to deny vigorously some of the facts set forth by Ferguson (even where he misinterprets those facts), one can benefit from this documentary.
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visit counter added 7-14-08

Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell

Most of the problems of this country are not nearly as bad as the "solutions" -- especially the solutions that politicians come up with during election years.

Thomas Sowell

War of the World, Part II; Niall Ferguson; PBS; George Bernard Shaw; North Star; Kursk;

Click here for my notes on Part I of Niall Ferguson's PBS documentary, "War of the World." The documentary has drawn much crticism from conservatives because Ferguson is critical of various aspects of Western participation in the war.

PBS presented Part II of this documentary a few hours ago.

Part II does allege that some American soldiers shot wounded Japanese prisoners in retaliation for Japanese atrocities against Americans. Ferguson supports this charge with some film and eyewitness accounts of Charles Lindbergh. Ferguson partially blames these incidents for lengthening the war. He believes the Japanese fought with greater ferocity and refused to surrender on Okinawa because the Japanese believed they would be killed even if they surrendered.

Ferguson also sites allied bombing of civilian populations in Hamburg and Dresden. These incidents have been documented in books such as Advance to Barbarism (which I have not read).



But far more important than this aspect of Part II (which didn't show up until the second half of this evening's show) was Ferguson's treatment of Soviet Russia and its dealings with the West.

Conservatives have long maintained that Stalin's Soviet Union was protected and kept alive by western governments and western liberals since its inception, including time periods long before World War II (as well as during the war). Ferguson provides a rare discussion of only some of these facts. Ferguson shows film of leftist icon George Bernard Shaw (a founder of the modern socialist movement and all that the Western left considers holy) traveling to Stalin's Russia in 1931. While Ferguson does not mention the forced famine in the Ukraine at that time, he discusses much of the brutality that Stalin practiced. (Part I was also unkind to the Soviet Union in this fashion.) Ferguson states that Shaw checked his usual "cynicism" at the door when he entered Soviet Russia. Ferguson quotes Shaw's praise of Stalin.
























It is enjoyable to watch the true colors revealed on one of the left's favorite icons. Rather than criticize this documentary, conservatives should relish this part at least. We always knew leftist judgment to be impaired. Here we have a concrete example of a leftist being duped. More importantly, the left's veneration of this dupe calls into question the entire foundation of the modern leftist movement (as if we needed another reason to deride the leftists). George Bernard Shaw is as important to leftists of our era as Karl Marx or the New Deal. Learning of Shaw's admiration of Stalin is equivalent to discovering Barack Hussein Obama's co-dependant relationship with racists, terrorists and other assorted enemies of the U.S.

Ferguson goes on to describe only a small part of the military aid that the U.S. provided to the Soviet Union during the war. For years, the standard MSM/DNC line has been that the Russians won the war because they were patriotic and brave and they pulled together to defend their workers' paradise. Most history texts downplay the American contribution to the war relative the Soviet effort. In fact, millions of Russian soldiers surrendered to the Germans in the early part of the German invasion. Ferguson describes the Russian defeats in mid-1941 as the worst disaster in military history.

In contrast, the Western version of the war has always dovetailed with the pro-Soviet propaganda film The North Star. But for the first time that I have noticed, a mainstream source has showed the significant role played by United States "capital" in saving the Soviet Union.

More of the story of American capital saving the Soviet War effort has been known to conservatives through such books as "From Major Jordan's Diaries" for decades.



But now, Americans who have been misled by the Soviet-loving left can learn the truth also. Specifically, Ferguson shows how American military aid provided the crucial difference for the Soviets in the pivotal battle at Kursk.

American P-39 tank killer painted with Soviet insignia for use at Kursk

While most histories of WWII focus mainly on Nazi brutality (which Ferguson does also with gusto), "War of the World" focuses equally on Stalin's brutality against his own people and Soviet complicity in the start of war. Ferguson details the Soviet-Nazi deal to carve up Poland with Hitler and the resulting brutality on the Soviet side of the new Polish dividing line. Ferguson quotes Solzhenitsyn (usually forbidden in the MSM/DNC) as having characterized Stalin as paranoid to the point where he trusted only one person in his entire life - and that person was Hitler in the 1939 deal to carve up Poland. I would have liked to hear about the effect on the Western leftist movement of the announcement of the Hitler-Stalin pact, but it was only a one hour documentary.

Most important was the conclusion, in which Ferguson questioned who really won World War II. Given the Soviet's conquest of Eastern Europe at the end of the war and the communist conquest of China, it is clear the Soviets were the largest beneficiary of the war - a war that led directly to what we know as the Cold War. The Soviets had been pursuing the "Cold War" since the Bolshevik Revolution. Our own perspective on World War II has missed the point for 60 years. For the people of China (inter alia) 1945 was only a beginning - a beginning of more than a half century of totalitarian rule that may yet erupt into another major shooting war.

The War of the World presents a unique perspective on the 20th century (and even the 21st) that connects the dots and allows us to see the roots of the present crises.
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Part III.
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Visit counter added July 15, 2008

RIP Jesse Helms

RIP Jesse Helms.

The War of the World; Niall Ferguson; PBS; The 100 years war.

The PBS documentary "The War of the World: A New History of the 20th Century" has generated some controversy this week, as conservatives have been critical that the documentary has attacked American war efforts in WWII. The documentary has been criticized for attacking America's alliance with Stalin.

I saw the first part of this series last night. Part I did not include most of World War II. Part I takes the viewer from the beginning of the 20th century through the beginning of WWII.

So far, the documentary has been somewhat instructive. The documentary was critical of the Bolshevik revolution, especially the brutality of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. The documentary pointed out that the Bolsheviks did not control the territory outside of the Russian cities for some time after the Bolshevik revolution. The narrator indicated that opposition forces were on the verge of deposing the Bolsheviks when the Bolsheviks reversed the course of the war by using "terrorist" tactics on their own people, including soldiers and farmers.

This harsh treatment of the Bolshevik revolution would never have been allowed in the western MSM/DNC when the Soviets still controlled Russia. I had heard of some of these facts, but never in a television documentary.

The documentary also spent a great deal of time on the Turkish persecution of Armenians and Greeks in the immediate aftermath of World War I. While the documentary did not explicitly point out that this persecution constituted muslim persecution of Christians, the existence of this story on PBS is new and significant.

The main point of Part I was the length of the wars of the 20th century. "The War of the World" views the 20th century wars as a 100 year war. The narrator deals with these wars as a continuation of the same war. For too long, we have tried to analyze these wars separately. In doing so, we miss the real causes of the wars. Authors analyze the pros and cons of World War II in a vacuum, thereby missing the real culprits, such as the rise of totalitarianism worldwide over a 20+ year period prior to the War and continuing well beyond the War's official "end." I have always believed that World War II was the hottest part of the Cold War, during which (and immediately afterward) the Soviets made their biggest territorial gains. We will see how the documentary treats that subject in Parts II and III.

The documentary analyzes the 20th century wars as part of a continuing battle between East and West. Will Durant's eleven volume series on the history of civilization does the same thing - and even traces the East vs. West conflict back to the Trojan War (circa 1100 B.C.). By using the East vs. West analysis, the currect conflict involving Islam (as well as issues relating to China) make more sense. The Cold War makes more sense when we see that its roots go back to World War I - instead of merely to the Berlin Wall or Korea.

Part I was deficient in that the author appeared to be too rooted in socialism, including fawning attention to H.G Wells. But this is to be expected on PBS (and almost all television in general).

The author also could have easily tied WWI to the financial crises of the 1920's and 1930's. The connections definitely exist and would prove the author's point even more strongly. The timeline runs basically as follows: (1) World War I and the financial bubble that paid for it led utlimately to the financial collapse in the West that we refer to as the Great Depression (1929 - ?) (the collapse began earlier in Europe). (2) The economic upheaval of the 1920's and 1930's in Europe and the West led to the rise of Hitler and Japanese expansion, which the remaining powers did not have the will to resist (due to the economic upheaval) until it was too late to avert another war. When combined with the rise of Soviet Russia (a direct result of WWI), the perfect storm was created.

For more on the effect of the bubble and its roots in WWI and its consequences in the Great Depression, see Garet Garrett's "The Bubble that Broke the World."



See "America's Great Depression" for a detailed discussion of how the bubble led to our own depression.



Both of these books hold implications for our current economic situation.

While the PBS documentary misses that point, the pros outweigh the cons thus far. "The War of the World" can be a beginning point for a greater understanding of the past 100 years.
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visit counter added July 1, 2008
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Part II of War of the World